E222: Jeff Walker & Kim Gottlieb on Tom Waits + Gram Parsons

About this episode

Jeff Walker and Kim Gottlieb-Walker discuss their experiences in the music industry, focusing on their encounters with Tom Waits and Gram Parsons.

For this episode we're joined — all the way from Laurel Canyon — by the husband-and-wife tag team that is Jeff Walker and Kim Gottlieb(-Walker). Married for 53 years, Jeff and Kim have worked in diverse capacities in the music business and talk about their experiences over those five-plus decades. We start with the couple's work together on monthly freesheet Music World, focusing on their 1973 encounters with Tom Waits and Gram Parsons (plus a 15-year-old Cameron Crowe tagging along). After audio clips of both Waits and Parsons, we hear a 1987 clip of Gram's great singing partner Emmylou Harris talking to Adam Sweeting about... Gram Parsons. Interweaving tales of Jeff's life as a publicity director and Kim's career as a photographer, we hear about Island Records, Jamaica and the couple's close relationship with Bob Marley, concluding with Jeff's account of being with Bob after the chief Wailer was shot by gunmen in 1976. After Jasper offers his thoughts on Bad Bunny's ICE-breaking half-time show at the Super Bowl, Kim channels her late '60s protesting self and eloquently summarises her feelings about staying sane in Trump's dystopian America. Finally, Mark quotes from newly-added…

People in this episode

Hosts: Jasper Murison-Bowie, Mark Pringle

Guests: Jeff Walker, Kim Gottlieb-Walker

Topics covered

• Tom Waits
• Gram Parsons
• music industry experiences
• Laurel Canyon
• Bob Marley
• photography
• protest

Keywords

• Tom Waits
• Gram Parsons
• music business
• Bob Marley
• Emmylou Harris
• Laurel Canyon
• photography
• protest
• Cameron Crowe
• Rock's Backpages

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Island Records, Rock's Backpages

Books & works: Music World, Bad Bunny's ICE-breaking half-time show, Captain Beefheart (1979), David Thomas (1985), Joel Culpepper

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