Jim Vallance: Pretty much.  You know, I haven’t finished the site yet … it's still a "work in progress", but pretty much every song I've written, there's a sound sample.  If there's a single sleeve, or CD, or EP, or album, or whatever, I've tried to put the art on the website.  It's kind of a "Story Teller" site. There's that show on TV called "Story Teller" … did you ever see that?

Michael: Oh ya, it's a great show.

Jim: So, I tried to do kind of a "Story Teller" website where there's a story behind each song, and I try to make it a little bit interesting.  Hopefully I was successful.

Michael: And you wrote for some of my favourites including Aerosmith and Bryan Adams.  All the Bryan Adams that you co-wrote with him, those are like his best tunes too, and some of his biggest hits.

Jim:  Well, he's had some huge hits since we parted ways.  I worked with Bryan for eleven years, from January 1978 until the summer of 1989.  So, that was quite a while ago we parted ways.  He's had some huge hits since then.  The Robin Hood ballad was after we parted, so …

Michael:  Right.

Jim:  We had a good run.

Michael:  Why did you guys stop working together anyway?

Jim: It's a pretty long story.  Y'know, eleven years, and we spent a lot of time together.  Literally, when Bryan and I were writing, it was twelve hours a day, seven days a week, in a little room with no windows, just sitting across from each other with our acoustic guitars.  I think familiarity breeds contempt.  I think we needed to take a break and we didn’t.  Y'know, it just got to the point where we weren’t enjoying each other's company any more.  It's like a marriage that just went the wrong way at some point.  We were pushing each other's buttons and just not getting along anymore.  We ran out of steam, basically.

Michael:  Ya, so how did that work when you guys wrote songs together?  The two of you just sat there with a couple of acoustic guitars and just came up with stuff?

Jim:  Ya, sometimes it was like that … it depended what we were working on.  Y'know, a song like "Heaven", if you know that one …

Michael:  Right.

Jim: I played piano and Bryan sang.  A song like "Summer Of '69" might have been two acoustic guitars. "Cuts Like A Knife", I think, was Bryan on guitar and me on bass … so, y'know, we kind of mixed it up a little bit.  It wasn't always two acoustic guitars.  Depending on the kind of song we were writing, we'd change the instrumentation.  If it was a ballad we'd use keyboards, mostly.  If it was a rock song, we'd plug in the electric guitars.  That's pretty much how it went.

Michael:  Did you both come up with melodies?  Vocal melodies?

Jim:  Ya, it was pretty much 50-50 … we'd both work on chord progressions, we'd both contribute to melody, we'd both contribute to lyrics, so it was pretty much right down the middle.

Michael:  Ya, and that song "Summer Of '69", that's like one of my favourite Bryan Adams tunes.  What was that called before it was "Summer Of '69"?  Was that a different title?

Jim:  I don’t' remember … uhmm.  Yes! -- "Best Days Of My Life" is what we called it, ya. 

Michael:  Oh ya.

Jim:  It started off with a different title.

Michael:  "Summer Of '69" is a better title, probably.

Jim:  It is a better title, but it kind of eluded us. We didn’t realize that was … even though that line was in the song – only once – we didn’t realize that was the strongest point of the song.  Sometimes you're writing a song, and you're in the middle of it, and, y'know, you need to step back and take a look … and we didn’t do that.  We were working away, and it seemed to us that the phrase "best days of my life" was the most important line in the song, so that was the title for a while.  And then, I think we left it for a few days and came back to it and we realized that we were off track, and that "summer of '69" was really the hook we were looking for.   And so, basically, we just took that title and shoe-horned it into a few more spots in the song.  It's kind of cheating a little bit ... but y'know, twenty years later it seems to work.

Michael:  Man, I can just imagine the royalty cheques you must get in the mail, like, probably daily.

Jim:  It's not daily.  The way royalties work is, twice a year I get a cheque from our publisher in LA, so the royalties don’t come in on a daily basis.  If a song plays on the radio on Wednesday, you don’t get a cheque on Thursday.  It's usually twice a year or four times a year you get a royalty statement.

Michael:  Are you still friends with Bryan Adams?

Jim:  Oh ya, I mean … y'know, when we first broke up, I was the one that decided to walk away.  It just wasn't fun anymore, and it was a little painful.  I mean, it really was like a divorce.  It was, y'know, a little bit unpleasant and then Bryan said a few nasty things about me in the press, which really made me angry.  For a number of years we didn’t speak ... and if we did, it was just kinda yelling at each other on the phone.  The last five or ten years we started hanging out a bit, having lunch once in a while.  We live a long ways apart. At the time he and I split up, we were both living in Vancouver.  A couple of years after that he moved to England.  He's been there, he's been in London, since the early 90's.

Michael:  He still headlines big rock festivals over in Europe right now, I think?

Jim:  He's huge in Europe!  But for whatever reason he just hasn’t been that popular in North America the last few years.  I'm not sure why, because I think he's still making great records … but Europe seems to be his home base, he's got a huge fan-base there. Like I said, he lives in London ... so he's well-positioned for the European market. I see him once or twice a year.  We get along great.  We trade emails, sometimes every couple of days, sometimes every couple of weeks … but we're still in touch and getting along fine.

Michael:  You guys ever think about writing tunes again?

Jim:  Well, y'know … ya!  Bryan started asking about that years ago, and I sorta had a theory about our relationship.  Once we started getting along again … once we became friends again … I thought the easiest way to mess that up would be to sit down and write a song with him, that we'd probably just end up arguing and not being friends again.  So I declined, and avoided the topic altogether, so for a bunch of years it just wasn't an issue.  I did not want to write with him.  And I still haven’t sat in a room with him, but the last few months, with the internet being so amazing now, you can send audio files back and forth, and I sent him a couple of little ideas I was working on, and he added something to them and emailed them back to me.  So, literally over the last couple of months we cobbled a few things together and it sounds like there might be a song in there.  So, even though we weren't in the same room, I think we might have written a song.

Michael:  You and Bryan Adams, did you write for 38 Special as well?

Jim:  Not intentionally, but ya, we did …

Michael:  What was that one … what was that hit you guys had with 38 Special … what was that song?

Jim:  "Teacher, Teacher".

Michael:  "Hang On Loosely"?

Jim:  No, we didn’t write that one.  I think they wrote that themselves.  I think Don Barnes wrote that, if I'm not wrong.  The one Bryan and I wrote for them was called "Teacher Teacher".

Michael:  I don't know that one.

Jim:  It was from a film soundtrack … a movie called "Teachers", with Nick Nolte.  It was a pretty big hit.  That would have been in about '84,  '85,  somewhere in there.  But before that … you know the song "Run To You" that Bryan had a big hit with? …

Michael:  Right.

Jim:  We actually sent that to 38 Special a year before Bryan did it, and they passed on it. They didn’t like the song.  And even before that we sent it Blue Oyster Cult, and they didn’t like it either. So he just kinda did it himself out of frustration, and had a huge hit with it.

Michael:  So then, after you left Bryan Adams you just, like, became a songwriter on your own?

Jim:  Well actually, before I left Bryan, especially after the album "Reckless" that I did with Bryan ... he started getting really popular. I think there were six singles off that album that did pretty well, and so Bryan was touring really a lot after that album. So I was on my own for months at a time.  Previously I was accustomed to spending almost every day with Bryan … writing … but when his career really took off, he was on the road so much that I started collaborating with other artists, and … I co-wrote the song "What About Love" for Heart, and that was a "top ten" for them.  I wrote with a Canadian band called "Glass Tiger" and had a big hit with them called "Don’t Forget Me When I'm Gone".  And so I started writing with other people while Bryan was away, and I think in some ways that even caused some tension in my relationship with Bryan, cuz even though he was away touring for a couple of months at a time, I think he really hoped that all the ideas I came up with while he was away, that I'd keep them and give them to him when he got back. And that wasn't the case.  I was writing with other people, and they were recording the songs, so I think that caused a bit of tension.  But by the time I broke up with Bryan I'd already established a network of people that I was writing with, so it was pretty seamless for me.  It wasn't like I was short of things to do when Bryan and I split up.  It was pretty much right into Aerosmith after that.

Michael:  Ya, which Aerosmith?  You were on "Permanent Vacation", and were you on "Pump" as well?

Jim:  Ya, I did a couple of songs on "Pump".  I think I had four or five songs on "Permanent Vacation", and three or four on "Pump", so it continued a couple of albums after.

Michael:  And "Hangman Jury" is actually my favourite song on that "Permanent Vacation" record.

Jim:  That was a fun one to work on.

Michael:  What part of that song did you write?

Jim:  I worked on the lyrics mostly.  Steven and Joe had that song pretty well under way by the time I came along, and Steven was stuck on lyrics. So he and I went out in my back yard.  It was a beautiful sunny day and we sat at the picnic table and just ... we had a "ghetto blaster", and we had the track playing over and over, and the two of us finished up the lyrics on that one.

Michael:  Did you write the line, what is it, "I'll smack her right upside the head"?

Jim:  No, that's Steven.

Michael:  Ya, it sounds like Steven Tyler. 

Jim:  He's a great guy.  He's so special.

Michael:  Ya, and Joe Perry as well, one of the greatest guitar players ever.

Jim:  He is, y'know.  That band is so awesome.   Actually, I’d worked with them for a few months before I ever heard them play live.  We wrote in my basement, and I went in the studio with them and did a couple of overdubs on "Permanent Vacation" … I think I played organ on "Rag Doll" and, I forget what else.  I'd never heard them live, and one night they decided to take a break and they went down to a nightclub in Vancouver.  There was another band playing, but they just went up and used their equipment.  There were only about a hundred people in the club, I think, and Aerosmith went up and took the stage, and it just knocked my socks off.

Michael:  You had never seen Joe Perry on stage before?

Jim:  I had never seen them.  And this was a small club, and the stage was only about one step up from the dance floor, so it was like Aerosmith in your living room.

Michael: Oh ya, that would have been an amazing thing to watch.  I'm a huge Aerosmith fan, obviously.

Jim:  Me too.

Michael:  So, that was their first record that they actually started using outside songwriters, wasn't it.

Jim:  I believe so.

Michael:  Who else wrote on the record?  Desmond Child?

Jim:   Desmond Child.  Great writer.  He collaborated with Steven on "Dude Looks Like A Lady".  And I'm trying to think who else.  I don't think Diane Warren was on there … she came on later.

Michael:  Was that that Kalodner guy's idea to have outside songwriters?

Jim:   It was … I mean, y'know, John is a pretty severe A&R guy …

Michael:  Ya.

Jim:  And, you gotta remember the situation at the time.  Aerosmith had done a couple of albums that tanked.  I think "Done With Mirrors" was the last album before "Permanent Vacation".  I forget.

Michael:  Ya, "Done With Mirrors" sold, like, 200,000 I think, which was a huge disappointment for them. That was their reunion record.

Jim:  Joe quit the band, and then he came back, but y'know, they were … the whole band was severely messed up on drugs and alcohol.  They were just not functioning.  Steven was … y'know, three songs into a concert he'd pass out on the stage and they'd have to carry him off and send the audience home and …

Michael:  Right.

Jim:  Y'know, they were really in big trouble … and John Kalodner took a chance on  them, and he met with them and he said, "Look, here's the deal:  all of you go in rehab, you all get clean and sober, and I'll sign you.  The first guy that falls off the wagon is out of the band".  They got a new manager … y'know Tim came on … and Bruce Fairbairn was brought in to produce it.  But the whole deal was, the band had to be clean and sober.  So, it was actually Bruce Fairbairn that called me and said, "Do you want to write with Aerosmith?".  And I had heard all the bad news … I had heard they were just impossible to work with, and I said, "Bruce, I'm not sure if I do".  And then he told me that they were in rehab, they'd all got clean, and that things were looking pretty positive.  So, based on that, I agreed to give it a try.

Michael:  I heard that there was, like, a competition for people getting their songs included on that record, on that "Permanent Vacation" record.

Jim:  Not that I'm aware of. I mean, there might have been more songs written than were needed, and there might have been a bit of a ... y'know, choosing 12 songs out of 30 at the end of it all. But no, there was no competition. I mean, y'know, Bruce Fairbairn brought me into the project ... Steven and Joe came over to my house, Bruce introduced us and then he left and I'm sitting in the room with Steven and Joe, freaking out cuz I'm such a fan …

Michael:  Right.

Jim:  But trying not to show it.

Michael:  I can imagine.

Jim:  And it was like, I’d never met them before and here we are.  The last thing Bruce said before he left was, "I'll be back in a couple of hours, I hope you have a song".  So we got right down to business.

Michael:  What was the first song that you guys cam up with for that record?

Jim:  The first one was "Rag Doll", and … Joe had the riff.  If you know that song, the melody is (sings) "Da da, diddle diddle diddle". And Joe had that riff, and he was just playing it over and over and over.  And it was apparent it wasn't really going anywhere. Joe was aware of that, so he said to me, "What would you do with this?".   I picked up my bass and just started … y'know, Joe kept playing that riff, and I tried some different notes under it.  I really like sometimes when a riff stays the same but the bass changes, or the chord progression changes.  And, y'know, it started to come together pretty quick, and Steven liked what Joe and I were doing and he started to scat and sing over it.  By the time Bruce came back we had – y'know the lyrics weren't finished – but we had the song pretty much sketched out.

Michael:  And then the only part of that song … what was her name, Holly Knight?

Jim:  Yup.

Michael:  She wrote … what did she, just come up with the title, and then they had to give her songwriter credit?

Jim:  I'm not sure what she really did ... and not to discredit her, or speak disrespectfully in any way, but we had the title "Rag Time" … it wasn't "Rag Doll" it was "Rag Time" … and we finished the song and we played it for John Kalodner, and he said, y'know, "I love everything about the song except the title".

Michael:  So she changed one word in the song, and she probably got a pretty good paycheck from just changing one word in a song.

Jim:  Well, I don’t know if she just changed one word because I wasn't there when it happened.  Steven and I -- after Kalodner said that we need a new title -- Steven and I went back out to the picnic table and I think we wrote down about 50 titles. I've got the piece of paper somewhere,  I wish I could find it, but … and I swear that one of them was "Rag Doll".  But, y'know, there's about 50 titles.  We faxed it down to Kalodner, and he said, "No, I still don’t see the one I want.  I'm going to send Holly Knight up".  So, she flew up from LA and … I didn’t meet her.  Her and Steven, I think, met at the hotel and spent an afternoon.  And by the end of it they had the title "Rag Doll".  So whether she contributed a few more words than that, I honestly don’t know.  I don’t want to speculate but, it kinda looks like that might be the extent of it.  Y'know, she got a bit of a share.  It wasn't generous, but Steven kind of complained about it later.

Michael:  I think I heard Joe Perry talk about that in an interview once.  Have those guys asked you about writing with them again in the future?

Jim:  Ya, they did.  It was a few years ago, but … in the early 90's, somewhere around '94, '95 … I got severely burned out, cuz, y'know, starting in the mid-80's with Adams, after Reckless, when things started taking off and I started getting a lot of writing jobs ... anyone who's a musician will understand this, where the first part of your career the phone just never rings …

Michael:  Right, ya.

Jim:  … you work once a week or once a month.  And when the phone rings and says, "Can you work on Friday?", you go, "Ya!".  So you never learn to say "No".

Michael:  Right.

Jim:  So when the work started rolling in for me as a songwriter, I mean, it just, y'know, it was just 52 weeks a year, 7 days a week.  I was writing all the time.  And by the mid-90's I was severely fried.  I was exhausted and I decided I needed to take some time off. In fact, I decided I was going to take a whole year off, cuz I needed to recharge my batteries.  I was out of ideas.  It wasn't fun anymore, and for a whole bunch of reasons I just thought, I need to take some time off.  So, shortly after promising myself I would take a year off, and telling everybody I knew I was taking a year off, I got a call from Steven Tyler, y'know, "Do you want to get together and write?".  And I said, "Steven, I’d love to, but I'm taking an extended mental health break.  I'm taking some time off".  Steven's a great guy, he's one of my favourite people on the planet, but he didn’t really understand.  I think he took it personally that I wouldn't write with him.  We've remained friends, and we've talked a few times since then, but he's never asked me to write again.

Michael:  And so, Bruce Fairbairn – is that how you pronounce his name?  Bruce Fairbairn?

Jim:  It's pronounced Fair-BURN.

Michael:  Ya, Bruce Fairbairn, he produced that record.  He also produced a lot of Prism records too, didn’t he?

Jim:  Well, early on, ya.

Michael:  Is that how you knew Bruce, from the Prism days?

Jim:  Prism was a Canadian band in the mid-70s, and that was Bruce's first production job.  I was the drummer in that band, and the main songwriter, so that's how Bruce and I got acquainted. 

Michael:  I have that record "See Forever Eyes", the only Prism record I have, but that was one of my favourites when I was a kid.  You're not on that record, right?

Jim:  I don't think so.  That was a couple of albums after I left the band.

Michael:  OK.  I'm just looking at all these songs.  I cannot believe how many tunes you have written, man.  Joan Jett.  So, which record did you work on for Joan Jett?

Jim:  I think the album was called "Pure and Simple".

Michael:  Oh, "Pure and Simple".  That's a great record too.  You wrote "Eye To Eye".

Jim:  "Eye To Eye" was one of the songs, yup.

Michael:  You wrote with Kenny and Joan?

Jim: Ya, Kenny and Joan kinda come together, y'know. 

Michael:  Right.

Jim:  Kenny is her manager, her co-writer, and, y'know, obviously her best friend.   They're a team, and it was great working with both of them.  Joan's really hard to get to know.  I don’t know if you've met Joan.  She's a very shy, quiet girl … very, very hard to get to know.  But once you get past that barrier she's the sweetest person … and the interesting thing was, her and I and Kenny were in my studio writing and -- the studio was in my house at the time – and I was trying really hard to communicate with her because she was so painfully shy.  And in fact, if I would play an idea … play a guitar riff … you're looking for ideas and I’d play something ... and instead of looking at me and saying, "No, I don’t like that", she'd look at Kenny and say, "Tell him I don’t like that".  And it was really strange and awkward.  But then my son, who was, I think, about three years old at the time, he'd wander into the studio and Joan would just melt.  She would just turn into a different person and give my son a hug and play with him for a few minutes, and then he'd leave and she'd go back into this dark place.

Michael:  Wow, that's strange.

Jim:  But after working with her for a couple of times – a couple of sessions over a period of months – she really started to open up, and warm up, and I got to know her, and she's a very special girl.

Michael:  I had Kenny on this show.  It was like a three-part episode talking to Kenny Laguna.  We were supposed to talk for, like, ten minutes and we ended up talking for over an hour.

Jim:  I heard the interview.  Kenny's a legend.  He's done everything from Tommy James and the Shondells to Joan Jett.  He was at "ground zero" almost when rock ' roll was invented.

Michael:  Ya.  So, that song "Five" … I think that's coming on her new record.  And you wrote that as well?

Jim:  It's already been released in Japan.  Is it out in the U.S. yet?

Michael:  Uh no, she hasn't done a domestic release.  That song was on the Japanese release, but they're recording some songs – more songs -- for the U.S. release.  At least that's what Kenny said.

Jim:  I didn’t know that.

Michael:  And I see that song is on a commercial for some new MP3 player in the United States.

Jim:  The song "Five"?

Michael:  Ya.  She's actually … it goes to her playing live, and that's the song she's singing.

Jim:  I didn't know that.  I gotta check into that … cuz you know, there's a funny story with that song.  The last time I wrote with Joan was – if I remember correctly – it was in 1995, and it was in Vancouver.  Just south of Vancouver is Seattle, a couple hour's drive south, and there's a girl singer down there, Kathleen Hanna, and Joan brought her up to Vancouver …

Michael:  Ya, from Bikini Kill.

Jim:  … and Joan and Kathleen and I got together and we wrote a couple of songs and, y'know, nothing ever came of it.  In fact, I think they sat on the shelf for ten years or so …

Michael:  Uh-huh.

Jim:  … and then when Joan's "Naked" album was released in Japan, I got a copy of it, and I'm looking at it, and there was one song on there that I recognized right away – I think it's called "Everyone Knows", if that's the right one – and it's credited to me and Joan and Kenny, I think.  There's two more songs on there … there was "Five" and "Watersign", and they were just credited to Joan and Kathleen … and I went, "Wait a minute" … y'know, I was part of that".  So I checked back, and sure enough, I had the demo's, and – I certainly remembered writing them.  But, to make a long story short, Joan and Kenny – because the song had sat for ten years – had completely forgotten that I was a writer on the project, and they forgot to credit me.  So, when I phoned Kenny about it, he was very apologetic and promised to correct that for the U.S. release.

Michael:  Ya, and you wrote for "LA Guns" with my friend Mick Cripps, right?".

Jim:  He's a sweetheart.

Michael:  Oh, he's the greatest guy.  I'm actually going down to LA this weekend to do this thing for INXS, and I'm going to be staying at Mick's house.  I'm going to tell him I talked to you.

Jim:  Say "hi" for me, because I really enjoyed my time with him.

Michael:  I definitely will.  That guy's a great guy … he's got a kid, a 16-year-old son, have you ever met his son? …

Jim:  I haven't, but our sons are about the same age.

Michael:  That kid is the coolest kid, man, he's the most rock 'n roll 16-year-old I've ever met in my life.

Jim:  It's interesting you mention kids, because, y'know, like I mentioned with Steven and Joe, they walked in the room, you meet them, and a few minutes later you're supposed to write a song with these people you've never met before.

Michael:  Right, ya.  That must be weird.

Jim:  Well, it's extremely weird.  And I did it so much, I mean, for 20 years or more, that's what I did … I got together with people I’d never met before and wrote a song.  And one of the things I discovered is, rather than just start writing a song, it's really useful to sit down and have a cup of tea or whatever, and just talk first and kinda get acquainted.  And there were two subjects that always kinda worked ... that, y'know, if you were going to get along with someone, this always worked.  One topic was children.  So I’d always ask them, "Do you have kids?".  And if they did – like with Mick … y'know, Mick had a son my son's age I think, when I worked with Mick his son would have been maybe five, and my son was five … so we talked about our kids, and right away you've got a common link, and things warm up right away, and suddenly you're friends, and a few minutes later you're writing a song, and it just seems like the most natural thing.  And if someone didn’t have kids, then the topic would change to music.  And more often than not, if the subject of The Beatles, Zeppelin, The Stones came up, and immediately you had a connection there with common influences, y'know … music that was important when you were a teenager … and the conversation would go that way.  But either way, whether it was talking about music or talking about kids, it was the greatest way to break the ice and get to know someone.

Michael: So, does your kid play an instrument?

Jim:  Ya, he does.  He's doing really well on drums and guitar, and starting to write his own songs and …

Michael:  So, do you give him songwriting pointers?

Jim:  Well, I've tried, but I'm not cool.

Michael:  What's he think about your music, of your songs that you wrote?

Jim:  He's slowly discovering it.  He's always, obviously, kinda been aware, but y'know, every once in a while we'll be in the car and a song will come on … and I won’t say anything, but my wife will go, "You know your dad wrote that".  So he's slowly becoming aware of my catalogue, and I think it's having a positive influence on him, musically.  He's got the ability to play his instrument, he's got the enthusiasm, and I can see the whole thing coming together.  It's really fun to watch.

Michael:  You know when he's hanging out with his friends, and one of your songs comes on the radio, you know he's bragging to all his friends that his dad wrote that tune.

Jim:  I hope so, cuz his dad sure isn't cool at home!

Michael:  I can relate.  I have a 14-year-old daughter …

Jim:  Oh, it's the best, isn't it?

Michael:  Ya.  And I play in a band as well, and she always tells me my band sucks, but then she brags to her friends how great my band is, so I can relate.

Jim:  Well you know, I get "cool" once in a while.  My son loves bands like Slipknot.  So, Slipknot were coming through town a coupe of months ago and it was like, "Hey dad, do you wanna go see Slipknot?". 

Michael:  Right!

Jim:  I said, "Sure, let's go".  In fact, I knew somebody who knew somebody, and we got backstage and met the band before the show, so dad was cool for a night!

Michael:  I know how that goes.  I actually know a drum tech for the band Weezer, and my daughter's a huge Weezer fan, so I pulled that trick myself for my daughter.

Jim:  I love Weezer.

Michael:  It's always cool to get your kid backstage.  You go up a couple of notches in their mind. 

Jim:  Absolutely!

Michael:  We're over a  half hour now, and I was only supposed to talk to you for 15 minutes, so I really want to thank you a lot for coming on this show.  For someone with such a huge songwriting catalogue – and I'm just a big fan and I'm engrossed in the songwriting process – it's really an honour to talk to you.

Jim:  Well, the pleasure was mine.  I'm really happy to be here.