Amy Spitalnick is CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. Before that she ran Integrity First for America and quarterbacked the lawsuit against the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. We discuss antisemitism as well as the Charlottesville lawsuit. Amy is focused on community relations between Jews and others in support of a just and equal world.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/amy-spitalnick/id1316200737?i=1000635031181

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/4db7614a-1a50-42de-b8b6-73878fd749aa/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-amy-spitalnick

Trailer: https://tinyurl.com/4spev3wa

I didn’t expect it to be this good. I thought it would be a sales pitch for the new band of these ancient, road-weary musicians. But really, it’s a sequel to the Wrecking Crew movie, but it’s even better.

Yes, it took years for the Wrecking Crew movie to come out, it was a rights issue. It was the little engine that could. Whereas this film comes out fully formed, sans the buzz, sans the begging, and I watched it out of obligation. But whew!

This is my era. And there was so much information. I knew who the players in the Wrecking Crew were, I still can’t believe Carol Kaye is alive. Yes, a woman was the bass player on all those hit records, and for a while there she was teaching, but the guys in the Immediate Family? They’re around, accessible, and I know so much of their story.

But there’s more.

But really, this is about perspective. I’m old, I lived through this. But if you didn’t…

Well, I don’t know if you’d care. But if you do, it’s a gold mine. Furthermore, I think many people do and will care, after all they call it classic rock!

Now the beginning is all set-up And there’s animation and nothing new, but as they start getting into the story of each member…

More and more is revealed that you don’t know.

And then come the studio stories, and then come the road stories.

When Waddy and Jackson Browne talk about recording “Werewolves of London”… They end up calling Mick Fleetwood and John McVie. Mick warns them, they’re not like Russ and Leland, this is not their world, don’t expect them to be machines and nail it. And then the band records a take. And then another. And then another. And Fleetwood Mac doesn’t want to quit, they keep playing, all night. And it’s the second of sixty one takes that is the keeper.

Or the story of the recording of “Running on Empty,” how it was supposed to be greatest hits and it evolved.

And Don Henley talking about the recording of his solo albums with Danny.

Yes, everybody is in this, from Lou Adler to Niko Bolas to Val Garay to Phil Collins. If you worked with these guys, you spoke on screen, Linda and Stevie too. Too often these movies have holes, because people wouldn’t participate, or something couldn’t be licensed, but it’s all here.

You see people playing along to their hits. Which in most cases they had no idea would be hits.

The highlight of Kootch’s life is when he’s on the 101, in traffic, and from the car next door he hears “All She Wants to Do Is Dance.” The guy is geeking out, in the groove in his automobile, and Danny wrote it. Whew!

And Leland wants no attention, doesn’t think he’s worthy. But at one JT gig the front row are all wearing Leland Sklar fan club t-shirts…and James is not thrilled.

But it all blurs together. These guys were on the road, staying up all night, playing, partying, talk about not remembering the sixties, the seventies began the era of constant touring, don’t forget the tour was the advertisement for the record, as opposed to vice versa today.

And Linda Ronstadt is a great poker player. And she goes with Waddy to a strip club and they won’t let her in without I.D. Waddy says IT’S LINDA RONSTADT! But that’s not good enough. So then Waddy tells Linda to sing, and she does, and they let her in.

Road stories. Studio stories. That’s what people not in the business don’t get, that it runs on stories. Hang with a promoter? They’ve got tons! It’s an inside job, part of the culture, and if you’re not in it, you’re out.

And I think it’s Waddy who says put an exec on the street corner next to him and see who survives. He can live on tips, but what is the executive gonna do?

Now in truth there was more than the Immediate Family back in the seventies, other famous studio players. These guys tended to play on certain records, but we all knew their names, they were part of the band, not hit and run musicians.

Someone says that Peter Asher was the first to put the players on the album jacket. That’s not the way I remember it. And there are other minor inaccuracies, “Tapestry” was not the first Carole King solo album. They’re minor irritations to a fan.

But other than Paul McCartney, I’ve found that most people don’t remember every aspect of their career, it was all a blur. We were home studying the records, they’d moved on to other things, they lived their lives. They spent all that time in the studio cutting these tunes…and in many cases never listened to the records ever again. Sure, they played them a zillion times live, but oftentimes changing certain elements, keeping themselves happy. Yes, the songs evolved.

That’s right, the fan oftentimes knows more about the career of the artist than the artist themselves. That’s how much these records mean to us. This is why I say selling out should not be de rigueur, that it makes a difference, that it affects the act’s credibility, because these records are everything to us, literally. I was brought up on rock and roll, the rest is superfluous. I learned more in college reading “Rolling Stone” and listening to records than I ever did in class. Truly. May be hard to believe, but that’s just how dedicated I am, what it meant to me, and still does.

But even casual fans will enjoy “The Immediate Family.”

This is not “20 Feet From Stardom,” because in that case most of the talent was nearly unknown, certainly their stories were. And let’s be clear, Morgan Neville is an auteur. But Denny Tedesco is a fan, a lifer, part of the story, so the movie has a different feel. There’s no sheen, you’re inside. If you ran into any of these players you’d pick up a conversation immediately, they don’t come across as stars, but musicians.

Which is what so many of us wanted to be.

This is the second generation. This is not the British Invasion, these are the people who listened to the Beatles, saw them on “Ed Sullivan.”

And it’s all about relationships, who you know. That’s how music works. And if you’re a jerk, you won’t make it, because no one wants to play with a jerk. But if you’ve got the chops, show up on time, deliver, give good hang, you’re in!

Another one of my favorite moments in the movie is when Waddy comes in to add notes to “Oh, Sherrie”…I love that record, more than I love Steve Perry Journey. And then Waddy asks about the solo. The producer says the artist plans to put a saxophone there. Waddy gets irritated, says no way, says to fire up the machine, goes in and plays the indelible solo we all know.

And after the seventies everybody needs to reinvent themselves.

And then comes technological disruption.

And I don’t know why these movies come out in theatres, this audience ain’t gonna pay money to go see it that way. But when it plays on the flat screen, when you can stream it at home as part of your subscription, all of us who lived through it will watch it, and we’ll talk about it, the same way we still talk about records and concerts.

And the youngsters… The way it works in the internet age is you make it, and if it’s good, if it resonates, it takes on a life of its own. It’s just waiting to be discovered, to catch fire with newbies.

“The Immediate Family” will.

The band?

Well, they’re not retiring, that’s not what a musician does!

Nor does a fan.

You’re gonna dig this.

“The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder”: https://tinyurl.com/3mcp7z2s

Yes, this is about a boat, not a bet. Not that I could remember months after I reserved it at the library.

This is a certain kind of book, that may or may not appeal to you. If you’re interested in exploration, the Arctic and Antarctica, especially expeditions gone wrong, this is a highlight in the genre. I mean with the trip around Cape Horn…

Now David Grann, the author of “The Wager,” is the same guy who wrote “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which was recently made into a movie by Martin Scorsese. I haven’t seen it. And I don’t plan on seeing it until after I read the book. But although I had the book from the library for three weeks, I couldn’t get to it, I was backed up.

I’m still backed up. Right now I’m reading Peter Heller’s “The Last Ranger,” which is a return to form after 2021’s “The Guide,” which was too simplistic, too obvious. Before that, Heller wrote “The River,” which I wrote about back in 2019, you can read what I had to say here: https://tinyurl.com/73ztk7j7 “The River” is an easy read, I recommend it. “The Guide” is an easy read, but I was disappointed. “The Last Ranger” is not the easiest of reads, Heller is showing his writing chops, which decreases readability/understanding a bit, furthermore it is set in Yellowstone and it’s hard to paint a mental picture of the locations, even if you’ve been there, which I have. “The Last Ranger” brings you completely away from today’s world, and for that alone it is worth the read. But dive in at your own peril. Meanwhile, Heller made his bones with the cult book “The Dog Stars,” a story set in the future that has some of the dense writing of “The Last Ranger.” So, start off with “The Guide,” and then read “The Dog Stars,” and then you’ll know if you want to read more, which you probably will, Heller is addictive.

And when I say cult book, I don’t mean a personal pleasure that no one is aware of, I’m talking about a book that has not penetrated the entire universe. There is a movie, without great reviews, that I have not seen, but “The Dog Stars” is a book readers talk about, tell people about, implore you to read, and it’s got 8,173 ratings on Amazon, and that’s a significant number, and by the way, it’s got a 4.4 out of 5 rating, and that’s extremely high.

Getting back to “The Last Ranger” for a minute… I’ve spent a lot of time in the wilderness. But that was so long ago, seems like another lifetime. Yet there’s so much I can resonate with here. A lot of the people who live in the hinterlands can’t fit into regular society, or don’t want to fit in. They don’t like to compromise, they want to do things their way. But in the hinterlands there are not that many people, and they all don’t get along. Some of these square pegs that don’t fit in round holes are edgy, rub you the wrong way, and this friction can result in consequences you don’t get in the city.

But I’m talking about “The Wager.”

Now one of the paragons of this exploration genre is Hampton Sides’s “In the Kingdom of Ice – The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette”: https://tinyurl.com/4d62fptx This has a 4.6 out of 5 rating and 6,683 ratings. I’d recommend you start here if this is the kind of book that appeals to you.

Actually, you might have heard the story of the Jeannette recently, since Sides’s book it’s been many places. And the problem here is it’s history, all true, but if I tell you what happened it’s going to ruin the surprise. Same deal with “The Wager.” But the Jeannette set sail in 1889, over a hundred years before the Wager. The Wager set sail in 1740, the dark era, you’re stunned they even made the journey, when maps were inaccurate and communication methods were mostly absent.

That’s one of the fascinations of the book. You put yourself in these circumstances, and then you realize these guys thought they were living in advanced times, even though they were positively antiquated from our viewpoint.

And by reading the title you can see what happens.

Only you can’t. What do they say, the devil is in the details?

And there’s an arc, it’s inherent in the story, then again so do Erik Larson’s books and they’re flat. Larson’s books are a retelling, almost sans emotion…this happened, then that happened and that’s the end. What Larson is writing about is fascinating, but the style undercuts what he has to say. However, having said that, the best is “Devil in the White City,” start there if you want to jump in. And my personal favorite is “In the Garden of Beasts,” all about the U.S. ambassador to Germany at the advent of  World War II. He’s got a married daughter who seems to have screwed seemingly every famous Nazi. And when you go to Berlin, which is haunting in its own way, especially if you’re a Jew, and you pass the locations, the park where meetings took place, it’s eerie.

Recently Larson has been on a losing streak. “The Splendid and the Vile” is a disappointment. Especially if you’ve been to the Churchill War Rooms, which I highly recommend, for your second trip to London, and on that same journey also take in the Imperial War Museum across the river.

And before that came “Dead Wake,” the story of the Lusitania. Interesting, but flat.

“The Wager” is not flat. But it’s not for everybody. You know if you like to read nonfiction. You know if you like this kind of explorer history. And if you do, I highly recommend it.

But having said that, I must make you aware that the beginning is slow, before the boat leaves England. What is said is interesting, but it’s only when they journey to South America that you get hooked.

Now “The Wager” is not some secret, it came out in April of this year and already has 16,093 ratings on Amazon, with an average of 4.5.

As for my links to Amazon…

You know I’m into digital books. These are all Kindle links. Furthermore, you can get these books digitally via Libby, the library app, and they’re completely free.

In other words, there’s less friction, even though the digital copy may be just as expensive to purchase as the physical copy.

This is a longer conversation, and the people who disagree with me, who insist one must read physical books and they must be purchased from an independent bookstore, are like Trumpers, whatever you say not only can you not convince them they’re wrong, they cannot even accept that you’ve got a different take.

But that’s a fruitless argument for another day.

Sure, “The Wager” is a ride, and it’s enjoyable, but the book has stuck with me, and therefore I’m making you aware of it.

P.S. To give you some perspective on the numbers, “The Last Ranger” came out in July, and it has 1,209 ratings on Amazon, illustrating the great uptake of the books above. Having said that, the rating is 4.2 out of 5, and that’s great. My metric is if it’s under 4, be wary. It has served me well, like under 80% on RottenTomatoes. It’s not definitive, but in a world overloaded with product, it’s helpful.

My inbox is filling up with people asking in what order they should watch “Ferry” and “Undercover.” I’ve been saying either way, but now I’ve reconsidered, you should watch in order of release…because “Undercover” grips you right from the beginning and “Ferry” the movie is uneven and “Ferry: The Series” takes a couple of episodes to go gonzo, the first is just exposition, set-up.

So, start off by watching the three seasons of “Undercover.” It’s gripping nearly immediately. It will ring your bell.

And after these three seasons, which are ultimately a complete story, with nothing left to tell, they made the movie, “Ferry.”

“Ferry” explains where Ferry Bouman came from, what made him who he is, including a focus on his family. It’s key backstory, very interesting if you watched “Undercover,” but not completely satisfying, maybe because it’s a movie and therefore everything is compressed.

Then watch “Ferry: The Series.” Which picks up right after “Ferry” the movie. Don’t watch “Ferry: The Series” without first watching the movie, it’s key.

And, you could watch in chronological order, with “Ferry” the movie, “Ferry: The Series” and then “Undercover,” kind of like what Coppola ultimately did with “The Godfather,” but in truth there’s still a hole between the end of “Ferry: The Series” and “Undercover,” allowing for another season of “Ferry: The Series,” if not more than one.

Once again, they are all on Netflix.