Here’s the thing about the wonderful thing about songwriting. Like, like there, there are rules in most things in life. Like if you’re playing, you know, football, which we call soccer, like it’s gotta go into this little goal thing, and then it’s a point. But in, in songwriting, everything I tell you, there’s a, there’s a, a success and then there’s like 10 things that are completely the opposite that are also a success. So we each have to, as Mark Twain said, what wasn’t Mark Twain?
It’s my last quote. We have to live the question and, and find out for ourselves. Like what? Like try different things on and feel out what, what, what path feels right for us? So that sounds very touchy feely. So now I’m going to, I’m gonna show you a very, very different Larry de Vasque. I can never do this, but I, I couldn’t help it. I found old pictures of when I had a more hair and less inhibitions.
So, so, okay, so this is, over here on the left, an album cover by a band in the late seventies, early eighties called Fandango. And yes, there is a ticket company called Fandango. There’s a ZZ Top album called Fandango, but that was, you know, just out of what we call high school in America. And, it was kind of an Eagles kind of vocal harmony band, really good, signed to RCA Records, toured with the Allman Brothers, Tom Petty.
So it’s great to like look like this and be on tour with a rock band. unfortunately later, and I can’t believe that I’m showing you this picture. I also found the one on the right when I lived in, in England and had a heavy metal band called Zeno that opened for Queen and, you know, black Sabbath and all these things. And I, I, I, I think I kind of look like some kind of, I don’t know, either, just, you know, this is gonna be a little bit more of a humorous talk.
So I, I hope you buckle up and come along for the ride. So as an artist and almost famous artist, it’s, it’s, you know, the band that you’re in when you’re a kid that you know, plays around. And then that band Fandango I told you about with Tom Petty and the Allman Brothers, and then going and moving to England to make a record and ending up in a group with one of the scorpions and one of Jeff Rot, these sort of old classic bands. And then the younger brother of Uli, John Roth Zino that was signed to EI records and doing a lot of these at the time.
Those big, big like rock band things. And so that was a lot of fun. And you know, you get to, it’s like that fantasy. You get to go on the road and play music and people actually pay you for it, hopefully, in some cases. And also, you, you get to do what you love, which is really Why we’re here.
You’re, you’re here on a Sunday at whatever hour you are, it’s, it’s little after three o’clock in New York. It’s, it’s a little after 8:00 PM in the uk. You’re here because this is what you love to do. And I’m living proof that in those days, this dream that this person had of living in a little town or outside New York and, and, you know, hitching a wagon onto a star, that, that went up and, and went around the world is possible. And, you know, and, and like many famous performers, you know, these bands didn’t really make it big otherwise, we’d be all suing each other in court and fighting and then going on tour every 10 years saying it’s the last tour ever and, and riding in separate limos to the show.
So I’m actually very good friends with these people still. But, yeah, so what I did, which was a very sensible thing, people said all along, you know, we really, you know, think that your songs are really good.
Like maybe try songwriting and, and, and this also, just to give you a, a hint about this artist, a songwriter, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but if you haven’t, there is a, a lovely film called How Do You Man A Broken Heart about the history of the Bee Gees. And, and they really started it, whatever, like 13 years old and, and playing in, in Australia and having a minor hit and playing a few shows.
And when they saw The Beatles, they were like, we’re moving to England. And, you know, they went through one phase of real fame in the sixties and then it kind of died down. And as we all know it, it went way, way, way up again in, in the, cide Fever Greece. I mean, there was a while here in America when just like five of the top tone songs were by one of the Gibbs, whether it was Andy Gibb or the Bee Gees. And then Disco Sucks came along and suddenly people were like, oh, we, we don’t like them, they’re not cool.
And so they turned to songwriting and they wrote like Islands in the Sun for, you know, Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, and became a huge hit. And then they wrote, you know, heartbreaker with them and, and Dionne Warwick. And so they suddenly started writing all these hits and having hits, and people were like, wow. Like, like these guys are, you know, not just great artists, but they’re great songwriters for other people.
And, and that that led them slowly back to reuniting as as musicians again. So it’s not, it’s not an all or nothing world that we live in. And, so I’m gonna go over to what happened after the Zeno band toured and had, you know, big support from the record company, but it really didn’t take off. I did what the Bee Gees did is I went to songwriting And was lucky enough to sign a, a, an agreement with Warner Chapel music and, and some others and, and started writing.
So I’m going to go to a little piece of what was my Wikipedia until last week. I, I just, you know, somebody didn’t like one of the links, actually a kind of a nasty rock blogger from North England, which if you really wanna write to him and say, how dare you insult the great Larry, I’m happy to give you his email, but that’s not the purpose here of this.
But I, you know, I did a lot of things. You know, I, I had a, a hit in Canada for all of you know, the band Glass Tiger. It was number one for six weeks. And then I worked on music with Robert Plant and with Cheap Trick. And then while I was living in London, I met this girl, Annabella Lewin, who had that song, ah, won Candy Kandy. And, and she had a, a solo deal that I got for her, by the way, on Sony. And then just various other things.
And Sammy Hagar from Van Halen, days and solo artists. And, and then we’d write a song and he’d call me and say, Hey, you know, like, is it okay? Neil Shana from Journey also actually kind of worked on this and would you mind sharing it with me? And, you know, as a music fan, the, these are icons from, you know, in the music world. Like the guy who wrote, don’t Stop Believing, you’re gonna Say, no, I don’t want him on my song. I mean, I, you know, smack me if I ever say that.
So, one of the other people I’ve worked with for a long time is Al Jardine of The Beach Boys. And, Martin from the Songwriting Academy had the fun, experience of, we got on a clubhouse talk with him, and Martin was a co-host. And we, we talked about what it was like to just be one of the Beach boys to, to be, you know, a pillar of music where the Beatles and the Beach Boys were always, you know, kind of competitor brother competitors from different posts.
And even to this day, I’ve been working on music with him, and that was a lot of fun. So there’s just a lot of stuff here, old and new, and I’m gonna go along. So, so the platinum answer here is, you know, should I be an artist and just focus on my, my music music? Or should I be a songwriter? ’cause I really don’t sing that well. or I look like something that, you know, got run over by a truck or whatever you feel. I’m not saying that as any of you, ’cause I can’t see you, so don’t feel offended.
But what I mean is we each have a reason. you know, I will tell you my reason for not being an artist. my reason for not being an artist is because, when I started out, I sang so bad that my, that first band that I was in, that this group, sunrise, 1973 to 76, sunrise would give me one song to sing.
So I’d sing like a Bruce Springsteen song and then playing the piano, the keyboard, and then the next week the keyboard would be gone and, and not the keyboard, the microphone would be gone and just the keyboard would be there and they’d be like, man, you know, just play we’ll. We, we, we’ll, we got to singing. So, so I, I was the guy who, they took the microphone away in my high school. So it was a little strange with things like this song here with starting with, with, you know, Al Jardine of the Beach Boys, you know, having them play at a concert in New York for 14,000 people and then get in the vans with a police escort, and then they’d drive into New York City and then come to my little Greenwich Village, walk up and walk up six flights of stairs to record in the living room.
And I’m producing and singing and, and singing along with them thinking like, wow, I have really come a long way from being the guy who sang so bad that they took the microphone away. So I just wanna share with you that not as a flexing bragging point, but just to say that, you know, what may need work today doesn’t mean that it’s like that for the rest of your life.
You know, we are, we’re songwriters, anything can happen. I mean, Jimi Hendrix always used to be very, very insecure about his vocal, but he was a storyteller. Same with Bob Dylan. I mean, he, he spoke to our heart with his, his voice. He didn’t sing like Freddie Mercury didn’t sing like Adele, and he didn’t need to.
And these are the greatest songwriters of our time. So the platinum answer, the, the answer to the primordial question of who am I, what should I be, Lord, is both end rather than either or. If you can perform your own music, even if you’re not like the greatest singer on Earth, just go for it. Don’t, don’t be afraid. You know, don’t be afraid to be who you are out there because everybody is kind of bad in the beginning.
I don’t know how else to say it, but then you get better. unless I think you’re, there’s probably a few groups that were really good from day one. You know, unless you were John Bonham, I, I read somewhere that, that first, you know, Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Pepper said he went to see John Bonham and first show or something, and like the guy played like he did his entire career. So, there are exceptions to this rule, but the platinum answer here is both.
And rather than either or ….
