Interview With Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller

The Press Conference

We had been invited to attend a Press Conference with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, (for which we are indebted to Ken Lower of Hermana). On the day both Harry Carrigan (representing our club) and Gerry McLafferty (representing The Elvis Presley Film Society) were in attendance. The press conference was held at the Atheanæn Hotel in London on the Wednesday 27th June 2001 at two o'clock. It started with the announcement of the forthcoming charity tribute show to Leiber and Stoller, which was to take place at the London Apollo, Hammersmith on Friday 29th June. The show was to include many major performers including, Ben E King, Elkie Brooks, Meatloaf and Tom Jones to name a few. The conference was then turned over to those present to ask questions and the first question was put immediately. The press conference had begun and it was a free-for-all, those that were first in with a question got answers, some people present never even got to ask one question, unlike ourselves who asked several.

Let us welcome two of the greatest songwriters of the last 50 years, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller (there was a long round of applause), to which Mike Stoller says "I always take great pleasure from welcoming myself". This sets the scene for the whole press conference, which is laid back and humorous from the start.

Question
So many different versions of your songs have been recorded by several different artists. Can I ask for a selection of some of your favourite covers to these songs? Or, are they all the original versions like for example "Jailhouse Rock", the version by Elvis Presley.

Mike Stoller
That's the best, as for "Kansas City", our favourite version is Joe Williams with Count Basie.

Question
How about things like "Cell Block No 9" the old Coasters stuff. They've been covered all over the place. Haven't they?

Mike
Well not really, The Coasters stuff, "Kansas City" maybe has 1000 or so covers, but most of The Coasters stuff has five or six or eight successful covers that I know of. The best version is by Ray Stevens; I like The Drifters, original records by George Benson very much.

Question
Did you write any songs for Elvis that you thought maybe we should have got somebody else to perform them?

Jerry Leiber
Not at all. In fact with Elvis after we sort of parted company after half a dozen years. He did songs of ours by The Coasters, it was unlikely but he did them.

Mike
And, The Clovers songs like "Bossa Nova Baby", and songs by The Drifters, and "Little Egypt".

Question
I'm curious to know about the relationship between the songwriters and the artists. Do they just come to you to see what you've got or did you send, like a reel-to-reel around. How did they know exactly what to do?

Mike
Well, with The Coasters, we formed that group and chose the singers for their voices. In the beginning it was mostly people we recorded. In the very beginning we were called by record companies who were having a recording session coming up, or artists would call and said I think you should come over we're having an rehearsal at my house, I want you to hear this. Then it was mostly we would get a call from a record company, bandleader or we were producing it ourselves and we knew what we wanted to do.

Question
Is that how Johnny Otis originally got a credit on "Hound Dog" because he was a bandleader?

Jerry
Well he kind of put his name on it and we after a short time had it removed.

Mike
It was not unusual in the early days even before, for the leader of a big band including Duke Ellington to find their name, the name of the bandleader, alongside a member of the profession, usually an instrumental. And it was done, but we didn't like it when it was done to us. So we took it off.

Question
As simple as that? You took it off.

Jerry
It took about eight or nine years.

Question
How difficult was it for a couple of white teenagers to be taken seriously by these great black artists that you wanted to sing your songs?

Jerry
We weren't white then.

Mike
We didn't think of ourselves as white. In fact we thought of ourselves as being black, and we used to argue between the two of us who was the blackest.

Question
Who won?

Jerry
No-one, we won.

Question
Who did Willie Mae Thornton think was the blackest?

Mike
She was sceptical.

Jerry
That was an eye-opener Willie Mae, the day we brought her in "Hound Dog" on a piece of paper, we actually seen her audition at the garage with Johnny's Band, with "Five Types Of Joy" and "Chain and Ball", and it knocked us out, we had to write for her. That's the reason we headed for Mike's house and we wrote 90% of "Hound Dog "on the way over, to a little piece we call Buck Dane, I can't do it anymore.

Mike
I would have done the same but I had to hold the steering wheel.

Jerry
When we got to his house he went straight to the piano. He didn't bother to sit down, we pretty much worked eye to eye, and we liked it like that. We took the song back to Big Mama and had this little bit of paper, she took the paper out of my hand, does this rock, I said I hope so, let's see how it goes. She had the paper upside down and she finally righted it, "Hound Dog and she was singing it like Frank Sinatra's "In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning", and she's about 280-320 (Mike jumps in - pounds not stones), I said it don't go that way, she said, white boy don't you be telling me how to sing the Blues. It was a long -----, but we finally got through it. Mike said he had to go, but Johnny brought him back into the room and… That was one of the moments when you say to yourself how do you reel it back in. But it was…

Mike
But, may I add that that experience was very good, because most of the people we worked with, almost all the people we worked with, artists like that....

Jerry
We worked exclusively with black artists because of the things we liked the music they made.

Mike
We thought we were black.

Question
Did you both agree Elvis's version of "Hound Dog" would be a hit?

Jerry
No, because when it came out they said immediately, in like twenty hours, there wasn't any question of predicting it, it was a hit.

Mike
I didn't hear it right away, Jerry told me about it.

Question
You where on the boat?

Mike
Yeah, I was, I had been on the Andrea Doria.

Jerry
He was sinking on the Andrea Doria while "Hound Dog" was going up.

Question
That story's right then, you met him at the quayside and said "I'm glad you're OK"?

Jerry
I didn't say that.

Question
By the way Elvis has recorded "Hound Dog"?

Jerry
I said, "Hound Dog" is a big hit and he looked at me and said, "You insensitive mother you, I almost drowned and you're here telling me about a hit record, and what do you have in your hand"? I had a suit, a mohair suit that you could see your face in, and he said what's that? I said, it's for you, for me!

Mike
He thought that I was soaked but alive, but he said we've got a smash hit with "Hound Dog", I said the Big Mama record? And he said no some white dude by the name Elvis Presley. I said Elvis who? Then I heard the record and I was disappointed it was too fast, too white. But you know after a few years and it had sold seven or eight million records, it started to sound better.

Question
Do you feel that Elvis' and Big Mama Thornton's interpretation of the song was the way you felt when you were writing that particular track?

Mike
Big Mama's record was the intention, it was perfect.

Question
That was the intention. Elvis chose to use Freddie Bell and The Bellboys version as his inspiration. Is that in particular why you didn't like it?

Mike
Well I hadn't heard that record either at that time. I only heard it after I'd heard Elvis's, but I must say that the other things that we did with Elvis were great. My favourite two are "Love Me" and "Jailhouse Rock".

Question
Do you always write together?

Jerry
At the same place at the same time doesn't mean together, but we do write them together. It's as simple as that, and they do have words. Sometimes he (pointing to Mike) goes home and stays there for months.

Mike
But if you can't, can't put the words immediately, why stay around?

Question
Which songwriters have you admired more recently?

Jerry
Recently, so not George Gershwin or Cole Porter. The greatest one's Irving Berlin, he's number one.

Mike
Randy Newman, The Beatles, they were the highlight of the 1960s I think.

Question
But more recently?

Jerry
There are some oddball writers out there, but it has to do with history, but if the song stays with you for fifteen, twenty, thirty years, it's hard to come up with someone who wrote a song last year that's a hit. It doesn't have the distance or the time on it.

Mike
The truth is, we don't listen.

Jerry
But if you talk about the 1960s favourite records, Pete Seger, no Bob Seger, that's right.

Mike
Everybody's been telling you that.

Jerry
How come I didn't hear it. You were talking while I was trying to listen.

Mike
I was talking while you where thinking.

Jerry
That'll do it too. Bob Seger is a great Blues singer, great bands and performer, singer songwriter, arrangements, outlandish. I just thought he was so original, all round.

Mike
Like James Brown.

Jerry
I was going to say that James Brown was the first guy that put a band together like that. You know, and Motown. We like being up to our ears in the Blues.

Question
Do you have a jaundiced view of singer/songwriters because they obviously put you out a bit?

Mike
No, not really, not if they are good. I have a jaundiced view of bands that can't really write but sing. I don't have a jaundiced view, not if it's good.  I just think we did that as producers. We didn't write everything we produced, whoever the artist was we always went for the best song and we would bring in other writers like Doc Pomus and go for the very best songs we could get. Sometimes we fixed them up a little and sometimes we asked and they gave them.

Question
Why did your record labels Red Bird and Spark have such short existences?

Mike
Spark was one story and Red Bird another. Do you want to tell them about Spark.

Jerry
What happened with Spark was that we had our biggest hit, which I think sold 100,000 singles in Los Angeles. And from the rest of the country we were getting the samples back for refunds, and because we didn't have enough money to promote so. It was heard by a guy who sent it to his brother at a record company, they then brokered a deal and bought us out.

Question
Since you both spent time with Elvis Presley in Hollywood, in particular during the production of "Jailhouse Rock" in 1957, and given that you were very involved in writing songs for his movies at that time, did you see any evidence of Elvis being pressured into performing several songs in each film, when he had made a very clear statement that he was primarily interested in acting in dramatic productions without any songs at all?

Mike
I never read that but we had no problem with Elvis, it was great.

Question
I know that would not benefit yourselves, the statement he made.

Jerry
We didn't solicit him, we didn't go after him at all. First off, he did not fit the bill, he was white. He was not somebody that we would record.

Mike
Nobody's perfect.

Question
People thought he was black?

Jerry
We didn't, I didn't.

Question
That's what they say.

Jerry
After he recorded "Hound Dog" and it became such a monumental blockbuster. His publishers called us in and offered us to write songs for specific Elvis pictures and recording session, and we went, and we took the deal, and we wrote for about six years or so.

Mike
No it was nearer three years. '56 was when he did "Hound Dog" and from '57-60 that was pretty much it. After that we had a fall-out. We also got bored with his movies.

Question
Did you regret the fall-out? Did you regret that breach, that period you sort of lost him?

Jerry
No, no. it's interesting when you get an artist like Elvis. It's a licence to print money. You could write anything on a piece of paper and he could sing it well. He could sing the telephone book. But, we wanted to keep our interest. The fall-out, I'll tell you if you're interested. I got walking pneumonia in '60. I was walking along the street, I didn't even know I was sick, and I collapsed. This Good Samaritan cab driver drove me round different hospitals and he couldn't check me in, finally he got me into a hospital and I was there for about nine days or so. When I got home I found all these telegrams, about twenty or so stuffed in my mailbox. I opened some and they all said basically the same thing, they wanted us to go to Los Angeles immediately as Elvis was going into the studio and he wanted us there. Anyway, my doctor said I wasn't to travel so I got on the phone and spoke to Colonel Parker. I explained that I was ill, I wasn't to travel and he said this is important business, that's spelt B.I.D.N.E.Z. and to tell Mike to get there to. Well you don't tell Mike anything you ask Mike. I told him I couldn't travel but he said, well I'm just gonna send you the contracts anyway.

About two or three days later a manila envelope arrived with a cover note and two signatory pages, this was a blank page with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in type at the bottom left hand side, and to the right a line where we had to sign, and nothing else. So I called up his secretary, I said there must be a mistake here, she said, oh no. I said there must be a mistake as I've got two cover letters and I've got two signatory pages, they've left the middle pages out, so she went to get the Colonel. That's always amused me he's no more a Colonel than I'm a ballet dancer. So he said, what's wrong son? I said, there's nothing really I got the contracts. He said, what's wrong with them? I said, I got two cover pages and I got two signature pages, which are blank. So he says, what's wrong with that? I said there's nothing wrong with that either, but there's a page missing. Which one is that? I said that's the contract. He said, don't worry about that just sign it and we'll fill it in later. That was it.

Question
Did you notice any difference between New York and Los Angeles, musical differences in genre and style?

Unfortunately the tape ran out at this point and part of the answer was lost. We hope this does not spoil your enjoyment.

Mike
--------- we moved a piano, a filing cabinet and that was that. We didn't move into the Brill building until, like three years after we got to New York. Sort of worked out of our briefcases at Atlantic records. It was very much more a graphically close set up in New York. With Blues, Rhythm and Blues, Jazz within a few blocks from 57th down to 42nd.

Jerry
There where hangouts where everybody hung out. It was a different kind of community then. Today it's the opposite. The record business is going that way; it used to be very convivial and very social. You would meet someone in a bar, go ahead try it out and all that. Then there where small family businesses where as today you have major corporations, international corporations, where as right now they may own a hundred catalogues or more.

Mike
Also then the records reflected the tastes of the owners. Some maybe make records whose tastes are Mississippi Blues and other record companies may make Rock 'n' Roll or Rhythm and Blues or whatever. They had different styles and frequently a label would have in his directive a certain kind of music. Then they were all bought up.

Question
Tell us the Red Bird story?

Mike
We just got bored after awhile.

Question
As songwriters who obviously rely on royalties to make a living. When you see what's happening with people using Napster. How do you feel? Do you think this will put an end to professional songwriting?

Mike
I hope not, we're suing. Jerry and I are the nominal plaintiffs against this particular case.

Jerry
You'd better talk to him about it because he knows all about it.

Mike
We were at a congressional hearing and I was a witness, I sat between two guys, one was representing MP3 the other was representing Universal and they where talking about how each one was affecting the other and so on and so forth. All record companies like to tell the music publishers that more records are sold than they do the source, the songwriters. Anyway, this happened on the Thursday and I went to Loa Angeles on the Monday, and it was announced that Universal had bought MP3. So I'm wondering if that happened over the weekend. I doubt it.

Question
Of all the songs that you've produced. What are your particular favourites? Yes of the songs that you've produced.

Jerry
All of them

Mike
"Hound Dog" the Willie Mae Thornton record, "Is That All There Is" by Peggy Lee, "Stand By Me". Of the ones we didn't write, "Save The Last Dance For Me".

Question
In hindsight, are there any you don't like?

Mike
That we've produced? If I remembered any, I wouldn't tell you.

Question
I heard that you like Hip-Hop?

Mike
I was impressed by the first Hip-Hop or first Rap record that I ever heard, which was "The Message" by GrandMaster Flash. It was original, raw and political. A lot of it now is just bland with a lack of tune to it.

Question
Do you think there are any comparisons between Elvis and the way he took over everything he was doing, you where there, and what Elvis was doing right through to what Eminem is doing today and all these other white artists?

Mike
Yes there is a similarity in a sense, as Elvis sold to a predominately white audience.

Jerry
They're all good. Although I'm not that interested in that movement, but pop singing, as I see it today is not as exciting as it was back then. I don't see anything out there now that does it, not like, say Elvis was back then.

Mike
No, but when it's original, political, but once the opportunistic record companies take advantage of the fact, well that's that.

Interview abruptly stopped by manager.

After Press Conference Discussions

After the press conference both Leiber and Stoller stayed around for awhile for some additional discussions and gave us the opportunity to have some pictures taken. Of the comments we have selected including some exclusive comments, the comments either cover subjects not covered in the press conference or comments that elaborate on what had been said earlier.

Talking about the Internet and copyright infringement

Mike The Internet is going to be a problem for all writers, book writers, scriptwriters, journalism and songwriters. But, it really all has to do with copyright. But if we lose the importance of copyright then I think we'll have much less writing and the defining of culture.

Talking about the fact that they are white not black. Like their music.

Jerry
Well we are.

Mike
That's their problem. No we're not surprised. We are white guys. Well we thought of ourselves as black, very much so.

Additional discussions about the song Hound Dog

Mike
It's not that it wasn't to my liking, it's just that when I first heard it I was disappointed, I was comparing it to the original record by Big Mama Thornton. You must remember Elvis knew the Big Mama record, but it was with a woman's lyrics.

Jerry
I don't know if I would call it sabotage but the lyrics were changed by Freddie Bell and the Bluebells. They where rehearsing for a show in Las Vegas and Elvis was walking through the lounge and he heard the song. Elvis had this talent of remembering every tune, and he heard them sing the song and he went out and did it. He went ahead and made a record of it. They changed my lyrics.

Talking about their passion for writing

Jerry
I don't know where the passion came from. I had a lot of access, interaction and contact with the black community, but I'm not sure.

Talking about their previous quote, "We don't write songs, we write records"

Mike
It's a statement one of us made and he's lived to regret it, we've both lived to regret it. We've tried to get people to stop using that quote.

Jerry
I was looking for a way, I coined the phrase, to tell people that what we did was something special. Not like anybody else, and not just to say that we were special, but also to through some light on the fact that it was the truth. We didn't write songs like Irving Berlin and Cole Porter. We wrote songs with the recording session in mind. We wrote songs that can't be less than 2 minutes 20 seconds, or more than 3 minutes 40 seconds. We wrote to the stopwatch. Not that we were mechanical, but after awhile we got to the point that it seemed to be mechanical. What we wrote were not songs but what we conceived were records. With the Coasters songs we wrote out the little saxophone phases between lyrics. So we had the concept of the whole thing.

Talking about Ben E. King and the song Stand By Me

Mike
Yes, when Ben E. King was young he had a very mature styling of any of the singers at that time. He had this very comfortable, very mature style.

On finding out we were from Scotland

Mike
How's Gerry Rafferty, he's from Scotland. We produced his first album "Stealers Wheel" and the second one "Ferguslie Park". It was done at Apple; the building was totally empty. Nothing but a shell, that was in '72 and '73.

End of Interview

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