Ep 16 | John Parr | The Man Behind the Anthem St Elmo's Fire - Betrayed Twice & Silenced for 20 years

The Voice Behind the Anthem: John Parr on Fame, Betrayal & Never Giving In

In 1985, a song exploded out of a Hollywood cinema and never really stopped playing. That song was St. Elmo's Fire — and its writer and singer, John Parr, joins Emyr Afan on Inside the Maverick Mind for one of the most honest, surprising and inspiring conversations you'll hear this year.

Born on the wrong side of the tracks in a Nottinghamshire mining town, John Parr spent 20 years grinding his way to a room with David Foster — then wrote a number one anthem in three attempts on a single afternoon. But what came next wasn't the fairy tale the world imagined.

In this episode, John opens up about:

• The real story behind "St. Elmo's Fire" — and the wheelchair-bound hero who inspired it
• Why his record label hated the song and refused to promote it
• The betrayal that cost him 20 years of his career — and how he survived it
• What it was really like touring with Tina Turner, Toto, The Beach Boys and Journey
• Working with Mutt Lange and the lesson that changed how he creates
• His growing obsession with Welsh culture, Hedd Wyn, and a film that could change everything
• Why he believes the next great anthem needs to be about mental health
• And the uncanny sign that made him certain he was on the right path

This is the story of a man who never gave in — even when everything gave out.

🎵 "St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)" | 🎬 Filmmaker | 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Friend of Wales

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Imagine this: it's 1985, the cinema lights go down, and the song starts. That doesn't just sound like a movie, it helps define a decade. That voice and that song belongs to our guest. He wrote and sang cinemas Fire, Man in Motion, an anthem that's outlived the film itself, and still gives people goosebumps. He shared stages of rock royalty, Tina Turner, The Beach Boys, Toto Journey, taking songs from the studio to arenas packed with people, singing every word back and behind the big head, big choruses, and the big crowds is a different story. A working class kid who turned melodies in his head into global hits, who's written the highs of number ones and the lows of the music industry, and who's still creating on his own terms, decades later. Now he's not just a musician, he's also a filmmaker. And he's become deeply interested in boss culture of people, of stories. On this episode of Inside the Maverick Mind, we're talking about what it really takes to write an anthem, survive the chaos of fame, and keep your creative fire burning. John Papa is our guest. Let's get inside his Maverick Mind. John, great to have you with us. Before the arenas and the film themes, what did life look like when you grew up and when did Musicfires feel like the way out?

SPEAKER_01 1:28

I was born on the wrong side of the tracks, they reckon. Little mining town in Nottinghamshire. Nobody'd ever escaped, really. Robin Hood is probably the nearest. I was born in my nana's house, little three two up, three, you know, three down. Um my mum, my dad, my auntie Kath, my uncle Brian, and their baby. So it was very cozy. Tin bath by the fire. So that was idyllic. Uh that was all we knew, it was full of love. And then we moved to the shiny new council estate when I was five. And I suppose it really began then, went to St. Augustine's primary school, and uh I started putting uh plays on at school. They saw it in me, and they would give me the school hall to put plays on at six, seven, eight. So it began then, before music, really.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

When did it stop being I love music and start being I'm going to build a life around this? Even if that sounded crazy to people around you back then.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

You know, being a kid of the 60s, uh, the Beatles was it. And it pulled me away from the dramatic side, straight into music. It just I think it was an epiphany for everyone. The Beatles were just it. My town had a couple of clubs, British Legion, Miners' Welfare, and uh that was like the London Palladium. We started a school band, started playing. First gig for money, six guineas at the Miners Welfare Workshop in the school band. And then I got the bug, really got the bug, and practiced and dragging people along that weren't that didn't have the same work ethic, but kind of just pushing and pushing. And and just looking at the top line, looking who who's the competition, locally, internationally, globally, and you jump for each bar.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

I've seen that work ethic they were incredible, but I think that doing it incrementally, just hitting what you've got right in front of you, rather than thinking, I want to be this, do what you've got in front of you. I think it's really wise words. Little bit of context from my side, the younger me spent a lot of time in bands, writing, recording, gigging, and even touring. I was up against two big things, a very religious family, and I found myself arguing, why does the devil have all the good music? You know, it's crazy. And that was part of my rebellion. And this notion that it wasn't a proper job. Did you get that kind of thinking to shut you down your creative expression, or did the Maverick behavior just override that?

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Mum and dad were always supportive. My dad was the manager from 12 years old, right up to being 19. But it was get a proper job. I found my 11 plus, but I got a job at Bachelor's Foods, you know, so Vesta and I worked in every level of food production from unloading the P sacs to work in the laboratory. So I was working the clubs at the same time, and it was a great leveller because people would say, I saw you last night, you were crap. They'd love it, you know, because you were trying to be different. Only in later life did my dad say to me, Maybe it's time to get a proper job. But I was way down the road then. I was probably pushing 30 when he said that. Up until that point, he'd always been when I'm gonna do it from me, rather than if I'm gonna do it. Uh I was always certain. But uh, when your dad says maybe it's time to get a proper job, and it I was at my lowest ebb when he said it. In retrospect, I wonder if it was a geop. I wonder if he really meant that. He's gone, so I can't.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Oh, bless him. Well, well, thank you to both of them for being so supportive. That's a big the best beginning in life, you know. Totally. But sometimes when people say you can't do something, a Maverick says, I'm just watch me.

SPEAKER_01 5:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:13

Even if you're saying it quietly in your head.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Was there a moment you realized you didn't really think like most people around you, that you were wired a bit differently?

SPEAKER_01 5:22

I knew it from uh a very early age. Uh uh really early. Uh I I suppose even five, six years old, I was an only child, and you want friends, you want, you know, it's not just your mum and dad, is it? And so I'd be the school mimic and the school comedian, just you know, trying to get attention. I knew it was different, and and as my life progressed, uh, that burned, that cur I call it cursed with ambition. I think I was cursed with ambition, and it just built and built and built. Uh, and it was intolerable. You know, I I heard uh great speech by Richard Burton, he's talking about Frank Sinatra, and he said uh burnt to the bone, consumed by the flames of his own ambition. Wow. I and I I thought, man, that's me, you know. And it and I felt completely alone within it. It wasn't just felt different. I felt alone, painfully alone, like I was wired wrong, like I was wired different, you know.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

I was the youngest of six, always the performer, always the entertainer, so I relate to that. But I couldn't find the off switch either. Do you mean you are? I don't know what it is, it's just conditioned, you know, to to do something. Self-propelled, I guess, which is what you had to be. Who were the first people who backed that in you, the mentors or bandmates who give you permission to be that bit maverick? Who was the around you saying, let's do this?

SPEAKER_01 6:45

I said it was my father that would, you know, they paid where they couldn't really afford for guitar lessons. They paid for guitar lessons, and he would at that time I didn't have quite the same work ethic, and he would look round the corner and say, You got another 10 minutes. So it was always a half an hour, and it was a pain to me, some of it, because those guitar lessons in the early days were Burt Whedon playing a day, so you had Bobby Shafto when the Saints come marching in, so not really stuff that was energizing, but yeah, my father made me stick at it, you know, that that way. So he was the first, and then I think probably very late, probably 15. So I was already playing for money, I'd been playing for money for three years, but still at school. But the teachers would say, you know, knuckle down, you're always looking out the window, dreaming. And then we played the school dance, and they all came up to me at the end and said, Forget everything we ever said. That's it. So that was the real endorsement that you know these kind of peer pressure deputy head, headmaster saying, you know, you've got potential, but you know, get a proper job, you know.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

I think the foundation of learning an instrument like that, although it you have to go through the room rudiments of music, it gives you a fantastic lexicon to write music later on, although you had to play when the states came actually before it. Let's get into your Maverick mindset and the mechanics of what you do. So Delma's Fire, Mind Emotion, has become the anthem for a lot of people. When you were writing it, did it feel different or did it just feel like another session at the time?

SPEAKER_01 8:26

Uh, it came at a point where I was in a room with somebody that five years earlier I was broke, no hope. My wife was paying the bills, and I was just sending cassettes out. But I'd be listening to Earth, Wind and Fire, I'd be listening to Chicago, Toto, all of whom were directed by David Foster, produced by David Foster. So I'd got this call. I was already on the road and I'd had a hit, but he called me. I was suddenly in a room with this person that I'd cried listening to those records, thinking I'm never gonna be there. So I got there. Can you imagine this is my dream? This is I'm in the room with just he and I in LA, the lighthouse studio. And he went, Great to meet you. I love I had a song called Naughty Naughty, I love it. But I'm exhausted, I don't want to write a song. I'm exhausted. And I said, please just give me five minutes, you know. And he went, I'm Burn Man, I'm like he was doing um, he was doing the his first ever score for a movie, but he was also doing 10 original tracks with 10 original artists for the it was too much. And I talked him into going into the control room. Obviously, I'm in a room with a master, one of the probably top handful of people in the world. And we wrote a song in five minutes, and I went, Wow, this is great. And he went, We can do better. And it changed, and then I wrote another one and he went we can do better. And the third was San Elmo's, and it was just electric because he was playing all these incredible chords that anybody knows David Foster's music. It's like he's like he's got 15 fingers, not speed, just beauty. And um we wrote the song really quickly, but I uh I knew it was great, but couldn't come up with the words. Joel Schumacher, the director of the film, came down, he'd written the film, and I just couldn't uh empathize with uh the story. And then David showed me uh a video cassette, local news of a young boy who'd broken his back in a car accident, severed his spinal cord, and he said, I'm gonna get in my wheelchair and wheel it around the world and raise money for spinal research. Um, 25,000 miles, called the Man in Motion tour. And the hairs on the back of my neck went up. I went back to the hotel that night and on hotel notepaper wrote what I thought this young person would achieve and uh came in the next day and sang. David said, What is this? And I went, Well, this is that video he showed me, but I tailored it so people would think that the pair of wheels was Demi Moore's Jeep and not the wheelchair for once in his life, a man is his time is not when Emilio gets the girl, it's when Rick Hansen bursts through that winning tape, and it predicted what happened. He did wheel around the world, and we've raised now nearly 400 million for spinal research, and the song lives on, and I think it lives on because I realize, as you psychoanalyse yourself, when I sing it, I'm so over the top singing it because I'm the guy in the chair. I am him, and all my personal struggles that I'd got, you know, in those 20 years to get there, it was the same struggle with the same barriers, and I think that's what San Alma's Fire is. So even people that don't know what it's about. And so David said, Well, the film company are never gonna swallow it, you know. And I said, Well, it's worse than that. I want to call it man in motion. How are you gonna, you know, and it was that quick that that it was in the movie and done before anybody woke up to the fact that it was St. Alma's fire, man in motion. So that was the if you like, that was the beginning of uh standing up to a giant and and saying, Well, I'll just try to persuade somebody that I was in awe of. Give me a shot.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Right, but I do think you bottled that energy, that disappointment, and that, you know, the whole graft of getting there, and it exploded into a song which, you know, has lasted so much. You've written a lot of great songs, uh, John. Why do you think that song in particular has lasted the way it has?

SPEAKER_01 12:53

I think it's lightning in a bottle, but it's the only time in my life where I had the weight of the machine behind me fully, except the record label. Record label hated it, believe it or not. They wanted me to be uh leather clad rocker, and so they never promoted San Amos at all. So, you know, when you I was touring America with Tina, and I'd get off the plane, and when I'd been on the tours before, there was always the record guy there, take me all the radio stations. None of that was San Amos Fire at all. They didn't like it, they didn't want me to do it, and uh I wanted to do it again against the grain. And uh it was the power of Sony in the movie that launched it. And uh I could remember the people in I'd had such a battle with uh my first record that went number one in America, but it was really in the trenches, really day-to-day tears, blood, sweat, and tears, and they just went enjoy the ride. And when you've got that rocket launch of Sony and every you know, and and the Brat Pack, it that's what did it, I think. And then, like you say, long after the film faded, the song was in orbit, and it kind of went off the radar for a bit, but then people got it. There's something about that song and the the life of its own within it, I think energizes people and gets them through many things. Having said that, I think I've got other songs that are its equal but never had the machine, some of which were never released. So if I'm the biggest movie of the year, Three Men and a Baby, I wrote it with Carol Bear Sager and and Marvin Hamlich and David, but Atlantic wouldn't release it because they didn't want me doing, and it was a story of my life, you know. A lot of those Hollywood soundtracks for huge movies were never released because the record company didn't want it. So my career's a f a strange one that way. That it looks like you know, you curse with that one-hit wonder for it, and yet there are 10, 12 Hollywood movies that could have six of which had original songs, that never saw the light of day other than in the cinema.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

How do you deal with that?

SPEAKER_01 15:00

It's a terrible thing, particularly when everybody's going want it wonder for so long. The saviour was the internet, which comes later, and people then discover your legacy by accident a bit more. Yeah, but again, you know, those songs are just lost unless you watch the movie. Fortunately, a lot of those movies, 80s stuff's very popular, and people go, Wow, didn't know he sang that or whatever. But of course, they're not hits because they've had their day. But it's a it's an immense, it's a long story, you know. It's life, uh, adversity, tragedy. I found very often, maybe 10, 12 years later, you realise they were blessings. What could have happened if that would have done that? Actually, I wouldn't change it. Not now. It would have been nice, but uh what's happened in my life, I wouldn't change it.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

I'm gonna confess you too. I never thought I'd be sitting with the composer of that song because I used to play it a full blast, roofed down on my MG with blonde hair, would you imagine? Uh like you, but flying in the wind, listening to this go-to track of mine, which I think you're right. I think it's happening to you know, that struggle, but I'm gonna do it. That determination is in the song and the way it's built up, it's beautifully produced.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

Well, you see, and it cost us the Oscar. We had an Oscar. I think we would have won that year. Yeah, I think we would have won. What the record label eventually said was if you'd have kept your mouth shut and said it was written for the film, you would have got the nomination. But the fact that you said it was written about somebody else outside of the film, it negates you from the rule book. But I wouldn't change it again, you know, because what we've achieved with the Man in Motion campaign far outweighs having a hit. Far, I mean, it was a hit, but you know, people can actually people with that injury can walk again if they're lucky. You know, we've helped build iCord, which is the world's leading research facility for spinal research in Vancouver. And um, you know, people are walking out of there that would never have had a shot. It a lot of it is timing with uh spinal injury, you know, what happens in the moment, and all that's come uh greatly through the Rick Hansen campaign, and and just you know, kid kid with a dream from Worksop and a Kid with a dream from Vancouver, and you know, David Foster in the middle of it.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

You know, I know it's fantastic to dynamite that. Yeah, but I think your honesty and integrity has been a a sort of a through line through all this. You've been true to yourself, and I think that's why you haven't done and said, you know, the things that the record company wanted you to do, and that's that is a maverick all day long.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Yeah, it was a tough one because um record labels in those days. I was on the tail end of analog. Armad Erdogan owned the record label and Neswi Erdogan. Armad signed me. Army privately told me that he saw me as their way forward. They'd just lost the stones, they'd they'd uh struggle. I think Zeppelin too. So they were looking for, and he said, You're it, we'll do it. And I thought naively that uh my difference was my width. I was uh you know, I could be that or this, and of course, you learn later that they're looking for the sharpest point sticking the dartboard. And I I blunted that by being me. But I thought that was my strength, yeah. You know, I wasn't just you know a a rock and roller, I was something else that wanted to make a difference as well. You know, rock and roll can be quite limiting sometimes. It's rock and roll can be just alchemy, whereas you know, some of the great it's it's a funny one, isn't it? Great songs almost like um classic, classic great songs, they have uh something within them that that goes far beyond there's purpose, yeah. They do, you know. I was thinking the other day, uh people used to say why film and I'd say because it's the 360. Yeah, and then I thought it's not true, John, because the true classic is the 360. Yeah, it does it, doesn't it? Hard habit to break is does does that, those kind of songs, you know.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

If you were pinching yourself in the room with David Foster, you must have been pinching yourself when you're on tour and supporting and hanging out with the people you used to listen to in your bedroom.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

Yeah, that was you know, Toto, you know, I mean that was the that was the beginning. And um I did cry on the carpet with uh with that Toto 4 album. I remember you know, we're doing the sound check, and first thing they said was get make sure John's got enough sci time for the sound check. You'd never hear that. And then Dave hello, I'm David Paige, I'm Steve Lucas. Yeah, yeah, I know you are, but there was that. And then I'd look over and they'd be in the wings watching me. And uh, why don't you come on the bus with us? And I'd start travelling, and then Steve uh Piccaro said, I'd love to play on your records and then come to my studio. So he'd he'd play drums for me in his studio for free, and I'm thinking that you know, just and they were just lovely, and of course, as you know, the nearer the top you get, the sweeter they are, you generally by 100%, 100%.

SPEAKER_00 20:08

It's the ones in the middle you've got to watch out for.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

Yeah, you know, and uh, you know, and you can tell as well. I always kind of gravitate to the crews. I like the boys that do it and the girls that do it, and so a lot of my pals, even now, are from those days with the crews, and and uh you know, it's a bigger deal, it's a bigger deal on the back as it is on the front of the stage, isn't it? Greatly, so you know.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

A lot of um ex-roadies, drum techs, uh editors with us now because they know what craft is and they're highly creative, yeah, and they've you know they've not got the CV, you know, they've got two ring dates, but they're my best workers, you know, and always have been. Um and now have gone on to do incredible things. Uh, I think we've been a home for that kind of thing. What were the other artists like Tina Turner and others?

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Tina was a strange one. Um that uh I was in LA and uh the band couldn't, so the band were off. So it was just me. The phone rang, and it was Roger Davis, Tina's manager, lovely man. My manager was called John, so he thought he was talking to him. And he went, Tina's just jumped up and down on the tour bus. She's just heard San Elmo's, and she said, I've got to have him for the rest of the tour. And I went, I think you need to speak to the brother John. And so I I met her that night. She was playing in Madison Square Garden, and uh we flew to we flew to New York, met Tina, and we got on like a house on fire because she's as you say, she's just a grafter. I mean, six months before Private Dancer, she was in the she was in the truck with the band honouring the corporate gigs that she had to do before it all went nuts. She is the most dedicated artist I've ever met in that the private dancer tour was 126 shows, I think, for a lady in her 50s. And the last night of the tour, a young black boy came up to me in LA and he went. John, it's very nice to meet you. I'm Tina's son. He said, This is the first time I've seen my mum in over a year. He said she won't see anybody, nobody from the family. Her energy is she does the show, she goes to the hotel, she comes back. So we've not seen her. That's the dedication of and that, and you see, that's why this electric personality. I watched every show. I did 40. I'd do my opening, and then I'd get changed and I'd go out and watch The Master. So, you know, education at the knee of one of the true greats, you know. Never Mr. B, never gave you half measure. Yeah, incredible.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

Yeah. I'm curious. When you write now, what do you read for first? Melody, lyric, feel, and what rules do you always ignore?

SPEAKER_01 22:44

Writing can come anywhere, usually not being anchored to an instrument. So it could be in the car, it's a word, it's a phrase. Sometimes a melody. I do think they're gifted to you. So I take no response. Personally, I think they're gifts. Sometimes you're given a diamond, sometimes you're given a pebble. You work on them the same. So your job's the craftsman, that's my gig. But I honestly believe the good ones are given. And uh trust in it, like I trust in today. I you know, I chose not to know what you were going to ask or whatever, because I want that space between us to be filled by truth and whatever. And I think that's the big thing in writing. Even if you've got an ultimate, I can remember in the early the first hit I had was a real uh an engineering job. I knew that it had to be a certain type of track that had to do certain kinds of moves, that when you heard it, it made you pull over and listen. So and it did. So that song did the song called Naughty Naughty, did the job of a of an album. It brought me to the attention of Mutt Lang and David Foster, all in one thing. But I knew that was my thing. But thereafter, I knew San Almo's, you know, obviously did an album, a lot of that was prepared. But you you know that you're a new artist, 10 tracks have to be singles, yeah. And Atlantic only ever released one or two, even though you'd made eight. So that's the other tragedy that I had an album that was five or six deep in singles, but they didn't do that. I didn't know. But um, so I'd always trying to never write a filler, always trying to be thing, and that's why I love the movies, because if it was a you know a good story, I saw myself as the fifth horse in the team, you know, trying to tell that story in four minutes what the message of the director. So that uh and seeing it, I always hear it and see it in my mind before it's done. So I think that's it. But I think truth, truth is the big one. Does it ring true? Is that the best word? Is that does that really do it? And it's torture, you know, is you know, you you're given the gift, but it's your gig to and it if it fails, it's down to you, I think. That's what I would say.

SPEAKER_00 24:53

Well, you did all right. You've written for films, commercials, other artists, as well as yourself. What's the biggest mental shift you make when you're writing to a picture or a brief instead of just writing about your own life?

SPEAKER_01 25:06

Yeah, I think um I think what we do in our lives though, um, you know, when you have a lot of not just good stuff, when you have a lot of bad stuff in your life, it sits in a pot, and if you're smart, you can exercise that ghost and bring it. So I found sometimes, even like I'll say the running man, it's for an instance of the running man. I remember going in the um going in the theatre with the producer, and I watched the film, and I heard the song straight away in my head. It was because it was such a great idea that that uh you know it was a guy, would you risk your life on a running man? You know, roll the dice on a one life. It was that, and uh yeah, and I thought, well, it's risk, in it. Would you risk it? And I've been risking it all along. I'd always risked that. So I thought it was an easy, so I was aligning. I think that's what I think the good ones, you bring a Britney U in, yeah, you can and it makes it true, you know. So, but that's the big shift. Um, with um, I remember with these couple of short films I've just done, I didn't want to be the composer, writer, director, you you name it. I think I I I I want somebody else to come in and make it shine and budgets do it. And then you think, okay, here I am, help me. And and it comes, you know, and it can it comes in. But they were the they were the biggest shifts. The short film, writing the short film thing was a bigger shift than writing some of the big m movie uh stuff. It's funny, isn't it? That you know, always confident that you know, but the confidence comes not from me that if I open my heart, it comes in and it does, it does come in generally.

SPEAKER_00 26:38

100% that's if I've been a good boy. Oh, you'll have always been a good boy. Well, I don't know, but it's truth, isn't it? And it rings in as authentic truth when people listen to it and identify with it, you're not going through the emotions because the trouble is with writing to order is that you could go through the emotions, you know, it's the A to Z of writing for something, but you've got to give of yourself, you've got to give something that you know that you've stored up there, as you rightly say. You've worked alongside some huge name. What's the maverick thing you've seen another great artist do that's stuck with you?

SPEAKER_01 27:10

Uh, I would say Mutt Lang. I was blessed to produce a record with Mutt. Very few people have. One of the greatest human beings I ever met. But a lot of the American producers take the money and run. So there'd be three, four, five percent they get. Back end. Mutt will say, uh, yeah, I want five percent, but I don't want any money. So he believes in what he does and doesn't take any money, but is on a bigger back end of it because he believes and he puts it all in. The other thing is, you know, at the knock at the door, man, we've got to have this, it's got to be we're doing the release date on whatever. Mutt will go, it's done when it's done. And uh obviously I'm working with him at his peak. I don't know if he's always been able to do that, but the fact I'd never heard anybody say that, because obviously you're dealing with the gods, you know, and he would just go, it's done when it's done. And I remember um on the Brian record on the everything I do, you know, the huge Brian Adams record, uh Bob Clear Mountain. I know a little bit of the inside story, but Bob normally would mix in a day, and I think on and off it was 10 days because Muck kept going. No, it needs to be, and that's what I mean. How do you, even though you're more long, how do you push the greatest mixer in the world? Keep pushing, no, no, no. And I do that as I've got older, I've I've tripped my hand off the off the off the my foot off the pedal a bit more to be a bit kinder because people when they work with me have to take a deep breath because they know what's coming. But most people have worked with me half my life, but they know that it's gonna be tough. It's gonna be I I demand as much from them as me. I think again, when I was in the room with Mo, it was the one the first time in my life ever, I didn't feel totally alone. That I thought, wow, it's exactly what I do, and maybe not to that level, but I'm I'm jumping to that bar and trying to be better and better. When everybody in the room is going, I thought we had it, I thought we had it, you know, and uh you have to back yourself, don't you? We don't have it, and you know, a lot of people don't realize it's forever. What you do, you know, certainly recording on film or whatever, it is forever. And uh, you know, so uh hey, I'm making it for me, but I'm also thinking, what would he and there's only a handful of them, but what would they think? What would they and you know even your idols betray themselves, don't they? They always and that's a saving grace for ourselves as well, that you realize you you phone that one in. They've they've all done it. Greatest actors, greatest composer, they've all done it. I try not to do that, but uh, but it does make me feel a little better that even the greats uh are fallible, you know.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

I'm curious in the fact that in the same way AI is empowering, the internet has been a big deal for music. Do you feel slightly envious that you weren't born in the internet age, or do you feel that your journey is what it is and made you what you were anyway?

SPEAKER_01 30:14

I feel really blessed that I was that was my life. I'm 73. I feel that was a wonderful period of time to be. So I got the tail end of all the classic crooners and all the bit and the orchestras. Then you got the 60s boom, but then I got the 80s boom. I saw every technology come in and been part of that. The internet was this and still is somewhat of a mystery to me, but I found it to be uh personally invaluable. Uh, both as a writer, you know, when you want to know what would happen in here, you can go to the internet and get it. But also from my career, I look at some of those songs that I think, man, this is the equal of anything I've done. And then you look, and you know, I don't know, 50, 60,000 people thought it was cool. It doesn't have to be a billion, you know. I'm not sure I believe all those numbers anyway, but I think it's another story. But you know, the fact that even one-on-one, isn't it? You know, when that one person just goes, you could have been mixing sound, or you could have been singing on stage, or you could have been, and somebody just goes, it it does touch you, doesn't it? It doesn't have to be 25,000 people.

SPEAKER_00 31:22

Well, I was gonna ask you, you've stood on stage with giant Tina, the beach boys, Toto Journey. What does it feel like in that split second when the intro starts and the crowd sings your song back at you?

SPEAKER_01 31:33

Do you know a lot of it is a blur, but I have always said, I mean, I had 20 years in the clubs, and Wales knows all about the clubs and knows how, because you had the greatest people in those clubs. So playing Madison Square Garden with people that know your songs is a doddle. Play in Stainforth Democratic Club, where they'll throw a bottle if you don't do it. I've I've gone through that. I don't mean it in a blasé way, but playing to an audience that know, you know, if I had 10 hits, I wouldn't worry. I'm used to, you know, when I was touring with Tina, uh Cinemos was the last song. So I had to survive her audience for seven of my songs that most of them haven't heard. But I could resort to my stagecraft from boyhood and and you know, cabaret if you like. And I remember working with the Beach Boys, and uh and uh the the guy said before we had, oh, this is a real first for us. And then what do you mean? He said, We've never had an electric band open for us. I went, what do you mean? And he went, Well, we use Lev America, the group America opened for us. And I'm thinking, we're gonna go out there like bulls to the wall with the whatever. And I'm saying to the boys, wear your brightest shirts, forget the leather, you know, let's just try and get up. Um and it went and it but it went great, you know, and we got away with it. Like you say, because I think if you've had the experience, I'm I'm not on stage, it's the most comfortable place for me. And and of course, what then follows this, what we're doing now. And you learn to you learn to be. If I look at interviews of me 30 years ago, I'm pretty wooden and fake. But now if I look, I think, yeah, well, I'm just not trying to, you know, be John, you know, it's like he's all right, you know, it's like, and you can't be caught on a lie, can you? That's the thing, because if you tell the truth, you can't be challenged or whatever. So I think it's you know, when you're young, I mean I wasn't young, but I can remember I looked at a few things, I'd be in my 30s with Dick Clark, who's wonderful in America, he'd be interviewing. I'm thinking, I look a bit like a you know, and it but you learn, and and and it it while you're willing to learn, it's a wonderful thing. It's like today, you there's always one extra thing you think I won't do that next time, morale, you know. And I I think that's what keeps you young and keeps you going, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 33:53

Yeah. I've got to ask you this, um, because I'm curious. Are you worried about human creativity with AI coming in? Can AI be as maverick as a human?

SPEAKER_01 34:04

I think um I choose not to believe it, can not to believe it it can take over. I think it is going to be infinite. I just choose to believe, I believe in the divine, you know, whether you believe it's the universe or God or whatever name you put on it. I believe in the divine. So I mean the divine must be within that somewhere, and who knows at what point the divine will be, you know, without sounding like you're on a pulpit. But I just believe that um a human that's lived a life and grown and experienced many things in life, uh, I just can't believe that that can be it's just regurgitated. We're all so different, aren't we? And I don't think that will be. I think it will wear many coats and winning value, but I just think there's nothing more powerful is there than truth spoke on honest lips, you know. I think it's, you know, and music done that way. And uh, you know, we're just the filter for it, aren't we? I I find that with film, you know, that that uh, you know, when you're writing a script, you're looking at life, but you're translating it into word, but then you make the film, you're then translating that back into. And I just like to think that that trans that translation doesn't happen that many times. There aren't that many truly wonderful ones, are there? And while ever that's true, I'd like to see something copy that. I think it can make great country songs or make whatever, but can it make a classic? I'm wanting yet to hear it.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

Well, I think it's gonna make music more bland. It'll be the this is how a music works, but it won't have the originality of a lived experience that will identify with audiences. That's why I think the authenticity, the originality is not gonna be like it's copied from other experiences.

SPEAKER_01 35:48

I think so.

SPEAKER_00 35:48

From the outside, the world of fame looks perfect. You've lived the other half too, haven't you? The dips, the politics, the times when the phone is quiet. What have the lows in the business taught you about yourself that the highs never could?

SPEAKER_01 36:02

Just as I'd reached the top of the mountain, I was writing a record label that didn't want me to be on that course in Hollywood. At the peak of that, somebody I loved and trusted within my organization betrayed me. And I gave them a second chance and they betrayed me again. And it resulted in a court case for 20 years that stopped me being able to work for 20 years. My income stopped, everything, the drawbridge came down, so for 20 years I couldn't work. So I did anything and everything to make a living. And my friend had a wood shop, and I would go in there French polishing in his wood shop, and I'd go fit in with him and all that. But I'd be in the woodshop and San Amos would come on the radio, and then everybody in the woodshop would look around at me. So that's a pretty big gulf. And uh I would have thought good on you, boy. You're one of us, you know, yeah. But there's a great line in uh I forget the Tom Cruise film, and he and the guy, the old agent says, you know, I love my life, I love my wife, and that's my kind of success. It's a pretty hard act to follow. And I would couch that by saying the failure of what looked like abject failure of 20 years enabled me to be a father to my children for 20 years. So I raised my kids from boy to manhood uh in those 20 years. Uh, and most of my contemporaries are on their fourth wife, estranged from their kids, or whatever. So this is what I'm saying about success and failure. It's a funny thing, isn't it? How that was a blessing, but I didn't realize it was a blessing. And it was an intolerable time, and very, very it cost me my health, certainly cost me a colon. It cost me a colon. Um so um cost my wife a what's that one in the neck? Cost my wife that sure stresses it, you know. 20 years of it, you can imagine when everything's threatened, you've got no money, but we came out the other side and life is sweet and you know, uh and a great source of creativity.

SPEAKER_00 38:22

I see in you that's an incredible story, the wood shop. I had no idea, and I would have loved to have a film camera at that moment. But you know what? We've got imagination. I could just I play there in my head, I can just see it. It's hard, isn't it, when the people you trust hurt you. Yes, and how you recover from that is something I've struggled with over the years, and well done to you for doing so.

SPEAKER_01 38:44

And yet still never put my armor on. I could put my armor on, most people put their armor on, and you know, certainly successful people are surrounded with armor or or courtiers. I never put my armor on, so I'm I'm as vulnerable to attack as I have ever been, but that enables me to have the creative because it comes in. Uh so I wouldn't let I wouldn't let the callous of the injury stop the truth coming in and the love coming in. So that's a big, big part of me, you know.

SPEAKER_00 39:13

Yeah, I've I've had to learn to be a statesman in being a CEO, but being a creative as well. I'm in tune with life as a child, you know. I reimagine things, I ask questions, and you're vulnerable. You are, you know, you don't want to put your guard up because that closes the drawbridge, as you say, to creativity. And I wouldn't want to be that person, I'm not that person, but I do have to have a word with myself often when I react to something as the creative, more emotional me, and say, Well, filter it through CEO me, not the songwriter, not the you know filmmaker or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 39:45

And the wife's word in your ear as yes.

SPEAKER_00 39:46

Oh, very much the wife, the wisdom, yes, but what stopped you from walking away? You could have said, That's me, done.

SPEAKER_01 39:54

Well, it's like you said, you know, when they tell you no, it's got to be yes. So I I really thought, I honestly thought, uh so bear in mind this was 1991, the drawbridge came down, and it wasn't lifted till 2010. So instantly, uh this is a weird thing. Um I'd when I was in America in 85, I've always been passionate about the military, I've always been passionate about what it takes for a boy or girl to kind of do that, you know, when you could be clubbing and all the things, and you choose to go. And in 85, we'd come out of the Falklands, and I I think my experience, 83, 84, I was making my way in America, and there's a lot of expats talking about how we were saber rattlers and whatever, but I was thinking of all those young boys and girls that whatever. And I thought I really would love to do something in my own little way to bring a light to their what the reason why. Why do they do that? Whatever. And of course, within the midst of it all, I wasn't able to. So in 2010, I went to America. I wrote an album called The Mission, which was all about uh the military, and I gave all the money from the the because I got some payoff with the when I so me and my buddy, we did 35,000 miles in the first seven weeks of 2011, uh, doing radio shows, TV shows all over America. Six states in one day, sometimes, for love, not for fee. Promoting the idea of uh the sacrifice of uh you know, putting your life on the altar of freedom, you know, and it's it's always intrigued me. Military is not a very fashionable thing, but that dedication is massive. I mean, that is a religious uh thing for your fellow man, isn't it? Whatever you believe in. So that was a a big thing for me, but it didn't happen. I thought, I thought, you know, it was a little voice, I was out of step by that time in America in 83, 84, the Americans military were told not to wear the uniforms in the street because they get spat on. Uh the America of 2010, it was on every beer can flags flying and everything. So I was so out of step, it didn't happen. And uh so it was, you know, it was wonderful, but it was a very little pebble in the water of change, if you like.

SPEAKER_00 42:09

You've developed a real connection with Wales and Welsh stories. What is it about our place and our people that has gone under your skin?

SPEAKER_01 42:17

We came down to the Kamarthan Bay Film Festival about three years ago now, had a film in it. We got in the final, but we didn't win. And we were driving home, and I said to my friend Gary and the boys, there's something magic here, I can't put my finger on it. And everybody in the car agreed. We were kind of like-minded souls. And uh I came home, I was angry, right? And I said, I thought I'm gonna write something, I'm gonna show off. Simon ran the festival. I thought I'm gonna send him tonight. I'm gonna finish this and show him. I can do this. And I I'd always been interested in war poetry. It really touched me, but they're all English, they're all you know, Secret Satz and Wilfred Owen. I'd got this idea for a story, but it needed a a war poet. And I thought, well, Welsh one. So I looked and I found Hedwin, but I think Hedwin found me. And it did me in, absolutely did me in completely. So the incredible thing to me, it's unfolding on a Saturday as I'm trying to write it. I just couldn't believe it unfolding. He was a very gifted poet. Gladhannath is a way of writing poetry to completely unique in the world, because it's got an internal rhyme within the Welsh language that is unique. So it's not only have you got to rhyme, but you've got to make the metre of it. But he was very passionate, very much, I think, very much a maverick. And his brother, he was a conscientious objector, I don't think officially that, but he was a pacifist and didn't want to go to war. And um, they were rounding up the families from the farming villages, and his young brother was going to go. Headwind said, I will go in his stead to fight in France. So he went and um he left the notebook with his poetry in it. So while he was in uh Belgium, Passchendale, he he wrote the poem that won him the Istedford from memory. Five hundred pages, I think, was a huge thing. But the romance of it is that when you are entered in the Icedtedford as a bar as a poet, you can't use your name, so they don't know, there's no favoritism. And his pseudonym was Fleur-de-Lise, which is quite poignant when you think of what Fleur, if you do research, that's poignant in itself. Fleur-de-Lise. So that the Icedtedford in Birkenhead and uh the druid said, and the winner is uh Fleur-de-Lise, silence. The winner is Fleur-de-Lise, silence. And then somebody stood up and said Fleur-de-Lise fell two weeks ago in Passchendale. And the chair that you get when you win the Iced Edford is a remarkable thing, and it's been known as the black chair. If anybody gets the chance to see the black chair, I love woodwork and I do understand what it takes, but there is carving on the black chair that if you do research, most scholars of that kind of work say it's physically impossible to carve without the wood splintering, and yet it's done. So it was carved with such passion by a carpenter that was at working 20 miles from where he fell on the battlefield. So there's all this romance and uh incredible legend. I think Headwyn deserves to be correctly translated, and you know, so he can stand alongside his colleagues in the rest of the world. But Hedwin and many others are trapped within a language that if they can be sympathetically restored, they can touch people long after their moment. So I think that's something I'd like to see happen. It's ir ironic, isn't it, that Dylan Thomas didn't speak or write in Welsh, you know. Everybody knows. Would that have been the same if he would have been locked in the language? I don't know, you know. Uh so that's that's the thing for me with Headwind.

SPEAKER_00 46:24

I think it's a remarkable story. When I was told that the composer, singer of Cinema's Fire is working on a film on Headwind, I said, no, it's just this is crazy, it's it's incongruous, it's it's but it's maverick. I mean, it's it's exactly what you shouldn't do, but you do because your gut tells you there's something here, and you're alive to those influences, alive to those uh little signs that says there's something here, which I greatly admire you for.

SPEAKER_01 46:51

I knew the tragedy of the mines in Wales, I knew the tragedy of Abba Van. Simultaneously had been fascinated by the the Welsh choirs and what it was that elevated them beyond other choirs. But there's something in the Welsh choir that dropped people to their knees. My conclusion was it was the isolation, the nature, the tragedy, the abuse that it's had. So that's what I'm on the quest of now. Writing this new story, which on the face of it is just the story like a full Monty of a Welsh male voice choir. And I think the more we've come and the more we've spoken, spoken, risky conversations where you open your heart and you risk being looked at sideways. Sometimes the shutters have gone down and sometimes they haven't. And we're not so different, are we? I think South Yorkshire and South Wales were built up by the mining industry and the industries that go, and it just leaves you with, you know, they've kicked your legs from under you, you know, and and people muck in, don't they? And the the military humour is not that dissimilar to community humour, just even the blackest of moments, it's a saviour. And I think it's very alive and kicking in Wales, and I think the fact that it's still somewhat isolated, particularly away from the big cities. And I remember um driving down, we were gonna do um a little premiere of a pack of five uh in the Ascun uh in Hedwin's birthplace. So we opened the visitors centre for free. 65 people came in, all Welsh, with this English interloper thinking, oh yeah, who's this coming? We read some of the poetry of Hedwin, and then we showed the film. Something very strange happened. There's a scene in the film where uh the soldier gives Hedwin's notebook to the sergeant, and as we did it, the sun blasted through the window in the schooner and it lit all the room. It was it was on the day of his death, it was an anniversary of his death, and it freaked everybody out in the room. I missed it. I was that busy engrossed, and then somebody questioned me and said, What do you think about what just happened? And then the whole room said, Yeah, the whole room lit for five minutes in brilliant light at this point. You know, when in life, as a maverick, you go on a risk and you're looking for a sign, am I on the right path? And I've had so many signs in my life, and a lot of that happened in the last three years in Wales. Very abstract things that you'd think millions of one, you know. I'll give you one example. So I'd never been to an Isteadford, and Elsa Davis, Hedwin's niece, took me through the Icedtedford, and as an Englishman, the Icedtedford is quite a strange experience with the robes. But once you realise what it's built upon, it's sacred. But we went in a room, 1,500 people, and we sat down, and the lady next to Elsa, her grandfather, great-grandfather, saw Hedwin fall on the battlefield and trained with him before he went off to France. I mean, what is the odds on that? That kind of thing has happened throughout signs that make me think I am on the right road, you know, and uh, you know. And it's very small. So the other thing, I love it. The other thing about Wales, it's quite globally small. I think it lends itself to, you know, those little secrets that become big. I think there's an opportunity for something small to become very big. And I think the fertile hearts and minds of Wales is the place for that to grow from, even though I realize how protectionist you learn that to your cost as an Englishman, that it is very you wonder why the shutters go down, and it's because I understand, you know, it's protection and it's self-survival as well. And you know, it's been used so many times. People have been dealt false promises, haven't they? And and whatever. And I get it, and I'm not selling that false promise, you know.

SPEAKER_00 51:02

I think we've adopted you as a Welsh son by now. So I want to look forward for a minute, next few years. What excites you most? Is it music, film, or something completely different again?

SPEAKER_01 51:11

Film for me. Um, some great stories to tell, some great stories to tell. And um I I keep thinking, I'm maybe am I do I have the uh stamina to direct it? You know, I I know I can do it, I know I can bring the best out of people. But I think with certain stories that I've written, I do think I've got to carry it all the way through just to make sure, particularly in the sacred ones. This is a sacred one, the one we're doing now, pack of five was sacred. Blessed, blessed by the fact that everybody was Welsh, and most of them knew about so they realized that it was a big deal. Uh, but this this new one is it's sacred. But sometimes people out, yeah. I think that with writers, you know, well a lot of the male writers write women's stories better than women do, and I feel that sometimes that maybe being outside of it, I can see the woods for the tree. You often, when it's close, you just take it for granted. And and so, you know, yeah. So for me, I think film, um, but then again, you get that great soundtrack, and it just you switch the sound off and it's a great film, but then you put that soundtrack in if it's great and he and he's done it, or she's done it, man. Oh man, it like it's a biblical experience, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 52:28

I agree. Well, you did that for us with St. Elma's Fire in Venice. It's that that's in a bit. I'd never forget it. Are there stories of causes you still feel you haven't done justice to yet? You've raised 400 million with the with the whole spinal charity. You're you're about more than songs and writing films.

SPEAKER_01 52:44

Yeah, I mean it's all it's certainly all driven by the need to do good. I it sounds corny, but unless it's got some other life within it, I can't do it. I has to have some, you know, it's gonna make a change, it's gonna make a difference, you know. And what's that word, edutainment, you know?

SPEAKER_00 53:02

If I said the next jump part anthem, what would you want that to be about now at this stage of your life? What's the next anthem?

SPEAKER_01 53:10

I think it might be about uh something that was never discussed, certainly uh in my thinking, was meant the mental side of it. I think uh coming from where I come from, it's pull yourself together, lad, you know, and whatever. And you know, have you talked to somebody? But I realize that, you know, there is uh a real issue with the mental thing in ordinary life, not just if you've got a diagnosed. I found myself, you know, in the midst of it being as a younger man being overwhelmed, and certainly as an older man being overwhelmed by uh just the tidal wave of things, plates you're trying to juggle, emotional things you're trying to juggle. So I think I'd like to I'd like to see if I could touch on that side of it. I've got an idea for something that I'm writing at the moment, and it's um I I think something that's very deep hurt in my recent life. I think I'm best placed to be able to write about it. It's very private, personal, but the hardest thing for me to go through, and I think I'm well placed, but also I'm able to shift and think I can tell this story from a side I've never seen it taught taught from. But it's so important that it might open the eyes of the sufferer to the to the healer, you know, that that and so I think that, and if I can wrap a song within it in a phrase that you know those phrases that that uh you know in life sometimes people have to hit rock bottom before they can surface. But then I heard somebody who didn't speak English very well do it beautifully, and they talked about the tide needs to go fully out before it can come back. But what I wanted to explore was also, but what if the tide doesn't come back? But you have the faith to believe it will. So it's all so I think that's what I'm that's where I'm at in my mind at the moment because I think it's a I think it's a huge issue for people, and I think it's gonna get physically worse because uh a lot of our heroes have uh betrayed themselves. And if you were raising a child, who would be the role model that you would direct them to? And so uh somewhere along the way uh I think there's that, and then the other would be the message of peace, which is the biggest challenge to mankind, I think. And that is um from Adam and Eve, we've never solved it, have we? You know, that's what I'm currently searching for, and it's in Wales. That's part of my mission. Part of this year we'll see what I'm trying to explore, and I want to talk to people that dream this dream of it the possibility, but how? And how do you sow that seed in an innocent mind that it becomes a doctrine that's not a pulpit one or not a you shall or whatever? And that's that's what fascinates me moment. Can that be found? And who am I to find it? But I'm looking.

SPEAKER_00 56:11

I think this generation certainly are tired of war and tired of you know the adversity. I think there's now a there is a glimmer of hope, I think. But we'll see. You know, I wish you well with a look forward to it. I'm gonna go on to Maverick Maxims, one of my favourite bits of the show. It's quickfire questions. Come to just answer with whatever came into your head. This is how we roll.

SPEAKER_01 56:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 56:34

A song by someone else you wish you'd written.

SPEAKER_01 56:36

The Long and Winding Road.

SPEAKER_00 56:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:39

Or Nimrod.

SPEAKER_00 56:40

That's a good word. One of your songs you'd happily play for the rest of your life.

SPEAKER_01 56:45

Running the Endless Mile.

SPEAKER_00 56:47

Right, I'll have to check that one out properly and still play in the car later. Because I am. What's one habit or ritual that keeps your creative muscle in shape?

SPEAKER_01 56:57

Not wearing death aids. As soon as I hear it or well, see it or hear it, I can't help it. It goes in and instantly go becomes that could be a song, that could be a poem, that could be a whatever. So, yeah, that that would be the one, you know, if you could switch that off, because it's like it still is a million miles an hour. There's not enough time to do it all.

SPEAKER_00 57:20

I relate to that. My head is like a bunch of ferrets having a fight in it, you know, it's it's like 24-7. Totally. And I can't find the off switch. Tell me about one bit of music business wisdom you'd tell a young artist to completely ignore.

SPEAKER_01 57:33

Oh boy, to completely ignore. Uh, I think listen to you. I think listen to you. I think uh there are no rules, break them at your peril. Uh, but I think be you be you because I could have listened to people and you know gone completely down. I think you know, I'm not saying be, you know, I'm right and you're all wrong, but sh if you listen to somebody's idea, I'd very much want to know what they were capable of before I listened to it. See, anybody's got an opinion, but I'd very much like to see uh is it in line with my own, you know. Yeah, uh, you know, so that you know, I think be true to yourself.

SPEAKER_00 58:11

What is the non-music, non-filmmaking thing that gives you the most joy right now?

SPEAKER_01 58:17

My grandson. I think my grandson, and I think I I f I look at I look at YouTube a lot, uh looking for for it, whatever it is, and I find myself with this face, and even people I've admired, when I've watched the thing, my face is this way, and I find if I watch something with animals or something with joy, my face has done that involuntarily. So uh whatever that is, it's certainly nothing to do with fast cars, beautiful women, or whatever. It's to do with something within that natural purity, within I think nature, I think again, going back to Hedwyn, I think I remember driving down to do that. What worried me greatly, I'm going to talk to Welsh people about Headwind. They'd had these insular lives within this small village and not gonna, where was that wisdom gained from? And as I drove down through Wales, I thought it's Wales, it's the beauty, it's the nature. They've raised sheep, they've seen the life and death, they've seen the cycle. And when I got down, I didn't realise Elsa began by reading some of Edwin's nature poems. Headwin wrote a poem in English. Nobody knows, I didn't know. So Elsa dropped it on me that evening of the anniversary of his death. The last poem Hedwin wrote was in English. After the Ice Deadford one, he'd wrote he'd written this thing, and it was a commission for a wedding. And the father had said, Would you write a poem for? And you know what the surname of the daughter was? Pa.

SPEAKER_00 59:48

That's uncanny. Signs of lightning.

SPEAKER_01 59:51

I've thrown you now.

SPEAKER_00 59:52

Come on. I know from personal experience that the music industry can be brutal. Looking back, what's a mistake or a tough moment that hurt you at the time, but give you a lesson you still lean on now going forward. We all get told what we should do, play it safe, don't tear people, don't mix genres. Can you think of a time you ignored very sensitive advice and you're glad you did?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:15

Yeah, it was it was uh a double-edged sword, really. It was Atlantic Records, the big bosses. The conversation was you've got to make records like this, and the other one in the same sentence, next sentence was, and you've got to get rid of your manager. And if you don't get rid of your manager, your career with this record label will be over. I didn't do either, and both cost me tremendously. But I didn't do either of those. But in retrospect, I got 20 years to be a dad, and but but it that's what costed me. My career, it cost me my career and my trust. Um, but it enabled me to be the greatest thing of all, isn't it? What what's what's better than that, you know? Than to be, you know, the guiding light for that for that period of their life, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:19

We have a feature on the show called the Maverick Moment. It's about a point when you look around and think, no one else could have done this exactly the way I've just done it. What was that Maverick moment for you?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:31

It was San Amos. I know that David Foster would have just got somebody to sing song nine. But moreover, a young boy born and lived 6,000 miles away from me went through this journey very disparate to mine, but yet it was the same one. So I was the best placed person to do that, to sing it, to write in that moment. Terrible to keep going back to that one, but it and being so long ago. But I think it's vindicated, isn't it? Now, but I think that would be I was placed, you know. And I think David says that too now, you know, as we've got older, you know, and uh, you know, they think a lot of my what can you say, lords and ladies of the time that maybe left me behind have suddenly realized now that's the friend I should have kept throughout. And that's that's quite rewarding also. Yeah, that that people, you know, in the end realise what's really important, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:33

And if you had to name your best decision and your worst decision, what would they be?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:39

My best decision was uh marry my wife. My worst decision, that is hard. Well, certainly one of them creatively would be Bet Midler with Atlantic. They said, Would you like to produce Bet Midler? She to me was a person that was worked with Barra Manilo, she was a Vegas artist. I'd got no concept of the depth of the woman, of the human being, and the talent. And I said no. And I think what I would have learned and that experience of being in a place with her as a person and but also creator, what we could have brought, you know, I think I think there would have been a meeting of minds there. And again, it's those in your naivety, you just go, and uh you know, when you're when you're in the in the midstream of it all, you know, you're you're the hottest thing on the for that week. Everything was coming at me, and I just I just declined it.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:37

There'll be people listening who grew up on your songs and others in completely different fields who recognize the pattern, working class, big innings, a big break, and then the long game of staying true to yourself. What's the one thing you'd want them to take from your journey?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:51

To take from it. Um he never gave in. He never gave in and you know kept the faith, really. I think keeping on, you know, that another thing in the military at his high central on. The the thing that sets the military from the 1% of the SF, you know, is they just don't understand giving in. You know, it's it's impossible, isn't it? Yeah, for you two. It's it's impossible. It's not even a well for one night or two nights, but yeah. I've had those thoughts recently, but they fade very quickly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:27

We always finish with this complete the sentence for me.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:30

And Maverick is someone who prepares to go where others d dare not. I'll go against all odds. I think, well, I think it's right. If I think it's right, that's me, I'll go there. So Maverick is someone that's prepared to go the trust, the what do you say, the path least trod. Yeah. I think so. I think that's me.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:53

And finally, years from now, when people hear St. Elmo's or they stumble on one of your films, what do you hope your story stands for?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:01

I hope that it gives them uh the impetus to put one step in front of the other, to have hope. I found in life the biggest thing in life is hopeless is a a word, an empty word, but hopeless is the darkest place in the world. So it sounds corny, but if it just gives one little tiny pinhole of hope, I think that I think that I'll settle for that.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:23

Yeah, it does give hope, and certainly St. Elmo's for me is my go-to drag. And I can't believe you're sitting there. Thank you, John. I mean, so grateful for coming in from you know, a kid with tunes in his head to the man behind one of the greatest anthems of the 80s, uh, and a creator still pushing, you know, into new work and new cultures. You're not settling for anything. Your journey, without a doubt, is a proper Maverick one. Thank you so much, John. Yeah, that's one time. And to everyone listening, remember the world doesn't change by playing it safe. Stay sharp, stay bold, and keep that Maverick mindset alive. We'll see you next time on Inside the Maverick Mind.