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Our
American correspondent David L Brooks talks with successful Los Angeles lawyer Rob Pingel
about his love affair with popular music
My friend Robert "Rob" Pingel, 53, is a successful Los Angeles County Criminal
Lawyer who has long had a second avocation: an abiding love of popular music, and has
acquired an encyclopedic knowledge of the countless performers, songwriters, arrangers,
producers who have created it over the years.
We spoke over the telephone for an hour on the evening of Saturday, 20th July 2002, he in
his home in Pasadena, California; myself at my homebase of Boerne, Texas.
Rob’s genial, fascinating observations are provided here in our conversation.
Rob Pingel as a boy
This article is the intellectual property of www.retrosellers.com and cannot be
reproduced without express permission.
DLB: Rob, you and I first met on the Internet… the Burt Bacharach: A HOUSE IS NOT A
HOME forum. I had put out an inquiry: did anybody have the extremely rare Connie Stevens
version of the Bacharach/David song "And This Is Mine" ? You immediately wrote
back and said that you could provide me with a copy, and I was elated! As time went on,
and we corresponded, I began to realize that you had an extraordinary command and
understanding of the music of the Rock Era. I’d like you to tell me, if you would:
How did you get started listening to pop music? First of all, you were born in 1949…
RP: ’48.
DLB: ’48, okay, so you are a quintessential Baby Boomer. No-one could be more of a
Baby Boomer than you… You were born in St. Louis.
RP. Yes, I was. It seems to me that I must have lived in another life, because as soon as
I was able to put a record on a record player-- and I mean, age two?-- I was listening to
records. I loved records. And the records at that time were 78’s. I remember when
45’s came into being, and I thought that was the dumbest thing I’d ever seen in
my life!
DLB: Why? Why was it dumb?
RP: They were too small, and they had that big hole in ‘em, you know? I was used to
78’s. As a kid, my aunts and uncles had their records over at my Grandma’s
house. I used to go over there and play all those records. It was like I just
couldn’t get enough; I used to wear holes in those records. My mother and dad
must’ve gone nuts. I played "The Roving Kind" by Guy Mitchell… I
probably hold the world record for having played any one record the most times.
DLB: I only know the song "Singing The Blues" by Guy Mitchell.
RP: Oh, that was years later.
DLB: Was he British?
RP: I don’t think so… Anyway, my first experience with music was Perry Como, The
Ames Brothers, Vic Damone, you get the picture?
DLB: Yes. We’re not talking Rock at all…
RP: No. We’re talking pure pop music. Nothing fancy here; mostly vocalists. As it
turns out, one of my favorite records as a little kid was "The Four Winds And The
Seven Seas" by Vic Damone. Little did I know then that that song was written by Hal
David.
DLB: Really?
RP: Yes, and it actually proved to be my passport to meeting him.
DLB: Oh, so you’ve met Hal?
RP: Oh yeah. You want to hear that story?
DLB: Yeah!
RP: Okay. When I went to law school… this was a few years ago, West Los Angeles
School of Law… I was attending at night. This was around 1980, ‘81. One night, I
was driving home, and I start singing "The Four Winds And The Seven Seas". Truly
a song I hadn’t thought about or heard since I was maybe eight years old… nobody
was playing it. I surprised myself by singing it word-for-word, from the very beginning to
the very end! How could I remember every one of those words after so long? Then last year
or so, I was visiting the ASCAP/ACE database on the Internet, and I just pulled up Hal
David’s name… I figured, "Let’s see all the songs that he’s
written." I’m going through it, and I see "The Four Winds And The Seven
Seas". I thought, this is ridiculous-- He had written the song that was my favorite
when I was two years old-- In 1949!
DLB: I didn’t know he went back that far, frankly… I knew his brother Mack David
did…
RP: 1949! Anyway, on the ACE database, I was stunned to find out that many, many of the
songs he’d written-- even the ones with Bacharach-- did not have the performing
artists who’d recorded them listed alongside. Even songs like "Blue On
Blue" or "Be True To Yourself".
DLB: …pretty big hits… [for Bobby Vinton and Bobby Vee, respectively]
RP: Nothing there! I felt this Hall Of Fame songwriter ought to have as many artist
attributions listed there as possible. I wondered: how many did I know? Turns out, I knew
well over 100 of the songs for which no artist was listed! So I wrote him a letter; I had
never written a fan letter in my life.
DLB: He lives in New York City, doesn’t he?
RP: Yeah, but his publishing company is out here [in Southern California]. So I wrote him
the fan letter, told him about my night driving home from law school, singing "The
Four Winds And The Seven Seas". I wrote: "I’d like to pay you back for all
the pleasure your songs have given me… I have prepared a list of all the
artists’ names missing from your ACE database. You deserve this.". I put my card
in the envelope and sent it off. I sort of hoped I’d hear from him… but, two
weeks go by, nothing. Three weeks, nothing. After that I just thought, you know, forget
about it-- it ain’t gonna happen. Then, late one Friday afternoon, I get a buzz from
one of my secretaries that I have a call coming in. Now, in my business, when someone
calls at that particular time, it’s usually because I’ve forgotten to file a
case against someone. [laughs]. I pick up the phone. I hear this guy on the other end,
saying, "Uh, hi, is this Robert Pingel?" "Yes." "Hi, I’m Hal
David." Woo-Hoo! It took me about a half-second to register that the guy on the other
end was Hal David! My heart started beating a mile a minute.
DLB: You must’ve felt like Mike Myers in WAYNE’S WORLD: [imitating Myers’
signature grovel:] "I’m not WORTHY!!"
RP: [laughs.] He says, "I’ve just gotten back from New York". It was during
the Grammy Award season. "But I’ve looked at your letter. My wife and I are just
tickled-to-death by that story." I could hardly speak. After a bit of conversation, I
said, "Well, you know, your office isn’t that far from where mine is; maybe
could get together for lunch someday…" "Hmm. Maybe. Possibly we can."
We don’t make any firm plans, but I am walking on air! I’d talked to Hal David!
Well, a week or two goes by, then one day out of the blue, I get buzzed: "Somebody by
the name of ‘Hal David’ is hear to see you."
DLB: "Somebody by the name" …. !
RP: Nobody knew who he was! I called Hal a few minutes later, and he said, "Robert,
my wife and I would like you to join us for lunch at our country club." (Some really
famous one in West L.A., I can’t remember the name of it.) He went on: "What day
would be convenient for you?"
DLB: Oh, my! [both laugh]
RP: So I name a date. I go out there, and it’s just… just magnificent. We have a
very, very nice lunch at the country club. And of course, I’ve got a million
questions for him. And he’s stunned that anybody would know that much about him!
I’m asking him, "What was it like working with Lee Pockriss? Leon Carr? Sherman
Edwards? Burt Bacharach?" It was such a thrill to meet him; he’s such a nice
guy.
DLB: By all accounts-- that’s what I’ve heard-- so approachable.
RP: And his wife, Eunice, is a wonderful woman. His "right arm", it seems. At
lunch, I also broached the subject of the song "You’ve Got It All Wrong"
which had been written for the original staging of [the 1969 Broadway musical] PROMISES,
PROMISES, but was cut for a variety of reasons, mostly business-related. Have you heard
it? [editor's note - actually written in 1997]
DLB: No.
RP: Oh, it’s just killer. When I went to see the show, I was told that the song had
originally been part of the 1969 staging of the musical, but had been cut. Now it was
being reinstated as the showstopper for the revival. Now, I’m not a crier, but when
my wife and I heard that song-- it’s a duet-- we were just choked up. Even at
intermission, we could hardly hold back the tears-- that’s how good it was… we
couldn’t even talk.
DLB: Good art does that.
RP: Anyway, I asked Hal, "Why hasn’t this song been recorded? And if it has, by
whom?" And he told me of how the song was cut due to business legalese. Then he says,
"But I think I can get you a copy… " [both laugh] And later he did, along
with a copy of his songbook anthology, dedicated to me with his flourished signature. It
was my first celebrity autograph. I also told him that I had recordings of most of the
songs he’d written with Burt Bacharach-- even the obscurities-- would he be
interested in having copies of these?
DLB: You mean he had no copies of these recordings himself?
RP: NO! This was his business; he didn’t need to collect those songs…
DLB: Those Brill Building people, they were "men at work", weren’t they?
Men and Women At Work. Churning out Product. Rob, you’re a huge Hal fan; I assume
you’re crazy about the music of Burt, too?
RP: Oh yeah.
DLB: I’ve always felt that the public really has no idea of all the great songs Burt
has written… Sure, they might know The Carpenters’ "Close To You",
B.J. Thomas’s "Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head", a number of the big
Dionne Warwick hits. I think, if the public knew all he’d written, they’d have
that big "Eureka!" moment, as I did in the early 1980’s, when I pieced
together that he’d written a lot of other songs that I loved and grown up with, like
"Wives & Lovers", "What’s New, Pussycat?" , "The Man Who
Shot Liberty Valance" and so on. There are so many songs, even Burt apparently has
said he doesn’t know how many he’s written.
RP: David, I feel confident in saying that you, or I, or the other die-hard Burt Bacharach
fans probably know more Burt Bacharach than Burt Bacharach does.
DLB: We mentioned the "factory" aspect of those Brill Building writers…
They were writing "on spec", yet they produced so many classics!
RP: You know, if Burt were here with us, listening in on a third line, and I asked him to
sing an obscurity of his, like Adam Wade’s "Rain From The Skies"—
DLB: [sings the song:] "…and I don’t know if it’s rain from the skies,
or water from my eyes… a-rollin’ down my cheek…"
RP: Yeah, that’s the one. But I’d bet you he wouldn’t know it. These guys,
they’d write a song, and either it would sell, or it didn’t. And if it
didn’t, it was in the drawer. "We may or may not come back to it in the future,
but let’s move on".
DLB: Rob, how do you estimate Burt’s contribution, ranking him up against the other
great 20th century songwriters… you know who I mean: The Pantheon… The
Gershwins, Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hammerstein…
RP: In my opinion-- and you’re talking to a guy who owns 15,000 records-- Bacharach
& David are the preeminent writers of the last half of the 20th Century.
DLB: I suspect there are Beatles fans who’d beg to differ!
RP: Of course, it’s fruitless to compare Greatness against Greatness… I love the
Beatles. I love Lennon & McCartney. They are great talents. But you know what? I find
I don’t listen to them as much anymore.
DLB: I don’t either. As far as longevity is concerned, I wonder if the Beatles will
have the longevity as Bacharach & David. I suspect that nonsense lyrics-- especially
drug-inspired ones-- will tend to have a shorter shelf life. I could be wrong.
RP: There aren’t that many covers of Beatles songs, "Yesterday" being the
big exception. Or George Harrison’s "Something". A lot of their songs are
now dated. Who’s going to cover "Please Please Me" again? Who’s going
to do "Love Me Do" ? Or "I Want To Hold Your Hand" ? It isn’t
going to happen; those songs were a product of their time. Great products of their time.
But not of all time. But they experimented. That’s their contribution. They expanded
what people thought could be done with a song. They expanded what people’s perception
of Rock ‘n’ Roll was. They never worried about leaving whatever fans they’d
made behind in order to pursue what they wanted. People will always glom onto the Beatles,
though, as we’ve seen with the 2000 release of the ONE anthology [of digitally
re-mastered Beatles hits].
DLB: …it’s proven to be popular with the young kids, too….
RP: I see it this way: the songs won’t be considered standards; the records will be
considered standards. The only other real challenges to Bacharach & David’s
position-- and, granted, they are formidable challengers-- are your Goffin/Kings, your
Pomus/Shumans, your Mann/Weils, your Lieber/Stollers, the Brill Building folks…
DLB: Jimmy Webb?
RP: And Jimmy Webb. But, for all I listen to, I find I always gravitate back to
Bacharach/David. It satisfies. There’s something about Burt’s tunefulness…
The sheer number of songs that satisfy me from their catalogue… You can go for a long
time without encountering a Bad Bacharach song…
DLB: You mean, like, say, "Three Wheels On My Wagon" [novelty tune Bacharach
wrote for Dick Van Dyke in the early 1960’s, filled with Wild West sound effects and
Indian war whoops] ? [both laugh]
RP: Oh, but that was with [lyricist] Bob Hilliard. But the sheer prolific output of
numbers by Bacharach/David is staggering; their "batting average" of worthy
songs is amazing. To me, if there were a "bad" Bacharach/David song, it would
have to be "The Windows Of The World".
DLB: Not one of my biggies, either.
RP: But, you know, if that’s the low end of their quality, can you imagine…! And
their songs are timeless. Today, you have young people discovering them from albums like
THE LOOK OF LOVE by Diana Krall, which has sold about 19 million copies. That song is as
timeless today as it was in 1966, and will be timeless fifty years from today.
DLB: You were born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, which, for our international
readers, is considered the heartland of the USA, right smack-dab in the middle; it’s
the city people generally think of as dividing the Eastern states from the Western
states…
RP: "The Gateway To The West".
DLB: You once mentioned to me that one of the reasons you were familiar with so many songs
and songwriters and producers and studios is because St. Louis was blessed with some
fabulous radio stations back in the ‘60’s…?
RP: "Fabulous", I don’t know. There were two: WIL and KXOK. There was only
AM at that time, and these two stations were at opposite ends of the dial. There was no
automation; to get from one station to the other, you had to manually twist to scroll down
the dial. Actually, there was FM at that time, but it was for-- as my Dad put it--
"good music". [both laugh]
DLB: "Longhair".
RP: But nobody had FM radios then, for the most part; there were no FM radios in cars,
only AM. In those days, the format for Rock ‘n’ Roll radio stations was Top 40.
DLB: Each American region had its Top 40?
RP: Actually, each individual Rock ‘n’ Roll station had its own Top 40. Each
station would have its two or three Picks Of The Week, and then they would have a few
"Survey Extras". So each radio station would have between 40 and 46 songs in
playing rotation. Now, a competing radio station would also have their own Top 40…
Between the two, on the average, there would be an overlap of , say, thirty songs. But
each would usually feature ten songs that you wouldn’t hear on the other Top 40
station; and the reverse was true. The reason for the difference in the Survey Extras of
each station, was because of the promise, to various record distributors, of exclusivity
for certain songs. I don’t know if you’d call this "Payola"…
DLB: The "P" Word!!
RP: But if a song proved to be a hit, the station that debuted it would have exclusive
rights to play that song. At least for awhile-- say, a week or two. So, if you hear a new
song you were crazy about, the logic was, you’d probably stay tuned to WIL rather
than going all the way down the dial to KXOK. My point is, given this scenario with the
radio stations, if you listened to the radio religiously in the St. Louis area-- bouncing
back and forth through the stations-- you’re going to hear, on average, fifty
different songs!
DLB: That would never happen today.
RP: No. Even one station back then -- forget about its competitors-- would be offering the
listener more songs in rotation than any one station would today. Now, St. Louis is a big
city, but not what you’d consider a major market region. A lot of the songs would be
tried out in St. Louis. If they were hits in St. Louis, if they did really well, a lot of
your larger markets would think, hey, that’s the song we want to put on. It was a
song that had proven itself. That said, there were, in fact, quite a few songs that were
big hits in St. Louis, but, frankly, when I look at the national charts for that period
myself, I find that they didn’t do much better than, say, #75 or something.
DLB: Yes, I don’t see how they could reliably consider the demographic of St.
Louis’s tastes to be identical with those of New York City or Los Angeles.
RP: They figured, if a song didn’t make it in one of these "breakout
regions"-- St. Louis, Kansas City, Atlanta, Cleveland, Philadelphia-- it wasn’t
going to make it anywhere. The record business is an imprecise art, a crapshoot. In high
school, I attended a boarding school in Atchison, Kansas. You cannot picture a place more
tiny, more out-in-the-sticks than that… Yet, all of us there were able to pick up a
huge variety of radio stations from thousands of miles around…
DLB: …because Kansas sits on a flat plain!
RP: You’d be able to hear KOMA in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; WLS in Chicago; KAAY in
Little Rock, Arkansas; you get the picture? So, with all this, you were hearing a
tremendous variety of music at this point.
DLB: You graduated high school in 1966… Music was extremely eclectic in the Sixties,
wasn’t it, I mean, in its stylistic influences? As opposed to today… or am I
wrong here?
RP: You’re wrong only in one sense: if you’re talking about what any one given
station could play, the eclecticism of one station. A pop station in those days could play
Rock ‘n’ Roll, MOR, novelty records, instrumentals, country-western crossover
records… basically, any style in America could conceivably "make it" to a
Top 40 radio station. Because they were the stations who were selling records; there were
plenty of other radio stations out there, but they were not selling records, you see?
Today, there is nothing that even comes close to that scenario. What you’d probably
find today is, if you were to coast up and down the radio, you’d probably find there
is as much stylistic diversity out there as there ever was. I’ll tell you when things
started going downhill for Top 40 radio… does the name Bill Drake ring a bell with
you?
DLB: It doesn’t.
RP: Bill Drake was a program director in the Sixties who was known for "turning
around" stations whose ratings were falling. As he got famous, he developed a system
whereby individual stations could sign up for his automated service… Bill Drake would
program your radio station for you. The Drake Formula was simple: "There are just too
many songs on the radio!". [both laugh]. All of a sudden, Top 40 radio became Top 30
radio. Top 30 was whittled down to the Top 10… only the songs that were the Tried and
the True were played, and they were played every-hour-on-the-hour. And you know what? IT
WORKED. From a radio programming standpoint, I’m sure many would consider Drake a
genius. But from the viewpoint of Music and the Art of Recordmaking—
DLB: It spelled the end of those eclectic, one-size-fits-all stations.
RP: …and from there, it was only a short leap until programmers thought, hey, well if
that works, why not create a station that plays only Rap music? or only Adult Middle Of
The Road? Or only…. whatever. So now, when people listen to a radio station, they
only hear What They Like. Nobody wants to risk playing Something They May Not Like. This
brings me to my ultimate pet peeve: Oldies Radio. I’m sure you have that where you
are, right?
DLB: Yep, KONO-860 AM and KONO-101.0 FM.
RP: They are beneath contempt in Los Angeles.
DLB: Well, nowadays they only have a playlist of, what, twenty, thirty songs?
RP: You’d think, with over 50 years to pull from…! Let me ask you: did the Beach
Boys ever do anything besides "Surfin’ U.S.A.?"
DLB: Sure. Lots of fabulous songs. "Wendy", "The Warmth Of The Sun"
RP: You’d think Roy Orbison had been a One-Hit Wonder, because you never hear
anything else besides "Oh, Pretty Woman". Gene Pitney doesn’t exist.
DLB: What about "Wonderful Summer" by Robin Ward? You’re never gonna hear
that song on Oldies Radio. Ever.
RP: [laughs] I love that record.
DLB: I do, too!
RP: The point is, when I listen to Oldies Radio, there’s always two things I know
I’m gonna hear: "Surfin’ U.S.A." and "Unchained Melody" by
The Righteous Brothers.
DLB: Right! And, golly-gee, if you were going to choose from amongst the Righteous
Brothers oeuvre, you’d think they could pick something better than that one. Like
"(You’re My) Soul And Inspiration" or even "Little Latin Lupe
Lu". I think "Unchained Melody" is long and dreary; I suppose it was the
movie GHOST that propelled that song into its popularity nowadays.
RP: Yes, and the irony is, when that record came out-- and it was a remake at that time,
having been done in the ‘50’s-- it didn’t do that great. [editor's note -
actually reached number 4 in the US charts] You’d think The Temptations only ever did
"My Girl". The bottom line, with these Oldies stations, is this: if it
didn’t make #1 and sell 10 Trillion copies…. The record just doesn’t exist.
And the people running these radio stations don’t even know all those other great
songs; they’re either too young to remember them, or they just don’t care.
They’re just reading these song titles off of a playlist. Nobody’s being
creative. They’re killing the music.
DLB: In LA, is there a radio station featuring the so-called "Music Of Your
Life" format, with a playlist that sort of dips back into the ‘40’s and pop
‘50’s? Here in San Antonio we have KLUP AM-930 "The Loop" which
actually plays a nice blend of, say, The Andrews Sisters, Patti Page, Johnny Mathis, Dinah
Shore, The Ink Spots, Vaughn Monroe…
RP: Vaughn Monroe! One of my favorites!
DLB: Wasn’t he fabulous, with that strange baritone of his?
RP: Yeah. You know, I don’t even listen to radio anymore. I just record my own
favorite music from my collection to tape and listen to that in my car.
DLB: So you must have a rather astonishing record collection by now. Is it mostly vinyl?
RP: Mostly vinyl.
DLB: Did you collect it all "back in the day", as they say? Or later?
RP: One would have had to be a pretty rich kid from a rich family to afford all these
records "back in the day". I’ve been blessed with a photographic memory. I
have the knack for remembering Who Sang What. Like that song you mentioned,
"Wonderful Summer" by Robin Ward? I could sing it all now from beginning to end.
[sings:] "I want to thank you for giving me the most won-der-ful summer…. Of my
li-i-ife!" [both laugh]
DLB: Oh, and the [Perry Botkin] arrangement on that record! Rob, tell me: whatever has
happened to the whole concept of the Song Arrangement-- the idea that a song should have a
Beginning, a Middle and an End…. With a sort of lovely contour that takes you on an
emotional journey? That, more than anything, is what I miss about the pop music of the
50’s and 60’s.
RP: Glad you mentioned that. The most overlooked people when we think of Sixties music
today, are the arrangers. Everybody knows the names of producers pretty well. But the
great arrangers-- people like Garry Sherman, Arnold Goland, Herb Bernstein, Stan
Applebaum, Robert Mersey-- these guys were on the majority of the era’s greatest
songs, and many that weren’t hits. These were the guys that made The Sound. If you
like The Four Seasons, for example-- and if you don’t, you’re probably dead--
but if you do, it’s Charlie Calello who created that sound… he was the arranger.
Everyone talks about The Philly Sound and Phil Spector. But, you know, that was Jack
Nietzche more than anybody else. He’s the one that brought the "Wall Of
Sound" to life. And most of them toiled in total obscurity. Even more so than many of
the writers, which was bad enough.
DLB: Nowadays, artists thank everyone from their dogs to the tea-girl on their CD’s,
but in those days, albums were largely devoid of thank-you’s.
RP: Yeah, credits on albums really came into being in the mid- to late- Sixties. But back
then, you had many more musicians playing on a record than you do today… I mean, how
many Top 40 acts of today even play their own instruments?
DLB: They’re mostly shakin’ T&A on MTV these days. Gettin’ their freak
on. [laughs]
RP: But the last 30 years… You know, in any given era, in any genre, you’re
always going to find something that’s good out there… I’m not going to go
so far as to say "Everything out there is crap!." But I think the last 30 years
can easily be considered the nadir of pop music in the 20th Century.
DLB: So it’s not just me?
RP: No, no, not at all. It is. Nowadays you have young kids, age 20 or so, who have grown
up without that big panorama, that eclecticism of music. Can you imagine now that there
are kids who have never heard anything other than Rap all their lives? Listening to, say,
a Bacharach, would be, for them, akin to asking me to listen to Opera. I’m just not
gonna do it. I know Opera’s great; people swear by it. But it’s not me.
DLB: You practice Criminal Law in Los Angeles County, and that means you must deal with
some pretty rough characters. And even as we speak, the LA police are in the news again
for questions of police brutality, racism and such. Now, Rob, do you feel that Rap music
may well exacerbate some of the crime in LA ? Some people contend that art simply mirrors
life; but others might say that the tail is wagging the dog now… that Rap enflames
certain sectors of society…
RP: I don’t think I agree. I can’t stand Rap music... Well, I’ve listened
to some that I find maybe a little interesting. But it exacerbates problems now no more
than Elvis Presley caused juvenile delinquency. I lived through that era as a little kid,
and watched the adults go absolutely nuts.
DLB: Your own parents included?
RP: Oh yeah! They thought Rock ‘n’ Roll was going to be the Ruin Of Youth.
"Oh, this is causing juvenile delinquency!" But, for the young people who were
living it? It wasn’t. Music is not gonna make you do anything. You either like it or
you don’t.
DLB: So the Columbine boys were crazy to begin with? It wasn’t Marilyn Manson who
pushed them over the edge?
RP: Right. But what if we’d found out that the Columbine boys had been listening to
Burt Bacharach? [both laugh] And they just couldn’t take it anymore, because this
world wasn’t beautiful like in the song? (Do you see where I’m going with this?)
DLB: Of course.
RP: Music can perhaps be socially irresponsible at times; but it’s never made me do
anything. And I lived through the Progressive Rock period, too!
DLB: Well, Plato said he could take any boy, and by exposing him to various musics, turn
him into a scholar, a criminal, a poet or a warrior. Or something to that effect.
RP: An interesting thought. I know there is a correlation between music and personality,
but I just can’t put my finger on it. Mostly, I just love music for the pleasure it
has given me.
DLB: Me, too.
RP: I mean, if I were to lose my hearing, I’m sure I’d still find the strength
to go on, but I really think my world would crumble.
DLB: One last question: how is it, given your passion for, and knowledge of music, that
you made your way into the world of law? And not even entertainment law? Not that you made
the wrong choice, of course-- I’m sure you apply the same passion to your law career
that you do your musical side. But how is it that you didn’t end up in music?
RP: I didn’t have enough talent. I was a guy who could play the guitar, I could play
the piano, I can sing well. But none of these well enough. I can write songs. But I
can’t write ‘em good enough. I’m sure I could be a very average, competent
musician, singer, songwriter, whatever. But Loving It and Doing It are not necessarily the
same things…
DLB: The musician’s life is a tough row to hoe.
RP: I always say this: if someone would give me some real piano talent-- real piano
talent-- and said to me, "Okay, you’re just going to go down to that bar down
the street. You can play whatever you want, but you’re never going to be anything
more than a cocktail pianist." You know what? To me, that would be heaven.
DLB: Rob, It’s exactly what I did for 25 years!
RP: Heaven! [both laugh]
DLB: You know, Leonard Bernstein’s father, when his son was first starting out, gave
the boy only the most grudging permission to become a musician… but only with the
sternest caveat that Lenny not become one of those "cocktail pianists who sits under
a palm tree in a hotel lobby". [laughs]
RP: Well, look at him; he did OK, didn’t he?
David Lincoln Brooks is Senior Art/Audio Director at Velocity Web
Enterprises,
711 River Road, Ste. 124
Boerne, TX 78006
830.249.0053/830.249.5980
Many thanks to Rob Pingel for his reminiscences and to David L Brooks for the interesting
and evocative article.
This article is the intellectual property of www.retrosellers.com and cannot be
reproduced without express permission.
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