Producer Howard Benson has worked with acts as varied as the All-American Rejects and Kelly Clarkson. You know his hit with Hoobastank, “The Reason,” as well as P.O.D.’s “Payable on Death” and multiple records with Three Days Grace. This is his story, how he made it and how he produces records.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/howard-benson/id1316200737?i=1000698070284

 

 

 

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/1ac8b55d-4d83-4c2b-8777-431f136ccd21/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-howard-benson

 

Playlist: https://shorturl.at/WhzPz

Was different from 1964. 1964 was all bright and sunny, brand new. Credit the Beatles and the tsunami of British acts that followed them on to the radio.

The radio… Record companies still talk about it, but youngsters do not. But in ’65 the radio was everything. Everybody had a transistor and everybody was addicted. Every market had at least one Top 40 station. And the disc jockeys were famous! And occasionally there were regional hits, but most big records were known by everybody. And I mean EVERYBODY! Every boomer listening to the radio knew every cut. The nerds might have missed the switch to FM in the late sixties, but even they were listening to Top 40 radio.

And seeing the hit acts of the day on Ed Sullivan.

WE’RE GONNA BE ON ED SULLIVAN!

Ed… Every boomer knows this too, from “Bye Bye Birdie.”

Anyway, you hated having to sit through the whole program for the rock act, you tried to second-guess placement, usually the bigger the act the later in the program they appeared…but it was kind of like “Laugh-In,” the next day in school everybody talked about the band on TV.

So, you know how 1965 is different?

The Beatles hit with “Ticket to Ride.” AND SHE DON’T CARE!

Yes, 1964 was “A Hard Day’s Night.” By ’65 there was a lot more depth in the Beatles’ music and lyrics. Gravitas. The screaming had died down, people were listening.

So writing about “Eve of Destruction” in 1965 I decided to pull up the “Billboard” playlist, the Hot 100. I put it on shuffle, to surprise me. And there were a couple of tune-outs, not every track was a rock act. But then there was “You Were on My Mind,” the We Five version.

“When I woke up this morning

You were on my mind”

The funny thing is the lyrics are negative, but the vibe of the music is positive. She’s gone, long before she left Hall & Oates, but there’s a bounce in the song, that encompasses the optimism of the era. We were a can-do nation, we were testing personal limits, ultimately the Army stole our slogan, “Be all that you can be.”

And then came Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs and “Wooly Bully.” You’ve got to know, we listened on the aforementioned transistor, on scratched up 45s on record players with heavy needles, there was no internet, the lyrics were up for grabs. But sixty years later, on Spotify, the words are perfectly clear.

And then the Sir Douglas Quintet and “She’s About a Mover,” HEY HEY! Doug Sahm had a celebrated comeback on Atlantic in ’73, the album was really pretty good, but now he’s been completely forgotten.

Doug Sahm died at fifty eight of a heart attack, not from misadventure, but coronary heart disease. Musicians traditionally get bad health care, never mind oftentimes having no insurance.

But Sal Valentino is still alive.

I’m getting to Sal, but first I want to talk about “Satisfaction,” that came up on Spotify before “Laugh, Laugh.”

“Satisfaction” is in our DNA. It was considered limit-testing, dangerous back in the day. It was the biggest hit of the summer, that riff was everywhere. And you know what the biggest complaint was? Who was a young person to complain they couldn’t get satisfaction? They had their whole lives in front of them, they should be upbeat, happy! Truly, that’s what people said.

And Mick and Keith are still around playing this adolescent song… I think they’ve had plenty of satisfaction in their lives, but people go see them to remember when, or to get a glimpse of when music truly mattered, when it made a difference.

But then I heard the Beau Brummels song.

There were two, “Laugh, Laugh” and “Just a Little.” I actually preferred the latter more, but both were stupendous. Band member Ron Elliott wrote both, with help from Bob Durand on the latter. But Sal Valentino was the vocalist.

Yes, yes, yes, Sly Stone was the producer. You’ve proved your rock and roll bona fides, you can take your seat. Then again, did you know that Vault bought Autumn, the Tom Donahue label that released the Beau Brummels’ music, and Vault was owned by Jack Lewerke, and his son Greg was the manager of Walter Egan (and ultimately the Blasters)?

Ah, trivia that might be documented online that will few will bother to Google in the future.

Now Sal was such a force that after the Beau Brummels broke up Warner signed his act Stoneground, which released three albums and…

Those of us on the east coast scratched our head. Who?

And then Sal Valentino disappeared.

“I hate to say it but I told you so

Don’t mind my preaching to you

I said ‘Don’t trust him,’ baby now you know

You don’t learn everything there is to know in school”

It’s the harmonica in the intro that sets the tone. The darkness. Something absent from today’s hit parade. But it was all over the airwaves in ’65, like with the Zombies’ “She’s Not There.”

“Wouldn’t believe me when I gave advice

I said that he was a tease

If you want help you better ask me nice

So be sincere, convince me with a ‘pretty please'”

This isn’t the usual teen ditty. These aren’t ten to thirteen year old Beatles fans from 1964, these are late teenagers, high school juniors and seniors, who are past the era of puppy love.

“Laugh, laugh, I thought I’d die

It seemed so funny to me

Laugh, laugh, you met a guy

Who taught you how it feels to be

Lonely, oh so lonely”

WHEW! The attitude. Sure, you got it at the end of the decade with Led Zeppelin and so many more, but this was 1965! This was more of her being on his mind. He had perspective, a sense of humor, he was enjoying her being dumped by the guy she left him for.

Hmm…

But there’s that loneliness.

Now in the seventies there were a ton of singer-songwriters singing about loneliness. But that’s not a theme in today’s I’m a winner music world. I’m a world-beater, pay attention to me, buy my cosmetics, I’m flawless. Sure, I have breakups, but I crawl from the wreckage into a brand new car. That actor, I’ve replaced him with an athlete!

“Don’t think I’m being funny when I say

You got just what you deserve

I can’t help feeling you found out today

You thought you were too good, you had a lot of nerve”

Man, we’ve all lived this. We’ve all been left, at least most of us. And this is exactly what we thought, that they believed they were too good for us. And when they take a fall, we relish it. He’s DISSING HER!

“Won’t say I’m sorry for the things I said

I’m glad he packed up to go

You kept on bragging he was yours instead

Found you don’t know everything there is to know”

Everybody’s apologizing today. For everything. Nobody’s standing their ground saying the words I uttered hurt you, BUT SCREW YOU, I’M STANDING BY THEM!

“Before I go I’d like to say one thing

Don’t close your ears to me

Take my advice and you’ll find out that being

Just another girl won’t cause you misery”

She’ll survive. But he’ll still have one up on her.

“Don’t say you can get any boy at your call

Don’t be so smug or else

You’ll find you can’t get any boy at all

You’ll wind up an old lady sitting on the shelf”

What’s that cliché? Show me a beautiful woman and I’ll show you a man who’s tired of f*cking her?

Oh Bob, there you go, you had to ruin it, what next, some anti-Trump venom? You’ve got to respect women, beautiful women have feelings too.

Then again, if you’re a man… Sure, the women will complain that they’ve got to be skinny and wear makeup based on the images on TV and in magazines and now online, but what is also true is men are made to feel desirous of said women and the odds of being involved with one are…

Minuscule.

Of course, of course, looks aren’t everything. But we live in a looks-based society.

We all have these feelings, but we don’t vocalize them, for fear of being excoriated.

But Sal Valentino is setting this woman straight in this song.

And right now she’s lonely, oh so lonely…

And as I’m playing the record again I’m thinking how this simple 45, not even known by younger generations, is not just a curio of the time, but an avatar of what once was. In an era where money wasn’t everything. Where music wasn’t just mindless or clapback. “Laugh, Laugh” is chiaroscuro…then again, you probably wouldn’t know that term unless you studied art history, and we all know that’s a loser’s game, STEM all the way, baby, or at least business.

But the people who create our entertainment, which we live for, didn’t follow the approved track. They thought for themselves, revealed their truth and we couldn’t get enough of it, STILL!

We wanted to penetrate the miasma. Who were these young guys who were dropping such wisdom, who seemed to exist separate from the rest of society? They were our heroes.

So I’m listening to “Laugh, Laugh” and I’m thinking Sal Valentino should be dead. It’s not like anybody has mentioned his name recently. And Michael Brown is six feet under, a man who concocted a similar sound for the Left Banke.

But I was pretty sure Sal Valentino was alive, but I went to Wikipedia just to check.

Yup, Sal’s still here. He was born in 1942, just like Paul McCartney.

But he ain’t living on his royalties. He gave up music, became a forklift driver, worked in a warehouse and then for the racing form.

Hmm…

We think they’re dead or they’re rich, but most are not. We know their songs by heart, why isn’t Sal Valentino on the oldies circuit?

Then again, maybe he’s lost his voice.

Or despite being alive he’s not healthy enough to go on the road.

But those records… Like I said above, every single baby boomers knows them, by heart. And the guy who sang them is living in obscurity.

What a strange world we live in.

1

I first heard about the Vietnam War from Marshall Drazen.

It was 1964. We were at Camp Laurelwood. Well, actually we were on an overnight, off-site, gathering wood, and he said “You know there’s a war in Vietnam…”

I didn’t.

But Marshall had older siblings. Who told him about it.

War? That was something that happened in the forties, or the fifties. All the talk was about World War II and what is now called the Holocaust. As for Korea… Most of our parents were too old for that and it wasn’t as easily understood. But now there was a war in Vietnam? Where in the hell was Vietnam?

Well, I knew it was in Southeast Asia somewhere, but…how could there be a war?

I parked this information in my brain, no one else was talking about it, but in the summer of ’65 there was a song by Barry McGuire entitled “Eve of Destruction.” It was a gigantic hit. And at this point most people knew there was as war. Over there. That we were going to win, right?

You have to know that America was almighty. If we set our mind to it we did it. Ergo the space race. We were supreme. Of course we could conquer some little rebellion halfway around the world.

And then people started to die.

First those you did not know. Those who were not on the college track. Who had no deferment. Those who thought joining the military was a leg up.

And then…

You were next.

It seemed impossible. The war had been going on for years. Now I’m gonna have to go?

And now the tide was turning. If the war was so winnable, why were we still fighting it? And why were we fighting anyway. The Domino Theory? And the old men in Washington, were they baked in old ideas, did they really know what was going on? Culture was exploding, there was a generation gap. And it was very exciting. There were old fogeys who kept their brush cuts and stood up straight and said nothing had changed, but the middle of America was shifting. It was the music, the movies…everybody wanted in on that.

Now the war went on and on and it finally ended in ’75 with capitulation. We all saw the footage from the airport. People dying to get on a plane, and probably dying if they didn’t.

And then it was hedonism, for the rest of the seventies into the eighties and nineties. Sure, some were left behind, but the boomers who had protested the war were now raking in the dough.

Oh, there was Carter and the hostage crisis, but it was all blamed on him.

And then there was the disco demolition at Comiskey Park and…

Mores were changing in America, but we were in no war, everybody was getting high and chasing the buck. Cocaine was prevalent. Billionaires started to appear and then…

It was the twenty first century. Bush II was the president, the internet was rampant and…we thought the new war was bad, but it was all containable.

Of course there was 9/11, but there was no introspection, no understanding that we were now part of not only the world economy, but the world at large.

And then everything continued to splinter. There were winners and losers and…

Trump got re-elected.

2

I wake up every day and read the news and am stunned and depressed. And I wonder if everybody else feels this way.

But my inbox and social media tells me this is untrue. There are all these videos on TikTok with women looking into the camera and gleefully saying how they support Trump, that he’s doing what he promised, and then there’s a dagger plunged into the heart of the Democrats, the nonbelievers.

But for the past couple of weeks there’s been an increasing number of videos from farmers on TikTok. Stunned. They voted for Trump and now they’re going bankrupt. DOGE eliminated their payments and protections. And then there was that cattle farmer in Nebraska yesterday. She’d voted for Trump three times, but now said they were going bankrupt, because all the undocumented help they depended upon had disappeared.

I don’t own a farm.

But I do buy products. I just bought a new computer two months ago, cost me 4k. It was made in China, what would it cost today?

And I’m not planning to buy a new car, but even in today’s WSJ it spoke about car parts crossing the border multiple times before the assembly of a car was complete.

And I started to think if this was like the Vietnam War. Where everybody supported the President until they didn’t. And believe me they didn’t, Johnson decided not to run for a second term.

And in the free-for-all that resulted… It was just like the 2024 election. The left was so busy arguing within, Humphrey was nominated and the protesting youngsters were not happy and…Nixon won.

And the war went on. And our draft dates got ever closer.

And Country Joe and the Fish said they felt like they were fixin’ to die and…once again, when your life is on the line, it’s a whole new matter. When true believers’ kids died they re-evaluated their belief in the war.

Now so far it hasn’t been life or death. But maybe that’s coming, with Medicaid cuts, possibly even Social Security cuts.

And so much infrastructure that people have depended upon has been eviscerated.

But Nixon didn’t care. Nor does Trump. Both can handle the hate and continue to march forward.

But not J.D. Vance. I’m sure you’ve seen what happened at Sugarbush over the weekend. People were not only protesting on the street, they were running him off the slope.

And the truth is it’s a very rare person who can withstand negative feedback. Which is why so many abstain from participating online, they can’t handle the blowback.

What does it take to get someone out of their house to protest?

When they’re personally affected.

Right now so much has been theory. But when the buck stops with the average American…

There were still true believers. People who thought we should have stayed in Vietnam, who were behind Nixon one hundred percent.

Same deal with Trump, no matter what happens. There will be people standing up for him and his declarations, because they’ve put their faith in the man and refuse to question their beliefs.

As a matter of fact, that’s what’s different from today as opposed to the sixties. Everybody’s afraid to question their beliefs, especially the boomers and Gen-X’ers. Used to be old people faded away, now they think they’re all powerful and they are right, goddam*it. And the Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans. They can’t understand why Kamala lost. It must be racism or sexism… They refuse to look under the hood and question her, her beliefs and her campaign. See how Trump was authentic, you got what you were seeing, whereas Harris was inauthentic, a phony you’d keep at arm’s length in real life.

And then there’s the educated looking down on those who are not, who are probably not as wealthy. They know better. But how can you if you’ve never walked in the other person’s shoes?

And as the internet progresses we’re all deep into our own silos. Most don’t even know what is happening with everybody else, never mind the facts.

RFJ, Jr. promotes Vitamin A for measles. All well and good until the outbreak is in your neighborhood and your kids are at risk.

Is this just like Vietnam, will the public ultimately be affected to the point where people react?

Then again, Vietnam lasted for over a decade. And Nixon got re-elected. And unlike in ’74, today’s Congress is not squeezing Trump out of office.

I can’t predict the future, but every day I’m depressed, politics and the world situation are all I can think about.

There are some who believe in America First, that nothing that happens overseas can affect us.

But after Brexit it’s oftentimes economically unfeasible for new acts to tour the continent.

Actions have consequences.

And when is there a concomitant reaction?

That’s what I want to know.

The hype is deafening, but will Jesse Welles break through?

Not according to Spotify, where his streams are anemic.

But I keep getting e-mail from people telling me he’s the great folk rock protest hope.

So I checked him out.

You’re going to be immediately put off by his voice.

I know, I know, Bob Dylan didn’t have a classically beautiful voice and look at him!

Then again, Bob Dylan was the best lyricist of all time.

But let’s stay with Dylan.

There were only two originals on Dylan’s debut. Which had almost no commercial impact.

But then the unsung hero, the forgotten devil of Dylan’s career, took action.

Albert Grossman. He got Peter, Paul & Mary to cover “Blowin’ in the Wind.” That’s what broke Dylan, this effort of his manager. No act ever made it without a good manager. And some of the best rub their clients the wrong way. The acts don’t want to listen to advice, they want to do it their way. Ken Kragen made one act after another stars. From Kenny Rogers to Gallagher to Travis Tritt. And so many left him and never had the same success.

Anyway, by time Dylan emerged on the hit parade, not only had we heard a hit cover of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” but the Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man” and the Turtles’ “It Ain’t Me Babe,” so that both listeners and the industry were primed for “Like a Rolling Stone,” which believe me sounded different from everything else on the radio.

Or maybe we should look at James Taylor. He had a cult audience, his first album percolated in the marketplace and then “Sweet Baby James” came along and… “Fire and Rain” put James over the top. It was all about the hit.

So do I think people are lining up to cover Jesse Welles’s songs?

No.

Do I think one of his tracks could be plucked by a radio programmer and pushed to the top of the chart?

Well, that’s not the way it works anymore. Radio responds to Spotify, to the internet, radio comes last, radio plays it safe.

So if there was spontaneous combustion on Jesse Welles…why does he have only three tracks with more than a million streams on Spotify, and none of them are from his most recent album. There is no conflagration.

However, today’s world is different. You can make it without a hit. Just look at Brittany Howard and Alabama Shakes. She can sell tickets without having written any truly memorable songs. People clamor for the story, the groove, the sound.

Will the same thing happen with Jesse Welles?

Now Welles is no newbie. He’s recorded before. And unlike Dylan, he wasn’t commenting on social conditions from day one. But he wrote a song about Gaza and…as of this writing, “War isn’t Murder” has 3,541,874 streams on Spotify. There are 1.4 million views on YouTube. This is not a juggernaut.

The second million streamer is a cover of John Fogerty’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain,” so that really doesn’t count.

And the cut with 1,085,368 streams is…

“United Health.”

Ah, now you understand, now you know why people were e-mailing me. That’s how hungry the audience is for something in this vein, that speaks to life in these United States, something that can be labeled “protest.”

And Welles certainly sounds different from the Spotify Top 50, and he’s not in a war with another singer and…

What was the name of that guy they name-checked in the debate? You remember, that guy from Tennessee… Oh yeah, Oliver Anthony, with “Rich Men North of Richmond.” He and his song caught the zeitgeist and now he’s promptly disappeared and I’d be stunned if he had another hit.

Will it be the same for Jesse Welles?

Now after I started getting e-mail about “United Health,” there was a story in the “New York Times”: 

“Jesse Welles, a Folk Musician Who ‘Sings the News,’ Is Turning the Page – The 30-year-old known for strumming his guitar to tunes about hot topics is releasing a new album, “Middle,” that avoids current events.”

https://rb.gy/1mnzy0

But isn’t current events the only reason people are paying attention?

And then last week “New York” magazine weighed in:

“Will the Revolution Start at a Jesse Welles Concert?”

https://shorturl.at/z33x5

Now what this tells me is the second writer wanted to get on the bandwagon or…

This wasn’t spontaneous combustion, Jesse Welles has a good PR person.

I’ll go with the latter. Because almost nothing gets in the “Times” serendipitously, unless it’s already mega-successful.

So like I said, I checked Welles out and his voice…

But then I decided to give the new album a go.

And what I thought was this was a not-so-good Elliott Murphy record.

Elliott Murphy would have been much bigger today, because like I said above, a hit is not absolutely necessary, unlike back in the day.

And it’s not only Elliott Murphy, there were a number of singer-songwriters who got pushed by the machine that fell through the cracks.

But those days were different, because you had to buy the album. And if you did, you listened to it over and over and came to know it and usually like it.

If I played Welles’s new album “The Middle” over and over would I come to enjoy it? Yes. There’s definitely something there.

But is Welles the great white protest hope? The new Dylan?

Even Bruce Springsteen wasn’t the new Dylan.

So is there just a delay and Wellesmania is right around the corner?

Or is Jesse on his way to becoming an Americana fixture who doesn’t translate outside that world but makes a good living.

Now my belief is most of the people who e-mailed me about the United Health song were more excited about the fact that someone was addressing the topic in a magnetic video than they were by the song itself.

Check it out here: https://shorturl.at/BH2Ir

For the record, the video only has 670k views in two months, this is no “Rich Men North of Richmond.”

So I don’t think Jesse Welles is on the verge of taking over America, becoming an icon.

But once again, the volume of e-mail I got about him evidences an incredible hunger for someone who fits this slot. And this slot is not being satisfied in the Spotify Top 50.

It’s kind of like the early sixties, there were hit records, and then the Beatles came along and wiped out everybody on the radio other than the Beach Boys and the Four Seasons.

That’s the moment we’re in.

But what we get our rap wars and brands and commerce when people are hungering for soul.

Listen yourself, let me know what you think.