It's time now for another Pinball Profile. I'm your host, Jeff Teolis. You can find our group on Facebook. We're also on Twitter at Pinball Profile. Email us, pinballprofile, at gmail.com. And please subscribe on either iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play. He is the keeper of the flame for rock music. He is the voice you hear on the new Beatles pinball machine from Stern Pinball. He is a radio icon, a legend. He is Cousin Brucie. Thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you, Cousin Big Red. You know, it's funny. When you were just doing that, I never thought I'd be introduced by the voice of a pinball machine. Isn't that amazing? They had a press reception here in New York City to introduce this Beatles pinball machine. No, I haven't touched a pinball machine in many years. I just own a regular one. I told them on the air, it's really an entertainment center, pinball machine. There's video, there's music, there's Cousin Brucey's voice, and there's action. And so I'm playing this thing, and I'm really screwing up, but I didn't care. I was more interested in watching this thing and listening to this thing than playing the game. It's quite an amazing event. We're going to talk a lot about that machine and your contributions to that, But I do want to talk a little bit about your radio career first. For me, I thought 25 years was an accomplishment. That is chump change for somebody like you. Well, it is quite amazing. I never thought at this time in my life I'd be flying on a satellite. You know, I never dreamed of reaching places that I reach now with people because of this new technology. So there's one thing that stays the same. On air, it says. And there's another thing that stays the same. I feel so good. I love what I'm doing. Well, we love what you're doing, and you can catch Cousin Brucie on the 60s at 6 on SiriusXM. Pinball players definitely know the game The Shadow, which was based on the Alec Baldwin movie. But you and I both know The Shadow was something more than a movie. It was a great radio serial that I imagine was a big influence for you. Oh, of course. All those serials were great. Remember, Lamont Clemson, The Shadow Knows, it was very real. In fact, it was much more real than when it went on television. You know, there's nothing more beautiful or more vivid than the stream of consciousness and the brain and the imaginations of the best motion picture you can ever get. So sitting there by the radio and listening to The Shadow and Superman and all the other serials that we used to listen to all the time, amazing. Then, of course, television took over, and it lost something. It lost the dimension that radio has and television will never have. You know what, Cousin, what I think of is when you read a book, you know you have your own vision of what that story tells. You see it on the picture, and it's not quite the same as what you imagined it. So radio is, as you and I know, that theater of the mind. And a great example would be when Orson Welles did The War of the Worlds, which had people in a panic. That was an amazing, that was in the 30s. And I don't know how many people lived through it. The audience would not even know what we're talking about. He went on the air, and radio was so real. It was used to news. It was factual. People at that time were the only real source besides newspapers. But this was part of your lives that painted pictures. And like you said, that's beautiful, the funeral of mine. He went on, and the Martians were eating earth. And it was done as a drama. But the audience grabbed it, and I mean the whole audience, and took it for that it was so real that there were panics, and people got hurt in the streets. People started running out. They thought we were being invaded. That's how radio can affect people. And that's why it must be used very carefully with great responsibility. Well, that War of the Worlds, the police had to come into the studio and say, you have to let people know this is fake because of the panic on the streets. I hope you having Cousin Bruciard won't scare them and have them run into the streets. No way. Having Cousin Bruce on is a thrill for me personally because of your amazing career. And what it is is you've talked about it before, and we all get it once we're in it. It's that connection to the audience. It's really people go to bed with you. They wake up with you. They go in the shower with you. They go on long drives with you. It is so personal. And what you do and what we all try to do is you talk to people, not at people. Beautifully put. I learned early in my career how to talk directly to people, Like they were in my room. They were visiting me. Most radio people or people on electronic media will talk at. So talking to people is the big secret. And that's what I've done all my life. And I continue to do that. Because once you do that, the warmth is returned from an audience. They feel like they're very involved with you, that you belong to them. Cousin Bruce, as we talk about this new Stern pinball machine, the Beatles, I think people have to understand the significance if they didn't live in that time. In the early 60s, American music was pretty much getting stale. There's no other way to put it. You know, if it wasn't broke, they didn't fix it. And then the Brits came in with something a little bit different. And you were there when you saw it. It wasn't even a hit right away. In fact, a lot of management wouldn't even play the Beatles. No, because when the Brits started taking our American music idiom and started replaying it, But what they were doing is they were helping to save all of this industry, this recording industry. The music industry, as you just said, was getting very tired. There was no new energy. What they forgot, very important basic thing, not the technology, which was advancing, not their talent. They forgot the audience. Now, what was happening, very simply, the audience was maturing. The audience was growing. Their interests were changing because the world around them is changing. Now, music is the poetry of the streets, and that's what we must always remember. So it reflects what's happening in life. Well, along came these revolutionary characters, we call them mop tops, and they put a new energy into it. Their music was energetic. The crowd accepted them, because I never forget when I received the first Beatle records. We didn't get it. Well, thank goodness for them, because they saved the American music industry. The Brits saved the Americans. You remember that first Beatles album you had, and you remember management not wanting to play the Beatles. What made you say you know there something here Was it what you were seeing on the TV and what was happening over in Europe Because this was obviously before they came over to the States Well yeah we were watching the European markets and then our TV, very little was shown on TV. Well, suddenly things started changing. Records were being sold. Our music industry started looking at them, and something happened. Now, the record companies were getting a little hungry, a little scared, because nothing was happening, so they put money into it. There's an old song from a Broadway show. Money makes the world go round, the world go round, the world go round. Money was put into the Beatles and promotion and hype. There was a time you couldn't even walk down the street or go into a restroom without seeing a picture of either John or Paul. It was there everywhere we looked. And then something happened. We started playing their music. I started playing, I want to hold your hand. Please, please, please. and something happened. There was no energy. The audience was reborn. The Beatles did not only affect the music industry. This is an important part. They affected and infected our entire cultural existence. They affected our speech. They affected the way we wore our hair. They affected our clothing styles. And as I said, the way we spoke. May I give you a cute story about how they affected us? Sure. Well, here, Cousin Brucie's on the air, right? And it's about two or three weeks before the Beatles arrived. This guy Joey from the Bronx, and he says something like this. Hey, Cousin Brucie, how you doing, man? We did your show. You're a cool daddy-o. Would you please play a record for me and my girl, Susie? Play an Emily Brothers record, will you? Now, the same guy is on the phone two to three weeks later after the British invasion. But listen to this. Hello? Is this Sir Cousin Bruzy? This is His Majesty, Jody of the Bronx Shire on the Grand Concourse in the U.S. of A. You mean if I play a record for me bird? Lady Susan, Cousin Bruzy, God bless the Queen. Suddenly everybody was speaking and became Anglophiles. Everybody wanted to be British. Everybody. So they affected us very quickly. The music, well, it was there. and the cultural effect of the Beatles were equal partners to this day. Look at this. I'm a voice on a pinball machine. I mean, how American could you get with a pinball machine? I'm in a pinball machine. That's weird. I love your excitement about it, and that's a great story about Joey and some of the kings that came out of Queens, if you will, in New York. Very good. I like that. I'll use that. It's all yours. So when we think of huge, huge concerts in history, A lot of people will think of Woodstock and think of the Isle of Wight and Live Aid, but that Shea Stadium concert when the Beatles played, you couldn't really hear the Beatles playing, could you? Not only could we not hear it, and the audience couldn't hear it, but they couldn't hear it, which was probably more important. The sound of that audience, I'll give you an example. I hosted the Shea Stadium concert with Ed Sullivan, and we were in the dugout, and John and Paul came over to me, And John said to me, Cousin, they always called me Cousin, Cousin Brucey, is this going to be okay? Because there was so much noise that all hell could have broken loose. There could have been a riot. They were just, I don't know what was holding them back. It was like a dam getting ready to burst. He had 65, 70,000 young people, and most of them female, just ready to jump over the barbed wire. And I said to John, John, it's going to be okay. they're just here to share his face he says it's a safe cousin i said yes now when i told him yes picture this i had my right hand behind me with my fingers crossed you know what that means i mean i was praying that it was going to be all right because i was more frightened than he was i have never ever heard or felt the energy come from a cloud from an audience like that day but in fact to this day, I can conjure up that feeling in my body of the energy and the love and the admiration and the cultural phenomenon and the grabbing, everybody wanted to grab them, of this audience. Matter of fact, I'll take it a step further now. We get ready to introduce the Beatles. Ed Sullivan was going to introduce them. I'm introducing Ed Sullivan. So anyway, we're walking up the steps to the little announce stage. So Sullivan and I are walking. Ed Sullivan, it was a guy who was at Post of the Town, a really, really big shoe. And he introduced the Beatles, who, by the way, he really did not know, I repeat, did not know who the heck they were. Had no idea what was going to be happening when he introduced them. So he and I walk up the stairs, and he turns around with me. He's about a step and a half ahead of me. And he says, hey, this is dangerous. He felt it, too. Very scary. What do we do? Now, I looked at him, and I knew that I had this guy. I always wanted to give him a kick in the behind for some reason. He always had me wanting to kick him a little bit. I knew he was, you know, phony, especially after Beatles. He didn't know who they were. And I looked at him, and I said, what's going to happen? I said, Ed, you better pray, with his big eyes wide open. And he said, pray? Pray? And he looked, and he turned around, and he walked up those stairs very, very slowly. And I knew I got him. But I also knew that there was a possibility of the flood dam breaking. It was that wild. Well, we introduced him. The postscript to all this, right, I was asked by the New York police and the security people at Chase Stadium to walk around with him. They got the kids' car because they'd listen to me. And they were wonderful. They didn't want to hurt anybody. By the way, nobody really got hurt or damaged during that amazing thing that could have been a disaster. And we walked around and I was talking to the kids. And it was a great, great concert, except nobody heard the concert. Yeah, no kidding. I just heard it for the first time about a year and a half ago. Somebody gave me a recording, and they gave it to me, and I listened to it for the first time. And I was thrilled. They were really good. You had mentioned they stopped playing by 67. They didn't tour anymore, and it's too bad because some great things were to come. Yeah, that's too bad. So what was it like for you working with Stern Pinball, Jerry Thompson, who's a master of sound? obviously contacted you and said we want you to be reliving that 1964 moment. What was that like for you in working with Jerry? You know I said to him Jerry I don understand this I don say does a machine need a pinball machine That not what I do Because I always thought well first of all pinball machines are going to sound like you talking in a barrel So I thought. But I was very wrong. The fidelity, the quality is excellent. The world has never seen anything like Beatlemania. Okay, now shoot for the stars, aim for the orbits, and drive my car. It has music in it, a lot of videos. The boys talk a little bit. They borrowed some clips of the actual Beatles talking. Also, remember, they have a game that you really have to learn how to play. I learned one expression, so now I feel I'm a professional. Flip it. Flip it, Red. Flip it.