To create compelling soundscapes, it’s essential to understand professional techniques. Even if you don’t have a similarly large budget, you can still step up your sound game. Here's how:

During shooting, the director prioritizes visuals, but once things move to post-production, sound is critical. If quality sound hasn’t been captured during shooting, a great deal of time – and money – will be lost in post-production trying to rectify it. At that point, creators will have to use automatic dialogue replacement (ADR) by rerecording the dialogue and sounds, or hire professionals to fix the tracks. However, that’s not always easy to do. Sounds can sometimes be overly compressed or plain noisy. 

So, what can creators do to ensure their sound is top-notch? First, it’s essential to buy professional-grade equipment and use professional people. That way, the chances of having to make major changes in post-production are reduced. And when it comes to post-production, too many people with online content believe it’s easy to fix a noisy track. While there are fancy studios today that can do a lot of things, it requires a lot of knowledge, experience and skill. 

To ensure hiring is spot-on, there are ways to vet a sound professional. The first is by watching their reels. Do they fit in with the creator’s vision? If a reel shows an ability to create clear, loud noises, dramatic gunshot firing or a grand cinematic scope, they might not be the right person for a sitcom. In those instances, you need someone who is good at cutting dialogue and mixing. Creators shouldn’t be afraid to ask questions directly. 

“Sound design requires a delicate balance between effects and music. While the effects will provide the detail, music sets the emotional tone, providing rich texture in both documentary and feature productions.”

Once a sound editor has been chosen, it’s important to ensure they can work with the video editor. Everyone in a studio has an ego; everyone wants their own work to shine. The only way a collaboration between a video and a sound editor can function is if everyone is fixed on the goal of the project. As the most critical challenges tend to arise in post-production, ask how they have solved problems in the past. 

One way to head off conflict is to create checklists with bullet points and technical specifications. This allows both parties to follow the checklists, a kind of guideline. Another way is to follow an email chain for everything that needs to be done. By not leaving anything to chance, both the video and sound editor are clear on what’s needed. Then, if there are any conflicts, questions can be handled by the director or the producer. 

Sound design requires a delicate balance between effects and music. While the effects will provide the detail, music sets the emotional tone, providing rich texture in both documentary and feature productions.

Collaboration - a meeting of minds - between the post-production sound crew, the composer, and the editor, director and producer is essential in the melding of effects and sound. Music tempo, beat, structure are all considered to assure background music tracks complement the accompanying visuals and spoken word add meaningful effects to the overall production. Processing and combining dialogue, music and sound effects are a delicate and sometimes tedious process, but no less important to the overall theme meant to be delivered.

To this end, a structured timeline is an essential element in the workflow of a  successful sound production. There should be no guesswork. A constant flow, a give and take, is an essential element in strengthening the work for the most powerful audience impact.

No question, the sound track post-production process is often tense as a result of tightly structured deadlines. On the surface it may appear the system requires over the shoulder direction, but, in fact, quite the opposite is true. Once the post-production sound team reaches an understanding about the needs and desires of the producer and director, much of the process can be conducted through check lists and email chains. As detail work comes to a close, however, an in-person session is a natural necessity.

Hollywood has always understood that without excellent sound, you can lose an audience. Don’t let it happen to you. 

Great Hollywood sound first hit theaters in 1977 with the release of George Lucas’ “Stars Wars,” which was screened with Skywalker Sound by Lucasfilm. Over the past five years, critical advances in sound design have also been made with Dolby Atmos’ object-based audio and powerful surround sound.  

Advances in sound design have created thrilling productions that resonate deeply with audiences. “Top Gun: Maverick,” released in 2022, was a huge hit, in part because its sound felt so real. The movie won an Oscar for best sound design. 

Today’s content creators – even if on a smaller scale – should take a leaf out of Hollywood’s book by placing sound design at the top of their list, employing the right people and using the newest technology. Impactful, layered and thoughtful soundscapes are critical to a production’s success.

DAVID ZANG is the owner of AsparTateSounds in Los Angeles. He is an award-winning re-recording mixer, a sound editor, and a location sound mixer. Feel free to reach out to David on his website, www.aspartaterecords.com

   A prolific and diverse talent, Shah-Tayler (who also records and works under the moniker The Singularity) draws his inspiration from ’80s and ’90s New Wave, Britpop, and electronic rock with his lyrics influenced by literature and a lifetime of professional touring.

   Fans have described his complex synth-driven sound as if “David Bowie and Depeche Mode had a baby."

   The busy lad has also produced the first side of David J’s (Bauhaus/Love N Rockets) upcoming album. 

    He's currently in the  studio working on tracks co-produced with Robert Margouleff (DEVO, Stevie Wonder) and collaborating with mixdown producer David Chatfield who helms Harmony Records. 

    Julian is also deep into production of his new podcast: #bowiephiles, featuring interviews with Mike Score (Flock Of Seagulls), NIck Launay (Nick Cave/Arcade Fire/Kate Bush), Carmine Rojas (Bowie/Rod Stewart) and Michael Aston (Gene Loves Jezebel).

    Julian Shah-Tayler's just released Bowie-themed project Forget That I'm 50 is now out via Harmony Records. He is the Executive Producer of a song by song cover album of Aladdin Sane that alongside a plethora of his musician friends pays tribute to David Bowie. 

   "I was delighted to debut selections from Julian's tribute to David Bowie's Aladdin Sane album," emphasized SiriusXM deejay Rodney Bingenheimer. "The two tracks I programmed ("Jean Genie" and "Cracked Actor") were amazing!”

   During May and June of 2023, HBO-TV is screening director/producer Brett Morgen's documentary on Bowie, Moonage Day Dream.

    On July 3rd, the 50th anniversary of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars: The Motion Picture will be celebrated fifty years to the day when the movie returns to the Apollo Hammersmith (formerly the Odeon) on July 3rd for one night only.    

    Cinema tickets for the 50th anniversary Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars: The Motion Picture are now available for the UK and Ireland.

   The 50th anniversary event will include live conversation with Bowie associates and fans, streamed from the Apollo. 

     There will also be further screenings available soon across Europe, North America, Australia, Asia and Latin America.   

  All tickets available here on davidbowie.com.

   Julian was born in Leeds, England and educated at Hogwarts(truly!) all the way to a philosophy degree at York University. Julian  moved to London as a singer songwriter with classical training on piano and self taught on guitar. 

   He won a “Golden Trailer” award for his work with Lana Del Ray on Disney's “Maleficent” trailer.  Three songs by Julian were in the music movie Plush directed by Catherine Hardwicke of Twilight fame.  

    Four of his songs cowritten with Siobhan Fahey (Bananarama/Shakespear's Sister) were the main  songs for the Astrid Angel band in the movie Riot On Redchurch St directed by Trip City and  Martin Amis' Money author/director Trevor Miller.  

     His Song “Talking In Your Sleep”  won the ASCAP/Homegrown Hits best song of 2013 earning  sponsorship from Protools and ESP guitars.

   In May of 2023 I conducted an interview with Julian Shah-Tayler about his Bowie-centric ventures and his just issued Forget That I'm 50, on Harmony Records.

Q: Besides your remodeled Bowie's Aladdin Sane endeavor, you've been hosting a Bowie-themed podcast now in production.

    You've done guest interviews with Mike Score (Flock Of Seagulls), Nick Launay (Nick Cave/Arcade Fire/Kate Bush), Carmine Rojas (Bowie/Rod Stewart) and Michael Aston (Gene Loves Jezebel).

A: I’m still working on the formatting on the interviews I’ve already done. Nothing is out yet. 

Q: Tell me about the genesis of the podcast. And how do you enjoy probing others about Bowie? You've gotten some terrific insights from guests.

A: I’ve had the great honour over the recent years of performing and working with Bowie’s band members and notable associates often, and it became clear that each of them in their anecdotes had more of an insight into the “private Bowie” than we’ll ever get from “documentary films” or interviews, as he was keenly adept at curating his public image to fit his very singular narrative in each phase of his artistic development.

    As a mega fan and a musician myself, this seems a privilege I should share with other fans. I’ve always been a collector of esoteric thought, with a heavy emphasis on philosophy and its manifest behaviour. Bowie’s imprint on the world and artistry beyond his own (musical) sphere seems so far to have been an immeasurably positive one. 

Q: Obviously, you are a fan of David Bowie. How were you introduced to his music/recordings?

A: I first heard “Let’s Dance” and was nonplussed. It felt unsophisticated and bluesy, which has never been my favourite context (I’m classically trained) but subsequently a strange friend of mine “Justin” with a seemingly very ambiguous sexuality/gender identification introduced me to Lodger and the song “Yassassin” intrigued me very deeply through its middle eastern feel and strange structure/rhythms. Next it was “Look Back in Anger” and "DJ" and I was sold on his artistry, choosing to explore further into Low, Diamond Dogs and Scary Monsters from whence I was hooked. 

Q: Were you initially struck by the image? The voice? The words? The production?  

A: I didn’t really know what he looked like. The video to "Let’s Dance" made me think of him as a very traditional 80s rockstar with the tan and blonde hair. Both of which were initially a turn off. His voice took me a while to appreciate and the lyrics never really resonated viscerally. I have recently begun to appreciate his vast and brilliant lyricism and verbal artistry, but it wasn’t an initial draw. 

   I think the experimentation with form and sounds overall was the draw. Robert Fripp’s guitar, Mike Garson’s piano, Brian Eno’s rhythm beds. 

    Once that had set the scene for me, I most certainly jumped into the whole Bowie experience wholeheartedly. He had a genius for finding the exact perfect collaborators to drape his musical inventions around and inside. 

Q: Did you see him in concert or ever have some encounters/interactions with him? 

A: I met him at Virgin Records on Oxford street for the signing of the Hours record. I had been tasked with being his liaison/security at another store (Piccadilly) until they realized his presence pulled thousands, and they removed him from my clutches. He had the great grace to have a few words with me as I was obviously horrendously disappointed and he signed a couple of CDs. 

   I only saw him perform live once at the Phoenix Festival in the UK on the earthling tour. It was transcendent. 

Q: Which brings us to Forget That I'm 50. You are the executive producer of this wonderful collection. The epicenter is your Bird of Paradigm studio in South Pasadena.  Where did this idea come from?

A: I’ve always loved the album Aladdin Sane mostly for its strange arrangements personified by Mike Garson’s contributions, and have often approximated his piano parts most imperfectly in live shows, so I decided to strip back the album to its constituent song parts and abandon piano entirely on my versions.

     I produced and/or contributed to the majority of the versions on the album to maintain a structural integrity with the project as a whole. I trusted my excellent friends to perform a stellar job overall on the album 

Q: What is the genesis of this compilation? It's not the usual tribute album. It's a whole different bag. You spent a lot of time selecting the specific recording artists.

A: I wanted to give a platform for my wonderful friends and associates to shine on this project. Like the podcast, it’s a branch to reach out to the brilliant ones  and share their skills and talents with as wide an  audience as we can reach. 

Q: Can you offer some back story and insights about your relationships and requests of participation? Did you offer a track to someone or were there some anecdotes and dialogue that resulted in them coming aboard? 

A: I mostly had to feed them to people who volunteered their services for specific songs until they were taken…. 

     I knew everyone involved except Human Drama, who were introduced to me for the project. I simply wanted the best version by the best person, and I believe I got it! 

    I met Michael Aston (Gene Loves Jezebel) on the 80s Cruise when we were playing together so he felt like a good first step to ask. His “backing band” of guitars/bass just so happened to be “beauty in chaos” with whom I’ve done a great deal of work.

    David Chatfield claimed “Cracked Actor” for his protege band Sumthing Strange and produced a fabulous version with a lot more heft and dancability than the album recorded version. I very much enjoyed contributing predominantly solo guitar to this one 

    Darwin is a great friend and member of the indie supergroup “night crickets” for who I produced an album and a few singles/EPs so I really wanted him on it. 

    Former Teen is one of my longest standing friends. He’s a brilliant musician hiding his light in plain sight on this version. 

    Beck Black is a great friend who credits me with starting her off in music. She is good friends with Rodney Bingenheimer and even has an original song with Ringo on drums. 

    Natalie Wilde is a brilliant singer who works with Nick Cave, and I’ve performed and recorded with her very often. 

   Human Drama are stalwarts of the goth scene in LA whose Lagan lilting lullabies always charmed me. Michael (beauty in chaos) introduced me. 

    Gene Micofsky is a consummate brilliant musician that I have the honour to call my friend and collaborator in some bowie tribute shows that I’ve done. 

    Jawnee Danger is a long-standing friend: a force of nature who consistently brings excellence to every musical context he touches

     Fernando Perdomo is truly a brilliant musician in every sense. This is the first time I’ve had the honour of working with him on a project. We’ll do more! 

    Mark Damian is drum genius #1 who has cropped up on my recordings and shows so often I can barely quantify. 

  Christina Larocca, - I know Christina for a long time. Lovely artist in her own right. 

    Michael and Tish Ciravolo, - “beauty in chaos” for whom I’ve done 6 remixes and one original vocal song  

     And Sumthing Strange and David Chatfield. 

Q: David Chatfield was involved in producing your own contribution, "Cracked Actor." Why did that song/initial Bowie rendition have such an impact on you? Can you address the collaboration aspect of working with David Chatfield?     

A: That one was produced by David featuring Sumthing Strange on vocals and instruments. I contributed Acoustic guitar, bvs and guitar solo only. My principal contribution was “Lady Grinning Soul.” 

   I love working with David. He has a laser focus on “the hook” wherein he leaves the majority of the song intact, but restructures to put the emphasis on the catchiest elements. It’s like digging for gold and finding the diamonds…. 

Q: As the project was coming to fruition, what were some of the initial revelations of what was being brewed?   

A: I distinctly remember a Face Time I had on tour on the east coast where I had to step out of a restaurant in a mall to listen to Johnny percolating his version live on acoustic. It was quite an  honour and very moving! 

Q: You've done some other Bowie-related ventures. Including performing "Star" with the full Bowie backing band including Mike Garson, Gerry Leonard, Carmine Rojas, Kevin Armstrong, Allan Childs at the Rose in Pasadena, California  in 2020. How was that gig? 

A: I couldn’t stay for the gig. I was performing elsewhere on a full show. The one song I did get the chance to play with them backing me was a great thrill which I’ll never forget 

Q: You cut "Lady Grinning Soul" and other Bowie tunes on an Aladdin Sane cover album.   And  Loving the Alien (from the Torment Suite EP). What is the back story on these and any anecdotes on the sessions?  

A: I fully produced "Aladdin Sane," "Panic in Detroit," "Jean Genie," "Lady Grinning Soul"  as well as recording on and/or mixing "Drive in Saturday," "Cracked Actor," "Time," and "The Prettiest Star."

   Most of these recordings were done by sending each other parts from our home studios and compiled in my/their studios. 

    "Loving the Alien" I released in 2020 and both Alain Whyte and Carmine (who played bass on the original Bowie version) both expressed their heartfelt compliments on my version. 

Q: Carmine Rojas (Bowie) and Mike Garson (Bowie) are playing on your next album of new originals album alongside David J (Bauhaus/Love and Rockets) and Alain Whyte (Morrissey). Tell me about this new endeavor and the types of tunes you are now crafting and recording.  

A: It’s an album called Honne/Tatame which is a Japanese term for the two sides of the human presentation: one is the face we show the world, the other is the reality. 

   I’m using the concept as a dichotomy to explore the light and dark sides of my writing and thought. The “Alpha Side” will be mostly optimistic and upbeat, with love songs and traditional arrangements. The “omega Side” is mostly downbeat and pessimistic displaying my “goth” leanings. It’s predominantly electronic."  

Http://Thesingularitymusic.bandcamp.com

Harvey Kubernik is the author of 20 books, including 2009’s Canyon Of Dreams: The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon and 2014’s Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll In Los Angeles 1956-1972.   Sterling/Barnes and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik’s The Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz. In2021 they wrote Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child for Sterling/Barnes and Noble. Otherworld Cottage Industries in 2020 published Harvey’s Docs That Rock, Music That Matters.

Kubernik’s writings are in several book anthologies. Most notably, The Rolling Stone Book Of The Beats and Drinking With Bukowski. Harvey wrote the liner notes to the CD re-releases of Carole King’s Tapestry, The Essential Carole King, Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, Elvis Presley The ’68 Comeback Special, The Ramones’ End of the Century and Big Brother & the Holding Company Captured Live at The Monterey International Pop Festival.  

    During 2006 Harvey spoke at the special hearings initiated by The Library of Congress held in Hollywood, California, discussing archiving practices and audiotape preservation.

Photo previously appeared in PASADENA WEEKLY.

“Youth power” is the core theme of this collection of powerful music destined to reflect and inspire today’s generation of young people. Click here to watch the new music video featuring youth leaders from the film.

Directed by Peter Nicks and executive produced by Ryan Coogler, HOMEROOM powerfully documents the tenacity of Oakland High’s class of 2020 as they confront an unprecedented year derailed by COVID-19 while also rocked by the national trauma of the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others. HOMEROOM is a Hulu Original Documentary and was released on August 12, 2021. Click here to watch the latest trailer for the film. HOMEROOM is the third and most personal in Nick’s trilogy of vérité portraits including The Waiting Room (2012) and The Force (2017).

HOMEROOM: Music From and Inspired by the Motion Picture features nine tracks including “Look at Us,” by Goapele featuring Rexx Life Raj, and two versions of “Rising Sun,” one performed by Elena and the other by Karina Nicks. The soundtrack also includes “Bigger Than Us” performed by Dame D.O.L.L.A. featuring Paul Rey.

Track list:

1. “Look at Us” - Goapele featuring Rexx Life Raj
2. “Hyphy”- Tia Nomore, Bruh from Last Night and Mikos da Gawd
3. “Bigger Than Us”- Dame D.O.L.L.A. featuring Paul Rey
4. “Keep It Player”- DJ D Sharp and Ian Kelly
5. “Pesos” by Studio_Dad, WADE08 & Tia Nomore feat. Lord Morgan, Wayne Mills & Pretty Bobby
6. “Climb”- White Dave & Elena
7. “Manifest” by Basi & Drew Banga
8. “Rising Sun” - Elena
9. “Rising Sun”- Karina Nicks

Pre-order link: http://www.omnivorerecordings.com/shop/homeroom

Of the soundtrack, Zeitlin says, “We set out to create a score the charges straight at you, with all the energy and reckless abandon of a toddler on a rampage. The themes are meant to feel timeless and cathartic, iconic yet dizzying.  We wanted to take the ragtag back yard orchestra concept from Beasts of the Southern Wild and explode it to new heights.” 

The classic story of Peter Pan is wildly reimagined in this ragtag epic from Benh Zeitlin, director of Beasts of the Southern Wild.  Lost on a mysterious island where aging and time have come unglued, Wendy must fight to save her family, her freedom, and the joyous spirit of youth from the deadly peril of growing up.

See the trailer for the upcoming film here.

]]> https://www.musicconnection.com/new-documentary-the-vinyl-revival-explores-all-things-vinyl/ Tue, 18 Feb 2020 22:56:44 +0000 https://www.musicconnection.com/?p=101058

A new documentary exploring the renaissance in all things vinyl will be arriving on Apr. 10 via Wienerworld (UK). From the makers of the acclaimed Last Shop Standing, this new film, The Vinyl Revival, charts the amazing revival of vinyl over the past several years. The film explores the whys and hows with industry pundits, artists, record shop owners, vinyl fans alongside interviews from Nick Mason (Pink Floyd), Philip Selway (Radiohead), Ade Utley (Portishead), Joel Gion (The Brian Jonestown Massacre), The Orielles, CASSIA and many more.

Directed and produced by Pip Piper, the film allows us to hear from passionate new record shop owners as well the established die-hards still going and thriving. The film discusses the importance of the record shop and vinyl as a whole. We answer the why's of vinyl's revival, the human need for belonging, the love of history and the stories of how the humble little record shop has shaped so many lives.

This year's tree was a Norway Spruce from Florida (Orange County), New York, standing at 77 ft. tall. It weighed about 12 tons and was around 70-75 years old. In keeping with tradition, it was garbed with 50,000 multi-colored LEDs and topped with a radiant Swarovski crystal star. The spruce was lit by New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio, respectively. Those who wish to see the tree lit in all its glory can do so until Jan. 17, 2020.

For more information on NBC and the annual 'Christmas In Rockefeller Center' special, visit www.nbcuniversal.com.

Check out the gallery below for photos from the event!

Brian and Roger’s Christmas messages can be seen here:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

Just in case you didn’t know the words !!! There is this version !!! Bri

A post shared by Brian Harold May (@brianmayforreal) on Dec 15, 2019 at 3:48am PST

 

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Happy Holidays.

A post shared by rogertaylorofficial (@rogertaylorofficial) on Dec 15, 2019 at 3:32am PST

“Thank God It’s Christmas” was a rare song writing collaboration between Taylor and May. The song spent six weeks in the UK charts over the Christmas and New Year period in 1984 and 1985. It enjoyed a second lease of life in 1995, when the song was coupled with the hit single “A Winter’s Tale” from the album Made In Heaven. The track receives a fully animated treatment in this new release.

The concept for the animated film came directly from May and Taylor, who explained their thoughts behind it, with Taylor saying: “Ironically, Christmas tends to be such a stressful time for so many of us. [There are] so many emotions, joyful memories of past Christmases as delighted children and as responsible adults and parents. It's just a great relief when it finally happens.”

May added: “The video goes a little further by including a subtle reminder that we as humans now need to feel a responsibility for the welfare of ALL creatures on Earth—not just for our own benefit, and that of our grandchildren, but out of respect for the rights of the animals themselves.”

Working with May and Taylor, the film was directed and animated on their behalf by Justin Moon and executive produced by Drew Gleason for production company °1824.

The new “Thank God It’s Christmas” film is available to enjoy in two versions

Lyric version:
Queen.lnk.to/ThankGodItsChristmasLyricVideo

Original:
Queen.lnk.to/ThankGodItsChristmasAnimatedVideo

Zirkel decided to develop the show as a way to give artists of all levels the opportunity to reach new fans based solely on talent and drive, and nothing else. With the decline of festivals focused around the genre, Zirkel hopes that Sounds will fill that gap to help artists and fans connect and build relationships with each other once again. The "underground" scene is not dead.

“Not one artist on Sounds Of The Underground had to do anything other than be talented and driven to be on the show,” Zirkel said. “They didn’t have to pay anything or sell tickets or win a contest or have a crazy number of followers or have a label. They just had to be talented and driven.”

Some acts appearing on Sounds of The Underground include:
August Burns Red, Frank Iero, The Wildfires Projekt, Halifax (reunion set), Emarosa, Craig Owens/Chiodos, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Sleeptalk.

Along with the announcement of the show, Zirkel has created an Indiegogo where fans will have a chance to own a piece of television and music history. Some items available are autographed guitars, limited-edition merchandise, and even a chance to co-host an episode.

The five-episode series began airing on Sept. 5 in select markets on CBS, with nationwide availability released the following Saturday on YouTube.

The movie is a collaboration between filmmaker/director Jamie Catto, Google Empathy Labs, and producer Raghu Markus, who is the director of Love Serve Remember Foundation.

Writer, author and novelist Anne Lamott hailed Becoming Nobody as “a revelatory look through Ram Dass’ decades of wisdom-keeping.”     

In Becoming Nobody, historic clips balance an engaging conversation with director Jamie Catto. We come to understand how our old roles and disguises become increasingly burdensome.

The film captures a loving man full of joy, wit, honesty and wisdom, at ease in conversation while sharing his considerable pains and pleasures. The life experiences that have freed him from the attachments of his ‘somebody-ness’ have transformed him into the radiant soul who now inspires a new generation.

Always blessed with a delightful and articulate on-screen personality, Ram Dass is up to the task on screen. Even with the after-effects of a severe stroke during 1997, Ram Dass delivers an engaging narrative, touching the joy, the foibles, and the honesty for the very essence of his work and relevance.

Using his own life as an example through the director’s interview, accompanied by archival footage and original music, Ram Dass explores our universal human condition and behaviors in connection to the journey of the soul and the shared unity of all of our lives.  The initial core interview Catto filmed was in March of 2015 at Ram Dass’ home on the island of Maui, Hawaii.

The film ends with the music track “I am Loving Awareness” from the new East Forest x Ram Dass collaboration. This mantra has been Ram Dass’ core teaching for the last several years.   As an esteemed and articulate spiritual guide steeped in Eastern and Western religious traditions, Ram Dass continues to help shape the evolving shared consciousness of an entire age.

In 1997, Ram Dass suffered a stroke that left him with expressive aphasia. From that moment, Ram Dass continues to demonstrate the slowly unfolding process of recovery and rehabilitation.

2002 brought the US theatrical release of a heart-warming documentary on Ram Dass by filmmaker Mickey Lemle, Fierce Grace. “Equals any transcendent moment you’re likely to find in a fiction film, a novel, or a ‘manual for conscious being.’” Michael Almereyda, The New York Times.

Since 2004, Ram Dass has been based in Maui, Hawaii and is still actively conducting Hawaii-located retreats and participating in webcast-related lectures, videos, broadcast seminars and blogs.   

In 2013, Ram Dass published a memoir, Polishing the Mirror: How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart.     

On Oct. 31 -Nov. 3 2019 a Ram Dass retreat, Legacy Immersion, will be held in Ojai, California. This event will uncover the essential teachings of Ram Dass who will teach via Skype. The experience is for those who wish to be immersed in the teachings of "Compassion in Action," "Loving Everyone," "Being the Witness," in order to share them back in their own communities.

Richard Alpert (aka Ram Dass) was born in 1931. His father, George, a lawyer, helped found Brandeis University and was President of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad.

Ram Dass studied psychology, specializing in human motivation and personality development. He received an M.A. from Wesleyan and a Ph.D. from Stanford.

Alpert then served on the psychology faculties at Stanford and the University of California, and from 1958 to 1963 taught and researched in the Department of Social Relations and the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University.

It was in 1961, while at Harvard, that Alpert collaborated with Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg, and others to pursue intensive research with psilocybin, LSD-25 and other psychedelic chemicals.

From this environment and research emerged two books: The Psychedelic Experience (co-authored by Leary and Metzner, and based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, published by New American Books); and LSD (with Sidney Cohen and Lawrence Schiller, published by New American Library). Owing to the controversial aspect of this research, Ram Dass was dismissed from Harvard in 1963.     

Alpert continued his research under the auspices of a private foundation until 1967. In that year he traveled to India, where he met his Guru (spiritual teacher), Neem Karoli Baba. Ram Dass studied yoga and meditation, and received the name Ram Dass, which means “Servant of God.”

Since 1968, Ram Dass has pursued a variety of spiritual practices.

In 1974, Ram Dass created the Hanuman Foundation, which houses hundreds of his lectures and tapes while also promulgating spiritual awareness and well-being for people living in Western cultures. Projects developed under its aegis included the Prison Ashram Project, designed to help prison inmates grow spiritually during their incarceration, and the Dying Project, conceived as a spiritual support structure for conscious dying. It is now called The Ram Dass Tape Library Foundation.

During 1978, he co-founded the Seva Foundation, an international service organization working in public health and social justice in communities.

After appearing on FM radio as a guest interview subject going back to the sixties, usually on Pacifica and National Public Radio outlets, in the late nineties, Ram Dass hosted a series of talk radio shows on both the FM and AM bands, Here And Now With Ram Dass From The Heart.

Ram Dass’ landmark book, Be Here Now, is now in its 34th printing with 1.2 million sales. I first picked up Be Here Now in the very early 1970s at the now-defunct L.A. Free Press Bookstore on Fairfax Ave. when I was staying one night with Bob Sherman and his parents at their duplex on Genessee Ave.

I bought another copy in 1994 when Ram Dass was featured in A Change Of Heart, a one-hour television documentary that aired on 130 public television stations across the United States.

Ram Dass’s journey has always been linked to music. He listened to the jazz of Jimmy Archey and The Riverboat Five, and his running buddies in the jazz world included Maynard Ferguson and Paul Desmond. In the early '60s he actually did a week-long stint doing monologue at the Village Vanguard club, initially slotted to open for Charles Mingus, and later sharing that booking with Ornette Coleman.

During 1967, Ram Dass attended The Monterey International Pop Festival, frequented the Fillmores, Avalon Ballroom and Family Dog concerts. Early in their formation, Ram Dass, with a loyal following of his own, opened for The Grateful Dead, and over the years he was actually a board member of The Dead’s Further Foundation.

His text, “Jerry’s Gone,” appears in Garcia: A Grateful Celebration.

It was the book, The Psychedelic Experience, on The Tibetan Book Of The Dead, that had a profound influence on John Lennon and The Beatles’ composition, “Tomorrow Never Knows,” the first song recorded for the Revolver album.

Arrangements were made for me to spend a couple of hours with Ram Dass in late 1996 for an interview in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel in Universal City one afternoon while he was in North Hollywood doing some radio programs at KPFK-FM.   

Ram Dass relished the opportunity to discuss his life and work in the FM radio universe, as well as a retrospective look back on the roles music, jazz and rock concerts have done to impact and inform his life journey. I am grateful for his work on the planet.   

In our 1996 hotel lobby dialogue, Ram Dass approached me with a hug and a warm smile. In our earlier phone call getting the time secured, he mentioned he was delighted to participate in a music-driven conversation.

“It’s groovy to talk to a real rock ‘n’ roll guy,” was his initial greeting. Ram Dass also gave me some life observations during our two-hour chat. He is a very generous individual.  I am blessed.     

Q. Good afternoon, Ram Dass.

A. Namaste, Friend. (This is a greeting used in India. It means, “I honor the God within you,” or “as Ram Dass puts in, “I honor the place in you where, when you’re in yours and I’m in mine, there’s only one of us.”)

Q: For decades, you’ve always had a relationship to music, in your lectures, workshops, appearances at various auditoriums. You’ve also written a very passionate eulogy to Jerry Garcia now in publication.

A: Back in the ’60s and early ’70s, I spent a lot of time at The Fillmore, The Avalon and Family Dog in the San Francisco area. I went to The Monterey Pop Festival and it was a time when the San Francisco sound was rock by Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Big Brother and The Holding Company, Grateful Dead. Earlier in 1963-4, I was living in Millbrook with Maynard Ferguson and Paul Desmond, and we were turning on with Paul and we would use his apartment in the city. I was going to jazz clubs with Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus, and I hung out so I had a lot of tasty stuff with music and musicians.

    In my college days, I was into the New Orleans sound. I’d go on gigs with Maynard and hang out with him. I did a couple of shows with The Grateful Dead, but it wasn’t the right setting for my thing, because the audience, no matter how sweet they were, basically came to have a rock concert experience.

    Years ago when I was at Millbrook with Timothy Leary, he went off to India, and I was running Millbrook, and there was one night when we rented The Village Vanguard, and we put on a psychedelic show there and I was on mescaline and was the MC. Max Gordon, the owner, caught it, and said to me, ‘How’d you like to work here? Open here?’ A stand-up monologue.

     I said ‘great,’ ‘cause I was broke and needed the money. I was to start opposite Charles Mingus, the next Monday, who then got in a fight with Max, and Ornette Coleman replaced him for the booking. The problem was, instead of my audience, there were sailors and shoe salesmen, and I started to deal with ‘Sit down! Shut up! Where’s the music?’ And Charlie and Max had had a terrible fight the night of the opening. Charles walked out. So Max had Ornette Coleman in place. They had come to hear Charlie. Waiters were feeding me lines. It was ghastly. And after about the sixth night Tim came into the club and I said to him, ‘What do you think?’ ‘Ridiculous.’ That’s what I think. I felt the same way. So, that was the end of my career (laughs).

Q. And in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, from what I gather, you really weren’t involved with the beat generation community, or the new poetry and performance world happening.

A. Well, I knew Burroughs of course and he and I took acid in London with some people. Gregory Corso. Allen Ginsberg. I knew them later on through Tim Leary and Millbrook. I didn’t know them before that really. When I was at Stanford in Northern California taking my Ph.D., I went there and stayed on the faculty there and went to UC Berkeley to teach. When I was at Stanford, weekends I would drive up to the city, and go to North Beach, and hear the beat poets, but it was so out of my world. I was a real gung high-need achieving Jewish upwardly mobile graduate student and they scared the shit out of me. Allen Ginsberg…

Q: What did you like about the music community of the ’60s, from the shows you saw, the music you listened to and the gigs you participated in?

A: What I loved was that these experiences were community and ritual of a very high order where people felt safe to be open and very uninhibited and there was a sweetness about it all.

    It was not hard rock. It was soft rock. It was John Lennon’s love. It was that quality of that space. I listened to FM radio and everyone around me had the albums. I was so preoccupied with psychedelia that I listened to music at every session had along with Debussy. I was at parties with the Grateful Dead and after the concerts, we would all be laying around. They were at the time when we used to buy sandwiches for them because they were in the park. The Panhandle. It was really that level of the game. And I was supplying them with stuff and I was Owsley’s distributor.

Q: What did you like about Jerry Garcia as a person? Not just the musician.

A: I have different images of him. Later, more recently, I was on the board of The Further Foundation with Bob Weir, Jerry and Mountain Girl. In the last few years, he was complicated to work with. He drifted through. I was peripheral to his world, and he was to mine, but we would meet, and there would be a real sweetness when we’d meet backstage. Jerry was always very warm and friendly, very joining space together, but we weren’t social beings.

     I met John Lennon and Yoko Ono. They came to my apartment in New York to meet me with the director, Peter Brook. We hung out and it was a very hard time in my life because I was under the influence of this woman in New York who I was studying with and she was very intrusive. John was very sweet and available and very curious and thoughtful. I found him a very loving being to be with. I loved The Beatles' music. I took acid to Sgt. Pepper.

Q: Along with the music and albums of the ’60s, did you follow any bands or music in the 1970s?

A: I’d go to places like The Beacon Theater to hear Bob Marley and The Wailers; those kinds of things. Reggae—I loved that stuff. Reggae, Bob Marley blew my mind. It was his thing, his message; the quality of his being. His quality of being touched me deeply. I was touched very deeply. I felt that the deeper places I would get to in my own inner work, there would be people like who were resonant like that.

    Those were people who were resonant in that place in myself. You meet somebody who knows your deeper truth. You’re connecting sort of behind the kind of form and façade, and even though it’s through the forms, you can feel you are meeting another mensch, another spiritual being. Marley blew my mind. Reggae music fascinated me, and also because of Jamaica and all the grass. All of that. The records were always around because everyone else around me had lots of records but…    

      I was drawn to the music. I came from classical and jazz. I really liked (Bob) Dylan. He was close to Allen Ginsberg, and I was close to Allen. I loved Dylan’s music and took many acid trips listening to his music.

      I was real happy when Ravi Shankar started getting acceptance in the West, partly because of George Harrison going to India, and I had heard of Ravi in the very early '60s when I was in India. I played the Tambora. I was delighted of the East-West merger. I was so much a part of bringing Eastern stuff to the West that it all seemed obvious to me when it eventually started happening here, so I don’t think I was blown away by the time it happened, I had already done it in my own being. It wasn’t like ‘Someone is doing this!’ It was great to see someone doing it with such style and class.   

     I loved The Doors. Sure…”Light My Fire.” Of course, of course. Some Eastern influences in their music. Jim Morrison was a poet…I liked the level of reality he played with. I like people pushing the edge and getting out of the linearity. I love that. And not in a kind of clever, studied way, but in an ecstatic experiential way. That’s what I love better. That’s what he tried to do.

     I was just in Germany and I did a panel with Adam of The Beastie Boys. We were on a program with The Dalai Lama. He and I sat next together. We were also with an American guy in Germany who is playing music named Joe. Adam and I connected very beautifully, but it was with his holiness which made it fun. The Dalai Lama, along with (Czech President) Vaclav Havel in my view are the best political statements in the world today of people who are integrating passion with politics and not being blown out of the water by trying to keep those things together and The Dalai Lama and I have been together since 1967 when I first visited him. I think he’s a beauty, and he’s fun and he has a great sense of humor, and he’s a very kind and generous human being.

     Getting back to the music… Sgt. Pepper. Music is a vehicle for moving consciousness and humor is a vehicle for moving consciousness. And the combination of that… Let me tell you… What I treasure in human beings is rascality. Tim was a rascal. Jerry Garcia was not a rascal. He was different. Mountain Girl once said to me, “Jerry is like a monk. Music is his whole thing, and nothing else exists for him but that.”  She was married to him. Jerry was at the mercy of a lot of people and just wanted to give everything to everybody and let them until they’d be happy to stop bothering him.

Q: In the '60s and in this decade, are you still enjoying music, tapes, CD’s or live musical performances in your radio activities or lectures?

A: On my lecture tours, I always had music and as the years went on, the people wanted to hear me speak, the same way they go to a rock concert to hear rock. And the musicians were the warm-up act. Indian music, flutes, and the predicament was knowing their ego needs, I wanted to give them the space to do their own thing; the audience didn’t want to do that. Because the audience saw them as an interference. And they’d be talking when these musicians would play.

      After a while, I felt ‘This is like an immoral act that I am doing here.’ Then I started to use tapes of Bonnie Raitt and people like that. A mixture of music and tape. But I always have in my workshops, people leading chanting. It’s interesting. I love gospel. Baptist churches. Going down to the Jazz Fest in New Orleans. Fantastic! Five stages! Great moments. I did a TV thing in Oakland with a thousand people about five years ago with Bobby McFerrin, Arlo Guthrie, The Oakland Choir, Mimi Farina, and I’ve been part of Mimi’s Bread and Roses festival for a long time.

     “Peter Gabriel opened for me the first time we spent time together. I was in his studio in England with the water flowing underneath. He’s great. I couldn’t believe I was given the opportunity to have him open my whole series in Oakland. It was a 10 week series on service. Everybody had to do service in the community. A thousand people and this was with a four-camera TV shoot.

    The first thing that happens is that Peter Gabriel walks on, sits down at the piano and plays, “Here Comes The Flood.” And so beautifully simple.  Then we spent the whole night together in a hot tub just hanging out, and then I went to England and spent time with him and I was almost part of something he was putting together in Spain. But it didn’t work out because of our schedules.

     I'll tell you, I felt his beauty, but I also felt his psychological pain. There was a lot of psychological angst in Peter. And his music is showing some of that stuff and I love him as an energy person, the quality of his being. The psychological stuff I wish he’d come up for air a little more (laughs).      

     Harvey, this is a gas!

Q: What about classical music? You would meditate to classical music.

A. Classical music is very much a part of my life, first of all. My father had a string quartet. My brother was a pipe organist and harpsichord builder. My mother was a pianist. Not professionally. And I took up the cello when I was nine in Boston. I was a lousy cellist. And as recently as two years ago I was in a trio with a psychiatrist and a meditation woman. And the three of us are lousy, but nobody listens and we’re all happy.

Q. What does playing music do for you?

A. Hmmm…Good question. I’ll tell you if I had my choice, I’d rather be a musician than a speaker. I think words are a very, very ponderous vehicle for connecting people. And the connection happens almost immediately with music. And to me, I listen to music to hear where the artist gets out of the way, and the composer gets out of the way. Like when you listen to Mozart. And you to someone playing Mozart piano concerto, it’s as if your turning in to what Mozart is listening to. You’re hearing…It’s like moving in an astro plane. It’s you directly experiencing the astro plane and the composer and the musician don’t end up saying ‘What a great pianist.’ Or ‘What a great composer.’ You end up with saying ‘What an incredible experience.’ That’s the issue of where I go for music.

     A funny thing. Rhapsody In Blue. Gershwin. My uncle was a bandleader, and he was the M.C. at the Coconut Grove in Boston, which burned down, and changed everything for everybody. Because all our friends burned to death. I was like 8, or 9. Mickey, my uncle, brought Gershwin to my father to get money. Gershwin was like 20… ‘He’ll never…’ That’s been a source of great humor in our family for many years. I love Gershwin. Porgy and Bess. Things like that.

Q: How did the concept of your current radio program begin?

A: It started because I realized that I was getting more and more letters from people saying, ‘When are you coming back to Cleveland?’ ‘When are you coming back to Florida?’ And I’m 65, and I thought, ya know, maybe I don’t want to travel as much as I was doing for 25 years. As recently as 3 or 4 years ago, I was doing 60 cities, one every night for 4 and 1/2 months. And that’s just surrender. A lot of schlepping. I love traveling, but I realized I might want to change my game plan a little bit and use technology to connect with people.

     It also came out of the fact that I tried television stuff and found it was very ponderous to work with, because of the cost of it, the technology of it and I had some tough rounds with that, so radio seemed like a possibility.

Q: What has happened since you’ve done these initial shows? In the last 30 years you have had a radio presence, a connection with the Classic Rock community, and books like your Be Here Now are in a 34th printing and have been read by millions of people, now published by Crown.

A: A lot of things have happened and it’s been fascinating because the AM experience has been entirely different than the FM experience.  The FM experience, because I was doing a midnight show on a program, Something’s Happening that (KPFK-FM air personality) Roy Tuckman has been running for 15 years with my tapes and Alan Watts’ tapes being played regularly for years, my audience is gathered already, so I am inundated with phone calls, and 11 call lines are busy the entire shift.  When I stop, they are still busy.  It’s very loving and a warm hangout.

Q: Do you ever feel you are preaching to a converted audience and listenership already?  From the air-checks I heard, people and callers are still asking some personal and important questions.

A:  They still have incredible questions.  But it’s a different level of questioning.  It’s ‘We’re all on this journey together and we are running into this.’  It’s like you meet pilgrims on a path in The Himalayas and somebody says, ‘Hey, what do I do when I get to that corner?’  ‘Well, you curve here.’  It’s more that type of thing.

Q: What are your goals in doing radio?

A: See, when I give lectures, I’m getting ready in the green room, preparing, I am quieting, I am remembering my guru saying to me ‘Ram Dass speaks only about God.’ Which is fascinating to find out how to interpret that in daily life when I’m about to speak to the hospice workers of America.  I’m also bringing my consciousness into deeper and deeper awareness.

     My game then is to get from the green room to the stage. But when you speak at The Shrine, you go through the union people who see you like a side of beef. A whole vibratory set on the way to the stage. Walking out in front of 3,000, 5,000 people you’re going to be the only thing on for the next three hours. And your consciousness is what they paid to hear. There’s money involved, and it’s not like it’s a free scene. And about charging, I only ask enough so people don’t get paranoid they don’t get ripped off. That’s very important to me. If everyone else is charging $20.00, I charge $15.00. I try to keep the prices seasonable.

     I was doing a thing in New York City. My head was in the wrong…I hadn’t gotten it clean enough. I started out giving an ‘On the way to the studio time rap.’ And a guy in the balcony screamed out, ‘Ram Dass my heart hurts.’ At that moment, I saw that I could turn the whole audience against the guy, but I said to the guy, ‘If your heart hurts all of our hearts hurt.’ Let’s all take a breath and start again. He took me. He was like a gift to remind me.

     On every plane, you have to be clean. And I walked into a dialogue with an editor who was going to buy a book and he looked at me like ‘Here is a holy person and I’m gonna really take him.’ And I said to him, ‘Bill, I think you and I can be friends, but in this dialogue, I’m getting screwed to the wall and I want you to know because if I don’t be clean in my contractual dealings the karma is on my head if you rip me off.’ You hear that. I have to be clean. I can’t exploit. But I have to be clean. That’s across the board.    

Q: Is radio a very intimate experience for you?

A: Very intimate.  I do an awful lot of work on the telephone.  I work with dying people.  It’s part of my shtick.  I don’t get paid for it.  It’s stuff I love doing and I’m able to tune in through listening into somebody really deeply and put myself out of the way and just go way, way in to hear what single sentence or what single thing they are really saying, not just ‘saying’, saying.  And it’s interesting because it is like pillow talk.  It’s a form of making love, actually.  It’s very intimate because we get into shared psychic experiences, shared spaces of awareness.  The predicament with AM is that you are locked into time frames so you are constantly dealing with ‘2 more minutes’ or ‘3 more minutes’, hard cut, ads coming up, read this, do this, and it’s very hard to stay in a deep enough telephone conversation and it’s a whole new skill for me.

     When I do lectures, I like the lights on because I want to see the audience. For radio, I need the telephone call-in it’s like talking to a white light. If I have a telephone caller, then the way they phrase their words leads me to the metaphors I use. When I do lectures, I allow people to tape them, spread them around. Because what I was given in India by my guru was charged nothing and the thing that bugged me was when I came back to the West, I was renting halls, advertising, travel, you’re in a whole different trip. It’s not a culture where they support those kind of people. So, there I was, changing the game.

Q: What are you offering to the radio world? Guidance? Solution? Healing?

A: It’s tricky to figure out what is being offered. I’d like to get through the stage where it’s ‘Ask Dr. Dass,’where I know and they don’t, because that’s absurd. When I give lectures, as you know, I start out by saying ‘RAM’ is an acronym for ‘Rent A Mouth’. And you rented me to tell you what you already know, and I know you know it because when I say it, you nod. And, if you know it, what do you need me to tell you because we have to keep saying it to ourselves over and over again.

     So, my dream is that these (the radio shows) would be conversational, rather that I know and you don’t. Like somebody saying, 'Let’s talk about this.' 'Okay.' I say something and they say something back. It’s very hard because the cultural format for talk radio is asking an expert who knows. Not all, but it’s a large part.

     I do a lot of telephone call-in shows and do a lot of promotional interviews when I go on lectures city by city. When I’m going on tour, I might be doing 10 weeks from my home in Vancouver, or whatever. In the '70s, I did four all-night shows on WBAI-FM in New York with Paul Gorman, and those came out as a recordset, actually. He’s had a regular show on WBAI for 25 years. That was a great experience.

Q: What were your radio interviews like in the mid-to-late '60s?

A: I remember doing the Long John Nebel  Show in New York midnight to 5:00 a.m. with Timothy Leary. And, on the way down from Millbrook, we split a cube of acid, and it turned out that most of the acid was in my part of the cube. So when we got to the station, I wasn’t functional so Tim ran with the ball for a couple of hours and then I came in and took over.

     That show was more focused on psychedelics in those days, and there was more ‘flower child’ mentality, more ‘Wow!’ A sweetness, a naïveté about it. Now, today, there’s more tough groundedness. My audiences are older now. In the '60s they were 15-16, and ‘Is the blue acid with the yellow dots any good?’ I mean there were those kinds of questions, ya know? And that doesn’t come up much now. In the '60s, a lot of people called who were high on something and it was like, ‘We’re all out here together.’ It was like we were tripping together.

     My thing is to get out of being a guru. We’re on a journey together, and I’ll be as honest as I can about my trip and you can do whatever you want to do, but I’m going to create the space where it’s safe to be very vulnerable. That’s about drugs, sexuality, about politics, everything.

     On the radio I also use some interludes from Jai Uttal; he’s with Triloka Records. He’s an old guru brother of mine for many years. I pick parts from his tape, and often the least Indian part. I don’t want to define the category too narrowly, ‘cause I’m already called Ram Dass (Servant Of God).

Q: You have a dozen books out, hundreds of live and studio tapes available from the Hanuman Foundation. Do you prefer the audio or print world?

A: It’s different. I think another dimension comes through with the audio. A vibratory rate, a deeper quality of my being comes through. It still leaves an imaginary space for the listener, which books also do also, as opposed to television, which keeps reducing the imaginative space. I’m finding that my tapes…people can hear me and say, ‘I listen to your tapes every day when I drive my car.’ or ‘I listen at night when I go to bed.’ People listen to them over and over again and I realize it’s not the content they are listening too. It’s the quality of the being of the presentation that they are listening to. And that fascinates me. An old couple came up to me and said ‘You go to bed with us every night.’ I asked them ‘How many tapes do you have?” And they answered, ‘10.’ They listen to them over and over. Then I realized it’s not the content they’re listen to, it’s the quality of the being of the presentation they’re listening to. And that fascinates me.     

Q: I’ve known about your scene for many years and always appear so calm in front of a live audience. But we talked once and I was shocked to learn you get really nervous before a gig. I know as Richard Alpert, then as a student, and a teacher in front of academic lectures, you were like a scared rabbit.

A: Yes. Every time I lecture. Diarrhea. I still have it.

Q: I’ve done a few readings and starting to dig it. Any performance tips?

A: First of all when you perform in front of people, don’t be ashamed or embarrassed about it ‘cause you are. These situations awaken whatever ego is in you. Whatever residuals, even if they are residuals. The whole business of performance and being loved, being good enough, and there is a place in me that still maintains a feeling that I am inadequate to the task when I’m being called upon to perform.

Q: You once acknowledged you’re still “the neurotic Jew from Boston…”

A: Absolutely. I’ll tell you, through psychoanalysis, drugs, yoga, gurus, everything, as I’ve said in my lectures, I haven’t gotten rid of one neurosis. The only thing is that they have turned into little things, instead of big things that consume me all the time. But they’re all around and so more like residuals of things.  I’m mean, I’m friendly with my anxiety, but it is there.

     Now I do a lot of meditative practice in the green room beforehand. I eat and nibble lightly before, ‘cause if I get hungry it will ruin my lecture.

Q: What gives you, or anybody to go on display or be on the radio airwaves?

A: I figure that I’ve been on a trip for about 35 years now, since I took mushrooms in 1961. And I’ve been really quite single-minded on the work I’ve been doing in myself inside. And I offer that to people. If it’s useful to them, I will work, and if it’s not useful to them, I won’t.  It has to do with my functionality from where they’re standing. I may be the greatest thing since white bread, but if I’m not finding the niche in because I don’t find the metaphors to communicate, it’s no use at all. I don’t know if I’m the right thing for FM or AM radio.

Q:  I know we are going back 25, 28 years, but were there any specific artists or special albums you liked to trip with?

A: Sketches Of Spain by Miles Davis, of course. I knew Miles because I was hanging out with Peggy Hitchcock on Park Avenue at her apartment and Miles was having a scene there too.

     I met him through that. That music would take me out... “Take Five” by Dave Brubeck with the drummer Joe Morello. This is fun. Nobody has ever asked me any of this stuff. (laughs). It’s great talking to you because you’re right on the edge of it all.

Q: What a compliment! I guess I’ve arrived…

A: You have…Just keep doing what you do and it’s going to work out.

     You are realizing that it’s time to let go of your anonymity. You don’t have an ego problem. A lot of it is realizing that the people out there are us not them. That’s a big secret of the thing.  This is us gathering. A family. If they want to see me as him, that’s their problem. I see them as us. Had you pushed yourself earlier you would have burned. You would have crisped. I think you’ve done it very intelligently because you built a ground of connection, and in a certain way in which you’ve seen enough stuff and you’ve tasted enough so that you’re not as vulnerable to it. Your body of work, recording and writing.

     It’s interesting. It’s not usual. Because the culture, the People magazine mentality, externalizes people for that stuff very quickly. The minute a name appears immediately you are famous. And then you are gone. You’re in it for the long haul. You know when you’re ready.

      You don’t have the problem like some in the music and entertainment business that many of those people know what I know but they’ve just gotten deeply caught in a system that is not creating much happiness for them. And I feel their pain, but I would say to them ‘You are really screwing yourself by making a deal with your own integrity the way you are making it in order to be successful. And that when you win you still are losing.’ And that’s a real problem.

     The level of Prozac intake, and level of pathology of denial involved in being able to support something without integrity where you are not honoring the deeper values of wanting to have decent human relationships, and play at the edge of truth as well as you can. And the cost of that, arming your heart, and when you armor your heart you end up cut off from the light force. And then you end up in every pathology imagined. Whether it be drinking, drugs and this thing that has been created by your having to be hip and cool and sharp and with it in order to survive. And the question is: In a harsh industry can you survive any other way?

     I feel that you’ve got to go very slowly and look around for other people of like-mind to give each other a little support. But it is possible. It is possible.

     Don’t get psychically addicted to outcome.

Q: Thank you, Ram Dass. Were you not a joiner? You always seemed removed or really traveled to your own beat.

A: Well, part of it is that I’m gay. And the gay community was not a community I was drawn too. And the straight community I always felt outside of. I wouldn’t go to a bar.

     I mean, now, I give lectures on golf. This is very far out. I go on the links, “Hi. I’m Dick.”

Q: You like the game of golf? What attracts you to it?

A: I like the mindfulness of it. Where my consciousness is in relationship to each swing.

Q: Did you ever think in your lifetime there would be a cable channel devoted to golf?

A: (Laughs)….It’s no longer a game for the rich and privileged.  Now it’s becoming more mass consciousness.

Q: What’s the big deal about hitting a ball in a hole? You don’t have to be six foot five to play?

A: Exactly. There are certain skills that are not hard to get and after that it’s very much of a mind game. It’s where your head is at when you take the shot.

Q: So, does the hole represent completion?

A: It represents nothing to me. It’s just part of the form of the game. That’s not what other people are in it for. It’s the process and the journey. There’s a book by Mike Murphy on golf many years ago you should check out.           

Q: What is the greatest reward in the work you do?

A: I don’t go to a restaurant where somebody doesn’t come up and say, “Ram Dass. Thank you for Be Here Now. It changed my life.”  That book did a tremendous thing for millions of people. In prisons in Bali, there will be a copy. In Thailand, a monk will bring out his copy. Musicians will come up and say, 'Thanks for your books, your tapes.'  It’s gone on for 25 years. So I have karma that is so good I have so much grace. I wake up every day so blown away by the grace of my life. Now it’s two generations like grandmothers. ‘My grandmother gave me her copy.’ You realize that?

     “The only time I had one experience where I experienced fame and it was a drag. I was in Miami Beach and I was walking down the aisle to the stage and these women with heavy eyeliner tried to rip the buttons of my jacket. There was that hysteria. That’s a kind of a fame I don’t want. A symbolic fame. It has nothing to do with me. No empathy in it at all.     

Q: Why or how did you write Be Here Now?

A: I was in India in 1968 and met my guru. One day my teacher gave me a blessing to write a book. And I said, ‘What book? I’m not writing a book.’ So I came back to the States and was no longer in academia. I had used up psychedelics as a ‘Mr. LSD Jr.,’ that was all wiped out. And I came back and didn’t know what to do. 'I’ll write a book because that’s what I’m supposed to do.' So I wrote a book and sent it to nine publishers and they all turned it down.

Q: You did it yourself. That’s awesome.    

A: Yes. I never had an agent after 11 books. Then we did Be Here Now in a commune up in the mountains in Mexico and gave away the first 10,000 copies. What I did was go out on the road, and people paid a dollar and a half to come to the lecture, and a dollar of it went to this big box. It was not a book. It had a record in it and pictures. And then the orders were coming in at 50 a day and I said, ‘I’m going back to India.’ And then Crown came along and said ‘We’ll make it into a book.’

     Maharaj-ji, [aka Neem Karoli Baba] said, ‘Ram Dass, you should not hold on to money. It should go around you and through you.’ I’m part of a wandering sect. I give away, I would say, most of my money. So I live comfortably in Marin County. I’m not a hardship situation at all. And since I’ve never been focused that money was real to me I never really got into it. I had no family or responsibility. And some years I was passing the hat.      

Q: What about your live appearances?

A: I love the chemistry of an audience. I love when we’re just in the space together. We’re so fed by the moment of being together.  I’m still a generalist. However, I do get concentrated in certain areas. I do a lot more on dying. I do a lot on AIDS, and do a lot on social responsibility and business. I do a lot on the medical marijuana initiative. On hospice work and on spiritual practices. I’ll do workshops and retreats on spiritual practices. I do more now on politics. I’ll do a workshop in the hills of Santa Barbara with good level political people who really want to examine how to get out of how to be so reactive in a scene to get more reflective. Now if they are more willing to come and do that, I’m willing to come. That’s the way it works. What I like to do is take a couple of fresh areas a year and so when I look at all the invitations I get and then pick a few things I don’t know much about. It’s a challenge. And that forces me to think through and prepare a lecture for something.        

Q: This is a wounded world that needs a lot of help. Are you at all encouraged?

A: It’s all very tricky. There are a couple of things that your comments raise. One is the relationship of me to the new age. What happened initially, was that when this collective awakening started to happen, and It got articulated and it started to have some juice connected with it because of the minstrels like Dylan spreading it, then all the people who wanted power glob on to it and the new age was born. Yet, I’m considered part of the new age. Or whatever that means. I’ve never used the term, and I’m not comfortable with it. When I do these Expos I don’t want to do them anymore. I still have the audience, but the cost of it in terms of guilt by association, or something like that…

       See, my game is very shrewdly designed. My game is what I am marketing is my truth. And my vulnerability. I’ve taken my weaknesses and made them into my assets. By saying ‘I’m telling you my sexual story, my drug story.’ All this stuff. I’m balding. I’m getting old. I’m a fellow human being.

      Getting older first of all it lets you off the hook of the rat race. It gives you a chance for a new curriculum for the rest of your life. It gives you a proximity to death that allows you to become very awake at the moment, if you use it right. If you’re not totally traumatized by it and going into massive denial. So it leads you to new options.

      It gives you some space because to the culture you’re becoming irrelevant and the minute you become irrelevant, you’re free. You’re free to be eccentric in ways that you weren’t before when you were mainstream. It gives you the chance to re-think, and have a new identity with that, which many people didn’t have since they entered kindergarten because they were lock-stepped all along all the way through the game. All the way through until their 55, 60.

     To me the demographics of the baby boomers turning 50 means that as the numbers change in society, that obsession with youth that society has had, now the numbers can re-define the mythology. See, they have the advertising dollar and the vote. And the advertisers are figuring out how to get woman over 40.

Q: What about The Hanuman Foundation and the Ram Dass Tape Foundation?

A: I set it up in 1973 to try to figure out how to do some service. And since I was a bad guy iun society since I was thrown out of Harvard for drugs, the only people I could work with were dying people and prisoners. We have a tape catalogue. The most popular titles are relationship stuff and spiritual practices is a big one. And the aging tapes.

Q: I appreciate you finding the time to speak to me. People will read this transcription. What a cool way to spend a marvelous afternoon. And please sign my Be Here Now book.

A: Thank you, Harvey. I’ll see you again.    

For more information on the upcoming film, go to their website.

         Harvey Kubernik is the author of 15 books, including titles on Leonard Cohen and Neil Young. His 2017 volume, the acclaimed 1967 A Complete Rock History of the Summer of Love was published by Sterling/Barnes and Noble.  His Inside Cave Hollywood: The Harvey Kubernik Music InnerViews and InterViews Collection, Vol. 1 was published in December 2017 by Cave Hollywood.  Kubernik’s The Doors Summer’s Gone was published by Other Cottage Industries in March 2018.

   The Doors: Summer's Gone has been nominated for the 2019 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Awards for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research.

    In November 2018, Sterling/Barnes and Noble published Kubernik’s book, The Story of The Band From Pig Pink to The Last Waltz, written with his brother Kenneth Kubernik.

    Harvey Kubernik’s 1995 interview, Berry Gordy: A Conversation With Mr. Motown is included in The Pop, Rock & Soul Reader edited by David Brackett will be published in 2019 by Oxford University Press.      

    This century Kubernik penned the liner note booklets to the CD re-releases of Carole King’s Tapestry, Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, Elvis Presley The ’68 Comeback Special and The Ramones’ End of the Century.

    In November 2006, Harvey Kubernik was a featured speaker discussing audiotape preservation and archiving at special hearings called by The Library of Congress and held in Hollywood, California.

Web: christopherlennertz.com
Contact: desk@costacomm.com
Most Recent: The Boys

Award-winning composer and songwriter Christopher Lennertz (Sausage Party, Lost in Space, Agent Carter) is the guy behind Eric Kripke’s The Boys. A series adapted from a comic about corrupt superheroes is the type of project Lennertz is drawn to. “I’m a huge genre fan in terms of sci-fi, superheroes, gangsters. I like entertainment like that. Anything with swords and sorcery and magicians,” he says. “I go to fantasy worlds a lot; the music seems to be the most interesting for me. Just growing up in the '80s and watching movies like E.T. and Star Wars and Back to the Future and playing Dungeons and Dragons—that’s what I grew up with. I go to a movie to get somewhere that’s larger than life.”

Lennertz has created larger-than-life sonic backdrops for TV, video games and films across the fantasy, supernatural and horror spectrums. His advice is to use the storyline as the compass to dictate the music. As a musician first and foremost, this can be hard to do.

“I got fired from my first TV show after four episodes, because I needed to learn that confidence and simplicity was key. I was so worried about making the music good and impressive that I probably seemed nervous and unsure and panicked when in actuality, the music didn’t need to be as complex or overthought as I thought,” he says. “I wasn’t hearing the people I was working for, who were looking for emotion and storytelling, and I made it too much about the music. I learned that story is the answer, story is the boss.”

Lennertz says it's important to do some basic research and legwork to be able to relate to the show or film’s makers. “I’m surprised how many composers I meet who haven’t seen major classic movies,” Lennertz says. “Knowing those movies and how the stories are told and how the music relates allows you to have a dialogue that makes filmmakers comfortable. If they see you’re someone who gets it, it’s an easy way to have shorthand. When I speak to classes at USC, I tell them to grab the AFI Top 100 movies list and watch one a week.”