Adam Lambert interview

Who says you can’t go home again? Back from traveling around the world to promote his debut album For Your Entertainment, Adam Lambert is revisiting his old stomping grounds this week as he gears up for the role of contestant mentor on tonight’s episode of American Idol. In our Beatweek cover story interview, Adam talks about why he’s chosen to release the singles that he has, why he’s never turned his back on Idol, what went into his Remixes EP and VH1 Unplugged performance which both surfaced this week, what we can learn from his friendly relationship with Kris Allen, and what he’s got on tap for that U.S. summer tour that his fans have been clamoring for in our cover story interview for Beatweek Magazine’s 69th issue, released today.

Learn more at AdamOfficial.com • iTunes • MySpace • Facebook • Twitter

Beatweek Magazine issue #67: Alan Jackson, iPad accessories, Alkaline Trio and more

Alan Jackson interview

Lifehouse coming to Beatweek

Colbie Caillat interview

iProng Magazine talks with pop star Colbie Caillat, whose sophomore album Breakthrough has been released today, about her songwriting inspiration and being more ready for success the second time around…

interview by Bill Palmer

The release of Colbie Caillat’s debut album two years ago was just one step in her gradual rise to popularity that at the time had her opening for other artists and building a steadily growing fanbase that was still unsure of quite how to pronounce her last name. But with her highly anticipated sophomore album Breakthrough having just debuted at #1 this morning in iTunes, and scheduled appearances on everything from the Today Show to the Tonight Show before this week is over, one might be tempted to conclude that the demands on her time for the launch of this album are more burdensome than the last. But not so, Colbie tells me, as she chats with me on a Friday morning from her Malibu home.



“It was actually the other way around,” she says of gearing up for the release of Breakthrough, “because with Coco, I didn’t know anything about this business. I didn’t know everything that was going to be coming up, the touring and the schedule, and interviews and TV. All of that was a surprise to me. And now, I know what I went through for those two years of promoting my record, and now I’m prepared for it for this time around, and know what to expect.”



Knowing what’s coming also makes for a more relaxed mindset. “I feel like I know my job now. I know what to do, instead of being terrified and not sure of what to say or what was going to be coming up on the schedule. Now I just know what I’m supposed to do every day, and it’s a lot easier for me.”



Breakthrough sees a mix of existing Coco-era collaborators and outsiders, with the new and old working together in some instances, including a multi-week songwriting retreat to Hawaii that included longtime cowriter Jason Reeves (“he’s like my brother”) and American Idol judge Kara DioGuardi. “We rented this house on the beach and we wrote songs every day and lived life, and talked about everything that we were going through and wrote about it.”



“The three of us got along so well. It was just nothing but good times and writing great songs together. It was a blast.”



If every aspect of Breakthrough sounds like a more mature product, it’s no accident. “Coco was the younger side of me, and what I wrote about a few years ago, what I was going through in my life. The production on the record was all I knew the production could be at that point. And now over the years, I’ve learned myself. My voice has gotten stronger, I’ve taken notes on songwriting and tried different ways of going about it. And with production styles I just wanted a fuller sound, and make it more complex and diverse, and just experiment with this record.”



The twenty-four year old who two years ago penned the lyric “it’s kinda tough getting older” now sees things differently. “It’s actually fun getting older,” she says. “I think the older you get, the more you know about life, and the more you learn about yourself and you become comfortable in your own skin. So the older I’m getting, the more fun I’m having.”

But not all of the songs on Breakthrough are necessarily written from her own perspective. The R&B-tinged “Fearless” is written from the viewpoint of a guy she broke up with, based on “how I broke his heart but he’s still gonna be fearless when it comes to love in future relationships.” Another song ‘Breakthrough’ is written from the perspective of a friend who hadn’t spoken to her father in years.



While Colbie’s original hit single “Bubbly” two years ago was about an imaginary Mr. Right, her current single “Fallin’ For You” is a similar sentiment directed at a real life guy, with some of the lyrics coming literally from actual experiences. “He and I were on the dance floor, he was just my friend, and all the sudden the moment he grabbed my hand, I noticed that I was falling in love with him and he wasn’t just a friend anymore.”



Whether the songs about real life experiences have happy endings or not, there’s no fear of the subject of the song hearing it and realizing it’s about them. “I actually look forward to playing them to the person, and having people hear them and being able to relate to them and that situation that I went through. Songwriting is like a therapy, it’s a connection that you have with another person, and I’m not scared of it at all for some reason.”



With the album having had multiple producers (including Colbie’s father and veteran producer Ken Caillat), Breakthrough turned out to be an exercise in contrasting methodologies. With Rick Nowels, who produced Fallin’ For You, “we started out writing songs with a beat behind it, with this fun drum beat, and then he’d add on guitars and add on bass, and we had a production direction. And with my dad, we did a full-on live recording, so we had all the top musicians that we’d been working with come in, and we all had our own booths in the studio. I was in the vocal booth, and we would start the song and we would all record it live together, like we were playing a show.”



As far as working in the studio with her dad and being told what to do by her own father, “He would come up with ideas and most of the time I would agree with him. And if I wouldn’t agree I would still listen, because it’s always worth a try. Like why not try adding this instrument, and if we don’t like it, it doesn’t have to stay. So I would listen to him, and he would listen to me on certain ideas on whether the song needed to be more stripped down and have less instruments on it, and we really worked together well.”



Except for one particular instance where “I wasn’t paying attention, I was talking with one of the musicians when I was supposed to be in the vocal booth, and he comes out and he’s like ‘Colbie Marie Caillat, get your butt in that vocal booth!’ And I was so embarrassed, I was like dad, I can’t believe that you did that. But that was the only one time that I was embarrassed by him, and otherwise it’s great working with him because any other producer wants to go home by eight o’clock because they want to spend time with their family. My family was there with me. My mom came, we brought our dog, my friends were there. It was like that was our life, we had no other place to be. So we put our all into it. So working with my dad was the best experience.”



Of the unusually large number of bonus tracks included with the deluxe version of Breakthrough, “It was difficult choosing the songs for the record because I wrote so many.”

*****

Breakthrough is available in iTunes now. Learn more at ColbieCaillat.com

*****

Black Eyed Peas interview

“We are everywhere,” jokes Taboo in reference to the fact that he’s on the phone with me just minutes after his Black Eyed Peas have finished performing on back-to-back television shows on the same morning. But the hip hop quartet does in fact seem to be everywhere these days, having recently pulled off the rare feat of scoring the #1 album and #1 single on both the iTunes and Billboard charts.

When you’ve having one of these crazy days like the one you’ve having, with performances and interviews all over town, do you enjoy those days and feed off of it or does it wear you down?

As soon as we hit the stage and we see all the peabodies coming out and supporting the Peas, it brings us to life whether we got three hours of sleep or whether we’ve had eight hours of sleep, the fact is that we are performers and we love to be amongst the peers and the people who support the Peas. So we’re excited. We’re happy to be back together as a foursome. We all did individual projects, but now to be doing the Black Eyed Peas experience for the next three years or whatever it is, it’s going to be amazing.

You went four years in between album releases this time, as opposed to sometimes only a year apart in the past. How is it different when you come back together and it’s been that long since you’ve worked on an album together?

Within the time period that Fergie did The Duchess, and will.i.am did Yes We Can and Songs About Girls, and I did Street Fighter, and Apl did Subject: I Love You, we’ve always been involved in each project. We were on Fergie’s record on the song called Hands Up, and then we were involved with the Yes We Can campaign because we were doing the Democratic National Convention, so we’ve always been in each other’s lives, and it was a natural progression for us to be back into the studio because it was like we never left.

On the day that The E.N.D. debuted at number one in iTunes, you also had the number one and number two singles in iTunes. We all knew the album would do well, but did you imagine you’d have that kind of chart dominance right out of the gate?

We were just excited to be back in the public eye as a foursome, because we all want to share the Black Eyed Pea experience around the world, but to have such a great appreciation here in the States, which we’ve never really had that kind of reception, we’ve always went overseas and built a foundation on creating an international movement.

And now to have Boom Boom Pow come out straight out of the gate, it dominated everything, and we didn’t expect it to be so humungous. And now we have I Gotta Feeling. So it’s good to be home and have that love and appreciation from our own people here in the States.

We know this isn’t your last album. Is there any symbolism in putting the phrase “The End” in the same of your album?

“The E.N.D.” is the end of an era as far as conventional ways of selling music. Before, here in the States we used to have Sam Goody and Virgin Megastore and Tower Records. We don’t have that no more. So the days of going to get a tangible CD and having that in your hand, now you go to Best Buy and Target to get those type of CDs. And now everything is online. You have iTunes and all these different programs on the internet that will take you into a different way of looking at promoting your record, and how to get your record out there. It’s not just about having a CD no more, it’s also about creating components on the internet or on our site dipdive.com so that we’re not just giving people the CD, we’re actually creating opportunities for people to remix songs and to upload different ideas and content.

It’s also the end of the rumors and misconceptions that the Black Eyed Peas were breaking up, or that we’d broken up, because we’d done solo individual projects. It’s also the end of, possibly, this is the last physical CD for any group, let alone a Black Eyed Peas CD. Because four years from now, we don’t know what it could be.

So you think it’s realistic that your next release in 2013 could be just iTunes and MP3? Do you think all of your fans will be willing to go digital by then?

It’s one thing to just have a CD and need to live with that CD, but what if you were able to take those fifteen songs, and then you got ten songs the next month that you couldn’t have on the CD? And then we just keep on giving you new material and keeping it fresh and reinventing the song. Like with Boom Boom Pow, the Boom Boom Pow Invasion had about five different remixes off the same song.

It’s not too often you see a band like yours that has all four members taking turns on lead vocals. When you’re in the studio, is that a democratic process where you say “you take this part, I’ll take that part”?

It all depends. For example there’s a song called Rockin To The Beat on our new album, and it’s only “Rockin to the beat,” that’s all it says at the beginning, and then there’s only my verse. So I wrote that verse, and Will was “we gotta keep this like this, no more verses, just you rock this song and we’ll just have this hook at the beginning and let the music play.”

And then you have other songs like Out Of My Head where Fergie’s talking about being tipsy and all that stuff, and she brought that to the table, like “I want to play this character.” Or else Will will come up with Now Generation, and he’ll lay down the hook, and Fergie will come in and write something. It’s a collaborative effort. We all get a piece of different songs, and some songs are directed toward already having a formula, and some songs everybody brings their own idea and we compromise.

You guys are going to be touring with U2 for some dates in the fall. Are you looking forward to that?

I’m so excited, man. It’s an opportunity for us to be on tour with one of the greatest bands to ever step on stage in the history of music, U2, and what Bono has done as a humanitarian, he’s an inspiration to us and the group is a great inspiration. We’re signed to the same record label, so we’ve been fans of U2 and friends with U2, so we’re excited.

Any chance of any on-stage collaborations with them?

Right now we don’t really have anything planned, but who knows? Maybe throughout the tour we’ll come up with something.

Learn more at BlackEyedPeas.com

iProng Magazine #42: Black Eyed Peas interview, the iProng 50 and more

iProng Magazine 42: Black Eyed Peas, iPhone 3.0 and 3GS, iProng 50 and more

iProng Magazine has released its 42nd issue featuring a cover story interview with the Black Eyed Peas along with the iProng 50 Awards, hands-on with iPhone 3.0, and reviews of TweetDeck and ooTunes. Also interviewed: Butterfly Boucher, Davy Knowles, Endless Hallway, Gretel, Kingsfoil and more.

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iProng Magazine #41: Crystal Method, iPhone 3G S, Red Jumpsuit and more

iProng Magazine has released its 41st issue featuring a cover story interview with The Crystal Method along with the new iPhone 3G S and a hands on sub-$100 iPhone earbud shootout. Also interviewed: Erika Jayne, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, and Paul Kent of Macworld 2010.

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The Crystal Method interview

There are a number of reasons why The Crystal Method is perhaps the most recognizable name in electronic music over the past decade and a half. While the duo’s studio albums have built a large following within the electronic genre, their cross-genre collaborations over the years have expanded their presence even further, along with their work on everything from movie soundtracks to the original Nike+iPod soundtrack. Having just released their new studio album Divided By Night, I caught up with Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland to talk about Divided By Night and more.

Last I heard you guys were building your own studio so you could make this album, and that was a few years ago. So what took you so long?



Ken: Well two years is actually not bad time for us, you know? (laughs). Up until we got into the new studio we were busy with a lot of other things. We did a soundtrack album, a mix CD, we did a project for Apple and Nike called Drive, and so that kept us pretty busy. And then when we got into the studio we started working for real on the new album.

Divided By Night is a phrase that could apply to a lot of things that have gone on in this decade as far as division and darkness. Is that a worldview statement, or is there something else to the name?

Scott: It was more borne out of this beautiful sunset that we saw flying from one DJ gig to another. We were coming over the city of El Paso at night with the lights on, and above you could see the stars and space and the moon and sort of off on the horizon was this sort of bend of beautiful color and lights that obviously was the sun setting on the west coast. And being from the west, the beauty of it all was something to behold. And then “Divided By Night” just popped into my head. It was more a reflection of there’s my family, my kids, my wife, reflecting on them, you know, probably sitting at the table and eating and sort of wrapping up the day, and here we are at night flying into another city to spend the next four or five hours living this alter ego, these characters of this band that comes in and takes over a club and plays music two or three, and the two different worlds sort of seem to be divided by out late-night personas, if you will. Album titles are difficult. You try not to have, at lease we try not to put too much meaning into them, and kind of feel that that should be left to the consumers or the fans to add their own meaning to that. It does conjure up a bunch of ideas, and I think that’s cool that we can come up with a name that does have little bit of mystery and intrigue behind it.

You guys are no strangers to collaborations over the years, but this album has a ton of guest stars even by your standards. Was that the plan going in, let’s get a bunch of people to work with, or did it just end up happening that way?

Ken: I think it was overall a little bit more of a plan. We wanted to have more song-oriented tracks and a little more vocals. It’s not overwhelmingly more but it is more than we usually have on our albums. A lot of times we’ll try a lot of collaborations and they won’t work out, but only a couple we tried this time didn’t work out, and no one will hear those. But these are the ones that came out really great.

You told me last year that you were really looking forward to working with Peter Hook. You ended up getting him on two tracks on the album. What was the experience like of bringing him into the studio and recording with him?

Ken: It was really great. Some of the collaborations on the album, it was people that had their own studios or people that were not available to Los Angeles, but Peter Hook was in LA for a couple of days. I think it was when he was doing some promotion for the documentary side of the whole Control / Joy Division, you know, the two films that came out. So he was in town and we got him to come by, and he was just a really amazing guy. He was really funny and played well. He’s not afraid to play his signature sound.



The Matisyahu song turned out great. But it’s almost wall to wall vocals and he’s got such a unique identifiable sound. Did you have any thoughts about that when you chose that as the first single, that people are going to think it’s just a Matisyahu single, they’re not going to realize it’s The Crystal Method?

Ken: We still feel like it really feels like a hard-driving Crystal Method track with a lot of electronic elements in it, but yeah, you know, we did pare down the vocals some. But it was going to be our first single, and singles for the most part have vocals. We were pretty comfortable with it.



Scott: Yeah, I had never heard him do a vocal like that. The vocal and the treatment of the vocal and the lyrical direction fit the track really well. Anytime bands that don’t have a lead singer and you use someone that has developed their own sound, you run the risk of that. It was just about putting out a song that we thought sounded good.



You guys have done so many things, soundtracks, collaborations, remixes. What have you not done yet that you still want to do at some point as a Crystal Method project?



Ken: Playing the Super Bowl wouldn’t be bad.



Scott: So many things have happened to us that we’ve been a part of that early on we would have had no idea these thing would have been a possibility. And the reason why that has happened for us is that we’re always in the moment, we’re always sort of focused on where we are at the time.



iProng Magazine’s 41st issue featuring The Crystal Method and iPhone 3G S

Scott Sigler interview

New York Times bestselling author Scott Sigler has just released THE ROOKIE as a hardcover novel and sales are strong already, which is impressive for a book that’s been available for free as an audiobook in podcast format since 2007. But that’s the winning formula that’s allowed Scott to build a loyal audience, make a living from it, and achieve mainstream success. I caught up with him to learn how it’s all happened.

You started out trying to get EarthCore published as a print novel through a major publisher. What led you to change course and give it away as a podiobook instead?


I did land a print deal with an imprint of AOL/TimeWarner, and EARTHCORE was supposed to be out in mass market paperback in May 2002. However, in the post-911 recession, TimeWarner scrapped everything that wasn’t profitable. My imprint wasn’t profitable yet, hence, the whole project was shut down. It took me about three years to get the rights back. By then it was 2005, I discovered podcasting, and thought it was going to be the future of novels, short stories and storytelling.

Wasn’t it a bit scary, at the time, to give away content you’d been hoping to charge for, without knowing if you’d ever see a dime from it?


It wasn’t scary at all, it was a huge opportunity to be the first to do something like this, and use that to build an audience. I saw the connections people make online, and knew that if I created a great product, some people would like it and instantly send their friends MP3 links via IM, forums, chat rooms, blog posts, email, etc. Giving the first book away was about building a brand name, and proving that my work resonated with the marketplace. At the time, I assumed I’d pick up 10,000 subscribers and land a print deal. I hadn’t counted on the fact that publishers had no idea what podcasting was, or MP3s, or downloads or really even the internet, for that matter. I accomplished the goal, but it took five books and three years to get there.

How exactly did you go about building up an early audience for your podiobooks? Was enough to just put it out there for free, or did you have to actively spread the word?


I’ve worked constantly to spread the word, pick up fans, and get them to spread the word. Just putting a free work up isn’t enough, you have to market it. A lot of people will listen because it’s free, and a certain percentage of them will like your work and become fans. Therefore, my real goal as an entertainer is to make sure the most possible people find out about me and give me a shot. The larger the base, the more fans generated by that same certain percentage.

Now that you’re a New York Times bestselling print author, and people are clearly willing to pay for your work, why do you still give your content away? Is that just because you’re a nice guy, or is it part of a strategy to sell more content?


There’s a few reasons. First, my father had a phrase, “you dance with the one that brought ya.” I got to where I am because of my fans. They helped me in a lot of ways because my work was free, and I’m not going to bogart it from them now that I’ve achieved a couple of goals. Right now I give everything away for free, even the stuff that’s on sale. It’s up to the customer to decide how they want the story — free podcast, free PDF, paid iPhone app, paid book. And times are tough; some people want to buy the books but they don’t have the cash right now. So no problem, that’s what the free podcasts are for. Maybe someday they buy my books, maybe they don’t, doesn’t matter to me because that’s the customer’s choice to make. Second, “free” still gets me new people who try my stuff because they don’t have to shell out the bucks. If you have a choice between spending $25 on a Stephen King downloadable book, or get mine for free, odds are you’ll try mine first, even though King is a proven author and always delivers. You know if you don’t like mine, you can go back and spend the $25 anyway, so there’s no risk.

You released a hardcover version of THE ROOKIE last weekend. What’s the premise of the book?


Basically, it’s projecting professional football 700 years into the future, after we’ve discovered alien races, and trying to figure out what the game might be like. From there it gets much deeper, illustrating the integrative nature of sports and sport as a meritocracy that destroys racism (you have to learn to play with the best players, regardless of race, if you want to win). Finally, it’s a kick-ass coming of age story and chock-full of awesome, high-tech football action.

I’ll give you the synopses:


Set in a lethal pro football league 700 years in the future, THE ROOKIE is a story that combines the intense gridiron action of “Any Given Sunday” with the space opera style of “Star Wars” and the criminal underworld of “The Godfather.”

Aliens and humans alike play positions based on physiology, creating receivers that jump 25 feet into the air, linemen that bench-press 1,200 pounds, and linebackers that literally want to eat you. Organized crime runs every franchise, games are fixed and rival players are assassinated.

Follow the story of Quentin Barnes, a 19-year-old quarterback prodigy that has been raised all his life to hate, and kill, those aliens. Quentin must deal with his racism and learn to lead, or he’ll wind up just another stat in the column marked “killed on the field.”

How are your years of participating in social media paying off as far as promoting the print version of THE ROOKIE?


I’ve built up an online following in various social media places, like Facebook, Twitter and on my own site scottsigler.com. Simply making the product available in these different areas lets people find the book based on their preferences. Some find it via Twitter, some via Facebook, and some via my podcasts or my website. The larger the following, the more people want to buy the product, so that’s why doing this for several years gives me the best chance to find customers that really want the book.

Don’t forget, I already gave THE ROOKIE away for free as a podcast, and it’s still available for free. Most, if not all the people who have pre-ordered so far have already heard the story. They liked it so much they want a print copy to read again or to share with others. That’s what social media does for me – when my fans finish a story, I’m still right there, accessible, they can stay in contact and monitor what’s coming next.

Is Quentin Barnes, your protagonist quarterback of the future, based in part on any real-life football player?


I wrote this book years ago, so he was initially based on Daunte Culpepper. When Culpepper came into the league , he was 6-foot-4, 260 pounds. It was almost unheard of for a quarterback with his skill set to be that big. So Quentin is huge for his position, which helps set him apart. Personality-wise, I tried to imagine an incredibly talented kid that’s played his whole life in, say, the Ku Klux Clan minor league, but he wants to be the best so he works his way into the bigs, where — hold on to your hat — he has to have sub-races on his team. The final step was gauging his maturity level. Quentin joins the pros at nineteen, so I channelled a bit of early Kobe Bryant behavior in there.

You’ve said that what you like about Stephen King’s books is that he’s willing to whack any character at any time. You’ve announced an upcoming sequel centered around Quentin Barnes. Is there a chance he bites the dust in that book?


Absolutely. In my books, no one is sacred, and dead stays dead. That being said, THE ROOKIE series isn’t like my modern-day horror/thrillers. This is a scifi series, so odds are everyone’s favorite quarterback will be there to play another day. With a thriller, much of the fear-of-loss revolves around a character’s life. To draw the reader in, you need that specter of death. With a sports series, you get a different specter — losing the championship, the big game, the career, etc. So you can really put a reader through the wringer without having to put the characters’ life on that line.

Speaking of quarterbacks, you’re a long-suffering Detroit Lions fan. What do you think of their drafting of Matthew Stafford with the first overall pick this past weekend?


Paying the kid $41 million guaranteed is a huge mistake. The Lions have needs everywhere, particularly the offensive line. Detroit destroys quarterbacks. Not the other teams’ quarterbacks, mind you, our quarterbacks. If you just look at the statistical trends of Detroit, Stafford won’t be the starter in three years. I wish they would have traded down and loaded up with three first- or second-round offensive line picks. Franchises that had dominant runs, like Dallas, New England, Pittsburgh, they all spend the dollars to develop and retain a great offensive line. I’d love to think Stafford is The One for Detroit, but this ain’t my first trip to the rodeo. At least we didn’t use our first pick to draft another goddamn receiver …

Late last year you released THE ROOKIE as an iPhone app. What role do you think iPhone books and readers like the Kindle will play in the near future of books?


I think portable devices are the future of books, period. There are 20 million iPhones and iTouch units sold so far, in only two years. I don’t even use my Kindle anymore now that the Kindle App works so well on the iPhone. So that’s a market of 20 million potential readers, who can now buy books, stockpile books, and most importantly impulse-buy books. As the cost of eBooks comes down to the $3-$5 range, the same cost as most apps, I think readership is going to go through the roof. The reason it’s going to keep getting bigger is that the iPhone and other cell phones are lifestyle devices. A book is just a book, but an iPhone is your phone, your email, your calendar, your social media, your video, your music, your games and now your books. People will continue to be more attached to their phones. They are already ubiquitous, and if you can read a book on your phone, there’s no reason to read it on paper — it’s just one more thing to carry.

For an aspiring book author who’s just starting out, what advice would you offer them? Has your successful career path written the definitive blueprint, or have things shifted already?


There is no blueprint, things are changing too fast. The first piece of advice is get used to the fact that you are in the minor leagues, there is clearly a minor-league system, and in the minors you have to give your content away to build up a following. Be prepared to do that for three to five years before you have enough people to make a difference. It will not happen overnight for you, nor do you want it to, because audience feedback will help shape your storytelling style. The second piece of advice is that the days of “just writing” are gone. You may hear the old guard talk about how a writer should write, and how they “let other people handle those other things.” Well, that was because these guys signed their publishing deals fifteen, twenty years ago, when there weren’t 500 channels, when there weren’t metroplexes, when video games were nothing like they are today and the internet was basically non-existent. People have so many entertainment choices now, you have to fight for your customers’ time. You have to market AND write, you have to be a businessperson AND an entertainer. Third and final bit of advice, understand the fact that readers want to connect with the author. Embrace social media, reply to emails, to blog comments, interact with them whenever possible. Don’t be an arrogant douchebag. You are not important. Your work is not important. What’s important is giving people value for the time they spend with their works — write great stories, and be accessible. The days of the author’s ivory tower are long gone.

Aside from promoting THE ROOKIE and writing The Starter, what else do you have on the horizon?


Right now I’m working on ANCESTOR, which will be the third hardcover published by Crown Publishing. Should be out March of 2010, and we’re gunning for a top-15 spot on the New York Times hardcover fiction best-seller list. That’s my new goal, and I’ll be unleashing every trick in the book to make people aware of the book, and what it means for user-generated content and social media if we hit that mark.



Carlos Santana interview

Carlos Santana and I are sitting on a couch and he’s telling me everything from why he feels younger today than he did when he performed at Woodstock forty years ago, to what the next chapter of his storied musical career might entail, to why he’s about to start playing a few dozen shows in Las Vegas each year. But in addition to being one of the most celebrated, popular and influential artists in the history of recorded music, he’s also likely the most famous person to release his own app for iPhone users.



So what led Carlos Santana to the iPhone, both as a user and as the namesake of an iPhone app? “I’m through with the smoke signals,” as he puts it. “I was the guy who went from the smoke signals and the mirrors, like the Apaches, straight into the iPhone, so I have no concept of computers. I was still with cassettes. And so it fascinates me just how much the human imagination has gone into making things accessible. I can put all my library of records and cassettes and CDs into my laptop and then into my iPhone. And I’m basically more than just curious now. I’m eager to ride that. It’s kind of like a highway, kind of like a freeway, and this stuff is like billboards. So I wanted to join it.”



The Santana iPhone app is a gateway into the world of Santana, with full-length music videos, a sampling of songs from over the decades, recent news and upcoming tour dates (the next version of the app, already in the App Store cue, will include web links for buying tickets), and even instructional videos from Carlos on how to play Oye Como Va and Black Magic Woman on guitar – along with a link to the “Architects of a New Dawn” website where Carlos isn’t afraid to express his current worldview. Nor was he afraid to do so during our interview.



“I grew up in the sixties watching B.B. King and Tito Puente and Miles Davis and Coltrane, everybody, Marvin Gaye, Jimi. And at the same time, with my left eye I was watching Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mother Teresa. And with those songs from John Lennon or Bob Dylan, ‘Blowing in the Wind’ or ‘What a Wonderful World’ or ‘One Love’ or ‘Love Supreme’ I realized that it’s all really one, that John Lennon was correct. We utilize the music to bring down the walls of Berlin, to bring up the force of compassion and forgiveness and kindness between Palestines, Hebrews. Bring down the walls here in San Diego, Tijuana, Cuba. There’s a lot of walls still up. You know, the walls here in the United States between Fox Networks and just regular people who aspire to change the world without being cynical or arrogant. Because we do believe that peace is possible.



“So I utilize everything, whether it’s Maria Maria’s restaurants or shoes or music with Clive Davis, Yo Yo Ma, Justin Timberlake or Kirk Hammett from Metallica, we utilize everything that is available to us to give back, to invest. And what Arnold is not investing, or Barack Obama so far, which is invest in education for teachers in schools, bring the boys home, and legalize marijuana so you can make more money and pay more teachers a higher salary and erect more schools. I’m not afraid to create a website that is called ‘Architects of a New Dawn’ so we can ask ourselves how far have we come fighting like gorillas over a water hole and now fighting over oil, because clearly that’s what we’re there for, and going into a new dimension where we can actually, again, ask ourselves how far can we go instead of how far have we come?”

Santana’s live shows are legendary for their energy. So is there anything special Carlos has to do to get himself in the right mindset before he heads on on stage with his band each night? “All the musicians in my band, they’re leaders in their own right. They all play with John Scofield, Michael Stern, Pat Metheny, the best musicians in the world. Miles Davis, Prince, you know? Tower of Power. So I’m surrounded with le creme de le creme of musicians that can go anywhere we want to go, whether it’s jazz or reggae of African. The only thing we haven’t done so far is country & western and Riverdance music. But I think if we combine those two with some ska (laughs), it can be done.



Would he really go there? “Nothing is impossible at this point. The only thing that we need to do is first accept that the only reality is God’s love. Everything else is an illusion. And then you’ve got that energy that you can go on stage and do it. Like Elton John says, play Black Magic Woman, Maria Maria, Smooth and every song in the set like it’s the first and last time you’re ever gonna do it. It’s not wishful thinking. You can actually will yourself to do it because as you know, your body just follows your thoughts. If you think like a loser then you’re gonna be a loser, your body’s gonna get tired. If you think like a winner, everybody benefits. Your body will have, like, boundless energy because you’re inspired. You’re not depending on food. Kind of like when you fall in love, you know? When you’re in love man, you don’t need food, you don’t need a lot of things. You’re about this high off the ground, want to know what she smells like, what’s her favorite song, color, what she tastes like, all that kind of stuff. And so it’s important to stay in love with life and with the possibilities and opportunities.



Many fans have divided Carlos‘ music into two chapters, the first being the classics like Everybody’s Everything and Oye Como Va, the second being the genre-bending collaborations from Supernatural onward. So does Carlos foresee a third chapter in which his music takes on a whole other incarnation?



”Oh sure, you know? To combine Yo Yo Ma, Andrea Bocelli with African rhythms, some real far out Grateful Dead, Screaming Jay Hawkins for humor. You know, the main thing is we’re not afraid to try things. We’re not afraid to go hang out with Alice Coltrane when she was here, or Wayne Shorter or Herbie, we’re just not afraid because we’re bringing an element of openness and we want to complement, you know? So it’s not competition, it’s not comparing. And for me it’s just one breath, you know? It’s just that in that breath we’re able to cover from A to Z in music. It’s only eight notes. Actually seven, the eighth one is the first one again. Twelve if you count the ones in between. So I agree with John Coltrane: damn the rules, it’s the feeling that counts.”



This year marks the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock, a event that saw a young Carlos Santana take the stage and launch his career. What does he think of his younger self now, looking back? “I feel like I’m younger now because I’m not with fear. I was with a lot of fear back then. There was a lot of fear and anger and distrust. But at the same time there was a lot of acceptance to go almost from junior high school to being on stage with Sly Stallone or Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Michael Bloomfield. It was quite a gift, man, to walk into this door that Bill Graham provided for us, and Clive Davis, and then again Clive Davis with Supernatural, and I look at them just like doors, just like this is another door here in Las Vegas. They’re doors of opportunities and possibilities, you know? I started playing the guitar in Tijuana and basically being a dishwasher in San Francisco, and I dreamed that I could hang out with Michael Bloomfield and Jerry Garcia, and I just kept going.”



This month Carlos announced that he’s taking up residency at The Joint at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas, a deal which will see him playing about thirty-six shows in town per year. How does he feel about spending so much time in Vegas, a town that appears to be a polar opposite from the San Francisco Bay Area he calls home?



”I’m having fun hanging around with me no matter where I am now. So it could be Las Vegas, a parking lot, I mean I’ve seen Bob Marley, he played in front of Tower Records in San Francisco, same thing with Traffic. So I said damn, you know, if they can play in the streets. Real musicians, it’s an illusion that Carnegie Hall or Madison Square Garden, to me it’s all one heart at this point. Coming into Las Vegas, which is a city that’s based basically on investing in illusion and luck, chance and fortune, we’re bringing another element, the element of God’s grace, which has nothing to do with luck, fortune or chance. It brings the guarantee and reassurance that God guarantees a happy outcome for everyone. That takes care of that. To the illusion, we bring a genuineness. Genuineness is knowing that we can play in South Africa, 2010 World Cup, center stage with all of the drummers from Africa, Brazil and Cuba, very few bands can do that. Very few bands can understand the language of those rhythms and take it to the next level without showing off or anything like that.



“It’s a language that if you speak it correctly then you touch all the families of the world. So no, I don’t look at Las Vegas like I used to, like it’s a duality or in opposition to who I am. No, not anymore. To me it’s an opportunity, possibility to be of service to more people who need financial assistance like students. There’s no greater satisfaction than being of service to humanity than by providing financial assistance to students who can go to the next step in their lives because they graduated with supremely high honors and grades from high school but they don’t have money to go to universities.”



Looking out into the audience, what’s more gratifying, seeing kids enjoying his music or seeing adults who’ve been fans all their lives? As it turns out, the answer is a little bit of both. ”They’re bringing their children,” he says of his older fans. “I’ve never seen so many kids. You know, I swear to you, children under twelve and they’re freaking out, they’re bugging out. We invite them on stage in the last half an hour and it’s an incredible blessing from God to be able to be sixty-one and become like what I wanted to be, like my dad and B.B. King.

interview by Bill Palmer

Graham Nash interview

Pore over the history of music and you’ll find Graham Nash’s name etched into a number of chapters. He was a founding member of The Hollies, he’s the “Nash” in Crosby, Stills & Nash, and combined with his own solo career he’s piled up enough music to recently release a career-spanning boxed set called Reflections. But he’s also an authoritative Mac and iPhone user, so when Graham called me up for the interview, my only quandary was which of the two topics to ask him about first.



I suspect we could talk about Apple all day once we get started…



All day!



…so I’m thinking we should start with the boxed set first, otherwise we may never get to it. The obvious question is why did now feel like the right time to put Reflections together?



It’s strange, my school song when I was a kid was “Forty years on when afar and asunder,” and forty years has always stuck in my mind as as interesting period of time. And it’s been forty years. It’s actually longer, isn’t it? I think it’s been forty-four or something. It’s been a long time for me. I mean I cut my first hit record in May of ’63, for God’s sake.



There are sixty-four songs on the boxed set, which sounds like a lot, but like you said you’ve had your solo career, every subset of Crosby Stills Nash & Young, The Hollies. How do you narrow it down to just three discs worth of songs?



You know, I think the songs kind of take care of that. Particularly in CSN we had what we laughingly referred to as the “reality rule.” And the reality rule went like this: if I sit you down and sing you a song, and you don’t react, you’ll never hear that song again. But if I sit you down and sing you a song and you go “oh man, I know what we can do in the chorus,” or “I’ve got a great line for that,” then I know that that song is worth bringing up.



And so we’ve always done that with ourselves, we’ve always recognized, I think, the best part about our own selves, and we’ve always tried to support that.



You’re not done making new music though, are you?



Absolutely not! This is a milestone, not a millstone.


Can I ask you about Barack Obama?

Absolutely. What would you like to know?

You and Crosby performed in support of his campaign, so how are you feeling now that’s he’s President?

I’m breathing! I didn’t realize just how depressed I was about the political situation for the last eight years until Obama came around. And I think what has happened is the reason why there’s all this giddiness and hope and lightness around this man is, first of all he’s bringing it, and secondly, we’re coming out of the dark. So it’s like getting our eyes used to the different lighting, you know, when you come out of the dark into the bright light you kind of have to squint. I feel that I’m doing that. I didn’t realize just how bleak and how dark the Bush administration had been.



I mean of course I keep up with it daily, I know about the things they’ve done to the Constitution and our civil rights, I know all that stuff. But to have Obama promise something, let’s just say for instance Guantanamo, and on his first day or second day in office, close it down. It’s astounding. If we believe in this man, I believe that he has the talent to keep us together and to face these problems and to defeat them.



I was talking with Crosby about nine months ago and I asked him if he still thought music could change the world, and I want to ask you the same question: cam music still change the world?

Absolutely. You’ve got to understand, most of the brilliant ideas on the planet come from one person. Rarely a bunch of people. If you can reach one person with an interesting idea or a different way of thinking about something, or a way through a problem, or face a situation that I’ve faced and this is how I’ve dealt with it kind of stuff, I think that musicians are providing a cultural service to the population. I really do. I really believe that a song can change the world. I know that couple of my partners disagree, but I still truly believe it.



Was it your photography endeavors that first brought you into the Apple fold?



No, it was my curiosity that brought me into the Apple fold. What happened is that our accountant and our tour manager and one of my best friends, Mac Holbert, who runs Nash Editions, which is the printing company that I have, used to do the accounting on the tour by hand. And with a crew of forty, of somebody changed per diem on one day, you’d have to rewrite the whole thing and add them all up and make sure they balanced. And then this guy introduced him to one of the very first, I think VisiCalc, which was the very first database program, and then he had the ability of putting everything, changing one line and having all the lines change instead of having to do it by hand and rewrite it.



And I began to realize that computers were going to be an incredibly important part of communication. 



So you were an early adopter.



Absolutely. I was scanning photographs, there used to be a thing called a Thunderhead that you put on this kind of typewriting thing, and it was an amazing, really crude scanning device. And obviously photo manipulation programs that preceded Photoshop by five years.



You were a Mac user during the “dark days” when everyone thought Apple would go under. Were you worried?



No, because I’d tried to use a PC and it was insanely difficult. And I realized that the Mac environment was so much friendlier, and so much easier to fix, I could fix it myself practically. I didn’t have to bring in an engineer with a degree. I’ve loved Mac from the beginning.



Have you participated in the whole iPod and iPhone revolution?



Oh yes. I was walking by the Apple Store, and a couple of the keys were sticking on my son’s iPhone, and I was going to get him a new iPhone but they told me to hang on because early this year, in a couple of months, they’re coming out with a different model. Probably just a thirty-two gigabyte model, but still, different.


Did you get an iPhone on day one?



Oh yeah, on day one I went down to this mall outside of Detroit in Troy, Michigan, and I tried to get one but couldn’t. I got one three days later.



I love that I can get geeky with you on this stuff. What are your favorite iPhone apps?



Well, an entire medical dictionary for instance. Where am I? Where is the nearest post office? Those kind of things. I love those. Flashlight, that’s a cool one. Level is a cool one. And I’ve got various photo stuff in there, a small app that just came out that will allow you to add light to a photograph that didn’t have it previously. Great stuff. This is a four and a half inch by three inch by half inch wide piece of equipment here, and we’re traveling the world with it. This is fantastic.



What amazes me is when I’m traveling for a couple days I don’t always take my laptop with me anymore, I just take the phone.



Just take the phone. I mean it’s a little slower, as we know, but absolutely.



You’re on both sides when it comes to the iTunes Store. You’re selling your life’s work there, and you’re also consumer on the other end. When that was announced in 2003, were you one of the musicians who said “I can’t wait to get my stuff in there” or were you skeptical?



I was not skeptical. I’m a communicator. I want to communicate to as wide a spectrum of people as possible. I want to make my music available to as many people as possible. I have problems with the technology in iTunes, and the quality of downloads, you know, you’re not getting the full spectrum of stuff. I mean it’s certainly passable for a lot of people. So I had my qualms on the quality of iTunes stuff, but you can’t quarrel with… it happened to me yesterday. I needed a Buddy Holly album because I’m going to play this Buddy Holly show, the fiftieth anniversary of his death, which happened on my birthday, and I’m going to play the show in Clear Lake, Iowa, at the very barn that he played his last show. So I needed to learn a couple of songs, and instantly in my hotel room, five minutes later is a Buddy Holly album right there on my computer. It’s fantastic.



They sent me the boxed set, I’ve got the three CDs here, but otherwise I would have just downloaded it through iTunes. Do you think there’s still a need to put out a multi-CD set, or do you think that’ll be gone in five, ten, fifteen years?



I think it will be gone in less than that. I don’t think it’s economical for record companies to do it. I think CDs will be replaced by other stuff. Right now it seems like it’s being replaced by vinyl, which is pretty funny. Kids are finding that vinyl is a better sound for them. It has more humanity, it has a richer environment that you can listen to. So I think pretty soon CDs are going to be out the window.



What do you think is going to happen with the major record labels?



They were very silly. They made a mistake in trying to put Napster out of business, they should have been hip to the oncoming business model of the digital world. There’s no way you can put the toothpaste back into the tube when you reduce everything to zeroes and ones and are able to distribute it wirelessly over the air. They didn’t see it coming. They were warned. They were arrogant. They didn’t take any notice, and finally they’re probably going out of business unless they get a business model that includes the digital world and make it satisfying to customers.


The balance of power has shifted clearly into Apple’s hands. They sell the most music, they sell the most popular music hardware. Do you think we have to worry about Apple potentially becoming too big and almost dangerous out of having too much power?



I don’t believe so. I mean shouldn’t we be worried about Google? Shouldn’t we be worried about Yahoo? Shouldn’t we be worried about Microsoft? You can’t worry about these things. Apple had a brilliant programming team and a brilliant design team and a brilliant man in Steve Jobs who seems to have his finger on the pulse of what people want. I mean he’s already taken on the telephone companies and beat them, he’s already taken on the music industry and beat them. I mean Holy Crap. And I certainly wish him the best of health.



The last time I saw you on television, you were on American Idol. How did you end up getting involved in that?



I’d been asked to do American Idol several times and turned it down, quite frankly. And then a friend told me about Idol Gives Back, and I began to check out the charity arm that tries to make a difference in people’s lives by giving them money and attention. And when I saw what they were doing for children’s rights, for feeding children and educating children in this country and other countries, I decided that that, combined with a beautiful blonde folk singer who when asked what her favorite thing to do would be, said that she would love to sing Teach Your Children with Graham Nash. And when I thought about that, and I thought about her, and I thought about the exposure, and I thought about Idol Gives Back, I relented.


And I was very happy to do so. I had a great time and they treated me with great respect. I thought that Brooke White and I did Teach Your Children brilliantly, acoustic. It was so different from the rest of the show, which was high-powered rock.



What would you like to see Apple bring out next?



I would like them to make a computer for the road that is half the size of a fifteen inch MacBook and twice the size of an iPhone, with a QWERTY keyboard and total wireless and a very large hard drive. Now we’re talking.



So maybe start where the MacBook Air left off, and keep shrinking it.



Yeah, until you can maybe not put it in your inside pocket, but certainly put it in your outside pocket and carry it around like that. And a battery that lasts more than four hours.


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