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Amy:   We're back on tape, for one last time - right?
Peter:   I don't know. I thought Part 2 might be the last time, but apparently it isn't.

Amy:   You promised to tell us some interesting and true stories from your life.
Peter:   And I never make a promise I can't keep either. So let's do it!

Amy:   Why don't you start with the Steam tour? You already told us the story of how you joined The Dolphins in Part 1 of our interview.
Peter:   OK. After Na Na became a huge hit, Paul Leka, the producer of the record, asked us if we would want to go out on the road as Steam. The deal was that we could perform all our own original songs live if we just played Na Na one time. We jumped at Paul's offer because we really wanted the opportunity to perform our own original songs in front of live audiences and get paid for doing it.

Amy:   I assume that with a number one hit record, your tour was first class.
Peter:   Wrong assumption! One of Paul's friends named Don Dwyer lent us his van to transport our equipment and of course it didn't fit at all. So Tor built a huge wooden box on the top of the van which held about half of our equipment and made the whole thing top heavy and very dangerous to drive. The rest of our equipment got spread out on the rear floor of the van, and we put a couple of mattresses on top of the equipment so that we could have a modicum of comfort while driving and even get some sleep before we hit the next town. This entire setup was so ridiculous and absurd to us that we named the van Don Dwyer's Twuck!

Amy:   Tell us about some of the more interesting gigs you played.
Peter:   One of the very first ones was called The Love Valley Peace Festival, and it took place in North Carolina just a few months after Woodstock. There were at least 25,000 people there, and we opened up the festivities first thing in the morning. That was both cool and a bit of a drag because we actually woke most of them up. But they loved our original songs, and we knew that from the enthusiastic applause we were getting after each song from these half aware people whose sleep we had just interrupted. After we finished our set, a very young and beautiful groupie approached me, and I invited her to join us in the van. She was my first real groupie and I was knocked out by her unique talent, and apparently she felt the same way about mine because she ended up traveling with us for a while.

Amy:   That's a teaser, for sure! And that's the kind of stuff our readers really want to know about you.
Peter:   Yeah, you are the one who repeatedly asked me in our interview earlier about how many stars I slept with, remember?

Amy:   Please tell us some more about your performing experiences.
Peter:   We played at the University of West Virginia up in the Appalachian mountains right after the Love Valley Peace Festival, and I remember we got a huge standing ovation. You know, the Appalachian area is about as hillbilly a place as there is in the USA, and these students had really never seen a rock and roll band like us before. Their school newspaper wrote a rave review of our performance, and I had a copy of that which got lost a long time ago. One time we got invited to play a rock and roll sunrise mass at a Catholic Church in New Jersey. Tor had some things that people use to get wired and stay up all night, which we did. The congregation never knew what hit them and they loved us. We played in way too many clubs that are too numerous to mention, we did some theaters, a bunch of colleges, and one or two other festivals.

Amy:   Continue, please.
Peter:   I was in two different bands that I named Magic, and both of them played some interesting gigs. The first version of Magic was in southern California right after I moved there from N.Y.C. when Steam broke up. We got the job as the house band at The Orphanage in Laguna Beach. Now Laguna is the finest and classiest town in all of southern California, and the Orphanage was THE place to be. The second version of Magic was in northern California, we were the house band at The Boathouse in Sausalito, and Sausalito is northern California's version of Laguna Beach, without the beach. And the Boathouse was THE place to be. In fact, that's where I met Gary Kelgren, the owner of The Record Plant, and I will get to that very interesting story in just a minute. Magic also spent an entire summer in South Lake Tahoe, and that's the place Mark Twain exclaimed was the most beautiful place he had ever seen - and he had traveled the world at that point when he said it. We were the house band at Snowshoe Thompson's, and THAT was the place to be in all of Lake Tahoe. The place was just loaded with ski bunnies every night, and Snowshoe Thompson's gave us an entire house out in the forest to live in for the summer as part of our compensation package. Club playing doesn't really doesn't get any better than those three gigs.

Amy:   OK, what about Gary Kelgren?
Peter:   First of all, you should know that Gary went WAY back in rock and roll. Gary actually invented "phasing", and he did it on that old 1950's record "The Big Hurt". He was quite successful and well known as a recording engineer in N.Y.C. when he invested his money building the first Record Plant. He built one in Los Angeles and the fanciest one in Sausalito. One famous time at the Sausalito Record Plant Gary recorded a rock band in one studio and a full 50 piece symphony orchestra in the adjacent studio at the very same time, running back and forth from studio to studio. He told me that when he recorded Jimi Hendrix at Electric Ladyland in N.Y.C. he didn't use any recording gimmicks at all because he discovered right away that all he had to do was stick his best microphone in front of Jimi's amp, run the sound directly into the board and what you hear on the record is exactly what he got by doing just that. We were the house band at The Boathouse, a super hip club in Sausalito actually situated on a dock overlooking San Francisco bay. We were doing mostly cover songs for the dance crowd because that's what they wanted to hear. But one night Gary and his partner, Chris Stone, came in and seated themselves at one of the front tables. Gary yelled out to us, "Hey, can you play something original?" So we launched into "Make Love", a song I had recently written which I thought was about the most commercial song I had at that time. Gary literally fell out of his chair so we played some more of my originals for him and when it came time for our break, Gary invited us all out to his famous Rolls Royce which had front and rear license plates that said "Greed". To make a long story short, Gary ended up offering Magic more free recording time than he had ever offered to any band in his entire life. And that was the last time he ever did that too!

Amy:   What do you mean?
Peter:   In hindsight, I realize that nothing Magic ever recorded at the Record Plant had the "magic" on the tape. And being such a recording talent, I'm sure Gary realized that we just didn't have it in the studio, even though my songwriting was good enough for him to want to invest serious money in recording time for me. After the second version of Magic broke up, I continued to record demos of my songs whenever Gary got some available time for me in the studio. One day when I was working in the studio, Gary walked in and said, "We can't concentrate here. I've got a house on Paradise Island in the Bahamas and I'm gonna send you down there for a vacation. We'll take a bunch of portable recording equipment with us, some cash for spending money, and you can work down there at the same time as you relax and have fun." I looked at this crazy man and thought, "Well, if you can't concentrate at The Record Plant, where the hell else can you concentrate?" But I jumped at Gary's offer because I had already been to The Bahamas several times and I just adored the place anyway. Gary gave me $10,000 in cash, and I strapped $5000 to each ankle when I went through Bahamian customs so that Gary could avoid paying duties on the money and wouldn't have to explain where he got it from, which wasn't The Record Plant, you know. When I got to what Gary called "The Clapp House", I was stunned by it. Paradise Island is a long thin island right across a short stretch of water from Nassau, and that's where all the best hotels and the former Club Med are located for very good reasons. The Clapp House, which had nothing to do with venereal disease, was situated right next to the Club Med, and its property stretched all the way from the bay side facing Nassau to the opposite ocean side. The main house was a gorgeous Spanish mansion with a classic red tile roof, white walls covered with flowering vines, an artisticly tiled courtyard in the middle, and there was a unique swimming pool which had a blue lighted cave you could swim underwater to get into. The entire property was landscaped with lush vegetation, and there were colorful tropical birds and many different fruit trees. On the side facing Nassau, there was a boat house with a dock, and there were several Boston Whalers which we used to take out for water skiing and to ferry us over to Nassau at night for dinners at the really expensive restaurants in town. On the ocean side was a beach house with guest bedrooms overlooking the crystal clear Carribean ocean, and of course, a stretch of pristine private beach. I was so inspired by the place that I sat right down and wrote Too Young to be Lonely, Sweet Pain, and another really good song called "Rowdy" that was never recorded by Crossfire. And besides, in hindsight, I now know that nothing I ever did back then approached the level of "Magic" that I experienced during all three phases of Crossfire. Feeling like I had done the job Gary sent me down there to do, I went out on the beach looking for girls. I ran right smack into a group of beautiful British girls and I invited them up to the house to party with us. That's when I met dear sweet Rosie. But that's a whole 'nother story which I don't think is appropriate for this interview at all.

Amy:   Isn't that where you met Ringo Starr?
Peter:   Yes, it was. Gary had invited Ringo down there for a free vacation too. Gary knew just about everybody in the rock and roll business at that time and he was known as a really fun guy to party wildly with. I stayed in that house with Ringo for just a few days, and we shared some smokeables on the beach one sunny morning. I got to ask him some questions about how The Beatles got some of their sounds, and I will never forget what he said when I asked him how he got his drum sound on Mr. Moonlight off Rubber Soul. He just looked at me and said, "Tea towels. Some bird brought us in our tea on a silver platter, and I just took the little doilies from the platter and put them on my tom toms." I suddenly understood the whole concept of "chemistry" in the studio, and I realized that literally every single silly idea that popped into their minds just worked! And when the exact same thing happened to me in the studio with Crossfire, I thought about Ringo and realized that one of my great dreams was finally happening to me after all those hundreds and hundreds of hours at The Record Plant with Gary and Magic, where nothing we ever recorded turned out perfectly enough for me.

Amy:   I think your experience with Crossfire is related pretty well on all your different song pages, so why don't you tell us about some of your favorite rock bands that you saw?
Peter:   First on my list, for all kinds of great reasons, is Led Zeppelin. I think you know how I feel about The Men. Each one of them is the best player on his instrument, and John Bonham was far and away the best rock and roll drummer who ever walked the face of this planet! He had complete independence in all four limbs and played double bass drums better than anyone ever has before or since John died. He hit the drums harder than anyone else and he never once dropped the beat. I was able to get back stage at one of their San Francisco concerts when they played a Bill Graham's Day on the Green. I found a chair and I Robert Planted myself right behind John. I sat there for the entire performance with my tongue hanging out of my mouth, completely stunned by what I was seeing and hearing. Remember, I was a pretty decent drummer myself and I played double bass drums too, but I wouldn't even begin to compare myself to John. Jimmy Page sort of staggered around the stage as if he was drunk, but he wasn't. It was just that the hurricane of sexual energy that poured out of his guitar amp was too much for even Jimmy to withstand without being knocked for a loop. Second on my list would be Jimi Hendrix. I saw him at the Filmore East in N.Y.C. with Sly and the Family Stone as the opening act. Sly was completely unknown at that time and his show was very impressive. But Jimi was something else altogether. I had a cheap seat in the back row of the top balcony and he was so loud he pinned my ears to the wall ! But I wanted him to play even louder! I kept looking into the wings to see if there were some other guitarists playing incognito because I couldn't believe that all this sound was coming from just one guitar. I heard rhythm guitar strumming, lead guitar riffs, and multiple feedback sounds all at the very same time! In those days, Jimi was still putting on his great sex show, playing from his crotch, swaying his hips, sticking out his tongue and wiggling it around, and flirting with every single girl he could see from the stage. He played his guitar with his teeth, behind his back, and at the end of the show, he set his guitar on fire. He knelt over his burning guitar, poured lighter fluid on the open flame, and sort of prayed to the guitar god who obviously listened to this man! I never saw anyone who was sexier than Jimi on stage. Lastly, I must tell you about seeing The Who. They used to be my favorite concert band because they put on such a great show, and of course because I adored Keith Moon's drumming. Nobody plays like Keith because he achieved his own unique style and sound. And Peter Townsend was such a charismatic guitar player. So many guitarists play better lead guitar than Peter can but no one plays rhythm guitar better than Peter, and nobody has his moves. All those incredibly high jumps, swinging his right arm in huge circles and never missing a chord while he did it. I saw The Who about five different times, and the last time was at the Filmore East in New York City. It was that famous night when the place caught on fire, and I was tripping on magic mushrooms. As usual, I was so intent on watching Keith and Peter that I didn't see the smoke start to fill the theater, but I knew something was wrong when the cops came in. One of them went up on the stage and tried to stop Peter from playing. That's when he swung his guitar at the cop and knocked him clean off the stage. The entire audience, including me, rose to their feet and cheered ! The cops began to clear the theater but The Who just kept on playing. I saw flames starting to move up the curtains and then I knew what was happening, but I thought to myself, "This is as good a way as any to die - watching The Who!" and I refused to leave until some cop grabbed me and literally dragged me to the exit. I think those three stories are enough of my concert experiences by other bands.

Amy:   And now, will you please tell us some interesting stories from your life that aren't related to music?
Peter:   I've already told the entire true story of my family's close friendship with Albert Einstein in Professor Albert Einstein - My Family's Savior and I explained my spiritual journey in The Swami and Me. After those two, everything else is anti-climactic. But the best birthday of my entire adult life was at Paul Bocuse's restaurant in Lyon, France. Paul Bocuse is the premier chef in all of France and because French cooking is considered to be the most elevated and sophisticated form of cooking, he is arguably the number one chef in the entire world. I'm not the only one who says that. Other chefs come from all over the world to work in his restaurant and learn his techniques so that they can list that on their resumes. And besides, he pretty much invented "haute cuisine", he was awarded the first Grand Chef medal that France ever gave out, and he invented those very tall circular white hats that they all wear. Recently, I contacted his restaurant by email and they sent me a very cool poster of Paul holding a live rooster in a copper pot, along with a beautiful card thanking me for being a loyal patron. I put both of these up in my kitchen to inspire my cooking.

Amy:   How did you come to be in Lyon, France on your birthday?
Peter:   Oh dear, I will have to digress. This is a good one. I had met a 90 year old man in San Francisco whose job for his entire life had been picking winner stocks. His name was Harry, and for some strange reason I listened to him when he said to me, "Peter, buy Com Disco." I said, "Com what?" Harry explained to me that Com Disco leased used IBM computers and I wondered how any company could possibly make a decent profit from only leasing used computers. I must have been nuts but I actually followed Harry's advice and bought $5,000 worth of their stock. Within a very short amount of time, Com Disco issued a 2 for 1 stock split, and then it split again, and when my stock was worth about $15,000, I sold it. I put my original $5,000 back in the bank, and with the remaining $10,000, I took Mona on a vacation trip to Europe. We started out in England, drove up to Wales, took the ferry over to Amsterdam and then rode the train down to Brussels. We continued on to Paris where we stayed for a week in a great pension right on the Seine within a few blocks of Notre Dame. Then we rented a car, drove west to Mont St. Michel, and then back down the middle of France, following rivers like the Loire. And that's how we ended up in Lyon on my birthday, but I had planned it that way on purpose because it was and will always be necessary to book a reservation at Bocuse's restaurant well in advance, that is, if you're lucky enough to get a table at all considering how famous he is.

Amy:   Is the average person supposed to be able to appreciate Paul Bocuse?
Peter:   I was an average person once. I was eating Dinty Moore stew out of a can, frying frozen cod fish in a pan, and boiling frozen vegetables when I met Mona. She came from an entire Campbell family of highly talented cooks, so Mona taught me all I knew for many years about food. But nowadays I've become somewhat of a gourmet cook and I'm able to improvise interesting variations on classic dishes based on what I feel like eating. Of course I use only fresh ingredients, but that sort of goes without saying at a certain level of cooking. I'm not actually crazy about cooking, and I certainly hate cleaning up, but I really do enjoy the improvisation and creating something that's uniquely mine. It's almost like music, except that it tastes so much better.

Amy:   So back to Bocuse, please.
Peter:   I was just giving you some background so that you will understand my level of appreciation for who this man really is. When I arrived at his restaurant on my birthday, the first thing that struck me was how unpretentious it was. We were greeted by the maitre d'hotel, who made us feel like honored guests. The dining room is relatively small, with about 20 tables placed in a circle around an antique centerpiece - a huge, hand carved mahogany serving tower that all the waiters work from. And you don't have just one waiter serving you. There's literally a different waiter for every purpose. Powerful fans are cleverly hidden in the ceiling over each table so that the diners can smoke if they want to, and they do even offer a fancy cigar course because so many European diners love to smoke. There are many courses, and each course is a relatively small portion intended to offer you the taste experience without causing you to overeat. Not only is each course absolutely outstanding and unique in its flavors and ingredients, but each course is a visual masterpiece. You sit there looking at it and almost don't want to eat it because then it will be destroyed. They serve each of these works of art on different antique hand glazed plates that enhance the colors of each course that's being served. So the level of service is beyond first class, the food is indescribably outstanding, and the presentation of each course is a work of art. Before we began our meal, I ordered a bottle of Bocuse's own champagne, and then we settled in to totally enjoy the eating experience. The champagne lifted me onto a sensual cloud, and I was fully enjoying the meal on all levels simultaneously. Altogether, the meal took about 2-1/2 hours from start to finish. After they had brought this fabulous desert cart to our table and we had selected a bunch of fancy pastries to finish off with, Paul Bocuse himself came out of the kitchen and brought me a large cookie with a candle on it, and he sung me happy birthday in French. Can you believe that man? He must be about 6' 6" tall, and with that tall white hat, he towered over me without being at all intimidating, just gracious and friendly to me. As we were leaving, they brought out a box with an assortment of Paul's own cookies for us to take with us on our drive up to Switzerland, so we continued to enjoy his dining experience for another couple of hours as we drove. To this day, I've never been in a restaurant that could even begin to approach the level of experience that Paul offers to everyone who goes there to seek out his genius.

Amy:   That's a great story, Peter, and that's also a great note to end on, don't you think?
Peter:   As long as it's a positive major chord, that's fine with me!