analolaygwani
Mark VII Class
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2013
How was your childhood in New York? How did you grow up?
Growing up and hanging out in New York was fun. Typical of children then, that was my world, and I had little thought of what other life style to lead. Family life wasn’t particularly good although I didn’t know any different at the time. Both my parents were show-biz professionals and pretty focused on their own lives, egos and careers. Probably not an unfamiliar story.
How old were you when you started to be really interested in music? When did you realize that you wanted to be a musician? what motivated you to ? What were your expectations? Did you start alone? did anyone support you?
I have to credit my mom and dad in part for the exposure. My mom was a singer of slight renown and was often surrounded with people who were musical in themselves. Looking back, I’d have to credit part of my interest to her accompanist, a piano player named Nat. He was always cool, always in control and the melodies were stimulating to my young mind. Later on Nat actually gave me some singing lessons.
My first interest was in the piano, and I started lessons mostly of a classical vein, and began to compose at the age of 5 or 6. I remember my first concert for my parents, proudly playing one of my new pieces for them in our living room. As was par for my parents, while I was playing they started a low-volume argument with each other. The diva in me got the best and, interrupted by them sniping at each other, I slammed the piano closed and announced, “I’ll never play again.”
Whoops… I guess I was pretty serious about it and didn’t play for many years after.
In the sixties I bought an electric organ and a guitar, and dove into music once again.
The experience of creating songs was amazing, and the opportunity to mix lyrics with rhythm and melody seemed like a perfect world. I started to bring pieces to record into the studio, mostly Tower Sound Studios in New York. Today I’d probably have had a set up in my own home but back then the primary choice for me was Tower, working primarily with studio musicians. Tower was where the songs on my album were created.
From time to time I co-wrote with friends, and wrote several songs with Barry Peters, although none of these were recorded. Barry is still a friend to this day. It’s interesting to note that neither of us knew much about music, and Marvin Hamlisch, the late great wirter/composer wrote up a lead sheet from Barry and my song.
One of the recording engineers at Tower and I got together on a song, “I Can’t Stay Here Anymore,” which was the flipside on a 45 released on Impex Records. The A side was “It Happened,” one of the cuts on the album.
Could you tell about how was the day by day, a weekend, friends, your school, your job, your dreams during those days? How was youth on those days? How was Manhattan and your environment?
As a child of the city, Manhattan in particular, the heart of New York, my biggest interest was in girls. Ah, what a creature God created. Soft and warm and challenging. Music played in well to that as an expression of the ups and downs of relationships. I grew up on the West Side, and finally moved to just above Times Square. City life was fun with the emphasis on “doing things” as opposed to taking in the beauty of life around you. Concrete dominated nature, and the trips to Central Park for football and baseball were diversion from the hard edges of buildings and sidewalks. Central Park had amazing concerts though, and sometimes 4 significant groups would play at one sitting for $1 admission. Later I spent time on Long Island and the a place called The World, which played videos and had dancing, and I remember concerts at Fillmore East.
I worked several jobs at recording studios, Bell Sound and later No Soap Radio, the latter being near my place on 8th Street in the West Village. Ultimately the need to make a living edged out my concentration on singing and writing, and these studio gigs helped in the transition. I wrote a country-tinged song at Bell Sound which I still to this day run through my head. “I Won’t Be Like A Brother, Lover, Anymore.” It was never released.
In the sixties it supposed youth people to consume any type of drugs, grass, lsd... did you or your friends have any experience with them? And the rest of the people which attend to the clubs?
were there many people at the underground music scene? any anecdotes of that era?
Ah, yes, the sixties. Drugs and free love. J I dabbled in most but not the heaviest drugs and mostly preferred plain old grass and hash. I never did LSD, although I had some given to me by a friend, Roy. I debated for several weeks whether I should drop it or not. I realized that my body was very sensitive to even cannabis and it was probably unwise for me to do acid. I ended the debate by flushing the LSD down the toilet.
I loved grass though, definitely my drug of choice, and felt it opened a lot of doors for me that might not have creaked open otherwise. Even grass though comes with a price, which is the monitor or censor part of the mind gets altered as well so what seemed brilliant when high, was really pretty bad when not. Ultimately I liked my head better straight than high and gave up drugs totally. To this day I don’t even take aspirin and stay as far away from prescription drugs as possibly. The potential damages and dependency on legal drugs for the most part outweigh the benefits.
The clubs were great back then. Elektra courted me for a while and I saw the Doors play. Bob Dylan was at Lincoln Center, Jimi Hendrix, and. Jose Feliciano at a tiny club in Greenwich Village. Richie Havens walked into a publishing company while I was there, and they congratulated him on his success. That truly was an era of some great, groundbreaking music.
How did you become sound engineer at Bell sound from 68 to 70? could you describe or depict how was your job and how the studios were, which kind of equipment did you have?
(Here in Gijon we have a 100% analogic studio ... so we love these things..
) http://www.circoperrotti.com/
I was actually an assistant sound engineer at Bell, working with the engineers to set up the studio for recording, and break it down after a session. It was okay as a job but as an artist it may have been a mistake as it allowed me to take home a paycheck instead of working harder at singing and writing. Ultimately I enjoyed learning from the people there and wouldn’t have minded making a career of it. I went to the studio manager, realizing I was doing very well at all duties assigned, and asked for a 25 cent an hour raise. He gave me a ration of corporate BS, and how if he gave me a raise, he’d have to give everyone else a raise. Being one of those guys who like to be appreciated for me, not only as a team member, I left for greener fields.
Bell had, if not cutting-edge equipment, rock solid standards. It was all analog I believe, ranging up to a 12-track. Ampex is a name that pops out to me, along with AKG and Sennheiser mikes. I should also mention their huge Altec Voice of the Theater speakers.
I wound up at No Soap Radio, a small studio which specialized mainly in recording radio commercials. I was the house engineer there and we now and again did one of my songs for fun.
When did you decided to move to cinema industry and move to Los Angeles?
Movies were always the love of my life. Song writing was creative, and in a way similar to making a movie except on a smaller scale, but movies were and are for me the epitome of starting with nothing, and winding up with a product which millions of people can enjoy. While in New York I’d worked for a while as a production assistant on some films, and when I’d had enough of New York and its masses of concrete, I came to L.A. Looking back at work I’d done that I enjoyed, the movies stood out. I tried several types of jobs, including Assistant Director, but the path of least resistance and greatest enjoyment – that is suitable for my temperament – led to “set dressing.”
You have worked at art departments and i heard as a scripter too, in many hollywood films, for example Clint Eastwood world known film like flags of our fathers... How is your work in cinema industry?
I was fortunate to find a job that I could be creative within, and also lucky in the people I met. Marvin March, one of the foremost Set Decorators of his time, hired me as his “Lead Man” for “The Toy” with Richard Pryor and Jackie Gleason. Marvin and I did about 8-9 films together including Fletch, with Chevy Chase; Peggy Sue Got Married, with Kathleen Turner and Nicolas Cage; and Ghostbusters, with Bill Murray and Sigourney Weaver. I worked on CSI for five years, and one of my nicer work experiences was In Treatment with Gabriel Byrne, who I genuinely liked. I think Gabriel won an Emmy for that show.
Like a cinema wise you are, which is your favourite genre and what do you think about 40s,50s,60s cinema compared to nowaddays?
I love the harder-edged genres. Action, Thrillers and Horror stand out in my mind. But any genre done well is worth watching. From early to later, films like Lawrence of Arabia, and Bridge on the River Kwai were amazing. Coming closer to today, The Fugitive is one of the best action films ever made, but I loved Die Hard. Avatar was terrific if not terribly “deep,” and I totally appreciate work like Drive with layered characters.
Luc Besson does some amazing work, including The Professional and Unleashed.
I think the difference between the older films and today stems from the attitude of the Studios. As I understand film history, when the studio were closely owned by individuals who wanted to make profitable movies they were more willing to take a chance on something new. They realized no one knew what a success looked like before it happened so they took more of shotgun approach. 8 comedies, 8 actions, 8 horror, etc. Make a lot of films at a decent price and the successes and failures would balance out. Today, lawyers and accountants seem to have more of a say and marketing needs to show in advance why a film could make money. It’s Show Business not Show Art.
A film like Casablanca would probably not get done by a major today, although it might be made independently. CGI and special effects seem to hold too much influence in today’s filmmaking at the sacrifice of story.
Do you still compose?
Alas, no. I long ago sold my Hammond organ, and finally traded my rarely-used Goya guitar to a friend for sprinkler work in my yard. I do think of melodies now and again, and reworking some of my old songs but I’m not active in music.
My great interest today is in screenwriting. As a 3rd or 4th career, I return to my original love of film and since my retirement from set dressing and props, I work almost every day at writing and selling screenplays. Consistent with what I like to watch, I write primarily in the harder genres: thriller, horror and action. I do think I write differently than many writers and have been told my style is distinctive.
Do you collect records and are you interested in music? what kind of music? which are your favourite bands of all times?
My film collection dwarfs my CD collection by far. Although I still love a good song, I’d rather sit down at the computer and work on a script than listen to music. Favorites? The Stones, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Bob Dylan, Elton John.
Man, I sound like an old fogie rattling off those names.
I also have to add my admiration for Jewel, not only as an artist, but as a person who made her life go right.
Which are your hobbies? Prefered writers? artists?
Hobbies is a hard one. Writing is such an important and integral part of my day. It’d be a hobby if I wasn’t totally serious about getting projects done. I’d say my hobby and professional worlds have combined into an amalgam called screenplay writing.
If anything could be called a hobby with me, it’s keeping up on the latest in non-mainstream-medicine advances, especially in nutrition. I don’t know if you’re aware of it or not but here in the U.S. foods with questionably safe records are being sold without labeling. GMO foods, Genetically Modified, are in much of what we eat here, and the long- and short-term effects haven’t been fully studied. Do you have this situation in Spain?
When you ask about writers, I’m thinking you mean screenwriters but I’ll answer both ways.
Brian Helgeland, Ron Bass, the team of Orci and Kurtzman, and Bruce Joel Rubin. I guess I need to drop J.J. Abrams’ name in there too as a producer/writer.
I try to read some every night and James Patterson, Tess Gerittsen, Dean Koontz and Jeffery Deaver are all excellent.
I’ll get back to saying it again though. I love movies, and study film constantly even if it’s as little as the first ten minutes, or a First Act to see how things are set up. Ah, yes and thinking of The Fugitive, which I watch a lot, let me throw in a pair of great action movie writers in Jeb Stuart and David Twohy.
Have you ever been to Spain? Did you like it?
I’ve never been to Spain but it seems like a country I’d enjoy. It has such a rich history. Not to mention what would my life be like if not for explorers for Spain like Columbus, Vespucci, de Soto and Coronado?
MUSIC
How it was the radio on those days? Which kind of shows did you listen to?
All I can add to the above music choices is that I cared more for the music than to listen to a personality. The stations that played more music than talk, I listened to. Don’t underestimate though the influence of TV on music. Like Ed Sullivan, which was a huge breakthrough for The Beatles, and Elvis for that matter.
Which band or which kind of music did you listen to before to start to composing ? Did you have idols? anyone who inspired you?
All of the above, with the addition of “The Girls”: Joan Baez, Judy Collins and the like. The Mammas and Pappas were an influence as well. If you get right down to it though, The Beatles and The Stones, The Stones and The Beatles. J
How did you acquire your musician skills?
As a kid I had piano lessons, and guitar was self-taught out of a book. I never considered myself very proficient at either, and hindsight says I should’ve concentrated on increasing those skills. It seems I wrote despite my limitations on those instruments.
Did you have a good equipment to listen to the records at your place? were you able to get a good equipment to compose, to play?
Outside of some copies of my album I own very few records. If I listen to music I pop in a CD.
Did you record demos before to record and release your first single? Are there released? did you produce them by yourself? How were your first recording sesions at Tower sound studios in Manhattan?
All the songs on my album (and more) were originally demos. The three that were released (It Happened, the Fairy Princess, and the Last Remains of Our Live) were all done by me at Tower Studios. I was fortunate to have an excellent keyboardist and arranger named Frank (I don’t remember his last name) who was invaluable both to the sound and my own learning curve. He gets a lot of the credit for what finally came out on tape.
How did you meet Herb Ostrow? how was the process to reach to an agreement to record at IMPEX?
Herb and I were introduced through the owners of Tower. The record was a pick-up of what we’d already done. The B-side was written by one of the Tower guys and recorded at Tower before I met Herb.
Were there any distribution and publicity troubles with your first single? Could tell us anything about WLS radio at Chicago where they played "it happened"?
If I had it all over to do I would’ve been much more involved in the distribution and promo. As it was I left it all to Herb and only heard anecdotally about WLS. I appreciate their playing the record and I should’ve been more involved.
We have found a video of you in youtube singing at the studio "the last reminds of our love" , seems that you recorded another one, is it public?
Really? I didn’t know it was on YouTube. J There was also one made of the Fairy Princess but the young lady in the video asked me not to release it when the album came out. She was by then a grandmother and wished no part of her past.
**
(Several hours later): I went to YouTube and found what I think you’re referring to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd-ziFfSXLk&feature=player_detailpage
I thoroughly enjoyed watching the video. It is my recording but not the original promo video. This one appears to be taken at a club or some sort of party even. I loved it but it’s not the one we made. Hmmm, now if I could find the original…
Where did you record your second single? Was Rodin Label your own record label? Did this label release more records?
Rodin was my own label, and that was the only record released on it. I heard it got some play in Florida here in the U.S. but I don’t know much beyond that.
How many Paul Martin records more or less were sold on those days?
Seven.
I’m joking. That’s the number I give when I tell the story about how the album came about. I don’t know how many sold, although I do know I had a fan or two so they might’ve bought one. I just did a search and found a copy of It Happened on a website at $130. That’s more than I made on the original release.
Could tell us about gigs? where did you play? could you tell us about that? every tale or detail is interesting (we would give an arm to buy a time machine...)
I never once played live. The videos however were distributed and got some play. I can’t tell you where or how many. I lived in a bubble back then as I look back now and wonder why I wasn’t out there trying to do promo and gigs. I guess the bottom line is I was scared. Whoops.
Did you go to clubs at night? Did you attend to gigs, concerts? as i said before every tale or detail is interesting for us.
I live in a small mountain community outside Tehachapi in California. A good percentage of the entertainment here, outside of personal contact, is found at the Hitching Post Theatre in town. They get movies not long after L.A., so I can keep up that way. The clubs I go to are visited vicariously in my screenplays as I write.
When you were writing echo, last reminds of our love, it happened... what inspired you? What are the meanings of them?
Wow. There’s a question and a half. Last Remains is the easiest as it bemoans love lost. Who was the lady, or was she in fact real or fictional? Sometimes it’s hard to separate fact from fancy when you’re writing – they mix easily – but in hindsight it had to be about my first true love, Nadya (last name withheld). The thing with breakups is that they’re rarely about what they seem to be about and of course ego is the antithesis of love other than self.
It Happened on the other hand was a fictional account of a young woman’s first sexual experience with me.
There are a lot of carefully added effects to this songs, instruments, could you tell us about it?
A lot of these were courtesy of an instrument called the Ondeolin. I can’t guarantee the spelling of that but it was an early electronically-sounded instrument, played as a keyboard. Think in terms of an electric guitar and how the “pure” notes can be made to sound different. The Ondeolin was a piano-like instrument with a lot of latitude in the sounds available. As above, I was fortunate to have “Frank” with me in the studio to squeeze a lot out of the Ondeolin.
In general we also used percussion, and various other methods to add to the overall effects. I worked with some talented studio people.
You know there an LP by distortion records released on 1996? did they contact you? How was the process to release all that stuff?
I got a call one day perhaps 10-12 years ago from a man who began by asking if I was Paul Myerberg. I said yes. He continued, “Then you’re Paul Martin?” I started smiling. He went on to say he’d tracked me down through BMI (or ASCAP) and asked if I was willing to be on an album of Philadelphia garage artists. He had a copy of the Impex recording (one of the sevenJ) and made and distributed 33rpm vinyl records. I said “Sure, but I’m not from Philadelphia.”
We got to talking and when he found out I had a bunch more sides he asked if he could listen to them, and would I be interested in my own album. Long story short, it took around 30 years after my singles but I got my album.
Just an anecdote, This weekend 2000 youth people from Spain and Europe are going to be dancing " it happened " at purple weekend 2013 (http://www.purpleweekend.com/ chocolate watchband,trogg,remains are some bands which played at it in the past) in any moment of both tonite and Saturday allnighters along the best hits of that era.
I can’t tell you how exciting this is, to know my music has survived and is being enjoyed in Spain and Europe. I’d love to see anything you have of this.
Thanks for the opportunity.
If you want to add more questiones, anything , you are free to do it
Growing up and hanging out in New York was fun. Typical of children then, that was my world, and I had little thought of what other life style to lead. Family life wasn’t particularly good although I didn’t know any different at the time. Both my parents were show-biz professionals and pretty focused on their own lives, egos and careers. Probably not an unfamiliar story.
How old were you when you started to be really interested in music? When did you realize that you wanted to be a musician? what motivated you to ? What were your expectations? Did you start alone? did anyone support you?
I have to credit my mom and dad in part for the exposure. My mom was a singer of slight renown and was often surrounded with people who were musical in themselves. Looking back, I’d have to credit part of my interest to her accompanist, a piano player named Nat. He was always cool, always in control and the melodies were stimulating to my young mind. Later on Nat actually gave me some singing lessons.
My first interest was in the piano, and I started lessons mostly of a classical vein, and began to compose at the age of 5 or 6. I remember my first concert for my parents, proudly playing one of my new pieces for them in our living room. As was par for my parents, while I was playing they started a low-volume argument with each other. The diva in me got the best and, interrupted by them sniping at each other, I slammed the piano closed and announced, “I’ll never play again.”
Whoops… I guess I was pretty serious about it and didn’t play for many years after.
In the sixties I bought an electric organ and a guitar, and dove into music once again.
The experience of creating songs was amazing, and the opportunity to mix lyrics with rhythm and melody seemed like a perfect world. I started to bring pieces to record into the studio, mostly Tower Sound Studios in New York. Today I’d probably have had a set up in my own home but back then the primary choice for me was Tower, working primarily with studio musicians. Tower was where the songs on my album were created.
From time to time I co-wrote with friends, and wrote several songs with Barry Peters, although none of these were recorded. Barry is still a friend to this day. It’s interesting to note that neither of us knew much about music, and Marvin Hamlisch, the late great wirter/composer wrote up a lead sheet from Barry and my song.
One of the recording engineers at Tower and I got together on a song, “I Can’t Stay Here Anymore,” which was the flipside on a 45 released on Impex Records. The A side was “It Happened,” one of the cuts on the album.
Could you tell about how was the day by day, a weekend, friends, your school, your job, your dreams during those days? How was youth on those days? How was Manhattan and your environment?
As a child of the city, Manhattan in particular, the heart of New York, my biggest interest was in girls. Ah, what a creature God created. Soft and warm and challenging. Music played in well to that as an expression of the ups and downs of relationships. I grew up on the West Side, and finally moved to just above Times Square. City life was fun with the emphasis on “doing things” as opposed to taking in the beauty of life around you. Concrete dominated nature, and the trips to Central Park for football and baseball were diversion from the hard edges of buildings and sidewalks. Central Park had amazing concerts though, and sometimes 4 significant groups would play at one sitting for $1 admission. Later I spent time on Long Island and the a place called The World, which played videos and had dancing, and I remember concerts at Fillmore East.
I worked several jobs at recording studios, Bell Sound and later No Soap Radio, the latter being near my place on 8th Street in the West Village. Ultimately the need to make a living edged out my concentration on singing and writing, and these studio gigs helped in the transition. I wrote a country-tinged song at Bell Sound which I still to this day run through my head. “I Won’t Be Like A Brother, Lover, Anymore.” It was never released.
In the sixties it supposed youth people to consume any type of drugs, grass, lsd... did you or your friends have any experience with them? And the rest of the people which attend to the clubs?
were there many people at the underground music scene? any anecdotes of that era?
Ah, yes, the sixties. Drugs and free love. J I dabbled in most but not the heaviest drugs and mostly preferred plain old grass and hash. I never did LSD, although I had some given to me by a friend, Roy. I debated for several weeks whether I should drop it or not. I realized that my body was very sensitive to even cannabis and it was probably unwise for me to do acid. I ended the debate by flushing the LSD down the toilet.
I loved grass though, definitely my drug of choice, and felt it opened a lot of doors for me that might not have creaked open otherwise. Even grass though comes with a price, which is the monitor or censor part of the mind gets altered as well so what seemed brilliant when high, was really pretty bad when not. Ultimately I liked my head better straight than high and gave up drugs totally. To this day I don’t even take aspirin and stay as far away from prescription drugs as possibly. The potential damages and dependency on legal drugs for the most part outweigh the benefits.
The clubs were great back then. Elektra courted me for a while and I saw the Doors play. Bob Dylan was at Lincoln Center, Jimi Hendrix, and. Jose Feliciano at a tiny club in Greenwich Village. Richie Havens walked into a publishing company while I was there, and they congratulated him on his success. That truly was an era of some great, groundbreaking music.
How did you become sound engineer at Bell sound from 68 to 70? could you describe or depict how was your job and how the studios were, which kind of equipment did you have?
(Here in Gijon we have a 100% analogic studio ... so we love these things..
) http://www.circoperrotti.com/I was actually an assistant sound engineer at Bell, working with the engineers to set up the studio for recording, and break it down after a session. It was okay as a job but as an artist it may have been a mistake as it allowed me to take home a paycheck instead of working harder at singing and writing. Ultimately I enjoyed learning from the people there and wouldn’t have minded making a career of it. I went to the studio manager, realizing I was doing very well at all duties assigned, and asked for a 25 cent an hour raise. He gave me a ration of corporate BS, and how if he gave me a raise, he’d have to give everyone else a raise. Being one of those guys who like to be appreciated for me, not only as a team member, I left for greener fields.
Bell had, if not cutting-edge equipment, rock solid standards. It was all analog I believe, ranging up to a 12-track. Ampex is a name that pops out to me, along with AKG and Sennheiser mikes. I should also mention their huge Altec Voice of the Theater speakers.
I wound up at No Soap Radio, a small studio which specialized mainly in recording radio commercials. I was the house engineer there and we now and again did one of my songs for fun.
When did you decided to move to cinema industry and move to Los Angeles?
Movies were always the love of my life. Song writing was creative, and in a way similar to making a movie except on a smaller scale, but movies were and are for me the epitome of starting with nothing, and winding up with a product which millions of people can enjoy. While in New York I’d worked for a while as a production assistant on some films, and when I’d had enough of New York and its masses of concrete, I came to L.A. Looking back at work I’d done that I enjoyed, the movies stood out. I tried several types of jobs, including Assistant Director, but the path of least resistance and greatest enjoyment – that is suitable for my temperament – led to “set dressing.”
You have worked at art departments and i heard as a scripter too, in many hollywood films, for example Clint Eastwood world known film like flags of our fathers... How is your work in cinema industry?
I was fortunate to find a job that I could be creative within, and also lucky in the people I met. Marvin March, one of the foremost Set Decorators of his time, hired me as his “Lead Man” for “The Toy” with Richard Pryor and Jackie Gleason. Marvin and I did about 8-9 films together including Fletch, with Chevy Chase; Peggy Sue Got Married, with Kathleen Turner and Nicolas Cage; and Ghostbusters, with Bill Murray and Sigourney Weaver. I worked on CSI for five years, and one of my nicer work experiences was In Treatment with Gabriel Byrne, who I genuinely liked. I think Gabriel won an Emmy for that show.
Like a cinema wise you are, which is your favourite genre and what do you think about 40s,50s,60s cinema compared to nowaddays?
I love the harder-edged genres. Action, Thrillers and Horror stand out in my mind. But any genre done well is worth watching. From early to later, films like Lawrence of Arabia, and Bridge on the River Kwai were amazing. Coming closer to today, The Fugitive is one of the best action films ever made, but I loved Die Hard. Avatar was terrific if not terribly “deep,” and I totally appreciate work like Drive with layered characters.
Luc Besson does some amazing work, including The Professional and Unleashed.
I think the difference between the older films and today stems from the attitude of the Studios. As I understand film history, when the studio were closely owned by individuals who wanted to make profitable movies they were more willing to take a chance on something new. They realized no one knew what a success looked like before it happened so they took more of shotgun approach. 8 comedies, 8 actions, 8 horror, etc. Make a lot of films at a decent price and the successes and failures would balance out. Today, lawyers and accountants seem to have more of a say and marketing needs to show in advance why a film could make money. It’s Show Business not Show Art.
A film like Casablanca would probably not get done by a major today, although it might be made independently. CGI and special effects seem to hold too much influence in today’s filmmaking at the sacrifice of story.
Do you still compose?
Alas, no. I long ago sold my Hammond organ, and finally traded my rarely-used Goya guitar to a friend for sprinkler work in my yard. I do think of melodies now and again, and reworking some of my old songs but I’m not active in music.
My great interest today is in screenwriting. As a 3rd or 4th career, I return to my original love of film and since my retirement from set dressing and props, I work almost every day at writing and selling screenplays. Consistent with what I like to watch, I write primarily in the harder genres: thriller, horror and action. I do think I write differently than many writers and have been told my style is distinctive.
Do you collect records and are you interested in music? what kind of music? which are your favourite bands of all times?
My film collection dwarfs my CD collection by far. Although I still love a good song, I’d rather sit down at the computer and work on a script than listen to music. Favorites? The Stones, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Bob Dylan, Elton John.
Man, I sound like an old fogie rattling off those names.
I also have to add my admiration for Jewel, not only as an artist, but as a person who made her life go right.
Which are your hobbies? Prefered writers? artists?
Hobbies is a hard one. Writing is such an important and integral part of my day. It’d be a hobby if I wasn’t totally serious about getting projects done. I’d say my hobby and professional worlds have combined into an amalgam called screenplay writing.
If anything could be called a hobby with me, it’s keeping up on the latest in non-mainstream-medicine advances, especially in nutrition. I don’t know if you’re aware of it or not but here in the U.S. foods with questionably safe records are being sold without labeling. GMO foods, Genetically Modified, are in much of what we eat here, and the long- and short-term effects haven’t been fully studied. Do you have this situation in Spain?
When you ask about writers, I’m thinking you mean screenwriters but I’ll answer both ways.
Brian Helgeland, Ron Bass, the team of Orci and Kurtzman, and Bruce Joel Rubin. I guess I need to drop J.J. Abrams’ name in there too as a producer/writer.
I try to read some every night and James Patterson, Tess Gerittsen, Dean Koontz and Jeffery Deaver are all excellent.
I’ll get back to saying it again though. I love movies, and study film constantly even if it’s as little as the first ten minutes, or a First Act to see how things are set up. Ah, yes and thinking of The Fugitive, which I watch a lot, let me throw in a pair of great action movie writers in Jeb Stuart and David Twohy.
Have you ever been to Spain? Did you like it?
I’ve never been to Spain but it seems like a country I’d enjoy. It has such a rich history. Not to mention what would my life be like if not for explorers for Spain like Columbus, Vespucci, de Soto and Coronado?
MUSIC
How it was the radio on those days? Which kind of shows did you listen to?
All I can add to the above music choices is that I cared more for the music than to listen to a personality. The stations that played more music than talk, I listened to. Don’t underestimate though the influence of TV on music. Like Ed Sullivan, which was a huge breakthrough for The Beatles, and Elvis for that matter.
Which band or which kind of music did you listen to before to start to composing ? Did you have idols? anyone who inspired you?
All of the above, with the addition of “The Girls”: Joan Baez, Judy Collins and the like. The Mammas and Pappas were an influence as well. If you get right down to it though, The Beatles and The Stones, The Stones and The Beatles. J
How did you acquire your musician skills?
As a kid I had piano lessons, and guitar was self-taught out of a book. I never considered myself very proficient at either, and hindsight says I should’ve concentrated on increasing those skills. It seems I wrote despite my limitations on those instruments.
Did you have a good equipment to listen to the records at your place? were you able to get a good equipment to compose, to play?
Outside of some copies of my album I own very few records. If I listen to music I pop in a CD.
Did you record demos before to record and release your first single? Are there released? did you produce them by yourself? How were your first recording sesions at Tower sound studios in Manhattan?
All the songs on my album (and more) were originally demos. The three that were released (It Happened, the Fairy Princess, and the Last Remains of Our Live) were all done by me at Tower Studios. I was fortunate to have an excellent keyboardist and arranger named Frank (I don’t remember his last name) who was invaluable both to the sound and my own learning curve. He gets a lot of the credit for what finally came out on tape.
How did you meet Herb Ostrow? how was the process to reach to an agreement to record at IMPEX?
Herb and I were introduced through the owners of Tower. The record was a pick-up of what we’d already done. The B-side was written by one of the Tower guys and recorded at Tower before I met Herb.
Were there any distribution and publicity troubles with your first single? Could tell us anything about WLS radio at Chicago where they played "it happened"?
If I had it all over to do I would’ve been much more involved in the distribution and promo. As it was I left it all to Herb and only heard anecdotally about WLS. I appreciate their playing the record and I should’ve been more involved.
We have found a video of you in youtube singing at the studio "the last reminds of our love" , seems that you recorded another one, is it public?
Really? I didn’t know it was on YouTube. J There was also one made of the Fairy Princess but the young lady in the video asked me not to release it when the album came out. She was by then a grandmother and wished no part of her past.
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(Several hours later): I went to YouTube and found what I think you’re referring to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd-ziFfSXLk&feature=player_detailpage
I thoroughly enjoyed watching the video. It is my recording but not the original promo video. This one appears to be taken at a club or some sort of party even. I loved it but it’s not the one we made. Hmmm, now if I could find the original…
Where did you record your second single? Was Rodin Label your own record label? Did this label release more records?
Rodin was my own label, and that was the only record released on it. I heard it got some play in Florida here in the U.S. but I don’t know much beyond that.
How many Paul Martin records more or less were sold on those days?
Seven.
I’m joking. That’s the number I give when I tell the story about how the album came about. I don’t know how many sold, although I do know I had a fan or two so they might’ve bought one. I just did a search and found a copy of It Happened on a website at $130. That’s more than I made on the original release.
Could tell us about gigs? where did you play? could you tell us about that? every tale or detail is interesting (we would give an arm to buy a time machine...)
I never once played live. The videos however were distributed and got some play. I can’t tell you where or how many. I lived in a bubble back then as I look back now and wonder why I wasn’t out there trying to do promo and gigs. I guess the bottom line is I was scared. Whoops.
Did you go to clubs at night? Did you attend to gigs, concerts? as i said before every tale or detail is interesting for us.
I live in a small mountain community outside Tehachapi in California. A good percentage of the entertainment here, outside of personal contact, is found at the Hitching Post Theatre in town. They get movies not long after L.A., so I can keep up that way. The clubs I go to are visited vicariously in my screenplays as I write.
When you were writing echo, last reminds of our love, it happened... what inspired you? What are the meanings of them?
Wow. There’s a question and a half. Last Remains is the easiest as it bemoans love lost. Who was the lady, or was she in fact real or fictional? Sometimes it’s hard to separate fact from fancy when you’re writing – they mix easily – but in hindsight it had to be about my first true love, Nadya (last name withheld). The thing with breakups is that they’re rarely about what they seem to be about and of course ego is the antithesis of love other than self.
It Happened on the other hand was a fictional account of a young woman’s first sexual experience with me.
There are a lot of carefully added effects to this songs, instruments, could you tell us about it?
A lot of these were courtesy of an instrument called the Ondeolin. I can’t guarantee the spelling of that but it was an early electronically-sounded instrument, played as a keyboard. Think in terms of an electric guitar and how the “pure” notes can be made to sound different. The Ondeolin was a piano-like instrument with a lot of latitude in the sounds available. As above, I was fortunate to have “Frank” with me in the studio to squeeze a lot out of the Ondeolin.
In general we also used percussion, and various other methods to add to the overall effects. I worked with some talented studio people.
You know there an LP by distortion records released on 1996? did they contact you? How was the process to release all that stuff?
I got a call one day perhaps 10-12 years ago from a man who began by asking if I was Paul Myerberg. I said yes. He continued, “Then you’re Paul Martin?” I started smiling. He went on to say he’d tracked me down through BMI (or ASCAP) and asked if I was willing to be on an album of Philadelphia garage artists. He had a copy of the Impex recording (one of the sevenJ) and made and distributed 33rpm vinyl records. I said “Sure, but I’m not from Philadelphia.”
We got to talking and when he found out I had a bunch more sides he asked if he could listen to them, and would I be interested in my own album. Long story short, it took around 30 years after my singles but I got my album.
Just an anecdote, This weekend 2000 youth people from Spain and Europe are going to be dancing " it happened " at purple weekend 2013 (http://www.purpleweekend.com/ chocolate watchband,trogg,remains are some bands which played at it in the past) in any moment of both tonite and Saturday allnighters along the best hits of that era.
I can’t tell you how exciting this is, to know my music has survived and is being enjoyed in Spain and Europe. I’d love to see anything you have of this.
Thanks for the opportunity.
If you want to add more questiones, anything , you are free to do it
