Lainie: Well, you’re a huge influence on all these DJs because you were the first one to have the video on MTV and the first one to be signed to such a huge label like Columbia Records and all we saw was “Robi-Rob” everywhere.
Clivilles: Yes, but that kind of threw me in a negative zone with a lot of people, it was kind of… I got the envyism.
Lainie: Like the whole sell-out factor or…?
Clivilles: Well, they use it as a sell-out. In the very beginning they called us a sell-out, in the very beginning there was a lot of envyism, I mean till this day there’s envyism. I never really got a fair shake with all my DJ friends, I mean I did a lot of things to help them, you know, I took David Morales into the studio for the first time, I took Little Louie to the studio for the very first time, you know, and explained to them what a console board was in mixing. Hex Hector, I took him…
Lainie: Grammy-award winner now.
Clivilles: I took him from…
Lainie: He’s done really good for himself…
Clivilles: China club on Monday nights to the Palladium, and he ended up being a house DJ there. So, there were a lot of people that I really went out and helped out, and I did it because I wanted to, you know, I always wanted to help and let the industry grow, but it wasn’t that kind to me in return, you know.
Lainie: When David passed away did you feel like a lot of people jumped ship?
Clivilles: Absolutely, I mean David was… No, I mean it never really ended because no one really kind of gripped onto what I did.
Lainie: Right.
Clivilles: Men that who are partners for fifteen years, and we were partners for the first eleven without a contract with each other, so we really didn’t have, we could have left each other at any time but it was because we brought the same balance. Where David was a great keyboard player, I was a great arranger. Where I became a great song writer, David became a great vocal coach in the studio, we taught each other for those years. So, we basically were always even, you know, I taught David how to mix and spin records, and he taught me, you know, what notes were and how to keep things from going sharp or flat. So, we really helped each other. On the outside, I think, because people saw David playing the piano a lot in the shows, they probably thought he was the music guy and I was the business guy, they never really came to the conclusion that I was a songwriter at the same time that I started being a DJ. Everyone kind of caught the other side of what remixers used to do, you see, there was a lot of remixers around us that really didn’t play, didn’t write, didn’t do a lot of things. They just went into the studio and hire a keyboard player and let that keyboard player really pretty much play everything for them, and then put their name on it and…
Lainie: A lot of them still do that today.
Clivilles: They still do that to this day, of course. And I have never, ever, ever been part of a record and put my name on it that way. I guess that’s why I didn’t do, you know, thousands of records, you know, I took my time and I did albums instead because it was very important for me to put my name on something that I worked on.
Lainie: Now, you have a new project.
Clivilles: Right.
