From Teen Idol to Heavy Metal Star-Celebrating 70 Years of Show Business with Pat Boone

interview Boone.mp3

Buzz Knight [00:00:01] I’m Buzz knight and today taking a walk. Music History on Foot. As someone who is the number ten all time top recording artist of all time, according to Billboard magazine. Also, he was a teen idol. That’s right. Maybe one of the first record label owner. He dabbled in heavy metal. He’s been a bestselling author. We’re going to have Pat Boone. Next on taking a walk. Mr. Boone?

Pat Boone [00:00:33] Yeah, it’s Pat. Buzz.

Buzz Knight [00:00:35] Hello, Pat. It’s so great having you on. Taking a walk. I wish we could do it in person, though.

Pat Boone [00:00:41] Well, I wish we could do it. For one reason. I love Boston. Wonderful memories of Boston. And I would just look in your name because this is my first time to talk to you. And. And I bet you have a slogan. It’s a buzz knight. Every night. Every night. The buzz knight.

Buzz Knight [00:01:03] I love that. Are you in California?

Pat Boone [00:01:07] Yeah, I’m in Beverly Hills, sitting in a rocking chair. I’m a Beverly Hills Billy now. I’ve been out here since 1960. I lived in New Jersey for a while and, of course, raised in Nashville. But. But I remember so fondly being on radio and Boston and doing it strips. Is there still a place strips or not?

Buzz Knight [00:01:29] I don’t believe.

Pat Boone [00:01:30] It was one of the best places for performers to sing. A big, big deal. These few performed strips in Boston. And I was a headliner there several times. And it was just I always loved being there, partly because of the the historic parts of Boston. And I’m very much into what goes on in our country and where our country is headed. Very concerned about where we’re headed. I actually think I may be responsible for what’s called the Tea Party, but I think it’s 95 that in articles I was writing for WorldNetDaily every week for a while for a couple of four years, actually. And I call for a new American Tea Party and and told the story of how the first one happened and how the citizens decided they didn’t like the way they were being governed. And so they came together and they created a new and an independent United States of America. And so, you know, I’ve always had a very fond spot in my heart for Boston.

Buzz Knight [00:02:37] Oh, well, thank you. That’s very that’s very kind. No, it’s it’s 6:00 or so in the morning where you are. What the heck do you put in your oatmeal to be so energetic?

Pat Boone [00:02:51] Well, usually it is oatmeal, really? Three mornings a week and then three mornings a week, it’s fresh fruit and cereal. But then on Friday, that’s my egg day. And and I have hard boiled eggs cut into quarters that two of them. And then in each of the quarters, that’s eight pieces, I sprinkle a little Tabasco and have some sour dough toast buttered and I have I splurge on eggs on Friday. But the other six mornings it’s health and and also you know, I do take this product I’ve advertised on TV for a long time relief factor and and it fights any kind of inflammation in your body naturally and so I take that every morning and I take nature balance. I take that every morning, too. So I’ve been health conscious and I exercise, I swim, Appleseed, I swim, I ride my bike, I workout in the gym, and I played in the senior basketball games three years because it was every other year. But I played in the 70, 75 bracket three and three, and then the 75 to 80 bracket three on three and then 20 minute halves and then the 80 to 85 bracket. And I decided I press my luck as far as I should. But but I still shoot baskets. I’ve got a regular ABA regulation goal and and and 26 that semi-circle semicircle out and back right next to the hedge with a cross from which by the Osbournes lived for three years. He was my next door neighbor Ozzy Osbourne to it his dogs would be barking in the morning and I’d be out to shoot baskets a little alley and weekly life. I just am committed to staying healthy and I’m 88. I’ll be 89 in June and I’ll still shoot baskets and play singles, tennis and a host of the golf tournaments. And I just got back from Toccoa, Georgia, yesterday morning where I hosted a golf tournament before. So I stay active and I think really staying active and multi activities as I do is must be one of the ways you can just stay active. You just keep my granddad. He said a long, long time ago, if you quit using it, you lose it and so just keep using it, whatever it is. And he adds insult. Definitions of his own.

Buzz Knight [00:05:29] But you mentioned Ozzy Osbourne. So is Pat Boone ever still in a heavy metal mood?

Pat Boone [00:05:39] Every now and yes, I am, because those those songs. The reason I did them was my own musicians wanted to do a new album and I said, What can I do? I have a ten. You have done ten times. I’ve already done Country and Pop and and big Band Swing and Patriotic and gospel and even two albums of a cappella with no music. And they said, We never did any heavy metal. Well, we joked about it for a little while. And then one of my conductor, Deanna, said, You know, there’s some really good songs under all that noise and we should do them a different way. I said, Like what? He said, Big band jazz. I said, You got what is it? Give me some songs. And and so we found all these great songs, as you know, With the Wind, Cried Mary and Smoke on the Water and Ozzy Osbourne’s Crazy Train, and he moved in next door to me for three years. And when I met him I had already done his song, but he moved in and went out to get the mail and here he comes walking down the sidewalk, or I should say shuffling down the sidewalk. He didn’t walk, he shuffled. Hey, Hello. Hello. Paddy says the dose of it. You got to go to AA meeting right now, but when I get home, we’ll have some tea. Okay. And. And we did. And we were friends for three years until he moved. And then when he started his show, The Osbournes, my amazement and it was it was, you know, the talk of TV. And I tuned in to see his show and I heard my song and I mean my version of his crazy Train. Crazy. Hey, that’s how he goes. I heard his my version of his song as his theme song. He and Cher liked it. And so they used my version of his song as their theme song. And so I have an affinity know. I got to know a bunch of the of the heavy metal guys like Alice Cooper. He’s a son of a preacher and Dave Mustaine of Megadeth. And and the thing about that album, it went halfway up the charts the first week and, and it was college kids that were buying it went in the rock charts immediately because they were they knew all the songs and loved all the songs, but they wanted to hear how in the world I was doing them. And then they loved the big, bad jazz versions Everywhere I Go Now today. And of course I haven’t been appearing anywhere for a while, but as the audience and audiences there are usually gray and white haired people. How many have rushed out and bought my heavy metal album? And almost no hands go up. But the sound guys are operating. The sound and the tech and the lights all have that album. And and so it endeared me to a lot of people who had no idea who in the world I was.

Buzz Knight [00:08:41] Let’s play a little game here real quick. I’m going to read you a some lyrics. I’m going to read it like I’m in poetry class. And let’s see if you guess which one of those songs off of your album this is. I’m betting you’re going to guess this. Okay. Are you ready? Yeah. Okay. Say your prayers, little one. Don’t forget my son. I tuck you in warm within. Keep you from sin till the sandman comes.

Pat Boone [00:09:10] Enter Sandman. And you know. And when I. When I get Alice Cooper and I gave the awards right after my album had come out, it was coming up the next day, actually, and we gave the award to Metallica at Edge that were Edge Field. Yeah. Yep. And the drummer, they came on stage babbling to me, saying I was their new lead singer, whether they loved the way I had done their song. And with big band jazz treating their song as real music. And then of course, I asked them, who was the little kid that was answering your prayer? And they said it was one of our roadies kids. They didn’t have any kids yet. And and the song, it sounds so ominous and forbidding, foreboding, so dark. It’s about a guy putting his son to bed and trying to use the time honored method of scaring him to keeping in bed because something over here is going to get him or something under the bed is going to get it, so you better stay in bed. And he says, No, lay me down to sleep. I pray that all my soul to keep and this little kid voice, you know, I lay me down to sleep, you know, And I said, That was some roadies, kid. On my album. It was my grandson who was four years old. And when I did those lines in that song, it was my own grandson repeating them. So I love all that music. I mean, I would have done it if I didn’t love it.

Buzz Knight [00:10:43] That’s awesome. That’s so tremendous. So Bob Dylan in his book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, said, and I’ll quote, Of all the people who sang Tutti Frutti, Pat Boone was the only one, I think, who knew what it was about. What’s your reaction to that?

Pat Boone [00:11:03] Well, I have two reactions. One is that, you know, I knew Bob Zimmerman and Bob Dylan and he and I became Christian brothers, as you know. But he downplayed that eventually because it cost him. It really caused him after he came out as a Christian and that album of his You Gotta Serve somebody. That whole album won the Grammy, but the people did not want to hear him do those new songs and his shows. And he could tell it was it was really going to cost him the ongoing part of his career. So, yeah, he let up. But when he made that quote about me, I knew he knew that I was thrilled to be doing the R&B and honoring Little Richard and Fats Domino. And they groups, songs, groups that were doing the songs I was also doing. But Tutti Frutti, I think, at least, came to have a connotation in the race, music and R&B music circles of a potpourri of sexual appetite.

Buzz Knight [00:12:13] So you were Elvis’s prime competitor. Did you like him?

Pat Boone [00:12:18] Oh, I loved I was we were two Tennessee boys. I was in Nashville. He was from Memphis. And he opened for me the first time we met. And not any other entertainer can say that, but I had a six month head start. And in 1955, I had three or the cover records, million selling hits. When I when I headlined The Deejay Shack up in Cleveland, Bill Randall, the nation’s number one deejay, asked me to come in and headline this sock up for 650 kids in high school. And he brought Elvis up, had him come up from Shreveport, Louisiana, where he was on the the Louisiana Hayride, doing country songs, trying to work R&B flavor into them. It was not easy because his first record, which he was going to pantomime that night at the soccer club, was Blue Moon of Kentucky, a Bill Monroe Bluegrass on Blue Moon of Kentucky. Keep on shining. Well, it’s hard to make that sound R&B, and it really didn’t. But when he finished and the kids didn’t know who he was, he went ahead of me. He was the opening act, and they liked the way he looked, but they didn’t care for that song. But then they applauded him, I think mainly because of the way he looked, you know. And two of these musicians. And it is kind of a much I am glad that I know that the others had a record. I hope you like it. And he’s saying, That’s all right, mama. That’s all right with me. And that was R&B and they loved that. And so did I was backstage, and I realized that’s why RCA had just signed him. But when when he finished that song and left, they were wanting more. But that’s all he had. And so then I followed. And I was the headliner that night. Elvis was my opening act. But after that, we got to be good friends, running homes close to each other in Bel Air and doing films at 20th Century Fox. Both of us had long term contracts. 11 year deal Man was I don’t know how many years it was at least one movie. And I did sometimes three movies in the year. So did he. And we visit each other back and forth and the movie sets adjacent. But then we also visited each other in our homes in Bel Air. And one Sunday you came in on a Sunday afternoon and we were all in the pool. My wife, Shirley Arthur, one of the girls, and he just walks nonchalantly into the backyard. And the girls didn’t know who he was as a big entertainer, but he was a friend of ours. So I think he jumped out of the pool, went over, started jumping up on them to hug him. And I said, Girl, stop that. You they’ve already said live a little bit. I like it. And he did because and I realized later he was wanting his own life at that point. Well, I had already a wife and kids and a home, you know, a family home, which he did. And he had his buddies with him. And even when he actually married and moved to Palm Springs and with Priscilla, he told us later that it was like living in a boys dorm. He had his boys with him all the time, which she got up in the morning, came out yawning. They were playing pool and. And that was him. He just kept his boys around him. Any cause. It was he was happy to add his wife to the mix. But that didn’t make for a real happy marriage.

Buzz Knight [00:15:44] Pat Boone, you are a treasure. Congratulations on 70 years, 70 years in show business. And I’m sure it seems like yesterday. Thank you for being on taking a walk, sir.

Pat Boone [00:15:58] Well, thank you. And keep buzzing.

Buzz Knight [00:16:01] Thank you. Taking a walk with Buzz Knight is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Buzz Knight is an established media executive with a long history of content creation and multi-platform distribution.

After a successful career as a Radio Executive, he formed Buzz Knight Media which focuses on strategic guidance and the development of new original content.