Who would you want to play you?

If there was a movie made of your memoir?

Well, probably Ryan Reynolds, because we looked so much alike.

I love it. Identical twins.

Although most people would probably suggest somebody more like Bela

Lugosi or Stanley Tucci.

Welcome to CADL CAST with Capital Area District Libraries

Executive Director Scott Duimstra.

Due to the storied career of musician and music executive

David Libert is one for the books in his new memoir, Rock and Roll Warrior,

Libert gives readers the ultimate tour of his adventures, managing

some of music's most famous rock stars, including Alice Cooper,

George Clinton, Living Color, The Runaways and More.

And joining us today on CADL Cast is David.

David. Thank you so much for joining us today.

My pleasure, Scott. Thank you for having me.

So you started in the music industry as a founding member of a sixties

pop group

called The Happening Before Switching to the business side of the industry.

When you switched to, is there anything you missed about performing?

No, not really.

I guess I like the relative

anonymity of not being a performer anymore.

I like being behind the scenes, and I was still able to feed

my creative juices by continuing to write songs

for other people producing and many times

I was recruited to sing background

on some of my clients

records, most of most of which Alice Cooper.

If you hear background harmonies, I'm probably in there somewhere.

I'm going to have to go back and listen now.

I know you probably hear it quite a bit

that people probably love to hear stories about working in the music industry.

And in your book you speak very honest and unapologetically

about the highs and lows of the music industry.

So could you just share one of your favorite stories with our listeners?

Well, the book starts off actually with a prolog

sort of a flashback of

which is probably my one of my favorite stories

because it's probably one of the biggest highlights of my career.

And that was when George Clinton played

at the notorious Woodstock 99 Festival.

Yes, he

he played in front of 180,000 people.

And Bootsy was going to be a guest star, do a walk on towards the end of the set.

And Bush's behind this, these props

fiddling with his base amp and gear.

And I'm going, Bootsy, get out there.

The orange light just went on, which means there's only 10 minutes left.

And Parliament Funkadelic said, Get out there, get out there.

And, you know, George is worth the huge audience into an absolute frenzy.

And I felt like Lucy was going to miss this moment

and just so I'm about to just lose it completely.

Both of you, look over at me.

I'm on the side of the stage behind her, and Waits

gives me a wink, nods to his check guy,

kicks the prop out of the way

so the audience can see him.

And there he is.

And he sort the front walks forward

to the to the music of Parliament-Funkadelic.

And he leans is huge

six and a half with framed into the mic

and pretending to be absolutely oblivious to the enormity

of this incredible moment. Goes

What's happening, y'all?

The crowd just goes absolutely nuts.

That was a wonderful moment because I was standing on the side of the stage

listening to probably

the best music in the world being played at that moment.

So that was quite a moment for me.

It sounds like a stressful, but also a very amazing moment to live through.

Yeah.

And as a booking agent for The Runaways,

you secured a string of sold out shows for them in Japan

and Joan Jett Light and likened the mass hysteria to Beatlemania.

Were you anticipating just how popular they would be abroad?

No, I it was a surprise.

Of course, by the time they were ready to leave.

I all the shows had sold out in advance.

And I realized

how huge this string of consciousness was going to be.

And what I remember mostly about it

is I got a call from Mr.

Udo, the Japanese promoter, the night before

they were going to board a plane and and go to Japan.

And in his best

broken English, Mizuno says,

Mr. David,

this very important in Japan.

I go, What's that?

Mr. RUDA Because.

David girls on stage wild.

Yes, girls all stage wild.

No, this is very important in Japan.

Very important in Japan. Mr. DAVID.

I said, I'll make sure they get the message and

as clearly as I can give it to them.

Of course they it fell on deaf ears.

Yeah, they just went nuts in Japan, unless a string of wrecked

hotel rooms, unpaid bills and

a bunch of sort of heartbroken

young men and girls.

So definitely living in the rock and roll lifestyle.

Yes. Yes.

So even after disbanding memory that many of the members

of that band continued in the music industry.

How did it feel to see them moving into their own ventures?

It was interesting.

You know, I, I didn't really realize the extent of their creativity.

I mean,

Lita Ford became, you know, very well known.

And she did that duet with Ozzy Osborne.

Joan Jett is a rock and roll icon today.

And for a while there,

when the band broke up, I managed the film career of Cherie Currie,

the lead singer of The Runaways, and she did quite a few movies.

She did Foxes with Jodie Foster

and a few other movies that

I can't quite recall what the titles were,

but I was kind of proud of them.

They they were more than just

Kim Fowley proteges.

Kim Valley was their manager and producer.

And I talk about him in the book as well because he was quite

a character in his own right.

Well, and you also describe having a fairly unique

relationship with someone who is truly an icon.

Prince and where he seemed to take a shine to you during the Purple Rain tour.

What was it like getting to know him behind the scenes of it all?

It was it was interesting.

I liked Franci.

I thought he was a very interesting guy.

And of course, I was

very impressed with his his creativity

and his that's his style of music.

But he could be pretty brutal with everybody because

I don't know

if it was because he was

diminutive in stature.

He was only five foot two, but he was famous,

pretty tough on everybody, sort of ruled out of fear.

As opposed to Alice Cooper who ruled out of love.

Everybody loved that.

They'd never wanted to let him down.

So everybody worked as hard as they possibly could.

Princess, very nice to me.

And I assume it was because

I was older than most of the people

in his inner circle, and he knew of my

past with George

Clinton, who he absolutely idolized.

And I guess he didn't want to look like a jerk, you know, in front of me.

And I was amazed.

It felt nice to know

that Prince even cared what I thought of them.

Yeah, exactly.

And his death was was sudden, and it came as a shock to too many, many people.

How did you feel when you first heard the news of his death?

Well, I was I was I was stunned.

I was saddened.

You know, he

he didn't

he didn't do drugs.

He certainly at that time, he was very anti-drug.

It was even

anti-alcohol to a certain extent.

It's pretty straight laced.

So it kind of shocked me that he actually

his life ended

by him OD'ing

because drugs are something that he simply didn't tolerate

in the period of time that I was associated with him.

And it saddened me because I feel the world lost

one of the great, great talents in this world.

Fortunately for all of us, his music will live on forever.

I wholeheartedly agree.

Now I read in the interview with UCR that a movie might be made of your memoir,

and I think all of us dream of of having a movie made of our life.

And we always imagine who would play us in that movie.

And so whether the project and the movie is made or not.

Who would you want to play you?

If there was a movie made of your memoir?

Well, probably Ryan Reynolds, because he looked so much like

identical twins,

although most people would probably disagree with that.

And most like you would suggest, somebody more like Bela Lugosi

or Stanley Tucci.

It's very good.

And now if you had a crystal ball into the rock and roll world,

what do you see as the future of rock and roll?

That's a tough one, Scott.

It's who knows?

You know, the universe is so completely different today

and young people don't really buy records.

And quite frankly, I don't blame them.

I mean, for $10 a month with Apple Music or

Amazon music,

you can simply ask Alexa or Siri

to play any song that was ever recorded,

any genre, any band.

Why would somebody go out and buy a CD if you can just ask,

you know, a little,

you know, ask your radio in your car or the little cube sitting on top of your

hi fi system to play virtually any song ever recorded.

So streaming is the thing.

I lived in an era where even though odds are not great to succeed,

there were a hell of a lot better during that period of time than it is today.

Yeah.

I mean, it's almost impossible to get noticed.

You know, it's your it's

just the whole promotional infrastructure is completely live.

It's hard to get noticed.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, you think of all of the artists

that you work with, Alice Cooper, George Clinton,

and they had to have a whole life span of their music where

you're right, it's it would be very hard to get into the music industry

now and having that type of longevity

then.

I think, you know,

years ago during that golden

age of music as I called it,

the motivation was fame and fortune, I suppose.

Mm hmm.

If you're if someone is singing about a career

in the music industry these days, it's certainly

not going to be fame or fortune.

It's going to be because you just have a tremendous love

for music, because the odds of being famous and rich

are incredibly diminished today,

as it was back then.

And even back then, it was a pipe dream. So.

So very few really succeeded.

Now it's almost impossible.

Very good point.

And we always like to end with a library type question.

So we are in the business of recommending titles,

whether it's books, whether it's movies, whether it's music.

And so is there a title that you'd recommend that you've read,

that you've watched,

or that you've listened to, that you'd recommend to our listeners?

Well, as far as books are concerned, I finished reading a few months ago

a fascinating book called The Foreword

by Scott Galloway, and it talks about the four

entities Facebook, Amazon, Twitter.

And there was one other I can't remember, but I found it absolutely fascinating,

especially Amazon

with the whole, you know, they're out to conquer the world.

And yet and Scott is a very interesting guy, talented writer.

He's a very successful economist.

I mean, the guy is is so smart.

He's able to foresee so many things.

And he's he's a college professor, but he made hundreds of millions

in the process because it's just, you know, so much more than than than we do.

The movie Shawshank Redemption.

I think that's a terrific movie.

Great movie.

Yeah, I just love it.

I can't get enough of that one.

And movies related to music.

I love Bohemian Rhapsody.

I thought that was so well done.

And I was able to relate

to a lot of those things because of the artists I worked with.

So it was

I thought it was extremely well done.

Those are great, great recommendations.

And David, thank you so much for joining us today and giving us a look

and to some incredible experiences that you lived.

Well, thank you very much.

I enjoyed the interview and

and I have to say that Alice was huge in Detroit.

And I really love looking forward to

to go to Michigan, to Detroit to

play Cobo Hall a couple of times.

And there's a lot in the book about Alice and my relationship

with him, and a lot of it takes place in Michigan.

We love it in. Michigan, in Michigan and.

Michiganders, and he is talking his priorities, Michigan, so and so.

I encourage our listeners to hear more about their misadventures

with some of the biggest names in rock and roll, like Alice Cooper.

Check out David Libert’s book, Rock and Roll Warrior my Misadventures

with Alice Cooper, Prince George Clinton, Living Color, the Runaways and More.

Again, David, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you. My pleasure.

Don't miss another great interview.

Subscribe to the CADL Cast podcast and share it with a friend.

Hi there.

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