#402 - John Sykes, Chairman of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Writing Dolly Parton a Note to Get Her to Accept Nomination + How Musicians Get into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame + Co-Founding MTV and VH1 and His Influence on Music on TV and Radio

00:00:06
Speaker 1: When Dolly got in, she turned it down, originally saying I don't want to block another woman who should get in. I'm the country, I'm not rock and roll. So I wrote her a note. She said, oh, I get it now. The answer is still know you ought to do a better job telling people who you are.

00:00:23
Speaker 2: We're going to do this episode a bit different.

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Speaker 3: It's episode four oh two with John Sykes, who works alongside me, I mean over me actually at iHeartRadio, but he is the chairman of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That's why we initiated this conversation because obviously this is a music podcast.

00:00:42
Speaker 2: But dude, I'm gonna tell you I learned so much about John.

00:00:45
Speaker 3: And I've known John for a long time, I didn't know he's one of the people that started VAH one.

00:00:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like the Forst Gump of the music industry.

00:00:50
Speaker 3: Crazy. This guy's stories. So you're going to hear a lot of different stuff. We'll talk Hall of Fame, we'll talk iHeartRadio, we'll talk VH one.

00:00:59
Speaker 2: How we start that he was part of the group that started MTV.

00:01:02
Speaker 3: But because we talked about pop up videos, We're gonna do this episode like a pop up video. Audio wise, we've never done this before like this, so you'll hear little pop ups throughout the episode with facts as we talked to John, so he has some background, but also we just thought it was funny if we did a pop up video episode. So John Sykes. He is the president of iHeartMedia Entertainment Enterprises. As Mike said, he's the Forrest Gump of the music industry. I learned a lot, you know, prior to iHeartMedia, it was just him building and operating multiple entertainment brands. When I brought up I don't want to say the bands, but when I brought up one specific band and he's like, yeah, sign them to the first publishing deal, I was like, wait what. And then he goes, oh, yeah in this band, and I was like wait what. It's just a great episode and it all comes down to twenty nineteen, he was named the chairman of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and that's what we get into. He holds an honorary doctor up in the Berkeley School of Music. The Berkeley School of Music thinks you're so honorable they give you a dot.

00:01:56
Speaker 2: That's crazy.

00:01:58
Speaker 3: And he's a member of the cable Television Hall all the Fame, and he's one of the guys and my company that I love so much, which is iHeartRadio. Here he is John Sykes. It looks like you have some sort of editing program behind you. What's going on back there beyond me? Yeah, it looks like you're in the middle of editing some show of some sort. What is that on the wall of up there?

00:02:17
Speaker 1: Oh? Even handwritten or on the monitor.

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Speaker 2: Now on the monitor right there? What is that?

00:02:22
Speaker 1: Oh? Oh, the monitor is just to s line. Yeah, the lineup of everything we've got. I just kind of slot the shows and who's doing what where. When we got top ten ten polls a year, I did the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, which is going to be massive this year. I've got the Robin Hood event and Red So yeah, I've got to I juggle a few things here. It's part of my I like to have a lot of unpaid jobs, Bob.

00:02:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, but cool ones, which, by the way, formerly everybody. This is John Sykes, who is the president of iHeartMedia Entertainment Enterprises. Your music career has been so many different places that have example, when you started the MTV, one of the guys that started that, and you did the very first ever VMAs. It's got to be weird to have some of those guys who you started, they did the first VMAs with, and now they're getting into the rock and roll Hall of Fame. I mean, it's like watching who Do You Get Old? Like Darius is my first ever interview, and I'm like, dang, I'm getting old. I was like a kid, and now Darius is also old. I mean, there has to be some of those acts that you were with when they were babies and you were a baby that now you guys are doing massive things together as you're getting a little older.

00:03:23
Speaker 1: It's kind of like you you're much more talented than I am. But I mean even hip hop, even country, you knew rock and roll, you know all that. I was never really a talent on air talent, but I was obsessed with music. It defined my life growing up. It was when you grew up in a small towns connected in New York. Mom's a college professor, dad's a retail guy. Music was a snapshot of my culture, you know. It told and Bob Dylan told me about politics. I learned more about Bob Dylan about politics. I did from Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon, thank God. And so for me it's I look at my career as people say, god, you have a lot of jobs. I go, no, I've had one job. I work with artists. I love music. I may look at it through different lenses, but to me, it's an ecosystem of You know, when I was in school, all I wanted to was start a video music channel, Ladies and Gentlemen.

00:04:15
Speaker 2: Rock and Rolling MTV.

00:04:22
Speaker 3: The station launched on August first, nineteen eighty one, at twelve oh one am. The first music video ever played was the Buggles video Killed the Radio Star.

00:04:40
Speaker 1: Not because it was some brilliant idea to me. It was to Bob Pittman, who was who was there and really our leader of the five founders. It was the next step. We all grew up with radio, television and music and listen to our records, but we couldn't see them move. We had open Rolling Stone again. You're you were young enough to remember MTV or pre MTV, but barely. But I remember when I had to watch a TV show late on the Sunday night, you go, oh my god, there's Jimmy Hendrix. I'm seeing Jimmy Hendricks move. There's Eric Clappton, Holy cow, there is There were no movies, there was nothing that showed artists. So for me, this was fascinated. I was a child of television. I went to the New House School at Syracuse. I was obsessed with television and radio, and so it was the next step when MTV kind of was established, became a hit, and Bob and I both left, and he went into because Bob's a genius, he went into theme parks, and he went into AOL, and he went into Century twenty in real estate. I was obsessed with music. Bob used to say, you know what your problem is, You're too passionate about what you do. It's like I laughed all the time with them, but it was to me. The next step was to when I couldn't get the money to raise MTV to start MTV out of college, I took a job at a record company and I met these artists that I worked with. I met bands like Cheap Trick.

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Speaker 2: Let's talk about the band Cheap Trick.

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Speaker 3: Cheap Trick's biggest song was released in nineteen seventy seven when they put out the smash hit I Want You To Want Me.

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Speaker 2: Cheap Tricks.

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Speaker 3: Guitarist once said that their bassist Tom Peterson wrote that song as a bit of a joke and wanted to do a song that was a mix of pop and heavy metal because pop was so popular at the time. And you may know Cheap Trick as well from that double necked guitar sometimes triple neck.

00:06:30
Speaker 1: Guitar artists like Michael Jackson.

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Speaker 3: Michael Jackson, known as the King of Pop, arguably the greatest entertainer of music history. Michael Jackson's Thriller album was the best selling album of all time. It sold over seventy million copies, which is crazy and features the song Thriller. Heart Heart was a band formed in Seattle, Washington, and evolved into their name over time. They started out as as The Army, then they went by Hocus Pocus, then White Heart, and then they settled on just Heart. Now you may know some of Heart's hits like this song Barracuda and this song Crazy on You.

00:07:20
Speaker 1: And it's been incredible, incredibly rewarding to see them get up on stage at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and be inducted and Chief Trickle they got in said we'd like to thank the guy who brought us pizza as a college repis Syracuse on PSYCHS. I went good, That's how I remembered I brought him pizza. But that's for me. So in VH one, you know a lot of ways to me. VH one was even more satisfying because H one was mine.

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Speaker 3: VH one stands for Video Hits one and it was created by Warner Amex Satellite Entertainment Media Company in nineteen eighty five, and the goal of H one was to focus on the lighter, softer side of pop music, and inside of each one they did a lot of really cool things and John's gonna talk about that here, but pop up videos, which is why we have the bubbles here because it'll pop up. They tell you a little factoid like this one about VH one, And.

00:08:13
Speaker 1: That's where I met Daris Rucker and Hood in the Blowfish. That's where we met Cheryl Crow and decided, you know something, We're going to use our power to break these careers and then let's come and long before all these docs are out, like now was Behind the Music, which is our doc series. It really really kind of set I think the tone for these thirty and thirties and these other docks that are coming out today. So I'm really proud of that. And then of course now twelve years with Bob at iHeart and working getting to work with you and Charlemagne and Elvis and Ryan, these incredible talent and obviously the artist. To me, it's just part of the circle, part of the circle of what I do all the time, and I and every day. And they talk about gratitude. Gratitude sounds like a cliche. It's so gratifying. I'm so happy that on my worst day, I get to get up and do this.

00:08:59
Speaker 2: This is your worst day. Ah crap, No, now, I know, I know, I'm kidding. Hey, So you mentioned VH one. What years were you running VH one.

00:09:09
Speaker 1: I came in. I left MTV at eighty six or early eighty seven. I came back in ninety three. Tom Preston was running it and Bob was long gone. Where a bunch of us were all gone. Tom was one of our founders and he was still there running it. They kept saying your viewers that you're basically pulling in from MTV or falling off the cliff as some of these great artists like Tom Petty, the Rolling Stones, you two were kind of getting into their forties.

00:09:35
Speaker 2: Three massive artists.

00:09:36
Speaker 3: Here, Tom Petty, the Rolling Stones, and you two are all in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Rolling Stones were inducted in nineteen eighty nine, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were inducted in two thousand and two, and you two, being the most recent, was inducted in two thousand and five.

00:09:52
Speaker 1: And here comes Doctor Dre and Snoop and Eminem, which are changing youth culture.

00:09:58
Speaker 2: Let's talk about Eminem.

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Speaker 3: Emine missult most albums in rap history, with roughly two hundred and twenty seven million copies total. Snoop Dogg, also on the top ten, was roughly forty million sold, and Doctor Dre is widely known as one of the greatest producers in the genre's history.

00:10:14
Speaker 1: I said, you know, we could get the MTV graduates, as I called them. They're twenty four years old, they're out of college, they've got a family, but they're too busy to They're not sitting there to a kid and study hall telling them about the next Pearl Jam record. So I said, let us be that kind of trusted source to turn them onto music that they're going to love. Between twenty five and thirty four. I mean, I had a lot of fun doing that because we got into politics with behe One Safety music. Obviously, we were working with MTV on Rock the Vote, so we were moving culture but speaking to no longer teenagers. But like a twenty six year old who said, I don't want to quit music. I may be married and have a kid, but I'm not giving up yet. I love music. I'm going to concerts, but I need somebody to keep me up to date with what's going on music. And that was my whole idea I had for one was just a continuation of MTV, and I came up to the term MTV graduates. I don't think it went over too well in the company. A lot of people running MTV were people I had hired when I was there, and I moved on to VH one. Despite a little bit of sibling rivalry, we worked really close together and I really enjoyed those years at VH one because I found a whole new generation of artists. As I mentioned Jewel, Sarah McLaughlin, Hooty in the Blowfish Cheryl. I mean, these records, these are sold millions in cases of Hoodie tens of millions of albums.

00:11:32
Speaker 2: Let's go to some artists here.

00:11:34
Speaker 3: Jewel was born in Utah but raised in Alaska before living in a vand in San Diego. She would play coffee houses. Jewel's biggest hit was You Were Meant for Me. Sarah McLaughlin is known for I Will Remember You. Sarah also opened her own music school in two thousand and three as an outreach program that provides free after school music education for children in Vancouver. Cheryl Crowe graduated from the University of Missouri and became an elementary music teacher in Saint Louis before moving to Los Angeles to pursue an entertainment career. She landed backup vocalist roles for artists like Michael Jackson and sting All while she was living in Los Angeles, and I love her. Cheryl cro has many hits, and probably one of the most memorable is All I Want to Do. And finally, let's talk about Hooty and the Blowfish. Hoody and the Blowfish derives from Darius Rucker being inspired by his former college roommates nicknames. One of them wore big round glasses that made him look like an owl. The other had puffy cheeks that made him look like a blowfish.

00:12:44
Speaker 2: So it was literally Hoody was.

00:12:45
Speaker 3: One person, Blowfish was the other person, and they named the band after that, and Hoody's biggest song, well, Hooty and the Blowfish the band.

00:12:52
Speaker 2: Their biggest song was only Want to Be with You?

00:12:55
Speaker 1: Probably another step really in my life of working with artists and taking artists and connecting them with the public.

00:13:08
Speaker 3: Whenever I think back to VH one, you mentioned one of them behind the music, which I loved. It was like, that's how I got to know the freaking goo goo dolls and the things behind.

00:13:16
Speaker 2: But also pop up videos.

00:13:18
Speaker 3: When pop up videos launched, I thought that was the invention of my lifetime. Little do I don't know would be the iPhone, but before the iPhone, John, it was pop up videos. So I don't know where does pop up videos? How does that come up? And who do people say no to that?

00:13:33
Speaker 2: Forever?

00:13:33
Speaker 3: And then it all of a sudden it's something that is It was a phenomenon while it was out.

00:13:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, there's an old saying that jan that domin aregan used to have. They say, how do you make it in the music business. He said, you know, what kind of skills do you need to make it in the music business. He said, here's the skills you need. Get up from your desk, get on the elevator, go up in the street, and pray you bump into a genius. And so I was taking meetings on a VH one to look for ideas that really would speak to like an educated audience. They grew up with MTV, I thought of themselves. Now is a little more clever than a teenager. You know, just like when you do Bobby Earshow, you have a voice, you have an attitude. People know Bobby Bone Show, you have an attitude. Charlottee has an attitude and style does DJ Envy in the folks at breakfast Club. It wasn't just to me about playing songs, but what's the attitude. And the attitude was let's have fun with some of these artists and let's not get to me, but let's let's kind of look at the lyricity songs. And there's this guy named tad Low, and Tadlow who was doing freelance work for MTV, and he was the kind of guy that you know, you'd hire to do your your birthday video for friends. He is a clever guy, put these little video things together. When I got to VH one, he called me. He said, hey, I'm the guy who did that birthday video for you. I go, yeah, yeah, what's up? And he said, I got some ideas, So he came in and one of them was pop up the video. And I said, it's a little bit of biting the hand that feeds you because it's got it's got a little bit of a little bit of sarcasm. But I said, since the artists are the blood that runs through a veins tag, you can't be that mean, but have a little fun. That's what happened in pap up video. Boy to that pop that just that was but that helped define the kind of like the brand image for VH one of just being more than a video jukebox. So part of it was serious where we do back cells, where we talk about that this is the video you just saw, his video you're going to see now, and obviously behind the music with stories pop up video was let's have some fun. And then the third one, a show we had called Storytellers, and Storytellers was kind of like instead of unplugged, of playing the songs. It was unplugged with the stories behind the song. And that's where Bowie and Everyone in the Sun played. And that turned out to be one of the hits for us and put us on the map.

00:15:53
Speaker 3: One of my favorite albums. And I just had Adam Durrett in the studio. We did an hour together. From count of Crouse, I signed him what I signed and publishing, Yeah, I signed, you said, I wish you should ask that when you saw him.

00:16:06
Speaker 2: Counting Crows. I love him.

00:16:07
Speaker 3: They'm a favorite band. The band name Counting Crows is derived from one for Sorrow, which is a British nursery rhyme about the superstitious counting of magpies, which are members of the Crow family. Singer Adam Duratz heard the rhyme in the film The Signs of Life, which starred his close friend actress Mary Louise Parker, and probably their biggest song, Mister Jones, was what launched the band into superstardom.

00:16:37
Speaker 1: So go on, I'll tell my story, tell me about it.

00:16:41
Speaker 3: I was just gonna say I had him in and he was excellent and was so generous, and you know, Adam I'd never met him before, and it's always when you meet kind of your musical heroes, I'm always still a little nervous that I'm gonna like him less.

00:16:52
Speaker 2: I never want to like him less. I always want to leave the same way when I went in, I loved Adham. I thought he was great.

00:16:57
Speaker 3: Thought he was so generous with his time and his answers, and I just I was talking to him about the album that really in college I listened to more than anything else, and it was a Storyteller's album.

00:17:05
Speaker 2: It was counting Crowds across the live wire.

00:17:07
Speaker 3: And when you talk about Storytellers, one of those CDs and the two CD you know, Counting Crow's album was a VH one Storytellers And so I didn't know you signed Adams.

00:17:17
Speaker 2: So how did you meet him?

00:17:18
Speaker 1: After I left MTV, I was, you know, kicking around looking it was twenty nine and we had made our money there, which wasn't a lot of money. Looking back at the time, I thought was a lot of money. But I didn't know what's going to do next. So I kind of tried being an agent, you know, music agent for a while. That although I respect music agents or film agents, wasn't what I like to make things. I really wasn't in money to be the booker. I wanted to one to make it so or make the content. I took over Christlas Records and began the president of Christmas Records in North America. And we had we had a great run. We had We had Billy Idol, we had Shinead O'Connor World Party. We had been rock band called Slaughter, We had Arrested Development Gang Star. It was a great label. And I was about two years in and EMI bought us and folded our company into another part of EMI. And I was stuck there with another year or two on my contract, and I had a piece of the company side. I had to stick around to get my money. And so they moved me over to music publishing. And I said, I don't want music. What does the music publisher do well? Music publishing they find these artists, they're the ones well the record labels are they're worrying about graphics and fighting over deals. The publishers are out there finding songs out of clubs. So I said, all right, well, I got a couple of years here, I might as well go look for some bands and running up being the president of a record company. You're just in finance meetings all day. You're just you're so far away Bobby from the music. Music publishers are in the music at all times. So I would come into the office instead of sitting in staff meetings all day, I'd be going through tapes or CDs at the time and talking to lawyers, because the lawyers are the ones who were finding these are before the record companies did. I would just be out there with my friends I met from MTV, taking by the lunches dinners. I remember the head of the company saying, why are you taking these lawyers and agents out for lunch? And I said, because they're out there finding these artists. So one day a friend of mine said, I think we're gonna There is this band called Counting Crows. You might like them, they said, said, but they're nothing. They haven't been made a record yet. I don't think they even met p Bone yet. Burnette and so I went up to San Francisco to a BMI showcase and there with about twenty five people in this club were the Counting Crows playing on, going like, how am I so lucky to be in this room? And I'm listening and listening. So I went back and there was Adam and at that time had crazy hair, like so why I would like Dreadlock like Bob Marley Hare. It was very cool and he was in there and I just said, this is the greatest record I've heard in years. And I'm the music publisher. I don't know what what I do, but I'm a music in Tellivision. Help. I want to sign you. So I signed them, and I said what I would do is I know all my friends from MTV and I can help you get played on MTV. And Lauren Michael's is a great friend of mine. And so when I signed them, the first thing I did was I took the talent of director Marcy Klein from SNL. I said, you got to see the band I signed. They're great. Took her down to Webster Hall, which was the old Ritz in New York, and she said, I love them. I'm going to put them on the show. All said, what so this band When the record was just coming out, they were on SNL and I and of course went back to my friends at MTV and I promoted them to get them on MTV. And I said, wow, this is kind of fun of music publishing. You get to find bands and then promote them, and something that you can't do write a record company because you're too busy going through the paperwork and the red tape. And another band I signed was called Stone Temple Pilot who sold seven million records SDP.

00:20:57
Speaker 3: Stone Tiple Pilots had six number ones that made Billboard Rock charts and one number one album on the Pop charts in nineteen ninety four.

00:21:04
Speaker 2: That album was called Purple. I loved it. I listened to it a lot.

00:21:07
Speaker 3: They want to Grammy in nineteen ninety four for Best Hard Rock Performance for this song Plush. Their lead singer, Scott Wiland passed away from a drug overdose in December of twenty fifteen.

00:21:23
Speaker 1: Went downtown in New York during this thing called CMJ was called kind of a college music seminar. They all the young bands and all the A and R people would go to where the hot bands were. I went to the club where the hot bands were all playing. I couldn't get in, so I took my thing out and said, there's some band called Stone Table Pilots that the lawyer has told me about. Let me go see them at this place called the bank. It was a Tuesday night. I walked into the bank, same thing, ainst Counting Crows there with twelve people stone table pilots ripping the plates apart, and all I could think of was that I'm rigan line is pray you bump into a genius. And those are two cases where literally, by chance, I rant into two great artists and sign them and we become life on friends. And then I leave them. I and I in my music publishing where I signed them and went over to pH one and what were the first two videos I put on, Don't Table Pilot and Counting Crows. So to me, it's part of the again, that ecosystem where if you just hang around the hoop and be and beyond the court and be playing, you're going to be able to touch every aspect of the way fans connect with their artists. And that's where I think I've been lucky to live in that little cyclone or.

00:22:33
Speaker 3: That sweet spot when you talk about stp from back in the day, the Scott Wiland walking into hearing a young Scott Wiland sing, I mean, was it undenied?

00:22:42
Speaker 1: Now?

00:22:42
Speaker 3: It's undeniable because Don't Tail Pilots were so good, so big, rest in peace, Scott Island. But to hear him that young and before they had broken out, were you like, how does this band not blow up?

00:22:54
Speaker 1: You know? It's funny, Bobby. It's like, you know, success has a million fathers and failure, but one you know when you're in when you're in a club and you're listening, and I love so much music. I'm a fan like you are. I just love artists. I respect artists. They have more talent and they're pinky than I do. But they're just you know, I was in a band growing up. I was obsessed with trying to be a great artist. But you're in there and you're saying I like this, you know, and I'm not. I don't have any research data here. I can't say I'm not a focus group here. It's like I'm saying, but boy, they feel like watching them is like watching the Rolling Stones when I was a kid. I mean, I may be the oldest guy in the room here, but I still think that pretty good. Ears. There's certainly a nose to smell it and to look around and say something's going on in here. And again I met him and Scott and Dean de Leo and his brother, his brother Scott and Eric the drummer. Great guys and it's funny there. As you know from working with artists, they could be crazy and evil and mean on stage and then you meet them backstage and like, hey, how are you? Where are you from? And that's the beauty of these artists, it's there. It's the persona that they put out there. You know. One of the nicest guys you ever meet is Keith Richards. You see him on stage, you don't want to go near him. You're terrified, sweetheart. So Scott and I love Scott, and you could see he was struggling. But you know the great thing about him he was I would see him anywhere, you know, years after when I moved on to VH one and would see him and he would be in the dark place whatever, his eyes would light up. He is still that guy with a heart of gold. Gave me a hug, showed me baby pictures. He would be like, you know, just the guy. And it broke my heart that we lost him, But that's kind of part of the journey we're all on that we look at it, look at you started out, you know hip hop, you know rock, and roll. Now you're a kingpin and country. So it's about the love we have for music, and you really let that music pull you along and take you on the journey and hopefully along the way. You know, we use some of our own talent to basically go out and and curate and pick the good stuff that we are, not the good stuff and stuff we think will be. We'll work with you, connect with fans, and be a promoter. I always say here at iHeart, which is funny. We haven't talked much about radio here, but all the stuff we add at MTV or VH one would never have been a hit without radio. And I used to say to everybody we would get thanked MT would get thanked at the Grammys, but it was radio that drove that those records home. We were maybe TikTok back then we were basically the tip of the sphere, but actually after that it was radio drove at home. Which is why I was so excited to join my longtime brother Bob Pittman to come back here because we could now put a national brand called iHeart Radio on these eight hundred and eighty amazing local outlets and sometimes scale up in order to take a great idea and share it. I used to always say, grow up in my town. If it's a good idea for Schenectady, it's a good idea for America. If the Bobby Bone Show is a good idea in Nashville, it's a great idea for the rest of the country. Because we live now in a nuclear society where everybody everybody is everywhere, and we share so many the same likes and dislikes. So for me, radio, to me is probably the most powerful platform I've ever worked on. Certainly didn't get all the pressed like MTV and vh one did in the day. But if you really want to know where the power is, it's you know, people listen to your show every morning. When you turn on to an artist, that's when the button is pushed.

00:26:22
Speaker 4: Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor, and we're back on the Bobby Cast.

00:26:35
Speaker 3: How in the world did you get the coolest job in the whole world? It's that because the job that you're paid to do is awesome. But I know the responsibilities of that. But like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I don't know what the responsibilities are. That's an awesome job.

00:26:47
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, Bobby, I only wish I had this job in high school because I'd be a lot more popular. But I've been on the board of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for twenty twenty five years and on the nominating committee, run for thirty five years by Jan Winner, the founder of Rolling Stone, founder publisher, editor, and about four years ago he gave it up and I was nominated, voted in to run the hall. To run the foundation, it's sometimes the greatest job in the world. Sometimes it's the worst because no one's ever happy. The people get in or satisfied, the people who don't are upset. So it's kind of like the country music Hall of Fame Cooper's Town the baseball Hall of Fame. Every time you announced the winners, there's enough people saying, well, how come zone so didn't get in? What about so and so so? For baseball, you got to be batting about three hundred to get in Cooper's Town. And music, it's much more subjective. But yeah, I love it. It's an incredible position to have. I didn't even see it coming. They drafted me on there because I was just happy being on the nominame committee, and I used to work on producing the shows, but to me, it's just part of my life. Music is everything for me, and it's part of the ecosystem I have between iHeart, the Hall of Fame, what I do with Robin Hood and I did you know when we started MTV years ago, Bob and I and a few others. It's my life's what I do, and I love to live it that way.

00:28:06
Speaker 3: So if you're to be inducted into the Grand Ole Opry, for example, or the Illuminati or all of these places that you want to be in but you really don't know the exactly what you have to do to get in. Is the rock and Roll Hall of Fame like that where there are no exact there's no exact protocol as to how someone gets into it, just like a feeling amongst a group of people that are voting, or even how to get on the list to be voted for.

00:28:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, I figure you're right, Bobby. It's music is very personal, subjective. So the Hall of Fame is really based on artists that truly have contributed to the growth of rock and roll and the impact and artists that have followed them. So it would be not just record sales or ticket sales. It really is the music that was made move culture and did it and influenced artists that followed. I think Barry Gordy had the greatest line of all that he used to put on the bottom of every Motown record. It said to the young America. And that gives me goosebumps every time I hear that, because it was music for teenagers, which is where rock and roll came from in the fifties. When it came from, it wasn't one sound. It was an amalgam of rhythm, blues, country, and gospel. So it wasn't like jazz, which was a very neat silo an elite format. Rock and roll was about six It was about rebellion. And that's why it's a little bit of subjective category because it's so many different sounds that make up rock and roll, and it's continued to evolve. So we get a lot of people saying, that's not rock and roll. You know, Hank Williams, isn't rock and roll, Dolly part isn't rock and roll? Well, yeah they are. Country was a cornerstone of what rock and roll is all about. Somewhere along the line, rock and roll became known and maybe the sixties and seventies as rock. White guys playing guitars, which is an important part. It's important part of rock and roll, but it's just one. And that's why sixth of the first ten artists abducted the rock and roll things were black. There are and B singers. That was part of the genesis of rock and roll. You listened to the Beatles playing roll over Beethoven that was written by Chuck Berry. You listen to Cream or led Zeppelin, some of those great songs were written by Willie Dixon, Robert Johnson, and obviously you know the impact that Johnny Cash has had on rock and roll. So it's an amalgam. And so that's kind of the bass we use to find really as who should be inducted. Were they part of that amalgam, that sound, that collection of sounds that made up rock and roll? And then the way, if you want to really get into the details, there's a nominating committee of thirty people, and thirty people from all walks of like Tom Morello's on that Questlove is on that board, Dave Grohl is on that nominating committee.

00:30:43
Speaker 3: Let's talk about rage against the machine. The guitarists for Rage. Tom Morello graduated from Harvard after receiving a scholarship and political science, and he's right number forty in Rolling Stone's Top one hundred greatest Guitarists.

00:30:56
Speaker 2: Moving on to The Roots, which.

00:30:58
Speaker 3: You may have seen as Jimmy Fallons house band, but the Roots were legit far before Jimmy Fallon. The lead singer of the Roots, Questlove also Amir Thompson that's his real name.

00:31:08
Speaker 2: Was born and raised in Philadelphia.

00:31:09
Speaker 3: His father was a singer, his mom was a model and a dancer, and instead of paying for babysitters, they would take a mere Questlove to shows and have them set up the stages before they performed. And finally, let's talk about Dave Grohl, because not only was Dave Grohl the drummer for Nirvana prior to creating the Food Fighters, he also lived with lead singer Kurt Cobain from Nirvana for the first eight months they were together. Dave Grohl once said it was chaos and even wrote a song about it called Friend of a Friend on the In Your Honor album in two thousand and five.

00:31:39
Speaker 1: And they come up with thirteen names based on the only I guess the number that impacts whether you're in eligible is you had to have a record out at least or or refirst to record out at least twenty five years ago. After that. It really is what I just really outlined were the parameters of who should be con hitered for induction from that meeting, which is I always like to say half debate, half World Wrestling Federation and arguing, thirteen names come out. Then those thirteen names, Bobby go to a larger voting group of about twelve hundred made up probably half of former inductees and others from music experts, label current artist, the reviewers, radio programmers, and they vote on which of the thirteen nominees will get one of the seven six or seven coveted slots for performers. And that's really the process. It starts in January, and it's a wild meeting because people take the gloves off and go at it. In addition, and not to get it too much into the minutia here is there are three special categories that go along with that. The performers group. One is called Musical Excellence producers, songwriters, side men, side women who have influenced music, who may not be performers. Some performance some not. For example, this year Bernie Taupin, the Great Bernie taupmin wrote for Elton John is getting in under Music Excellence because of his writing. Last year Jimmy Jim and Terry Lewis got in from Musical Excellence because they wrote and produced all those great records. This year also you've got al Cooper. Al Cooper found Leonard Skinner, produced Leonard Skinner. Before that he basically produced and worked on played the organ for Bob Dylan and played with the Rolling Stones, the Beatles. He was a legendary assidement producer and then founded Blood, Sweat and Tears. So where do you put a guy in the category like that, Well, we put him into Musical Excellence. And sometimes if an artist like Ellll Cool Jay And this year in the case of Shaka Khan had gotten on the ballot, the nominating ballot many many times Bobby, but hadn't been voted in by the general voting group, and we are special committee, which is the smaller group, will put them in under Musical Excellence. And finally, the third category is the domed Eritigan Award, which is named after Amederita and legendary head of Atlantic Records, founder everyone from Led Zeppelin, Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones, amazing record executive. And that's for a non performer. In the past, Bill Graham has gotten out Award, David Geffen has gotten out of Ward, Moe Austin, you know the legendary record labels. Last year it was Jimmy Iveen who was produced Bruce Springsteen. This year it's going to be Don Cornelius, who founded Soul Trained or Them and Blues. And that's a tough one because everybody, every executive in the business wants that one. That's a covenant slot.

00:34:27
Speaker 4: We interrupt this interview to bring you a message from our sponsor. Welcome back to the Bobby Cast.

00:34:41
Speaker 3: You know, you bring up something interesting when you have humans defining art, and usually you know when you go, hey, is this rock and roll? This happens to country music? Is this country music? And people are like, well, that's not rock, that's not country. But mostly I see that people just hold said fast to the idea that the type of music there was popular when they were in their formidable years is only the definition of that type of music.

00:35:05
Speaker 2: You know, in country music. I get it. All the time.

00:35:06
Speaker 3: And now I've been lucky enough to work in pop and hip hop, in alternative, in country, and so I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on that. I'm mostly wrong when it comes to defining anything artistic because it's hard to put a label on art generally, and country music comes from the slave ships from Africa and European people coming to the United States and with fiddles and banjos, that's it. And so when people are like, well, it's not country, it's not like, you know, deep South prairie, and I'm like, well, if we want to really get down to it, that's not country because country music is derived from again, people from Africa and people from Europe coming together and joining. I just find that people, when they start to try to define art, they're always wrong.

00:35:48
Speaker 2: And I imagine that's so frustrating to you.

00:35:50
Speaker 3: When people are like Dolly Parton jay Z and we could go down and just and pick people, and they go, that's not rock and roll when they don't even understand what the the NSS of rock and roll was or is.

00:36:02
Speaker 1: Exactly Bobby, what happened was before your time and even almost before my time, because I'm older than you, there was top forty radio, like the real like sixties top forty radio where they would put Loretta Lynn would be on, the Beatles, Bobby Sherman, the Rolling Stones, and the Convoy Trucker. Song like. It was just just this collection of songs that seventeen year olds had to listen to for whatever reason. This kind of whatever wherever American culture was or is at that time, has brought together a sound. That's why rock and roll is so hard to define, to your point, because and you said with country, there's sometimes some country, kind of old school country fans are saying, no, that's not country. Well, country music, just like every other format, evolves, and then there's kind of crossroads of it all really came in nineteen fifty five with rock and roll, and that was really because rock roll is not one sound you could just it's everything. And that's why when Dolly got in, she turned it down originally saying I don't want to block another woman who should get in. I'm the country, I'm not rock and roll. So I wrote her a note and she said, oh, I get it now. The answers still know, but you ought to do a better job telling people who you are. I thought was funny, and I said, well, I just got started. But you're right. I think the rock and Roll Hall of Fame now that you know music constantly evolves, for young for culture, it's got to do a job of going back. It's not reinventing what it was, it's going back to the really the genesis of what rock and roll was, to say, this is kind of the path that we followed. But you're right. People are always going to point fingers, that's not rock and roll. You said, that's not country. It is sometimes easier if you're in the jazz world because jazz is a very clear lane. It's a beautifullybat format, and you could say that's Coltrane, that's Miles Davis, that so and so, and rock and roll is kind of is really the music of the people. And if you look at where a big part of rock and roll came from was the South. I mean that's where basically so much music outside of jazz came from the South in America. That's why the Rolling Stones when they were doing their Sticky Figures album, they went down to muscle shows. They wanted the muscle shows players to play on some of those songs. They wanted to capture that song, that sound because dead Flowers very much a part of what the Rolling Stones are about, and that came from country music.

00:38:33
Speaker 3: You ever have to is there ever a struggle separate the art from the artist? Meaning if it turns out somebody that's really crushed it over the course of twenty thirty forty years they ain't that good of a person, or there have been some story like do you ever go we just can't do it because they're kind of a douchebag that you know.

00:38:52
Speaker 1: The answer is no, we actually are blind to as you would say, the douchebag filter, and that it really is based on who they are. And by the way, some of the rock and roll arts were bad boys and bad girls and they broke some they broke some rules, and that's kind of why we liked them growing up because they we could live like carelessly through their music. I mean, Keith Richards, he did every drug under the sun. I didn't, but boy, I love that guy. I just I just I just lived vi kerosy to Keith Richards, you know, to me street fighting man. That was my escape from my small town. What can a poor boy do? Gets? You know, singing a rock and roll band. So there are some of the art and some people have been inductives. Maybe one or two said screw you, I'm not going to be in this place. You waited too long. I'm not coming now. Out of almost three hundred and eighty inductees, I think one or two are Maghamdful, I think haven't. But for the most part we're blind to that. It really is did their music move culture? More importantly, did their music did their music move youth culture? I go back to those early Motown records, which is basically did they create the sound of young America? Rage?

00:39:57
Speaker 2: You get some machines up this year.

00:39:58
Speaker 3: I was a big Rage fan, I mean massive, but there was always a battle, well we're going to come out to a football games because I was a massive Rage fan, and it was either that of Tupac and it was always so then it was just every other week, but love Rage against the machine. And you mentioned that one of the members, one of the selecting members, is yeah, one of the members of Rage. Now does he have to leave the room whenever you guys talk about Rage?

00:40:21
Speaker 1: You know, he liked Dave Grohl, who was also a member of the nomin committee before his band was nominated. They sit patiently in the room. And it's interesting because some of these nominated committee members are so tough they don't fold easily. So even if the artists is two feet away from them, that artist may not get the votes. That's how tough this room is. I feel very strange being a music fan that I am, that is sitting next to Dave Girl and not nominated in the first time. Now, in his defense, he was nominated first ballot. He wasn't a rage star. Rage Whoo's were not eligible until two years ago and they got in. Rage has been and it took a few years and Tom set there very very quietly. But he has contributed so much to the to the Hall of Fame because early on there was a criticism of the Hall that it was too it was too uppity, too much run by critics who turn their nose up at popularity popular music. So bands like Kiss Journey couldn't get in rush because this group of nominating committee members just thought that that was below them. It should be important music. Tom came in of course with from a from a band that all the critics love and said, that's that, you know, rock and roll is not it's not jazz, it's not some cool, high and inside format. It's of the people. Like I said, it's about sex, it's about breaking the rules. So because of Tom, a lot of these snooty you might want to say, nominating committee members went, you're right, you're right. This is the sound of young America. And about five six years ago, the floodgame it's opened and you felt a little bit of a democratization of rock and roll to balance off just the high inside cool kids on the block, and we let into some other people that really change young people. I mean Eddie Vedder listened to kids growing up. Of course he did. That's what he was twelve years old. That's what I mean. We all listen to music when we were teens. That may have changed our cases, may have changed later on. That's been interesting to see those artists in there and Questlove of course is in the roots, but he's been very open about supporting younger artists.

00:42:33
Speaker 3: Now Willie Nelson's up this year as well, which is super cool and what is that dynamic like with folks in the room again from all walks of life, and then Willie Nelson comes up as a guy who you have to suggest to be on the ballot and then actually makes it. But when someone like Willie pops up that super country or Missy Elliott that is hip hop. Is that a different conversation than someone who was pretty down the middle, like as a pop art, like a Chryl Crow for example.

00:42:56
Speaker 2: That feels like that would be easier for everyone to understand.

00:43:00
Speaker 3: Not that one's better than the other, but a lot of folks can understand Cheryl Crow mainstream, but Willie and not till later, Missy, they weren't. So is that conversation different when ours like that had brought up?

00:43:12
Speaker 1: Bobby, it was about six or seven years ago. Because you had a group of primarily white people who were raised on rock and roll rock excuse me, making the decisions early on. It wasn't odd that Hank Williams got inducted or Johnny Cash because the early voting really stemmed from people who had a knowledge of the fifties. And so when you had the original amin arrait again, seymour Stein, Bob Krasnow on that committee, they got why Brenda Lee should be in the rock roll fame. They got why Fatstalmo should be in the rock roll fame. Because they understood the really the creation and the genesis of truly what was rock and roll. As years went by and kind of white rock began to kind of steer the perception of the rock roll fame or really the inductee, that's where the group kind of fell into a comfort zone of a certain sound that was naturally an extension of white people playing rock and roll music. Well, what I want to do coming in was again not redefined, but really go back to the roots and the definite, the true definition of rock and roll and begin to honor the people who really should do deservedly should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So that's now that we've I think putting Dolly in last year, all of a sudden, Willie Nelson, who's ninety years old this year, automatically gets in first, I mean first ballot. I think it took a trailblazer like Dolly to I don't say opened the gates, but reopened the gates to the true genesis of rock and roll being honored because it was happening back in the late eighties when the Hall of Fame was established, when Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Brenda Lee, and again I mentioned earlier that's Domino Charles. They were all their hall of fame that kind of dipped and faded during the nineties when people kind of, I must say, lost sight, but kind of lost track of some of the artists that were that really were true, true iconic artists the help shape rock and roll, and I'm really happy to report that's coming back now.

00:45:19
Speaker 2: I when it comes to iHeart, like, what is your job exactly?

00:45:22
Speaker 3: Because I read your fancy title, which is president of I because you do everything. I've seen you be involved in everything period, But president of iHeartMedia Entertainment Enterprises. That's a lot of big words that give me a lot of big different things. So what does that even mean?

00:45:34
Speaker 2: John?

00:45:34
Speaker 1: Well, thank you Bob Pittman for dreaming that title up when I was I was about to go and do yet another startup in twenty ten, I left by a common the only people not to be fired, but it probably would have been fired because they fired everybody eventually there. But to me, the glory days we're going to MTV and VH one or I don't want to say, well, the way I wanted to run was gone, so I decided to lead I was going to run a company called Shazam, which is you can hit a hit a song shazamit. And I thought that could be the next MTV, the way you could base because you could your users were opting in. I know Bobby Bones likes Lady Gaga. Okay, now, okay, I'm going to now talk to Bobby about this. Son, Bobby Bones loves counting Pros. I'm going to do this. John Psychs loves the Rolling Stones. I'm going to connect him. You could have a you could have this, this amazing algorithm connected you to the people who opted in. And then Bob called and said, I'm going to do this. I know you like to work. You like Scale, John, which I love Scale. And they said we're going to take the biggest company that bigger than Google or Facebook as far as reach, and kind of want you to be a partner on it. And I said, well, I'm not that really good at running a radio station. I hadn't run one since college, and I'm not really interested in running one station in one market. I kind of like I've been trained over the years of MTV and vh one eying to talk to the country and that's hard because hard in this world of narrow casting to talk to the country. I liked the idea of amplifying a great idea make me better. So I said, you know, why don't I just build out taking this platform and build out relationships. And so we could push a button and break an artist, and we could create events on other platforms like video act short form video, broadcast television events where we can put a lot of people under the iHeart umbrella. And then Bob put me with Tom Pullman as a partner to Tom runs programming for the stations to look for the right artists and help to break them and help to put together actually marketing packages, which is what I did at MTV all the years to try to break artists. And so part of my time Tom and I are working on finding the right artists, breaking them nationally, using our powerful turbines at radio to break them, and the other half of my time looking for new places to put all our shows, our award shows on Fox. We're about to put jingle Ball to another broadcast, huge broadcast network. Our festival is going to go on one of the big streams. So I look for partners that we can basically take to amplify the iHeartRadio brand. And then I also deal with the advertisers with Verse and Discovery warners. That's really to I always say to them, don't just run a commercial. Have Bobby Bones or Elvis or Ryan talk with their team about this movie's about to come out, about this product, is this new phone, and humanize it to your point, Bobby, about being the trusted companion and not to lie or be in any way facetious. But if they do believe in the product and they are connected with it, talk about it. What better way. I mean, television, you have to buy a thirty second spot. It's one and done and you're gone. This is the time where you could actually have this person who you're sitting in the car was stuck in traffic for forty five minutes saying unbelievable, just that there's this new movie called, you know, called Elvis. You know, you might think of Elvis as some old fat lounge singer from Vegas. He was like the Clash, He was a punk artist. In fifty nine he upset parents. And you tell that story and the advertisers go, I see radio can do something that no one else can do. So Bob kind of lets me go wherever I want to go here, and I've never had more I've never stayed in the job. That's long, twelve years, but it is. And if I find the right television opportunity, you know, you know with I remember, I think we talked few years ago with the Masked Singer that was coming out, and then and you went on to do IDOL and you know, and I did nothing to do with Idol. I was jealous. I wish I had, but I mean it's something that's you take. And we just put the Breakfast Club on beet. That's something I always figured like that should be. You know, I thought I was tried so hard. I wanted you to go on CMT and they they all the good I don't say the good people, but you know, people who were who were really great at CMT left and they kind of put it all. I wanted one umbrella and they didn't see the power of Bobby Bones that could have been great for CMT. So that's kind of you. That's a long another one of my long answers to your short question of what do you do? It's kind of like every day, every day is a blank slate for me. But at the end of the day. You know, I just have it. I have an agreement with Bob and rich sip. You know, I'd say is it still working? And they go still working? I go, good, I'll hang up.

00:50:11
Speaker 3: It's still working when I come to New York in the next year or so. I mean, there are a lot more than that, but we can get our schedules to line up. I just want to sit down and talk artists. I just want to with you, go this artist, that artist, this artist, and just hear the stories and just document some of these psych's nuggets that.

00:50:31
Speaker 2: We got to get them. We got, we gotta get them down.

00:50:33
Speaker 3: You have so many from so many different genres, from different eras, So so much respect for me to you for you know, the resume that you have built and the high level that you've built it. And good luck with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And don't think I'm not going to hit you up to go, John, I'm in town. Let's get onto microphones. I'm ready to go.

00:50:54
Speaker 1: You should come. I'm inviting you to the Rock and Hall of Fame induction ceremony this November Friday, November third, Barclays and if you want to witness one of those induction ceremonies. There's nothing else like it. It's it is. It is a cavalcade of stars that come in from all genres. Again to our earlier conversation about that makes a rock and roll, They're all there on the stage. It'll blow your mind.

00:51:15
Speaker 2: John.

00:51:15
Speaker 3: I appreciate your time and I will see you very soon, my friend.

00:51:18
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.

00:51:19
Speaker 2: Bobby s anybuddy love this episode of the Bobby Cast.

00:51:22
Speaker 4: Subscribe on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.