Nelson Twins

Matthew Nelson was kind enough to speak at length to Pop Culture Classics about the diverse music he makes with his twin brother Gunnar, as well as the lustrous legacy of their father and grandparents.

POP CULTURE CLASSICS:
How did the concept for the new Christmas album take shape?

MATTHEW NELSON:
Gunnar and I had started negotiations with Universal, which wound up with our old catalogue, the old DGC/Geffen catalogue that we had hits with back in 1990. And it was a friend and kind of the head of the entire catalogue division -- a guy named Bruce Resnikoff [president/CEO of Universal Music Enterprises], we were kind of discussing what kind of projects we would like to jump into for our renewed relationship with Universal.

And we sent them a list of things that we'd thought about. And they right away pulled this up, "Oh, this is a great idea," because Universal is one of the last of the big labels now, one of the last of the 800-pound gorillas. So not only did they have our father's catalogue, that we work with them on, and they have our catalogue, but we went back into it and there was -- I'm not saying it was settled, because we handled it a different way -- but they had access to our grandfather's earlier stuff, too.

So we just kind of thought that there was one thing that our entire family could be represented on, through 80 to 100 years of music. And that would be this one. So that's really where it came up. The one thing Gunnar and I always thought, beyond the fact that we all love this time of year and the music and all that stuff, was that where Elvis and Ricky were the only artists to have number one rock 'n' roll albums in the 50s -- it was a singles world -- Elvis, of course, had seminal Christmas releases. And our dad had recorded a couple of songs. And Gunnar and I always thought, "Boy, I don't know why he missed that opportunity." But it was what it was. There were a couple of performances from "Ozzie and Harriet" that were notable and really cool.

And Gunnar and I were hanging around one summer in Nashville and thought, "You know, at a certain point a year, beyond the fact that we love being home with the family, nobody is really working at Christmas time in our business. And we thought it would be a really neat thing to be able to, once a year, if it's us, or grab some friends, go out and play some shows. That's really where it started with us, for our original double Christmas release [2015]. We had a Top 5 hit with a song called "This Christmas." We released it two years in a row. The second was with Carnie and Wendy Wilson.

So when we kind of talked about it, this album was more sitting down with the brass at Universal and them saying, "Oh, wouldn't be cool, if we could do something where all you guys could participate." And it would be something that would be an evergreen thing. I think it came together really well, all things considered. I think it's really kind of fun.

PCC:
It's cool to have three versions of "Jingle Bells," one by Ozzie, another by Rick, and the third by you and Gunnar.

MATTHEW NELSON:
Yeah, [laughs], I know. It's like you were jingled out. But it's the only song that each of us released. So I think that was an important thing, at least for the family to have, even though it's the same song, to basically represent different eras. And I think it worked out pretty cool.

PCC:
It's a beautiful track you guys did with the Wilson sisters. Did you find that you shared similar histories?

MATTHEW NELSON:
Oh, yeah. We've been friends with them forever. I mean, we had swim classes with them in L.A., when we were growing up. We love the girls and we've talked with them over the years, off and on. We had something in common, but where they released their first album pretty much to the Mercedes and nice wine crowd, we kind of went after more of the heavy pop/rock crowd. It was a different thing. But we all had number one records on the pop charts. And that was pretty neat.

And we stayed in touch through the years. Carnie and Gunnar are super close. The difference between us is, Gunnar and I grew up playing clubs and wanted to be musicians since we were like six. And they kind of came at it a little bit later. It was like, "Hey, let's put this kind of new Mamas and Papas thing together." Charles Koppelman kind of came up with the idea for that thing. And it worked really well. They sold a lot of records. And they're just really neat people.

So there are the Wilsons and, of course, we're friends with the Zappas, Moon and Dweezil. Gunnar and I wrote a hit song with Dweezil that was on "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" soundtrack ["Two Heads Are Better Than One"]. I think what we all had in common was, we loved our parents, we loved being around creative people. We had to make up for the lost time, when they were all on the road, as they were a lot. So we had a lot in common. Not that many people can, to that degree, identify. But they did. And of course, we also had a lot of people that were sons and daughters of, who really didn't keep it together very well -- you know, the cautionary tales.

What happened was, we released "This Christmas" with our co-writer Alyssa Bonagura, who has a beautiful, lovely voice. And it hit the Top 5 on the holiday chart, which was tough. We were the only independent to do it. And the next year, we wanted to release it again. But you've got to understand, those charts are the Bing Crosbys, the Elvises, the Mariah Careys. The air is really thin. And that's why I think Gunnar and I really wanted to go for it. It was really one of those ultimate challenges.

So we thought we'd do something fun and sing with the girls, even if it's for one tune. And it took a while to kind of pin them down, to be honest with you. They're busy. They've got families and stuff. And they don't do a whole lot of shows anymore. They'll do a corporate or a big party or something like that, but only do a few of them a year.

Gunnar and I flew out and worked with Carnie and sent the stuff up to Wendy in Washington state. We released it and thought the natural thing would be to do a video. And we filmed something at their mom Marilyn's house. A few people saw it. It wasn't really serviced, the video part of it. But you can find it on YouTube. And it was a really, really fun thing to do. Love the girls. I have fantasies of us being the new Mama and the Papas and at least part of our careers to go out and do a residency somewhere. It'd be great. They're a class act.

PCC:
You mentioned knowing what direction you wanted to take in life by the time you were six. So do you think it was really in the DNA? Or was it the environment, being around your dad and his friends, watching them making music all the time?

MATTHEW NELSON:
I think it's a little bit of both, to be honest with you. I mean, there's arguments both ways, obviously. It's funny, we're like a science experiment. But yeah, our dad rehearsed the Stone Canyon Band in our nursery, literally pushed our cribs aside, when he put that band together. We were born in '67. So we grew up with people in and out of the house all the time. We had no idea that they were famous.

The guy with the crazy hair, the homeless guy, turned out to be Bob Dylan, for instance. The beautiful chick that knocked on the door, she was my first princess crush, was Linda Ronstadt. That kind of stuff happened. Mama Cass was our babysitter. So it was just kind of a normal thing. We didn't really know about it, but if you look back and you think, there were all these creative people around and there's music just flying everywhere.

And we grew up kind of hippie kids. As the whole Southern California country-rock thing was exploding and our dad's resurgence with that -- where it wasn't about his celebrity; it was about him reinventing himself as a songwriter and as a bandmate -- that was imprinted on us hugely. I think the first time I connected with what he did for a living, it was really not about money, it was about making people happy.

He brought us on a gig run. It was like a working vacation, really, like a Hawaii thing. We were really little. Might have been two-and-a-half, maybe three. And it was a ballroom. I remember having fun in those red, circular booths. And then some music started playing and the curtains opened and lights started flashing. And I looked up there, saying, "It looks like pop up there." It was pop! And everybody was smiling and clapping. And the connection of smiling and clapping and happy faces and him singing and happiness and all this stuff, it was like, "Well, that's it." That was just kind of it.

So Gunnar and I, for a while, we'd play with pots and pans or dad's instruments, until they finally relented and gave us some used instruments from a pawn shop, when we were six, for Christmas presents. Gunnar got a drum set and I got a little Fender Musicmaster bass, a little short, scaled-downsized student bass. And Gunnar and I basically learned how to play to records.

We just went out to the barn. It was a ways from the house. We had a little place in L.A., believe it or not, in Studio City, that had a hayloft and an old barn. They thought, "Well, if we get them out over the horse muck and stuff like that, they'll give up on it." But we were there all the time. We just never quit. We had so much fun. Other kids were blowing up mailboxes and we were starting to write songs and stuff like that.

We started playing clubs, when we were 12, recorded our first song at 12. And it was just kind of something that we always wanted to do. I guess you can look at it this way -- it's not truly exceptional in the sense that, if you came from the Manning family [in football]... it was just around all the time. So it's just kind of what the family did. Or the Andrettis [in auto racing].

We had proof, I think, looking back on it, that the impossible was possible. And trust me, Gunnar and I had a lot of friends that we grew up with who said, "Oh, you're never going to do this. You're never going to be big like your dad or your grandparents. Give it up." And that just made us work harder.

We just kind of had that with us. And we were fortunate that we had the right people at the right times in our lives to impart to us the importance of being able to write a hit song. I think that's it. It all comes down to having a great song.

PCC:
Were you able to absorb anything from watching your father write over the years, either in terms of technique or mindset?

MATTHEW NELSON:
Well, we grew up with that whole phase of the Stone Canyon Band, where he had an acoustic guitar in his hand and he was encouraged to write for the first time in his life, because the primary part of his life as an artist, like Elvis, he had professional writers that wrote songs and he had to select them. It was honestly when he was considered washed-up and a has-been...

It was Dylan, who turned to him one day in the house, after listening to some records, saying, "Hey, Rick, now that the world considers you a washed-up, has-been loser and irrelevant, now that you have this obscurity, you've got this tremendous gift of being able to do nothing wrong, because nobody's expecting anything from you. Why don't you try writing?"

And it turned out he was up for the challenge at the right time. He had already retired, so it was like, "I'm going to come back with a band and write my own things." And I think, in his case, it was pretty miraculous, in the sense that it was a former teen idol that people had to really take a different look at, through music, culminating in "Garden Party," which was a great moment for him, playing an oldies show, being booed off the stage and writing a song about the experience. And that became a massive comeback hit for him.

Gunnar and I have paralleled certain things in that sense. We were like the world's longest overnight success. We had been playing the clubs. Everybody kind of lumped us into that hair band thing, because we had long hair. It made sense. But we were kind of like heavy folkies. We were like a heavy version of The Hollies. We grew up with that Southern California harmony kind of thing. And acoustic guitars were kind of the cornerstone of what we did and we built everything around it.

Of course image was important. But Gunnar and I had spent years at places like Madame Wong's West in Chinatown and Music Machine [L.A. clubs] and all that stuff, playing with all the new-wavers and punkers. And there was a big resurgence of rockabilly in the late 70s, early 80s. Los Angeles was a hotbed for stuff like that. And we were playing in these places where we were actually too young to hang out in. They had to escort us in and... that's a whole other story. We got that law passed that we could play and then we had to get the hell out of there.

It was kind of a career in reverse. We learned how to work an audience and be professional at a very young age and then scrapped everything and learned how to write songs. And that's really when we broke. I think we were more prepared than most, because we kind of were guilty until proven innocent. And we knew that. That's just our lives. We learned the hard way that no one was going to give us any A-material to cover. We had to learn to do it ourselves.

And so our dad -- back to your original question -- when we started playing and he realized we were taking it seriously, and we were wanting to record and play out, he really encouraged us. He just kind of left us with, "Hey guys, if you're going to do this, learn how to write." He said, "I would give away all of my number one hits from the first part of my career, for songs like "Garden Party," that almost made it to number one, but were a part of me. And you'll understand, if you do it, what I'm talking about." And he was so right.

The songs were not great in the beginning, like anybody that's learning. But we stuck with it and we learned as we went and got a chance to collaborate with people who knew what they were doing. I wish I could say that we collaborated with our father, but we didn't. He was working too hard, to be honest with you.

Towards the end there, he was gone like 300 days a year. But we were extremely close with him. We knew him really well. And his life was in the songs that he wrote. And then later on, in the songs that he just played. He just wanted to make sure he connected with an audience.

And Gunnar and I were lucky that way, too. We had each other. There was a lot about our father, especially growing up famous like he did... When he heard songs like "Lonesome Town," he didn't write it, but that was real to him. He never knew who was in his life for the right reasons. He wasn't a melancholy guy, but he had a streak of it. He was the sweetest guy we ever met.

But Gunnar and I having each other, and kind of complementing each other, because as similar as we are, we're different, looking back on it, I think, it really was an unstoppable tour de force. People couldn't take us both out.

PCC:
And so your dad was supportive of your musical ambitions?

MATTHEW NELSON:
Oh, yeah. Some would say, "Well, yeah, of course he was." He told us he was. I didn't get a chance to actually play with him, but we did open for him a few times. He kind of surprised us with, "Hey guys, I'm glad that you're here. You're opening the show" -- those kinds of things. His manager told us he would always talk about us on the road and playing music and getting to know each other that way.

Right before we lost him, Gunnar and I sold out our first club in L.A., at what's now the Viper Room. A tiny little club, but it was a big deal for us, because like, "Wow, people are there to see us. And we're headlining the whole night" and the whole thing. We were living with our dad at the time. When our parents divorced, in the late 70s, early 80s, we had to live with our mom. And we kind of became pawns in that whole thing. And on our 18th birthday, we moved in with him. We took the upstairs; he took the downstairs. For whatever reason, he was off the road for about three solid months. And it was about a week before the accident happened.

And Gunnar and I were playing that club, the Viper Room. We told him that we had to go and do this show. He said, "Okay, cool." He never said he was going. And he surprised us. He was one of those guys, he kind of stuck out a little bit. It was hard for him to go out. We noticed halfway through the show the unmistakable dude, hangin', lifting up the back wall, with the aviator sunglasses on, with a smile from ear to ear. He stayed through the whole show to watch his kids blow the place up.

We went home and had one of those talks in the kitchen, in that house -- Who owns it now? I think Justin Timberlake owns what's there now. It's not the same house, but it's the property. Beautiful view of the San Fernando Valley.

Anyway, the sun was coming up over the valley. He said, "Boys, I want you guys to know that I love you guys." And this was after hours of talking about music and family and stuff. We said, "We love you, too, pop." We said that a lot; it was not a big deal.

He said, "No, i really want you to know that I love you guys and I respect you as my peers. I consider you in the club of what I do. I just want you to know that." And that's when the tears happened. We hugged it out. And we lost him about a week later. It was so neat to have that. It's one of the things that I hold onto, no matter how dark things get. I mean, I wish he was around. I really do. I miss him every day, especially now that I've got a little kid, a little boy. He would have been an awesome grandpa.

But here's what I do have -- I took my son skateboarding at an indoor skate park and they had a 50s channel on. And my kid, every time he hears anything that's remotely rockabilly or old 50s stuff, he asks if it's Grandpa Rick. And this time, I had no idea what it was, because it was one of those things where they play everybody, some sort of a satellite thing. In an hour, they played six Ricky Nelson cuts. And they were like obscure, really awesome rockabilly things.

And my kid -- his name is Ozzie, named after my grandpa -- how cool is it for Ozzie to be skateboarding, having the time of his life, and listening to his grandpa on the radio. What a cool thing. And I take those little things as little signs -- "Hey, I'm still here." You know? "And I'm proud of you." That kind of stuff.

To do this album now, all these years later, to think about that conversation, him giving us our first instruments, him coming to see us play in a little club in Hollywood, telling us what it was like when he was making his first records and Ozzie sitting in on him and making it up as they went along. All this kind of stuff, going way back to Ozzie's big band thing. It's definitely the family tradition.

And the through line, it's ironic -- everybody thought it was television. We've all had success, because we were telegenic. That's awesome. But the truth of it is, we just love music. It's taken us all over the world and it endures.

It's kind of like the movies my dad was in. Every once in a while, I'll see "Rio Bravo" come on television with John Wayne and Dean Martin, thinking, "Man, at the time, he had the number one song in the country, it was "Poor Little Fool," the number one TV show, about to have the number one picture -- it must have been really incredible, being Ricky Nelson in 1958.

That's cool and it comes back around and I get to see it. But what I thought was more incredible was, how he reinvented himself and kept himself going. He was only 45, when we lost him, which is incredible to me. I'm 55 now. And I still feel like all that stuff happened yesterday. i think it's because the music, every time I hear it, it stays fresh.

And pop's version of "Jingle Bells" and "The Christmas Song," they're just fantastic -- the voice, wow! It's just like there's this unbelievable, real velvet voice. And Ozzie -- people don't even know this -- he was quite the heartthrob in his day, back in the time when people would dress up with their significant other, save up all their money in the Depression, and go and see a big band take them to a different place, kind of pretend that the world was cool.

And I think -- not to get heavy -- that we're there again. That's the one thing about music -- when the world is looking darker and darker every day, you've got your songs. And you can visit with those memories and those people all over again.

PCC:
What do you most remember about your grandfather Ozzie?

MATTHEW NELSON:
Oz was a cartoonist. A lot of people don't know this. When he went to Rutgers, which was Ivy League at the time, he was on the football team and all that stuff. But he also did cartoons for their paper. And I remember that, come Christmas time, he would always hand-draw little cartoons of Santa Claus with little funny things. I kept all of them.

I just remember -- my dad had it, too; Harriet had it too -- I call it grace. Ozzie just had this thing. He wasn't by any means corny. He was just real. And sweet. And I just remember that, having nothing to do with the fact that he was America's dad or whatever, people just loved to be around him. He had that engaging thing. It didn't matter what you did, or what your status in life was or whatever. He took time for you. He talked with you. He wanted to know what you were interested in, that type of thing.

My dad was the same way, although he was a little more shy. Pop -- I call him "pop" -- pop was a little more uncomfortable with the fact that, honestly, women just fell apart when they saw him. He had this, I'm talking Elvis charisma. And not talking people that saw him on TV growing up. I'm talking friends of ours, that were 18, 19 years old, saw this middle-aged man hugging the Mister Coffee and they couldn't speak. He just had it.

And Ozzie, what always impressed me with Oz, is that he very quietly managed to do some pretty spectacular things in his life. Starting with his dad dying young, so when he was going to college, he wound up having to not only pay for his older brother's dental schooling, but he had a kid brother who was only like four, his brother Don. He had to pay for and raise that kid, while he went to Rutgers, went to law school, got an Ivy League law degree, coached high school football, played quarterback on the football team at his college, and did a big band gig at night. He studied on the train. He said he got an hour to two hours of sleep a night. To the time he died, he only got three or four hours of sleep a night. He wanted to fit so much in.

He ended up producing, writing, editing and directing all 435 episodes of the TV show. And what people don't know is, there were 485 episodes of the radio show, which was live and had a completely different script. And he wrote all of them. So the fact that he managed to do all of that stuff and what I really love about him, he never played the Hollywood game, to a fault. I think I would have done the same thing, looking back on it.

I read a book and he was asked to be in something called Skull & Bones at his school. And he turned it down. It was one of those secret society things. Apparently they keep an eye on you, to see if you're going to be somebody who's going to have influence or whatever. And he said, "That's okay. It just doesn't feel right to me. I don't want to be a part of that." Because he was a real humanitarian. He didn't feel like he was better than anybody else. He just felt like he was just living his life and trying to be a good guy. He still has the record for being the youngest Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts. He was 14 or something like that. And so he said no to the secret society and they kind of gave him an, "Are you sure?"

And it kind of makes you wonder -- there are 435 episodes of the show. Everybody grew up with it. It was amazingly successful. But he never was nominated for even one Emmy. Our dad, the same thing. It makes you question. He sold half a billion singles in his career. Never got a Grammy. How does that happen? It probably happens, if you upset some people or just don't play along with that whole thing.

Frankly, Gunnar and I, looking back on it, there were some times that I can honestly say, there might be a family thing, something that we've all done, which is embrace humanity and real people, people that they all say, "Oh, they're in the fly-over states. They don't matter." And those are our people. My wife's from Iowa. I feel more comfortable in Iowa than I do in L.A., where I was raised, always did. And I'm proud of that. I'm proud of the family doing that.

I'm also not saying that our family hasn't had challenges. Again, I mentioned our parents got divorced. And things haven't been incredibly harmonious within our generation of siblings and stuff like that, because people change and have different priorities. But one thing that has been a through line, we've all loved what we do. And I can genuinely say that everybody loves people, which is an amazing feat, having survived Hollywood.

Going back to the original question, you asked me what impressed me about my grandfather. I can genuinely say what impressed me about my grandfather is he very lovingly, but very firmly, did things his way... and did some exceptional stuff. He did things his way, without hurting other people.

PCC:
You mentioned the sibling relationships. Are you close with your sister Tracy and younger brother Sam?

MATTHEW NELSON:
Not as close as I can be. You know, they're all doing their things. Obviously I'm closer to my twin brother than anybody. We live in Franklin, Tennessee. I'm five minutes away from him. There was a point in time, where I was living in L.A. and he was living here for almost 18 years. That made it tough, because I only saw him really when we were working. I'd fly in, he'd fly in, and we'd spend a few days of working some shows. And then he'd go to his corner and I'd go to my corner.

And look, siblings are awesome. Identical twins are a whole different ball of wax, man. It's different. People don't know this, but Harriet's mother was a twin, an identical twin. They had a vaudeville act called Hazel and Hattie, the McNutt Sisters. They were kind of a big deal in vaudeville way back when. It was kind of the same thing. I talked with Harriet a little bit about that. She told me about her mom and her mom's sister. I thought it was a neat little thing.

But I wish I could say that we were the first in the family that were twins, that were successful. I can't say that. And they look a whole lot better in bloomers than we do.

PCC:
What was Harriet like?

MATTHEW NELSON:
She was great. Again, I always say, a class act. Grandma was the kind of person who would smoke Marlboro Reds and you wouldn't even know she was smoking. People knew her obviously from being Ozzie's sidekick, but if you ever saw the show, you realized that Harriet was in charge. Ozzie wasn't.

Ozzie bumbled his way through the shows. He was the guy that fell off the stairs. And they did it in a very sweet way. But you could really tell that Harriet held it together. Ozzie never talked down to her or instructed her. It was the opposite, kind of. But in a subtle way. And I thought that was really sweet.

But Harriet was around for Gunnar and my success. She'd come out and watch us shoot our videos, came to a couple of our big concerts. I always got a kick out of long-haired rockers hanging out talking to Harriet Nelson. It was surreal. And she loved it. And she even loved our long hair, too.

People don't know this, but Harriet was singing at the Cotton Club by the time she was 16. She was a bigger deal than Ozzie was, as a singer. He was smitten by her the first time, he was playing an engagement, it was a New Year's thing in Manhattan and the emcee had either not shown up or got sick and here's this 17-year-old, beautiful woman who volunteered and took over and emceed the entire night.

She sang a bunch of the songs in the show and tossed to the next act, because that's how they did it back then. And he just couldn't believe her poise, her ability and her voice, her beauty and all that. And he talked her into joining his band. At the time, she had more momentum than he did. And they started playing shows together and it was nothing but professional at first. And it took a long time for them to be okay with dating each other and falling in love.

Harriet at that time had a contract with RKO Pictures. She was making pictures with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and things like that. She had some obligations that she had to fulfill. And then got pregnant, had a baby and would up Ozzie was taking care of David in Manhattan while Harriet made pictures in Hollywood for the first year of their marriage. They had to make that work somehow.

I think that's why, after doing 15 years of road trips with the band and all that stuff, he was drawn to this idea of being able to stay in one place and try out this little thing called television, which Ozzie thought was a fad and would go away and he would go back to the band. He just didn't ever want to commit to anything that was going to keep them separate again like that.

I talked to Harriet about Oz. We lost him, when I was about 10. And again, for me, he was just my sweet grandpa. He was a great guy and funny, always playing his little tenor guitar. When he got ill, they kind of kept it from us. He died of cancer, but it took a little while. And we would write him cards and stuff like that. We missed him. Still miss him. But Harriet, we spent a lot of time with her. And she had a real subtle way of keeping us humble.

I remember Gunnar and I were making our second album finally and she had a little weekend spot in Laguna Beach since the 40s, the family property. They would go down after filming the television show and spend weekends down there, just to be away and connect as a family again.

Anyways, we were down with Harriet and I just remember that one conversation. It was about recording. She said, "Boys, why is it taking you so long to finish your second album? You've been in the studio for three months." And I did this whole, "Well, grandma, we have to overdub things. We have this track to do and da-da-da-da-da." And out of frustration, I just said, "When you and Oz would go in and record, how long did it take you guys to make an album?" And she said, "About three hours." And I said, "How many sides?" And she said, "Fourteen."

And I just realized in that one moment -- this was before Autotune and all that stuff. When we were recording, we were still cutting with razor blades on analog tape -- but the fact that here's my grandmother who would go in with an orchestra that our grandfather somehow managed to keep together on the road -- I had a hard time with five guys -- But we're talking like 15 people and they would go in and they would mic things up, they would get it to sound kind of right. And then they would spend three hours doing a take and that was the record. And I was thinking, "Now that's talent."

That's why I was so impressed with my dad, when he started out. They were limited by their technology. You had to be good. You couldn't not be good. You wouldn't succeed. That's just how it was. And I realized that I had a long ways to go. She didn't say anything snarky at me. It was just her way of teaching me a lesson -- just remember that it really comes down to the message that you have and to be undeniably good. And maintain your sense of humor. All that kind of stuff has really stuck with Gunnar and myself all these years. I think it's still important, now more than ever.

It's just that it's so much easier for people to record now. You can go down to Best Buy and buy a computer that has plug-ins that will make you sound like you can sing. I understand the value of that, but...

It's funny, right before I called you, I was cleaning out the studio and I found an Ozzie Nelson and Orchestra Greatest Hits: 1933 to 1937. I showed it to my son. And I love that music. So great. It makes me miss my grandma a lot. I was very close with her. So was Gunnar.

We did a People Magazine, back when that was a thing. And we did a cover of that. There was a great quote from her. She said, "They're my pride and joy," which I thought was really sweet.

But what most people don't know -- everybody thought they were made of money and they weren't. They were super frugal, because they went through the Depression. So they didn't buy anything on credit. They bought everything cash. If they couldn't afford it, they didn't have it. And they really didn't live an exorbitant life. They were hard workers. But they were very generous.

I remember after our father died, things got really tough for Gunnar and me. We weren't prepared for any of that. We had to struggle and figure out a way of surviving... and we did our best. The thing I'm happiest with, is one of those times spent with Harriet, it was just one those lucid moments, beyond the fact that she said, "I know I'm going to see your grandfather again. So when I pass away, don't be sad for me. I'm going to be with him again." And she was really plugged in. I really took that to heart.

She said, "Matthew, I want to let you to know that you and your brother are the only two people in the family who have never asked me for anything. Never asked me for money. And you were the only two who really needed to. And you didn't." And she said, "I want you to know I really respect you for that. I just want you to know that." And that meant everything to me, because we just never wanted to hit her up. Just couldn't do it.

So I've been really lucky, when you look back on it. I can't believe in this one interview, I'm just seeing how it all seemed ti come together -- the family history, the family intricacies, the emotions.

This time of year, I think that's why I hold onto it so much. It was the one time when all of that stuff stayed outside and everybody got along. I think you can say that it's that one time of year that, whatever you believe in, people tend to be kinder to each other. I think that's so important.

I think that's why I dig it. That's why I like singing these songs. I didn't write most of them. But I get it. They mean a lot to people. So I feel it, when I sing it. And I'm just glad that we can continue doing this. My eight-year-old kid was downstairs playing the piano. And he just loves it like me. He just loves music, all the time. He's a sweet kid. That's what I really love. I think that's the one through line.

My pop was the kindest guy you'd ever want to meet. Ozzie was the same way. Harriet was the same way. And Gunnar and I have tried to be the same way, too. We still meet people for hours after our shows. And it's because they mean a lot to us. We always get so much more out of them than they do out of us. And that was something that was passed on. Harriet used to say, "We're in the connection business. We're not in the entertainment business. We're in the connection business." And the family has connected with their audience... and will fight for their audience. You can't dismiss the people...

Gunnar and I are really staunch about that. We've tended to do shows, for a few years now, that really cater to an older demographic, just because we understand that it's really bigger than us. It's not an ego thing for us. It's a matter of connecting. So we're happy to be doing it.

And frankly, after the last couple of years, where we were all considered in our business dangerous, let alone non-essential... We always joke about it -- "We've always been non-essential." But dangerous? And now people are finally coming together again. I'll fight for that. That's a hill I'll die on. And if I can bring them together through music for 90 minutes, you know what? That's a really cool thing to be able to do

PCC:
Dangerous, as far as performing during the pandemic?

MATTHEW NELSON:
Yeah, it's like anybody that brought people together in a room was considered dangerous. And you couldn't do that. We had to shut everything down. It was interesting, what they chose to leave open and call "essential." To me, it seems like human beings need communion. They need to be together. They need to be able to talk. Especially when times are tough.

We joke about this, but it's true. We talked about something like the last couple of years happening, Gunnar and I did. We said the one thing that would just shut everything down immediately is this. And I'm like, "Damn it, Gunnar. You caused the pandemic." The reality is, the one chink in our success plan was that. And it happened.

But what really got to us was the fact that we truly felt that we had spent our entire life developing a skill that was going to be necessary for that exact moment. We're supposed to be the people who are playing the music as the ship is sinking into the icy waters. We're supposed to be those guys. And we're not allowed to do it. And that was far more than money or whatever. When people are afraid, we're supposed to do what we can to overcome that with them.

We did go out and do a few Christmas shows last year. But it wasn't a lot. And the thing that we saw, because we're touring musicians, was that everybody's protocol and everybody's attitudes were different, depending on where they live and what they watched on television, ironically. So right now, Gunnar and I joke and say we always play every show we do like it could be our last. One day it will be. But we keep in mind now that we're very fortunate to even be able to get to play.

PCC:
You mentioned how supportive your dad was of you performing. Did your mom also encourage you at all, as far as the music goes?

MATTHEW NELSON:
Not at all. Our mom was completely different. I mentioned that our parents got a divorce in the 70s. And they didn't have a great divorce. They didn't split up very well. And she said to Gunnar and me, straight to us, "You remind me of our father. And I want you to do anything but play music."

And that was driven home, when we had to live with her. That's the way it was in the 70s. What was he going to do? He had to travel to pay for child support and legal fees and stuff like that. So Gunnar and I lived with our mom. I can say it this way -- because I want to honor our mother -- my mother was beautiful and an extremely talented artist. But she didn't have the mommy gene. And she liked vodka. That's just how it was.

So Gunnar and I, our music, for us, was our heaven. It was where we escaped. It wasn't just, "we want to be successful," it was "this is our way out of the emotional ghetto that we live in." And so it was our joy. And our mother knew that. As I said, she was beautiful and artistic. And she was a narcissist, as well. So it was hard on us. And it made us fight harder.

The fact was, she did things like she made us move our equipment out of the house. Her big idea at the time was, "You're going to have to move it to your father's house." At the time, our mother lived on the west side of Los Angeles. Our father lived on Mulholland Drive, which was about 25 miles away. And we were 13, 14 years old and couldn't drive. So that was her way of getting us to quit music was, "If I move the gear our of here, they can't play." And so Gunnar and I went and got any job that we could and then we would pay kids who could drive at our high school to drive us to band practice. We weren't going to stop, but we knew we couldn't fight this lady.

When we turned 18, that day she said, "You either quit music or you move out of my house." And so we moved into our dad's house that day. That's just the way it was. It wasn't something that she hid. She had a disdain for everything that was the music business and the lifestyle.

We were trying explain to her -- we don't live that. The 70s are over. We don't live that kind of lifestyle. It's around us. I'm not saying we didn't grow up playing around it. But we had a really great not-good example. You know what I mean? We had a fantastic example of how not to be, because of the people we were around. And again, Gunnar and I, we had each other to kick each other's butts, if we ever got out of line. And we didn't. We were too driven.

I think there's some providence in there. I think God had something to do with it. But that was our reason why. There are a lot of sons and daughters of who don't really have that sense of, "I have to do this." And there's a difference between feeing "I want to do this" and "I have to do this." So Gun and I, that's how it was.

Gunnar and I, six years after we left our mom's house, we were playing at the Universal Amphitheater with our band Nelson. We sold it out. Sold out in five minutes, actually. It was ironically the last stage where we ever saw our father perform, right before we lost him.

So here we are, playing this show. The production office got a phone call saying my mom wanted tickets. It was a hot ticket. And Gunnar and I got really excited about it. The long and the short of it was, we were looking for her after the show. Everybody was looking out for her. And her housekeeper was there with her son. And I said, "Where's my mom?" And she said, "Oh, she got us tickets." I said, "She got you guys tickets?" She said, "Oh, yeah, she's not coming." And that kind of broke my heart.

And then we played the same venue six months later and got another call from production. I don't really get upset a lot, but I said, "If anybody gives her tickets this time, they're going to have to deal with me. And I'm saying no. If she wants a ticket, she can go to TicketMaster. I'm not going to do this again."

And somehow [chuckles], she was very convincing. My mom was that kind of lady. She convinced the production manager to not only give her tickets, but to give her seats where we could see her. The venue, it's not there anymore, but I think it used to hold 7,500 people. So it was another sold out show and she showed up with her new husband. We're still friends with him, to this day.

We played the show. Everybody went berserk. It was fantastic. We came out for our encore, which was just Gunnar and myself with two acoustic guitars. And it was a very quiet moment. And she made sure we were watching... and she stood up and walked out of the venue. And I thought she went backstage, that she just wanted to avoid the crowd or something like that. But no, she left.

And my sister Tracy called her and said, "Where did you go? The guys were looking for you." And she said, "Well, I left." "Why did you leave? Mom, they're doing great. And honestly they've done a lot. You could have said hi." And she said, "Look, I was married to their father. I'm not impressed." And that's just who she was.

Everybody has great memories with their parents... or not great memories. Mom was a tough lady. Looking back on it now, I'm not saying she was all bad, but I'm saying there were some moments that were tough ones. It's like Steven Tyler told me years ago -- "Put it in your bag of power and use it."

But I had the opposite, too. I had a twin brother that I grew up with. I had a father who was as sweet as she was tough. She dismantled him completely, when they got a divorce. And I just think she had some demons. And we lost her a couple of years ago. I think I had a couple of nice conversations and we had as good a relationship as we were going to have. It's just that it's tough to be an effective parent, when all you care about is you. And our mom was kind of like that. And that's kind of what her upbringing was. It was a completely different thing than the Nelson family was. It was a very competitive upbringing. It was a sports family. And I think that had a lot to do with it.

But she's a beautiful lady. And I pray for her. And I miss her. I just wish I could say I was closer to her and that I could figure her out. At this point, Gunnar and I laugh about it. If we didn't, we'd cry. I think everybody has those kind of people in their lives, that when you look back on, motivated them in a completely different way, because I guarantee you that Gunnar and I would not have been the same people we are or as healthy as we are, as successful as we are, if we didn't have the things happen to us that happened.

I had a friend of mine, a producer in New Jersey, he said, "You and Gunnar can make the most out of nothing, more than anybody I know." And I took it as a compliment. I went, "Man, thank you. That's awesome." He said, "I wasn't complimenting you." But to me it was. So again, it's all about perspective.

PCC:
Was it a pressure on your dad, a bit of a burden, the fact that the Nelsons were touted as "America's favorite family'" on the series and people expected them to be the All-American, idyllic family off-screen as well?

MATTHEW NELSON:
No, I don't think that part of it was. I think the burden on pop was that, frankly, the albatross that he hung around his neck was the fact that people generally, especially in the music industry, wrote him off as being a made-for-TV guy. That was his baggage. He was impossibly good-looking. That was just a fact.

But I think it was only after he had the huevos to go out there in a station wagon, after being the biggest celebrity on the planet, and start playing colleges where nobody had any idea about his past as a teen idol; It wasn't until he was just out there playing music, doing it that way, that he started getting respect from people, which is unfortunate. It's like being treated as guilty until proven innocent. But his big thing was establishing himself as a grown man that had something to say beyond, "Hi mom; hi pop; hi Rick; hi Dave."

What people don't understand -- I have a letter from ABC, it's from 1957 -- and it says, "Dear Mr. Nelson," This is to my grandfather, "Congratulations on the success of the show and on your young son Ricky and his musical success. We're very happy over here that he's done so well. However, we just wanted to let you know that there are rumors that he's deciding to quit the show to focus on music full time. If that does happen, we wish him success, but we will be canceling the show immediately. Sincerely, ABC."

And think about being 17 years old, wanting to pursue your endeavors, but knowing that they had sent you a letter saying that, if you do this, they're going to fire your mom, your dad, your brother and 30 people you grew up with for the last eight years. That was the kind of pressure he had. And that's a lot of pressure. So I think that he did really well.

If there was anything that I'm confused by, it's our grandfather Ozzie, as I mentioned, had multiple jobs, he did all this kind of stuff, went to college, did all of that stuff, and I think that he was overly protective of our dad. And I don't know what you could have done differently, because I'm sitting here talking, having no idea what it would have been like for our pop.

I mean, Gunnar and I got one year of people trying to rip your clothes off. We didn't have what our dad did for years and years and years of that type of success. But Oz protected him a lot, to the point where my dad had his own little circle of friends, and they were all good people, guys like Kent McCord ["Adam-12"] and Paul Gleason ["The Breakfast Club"], really awesome humans and talented guys. And he was really a sweet-hearted guy. It's just that stuff like learning how to write a check, like he didn't really have to know how to do that. He didn't really need to learn how to adult, so he never really did... until he was forced to, much later on.

That was an interesting thing -- the contrast. If I could have anything to talk to my grandfather about, it would have been -- because he was all Mr. Education -- but then he was like, "Ricky can't go to college. He's him. He'll never be able to study. He'll never be able to do that." I didn't understand that. But again, I wasn't around back then. And I'm not saying that would have been the right call. pop used to say he hated getting out of bed in the morning, because he had done it his whole life, going to the soundstage, having a 7 a.m. call. That means you're up at 5. Harriet was in the chair at like 4, for years. What a surreal thing.

I don't know if you've heard this, but they constructed an exact duplicate of their living room and their bedrooms on a soundstage at General Services. So they would leave the house -- and by the way, they used an exterior shot on the television show of their real home -- and they would drive, or sometimes Ozzie would run, down to General Services, about a mile down the road. They would leave their house, to go into their house. And then leave their house to go into their house. And they did that for 14 years and 435 episodes.

I think that's super surreal. And they had a morals clause in the contract for our dad, if he screwed up. And he did a couple of times, got into some fights, because frankly, every teenage boy in Hollywood wanted to beat him up, because it was street cred. And every one of their girlfriends wanted to date him.

He was hanging out, in the early days, with guys like Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran. They were his best friends. And they were like the original punk rockers. They treated him like a little brother. And there's all kinds of stories. He never started anything, but he had a philosophy -- hit hard, hit fast and run like hell. And one day somebody grabbed him -- he was on Sunset Boulevard, hanging out with his friends -- and this guy grabbed him and said, "Hey..." and pulled on his shoulder. My dad turned around and clocked him. And he had laid out an LAPD cop.

And by the time he got home five minutes later, Ozzie's in the driveway, serving coffee to all the guys from the LAPD who are out there, with their rollers going, waiting for Ricky to come home.

He couldn't do anything and get away from it. He was too famous. And they didn't have security guards. People knew where they lived. And they would stop by regularly, just knock on the door -- "Hey, is Ricky here?" That's just how it was.

So it's interesting to see all of that. And I think that's why, when I look back on it now, why he loved his music so much more -- I mean, he was a good actor. He either got nominated or he got a Golden Globe for his role as Colorado on "Rio Bravo." He was a fine actor. But he just loved music. There was something about it that just called him. And honestly, arguably, it is not the easier way of going, I'm here to tell you.

PCC:
The fact that he had all that attention and then, by the time he's creating some of his finest music, on albums like "Rudy The Fifth," nobody was really paying attention, he couldn't get the deserved exposure -- was that frustrating to him? Or did he just take satisfaction in having made great music?

MATTHEW NELSON:
Here's the thing -- you mentioned my favorite album that he ever did, which was "Rudy The Fifth." It is solid brilliance, from the opening note to the end. And funny, you're not alone and I'm not alone. Gunnar and I live in Nashville and I have a lost count of the number of top tier session and celebrity country musicians that cite that album as the reason they wanted to start playing music.

It's not "Garden Party." "Garden Party," that was like the dessert. But the main course was "Rudy The Fifth." And you just made me really think, I have to call Bruce Resnikoff and say we really have to do something to coincide that brilliant album with the display they just opened here at the Country Hall of Fame. He was like the pioneer. Chris Hillman said Rick Nelson was the first country-rocker with "Hello Mary Lou." That was the song. He said the whole thing happened after that.

But what I was saying was, my dad wasn't disturbed that a song didn't take off the way that it could have. He never acted like he missed the days of people running after the car and jumping on the hood, stuff like that. I mean, it still happened from time to time, which was weird. He had enough of that whole thing. And if he went to an airport, like when I flew with Mohammad Ali, it was the same thing -- just everybody was all over him. He had it. He had cultural significance on a level that was pretty awesome.

But when it really came down to him, to get back to your question, he was just such a normal guy, my pop was. Honestly, he was fine with a cheeseburger and his Martin in his lap... and his friends playing some music... and when he wasn't with my mom, or even when he was, a pretty girl around. He was very simple. And more importantly, again, he was so sweet. I hear so many stories from people, to this day, saying, "He took this much time with me; he did this; he did that."

We just lost him a couple years ago -- Benny Mardones, sang the song "Into the Night." It was a big hit [in 1980]. A monster number one song. Benny Mardones came up to Gunnar and myself years ago. We were at a party, like an industry thing. And I didn't recognize him. I knew the song. But he said, "Hi, my name's Benny. I'm a singer. I did a song called 'Into the Night.'" I said, "Oh, I love that song." He said, "I almost didn't become a singer. It was because of your dad that I did."

I thought, "Oh, it's because he watched 'Ozzie and Harriet.'" But he said "This has nothing to do with 'Ozzie and Harriet.' I was in Maryland, near Annapolis. I was walking down the street. I had my guitar. I'd been trying to make something of music. It was the 60s and the war and all this had been going on and I was really down and out. So I was quitting. And I saw your father. He was in a little cafe. He was having breakfast by himself." I said, "Really? By himself?" He usually didn't do that. He said, "He had his Stone Canyon Band out. This was in 1968 or 1969." I remember he played the Cellar Door, some folkie club, around that time.

He said, "I walked up to him and I asked him for his autograph. He saw me with my guitar and he said, 'Oh, you play guitar?' He said, 'Are you hungry? You want to sit down?' I said, 'Sure.' So he sat down. Your dad bought me breakfast and he had a conversation with me, some stranger. I told him I was going to quit music. He said, 'You can't. Don't quit. Don't ever quit.' He said, 'Do you write?' I said, 'Yeah, I write.' 'Good. Keep writing. One day you're going to have that one song. You just need one. But you can't quit.'"

He said they shook hands and said goodbye and he took that to heart. He said it was that one moment and he didn't quit. And he said, "Ten years later, I had the number one song in the country. And I owe that to your father." And I just think about those moments that people have shared with me. There was no reason for him to do that for Benny, but that was my pop. That was the side of him that nobody knew. And pop didn't tell anyone that story. I had to hear that from Benny. And I thought, "What a cool thing."

I've heard stories about him pulling kids that were getting squished in the crush, when he was playing shows and putting them on stage and taking drinks to them through the whole thing, making sure they were okay. He was a good guy -- that's just the best way I can put it. But he didn't miss all that stuff that he got in the beginning of his career. I think it was because he realized that it wasn't about that. He was famous, no question about it. But it wasn't about that for him. He would have played music, if he wasn't famous. Trust me -- we all do.

He said, "Life is a series of comebacks," And that's true, especially in music. And if your reason for making music is that you have to be famous, you usually wind up dead... or really sad. Again, Gunnar and I had that kind of success for a very brief moment. And it was around long enough for me to say, "I can't live like this, if this is how it is forever. And it's pretty okay, because it usually doesn't wind up being forever. I think it's pretty amazing, the fact that he managed to keep his sense of humor and keep it going as long as he did, and he had lots of ups and downs.

Ultimately, I hate to say it, he made some decisions that got him on the wrong plane at the wrong time. He had just said, "I'm going to stay home and spend some more time with you guys and do some writing and maybe just take a little break from the road." But God needed him somewhere else. But I'm very lucky to have his music around and have those kind of stories that I told you.

But I can genuinely say that, yeah, having success and money is cool. It's great. But it's just not why anybody would choose to do music full time like this. There are a lot of my friends that make far more money than I do and get to spend far more time with their families. Except in the last couple of years, I was forced to spend more time, which was great. That was the silver lining in this. I got to know my wife and my kid and stuff like that. That was pretty awesome, to really focus on what's important, knowing that you have a finite time to do what you're here to do. But for all the shortcomings of my dad as an actual father, because he was gone a lot, the fact was, I learned so much about being a good person and humanity and having your focus on playing the music that you believe in.

The only time I think he was unhappy was when he did things that people told him to do. For instance, right before the Stone Canyon Band, he called them his lost years. He just showed up. And he was embarrassed by it. That was after The Beatles invaded America. If you weren't British, you weren't working. It was tough. So he retired. And later came back.

Gunnar and I have been fortunate to do different, multiple things that keep us excited and interested, whether it be more of an oldies thing or our other projects. The thing we haven't done is ridden the Nelson thing into the ground. We kind of pulled out of that, because we saw a lot of our friends, who were icons of that era, these are all the same people that were big stars at the same time, that kind of wouldn't let us into their little club... and now they're trapped in it. They say, "You guys are so fortunate. You can do music that you want to do and different types of projects. We can't. This is what we have to do forever." Like the whole be-careful-what-you-wish-for thing.

PCC:
Your father, in between the last hits of the early 60s and the formation of the Stone Canyon Band later in the decade, he experimented with a lot of different styles and types of material -- everything from traditional country to Randy Newman songs to psychedelic. There was the whole array of things he explored with John Boylan [producer/songwriter/musician]. And you and Gunnar have also been able to journey into a number of different musical avenues, too.

MATTHEW NELSON:
It's funny you mention Boylan. He was there the night we were born. He was at the hospital with our dad. He was actually instrumental in teaching my brother and me the value, to really take it to heart, the value of being able to learn the craft of songwriting. And we spent a lot of time at Boylan's house, actually, He was kind of like our Yoda. We would take him songs and he'd kind of point us in a different direction or whatever. It was all a matter of sticking to it and learning it and collaborating with people or whatever. He was a really big influence on Gunnar and myself, to the point where he actually produced our second album.

We had done an album that Geffen refused to release. It's funny, after what we went through, we wrote a concept, kind of a heavy record, called "Imaginator." And it scared them. It wasn't what we had been successful with. And frankly it was about the media controlling people's minds. And the front cover was two kids looking up at a wall of television sets. We had Henry Rollins come in and do a spoken word thing on it. It was terrifying. And here we are years later and it's like, "Well, I think we were onto something."

With Boylan, we went the other way and did a very acoustic-based record. It was great. We made that album and then we went and did a songwriting thing overseas and met a lot of songwriters from Nashville.They said, "You guys are doing what we're doing. You should come out here." That's when Gunnar wanted to move. It took me longer than that. I was married to another woman at the time, who was not going to leave L.A.

But it was neat to do that with John, when we made that album. It was called "Because They Can." And beyond the fact that it was acoustic, we had Timothy B. Schmidt [Eagles, Poco], who came in and sang on it; Gerry Beckley's [America] on it; Elliot Easton [guitarist] from The Cars -- friends of ours that we had known and worked with before. But we got to actually collaborate. Geffen didn't know what to do with it frankly. And I listen to some of that stuff now and I love it. It's a great record.

But John was really a great guy. Gunnar and I were just talking. As I mentioned, the Country Hall of Fame just did this thing called "Western Edge" ["Western Edge: The Roots and Reverberations of Los Angeles Country-Rock"]. It's all about that country-rock, Laurel Canyon kind of thing that was happening. And Boylan was really a big part of that. And I've got to call him up and just see how he's doing, because he was one of those people that God put in my life, when I needed one. He was definitely there after our father passed away to focus us on the important parts of music. Good man.

PCC:
You and Gunnar have such fantastic harmonies -- is that something that was ingrained in you, too, from an early age?

MATTHEW NELSON:
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for that. But yeah, absolutely. One hundred percent. I listened to a lot of my dad's records, growing up. He double-tracked himself on "Hello Mary Lou." And that's basically our sound. That whole sibling harmony thing. But you take it to a whole other level with the twins.

Funny enough, when we played in clubs, I sang the lower parts all the time. I was like lead singer. Gunnar was actually on drums for a long time. And then he switched, came up front and played the guitar. We were in the studio, making demos and Gunnar went in and said, "Hey, do you mind if I try this?" And I said, "Sure, why don't you go ahead." And so he sang the lead on something. And he just had a different thing tonally, that really worked And I sang the harmony, which I hadn't usually done. And I found that I was really good at picking out the harmonies. And together, when we mixed it correctly, it had a thing.

We were looking for that. Everybody's looking for the thing. What's the thing that makes your sound unique? It's funny, I haven't had a chance to talk to Gunnar about it, but I saw and interview and it was another family act, it was The Bee Gees, of all people -- Maurice, I think, was the lead singer forever and they were in the studio and Barry started screwing around with that super-amazing falsetto that he has. And they stopped the tape and went, "Wait a minute! What is that? Do that again." And this was after them having literally decades of success prior to that. So that was the same kind of moment -- you're playing around in the studio and people go, "Wait a minute, we need you to do more of this. This works." So that's how Gunnar and I discovered our sound really.

I've had kind of a nice side run, getting hired to sing on people's records, arranging the vocals, the harmonies and stuff. My pride and joy is singing the background vocals on the first two Steel Panther records [the satiric, often off-color glam metal band]. That's me [laughs]. It's funny as hell. But they're good guys. I know them anyways. I just couldn't believe I had to sing those lyrics.

PCC:
You mentioned staying on Mulholland with your dad. Was that the Errol Flynn mansion?

MATTHEW NELSON:
It sure was. The most haunted house in America.

PCC:
Yeah, did you have any experiences with the supernatural there?

MATTHEW NELSON:
Well, Gunnar had more of them. I'll say this -- that house, you could feel had a history and it wasn't all good. I know that's the house -- if you saw the [Blake Edwards] movie "S.O.B." years ago, where they went and they stole a guy's body out of the morgue and they put it in a chair -- where they [Flynn and his pals] took [John] Barrymore's body was on our lawn, right by the pool. That's where they actually did it.

But there were secret passageways in there and peepholes and mirrors. Flynn was a creep, I've got to be honest with you. He was an interesting character. But when our father passed away, as I mentioned, we were living there, Gunnar and I were upstairs. Everything felt okay for about two months.

And one night, Gunnar and I came back to the house and the house was interesting, because the front door was really around the back. You had to kind of walk around to the left, by the pool and that was the official front door. But the real place you came in was in the kitchen. You came in the driveway and there was a little pathway and you went into the kitchen door and that led you through the kitchen into the main entrance and the dining room, the big hallway. So that was the way everybody came in, through the kitchen.

I'll never forget that feeling. Gunnar and I walked in and we went in through the normal door, through the kitchen. And it was right where the living room starts, where the kitchen ends, and Gunnar and I, at the same time, stopped and, honestly, I almost crapped myself. I can't even describe the feeling. The house wanted us out. Right now.

And we didn't spend another night there. Gunnar and I turned all the lights on. The feeling didn't go away with all the lights on. We ran upstairs, we packed our bags, threw them in his truck and never came back to the house again. It was that serious. When the house wanted us gone, the house wanted us gone.

And the house was kind of in dispute, over who owned it and all kinds of weird stuff for a while. And it was vacant for a while. And people got word that it was vacant. And then some bad stuff happened in the house after we left. Like a gang brought some girl up there and there was horrible stuff. The house got torn to the ground. And Helen Hunt bought the property and built a house there. And then Justin Timberlake bought it.

Our parents, their marriage fell apart up at that house, really. I mean, it was already in shambles, I'm not saying it wasn't, but our mother moved upstairs, dad had the downstairs. I have a lot of memories about that house. Some of them are funny. Some of them are good. Obviously the conversation in the kitchen was great. But it's like certain places are magnets for not-great stuff. That house was one of them. I've been in better places, my friend.

PCC:
Sounds like you could write quite a memoir.

MATTHEW NELSON:
It's funny you should say that. Gunnar and I are in the midst of doing something with Macmillan. We'll see if that goes through. We have a lot to say.

It's kind of like what I told you about our mom. I really do respect her. I loved my mother. But I wish I could say I had better experiences with her. I don't think she liked us very much [laughs]. She looked at kids as an obligation. As a father now, I love being a dad. I really do. Not because I'm trying to make up for stuff I didn't have. But I waited a long time. I think that's what it was. Mom had Tracy when she was 17. She was a kid herself. So she always looked at it as, her kids took her youth away. And that's a bummer. I was 47, when I had my first kid. I had stepkids before I had Ozzie. But I really, really wanted to be a dad.

That's a big thing, especially in Hollywood. Let's face it, mom wanted to be an actress and she had some success on "Ozzie and Harriet." And it just didn't happen. She concentrated on her painting, but I think she had a lot of things she wanted to do that she felt she didn't get to, which is a shame.

PCC:
It must be gratifying to you guys, with all of these gifted artists in your family history, to have been able to carve out your own creative identity?

MATTHEW NELSON:
Yeah, honestly, I have to agree with you. That's a true thing. Gunnar and I, we did music that wasn't anything like our dad's, when Nelson happened.

And I think that's why, when people said, "Hey, can you play some of your dad's tunes?," we thought, "Well, it's enough time now. Let's do something that's comprehensive for all those people who grew up with it." And we got so much out of that, in a lot of ways, emotional ways. I think it's because we had already sold a few million records of our own. It meant something different. And it was cool. We can handle it.

And now we're about ready to release another band called First Born Sons, which is a modern version, basically, after spending 30 years in different types of music, of a country-rock hybrid, more rock than country. It's like what my dad was doing back in the late 60s. And it's crazy good. Very surprising.

PCC:
How many pieces in the band?

MATTHEW NELSON:
Right now it's Gunnar and myself, [guitarist/multi-instrumentalist/vocalist] JJ Farris, who was in a band called The Tories and Red37 with me; and [drummer] Pete Parada who was in the Offspring for 14 years. It's kind of like what my dad did. Except for [legendary steel player] Tom Brumley, he had mostly rock 'n' roll musicians playing country. We're kind of doing the same thing. This is not something that is going to fit in what Nashville does. It's more for people like us, who grew up with loud guitars.

PCC:
Are you in the process of recording an album with that band?

MATTHEW NELSON:
It's already done. The album is finished. And right now we're just tightening up our management situation and the team and figuring how we're going to do this. It's not going to be the same way we did it 30 years ago, because the world's different. And it's kind of going to be more grassroots, kind of like our dad was, when he reemerged. And we're excited about that. And not afraid of it. It'll be fun. Good times.

PCC:
So we'll be hearing that in early '23?

MATTHEW NELSON:
Yeah, absolutely. First quarter.

PCC:
We'll look forward to that.

For more on Matthew and Gunnar Nelson, including their upcoming performance dates, visit www.nelsontwins.com.