Podcasts-Last Week and This Week
Last Week: Diane Warren
You’ve really got to tune in to this because she’s no holds barred. Seemingly everyone in L.A. has a filter, but Diane does not. Even I was surprised when she said her parents had her committed to juvenile hall. You can jump through the hoops, go to college, buy insurance, but that does not mean you’re gonna make it, certainly not in the creative arts. It’s truly the square pegs who don’t fit the round holes who break through, like Diane. She didn’t have instant success, even though she thought she deserved it. But she persevered, and eventually broke through.
This Week: Eric Bazilian
Lead guitarist for the Hooters, I met him through an old girlfriend, and he’s so similar, growing up in a Jewish household where academics were paramount, although Eric not only picked up a guitar, but stuck with it, both before and after Penn. His first band, Baby Grand, faltered on Arista, but then he and Rob Hyman came up with a new ska-inspired sound and ultimately broke through with the Hooters on Columbia, midwived by their old buddy Rick Chertoff, who was looking out for them, and ultimately had them make a breakthrough record with Cyndi Lauper, who hated “Girls Just Want To Have Fun,” until it became a hit single, then she LOVED IT!
After playing guitar on “She’s So Unusual” Eric went on to cowrite Billie Myers’s “Kiss The Rain” with Desmond Child, but before that he wrote the song that put his kids through Penn, Joan Osborne’s “One Of Us,” the stories of both are contained in this podcast, you’ll enjoy it.
(We’re still working on Spotify.)
