Today on the Rarified Heir Podcast we have and we promise you, one of the most unique, fascinating, jaw dropping, emotional and sometimes shocking interviews we’ve ever had on the podcast. Today we are talking to Grammy-winning musician/composer/vocalist/violinist Lili Haydn, whose sophomore album Night and Day is up for another Grammy next month. She’s also a composer, has recorded six solo albums and performed with everyone from Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, Herbie Hancock, Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn, Roger Waters, The Jayhawks, Tom Petty and Parliament/Funkadelic to name just a few.
Talking to Lili was frankly, unlike anything we have covered before on any episode. Lili and host Josh Mills talked for a long time which is why this is a two-part episode. There was just too much amazing stuff, we couldn’t cut any of it. We talked about her comedian/author/writer mother Lotus Wienstock, a free spirit who not only was engaged to Lenny Bruce but became one of the beloved comedians of her era. She was a trail blazer and influential stand-up comedian and was loved and respected by contemporaries like Richard Pryor, Jay Leno, Bill Maher, Sandra Bernhard and Jerry Seinfeld, She excelled in her own personal and inclusive brand of comedy that was as much a shared audience experience as stand-up could be. She was the impetus behind The Comedy Store founding “The Belly Room,” where only women could perform, in an era when comedy was essentially a men’s only club. Lotus also wrote a fantastic book called The Lotus Position, changed her name twice and had her music recorded by Ritchie Havens. And that’s just the beginning.
Lili’s father David Jove is a mythical figure himself. He was known as “King Acid David” in the mid-sixties due to fact that he was one of the first ever to mass-produce L.S.D. A friend of The Rolling Stones, he may or may not have been directly responsible for infamous “Redlands” bust of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Marianne Faithfull and others in 1967. He was also a colleague of Stanley Owsley The Grateful Dead soundman and L.S.D. aficionado, created two early music video shows including New Wave Theater which mixed punk rock, SCTV and SNL alums and was hosted by enigmatic host Peter Ivers whose unsolved murder we discuss on the episode.
There is so much to unpack in our conversation with Lili in part one of this episode that it frankly left us a little spent And oh yeah, Lili did this interview while quarantining at home with her second bout of Covid, a real trooper. All I can say is, buckle up….this is the Rarified Heir Podcast.
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