Gary James' Interview With The Bongos'
Richard Barone



Richard Barone has worn many hats in his musical career. He's been a musician, a songwriter, a record producer, an author, a director and an arranger. He's worked with Tiny Tim, Pete Seeger, Al Jardine of The Beach Boys, Deana Martin and Donovan. He's also helped form the '80s band The Bongos and enjoyed a solo career as well. With all those stellar credits after his name, you just know that Richard Barone has a lot to talk about.

Q - Richard, how are there enough hours in the day to work on all the projects you work on?

A - Well, there aren't enough hours in the day. (laughs) There are not.

Q - That's what I thought. You worked with Donovan on a project about Brian Jones. What was that all about? His life? His death? And why Brian Jones?

A - For many reasons. Donovan particularly is connected to Brian Jones' family in many ways. Going back even before he was connected to the family, Brian Jones was his friend. The Rolling Stones and particularly Brian helped Donovan as a musician early on and helped get him on television and get noticed. So there was always that friendship, but when Brian died in 1969, Donovan married Linda Lawrence and adopted their child, Julian Jones. So the two families are intertwined in that way. Jules, the grandson is featured in this project that we did. That's Brian's grandson playing guitar and singing. It's a family affair.

Q - Did you delve into the death of Brian Jones?

A - Of course.

Q - And what did you decide? Was it an accidental drowning or was he murdered?

A - I really can't say. It's sad. It's a sad mystery. I loved his musicality and what he brought to The Rolling Stones very much. As a child, when I was attracted to anything by The Rolling Stones that I heard early on, I was attracted to the musical element that Brian was bringing to the group. So when Donovan asked me to be involved with this particular project; I'd done many projects with Donovan. He's my dear friend and has been been one of my favorite artists since childhood. This was one of my favorite projects we've done so far.

Q - When I talk about Brian Jones I always say he was the most musical, the best looking, the best dressed, and he had his own look, not to mention he named the group!

A - Yeah, I agree. Not only did he name the group, he put the ads out to find the others.

Q - He did everything and people today say, "Who?"

A - It's terrible, and it seems like there was a concerted effort to sort of wipe his history out. That is why I can't condone that kind of behavior.

Q - So, how can a guy like me see your film?

A - We filmed a documentary on the day, on the anniversary of his death. See, all of 2020 is now a blur to me 'cause it didn't really exist. (laughs) As a performer, it just did not exist. Those were the first years since age seven I wasn't performing. So, it was 2019 and we went to Cheltenham, which is Brian's hometown where he was born. We filmed a documentary. Now it was beautiful. It was all done on the day of his passing, right? Donovan started in a timely fashion, editing individual songs and putting them on YouTube, but now it's being put together all as one documentary with his narration. He's working on it now. I'm not sure what his time line is to release it, but I'm going to assume it's this year. (2021) So now it becomes a larger piece of work. Before it was I think twelve or thirteen short clips. Now he's editing it all together. Right now.

Q - I think that's a smart move.

A - Yeah, I do too. The idea of the quick ones, the quick versions on YouTube was simply to be a timely anniversary of the 50th anniversary of his passing. But now, it's a year and half later and it's now no longer about marking a date. It's about making a good documentary. And it's done in a different way. Donovan, as you may know, is an excellent story teller, an excellent voice actor. Donovan tells the story as a spoken word. I've been working with Donovan now for eighteen years. He teaches me a lot and puts me into situations in which I can learn something. In 2019 we went to Jamaica and made a tribute to Harry Belafonte also. But the Brian Jones project was the big project. We went to England, rehearsed in Ireland. We learned and studied the songs that The Rolling Stones started with. All of the first songs that Brian brought to the group were covers of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James, etc. And so we did all of those songs. We didn't do originals. We didn't do Rolling Stones originals in this piece. We did all of the covers that The Stones would have covered in their earliest days.

Q - That's probably because of licensing fees and copyrights.

A - No. We would have been able to do anything. Donovan chose to do the songs that inspired The Rolling Stones and by doing so it's also a tribute to those musicians because Donovan also loved those records. So we were able to do a deep dive into that material and perform it. It was really a great experience. It has to do with authenticity and sound.

Q - You wrote this book, Frontman: Surviving The Rock Star Myth.

A - My first book.

Q - What's the myth? You make a lot of money. You get a lot of girls. You meet a lot of famous, interesting people. You're applauded for something you're paid to do. You travel the world. Richard, what a great life! What's the myth part of that?

A - The myth is that you can actually do it without killing yourself. You have to survive that myth. Any myth can be dangerous. (laughs) Everything you just said is partially true. Not everything you said is something you can receive as a reward for being a Rock star. But you do get some of it. You're on the edge a lot of times. You can be mentally unstable. There's so many things that can happen to you in that role. It's a role that you're playing and it can go either way. And that book was about my own personal story. It's different for every musician and every artist. My book is slightly a cautionary tale, but it's really just my story. It's a memoir. It's a novel memoir is what I call it. I love mythology by the way. I saw my own role in that as mythological. It was living out the myth, the myth that maybe I grew up with. I started out on radio when I was seven years old. I've been around stardom, various types of stardom all my life. I met a lot of artists. When I was sixteen I was already producing other artists, including Tiny Tim. His myth, his stardom was very fleeting. He was very honest about teaching me what fame was because he had it and for a moment he was the biggest, highest paid performer in the world. Then he was playing at small venues again. I met him at a highway bar in Florida. He taught me a lot about the nature of fame and what it is and how to accept it, whatever it offers. That was an interesting education.

Q - What were you doing for this radio station when you were seven years old?

A - A d.j. Somebody else was spinning records. I was the on-air personality.

Q - At seven years old?

A - Yeah. It's a chapter in my book, The Littlest d.j.

Q - You just walked in the radio station and said, "I'm ready to be on the air."?

A - Something like that. It was even more arrogant than that. Not only did I say I was ready, I said I could do it. That was a starting point for me, but that was because I was obsessed with radio and Pop records and Pop music and I wanted to be part of it. I was able to meet one of the d.j.s at the station who put me on the air right away and then they started calling me back until I had a regular Sunday show.

Q - I once walked into a radio station when I was twenty and said I wanted to be a d.j. The guy in charge said, "I ought to throw you out for saying that. The proper word is announcer."

A - It works better at age seven I think.

Q - I think so. You were probably cute and lovable.

A - Yeah. I was all of that.

Q - At sixteen you were producing local bands. Did you produce any hit records?

A - No, I did not. When I say produce, I was learning. I was producing while learning. It was my own music, my own band. I had a band called The Snails. We were very Proto-Punk, just before the Punk movement happened. When I say produce, let's say producer in learning, producer in training. But then when I met Tiny Tim, it was right in the middle of that. I introduced myself as a record producer.

Q - Where exactly did you meet Tiny Tim?

A - Tampa, Florida. He was performing at a very small venue, at a Travel Lodge Motel. It was tiny, pardon the pun. (laughs) But it was a tiny venue too besides Tiny Tim. He was very charming. I was underage and not able to go into the actual bar to see him. So he offered to perform the entire show for myself and a friend in the hotel room. (laughs) So that's how a friendship emerged. He was amazing and did do the entire show in his room which we were impressed with. I asked, "Can I bring a tape recorder the next night?" So I started recording those performances before bringing him into the recording studio.

Q - And you still have those recordings today, do you?

A - I do, but they've also been released. The first release was called "I've Never Seen A Straight Banana" and it is on Collector's Choice Records. It's been reissued on "Rare Moments Volume One". So you can find it on all the streaming services. I might do a new vinyl release soon. It's been on CD on Collector's Choice, but now we might do a vinyl later this year (2021).

Q - You were the Executive Producer of the musical "Tiny Tim's America", based on his life?

A - No. "Tiny Tim's America" is an album. I produced the album. That came out a couple of years ago. The musical is just called Tiny. I was the Executive Producer of the musical. It was great. It was a great piece, theatrical piece. That was workshopped at Upstate New York. Hopefully we'll bring it to the City. (New York City) at some point. It's a big production and it's hard, especially now, to put a show up. (laughs) But yeah, that's a good piece.

Q - When you joined The Bongos you changed the Frank Sinatra reputation of Hoboken, New Jersey to what? Alternative music?

A - Yeah, but it was sort of Alternative. That phrase did not exist yet. The Bongos were a unique band because we were really not one genre. We were musician who focused on music itself and not one particular genre. So that was both good and bad. It was good because we could perform in different settings to different audiences and it made sense 'cause it was really based on music and not a genre. It was hard to market The Bongos, I think, for a record company. We were signed to RCA then actually. I think it was difficult for them at first at that time because we didn't fit into any niche. So when you say we were Alternative, it's okay to say that because yes we were Alternative. We were a new band. We were young. We were barely twenty years old. It was what became Alternative Rock a few years later. What it was for us was, we loved '50s Rock 'n' Roll, but also loved '60s Psychedelic and we loved Glam Rock and we loved Folk music. All of these elements and dance music. We used to go to clubs where they were playing dance music. So we're trying to say, "How can we combine these elements that we love in Classic Rock and make it so that they could play it in the Dance/Rock clubs that were emerging?" That was The Bongos. It was a bit of Buddy Holly, but the beat underneath could be a bit of Donna Summer. It was Buddy Holly on top, you know? (laughs) That was kind of what we were trying to do. We were playing our influences and a lot it was the Classic Rock bands that we loved. But we just tried to make it in a way that could be played in dance clubs 'cause that's where music was being played at that point. It was after Disco. Disco had sort of finished and the new nightclub scene was Rock at dance clubs. That's where bands like Depeche Mode came up. A lot of them were electronic ones. We tried to do it without electronics so much. We tried to do it with guitars. So we were kind of reclaiming Pop music for guitar based bands.

Q - Did your music get played in these dance clubs?

A - Yes. We hit the Billboard charts. We were on the Dance charts.

Q - So you succeeded in your efforts.

A - Yeah. That was our intention. We succeeded in that intention. Then we toured with the B-52s and that audience 'cause they were doing that. They had a similar focus. Those records that they made were a good pair and we toured the country together. That was their first big tour and our first proper tour as well.

Q - In talking about RCA Records, they were pretty good at breaking solo acts, but in terms of a group, I can only think of one group they broke, Jefferson Airplane. So why did The Bongos go with RCA?

A - Well, it's a long story. Again, it's something I talked about in different books, especially in Frontman. I liked RCA. I liked learning by working with them. I liked what I learned. In fact, we just re-signed that catalog back to them again. It's now on the SONY/Legacy label, Legacy Recordings. You're right, they didn't understand the band dynamic. They didn't understand where modern Rock was headed. We did. They didn't really understand that. The thing about it is it boils down to money. Their money was being made by their catalog because RCA had such a massive catalog. So, the Elvis reissues were still getting a lot of attention at the company. It's hard to argue with that because we also loved Elvis. (laughs) We loved Classic Rock. It was hard for us to really argue with RCA. Of course we knew when we signed with them that they had a huge catalog that was always going to be there like a ghost behind us. But we were courted by them. We had offers from other labels. We could've signed with others, Warner Bros. for one. The thing was that RCA seemed like they really wanted to sign us. The A&R woman who signed us, I won't mention her name right now, but she's in the music business, she really came to Hoboken for over a year, coming to rehearsals and hanging out with us and seeing every show. She made herself omnipresent in our lives, in our work. So when it came down to deciding, we decided to sign with her because the music business is personality based. You make friendships. I'm still working with the same people I started with because that's just how it is. It's a family. The music industry is still that. It's still relationship based.

Q - You were on the ground floor with downloading music on the internet.

A - Yes.

Q - There's a lot of grumbling about what digital downloads have done to the music business.

A - Yeah. I know.

Q - Have digital downloads helped or hurt the record business?

A - Both. I'm on the Board Of Governors for the Grammys and one of my jobs for the last four years is lobbying in Washington for artist's rights for streaming services to properly pay and for passing the Music Modernization Act, which did pass in 2018. Those things are designed; everything we do with the Grammy advocacy is designed to fix what is wrong with the downloading system, streaming services especially. I think downloading is a viable way to sell music. Using the i-Tunes model, which was first developed when I got into the picture by a company called Music Boulevard. They were the first, I think, high level sophisticated site to buy music online, to have it downloaded. The design of that website was used by Apple for i-Tunes. Music Boulevard was started by Phil Ramone and the guys who had GRP Records formed a company called N2K Records. It was a label, but it was also a site like i-Tunes. So N2K was at the end of the '90s. They contacted me and wanted to sign me. I said, "Well, that's interesting. What do you do?" They said, "We're going to download the songs," and there was an online store to buy CDs at that point. They really had a good business model I think. The only thing was it was a little ahead of the curve. People were not ready for it and didn't have fast internet then either. So downloading took awhile. Well, by the time Apple i-Tunes came around it was pretty much ironed out. They took it over. N2K closed down. I knew then if people could buy music instantly and have it in their house immediately, that eventually it would catch on, which of course it did. That's what I spoke about on the Wall Street Journal television show and other television shows they put me on. If you want a song and you can get it instantly, why not? Especially if the price is the same as a single. It was about a dollar, which was about the price of a single. Now, I love record stores. That's the other part of me. As much as I love download as one option, I also love vinyl records. I worked in a record store in college. That's how I learned so much about labels and producers and all those credits I would read while I was supposed to be working. I love it. I love records, but I also love instantly getting something if I want it. I think we can have it all as long as it's legally and properly done. I spent my entire paycheck of course every week on records. I didn't bring any money home, I'll tell you that. I remember when The Bongos first signed, it was to a label in England, a small label. I didn't mention them before because it was an indie label before we signed to RCA. When we wanted to release our music here in the States, there was a question. How do we do that? I remembered about JEM Records and how they would import records. I thought maybe JEM Records would import the British thing and what we ended up doing is signing with JEM for American copies to be made of our first album, our first singles, and that's how we made our first album. It's all our British singles on one album. But that's how I learned about labels, by looking at the credits.

Q - You teach or maybe you taught something called "Stage Presence: The Art Of Performance" at NYU.

A - I did, yeah.

Q - What goes into the stage presence you're teaching? Do you show someone how to dress? How to move their hands, arms, legs?

A - Yeah. All of that.

Q - How to introduce a song? The patter between songs?

A - Yeah. All of that, but I don't tell them how to do it. I show them how to find it. That class is more psychological. Stage presence deals with the psychology of performing. It's a very fun course. I love teaching it. I did it for four years before I got into the history I'm teaching right now. It's something different. When I was teaching stage presence I was asked to do that. The Frontman book came out and it was being used as a text book. Stage presence is how I help the students find who they are, or the elements of themselves they want to present I should say, in their stage performance. We look at artists who have done that before. So there's a bit of history in that we look at artists who brought out maybe extreme elements of their personality like say Iggy Pop or a theatrical element like David Bowie or more natural elements like any of the Folk artists. What works for them? What is their music? What will help that music get across? That was limited to only twelve students each semester and I would work with each one of them until we found who they are and how they're going to present that onstage. So yeah, a lot of it has to do with movement. We would have in the classroom, sitting with me, were two vocal coaches and a choreographer and different guests like staging people to help me help them find their performing style. It's a very intense class. It caused a lot of tears and anguish. But the results were very good. I'll tell you, the results were excellent.

Q - Sounds like an American Idol type situation.

A - It gets to be that, but I don't like it to be a contest. I want the students to develop on their own terms. I always make it so that we're just finding ourselves like the way I had to, and I still am, always trying to find myself when I go on a stage, so that it's real and it's connected to something that's real. So that was really that class. I loved teaching it. After the fourth year I started working on a project based on Greenwich Village, my neighborhood, diving into the history of that music. I wrote a new course called Music And Revolution. The New School, another university in the Village, wanted it immediately and so now I'm teaching that there.

Q - And so, are you working on another music book as we speak?

A - It's a music book, yeah. I can't say too much about it, but I'll tell you it's a historical book. It's a very personalized history. So it's almost like you would say there are different types of nonfiction novels. This would be like a nonfiction history book, but it's written in a style which they would call new journalism. So a big project, and I have to interview a lot of people for it, but it's not going to be written in interview form. The interviews are just to help me color the story in the most detailed way I can. I love it. I love this book. I already love the book and I haven't even finished it yet. (laughs)

Q - The best way to be, enthusiastic and excited about it.

A - I'm very excited about it, but I'm excited about all my projects. In the meantime it's making me write a bunch of songs. So maybe I'll have an album out this year (2021) also. The last one was "Sorrows And Promises" in 2016.

Q - I guess it is time to put out something new.

A - Yeah.

Q - And let's hope concerts come back.

A - I hope so. I really miss performing most of all.

Official Website: www.RichardBarone.com

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