Never Say Die at 80: Talking with Bay Area Creative Tom Donald.

Before we went on the air, you mentioned that your dad was a madman.

And so he was with Young and Rubicam on Madison Avenue, I guess, in Manhattan in New York during the 1960s as represented in Jon Hamm's...

Mad Men, which I binge-watched earlier this year.

So essentially, you sort of had advertising in your blood because of your dad's experience there at Young and Rubicam.

Again, talk to us about that transition, because to go from...

Using your musical ability and then also given your pedigree as the son of a young Rubicam executive, you use that experience to launch your own career in advertising and also with musical jingles.

Well, yes, that's putting a lovely spin on it.

You're a good writer, Jim, by the way.

I appreciate how you use the language.

My mother used to say, English is a beautiful instrument, don't abuse it.

In any case, that's a lovely encapsulation, I suppose, of what happened.

The reality is a little different in that, as I said, it was a really difficult transition to becoming...

You know, to making that switch from being a musician carrying a bass around to gigs to showing up in an office.

And back then we had typewriters, of course.

Okay, write me an ad, 100 words, have it done in an hour.

You know, that was a difficult thing for me to pull off.

Sure.

But it happened.

And jingles were part of it.

Music was part of it.

My first big job, I remember the principal brought me and said, you know, we've got a lot of production to do.

What he meant by production was radio back in the day.

And you've spent a lot of time in studios, so we brought you on because we think you can do that.

So the musical side of it, the production side of it helped, but I really had to go to school.

I mean, not literally go to school, but I had to kind of engage in a crash course of how to do this stuff.