Transcript

Introducing the Special Guest: George Patience

[0:22] Hello, everyone. I'm Jonathan. I'm Crystal.
And this is Haunt Weekly, a weekly podcast from the haunted attraction, haunted entertainment community, whether you're an actor, owner, or just plain aficionado.
We aim to be a podcast for you, but not this week.
No, this week is special. This week is special. Every time, every year, these months come around, we try to take a few episodes just to do stuff that we want to do.
It can be crazy. It could be felt the wall and through a series of wild happenstance. Yes.
Is the only way to describe it. We've been given the opportunity to interview a man who has made our anti-Christmas list so much brighter over the years.
We are very happy to be sitting down with the legendary George Patience of the song, I Hate Christmas.
Easily one of the best anti-Christmas songs of all time. George, are you there?
I'm right here, Jonathan. And thank you for having me on your show, and I just want to wish the best for the holiday season to all your listeners.
Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. So, first things first, for clarity's sake, is George Patience your stage name or is it also your given name?
Quote, unquote, given name. Well, we'll just go with George Patience.
That's fair enough. I like it. All right.
So, George, I want to kind of start at the beginning. What got you started in music?

Early Musical Journey: Accordion and Composing Tunes

[1:46] I started playing the accordion when I was about five years old, and I was also composing tunes.
I got very accomplished at it. I was doing some classical things on the accordion, and then I dropped it for a while.
But I've always enjoyed music. I could write and read music at the time, and I always came up with songs. I was very much a moored with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin.
And years later, as I was, you know, living on my own, I got myself some synthesizers, and did a little home recording and put together a few songs.
And when I was younger, I also had a little polka band and, It was a four-piece and I used to do bar mitzvahs and weddings and things like that personal parties You know, they we'd always be the opening act, but I really enjoyed the 20 bucks.
I got as a kid Yeah, well seeing the I hate Christmas Video that is not where I thought this was gonna start And also, I think you and Weird Al Yankovic may be the only two musicians I know who got started on the accordion.
Well, that's because my parents didn't want to have to move around a piano. Oh, that makes sense.

From Accordion to "I Hate Christmas"

[3:15] So, wow, so you started with the accordion.
Yes. And then went into, and then like we know you today for I Hate Christmas.
What happened in between? How did your career evolve?
Well, I was bouncing around. I was living, I was born in Chicago, but I was living, I was raised in Vancouver, British Columbia.
And for all intents and purposes, I was a Canadian.
And I would travel to Los Angeles, I was doing art, and I'd go to the Comic-Con and show my paintings.
And then at one point I came down to visit some friends.
I was actually, I grew up with an actor, I don't know if you're familiar with him, his name is Michael J. Fox.

Pursuing a Career in the Entertainment Industry

[4:07] I stayed with Michael, I lived with him, and I used to take him to auditions.
I considered myself a little bit of an entrepreneur.
I got into doing some things on the stock market, and then I decided to say that, hey, I could go ahead and do some things in the entertainment industry, because I loved painting, I loved art, I loved music, and I thought this would be my shot.
And at one point I had a roommate and he his name is Don Costa and he played with a guy named Ozzy Osbourne during Speak of the Devil and I one day this is a true story we're sitting out by the pool by the apartment at night and Don wouldn't talk to me very much he was very much his own private guy so I mean literally throughout the week, maybe we'd say three words to each other.
And Don was sitting there, this is at night, and a cat walks by.
Don kicks the cat lightly into the pool, sort of nudges it into the pool.
The cat does three leaps on top of the water and jumps out of the pool.
I was sitting a little ways away from him. I look at him and he breaks out into a big laugh.
And I couldn't believe it.
And he starts laughing and ever since then we were good friends.

[5:36] But he went on tour with Aji during Speak of the Devil and one of the things that, excuse me, one of the things that I found interesting was his recording, his bass playing and the he plucked his bass, he was renowned for having a cheese grater on the back of his bass where he'd, use it to shred his knuckles and his abs and he'd bleed into the audience.
But Don's big claim to fame was that he was the co-founder of a band called Great White, which I don't know if you're familiar with.
He actually left Great White to play with Ozzie.
And during that period of time, I went ahead and started put together my own little group with Lewis McCorkle and Jamie Sutton.
And it was Patience and being George Patience. And I considered myself somewhat of a solo act.
But at that time, my girlfriend was a girl named Jamie Dudley.
And her gig was she managed a band called Guns N' Roses, Tracy Guns and Axl Rose.

[7:04] And she also helped finance them.
And so we'd all get together and on more than one occasion I would fish Axel out of the dumpster behind the Rainbow Bar and Grill on Sunset Boulevard.
And a couple of times I paid the rent for those guys in their apartment where they were staying.
And then sometimes we would play together. So there was a loose association but because of Don being with Ozzy and them just starting out, it was quite, you know, it was a nice, tight-knit group of people, and we all sort of looked up to each other.
And at that time.

Tracy's Departure and Financial Compensation

[7:50] Tracy and Axel were sort of getting along, but they wrote a couple of great tunes, and it's unfortunate that Tracy didn't stay with the band, but I will put it to you this way, he did get paid seven figures to walk away.
Okay.

[8:12] So that was the beginning of that, but Tracy actually played on the EP, and that brings me to the point that everyone thinks that there was just I Hate Christmas, the single.
It was on a cassette EP, there was a 45 vinyl with a B-side with a guitar solo on the back of it. and it was aired.
It got played on some radio stations on the East Coast and the Midwest, and that's without any promotion, just for me selling the 45s out of the back of the Cadillac.
I had a 76 convertible Cadillac that I was living in on and off when I was recording and then actually shooting the video.
And just in the middle of shooting the video, the Cadillac had an accident.
I was staying at a couch surfing and Nick Nolte's niece ended up pulling the keys off out of my pocket.
She was drunk. She was trying to go to the 7-Eleven and she hit a parked car, a parked truck, flatbed and it totaled my ride didn't do any damage to the flatbed.

[9:25] And it was, I'll put it to you this way, it just sort of put me into the mood.
And this was just before Christmas to actually put an underline on the hate part of Christmas.
Yeah, so that kind of leads into the song itself.
What was the inspiration? Where did the idea for this come from?
Well, back then to say something like I hate Christmas was not really, pardon the word, kosher, especially in Hollywood.
But because of the fact that it was a great time of year for marketing and marketers and everybody made their big bottom line, went into the black during Christmas.
So from a commercial aspect, that was already a negative. And just saying that was sort of sacrilegious at the time.
I loved it when Scrooge said it in the movie.

[10:25] And I loved it when DeGringe said it and that always stuck with me.
And as I was getting older, I was seeing the commercialism of Christmas.
And I thought, man, we got to do something about it. And the funny thing is, when I was recording this, I was recording some other songs, too.
And actually, what I had planned to do as a 45 single at the time was a cover tune of Donny Osmond's Puppy Love.
And there's a recording of that out there somewhere as well.

[10:56] But I also had this, I was going to put the B side, I hate Christmas, but everybody loved I hate Christmas so much and we're listening to it in the studio that we forgot about the puppy love and went ahead and went with the I hate Christmas.
I also was looking at it from a commercial aspect myself that hey Maybe some of you'll feel the way I do and I'll be able to sell a few 45, So that was that that was the aspect that I felt that a lot of people felt the way I did that hey, you know the stress of Christmas was just too much and I put this out like a a release valve to take some of the pressure off of people so they could look at it, think about it, and then laugh about it a little bit.

Providing a Release Valve for Christmas Pressure

[11:47] And then, you know, sort of move on and not feel burdened by the fact that they hate Christmas or they dislike the holiday and the pressure of the holiday, but they have nobody to share it with or say it.
So a lot of people were thinking it, but not a lot of people were saying it, and I just gave that platform to them, I guess.

[12:08] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and that's very much why we do the anti Christmas music list, right?
Which includes songs like I hate Christmases as I mean a tries to kill you Yes, but So I'm allergic to the the live greenery that people bring inside so badly, But badly allergic Chris crystal.
I'm also allergic to it, but for another reason And I just don't like chopping down trees.
So my idea of yeah, it's like, you know, hey, you're going to celebrate something by killing something.
No, I prefer to, you know, have a living Christmas tree, put it outside.
Or if you have a tree growing out in front, decorate that and put the presents around that.
You know, it's dangerous to have a tree in your house too.
And we all hear that. One of the songs on our list is called Christmas Trees on Fire. It's all about how dangerous it is.
I know that's getting way dark and really, really on the edge.
You guys like some really scary stuff.
Yeah, well we do have a haunted house, but yes.

[13:28] So, is there anything else that I can tell you about, you know, some trivia of I Hate Christmas?
Yeah. Okay, go for it. Well, Tracy played on the EP and the songs that were on that EP, and it was a cassette.
If you can find one, maybe one of your listeners out there can track one down.
And that was... If that's people in LA, it would be most likely to exist.
If it's out there, they may find somebody who's got one.
And it was, there was I Hate Christmas, A-side, B-side, and the B-side had the guitar solo instead of the sax solo, and it was a 45 with a silver label with old English lettering, so if somebody sees one in a bin somewhere, that's what it looked like.
And then on the cassette there was Naughty Little Angel, Christmas in July, both of those are great songs.
Naughty Little Angel, Tracy Guns played and he became famous with his own band LA Guns, I'm sure you've heard of him.
And then there was a really cool 12 string version, acoustic Greensleeves that I did, which was really, really cool.
And that was how I ended up that EP.
And again, you know, it was and on the video, you know, I don't know if you if you notice.

[14:55] But the little people that are in the video, one of them is named Joe Geib.
And Joe has been on a lot of big films.

Strange Science and Collaborations

[15:08] Strange Science was one of them and I believe he was in, excuse me, he was on Danny Elfman's videos as well and Ozzie's.
And also on tour, when they went on tour with their stage shows, which is really interesting. That linked neatly into the, about the video.
It's one of the things that always struck me is that video looks, I mean, MTV only debuted three years before that video, basically. Right.
That was a very well done, professionally made video, especially for that time.
I mean, I was already- Well, thank you very much.

[15:50] But still, we were an early MTV. Yeah, thank you for noticing it.
Well, I wrote it, directed it, co-directed it.
My director of photography, a great guy, Gary Ashton, and Gary was an editor at KTLA-TV.
So basically what I did is I put up together some money and rented the, basic lighting package and a Aeroflex 16 and I said hey you know what if it's going to be time I'm going to do it.
Now when I did it I did it all using a pocket full of quarters and a pay and a payphone booth as my office and using the the Cadillac to move stuff around and get things together. I hear listeners don't know what a payphone is.
Pardon me? No yeah the listeners don't know what a payphone is.
That's when you had to put quarters into the machine so that you could talk on the phone.

[16:50] Right, because you didn't have one in your pocket. They were not... No, it wasn't.
Yeah, this was really a labor of love. But I was able to knock it out.
I remember cutting the AB negative, gluing it all together.
Then I remember trading this 35 millimeter camera I had to do some color correction.
Then I took it up to Little Mountain Sound up in Vancouver, and they're editing, they're video editing days, and I put it on a Rembrandt, and I did some color correction, then I brought it back.

MTV President's Interest and Decision to Hold Back

[17:26] But speaking of MTV, and this is a true story too, as I was filming this, I was getting like calls from uh the president of, MTV. I don't know if you're familiar with Video Killed the Radio Star.
He was the president of MTV and he called me several times saying, please can I have your video to show?
We don't have any Christmas stuff on MTV.
I ran back to the lawyer who was sort of representing me at the time.
His name was Richard Lehrer, who became head of Hollywood Pictures.

[18:04] I asked him and he was introduced to me by David Roth, okay, great, so he said no, don't give it to him because you want to have a record deal first or you want to have some product out there so you can sell some things.
Now that could have maybe changed the trajectory if I would have just gave him that and then played catch up from the back end.
But MTV really wanted it, but it's ironic because it gets played on the Canadian MTV every year.
Oh, interesting. And on the Canadian news programs, including the ones in French in Quebec.

[18:41] So that's where I have a little bit of a following. And it goes even further than that.
I mean, I can get into some deeper stuff as to when it was first playing on MTV.
Unfortunately, I had gotten arrested.
I was in jail, and I would call friends, collect, and all they wanted to talk about in Canada was that I was on TV.
And I'm asking them to go ahead and contact people for me. And they were like oblivious to my situation.
All they could say is that they saw me on TV. Okay.

[19:20] And this is at Christmas time.
But I did do, but I did become somewhat of a celebrity while I was my short stay there and the little warden of the of the facility was really impressed when I got all the inmates to put together a 12 days of Christmas in this particular facility.
And this was in Washington State, and they videotaped it, and they used it as their Christmas song inside of the prison, and I guess it took it to, you know, home to show how grateful and thankful the prisoners were during the Christmas holiday season.
But that was just one part of it. I know that I'm sort of skipping from aspect to aspect, but after all of this happened, I went back to Los Angeles when I was released.

Interest from Shep Gordon and a Member of KISS

[20:12] I went back to Los Angeles and Shep Gordon wanted to possibly sign me.
He was one of the first people who contacted me and if you're familiar with Shep, he did Alice Cooper and actually co-wrote a lot of the songs.
And then the other person was really interested in me that I was actually, you know supposed to be signed to was From the bank kiss.

Unexpected Opportunities and Becoming a Family Man

[20:45] And You know gene and Gene actually wanted to sign me to his label and I remember being in his Rolls-Royce with him with me to the I hate Christmas video now if that doesn't get any any weirder it does Because after that whole scenario, my girlfriend at the time got pregnant and then I had to become a family man, so to speak, and get a quote-unquote real job.
So off I go and I went into entertainment from an executive position because I could understand how I was, like you had enjoyed watching my video.
Well, I had an innate talent to be able to do that kind of thing and be able to mix business and art and sort of walk that fine line and do the translation.
And I went on to work for a company called Interactive Telemedia and then I became president of their entertainment division.

[21:47] But during this period of time, I ended up going to do a show in Vegas and next thing you know, I'm getting a call saying, Hey, there's a band that wants to cover your tune. They're from Australia.

[22:03] You know, will you license them to do your tune?
And that was a band from Australia, not the Jersey band Whiplash.
But the Australian band called Whiplash and they paid me and also paid me a consulting fee to spend a week with them in LA while they were shooting their video of I Hate Christmas.
Now their album was produced by Tamey Downs from Faster Pussycat and I don't know if you're familiar with Faster Pussycat, but he produced that album for Whiplash and the founder of that band, his name's Jason Doyle, he's living in Queensland now and he's got a very successful hot sauce company called Hot As Hell or Made In Hell or something like that.

Working with Ridley Scott and Mick Jagger's Girlfriend

[22:59] And that was his bad. Now when Jason had the video produced, a girl named Melissa was actually the one who was setting up to direct it, but she'd never directed anything in her life.
Her claim at that time to fame and fortune was she was Mick Jagger's girlfriend.

[23:28] And since she was going to do the video, she was living with Mick and she was playing my song to Mick every single day.
And I heard through them that he hated my song so badly, he never wanted to hear it again.

[23:47] Okay, so and then during During the filming of this, she had someone help her, which was, who was actually directing, and I worked with him.
I was there with him, was Ridley, Ridley Scott.
I don't know if you're familiar with him, but he does some pretty scary stuff.
So Ridley did that video. And I don't know if you got a copy of it.
I think I had sent you one at one point, texted you a link to that video.
But that is just a copy from someone taking it off the TV screen.
Now I don't know if it's still on rotation in Australia or not, but that was the one that was done with all the bells and whistles, and that was a big expensive production.
Now the one I did, believe me, I spent less than $4,000 or $5,000 on that.
While I was living in the car, total. And that's like a multi-day shoot.

[24:46] And I would trade out like doing, you know, being a janitor in the bar and cleaning up their place at closing time for a week so that I could use it to film in, in the bar scenes.
And then, you know, different trades I did to be able to get the location shots.
Part of it was shot in the recording studio, in the rehearsal studio that we had. and then a few people's houses and things, but I sort of cobbled it all together.
And no one would believe that I was able to get that kind of a quality at that time, because we didn't have iPhones at that time, and to be able to pull it off for that price.
But I was just more interested in getting that art out there.

Navigating the Music Industry and Connections with George Michael

[25:32] And a lot of people at that time, Weird Al was coming up too.
So it was almost like, am I competing with Weird Al?
Which direction am I going to go with this?
And then, like John Lennon says, life is what happens to you when you're making other plans.
So, you know, different things happen in life and you sort of go off of one thing.
But that's why I'm so thankful to you for feeling that my music is still relevant.
And I've written a lot of songs.
At one point too, I was contacted and I spent a weekend with George Michael and Jazz Summer.

[26:11] And they wanted me to pen a few songs for George and to see how that worked.
And the ironic thing about that is that I ended up becoming really close friends.
And he lived with me for a while.
One of his bandmates, Dion Estes, who I really adored.
So as far as that time in Hollywood, a lot of people all knew each other.
I was very blessed to have that lived the end of that whole heavy metal era.
It really was, you know, You know, that time when one band would be with one person, you know, you'd be a Blackie Lawless and then Chris Olms would be playing with Motley Crue and then Motley Crue.
I lived with Tommy Lee for a while. I was with him when he first dated, when he first met Heather Locklear.
I mean, it was one of these times in Hollywood, which was a magical time.
It seemed we never had a real job, but we always had money, and somehow we were always able to make things happen.
And the music, I think, is what carried us through.

[27:29] And there was a lot of help too. We all sort of looked out for each other.
So it wasn't so much of a competition at that time.
It was more of a cooperative because you had to cooperate with everyone.
Otherwise, you wouldn't, you know, you wouldn't be able to do what you wanted to do.

Reflecting on the Interview and Unpacking Stories

[27:48] Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So of all the things that I've told you, is there anything you'd like me to elaborate on? Well, you've grown a lot.
I told you there'd be a lot of presents to unpack, and I got more. I'm kidding.
I think archaeologists are going to go through this interview in a few years' time and try to piece all this together.
But yeah, so you talked about... Go ahead.
But yeah, you talked about how the video came together.
And I swear, I'd never had any inkling of an idea that it was a shoestring affair.
No. It never appeared that way to me. It looked like a high budget.
I had assumed a record label had actually invested in it, you know.
It looked like that to me.
Because that's what videos look like in 1986. It's just what they look like when they're freshly done. So yeah, you definitely had that talent that you talked about. Yeah, no kidding.
That's why I'm surprised. But what was the vibe on set like?
Was everyone just having a good time and enjoying it?

[28:55] Well, I tried to make it as diverse as I could. I tried to make it as fun as I could.
But at that time, you know, I was a hot kid making a video.
So I had to send off, you know, please Crystal, don't take this the wrong way.
But the girls were hitting on me. Okay. and like you know I'm trying to stay focused I've never done a rock video before and I really had to be focused and maybe they thought that I wasn't being as kind I never said a bit harsh word but I didn't give them as much attention as they wanted at the time because they had to focus on what I was working on and, The vibe on the set was everyone had their Picadillo, so I ended up having to be, you know, everything to everybody at the time, including a psychologist, getting them what they want to make sure everyone was on the same page, at least long enough so we can get some takes done and get something usable on the film.
And the funny thing, too, is here's another something, another little fact, a little trivia.

Trivia: Tom Petty's Donation and Filming on a Budget

[30:09] The original two-inch that I recorded I Hate Christmas from was a donation from Tom Petty from his live album.
So I had some of Tom Petty's live, which I erased to do my I Hate Christmas EP on.
So that was that two-inch. Can you believe that? Then, the actual film that I was getting, I was buying short rolls from the Kodak store on Santa Monica, which was the Kodak motion picture film stock, and I was buying the the cheapo rolls like remnant roll to shoot on and it's very you know even on a 16 millimeter it was very expensive and then the other thing too was that I liked I liked the vibe on it everyone was really excited about being involved and it was a group effort so everybody showed up and I made sure that everybody had libation and I made the sandwiches so they were you know on the set so also craft services.

Acknowledging the Collaborators

[31:26] Basically, if there were credits for this video, you would have pretty much everything.
Well, no, I've got to share it with Jamie Sutton and with my friend Gary Ashton.
And that's the three of us basically put this together, but with help from everyone.
So everyone from Stewart Gordon Enterprises, they were the ones that gave me a couple of days grace on returning some equipment and a lighting package.
Sometimes things would take a little bit longer than I wanted to.
And then, you know, the help with being able to use SoundSync equipment and boost spots.
But it's, you know, it's funny because I met a lot of different fantastic people through this.
And I appreciate all of their help in making I Hate Christmas a success.
Limited, cult, yes, but in my heart and in their hearts, it was a success.

[32:35] Well, we're members of the cult so Thank you very much for appreciating it.
Also. I wanted to let you know that You heard that mick jagger hates the song, Yeah, well get somebody who really loves the song was when the record release party, happened for the whiplash Album and I hate christmas that was held at the hollywood marquee, which was in west hollywood It's called the W Hotel now, but in attendance for that was ACDC and Bruce Springsteen.
I met Bruce Springsteen years before that, but he was there for it.
And ACDC said it was their favorite Christmas song at that time.
And they loved it. Maybe it had a role in Inspiring Mistress for Christmas, then.
Yeah, maybe. Yeah, maybe.

[33:31] Oh, interesting. So there's a there's an interesting isn't that an interesting weave of how this this song is sort of finds a new life every few years and goes on and on and I'm glad I was able to shed a little bit of light on this mystery of who I am who the people and players were involved in this and yeah it was really really something you know to try and put this together.
And I'll tell you something, this was the winter of 85 and I went back up to with the rough edit up to Canada and I remember flying in and it was going to go to a party.
I took a cab into town into Vancouver and it was a night of a snowstorm and I remember walking in the snow and I had the cassette and I had some headphones and I was listening to, you know, the EP. I was going, you know what, I wonder what this is going to sound like in 20, 30, 40 years from now.
And man, it still sounds great.

[34:36] Yeah, no, it held up very well. So we were talking about some of the other players in the video.

Introducing the Other Band Members

[34:44] Who are the other band members in it with you?
That was Jamie Sutton and Lewis McCorkle.
Now Lewis was playing with another band, and Jamie Sutton, he was also a engineer, studio engineer, and he actually worked on Appetite for Destruction and he worked at Red Zone and Take One Studios and before he went to Take One, which I did a little recording at too, to finish it up, he had his own studio called Sutton Place Recording Studio.
Now it's hard to find Jamie, I've tried to find him for years and I don't know where he is or what happened to him.

[35:24] And if anybody out there knows Jamie Sutton, fabulous guitar player, fabulous engineer, fabulous arrangements.
He's the guy that I'd love to be able to hook up with again.
And, you know, God bless him. He was fantastic with me. And he saw the vision.
And we tried to do everything in short takes. The thing is that when you have a limited budget for doing an actual EP and a video, you've got to make one takes work, you know.
So one, two, maybe three takes at the max. So you have to really be on the money and you have to really have an engineer who can sort of coach you through it.
And Jamie was really good, but you know, he had a lot of experience putting together different recordings for different bands.
He's a real master on the mixing board.

[36:17] Jamie Sutton. Okay. Yeah. If any of you out there know what happened or became of him, please let us know. We will pass it on.
Or Lewis McCorkle.
And then, you know, I was thinking of reaching out to Tracy Guns and seeing if he had any of the cassettes as well.
That would be you know interesting to see if he has it and he had a quite interesting career and I haven't heard anything lately from him but you know as time goes by different people sort of go off into their different lives and have different lives and sometimes we revisited at times and sometimes it's hard to get in touch with people.
You know, time marches on. Yeah.

Releasing the Song on Spotify

[37:08] So I'm glad that you guys loved the song. It really blows my mind.
I did re-release it just to let you know. It's available on Spotify.
It's under Patience. You are next. And it's a single, I Hate Christmas.
And I remastered it and sweetened it up a little bit. Yeah, the remaster sounds great, by the way, I wanted to say that. Yeah.
Yeah, that was actually at the bottom of our list Was about the re-release.
Yeah So, yeah, but after the video was completed you said it was it aired in Canada a fair amount Did it get aired in the States?

Dr. Demento and Radio Stations

[37:50] You know, I it was never that I know of aired on in the United States And I don't know if you're familiar with Dr. Demento.
Dr. Demento had a couple of, had two or three of the 45s.
I went to his studio, to the actual radio station, and dropped them off there.
I dropped them some off at K-Rock. and I believe that he played at one time.
Now the other funny thing is that when Motley Crue was opening for KISS at the Fabulous Forum in Los Angeles where the Clippers are building their next to where the Clippers are building their new stadium I would go I would go with them and they would play before there before they would take the stage during the holiday season when they were on tour with Kiss they would play I Hate Christmas.
Which was great. So I had my moment of the stadium, you know, hearing my, my song being played to, you know, 10,000, 15,000 people, you know.

[39:03] And I have done like, you know, during that time, I remember once up in Canada, somebody tracked me down.
And I did a radio interview for somewhere in Detroit and somewhere up in the eastern seaboard in New England, somewhere maybe Maine or possibly Boston and a couple of different radio stations wanted to know what I was going to come up with next and the thing about this is is that this is the hardest part for artists if you don't have an infrastructure it's real hard for you because you'll be able to possibly put one thing out but to do multiples you have to have a lot of money but to have money you got to work.
And it's sort of that chicken and egg routine that you have to play.
And that sort of holds back a lot of great talent.
But as things have gone in my life, I've been very blessed. I'm very, very happy.
And I love I Hate Christmas. And it'd be nice to see the rest of the songs come out because if you liked I Hate Christmas, you'd really like Naughty Little Angel.
It's got a real cool vibe on it. Yeah, that sounds like one I'd love.
Yeah, and then Christmas in July is great too.

[40:19] So is there any hope or any plan to release those? Or is it even possible?

Theft of Music and Loss of 2-Inch Recordings

[40:23] Well, this is the thing. All of my 2-inch was stolen.
You know this is Los Angeles and that was another thing a lot of my work and almost all of it and my songs everything else was stolen and that this is just the reality of living in Los Angeles, is that sometimes things like that happen and uh um yeah it was you know I Orleans.
Pardon me? Yeah, we're in New Orleans.

[40:54] Yeah, you could probably relate. Well, that's the funny thing is somebody would take something and not really know what it was.
Maybe they thought it was valuable or it got lost somewhere over the years, but it was really valuable to me.
And if I really had my head together, I would have taken that two-inch and put it into a vault or into a safety deposit box.
But, you know, as a young guy doing his thing before, you know, and trying to do things with limited resources and devoting time to the music and trying to put together, you know, a living, it makes it difficult for the extras.
So for the extra $100 a year or whatever at that time, I should have put it into a safety deposit box. I did not, bad on me, but you know at least it lived on.
The re-recording you were mentioning about the remix on the I Hate Christmas that I just re-released, that was, believe it or not, I took, I got a copy of a two-inch of the video, it's a dupe copy off of the original that MTV in Canada has.
They made a disc for me, sent it down, and I lifted it off and separated off the disc.

[42:20] Now that's a trick. Yeah.
You know you talk about how hard it is for musicians and we know several local musicians who have tried to do and they always talk about how hard it is to do those extra copies and the extra songs so I understand completely where you're coming from.
Well, I remember very, very, very vividly when I was doing sound sync to make sure my sound was, because I was using an agramiche while I was doing this so that the film would sync up.
That's a very important part of when you're shooting a video so that the timing is perfect with the audio and your lip syncing to the music.

Exhaustion and Pressure to Create More Music

[43:06] When I was in that studio, the guy says, this is fantastic. Do you have another one?
And I'm like, I'm exhausted from doing this thing, right? It's cold, it's Christmas, I'm alone, it's LA.
And this guy is saying, do another one?

Creatives' Struggles and Uncommon Treatment

[43:27] My car just got crashed. I'm taking the bus.
That is the way creatives typically are treated, though. It's not an uncommon story in a lot of different fields.
I think every author can relate to that too And artists and artists and filmmakers and musicians.
Yeah, it's just Hey, this is great. Where's the when's the next one coming is follow-up question.

[43:55] Well, you know that's good and that's the thing This is where the crossroads comes to you because at that point it's like okay do you sell your soul to the record company or do you go ahead and do your thing?
And I was open to doing something, but I never sold my publishing, I never did anything. I still own the rights to the song.
But that's okay, because at this point it's not about the money.
The money was needed to do the art, but once you get more mature as you grow, you see that Hey, you did that art and it was great and let it go That's a child that went and left the nest and is flying and people are enjoying it And that's the way every true artist looks at their music and that's something when I was living in in Laurel Canyon That whole vibe in that Canyon all the way from the doors, And Crosby Stills Nash and all the people that hung out in that area They all had that same vibe.
So it wasn't so much about the money. The money was just a way to be able to continue producing something that uplifted somebody or touched someone in a special way and made their lives better.

[45:14] Yeah. Well, it definitely has made our lives better. It has definitely made part of our Thank you very much. I'm humbled.
Thank you. I thank you very much. We are spreading it as far as we can, preaching the gospel of George Patience. Thank you very much.
It needs to be heard. And hearing how it came about and hearing the story of it, it's, A, endlessly fascinating.
But seeing how it's such a labor of love, just really drives me There's a lot of stuff there and when a song of yours gets covered, I go wow, that's fantastic. You know, I've made it.
Somebody liked my song enough to be able to do it again.
And then the other thing is that there's a third I Hate Christmas video that somebody pieced together using the Whiplash audio and then put together, and this is from Germany Or europe or something where they put together a really cool little video with some spills spills and stuff that they've stuck together.

[46:20] So i'm so behind the whiplash version i've not actually heard that one no No, we and it's kind of weird.
We only ran across your song I'd say like at the start of the pandemic It was like yes a few years ago three four years ago now And I don't know how we missed it because we've been doing this list every year for 23 years Yeah, well pretty much.
Yeah, it's kind of weird because when I when I when I asked Melody Cooper a friend of mine to throw it up on her account when on her YouTube account Just to throw it up if I had it and I thought okay, we might as well throw it up there, See what happens and the the the algorithm would would sort of give it to some people I guess or it was first starting out but the numbers on it, on their counter, changes.
So it was once 65,000, then it went down to 20,000.
Now it's at 40,000. So it was bouncing around.
So I don't believe that the accounting by Google Incorporated is completely accurate.
But nonetheless, I'm just happy that it was out there.
Yes.

[47:37] Is there anything else that you'd like to... I'm glad we discovered it and I'm glad it's become a part of our annual holiday traditions and I think it's going to stay there for a very, very, very long time.
Well, between you and me, I would like to see it sort of evolve into possibly something a little bit deeper and I wouldn't be surprised if in the near future it might end up as a soundtrack on a film for a certain scene, or it could even evolve into an I Hate Christmas, film for television, possibly for cable, for something that Netflix would do for streaming, where we take that original character, and the character who's sort of hating Christmas, who's running around town pushing this shopping cart and goes into this whole dream state and there's a whole story behind it now at the end of the video I guess you guys have noticed this here's a couple of other things I'm going to give you a couple of Easter eggs the dog's name is shadow at the end of the video and that was Jamie Sutton's dog and the dog whimpering, that's me.

[48:59] I did the video on that one. And then if you check the wrapping paper, the wrapping paper says Merry Christmas on it.
So, it's sort of a happy ending. And all of that was a wild dream that I was having during that video.
So it was almost like a dream sequence.
I did the first opening graphic before the Auld Lang Syne intro, I did that computer graphic on the same machine that did the Olympics opening sequence.
And I traded time to soundproof a recording room for him and put up the soundproofing panels to get the few hours to be able to do the snowflakes falling and that little bit of a computer, you know, computer graphic blip.
Now, that was sort of like a big deal to do that back in 1986. Oh, yeah, 1986.
Oh, yeah. Completely a big deal.
Yeah, yeah, in 86. I mean, people forget what it was like in 86.
I actually finished it in 85, but I branded it 86, because right coming up to Christmas 85, I wasn't going to be able to get much traction.

[50:21] And so I put the date to keep it fresh, 1986.
But at this point, it doesn't matter what the date was, everybody, you know, finds it, and it's new to them that that time when they find it.
And it's funny that you didn't see it on top of the list, because usually on the thumbnails, the I hate Christmas would come up.
But with my spelling, sometimes maybe that's why you didn't, you weren't able to find it.
And then I think another thing is I've got a lot of lag between the time the the first frame comes up and the video starts.
So that black area may throw people off and then you know, sometimes with the, you know, you don't go ahead and that's another reason to read the remake is so great is because it doesn't have any lag at all I've noticed that just jumps right in it's perfect right and you know that opening drop drum sequences is it sort of sticks with you you know what I mean I mean you can just that's almost rhythmic, you could almost meditate to that.

Reflecting on the History of the Song and Performer

[51:33] Well, George, it has been wonderful. We're actually at time, but it has been wonderful getting to talk to you, getting to know about the history of this song and your history as a performer.
Like I said, historians will be parsing this episode, I have a feeling.

[51:50] Yeah, there's a lot of crossroads there. There's a lot of stuff there and there's a lot more of the web to pull on and hopefully your listeners will be able to go ahead and put the rest of the puzzle together and let's see if we can find the missing pieces of the I Hate Christmas EP and if you see the cassette, that is a picture of Santa Claus getting attacked by a pit bull on the front, okay, so it's really cool, in a snowstorm.
And that was me in a Santa suit with an actual livid, angry pitbull, a really big one.
So that's on the cover. And then it's got me a picture of me on the back, you know, almost looking with a with a light behind me with the you know, my my hair being teased up.
And it's almost got a Nels Cooper-ish kind of vibe to that picture of me on the back.
But if anybody can find that cassette, I'll give them $1,000.

[53:00] I'll give you, and if somebody could find the 45, I'll sign it for them.
That sounds great. On that note, everyone, thank you again, George.
Thank you again, listeners.
You can check out more Haunt Weekly. We're at hauntweekly.com, Haunt Weekly on Twitter, Haunt Weekly on Facebook, and Haunt Weekly on YouTube.
Also, keep an eye on the Facebook page. We'll be announcing more live recordings, hopefully in the not-too-distant future.
But until next time, I'm Jonathan. I'm Crystal. And we will see you all next week.