Gary James' Interview With Franke Previte Of
Franke And The Knockouts



Franke Previte, to put it simply, has had an amazing career in the music business. With his band Franke And The Knockouts he enjoyed three Billboard Top 40 singles and two Top 50 albums. "Sweetheart", a song he co-wrote with Knockouts member/guitarist Billy Elworthy, went Top 10 in 1981. Two other Top 40 hits would follow; "You're My Girl" (#27) and "Without You (Not Another Lonely Night)" (#24). And of course he co-wrote "(I've Had) The Time Of My Life" and Eric Carmen's "Hungry Eyes", which were featured in the soundtrack for the 1987 movie Dirty Dancing. Franke Previte spoke with us about his music and his life in music.

Q - Franke, as I understand it, you have an Upstate New York connection?

A - I used to live in Rochester (New York). Monrose Avenue. I was in a band called The Oxford Watch Band back in 1967, '68.

Q - Did you ever play in Syracuse?

A - We must have. There was a band called The Brass Buttons back then from Syracuse that we used to play with. That was really, really an incredible horn band. We used to play all around Upstate New York. Then the drummer and I started a band called Bull Angus, which was on Mercury Records back in '71. We toured with Rod Stewart for about two months.

Q - Franke, don't get ahead of my questions, because I'm going to ask about that.

A - Oh, okay.

Q - The one thing I've noticed about Pop music, which also incorporates Rock 'n' Roll and Rock, is songs tend to be written around common phrases or expressions that people say every day. For example, Buddy Holly goes to a John Wayne movie and hears him say "That'll be the day." Buddy Holly goes home and writes a hit song using that expression. The Doors have a hit song with "People Are Strange". The Stones have a hit song with "I'm Just Waiting On A Friend". That being the case, do you put yourself in situations, whether at a restaurant or bar or maybe watching TV, where you will hear a phrase that would inspire you to write a song?

A - You know what? I can't say I sit there and listen for those phrases, but these are popular phrases that are already commercial. They're already known by millions and millions of people. The expression "I've Had The Time Of My Life", how many times have people said that throughout the years? When I write, I'm not thinking about or looking for an expression that everybody will know. I write more in the melodic sense first. I have to find the melody of the song I'm going to write and in doing that, in that jamming moment of finding the melody, I utter phonic sounds. So, these words come out of me that are inspired by the melody and the chord changes. In a jamming moment, most of my songs and the titles that come out of this inner seed that cause me to utter out this melody and these phonic sounds are these words that come out of my mouth that is created by the melody in a jamming moment. "Time Of My Life" was such a home run phrase that worked for that movie. I'm trying to think of what other songs I've written that might have that same kind of a phrase that's already been written. I have on the third Franke And The Knockouts album, "One Good Reason". Just give me one good reason. So, I guess I do it without even knowing it. I guess I do exactly what you're saying.

Q - Downloading is hurting singers, songwriters and bands because everybody wants the songs for free. That means guys like you can't make any money off the internet. So, what's the solution to this whole thing?

A - That's a good question. I really think it's going to take, and this will never happen, songwriters to say, "You know what? Don't play our songs on the radio anymore. Don't play our songs on Spotify. Don't use our songs." Then all of a sudden the world is going to wake up and realize it's a very sad world without music. Can you think of a movie that doesn't have music to connect a scene and how that would sound? It wouldn't really work, but the amount of money that is spent on music compared to filming is so astronomical it's like lunch money compared to what the costs of film is. So, the only way is to have songwriters and publishers unite and say, "Don't use our music anymore unless we get paid fairly." We have ASCAP and BMI and these others companies that are fighting for us constantly, but still when I wrote "Time Of My Life", the mechanical license back then was like five cents, and what what mechanical licence is, is you get paid five cents for every song that you have on a record. Then you have to split that five cents with the songwriter and publisher. So, here were are thirty-two years later and that five cents that I got thirty-two years ago is only up to a dime. It's only up to then cents per album. So, you can see that the numbers don't really equate to what a songwriter really earns compared to a record company or Spotify or these other companies that utilize the music, even film companies. The songwriter is always like the second thought in this whole process. Without us, movies and music in the car, music in general would really suffer. What happens I think, just to take this one step further, is that years ago record labels used to have spec deals that they would give new writers like, "Her's $10,000. Go in the studio and get me three or four demos and we'll see if you have anything." Those days are over. You have to go and do your own recordings. You have to get yourself on YouTube. You have to have a million views or listeners before a record label will even take notice to you, and you've kind of done their work for them. So, they just become a distribution arm. It's much, much different and much harder for a songwriter these days. It's sad, but true.

Q - Where are the lawyers for ASCAP and BMI? Why aren't they fighting for songwriters?

A - Well, they are constantly. They're going down to Washington, D.C. and trying to find Big Brother, but when you have people that have billions of dollars that you're fighting against, you're pockets aren't that deep. They incrementally change it, but in very minute amounts.

Q - Your parents told you, "Get an education and you can be anything you want to be." Did you believe it then? And, do you believe it now?

A - I believed it then because my parents, I believed in them because they always supported me. My father was an opera singer. My mother and father met taking voice lessons from the same vocal coach. So, music was a very strong entity in my family and my upbringing. Usually whatever my parents said, whatever they would do, they did. So, I knew that it was important to them even though it wasn't important to me to get an education. So, I went to school in Iowa for two years and then left there and came home and then went to school in Delaware for two years as an accounting major. The day I was supposed to graduate I was in Boston, playing in a Rock 'n' Roll band.

Q - At least you know about accounting and business. That's more than a lot of musicians know.

A - That's true. It is true and it has helped me in the business side of music, which in a lot of musicians is the side that's weaker. Their artistic, musical side is strong. They usually don't have the business side and people take advantage of them, not that I didn't have people taking advantage of me because I've gone through some pot holes. I had to learn how to be in the music business by trial and error, but that's just part and parcel of the business that we're in.

Q - So one day you're playing with your band, Bull Angus in Red Hook High School. The next week you're in Madison Square Garden, opening for Rod Stewart. I know that Rod Stewart at that time was being booked by A.T.I., which was headed by Jeff Franklin. Did Jeff Franklin get you that gig at Madison Square Garden?

A - It's interesting. Jeff Franklin also owned a nightclub, was co-owner of a night club called The Sugar Shack in Columbus, Ohio. The band I was in before Bull Angus, The Oxford Watch Band would play The Sugar Shack all the time. The band broke up and the drummer, Charles and I reformed the a band called Bull Angus and we started playing The Sugar Shack. The owner said, "You know what? You guys are incredible I've got to let my buddy who is the co-owner of the club hear you." And Jeff Franklin came to Columbus, Ohio and he heard us and he said, "You guys are really good. I'm going to hook you up with a producer. I want you to do some demos." I said, "Okay." And so the producer he hooked us up with, little did he know, 'cause he didn't know Bull Angus, he was the same producer that had worked on The Oxford Watch Band records in Long Island. We were at Ultra Sonic and we were someplace in Long Island. And so this guy calls me up and his name is Vinnie Testa and he starts talking to me about Jeff Franklin and wants to come listen to your band. I'm like, "Hey Vinnie. What's up?" I'm talking to him for about five minutes and I realize he didn't know who I was. I said, "Vinnie, this is Franke Previte." He goes, "Oh, my God! Who else is in the band?" I told him who was in the band. So he drove up to Rhineback, New York the next day. We played for him. Within a month I would say we were in the recording studio, recording in Hempstead, Long Island. That's where the studio was. The next thing I know we're playing Red Hook High School. It took up about a week to record our record. That's it. That's how tight we were. Then we went out and started gigging. We started playing these high schools by our home. Vinnie calls and says, "Next Saturday you're going on tour with Rod Stewart." I said, "Really?" So, we went from Red Hook High School to the following week, Madison Square Garden. Then we went to the Madison Square Garden of every town that Rod Stewart played in, in Canada, the United States, Chicago, all over the country. We opened and there was this other band that came on after us called Cactus. Cactus was the reforming of Vanilla Fudge. Bull Angus, Cactus and Rod Stewart went on tour. That was the start of Bull Angus' career and my career.

Q - If not for Vinnie Testa, Bull Angus might not have gotten that break, correct?

A - Well, when he came out and didn't like what we sounded like, he would've said to Jeff, "I don't think they've got anything." As soon as he heard us... We were so tight and so energetic. We had three lead singers. So, it was a very powerful band, and there was no denying that he was going to sign us, or somebody was.

Q - You would stand on the side of the stage at Madison Square Garden and/or other stages, watching the bands you toured with, learning how they did what? How they talked to the audience? How they introduced the songs? What would you get out of that?

A - Well, you know back in the day there was no School Of Rock. So, that was my School Of Rock. Standing on the side of the stage, watching Rod Stewart for two months, ingratiate an audience, take them in the palm of his hand, talk to them, entertain them, his movements, his subtleties. He was a professional soccer player, so he used to line up maybe ten soccer balls on the stage and he'd go up and rocket this soccer ball into the audience. People would go crazy. And so all these little things, all these little memories. We took that when we went on tour ourselves and we took frisbees and threw 'em out to the audience. So, you pick up these little things from performers that you make your own. That's what it is.

Q - How good of a job did Mercury Records do for Bull Angus?

A - For an unknown band I think Jeff Franklin did a better job than the record label, but we weren't like a Pop sounding band that had Top Ten singles. We were a Rock 'n' Roll band and we called ourselves Riff Rock, or a Riff Rock band, and we were heavy. There was just a certain amount Mercury was going to do without having a hit, but because of Jeff Franklin we were touring with Rod Stewart, Deep Purple and Fleetwood Mac. We played the Pocono Mountain Festival with 300,000 people. They flew us in in helicopters. Now you're having hundreds of thousands of people listening and knowing you, spreading the word about you. I credit Jeff Franklin more than anybody for helping us.

Q - He had that boutique agency.

A - He did.

Q - He had a lot of big acts. And he broke acts like KISS and Earth, Wind And Fire. You had, as your personal manager, Dee Anthony. Were you happy with the job he did for you?

A - Dee Anthony came much later in my life. After Bull Angus, I was signed to Buddah Records as a R&B singer. I moved back home when Bull Angus broke up and I started taking voice lessons again. This guy named Tony Camillo produced me. Tony Camillo's claim to fame was he had a recording studio in his basement in Belle Mead, New Jersey where he recorded "Midnight Train To Georgia". He had a doctorate in music, a perfect pitch guy who could sit there and write a chart, the strings and the horns, just sitting back behind the recording desk. I learned a lot from Tony Camillo for arranging songs and songwriting. From there I wasn't really getting the energy I was getting from the Rock band with this new R&B field I was in. So, I created a band called Franke And The Knockouts, which was like a Rock 'n' Roll, R&B band, a Rock 'n' Roll Soul band. From that, Franke And The Knockouts had three Top 20, one Top 10 single, "Sweetheart". After that band broke up, that's when Dee Anthony came into my life. I was introduced to him by Bert Caddell. They called him the "Accountant To The Stars". He had Madonna, Luther Vandross and just tons of stars, and he introduced me to Dee Anthony. Dee Anthony had managed some major, major bands from like Humble Pie to all of these English Bands. He believed in me. He thought I had something going on as a songwriter and a singer. I had gotten a call to write a song for Dirty Dancing. Dee Anthony was out of town. So now I had to kind of formulate this deal to write a song. There are different licenses you kind of have to have a handle on. One is called a synchronization license, a synch licence. Usually those synch licenses can go anywhere from $500 to a million dollars, depending on the song. So, I was offered a very, very small amount of money for writing "Time Of My Life", $1,000. Then they heard "Hungry Eyes" and they said, "We'll give you $1,000 for that song." So, it was like $2,000 for the songs. I thought that was really not a lot of money, even though I had only like $100 in my bank account. So I said to them, "Tell you what. Give me $3,500 a song and here's the key words and let me keep my publishing." So they went, "Done!" They didn't really think much of the movie Dirty Dancing, these people that were part of the record company. So, when Dee Anthony came home I said, "Dee, I got this deal and I was trying to get a hold of you." He said, "So, what did you do?" I said, "$3,500 a song and we kept our publishing." He started looking at me and goes, "You're a jerk. We could've really made some real money. We could've maybe gotten $25,000 from those people. You're an asshole." I went, "Really, Dee? Really?" And so I fired him. That's my experience with Dee Anthony.

Q - That was a very smart move on your part. You probably ended up making more money than if you let Dee Anthony handle the deal.

A - Correct. I doubled my money because now not only did I get my writer's share, I owned the publisher's share. So what that means is when a dollar is made, fifty cents goes to the writer, fifty cents goes to the publisher. So instead of only owning fifty cents, now it's a dollar. So, Dee Anthony, thinking very shortsightedly, we could've maybe made $25,000. Well, in the big picture we made way more than that.

Q - And he would've taken a percentage of that $25,000.

A - Or course he would've. He would've gotten his twenty percent.

Q - What have you been working on these days?

A - I have like a show I put together. It's kind of a theatrical tribute musical that I put together called The Unforgetables. It's about a young songwriter who's tried to save his boss's nightclub and he has to find the next superstar to help break out of his club. And so he has three days to do it. And so, through projection, I take you to a Gospel church and then to a Harlem Blues club and then to a Country bar. The he finds another girl in a recording studio and the last girl he finds is in the subway in New York. So these girls range from 50 to 19 years old and they all compete against each other and he has to pick one that he is going to use to break and make a star. He can't decide which one he likes better, so he makes the a group called The Unforgetables. We're kind of touring around. We've done Philadelphia, New York, and a couple of places in New Jersey. It would fit well in casinos, cruises, and places like that.

Q - I thought you might want to take a show like that to Broadway.

A - You know what? I wanted to stay away from Broadway and just go to secondary markets. Naples, Florida, Columbus, Ohio, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The competition on Broadway, people giving ten million dollars to put on a Broadway play, I can't compete with that. So I'd rather stay in a secondary market and keep the price of the tickets so a family can actually go see this. The music is really diverse where the demographic is from like 20 to 70. Early music on up to current music.

Official Website: www.FrankeAndTheKnockouts.com

© Gary James. All rights reserved.