|
|
THE JOURNEY ZONE
http://www.journey-zone.com
|
Jrnydv.Com’s
Exclusive Telephone Interview
with Robert Fleischman
January 8, 2003
Part Three: a Perfect Stranger in New York
In preparation for the interview, when Robert asked me where I live and I told him that I live in New York, he mentioned that he had lived in New York for a while as well. Having read his bio, I knew that he had worked for HBO following his time in Journey, and HBO is based here in new York. But when I asked him about it, he explained that it was actually in 1979, when he was working on his Perfect Stranger solo album. Let me tell you, that was a great time to be a rock star in New York. He got to go to Studio 54 and meet Andy Warhol, and he recorded at John Lennon’s studio while that rock legend was still living.
DG: Now, you mentioned that you used to live in New York. Tell me about that.
RF: I lived in New York when I was doing the Perfect Stranger album. I recorded the whole album in New York, at the Record Plant. So I lived there, and Jimmy Iovine lived there, so it was a really great experience, because I went there, and I was under the wing of Arista, and Clive Davis, and you know I could—anywhere I wanted to go, or any show I wanted to see, or anything—everything was very well taken care of for me. I got to meet Lou Reed, and The Clash, and Jack Douglas, and Peter Wolf from The J. Geils Band—and Ellie Grenrich who wrote all these great songs during the fifties, and Patty—uh, what’s her name, uh—
DG: Austin?
RF: No, no, no—she wrote that Bruce Springsteen song. “Here comes the Night?”
DG: Smyth? Patty Smyth?
RF: No, no she’s a famous poet. I can’t remember—she’s a whacky girl. Ah—fuck! She wrote that song “Here comes the night/belongs to lovers…” She’s a poet! She had that urban female voice. Ratty clothes. (footnote 1) And Jimmy Iovine was the producer. It was John Lennon’s studio. But the great thing was the basement. In the basement of the Record Plant, John Lennon has all his equipment—a lot of his musical equipment down there—stored. So he has a melatron—you know what a melatron is? It’s basically a keyboard which stores a few bars of music. And the intro to “Bungalo Bill” was on this melatron.
DG: So this was an original recording of John Lennon working in the studio, a piece of music that he had tried to work out at the—
RF: Well that was the real one that’s on the album—The White Album. You’d just hit this one key and you’d hear this (mimick’s the intro in “Bungalo Bill”) you know, that thing, in the beginning of “Bungalo Bill?” (Sings: “Hey, Bungalo Bill”) You know, that part?
DG: And that was—that was the studio where he was on his way back from when he was—the night that he was—
RF: Yeah, shot. Yeah, and then it had the sounds of “Strawberry Fields”—you know those flutes? It had those on there. It had all kinds of samples on there that you’ve heard on all the Beatle records, which was amazing. It was really magical being down there.
DG: Yeah, I can imagine.
RF: He had this huge gigantic guitar that Gibson had made for him—I mean it was like you could sleep in it.
DG: Did you get to meet John Lennon while you were working there?
RF: No, I never did actually meet John Lennon, which is one of my biggest regrets.
What struck me about this part of the conversation was the way in which he quickly glossed over the unpleasant memory of John Lennon’s fate—a crime which had occurred over a year after Robert had completed the album and left New York. Robert had grown up listening—and singing along to—the music of the Beatles, and as he himself said, attending their concert in L.A. was his very first rock’n’roll experience. No doubt in subsequent visits to New York he has been to the Dakota Building, the site of Lennon’s murder, and maybe he’s even meandered the adjacent section of Central Park now known as Strawberry Fields. But what is remarkable about Robert is his resilience. He prefers to talk about the positive, and would rather not dwell on memories which make him sad. That’s probably the same remarkable ability which helped him get over the split with Journey, and even helped him move past the news of the death of Aynsley’s son to continue the interview in good cheer.
This transcript ©2003 Jrnydv.Com. All rights reserved.
Notes:
1. Janice Ian. Return.
Last Updated 02 July, 2007 (DHG)
|
|
|
