Creative Curiosity

Welcome back to the Late Boomers Podcast! We're Cathy and Merry, and in this episode, we embark on a fascinating journey with our guest, Maxim Langstaff. Maxim has worn many creative hats: music executive, filmmaker, dog lover, and now novelist. Together, we explore how the art of storytelling evolves across a lifetime, blending history, folklore, fact, and imagination. This episode is a goldmine for anyone passionate about music history (think The Beatles and John Denver!), the enduring mysteries of Sasquatch, and the creative process, whether in novels, film, or music.

We dive deep into Maxim’s creative evolution, discuss his latest novel Sasqet, unpack the cultural differences between Sasquatch and Bigfoot, and share behind-the-scenes stories from the heart of the music industry. Plus, we talk about how staying curious and open to new adventures lets us all reinvent ourselves at any stage in life.

Key Takeaways

• Embracing Creativity Later in Life:
• It’s never too late to begin a new creative chapter. Maxim Langstaff shares how his journey from music and film into novel writing was sparked by solitude, curiosity, and a love of storytelling (02:12–03:34).
• The Power of Storytelling
• Whether through songs, novels, or films, storytelling connects us via empathy and shared beliefs (11:00–12:59). Music, especially, is a universal language that transcends boundaries.
• Fact vs. Fiction: The Magic of Myths
• We discuss why mysterious legends like Sasquatch persist through centuries and how our need for belief often outweighs a strict adherence to fact (05:49–10:11). Myths can be nutritious for the human imagination and serve deep cultural purposes.
• Sasquatch vs. Bigfoot:
• Maxim distinguishes between the indigenous-rooted Sasquatch and the pop-culture phenomenon of Bigfoot, offering a thoughtful perspective on how we shape myths to fit our comfort zones (06:45–08:05, 43:41–45:00).
• Behind the Scenes with Legends:
• From working with Sir George Martin, “the fifth Beatle,” to collaborating with John Denver, Maxim recounts career-defining lessons in honesty, risk-taking, and authenticity (13:57–19:16).
• Nature, Curiosity & Lifelong Growth:
• Maxim reveals how his dog and time in nature taught him humility, resilience, and the importance of being curious qualities essential to storytelling and life (34:43–36:46).
• Advice for Late Bloomers:
• For those looking to write, create, or reinvent: start with curiosity and let your passion guide you. Don’t chase outcomes—chase the process (46:53–48:43).
• The Future of Sasqet:
• In addition to a sequel, Maxim is working to adapt his novel into a streaming TV series, aiming to bring its message to a new generation (49:16–50:57).

If you love stories that blend music, myth, and inspiration to show it’s never too late to reinvent yourself, share this episode with a friend! And if Maxim’s journey sparked your curiosity, visit sasqetthebook.com to learn more about his work (and maybe read the book before it hits the screen!).

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Late Boomers Podcast on your favorite platform and on YouTube! Leave us a review or comment; we’d love to hear your thoughts and your own late-blooming adventures.

As we always say:

It’s never too late to rethink what’s possible!

Mentioned in this episode:

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eWomenPodcastNetwork

Welcome to the Late Boomers podcast, where we bring you inspiring stories of people creating new chapters in life with style, power, and impact. I'm Cathy Worthington.

And I'm Mary Ellekins.

Today, we're exploring a fascinating combination of subjects. Music, history, filmmaking, radio, writing, fiction, and one of the world's most enduring mysteries, Sasquatch.

It's amazing how many people become interested in creative pursuits later in life. Some start writing novels, others make films. Some finally tell stories they've carried around for years.

And there's something particularly exciting about blending fact and fiction. Historical events, folklore, unexplained mysteries, the. They can all become the foundation for compelling storytelling.

Yeah, absolutely. And the mystery of Bigfoot or Sasquatch has certainly stood the test of time. Reports span centuries and come from all over North America and the world. And whether you're a believer or a skeptic, the topic sparks curiosity.

At the same time, our guest has had a remarkable career in the music industry, working alongside legendary artists and witnessing some truly historic moments in entertainment.

He sure did. He worked with Sir George Martin, often called the fifth Beatle, and he collaborated with John Denver and has now turned his talents towards writing and filmmaking.

We are excited to welcome music executive filmmaker and novelist Maxim Langstaff. Two late bloomers.

Yes. Maxim, welcome to the show.

Thank you. I'm also a dog owner. You should put that on the list.

Dog owner.

I own the dog so much as the dog owns me, but we'll go from there.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you had a wonderful, successful career in music and film before becoming a novelist. So what inspired you to write Saskat, and why was this the story you felt compelled to tell?

Well, it's interesting. I didn't feel compelled to write it, and I didn't feel. And everyone has this idea that, you know, somebody writes a book, they write a book, and maybe they do it. Certainly in nonfiction. You do nonfiction, you write a book out of ambition. I have a story I want to tell. I have something I want to communicate with people, whether it's a cookbook or politics, whatever it is. This book sort of evolved for me.

And it evolved, really. It started out as a series of just essays, and, I mean, I like to write. I think it's a process in life where you tend to like to do things you're good at. And I never thought that there was anything special about my writing. I just. I figured everybody else could write really well, too, so I was surprised. But I think. And you tend to love what you're good at, and so I've always been writing and I love to write, whether it's poetry or fiction or stories or.

I've written a lot of non fiction professional writing for John Denver and George Martin and others. So this book started out as a. Strangely enough, I was living in a cabin in northern Maine and had no running water. I had no heat. I was with my dog Kima, who was a star of the book. One of the stars in the book is a real dog. And I just was alone and I had space. I had space that I had never really had in my life for so long.

And I just allowed it to come. And I just. One day I opened my computer, I thought I just started writing this. This thing that wasn't. Just came through. A lot of this stuff just comes through. And you just. The key is to allow it to happen.

You can't control it on some level. Obviously you bring your craft to it. You do all that. And it started out as an essay and I was writing some more little bits here and there, but there was no story, there was no theme, there was no sort of, you know, objective per se. I didn't have any ambition. And I then eventually took a few years in a process and I threw my dog in a car after a bad winter in Maine and we took off for California. So it was sort of like John Steinbeck, you know, travels with Charlie. I drove across the country with my dog and we went everywhere we went, you know, you know, we.

We sat on the green Memphis, Tennessee, eating ice cream cones and together and then we, you know, swimming in high lakes in the high alpine, Colorado, Rocky Mountains. Anyway, we ended up in California. And we were walking one day in the Santa Monica Mountains. And I was just walking with him. And we did that every day, hiking and things. And this sentence came to me. I don't know how or where it came from. And the sentence was.

Sometimes the truth is best left unknown. And I just. I was shocked. I just was stunned by it. And all of a sudden that moment, the entire book showed up in my head. Whole thing. And I remember racing back to my. My little place that I had up in the mountains in the Santa Monica Mountains in Topanga.

And I just started writing. And then, you know, then you have to go through a process of sort of figuring it out and how to do it and how to put it together. The whole Sasquatch, Bigfoot sort of thing came about because I'm a writer and I'm a creative person. What's juicier than that as a subject?

What's Juicier than that.

Yeah, I know.

And when I started out, it was just. It was just a. It was just a literary device in a weird kind of way. I had no. You know, it's a silly thing. You can't take it seriously. And I started to do some research and homework on this, and I found all these real scientific articles of people who took this very seriously, very prominent scientists in major universities in the United States and England and Russia. I thought, this is really strange.

And so I thought, well, I. I can disprove that. This is just silly. So I started to get into it. I suddenly realized partway through my research process, as I'm putting the book together and structuring it, I thought, my God, it's easier to prove this creature is real than it is to disprove it. And what do I mean by that? If you believe that Sasquatch is a hoax, you have got to believe that there's been somebody running around in the woods about four or five hundred years in a gorilla costume, hoping somebody will see them in the middle of nowhere. And if that's gonna happen to them, they're gonna get shot. I mean, the whole idea.

Premise is crazy. Or you can believe it's a conspiracy, which has been going on for years and years, which means nobody's ever given it away. It's cost millions and millions and millions of dollars to sustain, and it just is not plausible.

I love this.

What are you left with? It was the weirdest thing in the world. And so my certainty became uncertain through my process. And part of that process, which I think we talked about before, when on camera, which is interesting, Sasquatch is not the same thing as Bigfoot. It's not the same thing. And the way to describe it and became clear to me this. Bigfoot is a. Is a product of pop culture, is a product of, you know, what we want. So I think of Bigfoot as the teddy bear, okay, Versus a bear.

So we've turned this thing, this enigma, this whatever it is, into something that it's acceptable to us, something we love, something we can cuddle. And then we make movies like Harry and the Hendersons and all that kind of stuff. But Bigfoot is. Is really just a pop thing. And you see it all over everything, everywhere. I was in an outdoor store, like REI the other day, and there was a. Was. There was surfboards on display.

I'm looking at the surfboard, and there. There. Right there's a. On. On the surfboard is a. A plaque or whatever you call those things. A stamp. And there it was, Bigfoot riding a surfboard.

I thought, oh my God, this thing shows up everywhere. And it leaves you with two very interesting questions. One is if it's real as a biological creature, that's, that's an interesting thing to look at. Is it plausible? Absolutely. From a scientific standpoint, it is plausible. Of course the scientific community will tell you, no, it's not ridiculous because if it was real, we'd know it. That's about as scientific as a cheese doodle. So I mean, it's ridiculous.

So certainly biologically it is, but it's sort of like Jurassic Park. Michael Crichton, who wrote this fiction book and has. But the basis, the scientific basis of Jurassic park is plausible and real. It, we do that. And so this with Sasquatch, it's, it's. If it's a real biological creature, is it plausible? And it is plausible, but we don't know. We have, you know, it's, it's still out there as a sort of question mark. But if it's not real and it's human sort of made up, we've been doing it for thousands of years.

This goes back to Alexander the Great. So what.

Wow.

Reports, really? And those reports are in the book. But what is it about human beings that we have a need to create this creature if it's not real? It says an awful lot about us. And to me that's equally interesting, a mystery. And in my book, in the opening, sort of really, the opening page, I have A quote by Dr. George Schaller, one of the great, great field zoologists, who comments that, you know, perhaps it's because we need to try to find new connection to nature. A connecting. Excuse me, excuse me. A connection of ourselves to something bigger than we are.

That's the world where we came from. Who are we? What are we all about? And this creature serves as either a symbol or some kind of a thing. So either way, whether it's a real biological phenomenon or whether it's something that human beings have a need for, any way you look at it, that makes it real. I mean, think about Christmas time, right? We all celebrate Christmas, right? Well, Santa Claus. We spend billions of dollars a year every year on Santa Claus. So when someone comes to tell me that Sant clause isn't real, this is a choice. We're either cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs or this. You know, we need this.

You know, we, we are as human beings, we, we don't operate from facts, we operate from belief. We always have.

That is the truth. And maybe we should operate more from fact these days. But even then, facts may not be as interesting as. As our beliefs in our culture.

We aggregate beliefs, we get enough of them, and then we turn around and call them facts. But it's. It's, you know, I mean, I was saying in that book, I make a comment in my afterword about, you know, when I grew up as a kid, you know, we had the planets and Pluto was a planet. Well, Pluto's not a planet anymore. My question to you is, what happened? Did Pluto go away? Did we make some grand discovery that all of a sudden Pluto doesn't qualify based on our belief system? And then we call it all science? It's just complete nonsense.

That's so true. So I want to pivot a little bit. You mentioned that you've been writing for. For a long, long time, and you've spent years telling stories in different mediums. So how does writing a novel compare with making a film or. Or working in the music industry like you did?

Good question. I. It's all storytelling.

Yeah.

I could look at you and say it's the same thing. And if you look at. And a lot of people come up through a particular funnel, you know, I. I work in film, I work in television. I work in a book. I'm a book person or I'm a music artist. We all do the same thing. It's, you know, it's the same craft with different instruments

or what is it different?

It's the same discipline. It's storytelling. So. And the value of it and the outcome that everyone is looking for, whether it's film, television, music, or a book, is empathy. A bridge of empathy. So when I was talking to John Denver and I said, john, how do you know you've written a great song? And he said, when it becomes yours.

Oh.

So how. How do I know I've done a good book? How do I know I've made a good movie? How do I know I've written a good song? When it becomes yours. It's.

That's the ultimate, like, psychologically in your own head, emotionally.

You have to connect to it. You have to. It's a bridge of empathy. It's created. It's a connection. Human beings can't exist in isolation. We. We are social creatures.

We connect, and we connect through storytelling. We connect because we operate from beliefs. So we. And so so much of what informs us in reality, our version of reality, what that reality is, is as much made up as not. And you think about music as a very powerful healing force. It's the only universal language. It's unmediated. In other words, you don't have to learn it to be able to do it.

You can pick up a stick and make music. It's. It's incredibly powerful. I think it's the only thing human beings do that don't. It doesn't destroy something or hurt something. And it doesn't matter how old you are, it doesn't matter your gender, it doesn't matter your sexual orientation, it doesn't matter your politics, it doesn't matter your race, your government, your country, anything. It doesn't matter. Music is that powerful.

And it's, it's. And, and. And writing is obviously another art form. And. And so is filmmaking. Filmmaking is visual. So it's. But you're doing the same thing.

And a lot of the roles and jobs in each of these professions are the same. You have producers in each one. You. You do the same thing. So for me to go from writing the book, it's just. I'm just staying focused on the book and the writing. But the, the creative process that I'm having to go through is very similar when I'm writing a song or I'm in the studio and trying to put something like.

Well, I want to talk about a little bit about your music thing because one of the highlights of your career was working with Sir George Martin, who I adore because I'm a huge Beatles fan fanatic. So what was that experience like and what did you learn from one of the most influential producers in music history?

I learned a lot of things from George. We spent. I work. Actually worked with George longer than the Beatles did, which is kind of weird. I think about it. It's for 17 years. But I think one of the things that George used to say was the truth is always much more interesting than the myth. And I think one of the reasons the Beatles were so successful was that he didn't, in a sense, when they were very young, he didn't allow them to go into that space that is so predominant today in pop culture.

And of course, the industry as we know it today didn't even exist. So you didn't have that. It wasn't. It wasn't a famous job to be a producer in 1963. It wasn't a staff position in a company. And the Beatles had been turned down by every major record company in the world, and he took them on. The story behind his signing the Beatles is. Could.

I could take up an hour with that. So I won't go there. But it's, it's, it's not really gotten out much, but it's, it's.

He, he,

he was a very gentle man, very smart, classically trained musician. And he took risks and he, he, he based. Whether he was going to work with you or whether he would work with you or make a decision about whether you're somebody he wants to spend time with on some level based on you. He, he didn't judge people based on their accomplishments or their fame or their this or their that or that. He took people at face value. So he treated me just the same way he treated Paul McCartney. He didn't. There was no difference.

And, and I think that people don't realize it. And he was talking about the fifth Beatle. He, he arranged all their songs, most of them, and he played on almost all their songs. He was the keyboard for most of all, right up through Abbey Road. He produced their feet or whatever. And, you know, you think about whole parts of Beatles songs he wrote. I mean, you think of Eleanor Rigby. That's.

It's a great pop song. It's got a great story. It's a wonderful song. But what makes it amazing is that string arrangement. Yes, that's all George Martin completely.

Oh, yeah, sure. You know, you look at, know how to arrange for violins.

You look, you look at a song like In My Life, for example.

Oh, yeah, I love that song.

John Lennon, right. Well, that, that middle section George wrote and the Beatles had. John had written the song. And they went off to take a break, a tea break you'd get in the morning. You do two songs in the morning and record two songs in the afternoon. And went so fast they went out of the studio. I know they went out of the studio. Their first album, they did in one day.

Everything recorded, engineered, produced it and whatever, but two tracks. So they went on a break and George realized he had 25 minutes and, and John has left him and said, I don't know what to do with this bridge. What? You got any ideas, George? So George said, let me, let me think about it, John. I'll get back to you. They went off on their break. George sat down. So he starts fiddling out this sort of Bach style little piece. And he then he sort of thought he could insert in the song, but he couldn't play it fast enough.

He couldn't play what he had in his head fast enough. So what he did was he took the tape machine and he changed the knob so it would play at half speed. This is a technique you do in the Studio. So he then played as fast as he could, playing it at half speed. And it was. He played it on piano. It's a piano, okay. Then he switched the knob back to full speed and it comes out twice as fast and it sounds like a harpsichord.

So they came. He didn't. He wrote the whole thing in 20, 25 minutes. And the Beatles came back in after their tea break and George said to John, say, you know, what do you think of this? And John, George, John was like, wow, that's fantastic. And that's history. There's a lot of that. A lot of that.

All of. All of us Beatle fans admire this. Those early recordings for the roughness and the raw, raw character when they made mistakes on the words. They didn't do another take, they just left.

I'm so glad.

Harmonies where they're saying different words at the same time.

There's a great story that we used to, you know, when we were going around the world doing our shows, we greet, meet and greet people after the shows and things. One guy comes up, he's a complete beetle nut. He said, oh, you know, Mr. Mr. Martin, can you. You know, you did that thing on, on. On Strawberry Fields Forever. You know, it comes to the end of the song and then it fades out, man, it's so cool, man.

It's the coolest thing I ever heard, man. I mean, whoa. How'd you figure that out? And then you brought it back up. I mean, whoa. Nobody ever thought about that. George, George looked at me, goes, you want to know the truth? He goes, oh, yeah, man. I thought he was going to pull out a pen and paper and write this thing down. He said, well, John hit a bad note and I'd written this real.

Had this really good ending for the song and I didn't want to lose it. So the only way to get around the bad note was to fade the song out, bring it back up. The guy stood there, he was devastated because he expected some big profound, you know, whatever. But you think about the Beatles, their first album, and it's during George's wife Judy, who's. Was a secretary when he first took his job. The secretary at the record label, she said she. Her favorite Beatle album was the first Meet the Beatles or Introducing the Beatles Basis, a British or American edition. And I.

And she said, because it's a live record, they recorded the songs live. They didn't have parts, they didn't record, like the bass and then the guitar and the drums. They didn't record vocals and then mix them all together. You couldn't in those days.

Yeah.

And I remember we talking about sergeant Pepper. And of course, sergeant Pepper often is referred to as the greatest rock album of all time, which is sort of a silly idea, but that's fine. Anyway, George would disagree with that. He doesn't even think it's the best Beatle record. I can tell you what that is in a second.

Oh, what does he think is the best?

Abbey Road.

Abbey Road, okay. Every Beatle fan has got a different,

different one in terms of it's the best production, it's the best performances that they gave. And the songwriting was impeccable. By far the best cover and a great. So I. George, you know, George said, you know, we did sergeant Pepper on four tracks. Only had four tracks to work with. And I said. I said, you know, George, if you could do it today and you could have infinite number of tracks, which you can essentially now, hundreds if you wanted to, would you do it? He said, of course.

I mean, you would do it because you have that ability. He said. But honestly, he said, I think part of what makes the album so good is because we did it on four track. And I said, what do you mean by that? And he said, because there's a certain discipline that's required. You know, there's this. You have to stay focused in a different kind of way. You can't screw it up or just do a sloppy thing and then go fix it in the mix or something like that. You had to do it right? You had to nail it, and you had to lay it out and to figure out what you're doing musically.

So in many ways, it was much more. The approach was much more classical than we think of, certainly, than pop music is today. So there's a few Beatles stories for you. You can run with them.

Well. Well, I'm playing all the music in my head right now, Sergeant.

Yeah, me too.

Abbey Road, you know, in my life,

I was playing the whole thing while he's talking.

So, each of you ladies, what's your favorite Beatles song? Oh, did you have one or album?

I like one of them, but the whole of Abbey Road.

Yeah, that's not my favorite, but I like the earlier ones that really grabbed me emotionally when I was very young. So that would be like. And I love her if I Fell. The Hard Days Night album is probably my favorite because it went with the movie, and I went crazy for the movie.

I saw that movie. When I was five years old, my mother took me down to the theater in Bethlehem, New Hampshire. We were On a vacation and.

Oh, I saw it on a vacation too. My parents dropped me off at the theater.

Yeah, Huge, huge sensation. So it was like, we gotta go see it. My parents weren't too keen on it particularly, but they thought we kids might. And I was the youngest of three and I remember sitting there watching A Hard Day's Night and I literally fell in love. You know, the concert at the end. I thought I'd never heard anything like that. I had never. I just was like.

I just. It transformed me. That's what music does.

It certainly does.

It does.

And, you know, I was at the very first performance of the Beatles at the Hollywood bowl and I. Oh, my gosh. And I sat in the last row of the Hollywood Bowl. You couldn't reach.

I want you to know I'm reaching out and touching you now. Okay. So I just, you know. Wow.

Yeah, I got to see them stock for me. I got to see them on in 1965 and in 1966 at Dodger Stadium.

I have to say that being in the last row and they had no big screens there at all. So all you heard was all the girls screaming. And they were probably ant sized for me.

You were there. You were there.

And I was in the second to the last live performance they ever did as a band, which was Dodger Stadium in 1966, the last one being San Francisco the next day. And except if you count. If you don't count, Let It Be, the Rooftop thing. Yeah, that was the last of their tour. That was the last of their tour.

Yeah.

But there, you know, Phil, Phil, Phil, what's his name? Who. Who was the. Is credited with a producer on Let It Be. George did all the sessions. Then he walked out on it because they were. They were too caught up in their own man. And they were, you know, we need 62 takes of let It Be. He's just.

This is ridiculous, you guys. You don't get in the first two or three takes. You got to move on. So he's not actually credit his producer on that, but he was the producer. The other mistake that people make in history is that they talk about Let It Be as the last album. It's not last album. The last recordings they did were Abbey Road. Right? Let It Be.

The sessions and Let It Be were so disastrous that they did. They shelved it. They shelved all the tapes. And after. After the Beatles broke up, Alan Klein, who was a sort of a slimy manager guy, got a hold of the tapes and they put them together and released it. And that's how that and the Beatles had nothing to do with what they put together. And. And Paul was furious about songs like the Long and Winding Road.

He didn't want all those strings on there.

So I know he hated that. Phil Spector put that on there.

Yeah. There's so much, as George said, there's so much deep, interesting stuff about the truth about the Beatles, but everybody perpetuates the myth.

Well, you've also worked with John Denver, so. Including the historic wildlife concert that raised millions for conservation efforts. So tell us a little bit about that experience and what made it so meaningful.

John. John was a very remarkable human being. He was sort of over. Over. Would you say overexposed in this with a certain kind of marketing campaign that make him sort of thank God I'm a country boy kind of a guy. And he did have roots, but his roots were not in country music. They were in folk music. And he came up like the Beatles.

He spent years and years and years toiling on his craft and learning his craft. He was extremely smart guy, very charismatic. So if you're standing in a room, a gymnasium filled with 300 people, and he walked to the room, everybody would turn around. He just had that magnetism.

Yeah.

My late husband, Ken Cragan, partially managed him for a very short time.

And I know Ken. I met Ken. I spent time with Ken. Oh, my God. He wrote a book called Life as a Contact Sport.

Right?

Yeah, it's right here on my bookshelf.

There you go. I know Ken.

Oh, yeah. We were married for 43 years.

Yeah.

Oh, fantastic. He was a wonderful guy. I mean, I think he was a wonderful guy. And. And he was great with me. And I did the wildlife concert and. And he and I sat down together in his office and on off of Sunset, and he wanted me to do the same thing with Kenny Rogers at the time. And we had some good conversation.

We're going to move that forward. And one thing led to another and we both got busy, but wow. Yeah. Kenny Craigen, he loves. Cool. He was the real deal. He was.

Yeah, he was the real deal.

We are the World in the world today.

And were you still in LA when he did We Are the World and put that together and stuff?

I remember he did We Are the World and I was not there.

You'd already moved away.

Yeah, I was. I was actually in.

Well, it's a very small world because going into this podcast, we didn't know that.

Wow, that's awesome. So that's great. John. John's manager, you'll love this. You'll know this guy too. John.

Jerry Weintraub.

Yeah. And he was a. He was.

Because Ken worked briefly for Jerry Weintraub and during that time handled John Denver and John Davidson.

He survived Jerry Weintraub, is what you have to say.

I guess that is.

It was his career to John Denver because, you know, John put him on the map.

Yes.

And. But John. Getting back to John. John was profoundly gifted at communicating. So if you went into a John Denver concert in Madison Square Garden and he was singing and you thought you were. You were absolutely convinced he was singing just to you, and he'd be just. I mean, how many people could be on a stage by themselves with an acoustic guitar and. And hold an audience of 60, 000 people? I mean, it was astonishing.

And I saw him do a concert, and it changed my life. I had no.

He has such a beautiful tenor voice.

Oh, yeah, gorgeous.

I mean, I. I had gorgeous. My. My late husband did a TV commercial with him for the. Was for the forests and for the. For, you know, conservation. And I went up to Colorado on his AT and went to his home, which had a gorgeous view of.

Oh, yes. I spent a lot of time there. Yeah, it's. It's absolutely stunning.

Stand.

You stand in front. You look at his living room and you understand Rocky Mountain High.

Yeah. Yeah.

It wasn't a big deal for him to write that, given that Right. Right there. And yeah, he's. He was one of my very best friends in the world, and he was

so nice and died so early. So wrong.

Right. We spent a lot of time together and he. He. His songs are aspirational. A lot of his songs are. You know, they're not all merry sunshine. People tend to think they're light. They're not light.

They're very deep, actually. A lot of pathos. And there were songs about things he hoped in the world, songs that he hoped for himself and love, that he aspired for. He didn't always have. And. And he said to me one day, he said, you know, I come out of the studio, you know, who've made a bad album when you're happy? I said, what do you mean, happy? Happy music artists can't make good albums. It requires pain, you know, if. You know.

And I think about some of the best albums that Paul McCartney did, he's really like Flaming Pie being one. The one that came after when Linda died and she was. She had cancer. Those albums are so deep. Best stuff he did. People don't realize. And John Was. I mean what a songwriter.

I mean co wrote Take Me Home, Country Roads. You think of leaving on a jet, plant me, the list goes on.

I mean I remember hearing the first, the first time I ever heard him was I'm Leaving on a Jet Plane. And it was one of those songs where you think who sang that, right? He became a huge star after that because I guess half the world thought the same thing.

Who.

Right. It was a first.

It was a huge can also managed Ken also managed Bill and Taffy Danoff who wrote with co writers.

Yeah. Country Roads, the two of them did with John and then when John made it started his own record label called Winstar. He, he. His first, first, his first signing was his old buddy Bill Danoff. Bill and Taffy, they carded this band called Afternoon Delight and wrote this grotesque

song, Starland Vocal Band.

Yeah, they became a number one hit song and it was a smash. Believe it or not. It's still. The song blows my mind. It's amazing. Weird. Anyway, but when you look at this, I like it when you listen, you listen to the. Well, the words leave something to be desired.

But the, the music, the harmony harmonies

that they did, they were great. They were fabulous.

It's off the charts. It's extraordinary.

And they sang on a lot of John's albums, didn't they?

Oh yeah, they did Social.

He.

He wrote a couple songs for John later in his career and gave them to John that were quite, quite remarkable. But anyway, so John was a very special human being. Very unusual and he was working in an industry that was very, very. You know, the music industry is a very cynical business and it has no sense of humor at all. And John, if I were to give. Describe John in one word I'd say guileless. The guy was, he was totally, totally authentic. And it didn't mean he couldn't get angry, didn't mean he wasn't a human being, but he, he was real and he was never put, he never put on sort of, you know, manure mannerisms that way.

And you know, he studied with the great people and learned from the great people going back to Pete Seeger and before that. So it was the deal. And as you say, it was a, a real, real loss. We did the wildlife concert and it was the first time in television history where a single solo artist had ever been done a two hour show without a guest. Because the, the network said to me, because I was the one had to do the battles, said you can't do that. Nobody can sustain that and we need Guests and they kept saying, oh, let's get that. All kinds of Whitney Houston they suggested at one point and, and I kept saying, no, I know I've seen this guy perform. He can do it and we can't.

It was funny because, you know, John had been out of the limelight for a while. Basically we went into, into Sony studios in New York and it's where they did all the unplugs. And it's a. It was a unique studio. It's condos now, but it was because they could do television and you could do music at the same time. Two totally different things. In fact, the double CD we released is. They're different takes than the.

What's in the tv, in the. In the show, in film. And of course there was no wildlife concert. You don't do. You can't film it that way. We put it together in a. Through television. We cut it and edited into a single concert.

There's no concert. John sang for five and a half hours every day for three days for. In front of an audience. And then if he screwed up a song, we'd do it again. And the next day and we. He. It was unbelievable. So you listen to something like the film version of Sunshine on My Shoulders.

In that film, his voice, he's tired. He's been singing for four hours song. He's got Jim Horn on, on sex. And it's just, it's so much substance and richness and nutrition in it. But he. Oh God. You know, he had written this song about his ex wife and it was kissing you goodbye and, and you know, he has to keep the audience excited and going in between takes. So he starts to sing this song.

Classic John. A beautiful love song, you know. So another version of Annie's song perhaps, you know, just something really sweet. And he gets to the flying guitar comes down, he goes, get your tongue out of my mouth because I'm kissing you goodbye. That was the line of the song. We all burst out laughing because it was absolutely hysterical. And nobody expected that from John.

You've had, you've had a front row seat to some of the most extraordinary moment moments. Music history, all of entertainment. So looking back, Maxim, what experience most shaped the storyteller you are today and maybe the person you are?

Well, that's a very. I'm not sure I can. There's an answer to that. It's like asking somebody what their favorite food is. As I got your question, you know, what's your favorite movie? I don't know. Yeah, I do, but I'VE been very blessed to have been. Come from a family that was essentially a matriarchy. I was raised by very strong women.

And I'm so lucky for that because I think women. I have huge biases. I think women are just periodically just more interesting than men. You're more complex and more interesting. That may be my own bias. Gee, I wonder why. But anyway, I, I think that. So I came from that kind of a background.

I'm always been drawn to nature and the environment. I spent a lot of time in the wilderness. But if I were to say who's my greatest teacher, I would absolutely have to say my dog, Chemo. And he's. He's in the book. He's in my book. You think about the qualities in life that matter. Grace, courage, kindness, playfulness.

All the qualities in life that I most admire in other people. And I would, I most aspire to myself. He just carries on. He kissed, he carries it with him everywhere he goes. And I learned so much from him. My watching him and my, my, my current, my dog that I have now, Huckleberry Finn, is just amazing to me because again, we human beings operate from belief, not facts. And so we have all these beliefs, beliefs about ourselves as being superior. We're human beings, you know, we're more intelligent than they are.

All this, it's nonsense. It's nonsense. I mean, he'd have a better chance of surviving in the wilderness than I would. Our cat would beat us all. I mean, I think that, you know, it was E.O. wilson, the great biologist, who sort of coined the phrase sociobiology, as we know today, commented, and I have that comment of his in the book, quote, if all human beings disappeared tomorrow, nobody would notice and it wouldn't matter because we don't matter as human beings. But if all the mosquitoes and bugs and spiders and worms went extinct tomorrow, the entire ecosystem of this planet would collapse. It's a very, very, very profound sort of.

And simple recognition. But I think we as humans tend to don't operate with a lot of humility. And I think we tend, we, we think the world rotates around us. I'm, I'm absolutely convinced when I go into the woods that that mosquito that's on my arm or neck or, you know, he's, he's looking at me saying, I'm like, I'm the top guy. He turns to his wife and he says, honey steak for dinner tonight. I mean, he, you know, food source to them, you know, I mean, I mean, but we operate from a belief system that Says, no, we're this, we're that, and this is how it is. And we disconnected ourselves from the world. And I think it's.

I want to go back to your book for a second, because writing fiction is such a solitary process. I mean, unless your dog is right there helping you. But what was the most challenging aspect of creating. Creating this new novel? Saskat. And how did you overcome those obstacles?

Well, how many podcasts are we. Are we doing today?

A lot.

How did you overcome those obstacles?

Yeah, yeah. The.

The challenge to. There were a lot of challenges, but one of the big challenges is you have a creative impulse and something is coming through you that you want to express. Express, and you want to express it, but you can't do it in a vacuum. You have to bring craft to it. You have to do your homework. You have to structure it. So I did structure my book. I got to a point where I sat down, I thought, well, I sort of turned to.

I'm a big fan of Joseph Campbell, so. The Hero's Journey. I've always believed this. There's only one story. I don't care whether it's the wizard of Oz or Harry Potter or Jaws, it's the same story. Human beings have this weird thing in our brains. It's an archetype. We tell the same story over and over and over again, expressing it in infinite different ways.

And so I wanted to make sure that I adhered to the structure of the Hero's Journey. And I did that because I knew if I did, I'd be in on the right ball field. So, yeah, it is a very solitary thing. I think the most important thing that I learned in my process was don't talk about it, don't share it. You know, you go into cocktail conversations with people and say, oh, you know, you're writing a book. Yeah, I'm writing a book. I'm going to write a book. And I think, oh, my God, you have no idea what you're talking about.

On the other hand, it makes you sit down and work on it.

Right. But it's. It's. It's. And if I knew. I'm a person. I'm a person who doesn't know what he's doing most of the time. If I knew what I was doing when I start something, I would never do it.

Why would I? So I didn't have a lot of struggles with this book. It was a process of wonder.

Yeah.

You said you got a download and

you had to give it time and space and allowed stuff to come through and it's not. And the key is you cannot wait for inspiration and then go. It's the going that causes the inspiration. Yeah, it's the process. Inspiration. So the thing is, I'd be writing something and I'd be very excited, but I think I'm going to go from A to B in terms of what I want to get to in a chapter or a moment or in a scene or whatever I'm writing. And I finished writing and I'd realized that I taken a left or right hand turn partway through my writing and I ended up somewhere completely unanticipated. And I think a lot of bad writers don't allow that to happen.

They don't. They don't. Aren't willing to go with it. They feel like they have to control the creative process. You can't control the creative process. Ultimately all you can do is capture it. And it's, it's. John used to say this about his songs.

He never felt like his songs were his. He felt they were coming through him. He was a vessel for something else. And we're not going to get into that, mind you.

But do you meditate before you write? Do you sit and quiet yourself?

No, but I have meditated in times in my life and I do periodically. But I think that to a large extent, I said how I started this book, you need space. You have to have space. And we live in a world that's so focused on outcomes, Outcome, outcome, outcome, outcome, outcome. And do this. Go here, get this done. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I used to say to my mother, I said, mom, you're just rushing to your death.

Stop. Enjoy the roses. Smell. What's that expression? Smell the roses. You have to create space. And that's why I think for me, the journey started when I was in Maine, when I had all of the space that I'd never had in my life. I had a busy life and all of a sudden I had some big chunk of space. And all the.

Everything that. All my life's experiences and everything else that happened just suddenly started to come through. It was very. It was. It's a magical thing. But I think there's certain things Bob Dylan said, you know, when he's writing a song, never share the song until it's done. Because it's a very delicate, intimate space that you as the creator are having with your higher power. However you want to describe it.

Yeah, yeah. Well, let's talk about AI Artificial intelligence. It's changing everything in every creative field from movie making Publishing, writing.

It's not changing. It's not changing it at all. It's killing it. I'll say this. I'll say it as simply as I can. The creative process is not compatible with AI And I explain it to you very, very simply. AI is a machine, for starters, okay? It's not human. We are analog creatures.

We experience the world in life. There's no such thing as digital music. There's nothing that's digital about it. It has to be translated back in analog for us to even experience empathy. See, well, it just. It doesn't even exist. We can't experience the world except through the analog. Our brains can't process.

So. But AI is outcome driven. Holy. Plug me in and I will give you an outcome. Right? And. Oh, isn't that. It's. It's a.

It's. It's makes fentanyl look like aspirin. And it's wonderful and it's addicting and it can do wonderful, great things. Don't get me wrong. But in terms of the creative world and the creative process, it's a death knell, because the value of creating is not outcome for the artist, it's the process itself. If. If I didn't write this book for a particular. It got to number one on Amazon.

It got to number one on. On Barnes and Noble. That's terrific. Great. It's a pat on the back. But that's not why I did it. Why would you do that? I mean, how formed an ego do you have? I. I just love the process.

Nobody. Nobody.

Yeah.

Bought it or sold it. Only three people read it. I still. I couldn't. I would have done it anyway. AI takes that away. It takes the process away. So, process.

You have no creativity.

And getting back to your book. Is there a distinction between Sasquatch and Bigfoot?

Ah.

Is it culturally, historically? What?

Yeah, I mean, Bigfoot is a pop culture phenomenon. And the word itself came about about 1958. Prior to that, it didn't exist. There was no such thing as Bigfoot. And it was a term that was coined by a newspaper man in the Pacific Northwest for an article trying to get, you know, get some readership and a. No, nothing, little teeny local in the middle of nowhere newspaper. And for whatever reason, the wires picked it up and it went around the world. And all of a sudden everyone in the world knows Bigfoot.

And. And in terms of what it is, it's. It's really a teddy bear to a bear. So if you have a bear, that's a real Bear. We love teddy bears. Everybody loves teddy bears. Who doesn't love teddy bears? You give teddy bears for our children, grandchildren, you're not going to give them a real bear, whether there's a bear cub or not. So Sasquatch is the bear, but we don't like the bear.

The bear scares us. And, you know, we don't want to know about the bear, but we love the teddy bear. So we turn Bigfoot into Harry and the Hendersons. We turn Bigfoot into on our mugs and our T shirts and on surfboards and you know, it's just insane. I mean, you can go to PBS magazine or their website and they've got Bigfoot mugs. What's the connection? I don't get it. But we just love it. And so that's the difference.

One is a pop culture, human created phenom where we've taken something, we do this all the time with animals and things like that. Look at the whole stuffed animal industry. And we turn it into something that we find acceptable and something that works for us and that we can be comforted by. But that's not the basis in reality. For example, in my book, I talk about the. One of the first times my lead character sees a grizzly bear in the wilderness in the distance and the person she's with turns to her and says, you know, you not, not quite the same thing that you see at the zoo or, or that you've already read about or seen in the movies or in documentaries. She said, no, it looks so small because it's a long way off. He says it is, it's inconsequential, it's small.

The grizzly bear in his own environment is lucky to survive. And yet we think it's a monster. And we think it's this terrible thing, you know, we think wolves kill people and attack people. Human beings kill more wolves every day than wolves have ever killed any human being. There's almost no proven record of wolves killing people. And yet we are absolutely convinced that they're the menace. They show up in our movies, they show up everywhere. There are, you know, a straw dog.

And this is how we operate as human beings. We operate from belief and they're nonsense. A lot of our beliefs are completely nonsense. And they lead us down a path that gives us permission to destroy the world around us and to destroy each other and to. And there's no legitimate factual need or basis for it, but it's how we operate and it's our problem in the world.

So, so Maxim, what advice do you give late boomers who may be considering writing their next. Writing a book or memoir? What advice do you give for people who are in their senior years? As far as. What do you offer them? As far as advice?

I think two choices. I always say that musicians. People come to me often. I'm asked to counsel younger people, whatever, and they say, you know, oh, I want to, you know, be a. Go into the music business. I want to be an actor or something. I'm saying, can you do anything else? Do you. Do you have any.

Any other skills whatsoever? Yeah, so I'm gonna go do that. Oh, no.

Hard.

Because the problem is, if. If it's a choice, then it's a false promise. Real creative people, creative artists, do it because they can't help themselves. They don't do it out of choice. If you want to do a memoir for yourself and for your family, you just go for it. I mean, it's like singing in the shower. I'm a great singer in the shower. I really rock out.

But that's where it belongs, in the shower. I think. I think that if someone were to ask me, what do I think is the greatest source of my success is not the right word. But the greatest source of my ability to navigate the world effectively, as I do occasionally, is curiosity. I think my greatest added value, my edge, comes from having curiosity. You need to be curious about the world. People say to me, ask me, young writer, well, I'm stuck. I'm stuck.

I. I can't think of, you know, I'm stuck in my creative process. I don't know how to go. And I said, then you're not alive. There's no such thing as being stuck. You can't be stuck. That means you're not connecting to anything. I said, go write about the leaf on your driveway.

Go right about. While you're stuck, whatever those moments happen is evidence you're not connecting to the world. And the best way to connect to the world is to get involved in something more important than you. And what's the best way to do that? Be curious about something other than yourself.

So what's going to be next for

you to say to me? You know, you remember, you guys remember this? In the 70s, the whole thing was the me generation. Remember that? Oh, yeah, generation. My grandmother hated it. She's a very accomplished woman, and she said to me, max, if you want to know something about yourself, if you want to learn about who you are and what you're all about, get yourself involved in someone. And something more important Than you. That's how you.

Absolutely. That's all you will find.

Find yourself.

And Maxim. What's next for you? Additional books. What do you got?

I was gonna say a nap, but. Oh, good. Thank you. Walk with my dog. I'm working on another sequel to this book. It's. I have a title for it already. It's.

The working title now is called in the Raven's Shadow. And. But I'm mostly focus right now on trying to translate this book into a streaming TV series. Oh, good. Want to do that? Well, there's a couple reasons, to be honest with you. You know, all the royalties I'll ever get from this book, I'll be enough money to feed my dog for a year, if I'm lucky. I mean, publishing industries is. Is tragically, you know, dying very fast.

The. But most important, importantly, why do I want to do this? I think the book has something to say. I think there's some nutrition in it, and I want to reach younger people. And how do you do that? Well, young people today, only one in five Americans read books anymore. This horrifying truth still 40, 40, 50 billion people. But I think that most young people today consume the world visually. And so what's the best way to reach them? Reach them, you know, on. At their.

In their location, where they are. And so I think this book will translate well into a. Could translate well into some kind of a series. And that's what I'm trying to do. So I'm trying to penetrate Hollywood now, which is, you know, where's Kenny when I need him? You know, the Ken Craig no longer around. I. All my Rolodex is filling me. I'm dating myself.

But, you know, my. All my contacts are either deceased, long since retired. So I'm just another bozo on the bus trying to. Trying to figure it out. But I think that there's something here. It would provide some worthwhile.

You have a juicy starting point.

Jumping point. There you go.

Juicy.

I'm.

I'm honored, you guys. I'm honored you guys both went and sat and were at beetle concerts. That just blows my mind. And, you know, we're married to Kenny Cragan for over 40 years. That's. That's. Wow. I'm impressed.

For. For two reasons. But anyway, yeah, congratulations on that. Wow. So you. Then you lived up in Malibu. Is that where you lived?

No, Brentwood.

Brentwood. Okay.

Before that, we were Beverly Hills, a little farther east.

He told me he bought a. I bought a. One of those things you could look at. The stars with.

Oh, a telescope. Oh, I know. Because you're thinking of our ranch. We used to have a ranch in Paso Robles.

Okay.

And that we had an observatory. He was very into a space astronomy.

Yeah, Big time. We talked about that a lot. He was so passionate about. It was so great. That goes back to my point. Curiosity, huh?

You know, I mean, curious about the universe.

Absolutely.

Maxim, thank you so much for sharing your. Your life, your journey, and I mean, the fact that you, you, you are a legendary music individual and you've shared your collaborations from filmmaking and now writing this amazing book. So thank you for your imagination and your history and the mystery of curiosity. So thank you.

Yeah, we love hearing about people who continue to reinvent themselves and pursue new creative adventures, and you certainly embody that spirit. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you guys for having me. Now, you guys to go away, since you've been to two Beatle concerts, your lives are almost complete. The only thing left is for you to read my book. So there you go.

Absolutely. Read it. And for our audience, both the audio and YouTube audience, if you'd like to learn more about Maxim or read his book, Sasque, be sure to check out his website and follow his latest projects. And Maxim, what is your website for our audience?

Well, the website for the book is sasqethebook.com and you can find everything you want on there. And I'll say to you two women, and I thank you again for having me, is that what was very, very. The most important thing for me about my book was that the lead character be a woman and that she wouldn't be attached to a man. In other words, she wasn't a wife, she wasn't a sister, she wasn't a daughter. She was her own person and had her own story to tell. And that's a big part of my. That was. That was something conscious and something very, very important to me.

That sounds great. And to our listeners, if you enjoyed today's episode, please share it with one friend. That's one of the best ways to help new listeners discover. The Late Boomers podcast.

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Until next time, remember what we Late Boomers always say.

Yes. It's never too late to rethink what's possible.