Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - 253. Shep Gordon

Episode Date: April 1, 2019

The legendary "Supermensch," talent manager and producer Shep Gordon joins Gilbert and Frank from his Hawaii home to share storied tales of his 50+ years in rock 'n' roll and to talk about the pitfalls of fame, the importance of "making history," the secret of client-manager relationships and the benefits of "bad" publicity. Also, Janis Joplin packs a punch, Cary Grant adopts a cat, Elton John gets showered in panties and Shep saves Raquel Welch from a wardrobe malfunction. PLUS: Wolfman Jack! The late, great Teddy Pendergrass! Groucho dishes dirt! Shep hangs with the Dalai Lama! And Alice Cooper gets fired out of a cannon! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Treat your senses with NuoLite Indulgent Moisture Body Wash. Buy it today at major retailers. I'm Nancy Allen, and you're listening to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal pod plant. Oh, see? Take two. Oh, thank you. This could take a while. This could take a while. We got the time. Okay, I'm Nancy Allen

and you're listening to Gilbert Godfrey's amazing, colossal podcast. Gilbert, you eat shit. He's easily pleased, Nancy. You are a very sick person. I hate to tell you. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre, and our engineer, Frank Berderosa.

Our guest this week is a genuine bona fide showbiz legend, a producer, a New York Times bestselling Vereen, Squeeze, Frankie Valli, George Clinton, Kenny Loggins, the Pointer Sisters, Raquel Welch, Rick James, and even Groucho Marx. He even managed Pink Floyd for all of nine days. And he's still working with his original client and longtime

friend Alice Cooper. He's also a movie producer, helping bring to the screen award-winning films like The Duelist, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Rhodey, Stop Making Sense, Choose Me, The Whales of August, Wes Craven Shocker, and John Carpenter's They Live.

But that's not all. But that's not all. He also created the concept of the celebrity chef directing the careers of Wolfgang Puck, Emeril Lagasse, Nobu Masuhisa. Close. Close enough. And Daniel Balud, among others. His best-selling memoir is entitled They Call Me Supermench.

And he's also the subject of the Mike Myers-directed documentary Supermench, The Legend of Shep Gordon, which was released to rave reviews in 2016 and featured longtime friends, Sylvester Stallone, Michael Douglas, and Willie Nelson. Please welcome to the podcast, mentor, advisor, spiritual guru, master promoter, marketing genius, idol maker, and the man who came up with the brilliant idea of wrapping a rock and roll record in women's panties. The one and only Shep Gordon. Now I know why I'm tired. You said your documentary was like a eulogy. That's like a eulogy.

Yeah, it's all a eulogy. My life has turned into a eulogy. That's like a eulogy. Yeah, it's all a eulogy. My life has turned into a eulogy. Now, starting from the beginning, one of your first jobs was something I'm sure any Jewish parents would be so proud of their son doing. You were a security guard in a prison yeah i was actually a probation officer i was in the california i was a probation officer for a day at los padrinos juvenile hall and um i was going to the new school for Research, knew I wanted to drop out, and they sent some recruiters from the California penal system.

And I said, I was a Jewish kid from Manhattan who thought of myself as the savior on a white horse, and it was the Reagan era when people like me, hippies, I was a full-on hippie, were getting persecuted. And I said, I'm going to go save these kids. So the luckiest, that was probably the best choice I ever made because it started my journey. I ended up at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall. I had hair almost down to my waist. Luckily, I left the psychedelics in the car because I had to go through a frisking when I went in. Good decision.

Yeah, good decision. And they sort of set me up. They sent me out to play baseball with the kids who were all basically South American kids, young. This was a probation, not a jail, so it was under 18. And I guess they gave them instructions that I was going to be the baseball, and all the guards left, and the kids came around me. And it didn't really hurt me, but I got the message, and I left that night and drove into L.A. and checked into a motel.

I had about 10 days' worth of money in a cheap motel. It was, I think, $50 a night. And took some psychedelics. You saw a vacancy sign, right? Saw a vacancy sign. It was actually right next to the Magic Castle. But I didn't know about the magic castle in those days it was all fate because i got off the freeway and i got in the right lane i was trying to get to hollywood but you had to make a right on franklin boulevard

which is where this motel was and it's our vacancy went in checked in room 224 still remember the room in the corner and i heard a girl screaming after i i was you know psychedelicized and heard a girl screaming and it just had just come from a jail so my thoughts weren't of love they were sort of of something violent so i went down again on my white horse you know here's the savior and um separated him and the girl punched me. They were making love. And in the morning, I went down to the pool. And the girl pulled me over. And the girl was Janis Joplin.

Amazing. And she was sitting with all these rock stars, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison. And my mind immediately went to, I am the luckiest guy in the world. I just found the world's greatest customers from my pharmacy business. And my journey began. And about three months into it, I made enough money to buy a car. So when I got the car, Jimmy Hendrix said, what do you do for a living?

I never see you go to work. And I said, well, I just do my pharmaceuticals. And he said, well, what are you going to tell the police if they ask you where you got the money for a car? And I had never thought of that. Long Island, nobody asks you. In Watts, you know, they ask you. And I said, I don't know. He said, are you Jewish?

And I said, yeah. He said, you should be a manager. Career advice from Jimi Hendrix. And Alice Cooper was living in Chambers Brothers' basement. And he said, can you afford to pay $100 a week to say you manage these guys? And I said, absolutely. So Alice tells of Jimi Hendrix walking in with Lester Chambers saying, we found a Jew who will give you $100 a week and manage you.

And the journey began. You had no knowledge of that motel. No knowledge whatsoever. You were pulling into the rock and roll motel. It was just there. There was a vacancy sign. It was in a convenient spot at the time. Yeah, it was completely because I had to make that right turn.

Had to make that right turn. You know, this place is as good as any, right? Oh, yeah. I figured I could spend $50 a night, and this was, I think, like $38 or something. It's almost magical. No, it's a bit. But most of my life has been knee jerk you know openness to be open enough to some knee jerk bump yeah i mean it's a random decision to just so i'll pull into this

place and it changes everything everything in a moment yeah so then your first and only client at the time i guess or or maybe the other ones were clients. Yeah, in a different way. Yeah. How was Alice Cooper? Who was, for me, the perfect client because everybody hated him, which meant I would never have to work because I didn't know what to do. I was doing it as a cover for my pharmaceuticals.

So he was the perfect cover. He was the perfect client in life. And life was beautiful. We went on for about a year, maybe nine months, and he'd come get his hundred dollars. And I do my thing and it was great. And then people started to get arrested all around me. And I just didn't want to be one of those people. So the only thing really in my life was Alice. The only thing in Alice's life was sort of me. So we looked at it, you know, the band got together. Alice at that time wasn't Alice. Alice was Vincent Frenier. Alice was five people. So we all got together. And I remember what we talked about. We said, it only took like 10, 12 people for Christianity.

We don't need to be that big. And their thoughts were much more abstract than ours. So six of us really believing, if we make a pact that we're going to change the world with this, let's just stay together till we do it. And the only thing we really had was that people didn't like them. So the thought was, how do we turn that into a positive? And when we started to think about it, we realized that that was the thing that every superstar had in common. Parents hated him. They hated the Beatles. They hated the Stones.

They hated Sinatra. Elvis. Yeah. Now it's hip hop. You know, I remember going into my kid's room, hearing hip hop and rap the first time. I think, what is this crap? And as I said it,

I realized it's going to be the biggest thing ever. So we realized that we had in our toolkit this unbelievable tool tool which was the ability to get people to hate us so we we told that story and we did everything to that point that's where you know the chickens came from and that's where the name Alice came from and that's where makeup came from and that's where chopping up babies came from. What's going to really piss off a parent? And during the course of it, he developed into a great rock and roll act. Yeah, it worked.

And that was the legend of Alice Cooper, where everyone says, oh, he's the guy who bit off the head of the chicken. Which he never did. Yeah. So what was the real story? The real story was we had our the theory we had of getting parents to hate us was a great

theory. The making it happen was a tough one. So buying lunch was difficult. Our dreams were big. So we knew we didn't have a lot of stuff. We didn't have a lot of bullets left in our gun. We just, we didn't have a lot of stuff. We didn't have a lot of bullets left in our gun. We just we couldn't get attention. We tried.

The first thing we tried to do was we we went into a place called The Experience in L.A. on Sunset Boulevard. And the thought was, let's get arrested for indecent exposure. Indecent exposure could maybe make a daily newspaper or a TV thing in L.A. Parents will see it and say, oh, my God, this is disgusting. A guy named Alice who's naked on stage. So we made up see-through plastic clothes and went on stage at the experience. And you could see everything. The genitals were all there.

And I went to a phone booth and I called 911. And I said, oh, my God, I'm here with my children. There's these naked, crazy hippies on stage. I'm sure they're on drugs. Next thing I know, the sirens are coming. It's like, yeah, we got them, baby. The police come, you know, bust in the door, like eight policemen. And by that time, the heat of their bodies had fogged up the plastic.

So you couldn't see anything. They looked like they were dressed. Was a noble effort. So we had a lot of noble efforts, but we were getting near the end of our economics. We were eating like rock soup. And an opportunity came up for me to produce a show with John Lennon. It was the first show. Um, Oh, the rock and roll revival. Yeah. It was a rock and roll Toronto. Um, it was Jim Morrison and the doors who I knew well, I helped get them for the

show. Um, and John, so I knew John's first appearance with Yoko was going to get the world's attention. So in lieu of pay, I said, I just wanted my act to go on before him. And they agreed to it because it was too late in the game. They couldn't get rid of me, and that was the only way I was going to do it. So you put Alice between the doors and John Lennon. Yep. Jim was very cool with it. Jim loved Alice.

They were really good friends. He understood this was sort of make it or break it for us. And we had to do something outrageous. And truthfully, I couldn't think of anything outrageous. So the thing we were doing was we had feather pillows in the hotel room and CO2 tanks and fire extinguishers so we were able to open up the pillowcase and blow it out with co2 every day as long as we stayed in hotels that had feathers so that was part of our show and i was driving to the show trying to figure out what to do and we got to the show there were these veer whatever like what do you call feral chickens yeah running around the field wild chickens so i said this is it so i just put one in a in a uh laundry bag from backstage and you

know snuck to the stage and when the feathers started to go on stage i threw the chicken and alice saw the chicken and he assumed the chicken could fly, so he threw it to the audience, and the audience just ripped it apart. They were frenzied. That became Alice bit the head off the chicken and drank the blood, and we never said it wasn't so. We were thrilled that that was the story, but it wasn't.

You went with it. We went with it. Print the legend. Yeah. Truth wasn't our biggest factor. Well, didn't that lead to the ASPCA following you guys around for years? Every single show. That's sort of where the snake came from because we figured as long as they're there, we might as well really irritate them.

So what other animal could we introduce into the show that would really freak them out? And the snake came up. So it was a doubleheader. They were after us for the snake and for the chicken every night. But that would make the 6 o'clock news. And that's what we wanted. We wanted on the 6 o'clock news the most respectable people in the city saying, oh, this disgusting guy is in your town tonight.

Don't let your kids out to go see him. That's what worked for us. Get your kids out to go see them. That's what worked for us. And you in England, you took a big picture of Alice Cooper naked. With Derek Taylor. Yeah, with a snake wrapped around him. And had this guy just drive around Piccadilly Circus and then just stop.

That's a great one. It was the same theory. I went to London. We had put Wembley up on sale. I thought that because we were starting to sell tickets in America, we would in England. But I got into town about five days early and ticket sales were very weak. And they took me into the office of this gentleman, Derek Taylor, who I had never met, who was just one of the most brilliant people I've ever met. He was the fifth Beatle, great character, always had a cigarette dangling from his mouth. And when I went into his office, George Harrison was there in these white robes. He had just come from India.

It was sort of that period of time, the Beatles in India. And Harry Nielsen was in there and a whole bunch of people. And I had to wait like three, four hours to get his attention. And he sort of said, what can I help you? I know my president sent you down. I said, I have this band, Alice Cooper. And he said, I haven't heard of him. And he said, tell me about him. So I explained a bit about him.

And he said, what can I help you with? And I said, I need a way to rapidly piss off every parent in England. And I only have three days to do it. And he said, you know, we started talking and I said, I just come from America, from New York and Richard Avedon took this picture of Alice naked with a boa constrictor wrapped around his penis. And Derek said, well, let's see, let's talk about it. He said, every family, where can you get every family?

You can get them at Morning News on the BBC. They watch traffic. You could get them maybe in the newspaper, but three days is tough for a newspaper story for me to get a reporter. So when he said traffic, I said, well, do they watch traffic every morning? He said, yes. What about if we took that picture and put it on a big thing and broke it down? Would they cover that?

He said, absolutely. And he's the one who came with Piccadilly. It ended up backing up traffic for about 25 miles. He broke down the truck three times, went to jail. Same police every time came over to down the truck three times, went to jail. Same police every time came over to get the truck away. Was the driver worried he was going to get

arrested, Sheriff? He knew he was going to get arrested, but we told him we'd cover him. You'll take care of him. The best part of it was what we didn't expect was the next day, one of the MPs in Parliament introduced a bill to ban Alice from coming into the country to do the show. So the London papers had a picture of the billboard with Alice naked and the story about being banned in England,

that this MP was trying to ban us. So the show sold out in two hours. Of course. Fantastic. Fantastic. Since we mentioned Pink Floyd in the intro, and I don't want to forget it because it's kind of fun. And I want to ask you what Sid Barrett was like, if you have any memories. only met i only met three of the band members okay um they had a road manager named stephen o'rock and they stayed in that motel same motel same motel and jimmy and um and lester wanted me to um develop a business that you know you should be you should manage

other people so So they, the name of my company is because they were artists and they wanted to make me a business card. And in those days, the Chambers Brothers used to put up a V, uh, time has come today. They would sing at the end of their show and they put up the peace sign and fingers. It was a big thing in those days, V's. So they drew that, and we looked in the dictionary for the first word with a V, and it was alive, A-L-I-V-E. So they brought me Pink Floyd as a second client. They said, we have this great guy.

He's Jewish. He's really great. He's, you know. And a guy named Steve O'Rourke came in. They wanted a gig on the way back to England. They were going back like 10 days later, and I knew nothing. I didn't even know what a gig on the way back to England. They were going back like 10 days later, and I knew nothing. I didn't even know what a gig was.

I had to ask what a gig was when they left the room. But Lester called a guy in Chicago and booked him at the hot club in Chicago the following weekend. It was a guy named Aaron Russo, very famous guy in the music business, was married to Bette Midler, ran for mayor.

I know the name, yeah. Yeah, a film producer too, I think. Film producer, very famous guy. Yeah. And a very famous, lived on the edge of the lore, sort of. I don't know how to describe it. So anyway, a kinetic playground,

which was like the Fillmore. And I got him $10,000 to play, which I didn't know was a gigantic sum of money, to play the following weekend, which I didn't know. Nobody books anybody for the next weekend. Well, they hired me immediately as their manager. $10,000 was got to Chicago. The club burned down that weekend. Unbelievable. He, I'm sure, needed an act to be on the marquee who he could not pay because the club burned down.

But I had no other act, so I wouldn't hurt his future. So that was the weekend the club burned down. They fired me immediately. The end of your association with Pink Floyd. By the way, Shep, that's Gilbert's dream dream that the club burns down before he has to go on. Every time when I'm backstage waiting to go on, I think I wish there was a fire or a flood. And they hand me my check and send me home. Should I have a detonator button?

Just start torching the place, Gil, like Joe Pesci. Yeah. Should I have a detonator button? Should I give you the check? Just start torching the place, Gil, like Joe Pesci. Good fellas. Now, the first time you met Teddy Pendergrass, tell us your sales pitch to him. That's right. You know, there's certain stories that you sort of never tell because they're not really believable because you don't want to hurt somebody.

This is a story I never told until Teddy wrote his bio, and he wrote it in his bio, so I now feel like I'm free to tell it. Sure. I first went to see him, and I went backstage, and there was every great jewish manager lined up at the door he had just had a number one record you know i didn't like the show um and i didn't really i was there doing a favor the the chairman of cbs at the time was the executor of groucho marx's estate got it liverson and he asked me to go see teddy Marxist estate, Goddard Lieberson. And he asked me to go see Teddy. So I went because I had to.

So anyway, Goddard called and made me go down a second time. When I went down the second time, I was always a huge fan of Teddy's voice. Once I realized he was the voice of Harold Melvin, I just didn't like the show he was doing it. But when I went down the second time, I sort of made up my mind that I was going to be so crazy that there was no way I was going to have to get into this. Because in those days, urban music was a tough game. It was dangerous. It was very different than the rock and roll world. So I get down there, and he lived in an apartment house.

And in front of the apartment house was a white Rolls Royce. It says Teddy on the license plate. And know i was a young kid i wasn't like i wasn't rocking at this point i was still you know checking the bills at the restaurants how much how much was the soup uh um and i go up and it's a penthouse apartment i ring the doorbell and this gorgeous girl comes out in a negligee. Just gorgeous, like drop-date gorgeous. And I was always very taken with gorgeous women. It was sort of one of my things. So it's a whole while.

And then I go in and Teddy walks in the room. And he's the sexiest, most handsome. I can't even describe. When he walks in a room, he owns the room, and it's like pure sex. And here I'm like this not even successful yet kid who's one of 25 other managers. So anyway, he said, thanks for coming down.

I said, listen, man, there are not a lot of things I really know in life, but for coming down. I said, listen, man, there are not a lot of things I really know in life. But one of the things I do know is that you have no qualifications to determine which one of us is lying to you. Because you have met the best liars in the business. And I'm probably one of them. So the criteria of you making a judgment that this guy's going to do a better job for you, or this guy's going to do a better job. It means nothing because you're not qualified to make that decision. I said, but here's what the other thing I know. I can get higher than you. I got more beautiful women than you. I can drink more than you. And when you collapse at the end

of like nights of partying, I will be there to take the cash out of your pocket. So when you wake up, you still got it. And he just looked at me like I was completely insane. I thought he just throw me out. And he said, you know, you're right. Let's get together. And three weeks later, I got the Atlantic apartment. Atlantic Records had an apartment at the Warwick Hotel. And we got a two bedroom suite, and three days later, I was managing Teddy, and I managed him for his whole life after that. And he actually tells a story in his bio. What is the story in the book of you running through the streets

with a suitcase full of money? That was related to Teddy. Yeah, we were doing two shows at the Apollo. And after the first show, and they were sold out shows way in advance, so there was no cash in the box office. And after the first show, the road manager came to me and said, he won't go on. He's left the building. I said, he's what? He's left the building.

It's a sold out audience. And he said, he's left the building. And he wouldn't get on the phone with me. Wouldn't talk to me. And I, you know, I had, this is Harlem. This is not funny. You know, this is a sold out crowd. You don't get up there and say, Teddy can't come on, come back tomorrow for your money. Um, I didn't know. I didn't want that on my shoulder. So I called him. I had a business manager who just passed away, Bert Padel, and he had a restaurant client in the village who,

in the restaurant business, you tend to keep cash. So he had $60,000 in cash, which is what I needed. So I took a limousine down to the hotel, picked up the cash, and the limousine broke down about 15 blocks from the theater. So I'm walking this white Jewish kid, walking too hard of it, like, you know, 10.30 at night. I was so scared, but we got it. We paid everybody off.

It wasn't until a couple of years later when Teddy told me, one night with some cognac, he said, you know, I'm really sorry about that night at uh the apollo and i said what happened man and he said uh someone flashed the gun and unbeknownst to me his last manager had been shot to death so he just got really scared someone had pulled the gun the first show and he just didn't want to do the second one he had a woman manager yeah and then just one day, one morning they said, Oh,

your manager was shot in the head. Well, you go into detail in the book, Shep, about the Chitlin circuit and the, the amount of corruption at the time and how you guys were determined to break it. Very ballsy of you.

I might add. Yeah. We, you know, for me, I didn't feel like I had anything to lose. Um, I wasn't really married.

I didn't have kids. Yeah. And just, you know, just about everything I've done has been a knee-jerk reaction. And that was really a knee-jerk reaction to like, you know, basically, can you curse on the show?

Fuck them. Sure, yeah. It was basically a fuck them. It was like, you know, fuck you. Like, fuck you. Promoter didn't pay us. And when I went to Teddy, I found out that's what happens to him every night.

This had happened with black performers. There was a history of this. You know, it was in every industry, it seems to be the same pattern. That there's suppliers of content who are the artists, whether they're chefs, whether they're musical artists. Then there's power people who make huge amounts of money off them and and they should no one's saying they shouldn't but um in the record business how it manifested in the black world it started in the white world too but it broke out very fast was an artist was told that in order to sell records radio stations would only play their record if they went to those towns and played a club date for them or a concert date for them.

So Teddy would go to Cleveland. He'd play for the radio station in Cleveland that was playing his records. For a promoter who worked in cahoots with the radio station, he'd basically play for free or almost nothing. The record company would make him do it, saying that's the only way you're going to get hit records. Radio station would make money, club would make money, and Teddy would go to the next place. The chefs were exactly the same way.

Yeah. They were convinced that the only way they were going to get business into their places was by doing these things for free. And the demand for R&B music was so gigantic that it didn't matter. You weren't going to stop people from playing Teddy. But every act went for that. And it became very hardcore.

And if you tried to move out of it, which a few acts did, then you started getting serious pickets at your show because it was very tied into politics. It was so much money, but it was tied into anything. Well, you guys got death threats when you decided to break it and

play the Roxy to take a chance? The FBI protected us for a while, which was really nice. Incredible. But we had, you know, when we did Radio City Musical, we had pickets because just because Radio City was a white owned facility. So the black promoter in that town couldn't make money on the show. So it became it was it was it was gangster on one side, political on another, cultural on another. on one side, political on another, cultural on another.

Also, there was a huge feeling in the black community of loyalty to the black promoters and black record companies. And even if they were getting screwed by them, they're still loyal. You know, it's like your parents. They may be bad to you, but they're still your parents. So, sure.

It was the devil they knew. Wasn't it that when they would hire someone, and at the end of the gig just say to them, no, we're not going to pay you? Yeah, or they'd give them a ring, or they'd give them half of what they owed them. But it wasn't just that. It was the lack of respect for their artistry. They'd never provide a PA that was adequate for the building.

They'd never provide lighting systems that showed off the artist right so it wasn't just that they weren't allowing them the resources for doing it they were making them compromise their artistry a pattern of disrespect just a total pattern and that's what got me to like the you know you uh it was teddy's first date he went on 30 minutes late because the PA system was being used at the holiday inn and they were doubling up the system. And he sold 8,000 seats in a building Alice had been to four months before and sold 6,000 seats. We got paid a lot of money.

He got paid nothing. And, and you, well, this is on a lighter topic but also with teddy uh you he was doing a concert with thousands of people mostly women who were in love they were all like yeah sexually turned on by teddy pinterest and and you gave out like thousands of chocolate lollipops like we said master promoter what i what i always tried to do for my artists was um so i always tried to get ahead a little bit and and write our own headlines so when we saw when we came up with this idea for women only, I saw it. I sat in my jacuzzi and I said, okay, now I'm in the hall.

Now he's singing Close the Door. What do I want those women doing? Oh, man. Like licking a chocolate lollipop. Shep, this is not a visual medium, so we'll tell our listeners that Shep is licking a chocolate lollipop. Demonstrating what his vision was. He's sticking his tongue out and putting his fist to his face. So it was like symbolically thousands of women sucking his dick.

What could be greater? Not subtle. What could be greater? Not subtle. What could be greater? What a great fantasy. I want to try that at one of my shows. You should. A little halva? I like it.

You know, on a more serious note, Shep, since we're on the subject of Teddy, and I want to plug the documentary, which Dara called me. We're all watching it. I had seen it before, but I showed my wife, and Dara was texting me furiously. I love this man. He's my new hero.

I've seen it a few times. I cry every time I see it. Oh, it's beautiful for so many reasons, and Mike did a wonderful job, but one of the most touching things, one of the most touching moments in it, not a dry eye in the house, is when you basically got Teddy back on stage at Live Aid after his terrible accident. Yeah.

And it's a moment. That was an amazing moment. Can we go back first to the accident? Can we go back first to the accident? It was like there was a show that Teddy didn't want to go on. It was a show in England. I actually am only half right about it. I had the opportunity since the movie came out to run into Harvey Goldsmith,

who was promoting that show. And Teddy was actually sick. Maybe not sick enough to go on. Okay, so you're amending the story. I'm sort of amending the story because I had the conversation with him, but he was also sick. I thought he was just really putting it on. I just felt like something was wrong. Um, and we had a long conversation about karma and how, you know, um,

these people got babysitters. Um, they planned for this for months and months and months. This stuff comes back to haunt you. Um, and that was the last show he did. You, you had said some, according to the documentary, you said something to him about how karma was real. Yeah. No, I remember saying it to him. In my mind, I didn't remember him saying he was sick.

And when I saw the promoter, he said he was. So I sort of feel a little bad that I was so strong with him. You know, artist-manager relationships are very unique when they work. They all have a different rhythm. The symbiosis is never the same because the needs are so different for every human and it's really a human management there's a career management but um with teddy we used to have these things called don't be a schmuck conversations and he was an artist who i could really talk to and he could really talk to me there were a couple of times when he called me out but it was such a great that that's the real joy of management

is when you can be stupid with your client where you're not scared to say things that maybe are too far so we this was one of our don't be a schmuck conversations where I called him up and he said, oh shit, what did I do? And we went through our thing. He crashed into a tree.

As Rolls Royce, yeah. So many things have been revealed to me in the last few years. I'm not one who deals with the past. So for me, as soon as this happened, I just jumped in working the future. I never asked them what happened that night. I never asked them. There was a big controversy.

The girl in the car was actually a guy. I never asked him. There was a big controversy. The girl in the car was actually a guy. I never asked him about that. But I did make some assumptions. And some of my assumptions were very wrong. I've now found out sort of the real story, which is I always assumed that Teddy put his hand down and felt a male, you know, a penis and then went into a tree. That was always my thought because I knew what happened up till then. He had been in a basketball game. He brought a date. I didn't realize he drove the date home till I saw the movie. But I knew Julius Irving had told me what happened that night, that this girl was at the bar. Teddy had a date.

He ended up taking the girl from the bar home. The girl was actually a guy that came out in the newspapers the next day. So my assumption was that I was lucky enough to get invited to Oprah's for lunch one day. And we started talking about it. And she said she had a show on TV that, um, where are they now? And she went out and found the girl or guy. And it turns out that she had had a sex change operation. So she didn't have a penis. So my whole thought process was actually wrong. Um, and he, that nobody, but nonetheless,

that's what, that's what came out in the streets. And, um, that was, uh, was a difficult moment. So I,

but I never went back and, and ever, um, well, it's a beautiful moment in the doc that, you know, nobody thought he would perform again. And he was in, he was in the wheelchair and at Live Aid in Philly.

Nobody thought he would live. Nobody thought he would, I mean. Would live, would even live. And somehow you convinced him. You brought him to that Live Aid show. And tell us what you said to him when he said, I can't do it. I just heard from Valerie, actually, Simpson. First time since that day.

Wow. She texted me yesterday. She saw the documentary. Got the number from the people who made the movie. We had worked really hard. I think if anyone watches the documentary, you'll see there was a team of doctors that got him back to a place where he could sing.

He didn't have a lot of power, but we had started recording. And then they announced Live Aid. And a good friend of mine, the same fellow from England, Harvey Goldsmith, who was a promoter for the last show, was a promoter for Live Aid. And I saw they were doing it from Philly. And we had been very careful to never take a picture of Teddy. Nothing. His audience had never touched him since the accident.

No press releases, no pictures. I wanted that first bullet to be gigantic. I didn't want to compromise it at all. And I knew that there were women out there who, you know, every day thought about Teddy, his audience. They loved him. So when they announced Live Aids, it just seemed so obvious to me that he had to be part of this moment. And I called Ashton and Simpson.

I called, I think, their manager. I don't think I actually ever spoke to them and said what I'd like to do and would they do it with them. And they jumped on it immediately. And we were all gung-ho until we got to the stage and when we got to the stage he was really scared i've never seen him scared before teddy's a pretty brave guy and um he asked the family should he you know the family the family was like hollowed around him and one of them came over to me and said i don't know if he can do it he's really scared and i just went over to him and i said listen teddy i got it i you should be

scared i'm scared too um but this is the moment so there's nothing you can do i'm going to wheel you out there you don't have to sing you can just hum along with them do whatever you feel like doing but you're going out wow and um as soon as he got out there it was he could see you in the movie when he's rolling out you know the uh it was a great moment i remember that day i remember that show really special you know he was a beautiful man um what a talent what a talent we will return to gilbert godffried's amazing colossal podcast, but first a word from our sponsor. Our moisturizing body wash is infused with vitamin B3 complex and has notes of rose and cherry creme for a rich, indulgent experience. Treat your senses with NuoLite Indulgent Moisture Body Wash. Buy it today at major retailers.

That's the sound of fried chicken with a spicy history. Thornton Prince was a ladies' man. To get revenge, his girlfriend hid spices in his fried chicken. He loved it so much, he opened Prince's Hot Chicken. Hot chicken in the window. This is one of many sounds in Tennessee with a story to tell. To hear them in person, plan your trip at tnvacation.com. Tennessee sounds perfect. Let's take it to something a little lighter and sillier, a lot lighter. Gilbert was talking about the penis lollipops.

It seems like a perfect segue into the aborted attempt to shoot Alice out of a cannon. Oh, my God. So, you know, when I talk to young people too, I always tell them that the failures are sometimes more important than the successes. That's one of your philosophies, right? One of your business philosophy. And I think this was one that really demonstrated how, how you can sort of overcome anything if you work together and have some trust and belief and are willing to really go for it.

So I had learned what I did to see through clothes that you have to rehearse. Rehearsal, you have to rehearse. If I had rehearsed that, I never would have gotten in that situation. So unfortunately, I didn't learn all my lessons. So we get our first baseball stadium, football stadium show. Three River Stadiums, Pittsburgh. I think it's 1972 or 73.

Humble Pie is opening and somebody else for us. And I'm trying to think of what would Alice Cooper do in a football stadium. What would be Alice Cooper? I got it. We're going to shoot him across the stadium out of a cannon. That would be so cool. And I've seen it at Ringling Brothers, Bonham and Bailey Circus.

It's obviously doable. I don't know if you can get how far you can project, but in those days, Warner Brothers Film Studios was building our props. And they had done a great job with, we did a, we hung them, so they built the gallows, which was great. Oh, and the guillotine.

The guillotine. Everything they built for us was great. Sure. So I went in. There was a guy with little half glasses on, didn't even look up for me. I thanked him for the guillotine, told him how great it was, was working every night. Thanks for the guillotine.

Thanks for the guillotine. And I said, you know, we're doing a stadium, and I'd like to shoot Alice out of a cannon across the stadium. And it didn't even look up at me, and it said, what period cannon? Which gave me so much confidence. So we ended up with a World War II cannon. And he actually had the blueprints. He took it out of a drawer.

There it was. To me me it's foolproof but i still remembered you had to do break-in you know you got to rehearse but i made the fatal mistake of going on radio and in the ad see alice get shot across out of a cannon so it's banging on the radio so we get to the first break-in date in Flint, Michigan. And the gag was Alice gets in, goes through a crawl space. There's a dummy inside. He gets into a golf cart. The golf cart drives him around to the other side. Meantime, we do schtick on stage to give him time to get there.

So the band, the lights go out the band all gets torches the drummer has a snare drum they do a slow procession up the steps to the end of the cannon they have the torch they light the fuse slow slow burn down, explosion over the PA, smoke everywhere, spotlight, hits Alice. The only problem is the dummy came out one foot. There wasn't a person in the place who knew what we were doing or to look where Alice was. They were all looking at the dummy. It's one foot down, so there's nothing. So they get him in the golf cart.

He said, boy, that was quiet ending. I said, yeah, could be the worst thing I've ever seen in my life. And I said, it came out one foot. He said, what are we going to do? And I said, go to sleep. I'll it came out one foot he said what are we going to do and I said go to sleep I'll figure it out and instead of keeping me up all night bitching at me

he let me go do what I do which is a great lesson not that it worked but so he shows up the next night and I say I got it it's overnight I got these, I was big on fire extinguishers. They had CO2 foam ones. So we put

balls on the cannon. We turned it into a giant penis. And when he got there, I said, you get on it, you're going to masturbate. You got to lick it and rub it. And this foam is going to go out over probably the first 40 or 50 rows of cum.

It's going to be fantastic. It's a cum cannon. It's going to be fantastic. So he gets on the kid's last song. He gets on the cannon. He's working so hard. He's licking it. He's rubbing it.

He's scratching the testicles. The foam drips out. It's like, you know, one little drip comes out of the testicles. The foam drips out. It's like, you know, one little drip comes out of the end of the cannon. There's nobody who knows what it's supposed to be. It's like, what is this guy fucking doing? So now we're one day away from, see, Alice, get shot out of the cannon. There's 55,000 people waiting. So what are we

going to do? I go to sleep. I got it covered. No problem. He said, well, you didn't really get it covered last night. I said, no, but I got it. I got it. So the end of the story is he shows up that night and

he says, so what are we going to do? I said, well, I don't want to tell you the whole middle the end is you're probably going to spend the night in the hot local hospital here and he what and i said i just had i have this premonition that the cannon's going to blow up while you're in it he said you got to be kidding me i said no we got a film crew here from from pittsburgh they're going to see youittsburgh they're gonna see you get in it they're gonna see the cannon blow up they're gonna see the ambulance rush up they're gonna follow the ambulance to the hospital we're gonna have one of the roadies one of the roadies

in a doctor's outfit who's gonna do a press conference around the corner for the hospital saying that that you got burned but that you want the show to go on, but that I'm going to make you do the show. The doctor is saying, but we're going to make him do the show from a wheelchair. He can't be standing. And it hit the news in Pittsburgh, and we did the show from a wheelchair.

Gilbert's taking notes, Shep. Let's incorporate this. You need a little bit of this in your stage show, Gil. And why was, there was one thing you said, the three things you say a manager does. Yeah, that was told to me by Jerry Wexler, one of the great old record managers. You want to be a good manager, you got to get the money,

never forget to get the money, and always money, never forget to get the money, and always remember to never forget to get the money. Right. Well, you know, somebody who knew that what you guys were going for, and you say this in the doc

and also in the book, you guys were, it kind of hits you that it was vaudeville. Oh, yeah, completely. That, you know, the music was one thing, but you guys were a little bit of P.T. Barnum. Oh, yeah.

And both of you. We love that era and love doing that stuff and still do. You go to an Alice show and it's fun. It's a beginning, a middle, and an end, and it's fun. I saw one of those guillotine shows as a kid. Yeah, yeah, it's great. Yeah, yeah. And you also had a thing of you would warn people you signed on.

Like you said something like, I'll have you work really hard, and then you'll be in rehab. Something like that. What I would say to them is, if I do my job perfectly, I will probably kill you. Luckily for you, I'm not perfect. But I'm really good, so you will get maimed and you got to be willing to take it because nobody escapes it. And I don't know anybody who, who really has, you know, fame is really tough to deal with.

You say there's no intrinsic value in fame. Could you, could you elaborate on that? Yeah, there's no, it doesn fame. Could you elaborate on that? media and people laugh being famous what you know you get a parking spot it's just it's there's no intrinsic value to it it's not it's a manufactured artificial um sometimes for a good reason sometimes for bad reason but but it has no there's it's it's vapor and it's a dangerous vapor. Because, you know, I'm not a psychologist, so I can't say why, but I am a sociologist by sort of college, and all you have to

do is look at everyone. Look at everyone who's famous. Luckily, the majority recover, but I don't know anybody who hasn't had a big fall. Well, it's sort of a specter in the dock. For all the good times that you're having and all the adventures that you're having, Janice died at 27.

Yes, that's what I mean. Jim Morrison died. Teddy had the terrible accident. You're stalked by it a little bit, if I may say. Alice in rehab. I mean, every friend that I have is either dead or rehabbed, every famous friend, which doesn't exist for my friends from college or from high school.

You go through them and not everyone, you know, it's a very different journey. Not that it's an easy journey. Of course. But there's something, and I don't know if it's the personality that drives to become famous that is the problem or the fame itself that is a problem. I don't know which came first, the chicken or the egg. But you have to be a fool to take fame lightly when you see what it does to people.

And you've been around the most famous people in the universe. Yeah. And fame also is addictive. addictive oh it's all the bad stuff it's that's what i mean there's no intrinsic value to it it feeds on itself it's completely addictive it finds you doing things that you would never think in a million years to do to try and get more fame or to keep the fame. And it usually ends up in this yin and yang where you will do anything. You pay $15,000 a month to get famous,

and if someone says hello to you in a restaurant, you freak out. So you're fighting to become the person that you don't want to be. It's such a, the circle is so bizarre. Fascinating. I always said to my artists when they would get angry, when someone came over for an autograph, I said, no, no, no.

The time to get angry is when they don't come over for the autograph. Yeah. That's when you get angry. That's great. Yeah. And if we could go to another topic, one I was fascinated by, you also handled, of all these rock and soul performances. I know where you're going.

Groucho Marx. Oh, the greatest. How did Groucho come into your orbit? And Alice is. Groucho came into my orbit. Alice called me up one day, and he said, you won't believe where I was last night. I said, where is it? I was watching TV with

Groucho Marx in his bed. And I said, you've got to be kidding me because Alice likes to tell stories. So I said, you've got to take me. So maybe a week later he called me up. He said, Groucho said you could come over. So I go up and they're both in bed in Groucho Marx. They're wearing

gray Mickey Mouse ears, both of them. It's so bizarre. It's in Groucho on it. And it was, like, wild. So I said, I was so intimidated, I don't even know if I could talk. Well, you were a kid. We should point out, too, that your dad used to watch Marx Brothers movies with your dad. My dad, that was so, we used to, my father would cry.

He was laughing so hard. So it was a very important part of my life. Of course. And literally the whole time I managed it, it was very tough for me to ever speak. It was really, really difficult. I was in awe every second I was around him. I had a person. Anyway, so I go up that night and I get to meet him.

And the next day, Alice tells me that he couldn't afford his three shifts of nurses. And that's why he was going up there every night to be the late shift. And he would sleep with them and get them water. I said, you're kidding me. It's Groucho Marx. And he had a business manager who was before they knew what Alzheimer's was, had Alzheimer's. And they literally didn't have money. I mean, they had money's, and they literally didn't have money. I mean, they had money to eat, but they didn't have money.

So there was a woman in his life who was his secretary slash manager slash wife. Oh, yeah. She's come up on this show before. Yeah. Many, many times. I have nothing bad to say about her. I know a lot of people do. But I came in after she was there.

She's the one who hired me. Erin Fleming. Erin Fleming, thank you. And it was amazing because Groucho would be slumped over, no expression on his face, inanimate, and she would walk in the room and he would get eight inches taller, a huge smile, start telling jokes. She'd leave the room. He'd go right back down with like a marionette. So she made him happy. And that's all I really cared about. And I, I never, I, I, I believe the

stories that maybe she gave him said it is when she wanted to go out. But that was at that period when they couldn't afford the shifts of nurses. So anyway, I came in. She hired me. I put a guy named Bill Owens who set up an office in their house. And the main thing we did was get the TV show back on the air. 95% of the contestants were SAG actors. You bet your life.

Yeah. So I never knew that. I found that out in your book. So we had to go back and renegotiate with the estates to get a rate that would afford it to be syndicated. Um, and then I did a birthday party for him. It was Albert Brooks.

I think last time he did stand up. Wow. He performed for Groucho. At some, I forgot where we went, but there was a group up at Groucho's house, Bud Cort, Marvin Hamlisch,

Jeff Bridges. Jeff Bridges. And they were the house band. And when you ate dinner at Groucho's house, you had to perform after dinner, something you didn't normally do. So Alice would read a book and have an arpeggio. Marvin would give him this big arpeggio or a dance. I would read contracts to music.

Where to for Groucho would always throw me out of the room, like, get out of here. But every time I'd be with him, every single time, he'd have an opportunity to come up where he would always throw me out of the room, like, get out of here. But he would, every time I'd be with him, every single time, he'd have an opportunity to come up where he would say, this guy's Shep, my manager? And someone would say to him, yeah, that's Shep. He'd say, funny, you don't look like a crook. Every time.

Would he tell tales about the actors and the people he used to work with when he was in bed with alice stories oh my god he'd entertain him he had a story about everybody you know but usually it was about who was fucking who this one he was fucking he was fucking the daughter of that no he was a sto. We'd go out to eat. It's been 10 minutes. You haven't sued anybody. And here's a case of one of the biggest legends of showbiz who can't pay for a nurse to take care of him. Well, he didn't handle his money terribly well, did he? No.

My sense was the business manager couldn't even find where it was if there was money. He was before we knew what Alzheimer's was, and he was definitely an Alzheimer's guy. But we got him back to life. Jerry Moss came up to the line very heavily at A&M, gave him a lot of money for that album, much more than the album was worth. Right.

Your friend Ron Delsner was here. Oh, was he? By the way, who produced that show. I love that you had Dick Donner. Your Richard Donner was here, too. Yeah, a lot? By the way, who produced that show. Oh, I love that. I love that you had Dick Donner. Richard Donner was here, too. Yeah. A lot of people from the Shep Gordon inner circle. And Alan Zweibel I went to college with.

Zweibel was here, too. Oh, wow. Ben Whoopi and lots of your friends. No, no, I saw a lot of them on the show. I love the Dick Donner show. I don't think he's ever done another one. A podcast, you mean? Yeah, I don't think he doesn't.

After Gilbert brought up the sexual affair between Brando and Richard Pryor, he may never do another one. I think we were his virgin podcast and his swan song. And you were talking about your father. And you said, you know, growing up, you didn't know he's your father. You didn't know anything about him and you weren't concerned with anything. And then you said that you found out he gave up his entire life.

Yeah. Yeah. He, um, I, um, you know, you only know what you know. Sure. And childhood is a strange thing. And I had a very bizarre childhood. My mother was a very strong personality. She really ruled the house.

Not uncommon in Jewish families at that time. My dad just sort of went to work and was quiet and gave me a lot of love. And my brother had a dog that used to bite me. So I very rarely interacted with the family. I mean, really rarely interacted. I barely know my brother. And we probably haven't had dinner 20 times. I'm 73.

So that's and we grew up in the same house. Wow. I'm 73. So that's, and we grew up in the same house. Wow. So my, my image of my father always was of the human I love the most on the planet who loved me so much. And I used to feel sorry for him. He never had friends. He didn't do anything. He didn't drive. He never did friends. He didn't do anything.

He didn't drive. He never did anything for himself. And I thought of him as, I loved him so much, and I thought of him as this very weak man, you know, domineered by my mother, no real life. And when I was writing the book, it sort of, there was a moment in writing the book where it sort of hit me. In doing the research, I started to see, I got out a box of stuff because Mike wanted me to look.

And I saw that he was a handball champion. Then I found these cards that he had that are available for stag parties, Ben Gordon. And I saw pictures of, he worked at a brewery, which I didn't know. What was he doing at stag parties? Like stand up? No, it was,

you know, it was a card that he would give out, I guess, to women. Oh, I have the card. It's framed in my bedroom. I'm liking this guy more and more.

Yeah, yeah. No, no. And I found out that he had a life and realized that he sort of gave up his life to raise me. And that was his full time thing. He was with me always and was had given.

I mean, I never he had one friend who I knew not. So I thought he never had any friends. And when I opened up the book, there's always 20 guys and their handball champions. when I opened up the book there's always 20 guys and they're handball champions and you know so it really it explained to me a lot of the choices I've made

in life which I never understood why I made them and they always say you know genetics are because I tend to make those kind of choices myself but I never understand I do basically everything knee jerk. So, you know, I make choices without thinking about it.

Well, you also put people first, which is one of the, one of the philosophies of your, of, in the book and of your business style, your approach to business and to life. And it sounds like your dad did. Yeah. Yeah. He was completely of service, which I never realized. I thought he was living a life out of weakness, and he was really living it out of strength. I mean, to give to your family the way he gave

and give up everything that he enjoyed in life, that's amazing service. Absolutely. That's living a life of service. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this. See yourself buying a home one day? Do future you a favor? Open a Questrade first home savings account and help that future come faster.

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reach for Kraft Dinner. Because when you're starved for moments that bring you back to who you really are and what you really love, that's when it's gotta be KD. When you got to do you it's got to be kd shop now she has so many stories on these cards where you where do you want to go gil oh uh well you oh that's a loaded question where do you so much you're like a six-hour interview you you got a phone call that I guess a lot of men would envy. Raquel Welch called you a few years ago. She called me. It was

about four days before the Academy Awards. And she said, are you the guy that made that freak Alice Cooper famous? And I said, well, maybe, sort of kind of. And she said uh you're taking me to the academy awards i'll pick you up at eight o'clock or six o'clock whatever the time was and she was wearing this little chiffon pink dress which as in those days you would pull up to a red carpet and johnny

oh uh the mayor of ho, Johnny Grant. Johnny Grant would come into the car. Yeah, he's gone now. Yeah, but he'd come into the car with the microphone, you know, and hi, it's Raquel's here. It's a whole different thing than the way they do it now. There was one guy in those days. So as he leans in, Raquel

says to me, my dress just broke. You had to hold the back. So now again, I'm a young kid. I'm with Raquel Welsh. I'm holding the back of her dress. I'm trying not to get a hard on. Probably didn't do too well at that.

So anyway, basically what she said to me was that she realized that um she was getting older that she was a movie sex star and that was a real problem and that she had two kids who she needed to support she was a single mother supporting two children and wondered if I could do sort of an Ann Margaret thing for a music dance show at Vegas, that kind of, you know, and find a career for where her brand of a sexual star would have some, some value. And that's what we did.

So we put together a song and dance thing. And I remember the first show was, the first two shows were at the Concord, where they had the wooden mallets. I'm sure you've been there, where they bang on the table. Oh, where they don't applaud. They do. Yeah. Which completely freaked her out. Which completely freaked her out. Yeah. And then the second show was up in Reno at the hotel that had elephants as the opening act for everybody. Sam Arceaga's or something. Arceaga's Hotel.

And they had these elephants that were the opening act. I forgot they were the opening act. And I'm standing with Raquel. It's the second show of her career. And the elephants shit on the stage during the act. Right, Maude? Ready to go on. Oh, my God.

It wasn't exactly the glamorous thing she was thinking of, I think, when she called me. It wasn't exactly the glamorous thing she was thinking of, I think, when she called me. I guess you guys can laugh about it now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You gave me another segue. Shep, you gave me another segue talking about the elephant. Tell the camel story from the book with Wolfman Jack. I was just telling somebody that yesterday. We booked the Hollywood Bowl.

We had Wolfman Jack, who was a great DJ. He was out of Tijuana. He did a show, and he went right across the country. And he was a great personality. He was a cartoon kind of character. So we had him introduce the show, and the Hollywood Bowl, at this point in Alice's career, was a big moment. He just had the biggest tour in the world.

He was on top of the world. This was going to be our big statement. We hired a helicopter pilot who was willing to go to jail. We put a lot of people in jail. He dropped 18,000 pair of paper panties on the crowd which cost a bunch of dropped paper panties on the crowd from a helicopter okay i just want to repeat that it was a great story elton john tells the story of being in the front row that night and spent he came out with about 14 pairs of underwear that night because have draped all over.

And the Hollywood Bowl is the most expensive union hall on the West Coast. It's everything you do is very heavily unionized. It's very expensive. You don't make a lot of money when you play the ball so we went out paying for the helicopter I got Wolfman and I got him to come out to introduce the opening act he came out on

carried by 14 women all dressed as Arabian you know belly dancers and they carried him out in a moat and then the second time he came out he came out on a little motorcycle with um 40 who are those like the rotary club guys in the hat oh the shriners yeah the shriners exactly i kept thinking of jackie gleason like a circus

then the third time he came out was with a camel, came out on a camel, again with the girls and that thing. So when we're doing the rehearsal and the camel comes out, the pit crew comes over to me, the union head, and he said, Mr. Gordon, we've got a problem. And I said, what's the problem? He said, you didn't tell me you were going to have animals. And I said, yeah, but, you know, it's one animal. It'll come and go.

He said, well, here's our problem if the camel takes a dump that's okay because we have prop guys but if the if the camel takes a dump and the dump steams that's working props we have to have two people you gotta be kidding me two more people I couldn't. I went to Joe Gannon. It's insanity. He was producing it with me. I went over to Joe and I said,

you're standing at the side of the stage with a fucking towel. If that cow will start shitting, you run out there and cover it in a towel. That's what happened. Before it steams. Those are some stringent union rules. If it steams, it's two guys, right? I didn't want to ask how much steam. Is there a line, like a steam line?

That is so good. We got to ask, it's in the intro, Shep. We got to ask about the School's Out album. Yep. And specifically, which is, again, the days when they really put production into albums. There was a great company called Pacific Eye and Ear. Two guys, Tony and Ernie. And I came across them with the Cheech and Chong Big Bamboo album.

I don't know if you remember that album. Sure. Oh, sure. But that was the coolest album. So I found them and we started working with them. And the idea for, I was always, again, I always went back to, I always thought my job for my artist was if I could make history rather than wait for history, I could guide where I wanted to go.

So I was very aware of things that got news. I would always clip things out of newspapers or if I'd see something that was really ironic. So I had seen this story that in Baltimore, they confiscated paper panties because they weren't flammable. And when I read it, I just thought, this is so ironic. This is something I can use somewhere with Alice. I had no idea where it was. I clipped it out of the paper. And we started working on Schools Out. We were talking about what would really piss off parents. What could

we package this album in that would really piss off parents? If a kid brought this home and the parent looked at the album, oh, fuck it, I want to drop it almost and wash their hands. And I said, I read this story about paper panties in the back of my mind. I said, fuck, if I could get the album stopped at the border for having paper panties, this is cool. So I went to the company and we had a really difficult fight about the paper panties because they were expensive and it turned out i had to um i had to do you know as a manager for yourself there are times

let me back up as an artist you only have one career as a manager you got plenty so if something doesn't work as for an artist as a manager you can move on if something doesn't work as for an artist, as a manager, you can move on. If it doesn't work for the artist, they have one life. So I never felt that I could let anything fail for the artist. For me,

I never gave a shit. So I went, when we, when the record company said it's too expensive, that to me was, you know, I couldn't allow that to happen. because what am i going to tell his fans oh we didn't do something cool because it was too expensive um so i never took no's i was that was

my reputation record companies hated me and i did whatever i had to do to get to a yes and in this case i knew that they were fucking me around and And in those days, what existed in the record companies was, um, only two companies had made album covers. It was album graphics and Ivy Hill lithograph. And each of those two companies had exclusive contracts with different labels. So if you were a Warner brothers artist,

Ivy Hill were the only people who could make your cover. So you couldn't bid your cover out. So I went to the guy in charge and I said, listen, this is really important. You got to bid this out. No. Why won't you bid it out? We don't want to do it. We don't trust the other company.

They do thousands of albums. No, no. So I don't take no good. So I hired a detective because at that point we had money. And I said, I need some dirt on this guy. I just need something that I can walk into his office and say, hello, now what do you want to do? and what it turned out was that the house he was living in was owned by the album cover company they own the house the deed to the house so i went back into his office and i said hey i can't bid it out and he said no i said uh how would you like this at billboard next week that you live in the fucking house of the people that print all the covers and he said we'll match the price so we got the paper that's management yes so now i'm in a climate of complete hostility

they're ready to rip my throat out they want well you up the stakes right they want this thing to fail so bad so i can't tell them what my plan is because my plan was to print up a hundred thousand albums with the illegal panties call customs get them busted but at the same time order panties from canada for the other million and a half albums that didn't have a flat, but I couldn't tell them because they would kill me. So I had to change it up in midstream. What I did is I had the panties shipped the same day as the album shipped. And I called Baltimore as a guy, Tom Zito, who was the music reporter for the Baltimore Sun.

And I called him up and I said, I have a major exclusive for you. You got to print it tomorrow. You got to wait 24 hours and then print it. So all of Alice's albums shipped into the stores. Baltimore Sun, biggest panty raid in history. Front page. 150,000 paper panties for the new Alice Cooper album have been confiscated at customs because they're flammable. The people of Warner Brothers didn't know that I had ordered from Canada

the real ones. They thought they had to take back all million and a half albums, and they just fucking freaked. But it was all cool. So anyway, that was... And you had... I miss those days. But it was all cool. So anyway, that was. And you had. I miss those days. There was one crazy story.

You had a pet cat that disappeared. It went to Cary Grant. Oh, yeah, that's in the doc. It's great. Yes. It went far out, was the cat. It was this great cat. And it got lost.

And I put things up on trees. I got a call from Cary Grant's housekeeper who lived down the hill from me. They said that they had found the cat and when was a good time for me to come and get it. Then they never returned my calls for a couple of

weeks. Finally, I just went down and knocked on the door. I had never met him. The door opened and it was Cary Grant on a fur rug with my cat and two bowls of food playing on the floor. And they actually did, TV Guide did a big story about how the cat sort of brought Cary back to life. So I just, I was going for joint custody and I just said, I can't do this to Far Out. Far Out was like looking at me going, don't blow this for me, Shep. I got Cary Grant fucking petting me and cheating me. Shep, I've asked this of a couple of guests before, but, you know, the liner notes on the back of the book,

you refer to yourself as a nebbishy Jewish kid. You know, you grew up in Queens. We were talking in an email about Jan's ice cream parlor. Oh, yeah, I love that. Some of our old haunts. You grew up around here. Gilbert and I remember Nathan's and Jan's, which you talk about in your book. Kitchen sink.

Remember the kitchen sink? Kitchen sink, of course. 28 scoops of ice cream or something. You say you tend not to look back. But you have these moments where, my God, I'm this kid from Queens. I'm this Jewish kid. I didn't know what I wanted to do.

You describe yourself as not having any ambition. Every day. Yeah, I can't believe it. And Betty Davis and Cary Grant and John Lennon and Salvador Dali and all of these people. The Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama. All these people came into your life.

Yeah, you know, there's a part of me that it's not me, so I watch it and I just can't believe it. You're removed from it. Yeah, I pinch myself. It's like, holy shit, how did this happen? And it just keeps happening and it's just better and better. But, yeah, no, I think for all of us, you know, I, I, and I think everybody's journey, it's just, we happen to be in a journey where Hollywood is the, you know, is the, uh, the, the, uh,

the candy of today. So our journey, because it happens to be Betty Davis, but you know, everybody's got their journey of it's Forrest Gump for everybody. It's just different levels. One way to be Betty Davis. But, you know, everybody's got their journey. It's Forrest Gump for everybody. It's just different levels. One way to look at it. And you also speak a lot about how you're aware of people's mortality. Oh, yeah. No, that's what it is.

It comes in, you know, it's a short journey. Enjoy it. Take advantage of it. I was very lucky. I had two mentors. I don't know if they know they were my mentors, but I had two people who really enjoyed life. Roger Verger, the chef, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, both of whom I was able to be around and see how service makes you happy. It's something that, you know, particularly in Hollywood and the entertainment business,

you're almost ashamed to be of service. It's almost like a weakness. Because it rewards narcissism. Yeah. To a degree. So it's weird. You know, it took me a long time to get comfortable even talking about it, of being of service. But it's really what makes me happy.

You know, I enjoy helping people. Anybody who wants to be in show business really should read the book and watch the movie. And then they'll change their mind. Well, maybe. In one scene in the documentary, they said you had a favorite T-shirt you wore. I did. That had a saying on it.

That perked Gilbert up. You know, it's very bizarre you mentioned. I just had a long conversation today about that. I am, maybe I'll give you too long an answer, but the derivation of it is when I was on the road, I used to get every night at the hotel, we were at a party room. And it was, there were guys who worked on the crew, whose job was to find girls and invite them back to a party room and it was there were guys who worked on the crew whose job was to find girls and invite them back to the party room because i wanted i didn't want the band to leave the hotel so i felt one of my jobs was let me bring all the action to the hotel and then i i sort of i know

where everyone is and every night would be the the guys telling these women who we knew they were never going to see again and who they didn't even know the names of how much they loved them. Oh, I love you. I love you. Come to my room and give me a blowjob. Oh, bye bye. Just like Gilbert's life on the road. Yes. And I thought it was so horrible.

You know what? It just seemed so unfair to the girl, to the guy, to everybody. Gilbert's life on the road. And I thought it was so horrible. You know what? It just seemed so unfair to the girl, to the guy, to everybody, because it wasn't about I love you. It was about give me some head. You know, and so I never was willing to play that game,

so I got hornier and hornier on the road. And then at one point I said, you know, let me just be honest. Really, they all want to get backstage because they want to go to sleep with the lead singer. I just want to get some head. I got I have backstage passes. Let me tell the band what I'm doing. And so I went to Alice in the band.

I said, listen, you know, I'm the manager. It's not easy for me to get ahead. I'm going to do this T-shirt and give out some backstage pass. They did it great. So that's what I did. I would walk around with this thing. And if someone would come over to me and say, I want a backstage pass, pretty obvious. I don't have to tell you I love you.

It was a transaction. To me, a transaction was an honest and open thing. It's open and honest. Yeah, to me a transaction was an honest and open thing it's open and honest yeah to me it was so anyway that that when mike made the movie that came back to life and when i i did a lot of um personal appearances with the movie and with the book and um invariably even at the most like um summit at seas you know the most liberal places you could get to, there are always a bunch of women waiting in the lobby with smiles on their faces going, oh, can I get a backstage pass in good form, you know, or, you know, can I have your baby or everything taken in sort of the way it was meant.

You know, could I have your baby or everything taken in sort of the way it was meant. And then the night that Trump got elected, I was doing a talk at Summit at Sea, which I had done the year before. And after it came, I went outside and women were screaming at me. You're a horrible human. You mistreat women. You should be ashamed of yourself. It completely turned into a Me Too kind of a thing overnight. So I burned the shirts and thrown out the coffee cups. And I don't know if we mentioned the shirt said,

no head, no backstage pass. Yeah, which was a true, which was exactly what it was. Well, that's true. That's an advertising. There's pictures from screenings when the doc came out of everybody wearing them. Yeah, yeah. There's you and Mike. And people would show up with it, and people would send me stuff,

and it was like this really funny thing, and then it turned on a dime. So I don't, you know, not being one who wants to offend people, if I don't need to, I just sort of took it out of the repertoire. Which my girlfriend is happy about, by the way. Your girlfriend's happy about it. Shep, before we run out of here, there's a gentleman who does some work for us, works with us, Mike McPadden, who's our Facebook, does all our Facebook, and there's a gentleman who does some work for us works with us mike mcpadden who's our uh our facebook does all our facebook and he's a big alice fan he reminds me that he

has alice's eyes tattooed on his hands oh my god so we had to ask one question for mike and i'm gonna ask you this one he says did alice have any ideas in the 70s that shep had to put a stop to and which ones worried him? And if you don't like that one, I have another. No, no. Not that I can think of. Okay. I mean, we had a lot of things that failed.

Like we would always try and figure out new ways to kill them. So at one point we decided a meat hook. We were rehearsing it to Fillmore. And we decided we'd put them on a meat hook. We were rehearsing at the Fillmore, and we decided we'd put him on a meat hook, like in Rocky, and let everybody beat him up on the meat hook. And it was just horrible. Didn't work at all. Well, he's a fan of all that stuff.

I mean, I've seen interviews with the two of you together, and he's a fan of horror movies, specifically bad horror movies. Bad horror movies. He's in a handful himself. Yeah, he loves bad horror. That's how he prepares for his show every night. That's what he does. He watches bad kung fu movies.

Yeah. What is the story, too? I found this fascinating. The famous scene from Almost Famous, the plane scene. Oh, yeah. You said this was taken. Cameron Crowe took this from the real the real scene was um cameron crow was maybe 17 18 he was a report hot shot reporter

and rolling yeah for rolling stone yeah yeah before rolling stone it was an orange county newspaper that's where i'm all right that's right um he's very young i probably met him at 14 or 15. And he got an assignment, and Candy Bergen was the photographer. So he was the writer, Candy was the photographer. And we had this really funky airplane. The only... In those days, there was no cable, there was nothing,

there wasn't a lot of stuff. And to get a last-minute sale, you wanted the 6 o'clock news. That was the only way you could really talk to the public. And especially with what we were doing, we wanted to, you know, we knew we had parents at the 6 o'clock news who would say to their kids, you better not go tonight. And that would spawn last-minute sales.

So we wanted something we could do to get the 6 o'clock news. And Alice doesn't last minute sales. So we wanted something we could do that we get to six o'clock news. And Atlas doesn't do rehearsals. And that's where you normally did it. So we hired this plane that's really funky, horrible, two prop plane with a pilot who was, I think, drunk all the time. And we should have never been in the airplane, but it gave us, we would come into the city we get

a high school marching band to meet the plane put a red carpet out that big snake on it and stuff and they would all get off with bottles of whiskey in their hands drunk and fall on the floor and get the six o'clock news to see him being drunk, even though they weren't. So the plane paid, the plane was an important part of our promotion, but we couldn't afford a good plane. So anyway, we're on the plane and playing poker,

which is what everyone did. And one of the engines caught on fire. And it was like, oh shit. And the first thing they did was double the stakes of the poker game, but the engine is now, I mean, it's flaming. And we had a, this is really early on, so this was, there weren't even crews at those days for rock and roll.

There weren't anything like a carpenter crew. So we used builders from Fire Island who couldn't be there in the winter. This is a winter tour. So we had space Latanzia, hot Ralphie, Kefuko, fat Frankie, skin layer,

this Italian building crew, complete fuck ups. These were like great guys. So, um, our accountant was named Jay Benson, but he wore big glasses. And his nickname on the tour was Elton Jew. So he had just had a baby.

The baby was maybe three months old. Elton Jew. So now the engine engines on fire we don't really know if we're going that or not but we had had a similar incident like a week before where they couldn't get the wheels down and the pilot had to put oil he was pouring oil in the cockpit cockpit to this thing. So anyway, Space Lutansia stands up in the back, and he says, I don't know if we're going down or not going down,

but in case we are, Elton, I got a confession to make. It's my baby. Which wasn't true. Not true at all. And with that, the plane lands. And that's the scene.

The camera accepts his game. He borrowed it and put it in the movie. That's great. Fantastic. You also had a story one time you were at home and you were having trouble with your computer. Oh, no, he was in Fiji. That's when you were on your honeymoon.

Fiji, and you were having some trouble with your computer. I called the desk, and I said, is there anybody who can fix a computer? And they had apologized to me. It was the island owned by Fiji Water. They have this beautiful resort on it, but it's only got maybe 10 or 12 buildings on the resort. And it's usually one person at a time. And I had helped them with marketing Fiji Water

in the beginning when they first came on the market. I was working with the chefs and I had helped. So they offered me the resort for my honeymoon. And when I got there, they apologized that there was another couple, but that I would never see him. Anyway, I called the front desk. They said, oh, yeah, we'll send someone. Knock on the door, and it's Steve Jobs from Apple. He came in and fixed the computer.

And talk about, like, building a company company he gave me his card I have his if we had video I would show it to you because I carry it all the time and it's a very simple just Apple S Jobs phone number email

and I've had that laminated and when I have trouble with my computer, I go into an Apple store, and every employee takes photographs with the card. I mean, I wish I ran a company the way he did. The admiration of his employees for this guy is just unbelievable.

So anyway, it's gotten me a few new computers. unbelievable. So anyway, it's gotten me a few new computers. Shep, we hate to wrap this up. There's so much. There's so many other stories in the book. And people, will you come and play with us another time? Absolutely. Just let me know when. We can ask about, I mean, you even knew Peter Sellers, for God's sake. Oh, yeah. And Albert Finney, who just passed away. And Albert Finney, who we just lost. Good friend.

No, the way Mike and I became really friendly buyers was when he started coming to my house. Every night, he'd have names written on his hand. And he'd go, okay, Peter Sellers. And I had a story for everybody. So I'd give him, then he'd go to the next one. There were a couple of times I didn't have stories and I just lied and made up stories. But that was what really bonded us together.

And he said, you got to keep, so I've been lucky, the Peter Sellers. Oh my gosh. Did you meet Chaplin too? Do I have that right? Yeah, I sure did. Wow. A great little Chaplin, too? Do I have that right? Yeah, I sure did. Wow. A great little Chaplin thing is Michael Jackson.

His entire show, he took from Charlie Chaplin. The hat, the bowler, the walk, the cane. Think about Michael Jackson on stage. Think about the moonwalk. That's fascinating. Think about the moonwalk. That's fascinating. Think about the gloves. Think it's all, and he openly would talk about it, not to the public, but I introduced him to Una, the wife after Charlie died, and he would openly talk about it. But think about that. Go watch a Charlie Chaplin and watch Michael, and it's the same thing.

Jeez. It is fascinating. There's so many people on this list, you know, in the interest of time, we, well, we have to get out of here,

but we'll, we'll ask you next time. If you'll come and play with us again, we didn't get to talk about the Hollywood vampires. Yep. And then that great Anne Marie story, what you did for Anne Marie. Well,

let's do it again. I want to ask you about the Thallus, the Thallus story from Buffalo. The Thallus of Marquette, the Alan Zweibel. Alan Zweibel was there. And Alan Zweibel was around. Oh, Zweibel, Zweibel.

We'll give our fans something to look forward to, and we'll tell that one next time. But got to plug the book. Yes. I mean, and the movie is great, and it's in addition to you having a million rock and roll stories. The book was published by Anthony Bourdain. Published by your friend, the late Anthony Bourdain.

Yeah, because that's another thing we don't have time to talk about. But you created that whole idea of superstar chefs. We'll do it next time. I was very hungry. There's also his famous dinner parties. Oh, it's insane. Chef, it's been quite a journey. You say

everybody has one, but yours has been... And also what I love is that your journey happened to pass through the most decadent period of rock and roll. I got really lucky. I got really lucky. You saw the period of excess so that you saw and experienced everything. Okay. The book is They Call Me Supermensch.

My Amazing Adventures in Rock and Roll, Hollywood, and Hort Cuisine. Hort Cuisine. Shep Gordon. And we recommend it and the movie which Mike Myers made which is a whole other show that we could do and talk about

I enjoyed being with you guys and you know something it's like as someone like me who's met a million agents and managers over the years. Sorry. You're the only one that people has anything nice to say.

That's right. I second that. I pay everyone. I pay everyone. They're on retainer. I'll tell you, Shep, I watched the movie, and I turned to my wife, and I said, if I'd ever had a Shep Gordon in my life, things would have been different a lot faster.

What a blessing to Alice and all your artists. So this has been Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast with my sidekick. My ghost. Sidekick? My boy wonder, Frank Santopadre. I'm wearing tights on this. Shep, you can't see it. I'm wearing see-through tights.

And we've been talking to the ex-Jewish pusher who became a legend. Oh, maybe not ex. Who became a legendary manager and producer, Shep Gordon. Aloha. Thank you, man. It was so great. Shep, aloha. Yeah, aloha.

Come visit me in Hawaii for the next show. Oh, God. We will. We love that. Have an invite. Thanks, pal. I'm tired out. Yeah, I'm tired.

I got tired on the intro. It's like, shit, did I do all that? Holy fuck. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Wake up all the teachers. Time to teach a new way. Maybe then they'll listen to what you have to say.

They're the ones who's coming up and the world is in their hands. When you teach the children, Teach them the very best you can The world won't get no better If we just let it be Na na na na na na na The world won't get no better We gotta change it now Just you and me Wake up all the doctors

Make the old people well They're the ones who suffer And who catch all the hell But they don't have so very long Before their judgment day So won't you make them happy Thank you. I know we could do it if we all lend a hand. The only thing we have to do is put it in our minds. Surely things will work out. They do it every time. The world won't get no better if we just let it be

The world won't get no better We gotta change it now Just you and me Change it, yeah Change it, yeah Just you and me Change it, yeah Change it, yeah, change it, yeah Just you and me Change it, yeah, change it Can't do it alone, can't do it alone

Need some help, y'all, y'all Can't do it alone, can't do it alone Yeah, yeah Wake up, everybody Wake up Everybody Need a little help, y'all Yes, I do Need a little help

Say it for me Need some help, y'all Change the world What it used to be And do it alone Need some help, yeah Wake up, everybody Get up, get up

Get up, get up Wake up, come on Wake up, everybody Did you know me? Maybe then, then listen Come on, come on Wake up everybody Teach a new me Maybe then they'll listen What you have to say Wake up everybody Never more sleeping in bed

Never more back to thinking Time for thinking ahead Come on now Wake up everybody Thank you. I'm losing the dope. Wake up. Yeah. Well, I'm out. Yeah. Wonder what you tell me now. Wonder what you tell me now.

False lying. False preaching. Yeah, yeah. False teaching. Oh, yeah. Wake up, y'all. Come on. You preachers Stop preaching what you keep

Teach the truth Wake up, preachers The Liars The Liars Bring up the creatures Stop lying Politicians Well Stop lying Stop lying Oh

Oh Oh Oh Why don't somebody help the poor people? Help the babies Help me, baby Stay on that, baby Help me, you business man Stop cheating, stop cheating Stop cheating, stop cheating Stop cheating, stop cheating Wake up, yeah

Wake up, yeah Wake up, yeah Wake up, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah It don't matter Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah It don't matter, yeah, yeah What base? Create a color Everybody

We need each other Wake up, everybody Well, you see, we need wake up everybody Come on now, wake up everybody No more sleeping in bed No more backward thinking Time for thinking ahead Wake up, all you teachers

Start to teach a new way They're the ones that suffer Virtual everyday Teach the children Teach the babies Teach the babies Teach the children Teach the babies

Teach the children Teach the babies They're the ones who's coming out. And the world. And the world. Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast is produced by Dara Gottfried and Frank Santapadre with audio production by Frank Furtarosa. Web and social media is handled by Mike McPadden, Greg Pair, and John Bradley-Seals.

Special audio contributions by John Beach. Special thanks to John Fodiatis, John Murray, and Paul Rayburn.