MJ: Pat Boone, thanks for joining us today.

PB: Great to be with you Mark.



MJ: You've got a terrific office here with a great view of Sunset

Boulevard.

PB: And a great view today of some clouds and rain, very unusual for Los

Angeles. Yes, it's a great spot.



MJ: You've had a very, very long career i music.

PB: Well, very long, not very, very long



MJ: Just very long. I mean, in the fifties, it was sort of you and Elvis.

Elvis was your main competitor. Talk a bit about that, and that side of Pat

Bone.

PB: Well, I first met Elvis, in Cleveland, Ohio. He was not very, he was

not known really nationally at all, it was before Heartbreak Hotel, before

Hound Dog, he had two or three country records, sort of "rockabilly" we

called them. And I'd seen his name on some jukeboxes in Texas, and made

note of the name. But he couldn't be a pop artist, not in those days, but

Bill Randall, who was the nation's number one disc jockey brought me in for

an old fashioned sock hop, to the big thing in the fifties, where a dj

would bring teenagers and school kids in by the hundreds or thousands to a

big gymnasium, they'd play records, and sometimes if the dj was powerful

enough, he would bring in a recording artist to surprise the kids. So I was

his big surprise that night. And he also brought an unknown fellow up from

Louisiana, way out in the country, named Elvis Presley. Now, when I heard

that Bill was bringing this country singer whose records I'd seen on the

jukebox in Texas, I thought he was a little bit crazy, because a country

artist was not going to be exciting to these teenagers who wanted rock and

roll. My record at the time was Ain't That a Shame - "You made me cry when

you said good-bye." Now, here comes Elvis, his collar's turned up, this is

backstage, lots of hair hanging down in his face. We shook hands, I said,

"Hello, Elvis. Bill Randall says you're going to be a big star."  "Well,

thank you very much." He just mumbled and looked up at me like this, stayed

back against the wall, and I thought, "This guy is hopelessly shy. How can

he possibly perform? This is going to be a disaster." Well, Bill Randall

introduced him as an up and coming star, he was saving me for last. Elvis

went out there and swiveled around the stage, and sang, "That's all right,

mama. That's all right with me." And the kids - "Whoo, who is this, what is

this?" And even though he seemed very country, very raw, they liked him.

And I had to follow him. Thank God I had two hit records then, and I was

the star that night. Of course I never followed Elvis again in any show. We

never appeared together after that. Of course, a person would have been a

fool to go on after Elvis. Elvis would have to always be the star. But we

became very good friends, and we both had, we leased homes in very

exclusive areas, Bel Air, here in Los Angeles, and we visited each others'

homes. And back then, of course, I had a wife, and four little children, he

was not married, and he would come over some afternoons, by surprise, just

come in unannounced, and want to visit with me and my wife and my children.

My children would maybe jump out of the swimming pool, and come running up

and get in his lap, and he would become soaking wet, you know,  and I would

say, "Girls, don't do that." And Elvis said, "Oh, no, let them, let them."

And I knew that he wanted a family. He was missing... He saw that I had

something he didn't have. e had all this fame, and of course, we both had a

lot hit records, and we were friendly competitors, but I had something he

didn't have, Which was a wife, a family, children. And I could tell that he

wanted this. And so of course he married Priscilla, and they did have a

little Lisa Marie, but they didn't live a normal life. Priscilla said later

that they were never alone, although they might to into a part of the house

alone, they could hear the laughter of his buddies in some other part of

the house, always. So he didn't live a normal life, didn't go to a movie

like we would go to a movie theater. He would rent the theater at night,

after midnight, and bring a few friends, and just he and his friends would

watch the movie themselves, at two or three in the morning. I think if

Elvis had allowed himself to have a more normal life, he would be alive

today. It was, he lived like a criminal, really, in hiding rather than a

person who wanted to have a normal life, which Elvis, at least part of him,

wanted to have. So I've been very, very fortunate, and very grateful that

I've had a lot of hit records, movies, and all this stuff, I even did an

album, a tribute album to Elvis. I wanted to call it Pat Sings Elvis,

that's the logical title, but his manager, Col. Tom Parker, wanted to

charge u s a huge extra royalty for the use of his name in the title. And I

said, "Colonel, this is my friend, I'm doing a tribute, I'm honoring

Elvis." "Yes, but this is business, you know. You got to pay for the use of

his name and sell more records." It was really sort of unscrupulous of him.

So we didn't call it Pat Sings Elvis. We called it Pat Boone Sings Guess

Who? And I wrote, I don't know how this will translate, but I wrote

backliner notes all about my friend Guess Whosely. I never said his name.

And Tom Parker eventually tipped his hat to me, and said, "Well, you've

conned the con man. You've out-hustled the hustler, and I salute you." But

the album was one of the best albums that I've ever made, musically, and

very much like, in a way, my new album - that is, doing songs that were

hits for somebody else, and never really recorded, most of them, by anybody

else. And then I did my own versions, which were light, commercial jazz

treatments. And I'm very proud of that album, Pat Sings Guess Who? The new

album, of course, is an album of heavy metal classics.

 

MJ: Let's talk about that new album, because the critics say that you're

square, you're not fun, you don't rock and roll any more. So now you come

out with this heavy metal record, you cover songs by...

PB: Guns 'n' Roses, Metallica, Judas Priest, AC/DC, Led Zepplin, Deep

Purple, Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper, Jimi Hendrix, doing songs by all these

artists, they're major hits. Van Halen. 



MJ: What does your wife say about this?

PB: She doesn't want to say anything. She thinks maybe I now am a little

crazy. But it started as a joke with musicians, we were on the road,

between planes, and my musicians, young guys, were saying, "Pat, you've

made so many records, let's go into a studio. We make records too. We play

on recordings, let's go into a studio, make something together." And I

said, "Fellows, I've done country albums, I've done rock and roll, I've

done movie themes, I've done gospel, I've done patriotic, folk, I mean,

what else is there that I can do?" And one of them said, "You've never done

any heavy metal." Of course, that was a joke. We just laughed at the idea

of Pat Boone doing heavy metal. But then, Dave Seebles, my conductor, said,

you know, there are some really good songs in metal, and if we did them a

different way, he suggested perhaps big band, exciting big band

arrangements, maybe we'd have something. So I said, "Well, I don't know

these songs. I've never listened to metal. Too loud, too distorted, too

angry for me."



MJ: Had you heard, for instance, like Guns 'n' Roses' Sweet Child of Mine,

is that a song that you would have heard of?

PB: No. That was a song I picked, and we decided not to do it because it

was more of an expected song, that somebody might expect me to do. But

nobody would expect me to do Paradise City by Guns 'n' Roses. Nobody would

expect me to do Enter Sandman by Metallica, or Ozzy Osbourne, anything by

Ozzy Osbourne, or Alice Cooper, but Crazy Train, No More Mister Nice Guy,

Alice Cooper. Stairway to Heaven, Led Zepplin, it's a beautiful song, but,

you know, people say, "That's Led Zepplin, it could never be done by

anybody. We do a jazz waltz. Beautiful, respectful, but very different.

Smoke On the Water, Deep Purple. We picked all these songs because they are

good songs, and I went through hundreds of heavy metal CDs until I was

nearly deaf myself, and again, my wife thought I was crazy, because she

would see these pictures on the CDs, of these demons, and KISS, and

Meatloaf coming up out of the grave, and all of these bizarre pictures and

imagery. And of course, I knew that was all theatrical. I was listening for

the song quality. I picked 13 songs. Actually, I picked 20 or more, but we

narrowed it to 13, and then we called the best arrangers, the best

producers, Michael Lloyd, who did the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, and a lot.

He's produce the Jacksons and Barry Manilow, and all kinds of popular

artists...



MJ: One of your daughters.

PB: Yeah, some of my daughters. And then Jess Webber, producer of a lot of

big band jazz albums, award winning, Grammy winning albums, these two men

came together, hired the best arranger in the business, the best musicians

in the business. We went to the best studio, we had the best singers, a

group of girls who are called Power of Seven, they're like seven Pointer

Sisters. They're not the Pointer Sisters, but they sing like them, you

know. And now the only question mark was me. We knew we had great songs,

great arrangements, everything great, could I do them? And I think I did .

I know I did. Because they're good songs. And I think we're going to

surprise a lot of people. There's more curiosity about this album than

anything I've ever done, and when people hear it, and we have been sneaking

records, and it will soon be out, people say, "Oh, oh, that's good!" And

they like the original song, they hear a lot of the same identifiable

characteristics, certainly you hear the words, maybe for the first time.

Maybe you liked Paradise City, but you could never tell what Axle Rose was

singing. I do the song faster than they do it, and yet you can hear all the

words. And they're good words.



MJ: Did any of them participate in the record? 

PB: Yes, Richie Blackmoore of Deep Purple played guitar on my record of his

song, Smoke On the Water. I think it's one of the strongest cuts in the

album. So did Dweezil Zappa, Frank Zappa's son, played Jimi Hendrix's

guitar, one that he used in his act, and had burned, but it's not

destroyed, and so Frank Zappa gave this to his son Dweezil, and he came to

our recording session, played the Jimi Hendrix guitar, terrific guitar.

Sheila E., of course, was with Prince for years, and she does bongos and

percussion along with Lenny Castro on the Van Halen song Panama, and on the

Deep Purple. The Dio song, Holy Diver, Ronnie James Dio himself sings with

me on the record. I'm singing here in my range, he's singing way up here

above me, in his range, and it works. It's an exciting record, and each

time, so far, any of the original artists have heard my treatments of the

their song, they've said, "Hey, it's great. We like it." And I think the

public will too.



MJ: What was rock and roll like in the fifties? What was the scene like,

and how did it change in the past four or five decades?

PB: Well, it's much more direct, when I came along, it was new, it was

exciting, it was central. You know, the songs were all just simple little

love songs, or simple little fun songs. Everybody could sing them, and

everybody could enjoy and identify with them. And it was new. There was a

certain controversy about it, because a lot of parents and some preachers

were afraid that  rhythm and blues and rock and roll, the sheer abandon,

you know, and excitement of it was maybe not good for kids, and of course

that made kids want it more. But it was much more innocent than today.

Occasionally there would be an original r&b song reference to something

sexual, but usually it was in sort of guarded language, or code language,

or something. Even the phrase "rock and roll" was originally an expression

for sexual involvement, but it became just this meaningless phrase. It just

meant "Let's dance. Let's have fun. Let's rock and roll," you know. It all

was really innocent then, but then during the sixties, there was a lot of

protest, there was a lot drug lyric, and of course, more advocacy for this

code of sexual freedom, and all this, into the seventies, until today, so

much of rock and roll not only has lyrics that endorse and promote things

that aren't healthy, gangsta rap and some of that music, they don't even

try to hide. They're very direct, and profane, and very angry, and it's not

healthy at all. But the business itself, instead of making the record in

the afternoon, as I did, and having it played on the radio that night,

sometimes, it was that quick, you know, so, that spontaneous, and making

records all at once, with the musicians, and the singers, and when I left

the studio after three hours, the record was finished, that was all we ever

did to it. And in fact we'd usually do three songs  in a three hour

session, I did. Sometimes never heard the song till I got to the studio. I

learned it with the musicians, an hour and a half later we were through

with it, we went to something else. And we would have a million seller hit

with mistakes in it, but excitement. Now, with this record, I finished the

recording in July, my new heavy metal album, and it's not coming out until

late January. And that to me is, you know, I have trouble with that. They

have to plan so carefully the marketing, and they have to have displays in

the stores, and they have to have all sorts of things lined up before they

release a record, so it seems so calculated. It's not so spontaneous as it

was then. So, there are lots of big differences between music, particularly

rock and roll, in the early days, and the way it's done now.



MJ: What's been lost in terms of the art? How has that calculatedness, and

a year in making records, for instance, is common, how has that affected

the music?

PB:Well, for one thing, it's very difficult to recreate the music in

personal appearance. You know, when I was making my records, I could go

right out on stage with my band, and create the same sound. I would sing it

the same way, and so people could hear a live performance that sounded

exactly like the record. Very difficult, very expensive to try that today.

You have to have all kinds of very expensive equipment on the stage, a lot

of us now use ear monitors, instead of speakers, so we can hear ourselves

and the music on stage. We use ear monitors, we put all music into our

ears. Of course, Prince and others, and Michael Jackson have used actual

headphones in the past, now they don't put it on their ears, they put it in

their ears. The bands, and it's just very difficult to create anything that

seems like the record on stage. It's so expensive that only the biggest

stars can do that. But then, I just think we've lost the innocence, the

spontaneity of the music of the fifties and sixties. Of course, that's why

the music and sixties lasts. Today, people still like it, they still want

it. They hear this contagious excitement that was happening in the studio,

as people were actually making the music, and enjoying it, relating to each

other at the same time. Now, people can make records, and maybe the singer

will never meet the instrumentalists, 'cause they do theirs on one day, and

the producer will lay all this music on many tracks, and then the singer

will come in after all of that's done, and never see the musicians, so

there's no relationship between, in this process of creation, between the

singer and the musicians. You know, I don't want to record that way. We did

all of ours in three nights, with 24-5 musicians, and we did all together

live, to 2-track, much like I did my records in the fifties. So if we made

a mistake, it was going to be on the record. But there were very few

mistakes made.



MJ: One of your greatest accomplishments outside of music is that you're

married to the same woman, you have four relatively normal children. They

grew up in Beverly Hills though, right? 

PB: Yes.

MJ: How did you accomplish this?

PB: You just mentioned the proudest accomplishment of my life. Gold records

are nice, and TV, and all these things I appreciate, but I've always felt

that my major, number one responsibility in life was to be a good husband

and a good father. Now, I have not batted 1.000. I don't know what my

average is, because I've made mistakes, and I've struck out sometimes, but

my major responsibility, my job, has been to create a good family in, we

had to live in Beverly Hills,it seemed, and so we made a conscious decision

by what I call "Tennessee Standards." That is, respect for parents, respect

for authority, respect for God, honesty, hard work,       cleanliness and

health, and family closeness,and communication. We did not allow in our

house any closed, any locked doors. since I had four daughters, you could

certainly close the door, but you couldn't lock it. There's no reason to

lock a door.



MJ: Even for you and your wife.

PB: No. No reason to lock a door. You knock, and then come in, but there's

no reason to have a door locked. So we did have, we had no communication

gap. There was a generation gap, because obviously we're older than our

kids, but we communicated, and we talked and laughed about anything and

about everything, and we prayed together, we went to church together, when

we made mistakes, we supported each other, and so I can make this

statement, looking back; though my daughters were all exposed to drugs,

promiscuous sex, religious cults, all these things in their schools in

Beverly Hills, they did not give in to any of those pitfalls, those

temptations. There was no drug experimentation, no sex experimentation.

They dated, they were healthy. Of course, one of the things that helped us,

was for seven years, while my daughters were all in their teens, very

pretty, and ripe for the picking, we traveled together as a family, and

that started in Japan. I was going over for, I don't know, my fifth, sixth,

seventh concert tour, and the promoter said "Why don't you bring..." it was

                He said, "Why don't you bring your family with you, maybe

have them sing a song with you?" And we brought the Osmond family as well.

So it was two families; George and Olive Osmond, and all of their kids,

Donnie and Marie, and Jimmy, and everybody in their part of the show, Pat

and Shirley Boone, and my four daughters, and our part, and then we did a

finale together. And we sold out every auditorium that we appeared in in

Japan. It was a huge success. Well, I thought if that can be successful in

Japan, maybe we'll try it in the United States. So,I had an engagement soon

in Las Vegas, in a big hotel, and I brought my family there. And that's two

shows a night, and it's a tough schedule, so I said to my daughters, my

wife, "Look, you only have to perform when you feel like it. You don't have

to do this." They wanted to do two shows a night. they loved it, the

audience loved it, and we broke the record at that hotel. We established an

attendance record. People love seeing a family. So I thought, "Well, my

girls are teenagers, and I need, their Daddy needs to keep his eye on them

all the time." And for seven years, we, they sang with me in my show, we

shared the dressing room, the airplanes, the buses, the life, and of

course, they stayed in school, in and out of classes, they made good

grades. We weren't on the road all the time. We did television specials,

records. I mean they were very much a part of my career. I hoped this would

kill any desire they had for show business, that they'd say, "Boy,this is

hard work. We don't want to do this the rest of our lives." And actually,

only one of them did, and that was my daughter Debby. And I think even she

has gotten sort of tired now. She has four children, and it's harder even

for a woman and a mother with kids in show business, than it is for a man.



MJ: She had a single that was number one for 14 weeks, was it?

PB: Something like that.

MJ: She must have broken your records? How does that feel to have your

daughter break your records?

PB: Feels great. She has actually a half dozen hit records, including this

giant, You Light Up My Life. And the fact that it was number one twice as

long as any of my records made me feel very proud, 'cause this is my child

doing this, you know? Of course I had many more hit records and gold

records and so on than Debby, though she still is making records, and one

day may surpass me. If so, great. But I felt nothing but pride about my

daughter's accomplishments, because what frightened me about the success,

was perhaps she would be like almost every other woman I know in show

business who has had two or three marriages broken, and a lot of

unhappiness, and had children that they couldn't be good mothers to because

of the demands of their career. Debby has put her career, I mean her family

first. Four children, a teen-age son now, two twin daughters, and then a

young daughter younger than that. She spends more of her time and energy

with their family, because that's her top priority. And if she has time to

record, or perform on Broadway, as she did last summer, in Grease for three

months, then she'll do that.It's tough, it's really tough for a woman, and

therefore I did not want that for any of my daughters, but Debby has

successfully combined the two. However, you don't hear as much of her as

you would if she didn't have four kids, and didn't feel so strongly about

them. If she were more career oriented, you would hear more of Debby Boone

today.



MJ: How old are you now, Pat?

PB: 62.

MJ: As you look back on your 62 years, what would you do differently if you

could start back at the beginning, in your life or your career; anything

you'd do differently?

PB: It's hard for me to think of anything, because the success came so

quickly it defeated my wildest dreams and imaginations. I simply, I guess,

would try to avoid making some of the mistakes I made, because in the

sixties, after I'd had a lot of success, and graduated from college, which

was a major accomplishment, graduated magna cum laude  - with honors - from

Colombia University, was on the cover of TV Guide in my cap and gown as a

graduate, you know. Very proud of all that, moved to California, making

movies, records, television. There was a time where I began to take that

for granted, and also felt my wife didn't appreciate me as much as she

should , and so there were times when I made mistakes with the young ladies

that were around, and those are... we lived past all of  that, and our

marriage survived, and I would avoid those mistakes, because they nearly

cost me everything that was really important to me; my family, my children,

my reputation. Those things are more important than any material things. So

it was really our relationship with God that kept us together, allowed us

to be able to forgive, and to forget, and to put those things behind us. So

the the original Tennessee Standards served us very well.



MJ: Pat, thanks for joining us today. 

PB: I enjoyed it, Mark.