Mick Fleetwood - The Interview

The email arrived early on Wednesday, November 12th.

"Are you able to film an interview with Mick Fleetwood and his band on Saturday afternoon in Palm Springs?"

It was originally a question for me to pass on to Tyler, since he's the one that just got out of NYU film school and has the mad shooting and editing skills. But he had a production meeting on Saturday afternoon for some reality pitch he was editing so I stepped in and organized the shoot. I found a guy with a camera and lighting package that could do it within the budget and, just like that, it was a go.

The purpose of the interview was to create a special features segment for a DVD of a concert they shot in London of Mick and his Blues Band. But then everything changed. The fates stepped in on Thursday and I was asked about the possibility of setting up a five camera shoot for the concert Mick was doing on Saturday night with his Island Rumours Band. That meant seeing if I could scrounge up cameras and operators as well as a pro sound crew and putting together a budget that may or may not be approved.

The visual part of it was within my wheelhouse but I didn't have much, if any, experience with sound...especially multi-channel concert recording. I immediately called my friend who has been recording for lots of years with the drummer from a very famous trio (think law enforcement) only to find out that he was unavailable. But he kindly hooked me up with another guy who has a remote recording set-up and has at least one Emmy® to prove his worth.

The budget was miraculously approved on Friday around noon, which sent me into overdrive pulling the whole thing together. Renting cameras, buying tape, lining up the crew and communicating back and forth with the venue and the sound guy for all the technical information that I was previously clueless about.

I was close to death when we headed to Palm Springs in the early hours of Saturday morning...running on no sleep and fighting the onset of a cold which would completely knock me off my feet by Sunday.

When we arrived at the hotel a couple of hours prior to the scheduled interview time, the original place they wanted to do the interview was nixed and we had to come up with a space. The hotel people were super-accommodating and we found a meeting room that we were able to redress into something that was more or less passable. There was a huge lighting glitch - the guy with the camera and lighting package didn't have the lighting part of the package so we punted with a couple of hardware store variety dish lights.

Then there was the problem with the questions that were sent over by some guy in the UK. They were crap. With no time left, three of us plus Mick's manager revised and honed the questions that would be asked of him and guitarist Rick Vito. Turned out both interviewees were great.

Here's a shot of the interview...

Yours truly, Rick Vito and Mick Fleetwood

After the interview was done I bestowed a couple of EISID books on Rick and Mick...

Mick happens to be mentioned in the book as he was 'discovered' and had his first professional gigs because of keyboardist Peter Bardens.

Stay tuned for Part 2 tomorrow...Mick Fleetwood - The Show.