Tom ‘Bones’ Malone

once again welcome back to the letterman podcast my name is mike chism right there you just got a sneak peek of our very very special guest i love doing the show so much thank you so much for all the responses that we've gotten so far uh for everything from the from the insiders of the letterman world to all of the folks in the the letterman enthusiast community who just love what it is that we're doing thank you so much for um the unbridled support that you have given us so far uh i want to get right to it because our guest today um i can't believe that it's taken us 18 episodes to have somebody uh to do with the musical portion of uh the letterman community beyond the show um i can't believe it's taken this long because music is such a part of the letterman uh mythos and and and we're so excited to to kick that off with a bang by having tom bones malone on this episode i was a trombone player uh myself in high school all the way up played jazz contemporary all sorts of stuff tom is one of the world's best arrangers of music he has arranged i think it's in the neighborhood of three thousand pieces of music tom can correct me if if i'm wrong on that he has a legendary career not just as a studio musician uh but also with the original uh saturday night live incarnation and has gotten one of the uh most well i mean really rare things for a musician in that he got a gig that lasted him decades long and uh we're going to talk about that that of course being in the horn section and the arranger for the late show with david letterman tom thank you for taking time out of your day to be part of the letterman podcast my pleasure oh man that's great oh is that you over to your end are you ringing i don't know what that was i don't know what that was either okay i didn't arrange that um i just i i have so many things that i can ask you and want to ask you and and so many uh little rabbit holes and pathways that that that we can go down um we're talking about a legendary career in music here um are you self-aware of that like are you self-aware of the impact that you have made on music pop culture uh the different acts that you've worked with or are you just you know a guy that just loves to play the horn and arrange and arrange notes on a page both um the late show again a 30-year 30-year gig uh well 20-year gig with the the late show and then saturday night live um well 10 years of saturday night live and 22 years at letterman 22 okay so 32 years in total in big time show business um a very rare thing for your musician to have a gig that lasts that long this is true this is very true very lucky to uh have um been uh you know doing all this stuff on the resume i sent you a resume you sent me a resume well you didn't read it i didn't i didn't now that being said i don't i don't know how much of it i i well then again how long would that resume have been i mean the list of artists that you have worked on am i correct in saying that almost 3 000 pieces of music that you've arranged yes and and my yeah my resume is 14 pages uh single space and uh the bio lists all the people i play but i play with everybody in the business yeah um i've got i've got a couple on the list that i wanna you know i mean there's there's big big huge names tina turner and carly simon and some of these other other names and then and then other ones bruce willis did you work on they call me bruno bruce willis album before he kind of got big is that the one you worked on no i did i did not uh i played with him at the letterman show but he uh always always a very personable guy oh i love that like again the plethora of names and and genres and things that you have done um it cannot it cannot be measured um i want to go back to the beginning a little bit because i love how you and paul shaffer how your careers have kind of really intermingled with each other right from the very beginning did you and paul uh first off you guys started at saturday night live together right yes we were in the original band 1975.

the first show was actually october 3rd 1975. and uh paul is an unusually uh uh intelligent intuitive guy he has uh um he has a degree in sociology from music university of toronto i have a degree in psychology from north texas state so we kind of we kind of bond on that too but um that's cool paul paul has perfect auditory recall he remembers everything he's ever heard like when he's 10 years old he hears a record and he remembers it note for note or he sees a tv show and he who sees his favorite band play a song and the guitar player played a different solo during the eight bar solo and he remembers that solo note for note and he remembers conversations that he and i had in 1975.

uh i paul was just moving to new york and he was asking me about what it's like to live in new york and i started telling them and he he recounted the whole conversation word for word remember when you said this and i said this um and he can he can you know he probably has 25 000 songs in his brain and he can play them instantly in any key which is quite amazing to me uh we so anyway we we we were uh we were in the original band at saturday night live and then uh and then we were in the the blues brothers when the blues brothers broke away from saturday night live and formed our own band it was uh paul and myself and lou mourinho alan rubin and uh steve jordan no it came out of the saturday night live band and then we got some other guys i recommended uh duck and steve and uh you know we put the band together uh but okay so i was uh i was in the band from 75 to 85 and i was the music director from 81 to 85.

basically it was uh uh eddie murphy joe piscopo uh martin short and billy crystal that that era so anyway so i started doing the job i was the uh uh the arranger the contractor and musician and music director for the show and uh started in 81 in 1982 uh i got a call from my unit manager she says liz anderson she says i got a new job i'm like congratulations what's your new job she says i'm an associate producer of the david letterman show i said what's that she says you've never seen it it comes on early in the morning but we're changing the show to late late night and we're looking for somebody to lead a four-piece band and uh and be a personality and i just wonder if you'd be interested so the financial offer was about twenty percent of what i was making of course yeah yeah so uh anyway now paul shaffer had gone out to the coast it would do you know to california and um was um in a show called a year at the top with greg abigan he was an actor and the show went six or seven episodes and the network pulled the plug so paul came back to town about two weeks before this phone call and i said i said to liz i said uh i said i you know i can't really i can't really do it myself but you should get this kid paul shaffer he'll take care of it he's really good you know so uh i had a network feed monitor up in my office i'm writing an arrangement one day and uh i hear this band playing i look over there and it's paul shaffer steve jordan will lee and hiram bullock he got the job no nobody ever told me but um so you know he he was the music director downstairs in in nbc for for all his years and then when they when uh their uh when they switched the show to late night and went to cbs paul was nice enough to call me to be in the band and b is a ranger i uh i i let you just talk there because you summed up what it would have taken me 10 minutes to ask you the questions of to to to leave the trail of breadcrumbs to how you guys have intertwined like that that is phenomenal how you helped him get his original gig at letterman and then he got you the gig that would last another 22 years after that um i want to go back to saturday night live for a second there because you are one of the few people that lasted lauren's incarnation and then lauren's sabbatical um and and we've got a lot of fans of obviously the crossover fans between the letterman community and the saturday live community i mean many of them are intertwined you actually got to see both um can you speak to how the the tone of the show changed obviously you had a job description change in that time as well but can you describe how the tone of the show changed when uh was it ever saw who took over after lauren or is that was it uh somebody in between there was somebody in between i'm trying to remember her name yeah i i feel like yeah yeah what was her name gene dominion there you go she was she was the producer of the sixth year yeah uh her experience in producing was uh uh bob and ray jane lorraine and gilda tv special and i was the music director on that show and okay anyway uh but when he came when she got the job of saturday night live she hired a guy named kenny vince who was a doo-wop singer you know some famous do-op group uh but you know a musical director that doesn't read music uh i mean that's kind of a so anyway he needed me in the band to be because he needed an arranger he didn't cover that part of it so so i was in the band that sixth year and then um the show almost went under when gene was the producer so yeah i think they cut the season short and then um uh brought in dick ebersole uh rizal was college roommates at yale with the head of late night programming so you know he got that job pretty easily and uh so he was executive producer bob tischler was the uh line producer and uh bob tischler was the guy who produced and engineered all three blues brothers records right briefcase willow blues soundtrack album and made in america and uh so we had worked together carefully so when he became the line producer he called me to be the music director because he knew i could handle it yeah um let's talk about arranging for a second here uh um you know i think anybody who has watched the uh uh the credits at all of of of late show you know they see you there as as uh you know the arranger uh you know what what is it what does it mean so you take a piece of of music that's out there and and uh what does it mean to arrange it for what it is that you guys do exactly you know can you can you give our listeners exactly the process of that uh arranging arranging can mean a lot of different things yes sometimes uh somebody will uh present me with a song and well we want you to uh write out the parts and sometimes we want you to create some horn parts that go along with this song you know i do that quite a bit too now currently i do that online people send me their their records from south africa amsterdam uh cleveland uh you know all over the world i arrange the horns and i put the horns on myself because i play 14 instruments professionally yeah i put an entire big band by myself at my house i'll send you some of that stuff is that available like can you go to apple music and down and and grab that right now yeah i'm i'm putting an album together where i play all the instruments outstanding yeah yeah it's it's a work in progress uh it started during the pandemic i'm sitting around the house and you know giggs was disappearing and so uh because of the pandemic so i i started i started doing this now is this new big band music or is this like glenn miller and some some old standards that you know yourself it's more you know it's uh he's so shy uh and a hard habit to break uh uh stuff like that i can see clearly you know uh awesome jimmy cliff so uh yeah it's it's more contemporary music uh i i like all that old big band stuff too but uh you know that that era is kind of over and uh so you know it's got to be contemporary more contemporary style well when you confusion stuff though when you can take a contemporary song and present it in you know i think about some of these these uh these these concertos that come out these four piece cellos that will take contemporary songs and put them into into a strings uh type or or when you can present a certain type of music in a brand new way uh that is a it's a it's a beautiful expression of the how a song can um open itself up like a flower in different ways and i love the way that you're keeping big band alive by making that fusion with contemporary that is very very cool tom well uh uh yeah arranging uh arranging can can be a lot of different things uh i got an arranging story for you now okay sir uh at the letterman show one day our general uh our general schedule was taping from 4 30 to 5 30 in the afternoon and then the show was course came on what 11 30 yeah so 1 35 yep yeah so we would uh uh so i'm off the stage go upstairs change clothes i'm about to hit the street and paul's assistant says can you meet with paul and paul's dressing room paul says uh renee fleming is gonna do the top ten tomorrow we need we need 13 opera excerpts by 11 in the morning yeah here's a cd here's a cd with the 11 opera excerpts and uh i mean 13 opera excerpts and here's renee fleming's recent cd figure out what key she should do them in in other words there was no you know ordinarily you have a rehearsal with a piano when you figure out what keys you should do it in yeah so anyway and then then paul in a panic says how are we going to pull this off tom and i said i'll play flute uh aaron will play oboe our sax player will play oboe we'll hire a clarinet and we'll hire french horn and you'll play the string parts on the string synthesizer and so that's what we did and uh uh 11 in the morning i got everything uh done and one was in the wrong key i had my head in my laptop transposed it printed it out in paul's office next door to the rehearsal space yeah and we moved right ahead and i also had this thing in the back of my mind that renee fleming was going to be a diva and was going to be hard to work with she turned out to be delightful easy to work with just a lovely lady on every level that's awesome decent singer too but uh anyway uh and it's on youtube just type in uh letterman top 10 renee fleming bang perfect yeah just and it'll come right up we had a lot of arranging experiences like that one one time uh they send the camera down to 48th street and they the cameraman goes into sandwich music and he says uh he sees a kid with a trumpet gig bag hanging over his shoulder and they said you want to sit in with the letterman show band and the kid says twin is it right now the other kid runs out runs away runs out on the street gone they so they find another kid that's got a tenor sax bag over his shoulder and sure you want to get over the letterman show when right now he runs away he's gone so now they go there's a girl behind the counter and she can't run away so they go they go to her they say are you a musician yes what do you play alto sax would you have your horn with you yes it's right here do you want to sit in with a letterman show right now yes so the camera's following her down the street started following following up broadway to the theater and she gets to the band stand and paul says what songs do you know and she says well i don't really know any songs by memory but if you can write them out for me i can read them oh my god we're like okay so so paul on the fly yeah so the now the rhythm section knows all the standard songs so it's uh paul says isn't she lovely tom what key should she do it in write her out a part bang bang bang right right apart with the part i hand her the part just as he counts it off oh that's awesome yeah and we did we did the whole show like that okay what should we do next tom what key should you do it in write her out apart yeah i mean it all covered all the commercial bricks like that okay by then by that point in your career i mean you've done snl i assume snl was the uh the proving ground for firing you up for for for going live and and and changing the type of nervousness or jitters that you would have being live on tv but i imagine a moment like that would infuse the adrenaline that comes with being because when you guys taped you guys taped a lot like you guys you guys ran the show like it was a live show like it was it was it was tight as a drum and and very very very little edits if any if possible you know you ran it like it was live um i assumed the feeling even when you moved over to the ed sullivan theater very similar to saturday night live the energy is up you guys of course a huge part of that energy i assume moments like that uh we're like that beautiful cold shower of live at the beginning the nervousness that kind of shows up there and it keeps you sharp it keeps you standing uh i can't understand it straight yeah yes it was still a live concept they never they didn't stop and start like a pre pre-taped show no it was uh you know the whole idea was to make it uh feel alive uh i've got to talk about i um so part of my reputation is being a member of the blues brothers and i thought i would tell you a story about that the blues brothers almost never got started here's what happened i i was at the first meeting with danny and johnny just the three of us danny and john myself and they were telling me about these characters that they were developing where they wore sunglasses day and night and they were near to well musicians from chicago orphans with very little emotional response you know they were so uh i wrote an arrangement a song called rocket 88 by james cotton and we rehearsed the saturday night live band to back them up and they're working out their little dance steps and john's doing his flips and not so we did it for lauren michaels didn't make the show lauren yeah so the next week john and danny are still hot on the idea so um i did an arrangement of a song called hey bartender so we did it for lauren lauren says frankly i don't see anything funny about the blues brothers shot us down week number two wow so okay so the third week danny john uh blues brothers so if lauren doesn't like it we're wasting our time uh we gotta move on so uh after read through the third week lauren comes out about 3 15 and he's looking at his watch and he says the show's three minutes short what are we gonna do john and danny jumped on him and said lauren the blues brothers so lauren said we have nothing worthwhile to put in those three minutes you guys might as well make fools of yourselves he put us on yeah and i i think i could say that the rest is history the rest is history well i mean you think about those uh snl sketches those magical snl sketches that didn't appear until one o'clock that ended up turning into something and and like wayne's world is a prime example of that i believe the first wayne's world was uh was a was a 1am sketch you know after update kind of a thing and that's where a lot of the the i don't want to call it lesser but that's where some of the more uh maybe the more out there stuff or or stuff that just wasn't cold open material or before update material before the musical guest material appeared and and there's another example of that i didn't realize the blues brothers was one of those i'm really glad you brought that up tom that's that's amazing like you say the rest is history and the rest is legendary i mean oh my goodness did you have um talk a little bit about john belushi like i mean we're talking comedy legend here you worked with him intimately um we were good friends we lived we lived close to each other in greatest village she lived at 60 morton street i lived at 100 west houston street and uh you know it was just short walking distance so we we we were close friends we hung out um and i really miss the guy too you know because he had his brilliance uh uh he had uh like uh had a tendency to uh overdo things and i think that's what led to his end but uh sure it was just his his approach to life was bigger you know bigger and better and more consume more of whatever it was and uh uh uh uh you know that was just part of his character that was that was really him he just he was bigger than life and did more of certain things and uh you know but uh the gas pedal stays down right to the floor all exactly he goes he was going he went full speed all the time yeah yeah in his mind he was just a great guy to be around always creative uh another story okay so there was a point where uh john and danny decided they wanted to have a separate band from saturday night live it was going to be the blues brothers band right so now it's uh he took uh blue mourinho and myself and i was going to be the horner ranger and he says if you need another horn it's up to you and so i hired alan rubin to be the third horn player to be the trumpet player uh and they chose uh steve jordan on drums uh paul shaffer and keyboards to be the music director and uh um so and then i recommended down to steve cropper because i'd played in a band with levon helm uh with them and so and and that's all killers these are all killers yeah these are all yeah yeah the blues brothers at that point before duck and steve came on it was a chicago blues style band and when duck and steve came in they brought in the the memphis rhythm and blues influence and so you know it became a little bit of both you know you know soul man was our first hit single of course yeah yeah which was uh you know out of their out of their catalog so um anyway so we had we had a meeting over at john's place 60 morton street and he says uh says okay we have a mat guitar murphy and a donald duck done in the band so now everybody has to have a middle name and if if you can't think of one yourself we'll make one up for you so i immediately said tom bones malone which was the nickname i got in high school yep a friend of mine gave me that nickname it didn't really stick but i threw it out there saw my friend at a class reunion he he didn't remember giving me that nickname really oh i thank him anyway and uh so uh lou mourinho stand next to me says how about blue lou mourini bang that's it and so he ended up john made up uh steve the colonel cropper and he made up allen mr fabulous reuben uh but you know that became a whole thing you know the the middle name in the band and uh that was just uh part of part of the fun it's all part of the fun gosh tom it's almost like you've done this before you're anticipating questions where did bones come from and all of that i really appreciate you truncating a lot of this stuff and and and uh taking the kind of the the softballs right off the table this is phenomenal that you're doing this because i want to get into like i love getting into the deeper deeper stuff and you're you're doing such a good job of truncating i don't got to ask where bones came from now i'm um i'm i'm writing my own book i've got 38 chapters already and so uh you know my mind yeah working title is name dropper i have indeed worked with everybody in the business except frank sinatra and i got the call to play with frank sinatra in atlantic city and i already had another gig so i had to turn it down oh my gosh we had tom driessen on the show not too long ago and i mean talking to tom i mean we're our goal of this show is to be a torchbearer um for for again without being cliche the greatest body of broadcasting work in history and and that's encompassing the entire show i want to do my goal is as this thing takes off uh unimaginatively titled live on letterman um i want to do a podcast that just just focuses on the musical part of of that broadcasting body of work because it's so vast and deep and and i love that we're getting into uh some of the granularness of this sonata having driessen on i mean you talk about a torchbearer himself um there's a guy who i mean really at the end of the day the last member of the rat pack kinda and and and talking about these amazing rich stories that involve show business music um with the charisma of the people who who made that music frank sinatra i mean there's a guy who the the i look at my you know i keep going to my 25 year old daughter-in-law and you know it's lost on her and without these torch bearers um you know it's going to be completely lost forever and we don't want that and and i i love that you are writing a book uh do you have any idea about release date anything like that we're obviously going to uh promote the heck out of it when uh when that do you know does happen coming out jason was the opening act for frank sinatra for several years he was yes sir he was the opening act and so letterman would always have him on the show because he wanted to hear some frank sinatra stories and he gave us some great ones he gave us some wonderful some wonderful stories so um the book uh i'm at a point now where i can either try to finish writing it myself or give it to a ghostwriter yeah which of course i'll give the ghostwriter credit you know it's a an arranger of sorts well i i would like i would like my ideas to be presented in the best possible way yeah and if a professional writer can write it better than me uh then i you know and i'm checking out a couple people so um that's i'm at the crossroads right now uh well i can't wait uh take my money i'm in and uh i will do whatever i'll i'll find you on the tour to get the signed copy uh yeah well hey i'm in kidding it's no no i'm i'm serious like and we will do everything hopefully by then the letterman podcast is has really really blown up the way that we we know it's going to and we'll be able to to be a trumpet for uh for that project um i mean reading paul's book of course it's just it's so great to bring richness into this world you have that like crazy um there's a few moments on the show i want to talk about and if you i'll tell you the kind of fan i was um even early on in the run i uh i i got a special television that had um that could understand some of the closed captioning signals uh now captions are are a thing that a lot of people do when they watch the netflix or watch their uh watch the binge watch their shows a lot of people put the captions on but but back in the 90s and early 2000s a lot of people didn't do that i'll tell you this tom i would do that because i wanted to see um on the on the outros of the commercials as you guys were going just before um the commercial would hit it would always on the closed captions say what song the band was playing and and it was fascinating to me when you guys would bring on like i'm a huge nine inch nails fan there was a point point where where dave was like oh did you see the nine inch nails at woodstock i'd love to have them on the show and shortly after that i'm talking within days suddenly you guys are playing hurt by nine inch nails right and somehow making it work for your uh for for your band in that environment doing what you guys do between the commercial breaks which is by the way play all the song you guys played the entire time you didn't just do it an intro and an outro and you guys kept that energy up and played the entire commercial break um i love that about you guys um the turnaround time on some of these arrangements was seems to be almost instantaneous which you alluded to and also at dave's whim uh there was a lot of music that dave would throw out there that you guys would then adapt to seemingly instantly um and that stayed the entire run is that one of the things that kept things fresh for you oh yeah yeah you never knew what was gonna happen uh one time uh uh the show's already taping okay okay and uh paul says uh we're gonna do a play on we're gonna play stars and stripes forever tom you play the piccolo part and i knew the piccolo part because i used to play it as a novelty on the tuba sure and they said and he says yeah so paul says what key should we play it on tom and i i'm thinking of a technique on the flute and i'm thinking i'm on that piccolo and i said i said key of g now that's a pretty straightforward key for a c piccolo and so so we played it and he counts it off one two three you know really fast but anyway so we and the you know the rhythm section just played the song that you just knew the song and uh we ended up playing that as a as crossover music many times after that time that we the first time we played it so anyway i get a call from a group called the tarot wins it's a professional win symphony in atlanta it's music educators that all find musicians 70 piece group they hire me six months in advance to come down and be the guest artist with them okay wow great so uh uh three weeks before the gig they say we heard you play stars and stripes forever on the piccolo we want you to come out in front of the band and play it at the concert now i know it's going to be an a flat and so i'm like uh-oh so what did i do i bought a d-flat piccolo and now it's still in the key of g bang so i go out go out in front of the band and and i play it i play the piccolo part and then so as i walk off 11 piccolo players woke up behind me and play it again whoa yeah oh my gosh okay so so like um here's the the cheat i love music it's one of my favorite things in the world um um i'm a cheat with my guitar i put a capo on that's exactly what i did okay but the fact that and i just want to i just want to throw this out there you talked about paul's memory earlier and the the only word i can use to describe it is a prodigy type memory um when i see somebody who can sight read i look at that and go my god that is a skill that is like alien to me and and when i see somebody who can transpose on the on the spot who can be a literal human capo i just bowed down to that and a lot of us who who watch and listen to this show um you know haven't gone that deep down into music i just you are a virtuoso you're a modern-day virtuoso and i just want to give you that compliment and tell you uh how much i appreciate that story um hearing it and and as many of those as you want please please please tell um a lot of people sat in with the band uh guest musicians over the years and and i mean you had some that that that came back time after time after time john popper and and buddy guy and some of these people uh john mayer um folks who would show up um can you give me any highlights of somebody who showed up and maybe the anticipation was awesome because you just wanted to work with this person or or work with them again or they showed up and uh like you alluded to earlier kind of just they surprised you or knocked your socks off are there any memories that spring to mind as i kind of paint that picture oh yeah oh my god uh jimmy smith the famous jazz organ player sat in with us for the whole show one time that was uh oh it was just wonderful uh one time uh uh schaefer took off for jewish holiday and herbie hancock subbed for him oh that was remember that yes oh that was amazing yeah ah oh my god oh yeah all these uh uh towards towards the end of the show um one of one of uh one of dave's favorite groups is um what dave grohl and uh oh the foo fighters absolutely one of my favorite groups as well they did the whole yeah mine too and they're nice guys too yeah you know remember taylor my god anyway it's great that we're talking about taylor right now uh yeah and the the yeah absolutely so they did they did the whole week they did five they were on five shows that week it was shortly before they retired and uh one on one of the shows we did uh uh they brought in tony joe white to do poke salad danny and i got to write a horn shark and a and and and dave grohl freaked out you know i said uh he comes up to the dressing room he says man i love the horn arrangement he says uh um i was afraid of horns i didn't know what to do with them so i said well i was afraid of guitar i didn't know what to do with that and he laughed and gave me a big hug and uh uh one night one night um tatum hawkins gets off the drums and comes out front seeing his lead dave growl goes back and plays drums it didn't lose a beat it wasn't you know did the energy level stayed exactly i felt like that was it was that a cover that was a cover of something too wasn't it it was a special kind of a thing that they did it was kind of oh now is it zeppelin oh no maybe it wasn't zep yeah that you just you just totally i'm gonna be going back and finding out that one because i remember that appearance uh that was that was i loved moments like that i loved moments where like i can think early on um i loved when you guys would do that and mix it up somehow and it would just be just be special the the special musical moments on that show and there's a lot of late show fans who you know after the second after the first guest would kind of check out or whatever i was the guy who really wanted to see um you know what the musical act was gonna do because of the integration of the cbs orchestra i i love that so much like early on white zombie was on early on you know they were one of the big you know and the keyboard part that paul played during during during that or the way that you guys would integrate in into um some of these amazing pop acts or or grunge acts or rock axe or whatever genre it was and if you guys could integrate yourselves into the performance it would make it the most unique performance of that band whether they were on tour promoting a new album whatever it was um was that always a focal point or was that something where it just kind of happened when it happened well it just it just kind of happened but you know we always hoped that it would happen i remember uh uh snoop dogg playing a horn chart for snoop dogg and he did he did a song called get the funk out of my face written by quincy jones and quincy jones is sitting in the chair with dave you know and so uh at the desk so uh that was a that was a highlight of uh of my whole experience there uh we did um oh my god uh ceelo greene yes the big orchestra yep uh that was an amazing performance oh my gosh bigger city and that was a fun arrangement that i got to write and uh we also did macarthur park with jimmy webb on piano yep really singing saying lead in playing bass at the same time on camera like so i got to ride the whole big giant uh orchestra for that french orange strings uh brass uh you know woodwinds you have had you have had a a blessed unique uh musical career in that you have been part of so many special special moments with the biggest musical acts in history i think of even went um again i'm putting you on the spot with some of these things but i just appreciate your memory so much i hope that you can come back and we can do this more and more and more uh moving forward i'm by no means going to the end but i just want to be grateful in this moment for for talking about these things with you this is awesome um do you remember near the end of the run uh maybe four or five years two or three years before the run uh you guys had you two week and you two was on every night of the week oh yeah again one of the biggest bands in the entire world uh coming on there at that point in your career are you are you immune to the fact that these are the biggest rock stars in the entire world and you're hobnobbing and all that kind of stuff is this just this is the world i live in and this is who i am or are you still like pinch me i can't believe this is happening like or is it a little both well i enjoy i enjoyed uh working with those ones that's the it's the only real ska band that i played with you too is really ska music and uh that was that was a special uh moment for me to play with them just because it was scammies and i always liked that uh that kind of music and never really you know got to play it with anybody so that was that was the real deal for me yeah that was uh i've been uh recently i wrote my own pops orchestra act i wrote 16 arrangements uh and it's called uh orchestral pop music of the 20th century you know it's the stylistics the temptations uh cashmere by led zeppelin nice oh my gosh yeah unforgettable by nat cole yeah uh georgia on my mind by ray charles you know just beautiful music and i just play these melodies um i've done four so far and one of them was a big fundraiser at north texas state and uh there was an after party and this older lady you know this kind of patron kind of situation you know she came up she said she liked the music i said did you did you recognize any of the songs i played she says i knew the lyrics to every song that was i took that as a compliment oh absolutely well it shows that your finger is on the on the pulse of the human experience when it comes to music and how you are not just um not just replicating it but you're interpreting it um and bringing it out in a completely different form again we talked about that fusion uh artists like you are extremely important tom um you know and when a band like i think about the um the mtv um unplugged craze uh of the of the early 90s which by the way i wish was still around i wish we could take some of these pop acts i've i've got a kind of a theory about that is because with the invention of auto tune a lot of these pop acts that are out there um don't enjoy necessarily going into the raw vulnerable unplugged kind of a setting uh but but you know you think about how many artists back then we hungered to see unplugged and you guys were kind of a different version of that because it's like okay we're not just gonna unplug you we're gonna accentuate you and and show you guys whether it's the beastie boys or whoever we're gonna show you in a bit of a different light than what is used to being and and it keeps it fresh for certainly for us for you as a as a as a very top-tier level musician uh it's just i always use the phrase it's just jazz and that's kind of what it is for everything you're just you could probably jump in and improvise with anybody absolutely i can i i uh yeah and i also i can read music perfectly the first time i'm a sight reader uh that's that's a necessary skill for um or well just uh like uh two weekends ago uh i was in the house band for a big rock festival up in vancouver island canada and about 300 miles from where i live by the way i'm in cologne british columbia i go to vancouver island often we backed up about five different acts and um i was it was just bass piano drums guitar and one horn i was tenor sax and the guy would just like the guitar player would just lean over and point at me you know like look at me and i'd start playing a solo and you know so i just i could you know i can figure it out if i can't figure it out by now i should get out of the business no yeah you know i hear the song i hear the chords bang i just start playing a solo now is it still fun is it still fun yes absolutely you know they say like uh some people go to work i go to play and uh and you mean it in every sense every layer of that you mean that and musician and magician are almost the same word and some people are not aware that uh music is invisible you can watch somebody strum a guitar you can watch somebody play a trombone but the music itself is invisible yes and uh here's another concept that i have uh music harmony and color harmony are exactly the same thing from a frequency relationship you know that the uh the relationship of uh c e and g is mathematical you know octaves are double the frequency you have and e64 and c128 it's you know they and c256 blah blah so um you can hear about eight or ten octaves depending on your ear uh you can see one octave but uh the frequency relationships of if you can visualize red yellow and blue yep see these these harmonized and it's kind of a happy feeling right yes okay that's c e and g okay now envision this now orange green and purple now they they harmonize too but it's a whole different feeling psychologically and that's d minor d f and a so right now you're melting my mind right now now now music and color are the same thing you can sight read yes and and if i have it correct paul doesn't read music uh paul paul uh um well uh he actually does read music but he may not be uh as proficient at it as some other okay his ear his ear is something that is outworldly like his ear is just okay so so this is where i've used him on recording sessions and you don't have to write him a chart he comes in and listens to the song one time and he just walks in the studio and plays his part this is where yes this is where i want to ask about that i want i don't want to get stuck in the minutia of what he can or can't do or anything because he's clearly a genius you are clearly a genius you are both just geniuses on different spectrums of the same uh scale like you guys are both and i i one the question that i want to ask is did you know that you complemented each other perfectly in your strengths um at the very beginning or did those two ways that you looked at playing or played take a little bit of adjustment to getting to know each other because they are from different aspects of the same spectrum that's my question if that makes sense if it's wrong please correct me no a little of both actually okay yeah yeah uh paul um paul can't be bothered to write out an arrangement so he gets me to do it for him well if you can just memorize the whole damn thing why would you write it out right yeah but he can tell me you know the concept well we you know we we want to we want the strings to come in here and we want to solo by the you know he you know he can he can tell him exactly what he wants and i can deliver it yeah yeah he knows he can hear it in his brain and i can write it out so was that um what you just said that shorthand uh the beautiful summation of what you just said was that evident when you guys were working together on saturday night live or did it take a little while to gel with that absolutely because uh a lot of times uh if there was a music script in the show paul would uh we'd bring the people in paul would play along with the skit and we would tape that and then i would write out you know based on that format and timing comedy timing and everything i'd write normation for the whole band right based on the you know his rehearsal piano yeah that's peanut butter and jelly isn't it we did that almost every week that is total peanut butter and jelly and and i'm glad that you guys discovered that right away what a uh what a fearsome team that you guys were um and an asset to the little engine that could that was saturday night live like i mean everything about that show at the beginning was experimental yes and and and uh the music obviously a key part of it right from the very very first episode um and and uh the fact that they had that going for it on the musical side is just as important as the fact that you had jeffy and tan gilda and jane and and john on the other side um what a a confluence it's a magic potion that just was done right right from the beginning absolutely absolutely yeah they were you know they were they were sort of pioneers uh they were taking chances you know can we do this on tv uh so that was a that was a yeah speaking of on the edge uh yes we're on the show one day and dave's doing the monologue and yeah this was my 15 seconds uh dave's doing the monologue and he says a guy in kansas city got arrested yesterday for having sex with a cash machine so so i whispered to paul on the intercom i said he wanted to come into money and so paul stops the show dave dave my trombone player has a better punchline and he gives a punchline and the show stopped for like two minutes and dave's like where are you at the meeting but the band has to write some material quite literally now they're writing the comedy too walter kim and don miller take note to this moment and throw it out there please get it out there right now don giller has documented so much about the show he'd be a good guy to interview oh oh oh don hey don is uh we're eternally grateful for everything that don does behind the scenes with us and the fact checking and all of the ideas and everything um this episode this is also kim as well too very intelligent guy uh well hey if he would do interviews i'd have him on in a second but but uh we're talking about a very uh particular personality that uh that doesn't uh enjoy the publicity and that kind of thing but we appreciate everything he's doing for us behind the scenes um you know we talk about him in the steve o'donnell episode that aired uh well it's airing it'll it'll have air by the time this episode airs we talk about dawn in in in that episode as well and and but at the end of the day walter dawn that moment that tom just brought up please get it out there that we want we want to see that one um and uh yeah we're we're that that's phenomenal um that's like the you know that moment there is just like when paul um julia roberts was on and it's it's my it's one of my favorite paul shaffer moments of all time and and i think julia had just she just separated i don't want to bring up you know negative stuff or anything like that but she had just gone through something and uh and and and dave looks over at paul's hey paul you got a question for julian and he goes hey you're getting laid lately and and the whole place came unglued and dave got up paul did his thing and that was just uh you know that's one of those moments where where you can't script that stuff and and i just appreciate that um hey listen uh i got a couple other things i want to ask you about can we uh can we break for a uh a quick sponsor can we do a quick sponsor shout out absolutely all right i appreciate that uh and maybe you can contribute to it in fact i think you might be able to if there's anything i like doing tom is it's getting the guests to participate in a commercial that they had no intention of doing at the very beginning and uh this is one that i think is real easy hey everybody did you know that the letterman podcast right now has one sponsor were brought to you in part by the hello delhi rupert g and the hello deli hey rupert g is a good friend of mine of course i mean i had lunch there every day for how many years uh and his and his wife and it just uh i mean it's just a happy place to drop into uh uh you know soups uh uh uh sandwiches uh everybody do you have a favorite sandwich tom uh i every everything he made was was great absolutely and the soups uh uh you know they had special soups every day and uh just anybody in new york should drop by there just to just to experience it and you know he's quite a character himself too yeah i could could not agree more um and just uh so the viewing audience is aware one of the only places on the planet that you can get licensed late show with david letterman merchandise hey right has your late show coffee mug get uh did you broke it hey i wish he sold those i i've got i've got one i've got some friends from this one that's good i was going to ask you that's one of my questions if you had any uh souvenirs uh that you kept that's that's that's on the docket uh go to hello dash deli.com and you can get you can get late show merchandise hats shirts mugs all sorts of stuff rupert packs them himself if you ask him very nicely he might add onions to the order and uh please please go to hello deli.com and uh get yourself some late show with david letterman merchandise official stuff and also rupert t-shirts all sorts of stuff and like tom said if you're in new york nestled in the womb of the ed sullivan theater is the hello deli go and visit rupert he is i i maintain uh if you average it out he is probably the the gentleman that takes more selfies than anyone else in the new york area he is like god took the word kind and made it into a human being uh he and his business partner may still run in the deli still doing their things go see them while you can there we go thanks tom appreciate that buddy until tell rupert that bones said hello there you go i'm going to do that too because he and i correspond every other day so i'll definitely do that and he watches these episodes so he's going to get a great kick out of that uh thank you for for this here um i i appreciate your time very very much and i want to be mindful of it uh so you know we can kind of start moving towards home here tom if you wouldn't mind coming back on the show and and i mean i've got so many things that i can ask you about um and and we've literally scratched the surface here now that we've scratched the surface the next time we can kind of go deeper into the weeds you love telling these stories i hope that there is an opportunity at some point maybe with the book tour maybe with touring um any of the musical acts where you can go and you can actually do some spoken word stuff and tell some of these anecdotes they're fascinating and they're beautiful moments i just appreciate you very very much for this um i want to ask about oh there's a moment i want to ask you about for sure early on in the late show run uh dave became obsessed uh with pearl jam's black uh the song black and and and eddie vetter uh did a did a walk-on and um it was it was uh it was the end of the song where they they go he goes into kind of the vocal solo that part of it and um and dave just needed to hear that eddie vader walks on the band starts playing the end of black eddie better does his thing walks off and leaves um i would love to know that story from your uh point of view well uh that's one of pearl jam is one of um dave's very very favorite bands of all time you know of course eddie the lead singer and uh um i was i was uh privileged to be in the house band for the uh uh in washington for the comedy awards the mark twain comedy awards i did it two years in a row it was bill murray and and david letterman two years in a row and uh when dave when dave was there eddie vader came on with an acoustic guitar and did a song by himself and dave was just like he was just almost in tears you know it was so emotional for him and eddie is is such a really nice guy you know there's i work with a lot of famous people and sometimes you got people that act like stars and but then eddie is just like you and i talking he's just like mellow same thing i played on paul mccartney's most recent album uh egypt station and uh we don't we're hanging out with him in the studio and it's just like you and i talking it's not like uh you know is there any more famous musician nope and he's you know after watching that documentary he's clearly the leader of the leader oh what a phenomenal let's i mean i mean what a phenomenal documentary that was talk about a gift uh that that none of us really knew was coming and and peter jackson and his team did a tremendous job on that i mean just great oh was it ever yeah i was also honored to be at the uh uh rock and roll and the house man for the rock and roll hall of fame awards and cleveland when i was getting to that but anyway keep going ringo starr was inducted uh uh so paul came in to induct him and paul says well we we we had this band in liverpool and our drummer wasn't working out so we we called this guy to come in and audition and he and he had a good beat and we called this other guy in and he had another good beat and we'd call this other guy in and he had another good beat and then we got this guy ringo came in and he had five six different beats so he says he's i said guys i think we should go with ringo and ringo turned out to be very just hanging out i got a picture with him that i'll never uh never forget i mean you think about that stage you got to play on every night okay and i mean there's so many dimensions that we could we could talk about with the ed sullivan theater i've i've maintained that when you walk in there um it has an energy to itself it's a character in the show unto itself it literally i i've heard they've turned it way more tv studio now with with like and it's lost a little bit of the luster a little bit no offense to any of the the new incarnation in there but but when you would walk in there uh it felt like a hallowed ground and that's well that's the beatles uh that's song you took the words right out of my mouth so so you walk in there and it's got all this energy from all these memories and then there are times where you see the guy who played there so many years ago and you're a contemporary with that guy like pardon my language that around with your head a little bit it's gotta around your head a little bit and and go oh my god and create these pinch me moments well you know elvis presley frank's not sure just go down the list everybody everybody performed in that theater and then they come back um i just uh oh i'm so this is so great talking about this again i can't believe it's taking us this long to have a musical um theme to to this show here obviously you know every member of the band is a dream guest and we want to have them all on here um i'm really grateful that you're one of the first ones uh to do this uh from the musical standpoint again the goal for me is that we eventually branch off and have two uh we have a we have a letterman music based podcast um and and show uh because again that's a torch that needs to be passed listen i'm gonna throw a real curveball at you um and and we didn't pre-interview this folks believe me even though tom is coming across like you know uh the pro that he is we did not pre-interview this so so i this might be a moment that doesn't uh that falls a little flat but it won't because this is one of my favorite musical moments there's a band from britain uh kind of a rock rock blues band that was on twice and and i one of the things that i loved about what you guys did on that show was i discovered so many of my favorite songs or or or bands or or artists because of their network television debut or or something like that because you're i can't wait to have somebody uh some people on who were the talent bookers or the music bookers because they did a phenomenal job of finding different artists and putting them on at exactly the right time or or with the benefit of hindsight looking back going oh my god that that person was on letterman you know a couple years before they popped or whatever everybody anybody that's any talent that's booked on the show is either they either have a book or they have a movie or they have a record and that's it it's one of the you know and you'll sometimes find all three on the same show absolutely yes uh and and and you talk about the idea of variety show uh no other show encapsulated it more than you guys did again the greatest in my opinion uh but not just a variety show but also the the greatest show in broadcasting because it's bigger than just a variety show but the variety was uh what made it so good um there's a band from britain called the heavy and the heavy the brand what's that and and and the heavy came on and uh there is two very memorable appearances that they did i don't know if you guys because they had their own horn section but you guys might have also accentuated it they did a song called how you like me now and um dave uh dave fell in love with the song while they were playing it and it was so good that dave came out at the end of the show and he looked and he he didn't even do that those eardrums or whatever he just looked at the band and said could you please play that song again and he made them play the song again so so so a british bluesy band uh kelvin uh amazing vocalist up front they're like okay and they played the song again so how you like me now now the next time they came on um they played a song called what makes a good man and again horn section the whole nine yards dave they brought their own horn section they brought their own horn section okay um anyway walter dawn put up the the heavy if you can and this is actually leading to a question that i have for you that's a moment that's ingrained in my in my uh in my my mind and it will be forever because that when they finish what makes a good man letterman comes out once again and he goes hey hey guys can you play something else how about a little how you like me now and he makes them play how you like me now again you know it was a phenomenal moment so here's my question moments like that do walter and and his team at the uh uh at worldwide that are putting these moments out now do they have issues when it comes to rights like that's a magical moment can walter does he have the power to just basically take that moment throw it out onto the youtube or because it's an artist with their own catalog of music and rights and things like that is that a is that more uh red tape to cut through to be able to do something like that i would think that he would have to get clearance from the group before he put something like that out but uh more than likely the group would think of that as being promotion yes you have a uh you know you have a youtube video of a group and somebody hears the group well they might buy the album absolutely yeah or you know on on yeah one way or the other yeah you know physical album or a virtual album you know it's a different world we live in now but you can you know you can certainly find the music one way or the other absolutely um i i that was one of my very favorite kind of bookended moments on on there uh before i get to the last question do you have any moments uh from late show that as i say some of your very special moments for whatever reason could be little or big or or whatever do you have any special moments when i ask that question what are the first one or two that come to mind oh wow well i was just i mentioned snoop dogg and i mentioned herbie hancock those are the first two that come to mind but there's been so many moments i get this question all the time there's been moments that it's almost impossible to you know to trim it down to two yeah um well then let me go this way and we'll we'll take her home with this question this is the take-home question i have for almost every guest that we have uh dave has obviously gone through many incarnations in his career uh i love them all certain people gravitate towards certain ones now he's doing a long form on netflix and he's also got his new show where he's helping to break new comics as well it's awesome to see that uh but my next guest needs no introduction um the the question that i like to ask a lot of our guests to bring the show home is um if there were three people now i really want your uh your opinion on this because i mean i watched the jay-z episode um where he is is is is not just meeting with jay-z but also you know some of these producers and and the uh the tina fey episode he met with buddy guy and all that obviously music is such an important thing and having these long-form conversations with people let's just say you're the booker and the sky's the limit and you could pick three people in music that dave could have an hour-long conversation with who are the three people well uh dave grohl would be one that dave would want to talk to and um uh eddie vetter would be one he'd want to talk to and uh taylor hawkins would be one that he wished he could look yeah sorry tom you're a man after my own heart uh oh bringing it home tom bones malone bringing it home with the sentimentality and the right the right place and we're thinking of our friends uh you know in the music uh as music fans music enthusiasts and of course those uh attached to um all the projects uh that dave grohl and company are attached to with taylor taylor's passing yeah the nice thing about recorded music is that um even when somebody passes the music lives on the music is on you know it's uh it's been captured and it's uh you know it's available to listen and remember uh a lot of a lot of you know like i played with bb king a long list of people that are no longer with us but uh oh let me let me call it let me call an audible here tom i'm gonna call an audible here just in case something happens i don't get a chance to talk to you on the show anytime soon um let's let's call it audible because what you just said there's really important and taylor by the way my friend joel day shout out to joel day uh gigantic foo fighters and pearl jam fan in his own right he's got his own uh musical um nft empire he's building um the quote that he said when taylor passed is one that i don't know if he got it from somewhere or if he actually said it himself but it perfectly encapsulated taylor hawkins the only guy who people would accept being the drummer for dave grohl and and and i think you know dave crawl is a heart act to follow that's what i'm saying and and and taylor's the guy that could be the drummer for dave grohl and people would accept it you see where he pulls the stick way up absolutely yeah he had his and it uh it had its own sound one day i'm going to do a podcast about uh about dave and drums and just with that but but but the the affection that he has for drums and things that i want that to get out there too early in this early in the 22 years uh dave used to come over to the bandstand uh after the after the rehearsal he'd come over to the bandstand and sit in on the drums just you know play just play the drums by himself and uh you know that went on for several years and then one day you just stopped doing that i'm trying to remember why but uh um it might have been some sort of temporary health problem or something like that but yeah he was and that um when the band was at nbc the band chipped in and for either christmas or his birthday gave him a set of drums as before i was on the scene but uh that's uh that was one of the connections that that dave you know because dave he just loved the drones he loved anton our drummer oh my god yeah anton fig is just an amazing drummer in his own right i loved when you guys uh included uh all the members of the band but anton anton obviously special when you say that i just smile because i think of all the times that they've included him and and whatnot um the audible that i was called before we go home now again i've tried to close it three times and it's impossible to do with you i could do this all day with you uh let's say something about warren zeal we'll do it another time good appreciate that i appreciate that brother well yeah warren zivan we know he he was on the show quite a few times and we became friends and i'm and you know i uh so he's i run into a hall one day and i just said uh so how are you doing how's your health and he says well he says i went to the doctor i hadn't gone to the doctor for 12 years and the doctor says i have cancer and there's nothing he can do about it that that got me in the heart and you know and he gave his guitar to dave i was just gonna yeah uh i'm no longer gonna need this anymore here you go and hands his guitar to david letterman he was one of he was one of the dave's favorite musicians and also you know when you he he had a way of writing songs that had humor in them yes no they were they were if he had a unique very they were clever very clever and laid out yes and it wasn't necessarily complicated music but you know the lyrics had some they had some content that you know dave could relate to elvis comedy people could relate to so uh and he was the nicest guy easy to work with uh once again you see uh and his music lives on and and and what a there's no better way to end this first time of thomas bones malone being on the letterman podcast i'm going to end it here uh before we say goodbye so you'll hear you hear the recording stop and then we can say goodbye tom um i can't thank you enough for uh taking time out of your day you're still you know you're in new york forever now you're adjusting to the west coast and all these things going on in your life and all these but i love hearing the projects i love hearing that you're still busy and and you've got all these things that we can look forward to i can't wait to help you promote these things uh tom's bones malone thank you so much for taking time out of your day to be on the letterman podcast my pleasure thank you for asking me all right that's another episode everybody i'm going to keep it on the gallery of you as we say goodbye here um that is another episode of the letterman podcast again this is the time of the show unfortunately we're still small enough where i got to say please share please like please subscribe whether you're on the the youtubes or the apple or spotifys wherever you are uh heck even the other platforms go onto the platform you're listening or absorbing this episode go on to the other platforms like share and subscribe them too let's build something big here we're creating a community uh that is going to pass the torch of the greatest body of broadcasting work in history that is another episode of the letterman podcast my name is mike chisholm thank you and good night