2021.09.18 - Appetite For Distortion - Roberta Freeman Wishes You Were Here

A love letter to the live concert experience, vocalist Roberta Freeman has released a passionate Pink Floyd cover. For the song and video, she recruited friends Derek Day, Derek Frank, and her Use Your Illusion tour mate Teddy Zig Zag. We discuss putting the video together and celebrate the 30th Anniversary of #UseYourIllusion.



Transcript of relevant parts:

Brando: Before Derek, I think Derek Frank has to run. I know he has a time, I don't know if he's on the clock. I want to get your opinion as well. Because we have to celebrate today. I'm sorry, Roberta, 30th, three zero. September 17th, 1991. Use Your Illusion. I look, I have to thank Derek Day for being younger than me. So I don't feel, you know, I'm not the youngest one on the call. 1991. Well, Secret of the Ooze came out, Ninja Turtles 2. I was all about that in 1991. It took me a few years to fully digest Use Your Illusion, but it's not about me. My thoughts. So I'm just curious. Any thoughts on the 30th anniversary? Just. Yeah, I mean, any of these 30 years, maybe some of your favorite songs on the album. Just, I mean, I can't, but you take it away. I'm rambling here. So Roberta or Teddy.

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Teddy "Zigzag" Andreadis: It was an adventure. You never knew what was gonna happen. Honest to God.

Roberta Freeman: Honestly from day to day, right?

TA: The band did a two and a half hour show with no set list. See, tell me what band does that these days. Two and a half hours.

RF: And the stage was so big that we had these like dressing rooms underneath the stage. And so, you know, we'd be like playing cards and hanging out under the stage. And then they'd be playing a song. They'd start playing a song that we're on. And then we'd be like, "Oh, we gotta go upstairs!" You know, we'd run up onto the stage and start performing. It was insane.

TA: It was like that all the time. He would introduce a song, because we didn't know what the song was gonna be. So he started talking. And then by what he said, we knew it was gonna be Double Talkin' Jive or...

RF: "Double talking, mother...!"

TA: Yeah, he would say something and go, "Double Talkin' Jive," and I'm up, you know. So you go racing up to the top. It was crazy. I mean to think about it. Those set list. How would a light guy get the queue?

Derek Frank: Yeah It's all different now because everything's automated and everything runs off a central computer.

TA: Back then it was all analog. I mean, it was pretty high-tech, but... Even all the pyrotechnics had to be...

RF: We had a lot of those too.

TA: And here's a good one. We had a guy named... What was his name? The pyrotechnic guy, not Nitro. He had-

RF: Nitro, wasn't it?

TA: Not Nitro.

DF: That's a total roadie name right there.

TA: He had a name like Nitro and he had a twitch. [laughs] No, his name was Pyro.

RF: That was it, Pyro. Pyro!

TA: That was his name. That was his name, Pyro, and he had a twitch. He was in charge of the pyrotechnics and you never knew how much he was going to fill the canisters up with until they went off. And you know-

RF: There was some close calls.

TA: There was so close and the horn players would be playing and then a flash pot would go off and you could see like Anne King go like this [leaning to the side].

RF: But you know, that gig gave me a lot of respect for the people that run the show. Because they literally were running around like crazy because there was no set list. So the lighting guys and the sound, like and the monitor, like all of them just really had to be completely on their toes.

TA: Yeah, there was no messing around, no messing around.

RF: There was no messing around. And I don't think Axl appreciated that as much as he should have because, you know-

TA: Yeah, being in a band with Axl Rose, you realize he was literally, he is one of the greatest frontman of all time. I mean, as quirky and as asshole as he was, nobody could do what he did.

RF: He was a great front man. He really was.

TA: I mean, try and run, try and run that, that distance sprint and sing. It's crazy. I mean, I never saw anything like it.

RF: It was an enormous stage.

TA: And it was stage and it had stairs-

RF: -and we had ramps-

TA: -the ramps and stage and when he got off the stage, he worked out. Man. I mean, who does that?

DF: Ah, youth.

RF: Right? Yeah.

DF: I mean, you gotta be in shape, man, for rockin' the halls.

Brando: He had his oxygen also, still when he went off stage.

RF: He had the oxygen, but he had this machine that it looked kinda like-

TA: The ROM machine. It was called the ROM machine.

RF: Was it called the ROM machine?

TA: R-O-M.

RF: It was this machine that you sit in it and you do all this weird cardio. It was just really crazy.

TA: The case for it was as big as a one-room apartment.

RF: It was big.

TA: It's a massive machine. And it was wild, man. They were... They still are, you know, they're great band, great songs.

Brando: Let me ask this and to bounce off what Derek Frank was saying, because I never had the midnight experience. I was too young. And for you, I mean, I can honestly just have an episode of his Roberta and Teddy Zigzag just talking about the tour and just leave the mic on and just shut up. But you guys, when we talk about the anniversary of the albums, are you able to separate your experience with the intense tour with just like the music when you first you ever just listen to pop in a CD, pop in a cassette, or you heard it every night and it didn't matter. Have you ever been able to kind of sit back and appreciate the album for what it is or does it come with too much extra for you since you were so involved in it? Does that make sense?

RF: I never listened to the album the entire time that I was on tour except for rehearsing. And I, you know, inhaled it before we went on tour because not only did I have to learn certain parts, but I also had to come up with vocal arrangements and, you know, Slash was like, "Do what you want to do." So I did that, but you know, so I inhaled it and I just tried to get the essence of it as much as I could. But after the tour, after listening to it, every single night, I mean, they weren't my favorite band at the time. I liked them. But I mean, even if it was like somebody who I just top of my list, if I was on tour with them for that long, I don't think I would listen to them for a while after. You know? So, well, like when I listen to them when they come on the radio or something, I, you know, and I always kind of jam out to it, you know? But yeah, I don't think it took me a few years to, to actually start listening to them again, because I was burnt out, you know, I was really burnt out.

TA: Yeah. So, and they, and they, and because the shows were so long, there was so much material. It was exhausting. It really was exhausting. And, and that's what made it so much when you appreciate just this guys are really good, you know, cause there's so much material and the crowd obviously knew every song. And we rarely did anything that they didn't know. Well, Estranged, that was....

RF: No, they knew it. They did it.

TA: They knew it, but it was so hard to play. I think it was a Estranged that they had cheat sheets on paper because Axl was the only one with a teleprompter. So they had these cheat sheets taped to the stage with the notes in it. Because we would rarely play that song. It's an involved tune, man. Estranged. That's a piece.

Brando: But for both of you, do you there's a few, how do you feel being associated? I know you it's again, it's different. The tour and the albums are they're one in the same. They are, but they aren't. You know, but people and people think about Use Your Illusion. They think back 30 years. How do you feel being associated, you know, still associated with that all? You know, and people just think back and listen and thank you all these years later. People still listening to the music, still talking about it. 30 years later. You know, how does it make-

TA: For me it was a gig, you know, I was happy to have a gig, but then again I was also friends with Slash and Duff. And you know, there was no auditions for, for our part. They just, you know, let's call Roberta and Tracy. And I know you had Diane first-

RF: No, I had Tracy. I brought Tracy in.

TA: Okay, that's right.

RF: Tracy took a hiatus for a leg.

TA: That's right. And there you go. And I brought the horns in. You know, they said we need some horns for these. So I just knew some girls that I played with. And they came down and, you know, luckily, they worked because... Well, that's why the girl singers came in because they were told the girl horn players told me, "Well, we can sing."

RF: [laughs] Sorry!

TA: I'll never forget it. I'll never forget it. I'm sure they'll hear this, but they said, "We'll do Heaven's Door," and I know the girls will probably see this and I'll get the phone call, but they said they stepped to the mic to start to sing and I went, "Oh my god, they can't sing."

RF: I remember being at rehearsal with them and they started singing and first of all I had written out arrangements for me and Tracy to sing. So they start singing willy-nilly and they were not singers. And I'm like, "What are you doing?" And we actually kind of got into it a little bit and, and Slash kind of had to go, "Girls, girls, girls," you know, "these are the singers and you're the horn players, let's separate these two things." And that was that. And I was very happy about that. Cause all that work I had done.

TA: And this is stuff that went on in the early days. But, you know, it ended up becoming a good show. Show was unbelievable. I mean, there was a lot of going on on that stage, man. I'll tell you that. Between the pyrotechnics, the girls and Axl running back and forth and.

[...]

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