YouSaid · the spoken record

Bob Spitz

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73
first
2026-05-13
most recent
2026-05-13
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1
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podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “I say. All right. Well, we'll have to have that out on a different show, but we'll see about that. I'm going to learn to love them. I am going to come to understand, like I learned about Led Zeppelin, why this person made those albums and what makes them great.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I'm working on a project already. I'll tell you what it's about. It's about John Lenin's second act. It is from the breakup of the Beatles to his tragic death. It covers about 10 years of his life. And I think we're going to get a picture of John that we've never gotten before. Fortunately, I'm going to be one of the first people allowed into the John Lennon archives. So his scrapbooks are there, his journals are there, his diaries are there. No one's ever seen them. And I hope I'll be able to bring this remarkable man to life.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “I write so much because I can't believe that there's anybody in the world who would allow me to write. So I'm going to keep doing it until they tell me I can't. I learned very early on that writing was Come up with what you need to come up with. Take a walk. Walk away and come back to it. Think about it a little and you'll come to it. But I love the whole process of writing. To me, it's like doing a crossword puzzle. You have to think about it and look at all angles on it until you're sure what you're writing is the right thing. And it's like solving a puzzle every day. I feel great while I write and I feel great after I write. And the fact that my subconscious works at night and allows me to wake up in the morning and solve certain things. It's just, it's a fabulous feeling. I love doing it.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Such a treat. We write our books back to back in the same room so I can always shout out Becky, synonym forestious. And I mean, she loathes the fact that I would interrupt her writing, but we do that and we edit each other almost every night. We look over our work. We talk about it. It's the table conversation. We kind of get to live our books and to have somebody else who does the same thing and understands what I do and what I go through. It makes for a fabulous marriage.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “It's an intriguing film. It has like a soprano's ending, the same way the sopranos ended. Did the movie really end that way? We think it did. Could it be a fantasy? Perhaps we don't know. It's a movie that makes you think, and it's a movie that has a great political undertone. I think movies need to get that edge again today. I've seen that film too many times, but every time I do, I learn something from it.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “We're getting into my wife's profession here. My wife, Becky Aikman, is the real writer in the family. She spent 20 years as a reporter. She is a brilliant writer. And she felt that Fellman Louise was really one of the very first feminist movies. And it's an outlaw movie. And there was women live as men in the movies have always lived as outlaws. And why not? Why shouldn't they? Why shouldn't they talk the same way men talk and behave the same way men talk plus they looked out for themselves and when they were abused they fought back and so it's a controversial movie I mean people were still wondering was it Thelma or was it Willise who shot the man? We don't know and should they have ended the movie the way they ended the movie by we assume committing suicide.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Think he does when he's out in public people stop this guy on the street. I mean, you know, he's like a rock star and he gets a lot of letters from people, especially people who want to know if he's ever going to finish that last installment of the Johnson biography. I expect we're going to see that any day.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “I think he's too busy writing. This guy writes and researches around the clock. I have learned not to do that, but from what I've gathered, he's up to his eyeballs in work day and night. He lives to do that. That's his process.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Robert Carroll is the guy I look up to whenever it comes to writing biographies. That man has a way with words that is often intrigued me and humbled me. I was at a party one time and a guy came over and said, I hear you're writing a book about Ronald Reagan. There were about 150 people in this party. And I said, I am. He said, can you talk to me about it a little? And we sat down on the couch. And I looked and I saw over the man's shoulder my wife was going. Carroll. It's Robert Carroll, at which point my semi-intelligent dialogue became bedab, bedab, bedab, bedab. But he was an incredibly thoughtful man. He sent me a number of notes from time to time. He is the biographer's biographer. I don't know how he does it. A great reason.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “I think it was a nice grandfatherly old man. Yeah, I think he lost some of that snap, lost some of the fire in brimstone just in the last few years, learned how to appreciate his life a little more and his wife a little more, retired his home in Santa Barbara, in Montecito, and enjoyed riding horses. So, yeah, I think he was kind of grandfatherly. But although at the same time, never learned how to be a father. He was a very remote father.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “I think there was a lot of Ronald Reagan under that surface. He really cared about the laws that were being enacted and the relationships of lawmakers and the relationships that he had with foreign affairs people. And so I think he was still pretty riled up. Yes, he was a personality as a president. He knew how to turn on the charm. He could look in the camera and really sparkle like an actor would sparkle. And that's what made him connect with his audience. But I think there was still a lot of fire and brimstone under there.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Money, an unusual story, but when Reagan was in World War II, he put together promotional films for the Army. But he had read somewhere that the soldiers in World War I after the war were excused from paying taxes while they were soldiers. So Reagan just withheld his taxes during World War II because he was sure he didn't have to pay them. It didn't happen that way. And then he started being dunned for money by the IRS. And it irked him and he became obsessed with economics, obsessed with not paying money to the government, not paying a lot of taxes. And that ushered him right into the Republican Party.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “He was just a leftist. I think he would have been offended to have been called a communist in those days. He was still a patriot, but of course he was a Democrat, where he grew up in his hometown. There was a Democratic headquarters who ran it. His father did. And Ron came in to help him all the time. Ron and his brother. They were some of the only Democrats in that small city. It wasn't until after World War II that he went to the other side of the aisle.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “I don't think Senile. I think he was wearing down. His battery was wearing down. He was tired. He was too old to be president, I think, that second term. He napped repeatedly during the days. He didn't sneak away to do it. He did it in public. He would fall asleep at a cabinet meeting. But I don't think the senility happened until he had that accident right after he was out of office on July 4th. He fell off a horse. He hit his head. Something went wrong. And it was downhill from then on. Nancy knew it. There's a wonderful scene at the end of my book where she calls people together and she admits that Ronnie is not thinking clearly and they decide what to do and then he sits down and writes that heart-rendering speech about his lack of memory and an incredible moment, especially for a biographer to get that close to somebody.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “They were smart and they were willing to play for Red Holtzman, who played a smart game. He had one rule, and that was see the open man. That's what I loved about watching that team. They were selfless. They looked for the open man. They pass the ball. Today it's all, give me the ball. Give me the ball. They want to get the ball. They want to score their points. They want to look at the stats. I have sing players today sit on the bench. And the first thing they do is they want to see the stats. They want to see how many points they scored. None of the Knicks in those days cared about that. They cared about the team and winning the game and hitting the open man.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “He not only played for them, you know, he would come off the bench and he would sit back down on the bench and coach them as well. They didn't have any money. They couldn't afford a new coach. And Dave was a gregarious guy. You know, he sometimes didn't show up because he and his father loved to drink beer and they couldn't get it together to get to the game for the next day. But when it came time to finding who had a rapport with the rest of the players and could motivate them, this 24-year-old kid could. And so Dave wore both masks as a player and a coach. I don't think we've seen that happen since.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “About writing, not knowing Led Zeppelin, not knowing basketball, never voting for Ronald Reagan and yet becoming his biographer. Very fortunate that I may not have gone to grad school, but this is my, I've done a PhD in heavy metal. I've done a PhD in Republican politics and basketball. What a wonderful experience.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Yes, another thing I had no interest in, no knowledge of. Somebody asked me to write a book on the 1969 NIX. And I was kind of poor, young, and up-and-coming writer at the time. And I said, sure, I'll do it. I didn't know anything about basketball, but I got to talk to all of these wonderful individuals who played for the Knicks. And not only them, but all the great players I sought out all the great players who played opposite them, Oscar Robertson and Jerry West, who explained the game to me and explained how they interacted with the wonderful Nicks, you know, Bill Bradley and Walt Frasier and Dave De Busher, a team like we've never seen in New York since those days. And so I learned all I could about basketball. I became a lifelong Knicks fan. And it's one of the great things.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Never cook Chinese food. She had enormous respect for it, and it was one of her favorite cuisines. But I don't think I ever saw a walk in Julia's kitchen. She stayed away from that and she let others who knew how to do it better than her cooked Chinese food”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “A wide palette. When we got back to the United States, she said to me, Oh dear, we've eaten such good food. I want to take you to one of my favorite restaurants. And she did. She took me to McDonald's and we had a big Mac. So, you know, Julia could go high. She could go low. She was quite a character.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Fabulous. We ate three meals a day together, and otherwise we talked, and at those meals, I always said to her, Julia, you're six three, you're in great shape. How do you do it? And she went, Oh, dearie, I'll show you how I do it. And she took a knife and she divided a line right down the center of every meal that came. And then I watched as Julia ate one half. And when she was done with one half, she ate the second half as well. She was funny. She was intuitive. She loved people and loved watching them cook. I went into restaurant after restaurant with her in Italy where she marched into the kitchen and she demanded to know how many women were cooking in the kitchen. She wanted to make sure that women were being integrated more and more into the kitchen. And she also had...”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “She was great. She was a wonderful person. But here's the little secret Julia was a great cooking teacher, but not a very good cook. There were people who left her house in John Updike told me this. He was a frequent guest with her. Corby Cummer, who was a wonderful food writer, told me this as well. They'd leave Julia's house, they'd go to a little park around the corner, and they'd get physically ill. They'd get sick. Julia, you used too much butter, too much cream. She really had no reins on her when it came to using things like that. But she knew how to teach cooking. She had great recipes. And she changed the way that Americans not only cook, but a way that they eat as well. She changed the way supermarkets position food. She gave us the wine industry. This was all because Julia went on TV and she demanded.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Yes, we did. It's the most foolish mistake I've ever made. I did it out of exhaustion and temper and not thinking and all those stories, I'm afraid to say, are gone. And you and your viewers can berate me for it over and over again.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Tyler, I wish we could. I'm going to tell you why that could never happen. And it's the same nightmare that I have whenever I have a nightmare. I moved out of a house in Connecticut after I was done with the Beatles. It had taken every lanced ounce out of me. I was broke. A marriage had fallen apart. I was 50 years old and really wondering where I was headed after that. I had spent eight and a half years on a three-year book and I was wiped out. And so my wife and I moved out of that house. And before we moved, I took all my research and all those interviews. And we took them to the dump.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “And I said, What did you cut? I mean, it read beautifully. And he said, Now we're going to make you cry. We're going to cut another 600 pages out of the book. And they did make me cry. I gave up about 1,500 pages of Beatles stories that you'll never hear again that were really fantastic stories. But they made the book much more streamlined. They made it a sleek 964 page book. And we didn't rewrite a word. We just cut.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “That is true. And then I write in sequence. I start at the beginning and I work to the end of the story. Also, perhaps unusual is that I don't edit. I've never edited a word of my book. I don't rewrite. I massage each sentence as I go. And sometimes that works to my benefit. And sometimes it doesn't. You might have heard that when I delivered the manuscript of the Beatles, I put it on my publisher's desk. It was 2,800 pages. And he looked at it and he said, Bob, you know this is unpublishable. And he was right. He said, so we're going to do an edit and we'll get back to you. And they called me about three months later and said, okay, the first edit. And I read it”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Do but then the day goes by, and it goes by in a flash. And, you know, I wonder how that all that work that I spent that day contributes to maybe a couple sentences in a book. It's magical.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Well, you know, Bob reads a lot. He studies a lot. He still studies Talmud. Listen, I was his biographer 40 years ago. He sat on my steps in the village chatting with me. And so I kind of got a sense of who he was then. But I wish I were his biographer again. I mean, I'd love to have another crack at that. I don't know what he does all day. I don't know what I do all day. It's beyond.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “I would say Thunder Road is his masterpiece. I've seen him do it with a band and hot wire it, but I've also seen him sit down at the piano and play it where he rings every last ounce of romance out of that song. And who writes a song that starts out, you know, the screen door slams? I mean, you know, it's just beyond me. I don't know where that comes from. You have to bottle it.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Oh no, it's not income. Although his income is astronomical, I think he maximizes his open heart. He has a huge heart. He loves his fans. He is a kind human being. More times than enough, I have seen him after a gig see kids in the parking lot not knowing how to get home. And so Bruce, in his truck, which he drove to the gig himself, to a stadium, stops and takes those kids home, picks them up and takes them home. And, you know, he would ring the doorbell and walk them into the house and introduce himself to his parents. I've told Bruce this recently after all these years. We're both now the same age. We're in our 70s. The first time I ever said to him, Bruce, you're my hero. I look up to you. You speak for all of us. You've put yourself on the line. You're a magnificent performer and you're a kind.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “He's a master performer. I mean, he has a beautiful voice. He works harder than anybody I know. And how does he stay on stage for three and a half hours and not loses energy and not lose his voice? You know, it's another example, a different example of what Keith Richards does. Keith learned how to live through drugs and alcohol. Bruce learned how to extend his life. Battering his body on the stage for three and a half and his voice on the stage for three and a half hours. You know, you can't explain these things, Tyler, but we have to know that when one or two of these people come along, it really does as well to sit back and appreciate them because you won't see people like that very often.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Person who hopped out of that was Bruce Springstein. And when I saw that, I burst into tears. We had come a long way. 21 years old, rough kids, unformed, unlicked, maybe Bruce unlicked than me. And here he was with the next president of the United States, the first black man to accept that honor. It was beyond my imagination.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “In his head, and he knows exactly what he wants, and he knows how to get it out of people. And yet, he is an incredibly nice person. I mean, just a gentleman, not that easy to work with when it comes to music because he is so demanding, but really a master of knowing how to work with people and how to get what he hears in his head onto a record and onto a stage. My hat goes off to Bruce. We've known each other for 45 years and he's still amazes me. When Barack Obama was elected president of the state, United States, he flew back to Chicago that night to make an acceptance speech and the helicopter landed in a field near the stage and Obama hopped out, Michelle hopped out.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Well, never saw anybody who had a work ethic like Bruce Springsteen. I was really, I got a chance to see it up close when we were kids, when we were 21. Bruce came into our office and auditioned with his guitar. And we quit our jobs. Micah Pell and Jimmy Cretis and I, we quit our jobs the next day. And so Bruce, because he lived in Asbury Park and needed to be in New York to record and to see John Hammond, the great Columbia Records producer. Bruce stayed in my apartment. And he wrote a lot of those songs in my apartment. And I watched him work and put a band together like never before. Bruce is a master when it comes to rehearsals and making demands on the other musicians. There are a lot of demands. Timing has to be right. Sound has to be right. It has to be everything that's”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Completely rated as it should be. Although I promised my wife I would never play that song again in the house. I had to do that. However, listen, we all made fun of that song at some point in our lives, but listening to it, I find it remarkable. The same way that I can hear Bob Dylan sing one of the early songs, a song that we've heard a hundred times, Blown in the Wind. And it can still bring tears to my eyes when I peel back the layers of the voice, of the instrumentation, of the words. I can do the same thing with stairway to heaven, and really appreciate it for what it is.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “Let them fill me up. I really studied it as if I were taking a foreign language and had never studied that language before. And it gave me an opportunity to spend a good year and a half before I started writing listening to their music, trying to understand it, asking other great musicians, explain John Bonham's drum technique to me. Explain Jimmy Page's guitar to me. I asked Jeff Beck to explain it to me. Jeff Beck was Jimmy's boyhood neighbor. And so I came at Led Zeppelin from Neophyte's angle and I thought, okay, I can be incredibly objective here when it comes to writing about this band. I was happy that I had the experience to do it. It taught me a lot and I fell in love with their entire catalog of music that I had never appreciated before.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “Right. I had been on the road with Bruce Springsteen and Elton John while Led Zeppelin came into the forefront. And our paths never crossed. I never listened to their music. I knew that they were a heavy metal band. I wasn't interested in heavy metal. I have 20,000 vinyl albums in my collection. I didn't have a single Led Zeppelin album. And when my editor asked me about it, I might have been able to mention that I knew a whole lot of love. I might have known Stairway to Heaven. But I couldn't name another Led Zeppelin song. And so I found myself saying to him, to my editor, of course, I'm your guy. And I was really happy that I did it. And I'm convinced now that I was the right person to do it because I'm a musician. I love music. I was an empty vessel when it came to Led Zeppelin. And I just...”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “I knew nothing about lead zeppelin. I was in the midst of writing a biography of Ronald Reagan, and in fact I had just begun the research on that book. And my editor called and said, listen, I need to sign you up for another book. And I said, I'm up to my eyeballs in this. I'm not even thinking of the future. And he said, no, I've always wanted to do this book. We're going to sign you up now. We're going to give you a contract. You're the only guy who can write it. And I said, who is it? And he said, it's Led Zeppelin. Tywar, I have to admit, my heart sunk. I knew nothing about the band.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “Was he good? Oh, yes. I would say he was good. And then I let him sing maybe I'm amazed by himself on the piano. And that was freakish having a private audience in a tiny room. Never experienced anything like that before.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “That he had, as well as Bill Black's base. Bill Black was Elvis Presley's bass player. Paul had bought all these instruments and maintained them. And he said, sit down. I said, sit down. He said, Paul sat down at the piano. And he nodded me into a guitar. What did we play? We played a few Beatles songs. And it was frightening. I mean, you know, I've played with some great musicians before. But when you see Paul McCartney nodding you into a song, it's a different feeling altogether, believe me.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “1997, The New York Times Magazine sent me The UK right after Paul was knighted to talk to him about that and his give me a few of his memories of John Lennon. We were in Hastings in his house. It was a strange experience because I expected Paul McCartney to have an expansive house and it was really this tiny two and a half three bedroom cottage. And I said, do you actually live here? And he said, I do. And I said, but you have five children. You have three bedrooms. And he said, Linda said that we all need to live on top of one another. And so that's what we do. And we are a family here. As I was leaving, he said, hey, you know, you're a musician, right? Want to see the studio? And of course, you know, that was like catnip to a guy like me. So we went downstairs and he shows me it was a room no longer than say my dining room in New York City. But there were all the instruments from Abbey Rose.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “Absolutely right. But George, I mean, you know, toward the end, George really came into his own and even after in his solo career, we got some of some real gems out of George. I think it took him a little longer. And more than that, I think he learned how to step out of the Lennon McCartney shadow and stand on his own two feet.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “Perhaps it was. I always felt that a lot of people run out of steam after three or four albums. If you look at, you know, Bob Dylan and Neil Young and Van Morrison and the Who and maybe even the Rolling Stones after a couple years after maybe four or five albums, they start trying to duplicate themselves. And I think the Beatles gave us everything they had, and then they stopped. And so we have 230-some songs, perhaps the most remarkable songbook aside from Hammerstein and Rogers that we know of from the 1900s on, the Beatles song book I would put up against anybody's. And I think maybe if they had stayed together, they might have lost some of that spark.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “Most of them were Irish. Yeah, exactly right. And they called themselves scouters because they made a scout. They kept a pot on the stove simmering all week long. And whatever scraps came off one meal went into that pot. And at the end of the week, they ate that. It was called scouse. And so they took the name scousers. And scousers have a really unique sense of humor. So that year and a half, it was almost two years that I spent commuting between New York City and Liverpool gave me a remarkable insight into the people and a real education about the history of that unbelievable city.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “Fabulous city, unbelievable. First of all, it has the best Chinese food I've ever tasted because it was the port where people came in from China, and that was where Chinese food really originated in the Western world. And it still has a big Chinese community there. But the town itself, the city itself, was remarkably beautiful. And I think that's because all the chandlers who built those Cunard ships and white line ships that sailed out of Liverpool built all the buildings there, the interiors of the buildings. They're gorgeous. The wooden structures are beyond the libraries and the bars and the concert halls were all built by the people who built those ships with the remarkable woods that were still around at that time. And so the city itself is gorgeous and the people...”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “Off the exercises. Young Michael. He would say, Mike, get down, show him 50 push ups. Mike, do 100 chins, and Mick would jump to it and do it. That man still has a 27-inch waist at the age of 83. Keith, on the other hand, is a medical miracle. He is a person who, look, we all know Keith abused his body. If he had nine lives like a cat, that cat has had nine lives many times over. The fact that he's still alive, still making music, still has his great sense of humor is beyond anyone's knowledge, although it looks like arthritis of all things has caught up with him. Not drugs, not smoking, not alcohol. It's his body, it's arthritis. We're all headed.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “Mick, too. I mean, you know, I went to see the Rolling Stones last year at Sofi Stadium in California. A massive football stadium. And from the stage extended a percentium that no exaggeration was two city blocks long. And Mick Jagger danced out and back on that presentium for two and a half hours. And I had to jab my wife in the ribs and say, you're looking at an 82-year-old man. I mean, I know how Mick does it. Mick from a very early age was an exercise freak. As we know from my investigation in the book, Mick's father was the Jacqueline of the United Kingdom. He had a television show, an exercise show like Richard Simmons, and he always had a great person to show up.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “Yeah, I think they ought to come queen with the relationships. The relationships were often fraught. We understand that Paul and John were intertwined as songwriters, but that only happened for a very short period of time. I think we should be asking Ringo a little bit about his background, the fact that he never went to school, that he was a very sickly young man who wasn't supposed to live beyond the age of 10 or 12 years old, lived most of his youth in a hospital, recovery room, stricken with polio, and other diseases, bronchitis. And I'd love to ask them about how they keep their youth, they keep their sound. Again, their longevity. I'd like to know the secret. I'd like to drink the same water.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “Yes, I did. It was my first job at a college. I met a man named Wes Farrell who was producing the partridge family. Interesting. There was a lot of talent involved. Very little of it had to do with the partridge family. You know, they, again, they were performers. And most of the musicians, even most of the singers on those albums were done by studio musicians. There were a pair of, I'm pulling this out of my memory because it was 55 years ago. But there were a pair of twin brothers who did most of the singing as the partridge family on the albums. And my colleagues, Mike Appell and Jimmy Credicus, with whom I went on to manage Bruce Springsteen, wrote a lot of the songs for the Partridge family. So it was a collaborative effort, but it was really a television show.”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “Because they're not musicians. They don't play. They don't even play keyboards. That's all done with electronics. You know, take a, and I'm going to get crucified for this, but you take a performer like Taylor Swift. Beautiful voice and a wonderful performer. I'd love to teach her more than the four chords she knows on guitar”

    2026-05-13 · Conversations with Tyler · Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and the Art of Biography · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source