Hi Larry, I'd like to ask you about eh the song Strong Love, Strange Peace [Spoken by interviewer] That's the first song eh ah, the curtain goes up and the house lights go down and, and eh the main character Michael walks in to his home an', and sits down at the piano. He's got a newspaper, he, he sits down at the piano but he's reading a newspaper and then he folds it and starts playing this response to whatever it is he's reading and it's eh Strong Love, Strange Peace. And also, he sings the curtains up, houselights down to kind of echo what the audience is experiencing an', and eh, he, he obviously has some strong beliefs and you don't know what, what they are. But you're gonna find out [Chuckles] [Spoken by Larry]

​​Backstage, I cross the middle ground Curtain up, house lights down I sing love songs and pass myself around And afterwards Some people say they thought I put them down They feel so bad It doesn't matter what I say I hope tomorrow they have a better day They seem so caught They need release They need your strong love and strange peace Strong love and strange peace Reporters question me, is this a new direction for the young How lamb like their faces How snake like their tongue They quote me perfectly Then rewrite every word I speak And go away convinced we're all some new kind of freak I feel so good It does not matter what they say I hope tomorrow they have a better day They seem so trapped They need release They need your strong love and strange peace Strong love and strange peace Please give them your strong love and strange peace La la la la La la la la la la la la la La la la la la la la la

​Larry, how about this next song Lost Kids, what was that about? [Spoken by interviewer] Well this is not my voice. Uh you know, I'm singing the song but this is another character singing the song. Uh, people who usually hear my albums think that I'm expressing something that I believe in. Uh, you could kind of think that I'm saying this except it's kind of scurrilous the way this person is doing it, he's, he's making fun of uh people's fear about their kids. Well people have, you know parents have a right to be ah concerned with their kids. Kids can mess up their life. But this person is uh, not the main character, which is Michael. He's another character. You hear all these different voices and these different philosophies in the musical This is, uh, from Lion's Breath. So um, he is mocking the situation while he's uh talki', he's actually detailing all the trouble the kids are getting into. But, but it's, it's a slightly compassionate expression of this dilemma that parents have had for centuries where their kids run away from home and go off to the big city and try to live a different way instead of staying on the farm and helping dad with the cows and you know. So it's, again, this is establishing character for the, later on you start to see how everybody's philosophy affects their lives [Spoken by Larry]

Here's a word to all you parents Who are looking for your Clarences and Larrys If he ran away from home he's probably living on his own In Haight Ashbury It's a shame that all the kids are smoking grass And buying live and looking hairy Oh oh wo-oh oh oh oh oh When they spend their nights in alleys And the local cops start prowling it gets very scary How about the blue eyed girls who used to wear their hair in curls With names like Nancy Now her hair is filled with fleas, her eyes are clouds of LSD She's in a trance-y With her hemlines at her thighs she's probably kissing every guy That tickles her fancy Oh oh oh oh oh oh And she's living in a nifty two room building With a fifty (badap) person occupancy

​Okay well how about the song We All, maybe you can elaborate on that for me [Spoken by interviewer] Yeah sure, this is sung by the cast and uh, you know different ones of them actually step forward and deliver a line or two lines and so eh, it's an ensemble performance. Uh, again I'm just singing it so it sounds like I'm speaking for this crowd of people but actually this is a production number, which means there's also movement on stage, there's dancing, you know, or dance movements and eh, and eh, eh it, this is the celebration of uh the people living in Haight Ashbury for their lifestyle. And it's not re', it, it reveals more about them than they realise. But because they accept this way of living, they think this is personally, that this is perfectly uh reasonable. But we the listener, depending on our philosophy, make judgements about who they are and how they're living. Uh, yeah, this is not my philosophy. This is other peop', other character's [chuckles] beliefs [Spoken by Larry]

We all live together, give together We all joke together, smoke together Our crash pad has an open door It is cheap together And every night we share the floor We all sleep together We love and laugh together We take our bath together Share our concern together Watch draft cards burn together We (we) all (all) sing and do our thing together We (we) all (all) goes without our clothes together Take LSD together Trip out and be together Our bodies move together Our minds all groove together We take our chance together F**k cops and dance together We dig hard rock together We peaced our flock [???] together We (we) all (all) live together, give together We (we) all (all) joke and toke a smoke together We (we) all (all) sing and do our thing together We (we) all (all) goes without our clothes together We all

​This next song Prayer Meeting, how in the world did you get these sounds? [Spoken by interviewer] Well this is uh, this is another scene, it's another ensemble piece. Ik, and uh there's movement that's not dancing and people are singing, uh, and you can't quite make out the words. Now this is a lot more radical for back in the sixties than it is now, because now places like, you know the churches that uh, um have ih, ih. Anyway, I, I had never heard anything like this. I made it up to be something musical. The only thing I'd ever heard was at a couple meetings I went to was talking, people praying out loud, but they weren't singing. So I just made this a musical expression of what I had seen in church. And uh, and um, th', this is uh, a real personal moment. So people are singing different things that they just feel at that moment And what I did, actually, how I created this was uh, I recorded various tracks. And then I used the faders to move in and out of these different tracks to make it ki', it's kinda like playing an instrument, it, 'cause the chords suddenly change. It was really complex how I did it. It took quite a while to, to figure this out and then quite a while to record, but anyway that's technically how I did it. And it end, ends up being very beautiful, like it just flows from one thing to another. So even though you don't understand what people are saying, there's a lot of emotion here with the chords that are being created And, and this to me, you know, I, during this time I was going to church for eight hours every, every uh, Sunday and five hours a couple days before on Friday. So the, you know, and it wasn't Pentecostal church. But this is the, kind of my musical vision of, of what real worship should be like. And you know, this was way before the praise and worship movement that, that exists now [Spoken by Larry]

​[Multiple voices overlapping in prayer and choral sounds]

​Okay, now the song uh, I'm So Glad I Know You. That's uh, that's a, almost a vaudevillian type of a song, uh, can you tell us a little bit about that? [Spoken by interviewer] Yeah. Um, there's a girl named Mary Kay, who uh, all, almost all these musicals take place in Sa', San Francisco, which is where I grew up. Uh, it's really about the, the, the, the um, the same kind of community. Uh, one takes place on a college campus, Birthday For Shakespeare's about uh, people in theater. Uh Allison takes place in, in eh San Francisco and Love On Haight Street takes place in San Francisco, and uh, and Lion's Breath takes place in San Francisco. So uh, Mary Kay's just come from back, the Midwest and she comes to San Francisco and, and she meets this guy named Christopher, and Christopher's asking questions. She just kind of gets off the bus, she wanted to see what is this that she's read about in Life Magazine, you know, and it's the summer and she, she comes here and, and you don't know if she's a runaway or if sh', if her parents let her come here, but she's very naive And he realises that from talking to her, you know, she doesn't drink, she doesn't smoke cigarettes, and she's never taken any drugs. She just really doesn't fit the Haight Ashbury scene. And so he's making fun of her but she doesn't know that. So he starts saying, hey I'm so glad I know you Mary Jane and, and she's saying, no, Mary Kay. And he just won't correct himself, he keeps saying, I'm so glad I know you Mary Jane and he's though, you know, every time you walk into a room, though dark and clouded, all I see i', cloudy, all I see is you, uh you're something special to me in every way, I'm so glad I know you Mary Jane. I think those are the words, it's been how many, thirty years or something, twenty, yeah thi'. And uh, and so we in the audience might figure out who this i', what, what he's singing about, he's really singing about drugs and he's singing to all the people that are standing around, they're all kind of making fun of Mary Kay, but she doesn't know it. And uh, this is a lot of the derisive kind of things that happened you know. I, I actually grew up just a few blocks away from Haight Ashbury. I used to walk to Haight Ashbury to catch the bus. You know, I had a, a paper route and, and uh, when I was ten years old and in a hospital, and so Haight Ashbury to me was no big artistic scene, it was just a place where the bus came and, and uh, so it, I, I'm, there's a lot of negativity in, in the hippie community, although they woulda thought they're all into peace and love, they're not They would charge people pict', uh money to take pictures of them. They would make fun of people, they would taunt sailors and, you know soldiers on weekend leave and, they, there there was a lot of cruelty and this is just one of the uh, you know sign, ay-ow that's kind of an indication of what kind of uh negativity there was [Spoken by Larry]

You'll never know how much I think of you You'll never know how high you stand with me You make me happy and you brighten my day And I'm so glad I know you Mary Jane And every time I walk into a room Though dark and crowded all I see is you Your presence lingers long after you've gone Every thought of you turns me on You're something special to me in every way And I'm so glad I know you Mary Jane

​Okay Larry, how about this song Clean Lennon? It almost seems like a, a, a take on clean linen. Am I right there? [Spoken by interviewer] ​Yeah, except it's spelled l e n n o n like John Lennon. Yeah. Well um, George Harrison had come to Haight Ashbury with his wife Pattie, and h', he had heart shaped sunglasses on, rose coloured sunglasses and, and uh, so they're talking about that. Somebody said, yeah, I've got to meet him. Well I didn't really meet him but I, I smiled at him and, and he, he flashed me the peace sign and, and uh. And somebody else says, oh, I wish John Lennon would come here, you know, he's really cool and he came out of the slums, you know, he grew up in Liverpool and. Yeah well, they all did. Well, yeah, I guess so But John just seems like he's more in tune with all the, the stuff that the man's doing and the pigs, you know, what they're, and so he starts to sing this song about John Lennon. And uh, you know, hey man, this is a guy from the, the bad neighborhood, local boy makes good, you know, all his life a hood but now he's a star, he sure went far with his guitar and, and uh, cool looks. You know, he even eh wr', wrote two books and eh, he's got wealth and fame and he, he's a household name you know. They never thought he'd make it but, you know, he came out of nowhere, man. He crossed the finish line, says he's feel', so there's a lot of song titles in there too, like Nowhere Man, and, and the flying glove at the end of the song, that has to do with the Yellow Submarine cartoon. Uh the flying glove would fly around and, you know, there's just ah, now I don't even know if the song would, would make that much sense to people. They can accept it on a literal level, but at the time, you know, back in, in 69, it, it, it rang a lot more contemporarily with what was in the news [Spoken by Larry] A lot of the irony would be lost nowadays then [Spoken by interviewer] Yeah [Spoken by Larry] Yeah [Spoken by interviewer]

Well whaddaya know Local boy makes good All his life a hood And now he's a star Showing far with his guitar And strange looks He even put his mind in a book He's got wealth and fame He's a household name We never thought he'd make it But you know he came out of nowhere man He crossed the finish line Says he's feeling fine Drinking Japanese wine And signing autographs Just for a laugh You know he never stops For cops or hops on teeny bop He drops his clothes And blows his nose Says all you need is love And then gives you the flying glove Ah

​Is God dead? [Spoken by interviewer] Yeah, this is from Birthday For Shakespeare, and eh, they're uh putting on, you know, plays and celebrating at this university. They're celebrating uh Shakespeare's, uh birthday ah, as accurately as they can, not being sure when he was born but. You know, it's been so many hundreds of years and. And they're putting on scenes from different plays, like uh, one of my songs called Pyramus and Thisbe, eh, is actually a, a humorous look at A Midsummer Night's Dream, and which, which is a funny play in itself. And uh, anyway, the, this person is not saying that God doesn't exist. They're saying, why is the world so messed up man? You know, how about the war man, the war in Vietnam an'? And, you know, is God dead or like is, is he here? Is he watching us? Is he asleep? Maybe he's like asleep man, and you know, it just, things can't keep going on like this, you know and, and we need God's help, man and So he's not really an atheist, he's not an agnostic. He's just a, uh, I'd say he's pre-christian. He doesn't really know what he thinks, and he's, and he wants some help from above to solve the world problem, brings, bring world peace or, or whatever God could do and. So this is kind of a sweet, gentle, naive look at the way the world is and, and wondering how God interfaces with, with mankind And that's, you know that's about all I brought today, I mean I've got a lot of other stuff. Some of it's a lot more complicated and some of it's more difficult to understand or more controversial, and I just thought I'd play it safe and bring some of the, the high points from these different musicals [Spoken by Larry] Well thank you very much Larry [Spoken by interviewer] Yeah [Spoken by Larry] It's been fun [Spoken by interviewer] Yeah thank you, thanks​ [Spoken by Larry]

​​​​​Is God dead or is he just asleep Sick in bed or buried six feet deep Look at what a mess the world is in Guess he's left it up to us, we should have left it up to God's not dead, the world has been asleep Sin has spread, the devil steals the sheep People have to make a choice in life On the verge of peace they always seem to find another knife Take a look at the people passing by Pushing you out of their way Stop a moment and if you listen You’ll hear the people say Is God dead or is he just asleep (Is God dead or is he just asleep) [x3] Is God dead or is he just asleep (Is he just asleep)

​What was it like Larry recording in the old studios back in the day uh, I remember reading about um, Abbey Road and they would have these technicians there that would be all dressed in these white coats, and the artist wasn't allowed to touch any of the machinery at all and uh, was it like that for you when you started out or? [Spoken by interviewer] Well the, the engineers weren't that uptight, you know. The, that's the English for you [Spoken by Larry] Yeah [Spoken by interviewer] You know, they, they uh, that's not the way we did it. But eh, I can tell you a little bit about the English studio and then compare it to the American studio. The English studio, they used to have two tracks, and then uh, they decided, hey let's make three tracks, three heads record simultaneously. We'll have a stereo picture to the left, to the right, and then straight ahead. So for years they had these three head recorders and then it occurred to somebody that stereo's all in your mind. You don't, you only need two tracks. People can't actually hear with their nose, so it doesn't matter what's ahead of you, you just need separate ambience So then uh, they said well, you know, we built a three track. Let's build a four track. So they created that. Uh, a lot of this stuff was on very small tape, so the, the, uh, quality of each track wasn't that good because the, the width of the tape wasn't that great on the small tapes. Anyway, so they started experimenting and I think that, uh, America was ah very influential. The 3M companies, Scotch, Minnesota Mining Corporation or whatever they're called, eh was creating different formats of tape, really helping the industry. So they had four track. Now jump over to America during the same time when the Beatles were recording on four track, and that was state of the art at Abbey Road [Spoken by Larry] Mm-hmm [Spoken by interviewer] I could walk in to almost any studio and do eight track. And if I wanted to pay more I could do sixteen track. So there was a different price, there was actually uh, three different formats that many, many studios had. Four track, eight track, sixteen track, and they would charge you maybe uh, $15 an hour for four track, twenty an hour for eight track, and then jump up to like thirty for uh, you know sixteen track. And that was real expensive, thirty bucks back then. Because you can walk into almost any studio in Hollywood or Portland now, and for fifty bucks you can make a recording on uh, 24 track tape. So it was pretty expensive back then [Spoken by Larry]

​Perhaps you could tell me about the actual recording process of the late sixties [Spoken by interviewer] I think most rock and roll was uh, a band that had already rehearsed, that knew the songs, maybe even performed the songs, and were going into the studio and, and all playing at the same time to get a feel. O', of course during the same time, there were, uh there was Sinatra and people. D', Don Costa would make the charts, the arrangements, and the people would come in, maybe they'd run through it twice you know the', and they'd never really rehearsed it before. Like when I did Upon This Rock in 69, we didn't really rehearse it. We had a bunch of players, you know, and they were good sight readers and, and some of them who couldn't read were so great at learning so quickly they could basically fake it and be perfect, no mistakes So that was the standard of performance at that time. That was the way that music was done, there was two schools. O', one was the, the have everybody in the room uh, and don't rehearse it. And then, uh, and uh, you know, have everybody in the room and know exactly what you're gonna do. And then there was just a third variation was have everybody come into the room, but not at the same time [Spoken by Larry] Hmm [Spoken by interviewer] Let people overdub. And that was the multi-track, that was the, you know, you could lay down a rhythm track. And then use the orchestra instead of as a live performer, you could use it as what they call a sweetener. They could come in a day, a month later and, and uh overdub the orchestra on top. But it just wasn't the same, it didn't get that same ambience. But you know, what you sacrificed in uh, the live sound sometimes you made up for in, in a pop world, in rock, with having a, a fascinating layering of, of sounds. And then you could, you could warp reality, like the Beatles did, they'd even have uh, tape loops and things going. So they were creating sound pictures that weren't necessarily something they could ever do on stage, or that could even be done at the same time if you had everybody in the studio. It had to be done in layers because you were creating it as you went. You were experimenting and dreaming it up as you went [Spoken by Larry] Mm-hmm [Spoken by interviewer]

​Do you think that the average musician in those days was of uh, a higher quality? Do you think they had to be a better player when they didn't have all the overdub possibilities and punching in and punching out? [Spoken by interviewer] Yeah, session players? [Spoken by Larry] Mm-hmm [Spoken by interviewer] Yeah they had to be perfect or they wouldn't get hired [Spoken by Larry] Mm-hmm [Spoken by interviewer] If they made a mistake on a track and the producer had to redo it, since it was union rules, you were under the clock, and if a guy made a mistake and it messed up your time schedule enough that you couldn't even get one more song done before the clock struck twelve. You wouldn't wanna hire that guy again and the word would go around, don't hire so-and-so [Spoken by Larry] Right [Spoken by interviewer] He, he can't uh, uh, you know, he can't do it every time. So yeah, you had to be perfect or you just didn't survive [Spoken by Larry] And it wasn't like, uh let's say the bass player made a, made a flub on a note. That would, that, it's not like they could go back and just fix that one note like they can nowadays [Spoken by interviewer] No [Spoken by Larry] They had to go and redo the whole tape, right? [Spoken by interviewer] Well you could punch in, you could punch out, but you had to have real nerves [Spoken by Larry] Mm-hmm [Spoken by interviewer] And uh, you'd have to take the whole time to go through the track and find out where that mistake was and back it up a little bit, and then te', and then you as the producer or the engineer would have to really have a good memory to know exactly where to punch, and the bass player would have to play the right note and not nothing more [Spoken by Larry] Mm-hmm [Spoken by interviewer] So he you could punch in and out. Because if he played the next note a little too fast, then it created what they called a, wow, it's been so long, I can't, I can't remember, uh, but you'd hear a ba-boom [Spoken by Larry] Yeah [Spoken by interviewer] You'd hear two notes [Spoken by Larry] Mm-hmm, hmm [Spoken by interviewer] And it would, it would, uh. Man, I can't remember what they used to [Spoken by Larry] Like an artifact or something [Spoken by interviewer] Yeah. Yeah but now with bass it wasn't so bad because sometimes bass player, you'd hear on the Motown records, the bass would make a mistake [Spoken by Larry] Yeah [Spoken by interviewer] But it was a good mistake [Spoken by Larry] Yeah, yeah [Spoken by interviewer] And he was like, wow. And then so, if me being a musician the next time that came on the radio, I'd be listening for that one part of the song where the guy goes to the wrong note but it's really cool, and I wonder what kind of chord that forms 'cause I'd like to, to know that in case I ever want to use a bass line like that. So uh, perfection isn't everything, you know. I played with Ray Charles' bass player and that guy was awesome. He just, we just went through the song once, talked it through and then he gave me the most fearsome performance. Uh I, I don't have the track anymore. I couldn't, I couldn't find it, but uh, it was something I'd already recorded as a demo and then I went in and did it and this guy was amazing. So uh, being perfect isn't everything, but in those days because money is, it was so scary to be in the studio. Now it's not, you know, now you go in there and you take your time and the band eats a snack on the clock and, you know ​[Spoken by Larry]

​You were talking about using tape loops and backwards tapes [Spoken by interviewer] Yeah [Spoken by Larry] And things like that, I noticed on, uh, Nothing Really Changes [Spoken by interviewer] Uh-huh [Spoken by Larry] You had some interesting sounds on there, uh, especially the reprise [Spoken by interviewer] Mm-hmm [Spoken by Larry] Did you, how did you get some of those effects, what? The, some [Spoken by interviewer] Yeah [Spoken by Larry] Of the hand clapping [Spoken by interviewer] Yeah [Spoken by Larry] Was, was, was that just you in the studio or what, how did you do that? [Spoken by interviewer] Gee I hate to ruin the song for people but [Spoken by Larry] Mm-hmm [Spoken by interviewer] It sounds like it's a huge festival crowd, you know [Spoken by Larry] Mm-hmm [Spoken by interviewer] But uh, really it was just the, the band, orchestra and me, and then I took one of my live concerts and uh, where the audience was applauding, I, I made a, a copy of that, made a tape loop and put it on so, on the machine in a circle so it just kept going, you know, the applause instead of going [makes applause noise] and then dying down it just goes [makes applause noise]. It just keeps going, you know. And then I took the fader and the engineer had never seen this, and no, nobody had ever thought of it before [Spoken by Larry] Hmm [Spoken by interviewer] I mean I don't even know how I thought of it, I just thought, I got an idea how to make this sound live. So I would take this loop, which was just [make applause noise] the whole time, and I'd, and I'd push the fader up. [Makes noises]. Up, down, up, down [Spoken by Larry] Mmm [Spoken by interviewer] Up, down. So that it sounded like a, this big crowd was applauding and uh, then I'd get it off a little bit, you know. I'd, I'd make them applaud a little bit too early, a little bit too late, just to keep it natural. You know, 'cause today if you sample something and then you, and you, and you uh, put it right on the beat, it sounds artificial. So I, I was thinking even back then, an audience can't clap exactly on the beat, so I made it a fake applause with, with the kind of errors that an audience would make in, in their timing and [Spoken by Larry] Huh [Spoken by interviewer] Yeah, it was fun, it was fun [Spoken by Larry] So it was actually like a early sampler [Spoken by interviewer] Yeah, yeah [Spoken by Larry] In a way really [Spoken by interviewer] Yeah. It was a tape loop and a, yeah. I just didn't bother using a, a keyboard. I just did it by hand [Spoken by Larry] Do you think that's gonna become uh, somewhat of a lost art? You know I mean, like nowadays kids can, you know, basically go out and buy a computer and record into a computer ah [Spoken by interviewer] Well, yeah yeah, I think it is a lost art and I, I've done things that, that I, it just came to me. I think that there was a lot of creativity in those days, uh with Beatles perfor', you know, performances in the studio, the engineers would have to figure out how to do things for the first time. And so I've done a lot of things that now when I talk to uh, engineers, they have no idea how to do it. They've never even thought of it. They never heard about it, they never read about it One thing was you'd take the old two tracks and you'd, you would unlock them at the side and bend them up. So instead of the tape going around like pancakes on a plate, it was like a clock on a wall. And you'd take the two reels and you'd get a baby hub, a plastic hub, and you'd dangle it below. You'd just suspend it in the air and you'd make a tape loop uh, with nothing on it. And you'd create uh, another form of reverb [Spoken by Larry] Mm-hmm [Spoken by interviewer] So you might have a plate echo, you might have a room echo, you, some people had a chamber, a natural chamber. And then there was spring reverb, and uh you know. And then you might have, some people had a hole in the ground, uh, in, underneath the studio they'd dug and they'd put a microphone in there just to give a, you know, it had hard walls they built to put it in a box. So then this created a different kind of reverb, with a delay. You could actually fix the kind of delay you wanted by uh, you know, make the t', the, the. I guess the next time I ever heard about anything like that was when Echoplex came out with, with mm, you know, a little box that, that had a, a built-in loo'. It, it's just interesting all the stuff you could invent. I used to lay in bed at night and try [Spoken by Larry] Hmm [Spoken by interviewer] To think up ideas, write 'em down, and then go into the studio and do it. You know, I did a whole album once with, for an artist named Randy Stonehill, and I actually tried to figure out special uh, w', types of vocals that I'd never heard anybody do, to give his album uh, an ethereal sound, a very, you know, angelic sound. And it worked. When I went into the studio, the stuff that I had thought about when I was falling asleep actually worked [Spoken by Larry] Hmm [Spoken by interviewer] So I think that the, all that stuff's gone now, people just have a machine. And, and players aren't that good, don't need to be that good anymore. You can get a, a band that's top twenty that the guys really aren't that good at playing, but they can always fix it in the studio and then go out on stage and. You know when you're playing that loud through speakers and the audience is making noise, and sometimes audiences even talk through the whole show. I mean it's just not the same as it used to be where the audience came and sat like they were in church and listened to every note​ [Spoken by Larry]

​Recording engineers and musicians back in the day used to uh, used to come up through the ranks in a, in a, in a mentor type of a situation. You know, where nowadays it's like you've got uh, all these recording institutes and [Spoken by interviewer] Right [Spoken by Larry] Uh, the Guitar Institute of Technology down [Spoken by interviewer] Yeah, ah [Spoken by Larry] In Hollywood and stuff like that, where you know, these schools are just pumping out, you know, quote unquote musicians and engineers [Spoken by interviewer] Yeah [Spoken by Larry] And, um, do you think, do you think some of the soul has been lost in music because of that? [Spoken by interviewer] Oh yeah. I mean, there's this very soulless quality about some of these schools. They're teaching you technicalities, but they don't really teach you the art [Spoken by Larry] Mm-hmm [Spoken by interviewer] It used to be that the, somebody wanted to be in the music business as an engineer they'd start off at a studio as a tea boy. That's all they'd do is make sandwiches, you know, and, and tea, serve everybody, go out for errands. They were a gopher. Th', then uh, they would move up to what they called a tape op, where they would just uh, reel, you know, spin the uh, thread that, the, the reels onto the machines so the engineer didn't have to get up out of his seat, he could still be talking to the producer or to the band They, then they worked their way up to an assistant, which was a little bit more because you could actually uh, do some of the EQs and go out and set up the microphones and, and, you know, eventually you worked up to, with a real, real education on all the variables. Guys that go to school, they have no real practical sense of all that can go wrong, all the gerrymandering that has to be done to make a session work instead of saying, well, we gotta stop now 'cause this, you know, this isn't working so sorry everybody, go home [Spoken by Larry] Hm [Spoken by interviewer] So there was, there's just a lot of on the, you know, spur of the moment, um, invention that went on and because you had so much history in the studio, it, you began to think in a, in a, in a, in a, a special way. Studio think [Spoken by Larry] Mm-hmm [Spoken by interviewer] Instead of school think [Spoken by Larry] So it's a lot of problem solving and create, being creative [Spoken by interviewer] Right, right. I mean, multitrack was invented by Les Paul because he wanted to overdub and there was no such thing as overdubbing back in the days when it was just mono or simple two track stereo. So in his garage he built a whole system of uh, recorders that all linked together. Yeah. And um, yeah, it's just, you know, it surprises me how much I knew when I was eighteen years old and how much, how many things I could come up with that, that hadn't been done before, you know​ [Spoken by Larry]

​I was just listening to Walking Backwards Down The Stairs and um, I really, really like the string parts, you know on there, the string quartet [Spoken by interviewer] Ah-ha [Spoken by Larry] Um, I've often wondered um, were string players uh, did they kind of like, you know, turn up their noses at, at a rock musician wanting to put strings on a, on a record? I mean, that wasn't really done all that much back then, you know was there like a certain snob factor? [Spoken by interviewer] Yeah with some people. There was some, there, there were some orchestra leaders that you'd call up that didn't have a problem [Spoken by Larry] Mm-hmm [Spoken by interviewer] Like Sid Sharp, Sid did all kinds of stuff. I mean, he did Sinatra but he also would do rock and roll. And he was very friendly. He would work with you and he was very patient if the, if there was something going wrong in the studio and he worked with, you know, he might have a forty piece orchestra. And so he was the fixer. You'd call him up [Spoken by Larry] Hmm [Spoken by interviewer] Dude, can you fix me up for a session uh, in two weeks at Capitol, the A studio? I want a thirty piece orchestra. I don't want any eh, gongs, I don't want any timpani, I, you know, you'd tell him and he'd fix it up and they all show up for it on time. And uh, he's very patient. Other people, yeah, it was a hassle. They'd get really mad if the, if, if it was discovered there was a mistake in the charts and they had to all get out their pencils and rewrite, you know, a couple measures themself, they were kind of miffed. See, some of these people were resentful because their way of life was also being destroyed, and the kind of music that was now selling on the radio was eliminating their weekly paycheck because they used to play maybe every day on somebody's session and now. You know there was still Frank Sinatra, but there just wasn't a lot of artists that we can't even remember the names of anymore to, to play for us So they were resentful, I mean, Sinatra was so mad at the Beatles when they came on the scene. He was vulgar about it, you know, and uh, and it was just a few years later that he recorded George Harrison's Something and said it was the greatest song ever written. I don't think he actually believed that, but I think it was a way of apologising without confessing [Spoken by Larry] Hmm [Spoken by interviewer] He didn't want to admit that, yeah I was wrong about the Beatles, actually they've done a lot of good stuff, you know. Yeah, so there was a lot of resentment [Spoken by Larry] Yeah [Spoken by interviewer] And then there's people that was cool. And I've done sessions where the orchestra was not working for the union. They were rock orchestra. So you, you'd, they'd come in. And it wasn't illegal. The union had totally lost its, its control of the music business. But they also did some union gigs and there was still a rule in the books said if you do non-union gigs you can't do union gigs. So they'd come in and you'd pay 'em in cash after the three hour session was over. And then they'd sign a receipt for the money and they'd, they'd sign it Ludwig Beethoven, you know. [Both chuckle]. Nobody signed their right name, and you had to pay 'em in cash, and you had to lock the doors, so that no union men could just happen to drop by a', and ask the, the studio owner, got any, got any union gigs coming up? You know, he couldn't even get in the building So that was kind of a. But the Beatles had done that when they used Mellotron. Mellotron used to be illegal. You know, let me take you down 'cause I'm going to woop doop-n doop-n doo, that, that instrument. It's a mellotron. I, I had that on eh So Long Ago The Garden [Spoken by Larry] Mm-hmm [Spoken by interviewer] And we had to lock the doors 'cause it's illegal [Spoken by Larry] Mm-hmm [Spoken by interviewer] It's on', something's only illegal if people say it's illegal [Spoken by Larry] Mm-hmm [Spoken by interviewer] Some things are immoral. Using a mellotron is merely illegal. But it was funny, we used to have to be clandestine, lock the doors and, and sometimes sit somebody out there with the chair to make sure nobody even, you know, came in by, like the tea lady comes in and then forgets to lock the door and somebody walks in afterwards and you're busted, so yeah, the [Churckles] [Spoken by Larry] That's great​ [Spoken by interviewer]