Artist Friendly with Joel Madden - Benji Madden and M. Shadows

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

On this week's episode of Artist Friendly, Joel Madden is joined by Benji Madden and M. Shadows. Good Charlotte recently returned with Motel du Cap, their first album in seven years, and the pop-punk elder statesmen are ringing it in with their longtime friend M. Shadows on Artist Friendly. The Madden brothers and Avenged Sevenfold vocalist go back, from meeting on Warped Tour in the 2000s to playing “Bat Country” together on TRL. In an intimate conversation between like-minded collaborators, the Good Charlotte bandmates sit down with Shadows to celebrate their recent Revolver cover and share untold stories from 25 years in rock. ------- Listen to their Artist Friendly conversation on ⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify.⁠⁠⁠ ------- Follow Artist Friendly! IG: @artist.friendly TikTok: @artist.friendly YouTube: youtube.com/@artist.friendly ------- Host: Joel Madden, @joelmadden Executive Producers: Joel Madden, Benji Madden, Jillian King Producers: Josh Madden, Joey Simmrin, Janice Leary Visual Producer/Editor: Ryan Schaefer Audio Producer/Composer: Nick Gray Music/Theme Composer: Nick Gray Cover Art/Design: Ryan Schaefer Additional Contributors: Anna Zanes, Neville Hardman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

But speaking of the rev, that, I mean, the memories, I still have random memories. And I feel like that was one of the things that I think brought our bands even closer. I think at a young age, having never, never having to suffer a loss like that. Never having a loss like that. And I think going, you know, watching you guys go through that was, for me, I think it was like a bond, a bond. It's just something that just like really bonds you. and I was telling my wife a story like maybe like a month ago just random thing popped into my head

and I still laugh about it. We agree on a lot from our last conversation two years ago or it had to be two years ago. Yeah. When did the record come out? Two years ago. So our last conversation

to our first conversation, how long ago was our first conversation? 22, 24? 23, 23, 24. It's just sad if you think about it. 24 years. Yeah. It's older than some people.

We've been friends on this planet. Yeah. It's, it's, and we feel like the same guys. And it's just, yeah. It's like you close your eyes and you wake up and 24 years ago. That's also one of the things I appreciate about you especially, all the guys. But I just feel like you're like we've, I mean, obviously all of us have grown,

married kids, all of it. But every, it doesn't matter if we haven't talked in nine months, two years, whatever. it's the same. Yeah. There's room. I appreciate that in life. But I was thinking about that. First of all, I said it on text today with all three of us.

I said, it's a miracle that the three of us could get together. You're busy not only being a dad, having a family, running one of the biggest rock bands in the world, but also building businesses and doing all the things. We're doing the same things. The three of us getting together and actually being able to take the time, not that we don't get together or talk, but to actually film it. take some pictures and memorialize it for the world. No one thinks to do that most of the time, but for us to be able to do it is special and kind of a miracle that we could all make our schedules work and do it.

But then what I was thinking about was over the course of our relationship, a similarity between all of us and our bands as people, aside from having some values as people, like being stand-up guys. I'd say everyone in your band, everyone in our band, like all just decent guys. Yeah. You know, decent?

No, like good people. You know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, I get it. But the idea that we're stronger together and we pull resources and we try to help each other figure things out is a good idea. But it's very hard to execute on that when you think about bands as different organizations, companies as different organizations, and then people as different organisms. Actually putting that into action takes a lot of goodwill, self-confidence, and undisputed. understanding of the imperfection of it, like the chaos of it is. When I started this podcast, you came in, no questions asked, you sat down in the chair, not knowing what is this thing,

does it have legs, will it become, you just did it because you could contribute your, you contributed to it. Like you put a brick in the wall, right? You helped carry, you helped push the thing. And you've always done that for us as a band. But think about if we zoom out how hard it is to get anyone to see what you're doing and then contribute whatever, right? Whether it's retweeting you or actually coming on and filming, whatever it is, it's a contribution. I always take that so seriously because as entrepreneurs, we know how hard it is to get anyone to go like, oh yeah, like tell me about your thing. Let me see if I, but finding ways to contribute to each other's world with no real understanding. It's not a transaction. It's not like there's a payoff. The payoff is, is that we all succeed.

in life and we continue to all rise and we kind of all rise together somehow. I believe that, but also individually, your success is my success. Like when you're more successful, I know the guy who's more successful and I can get on the phone with you and ask you, how did you do that or whatever. But like, I just think when I zoom out and I think about our relationship, aside from friendship and history, just knowing each other, you're on a very short list of people who aren't asking, well, you're not transactional. You're not trying to make a deal, not trying to do that. You just jump in if you can.

If you think that's a good, I think I can contribute. And if you can't, you say it. And there's like a real, I just think our relationship is rare. There's certainly like, I find, it's easy. It's easy. And I find that like the list of people in my life that like see me and believe in me. It's a short list of people. I think also too, I think you're able to have the closest.

most longstanding, easy friendships, think about it with people that don't need anything from you. Yeah. So like, you know what I mean? Like, you know, like, if you, you have friends who you're always having to solve their problems, it's like tough. It's tough to have a close relationship in some ways. We don't rely. We don't have to rely on.

I also think the thing that I will always say that I always feel like why, you know, us and our bands always have had like this like sort of like longstanding bond that doesn't require maintenance is I think that our both of our bands have always operated from like a place of abundance in the rock world it's very rare like you always kind of have the vibe in the rock world where like if you're winning then I'm losing right or if you got that I didn't and I just think the truth of life. It's not the truth. It's not the truth of life ever. And that the sort of that like that I guess you call it the abundant mindset. Like it's it's that there's really this world. There's so much there's an like if you win I win. You know. And I think that like for whatever sort of like

natural instinctual reason, all of us just sort of like saw the world that way, operated that way. So there was never anything where it's like if if you said no to something or I said no to something, it's never ever been feelings hurt because it's, it's like all of us are just moving and all of us actually, it's that thing of like being able to have friends who don't need anything from you. Everyone knows. You know, all of us have families. All of us have shit going on and everyone respects that. So it's kind of like when this is nice when it does line up and we can do stuff. I think that it's, it's always a pleasure because of that mindset and because of that, I think that natural just like, I think, uh, disposition.

Yeah, I also think that, you know, from day one and then everything from, you know, the way you guys see the world, um, and try to solve problems, right? That's what you guys did early on. And it was outside of good Charlotte. You use that as a place to get somewhere and then you can start solving problems that are, you know, with VEPS and all these cool things you guys have done. It doesn't matter if I'm doing one thing and you're doing something else. It's the same mindset.

Yeah. of like stirring up the pot a little bit, you know, not being afraid, not being afraid and also knowing that everything's not going to work. And we don't judge each other on successes or failures. It's just that we're at least we're out there trying to mix it up and make the world better for artists, right? It comes from a genuine spot. Always. And you need people that get into a place of power or a place where they can kind of move things because of the weight of whatever their projects are, whether it's good Charlotte or revenge sevenfold, and you can move people into a direction that is healthier,

whether it's through streaming, you know, the VEEP stuff and the video stuff, whether it's through bitflips and blocked it. And these are things that we've all dabbled in with each other and talk to each other, but you guys go hard in one way, I go hard in another way,

and then at some point, we just have a lot of respect for each other's, you know, obviously musicality and the music. Yeah, and you're right, it's easy. You want relationships that are easy. and you know and when you were talking about i think the biggest thing is that you know you don't need to call somebody that's not me an assistant or a manager right and try to get things done just call matt right and i don't need to let anybody in my life know what i'm doing i'm just going to do what i'm

going to do yeah i'll let you know later if you need to know about it right like i will probably let management know at some point that i did this and and shot something so they should look for it we always say oh yeah by the way Revolver cover coming out. But also that this is the thing is the three of us are very similar. We're unmanageable. Yeah. You can't manage us.

I know. But we need teams. We need teams. We got to build teams. So we find the teams that can tolerate who don't have ego, who don't need to be the man. Yeah. Those are the managers that get on my nerves, the gatekeepers that need to be the man. Guys who could sit at the table with us and talk things out are the guys we need to work with.

Well, and that's the thing that I think, like, we've, all had the spirit of because naturally by trying to make things better for artists that's just weirdly it sounds really weird but that's disruptive right of totally like it's so it's weird that that's a disruptive it's no like that's disruptive so and naturally like all of us like you know like maybe you know we leaned a little more punk or a little more pop punk you leaned a little more metal but all of us like we're just like disruptive it all came from punk and we're all warped her together I mean, that's, that's that's that our ethos. When we went over to OzFest, there was the main stage and there was a side stage.

We played warped for four years before that. And we were getting hazed and we had friends everywhere and everyone was cool and everyone was equal. And it was a different thing. And so we went over to OzFest, it was we had the ethos were already firmly in place from, you know, our forefathers of punk rock, right? Which at the time were poser punks. It was, the no effects is the bad religions. It was, well, this isn't exploited and this isn't, you know,

the damned or whatever. But for us, that was what we grew up on. And we were learning from those guys and everything was equal. Like everyone ate the same junk, you know, and no offense, Kevin Lyman, but you know, whatever the catering was. And everyone was getting paid very little. Yeah. But it was a, but it was a punk rock summer camp, right? And it was like, then you go, then you go to something bigger and there's like a hierarchy. And that was weird to us. Yeah. So we've always just kept the, that punk, the hardcore punk sort of, you know, vibe because that's like where we feel more comfortable. That's where we grew up, you know. That was such a fun place to meet. Yeah, for sure. You know, because we were both kind of outcast.

First time we ever spoke. Actually, the we were the pop guys. And we were the guys that were screaming. We wanted to be, you know, I just looked around and I was like, I want to be huge. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You guys were, you guys were a different thing on there, right? It was like there was, there was a different type of success. When you guys showed up, it was like, uh, you could see just, there's jealousy, there's animosity. And we were like, we were already on the outcast. We weren't even like taken seriously at that point. You got to think Kevin Lyman's throwing us on as a favorite at Lewis Posen at Hopeless Records.

And we're screaming. And it was the first band that had been on that that was just playing metalcore, right? And it was just like it does not compute. This is why people hate it on you. And if they still do, I don't even know if they do or they don't. I'm sure we all have our version of people who are like, whatever. but what you guys always had was self-confidence. You got on stage and you did your thing

and you weren't trying to be like anyone else and you actually weren't trying to get anyone to accept you. That's the difference. When you don't beg everyone to like you, it's a longer road, but in the end people get to know who you really are and then they accept you or they like you. Most of the time they like you

because originality is hard to find. But I find people that are begging everyone to like them, short term it might pay off. Long term, it's a waste of. But winners are going to win and losers are going to lose. Yeah. You know, like, and that just goes back to the. That's the quote of the,

like, but winners are going to win and losers are going to lose. Let's wrap it up. No, but, but hear me out because it's not a dig on anybody. When you have like back to that abundant mindset, when you have an abundant mindset, a winning mindset, you're not trying, you're not worried about what everyone else is getting. You're happy for them. You're building your own shit.

You're going to win some way, shape, or form. If you're looking around at what everyone else is, got and you're mad at them or you're jealous or you're throwing rocks or you're hating on them you're going to lose. I don't want to say what my version of winning or my version of losing is, but I didn't want to stay playing clubs forever. You know, the same, you know, people, they might appreciate that. It's great. But I think, like, we have, like, growth mindsets. It's not even about, it's not even about, like, the, like, whatever, like, indicator people go by where it's, like, how much money you're making, it's, whatever. It's not even about any of that. It's a feeling of, like,

oh, we're like all of us right here in our 40s are doing not the same thing we were doing when we were 21. We're doing the version of it now. And I just think that like I said, for any band out there or any artists out there, because you always, you know, a lot of, this whole thing you set up was because we have these conversations off the camera with artists when they come through is winners are going to win. Lusers are going to lose. Be a winner. Don't look around what everyone else has got. Don't judge what everyone else is doing. Like, do your shit. And I think that's something that naturally, I think both of us sort of, again,

it's why we could be friends and why we could so easily, different worlds, different, grew up in different places, could so easily support one another. But also, you know when you, you know, that thing, like that feeling, you know, it's hard to put into words, but you know when someone fucks with you and when they don't. Yeah. You know, like when you know, when someone fucks with you and when someone doesn't fuck with you. Yeah. Like, I just know it.

I feel it. It's like a vibration. You have always fucked with us. Before we even, before we even were near each other's stages, I remember I talked to you on the phone. I was on, I was getting tattooed by Adam Barton. Oh, remember? Back in the day, that's crazy.

In 2000, probably. Yeah, that's crazy. And he was like, my friend, Matt is the singer of a Venn 7thold. And I was like, oh, I like a Venn 7thold. It was like your first record or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. After your first record. Yeah, Adam did the art for it.

Our first record. Adam did the art for it. for it and I was and he was like you guys should talk you'd like each other or whatever and he put you on we got on the phone or something yeah because I was hanging out with him all the time he tattooed he did both my arms yeah and um Adam's funny he's crazy but hardcore guy was in a band himself uh what was the name of the band he was in like he he was temper I don't know if he was in it all the time anyways you got on the phone with me and you were nice and I just knew it there was no guard up there was no too cool there was no whatever.

And it was just like, I was at a time where we were like trying to make our way. We were touring. I think we were like touring with MXPX at the time or something. And like I was already encountering the reality of life versus what I thought when we were back in Southern Maryland trying to make it. Yeah. And I thought everyone's going to love me. Everyone's going to celebrate when I make it. And we got a wreck of a deal.

And then we were on tour and we were encountering like it was a cold water in the face for like the first two years. years of being in the world in band world. And so we were on the phone and you were you were you were cool as shit. You were nice. And I knew I liked you. And then we got to meet each other for real and all that. But like I knew you fucked with us. That's it. Like I just and I, I definitely met people that were nice, but I knew they didn't fuck with me. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to explain. I can't explain it. But you just know when you find your people. Yeah. Yeah. I'm definitely drawn to things that are like unique and stand out, right? And good Charlotte stood out. Not only for the music, and I always go back to the music is really important, right? It's like, you can tell these are good songs. This is, this means something,

right? And then there's like the whole thing on top of it that just feels, looks, and just, it's different. Yeah. And even as I'm older, I'm just drawn to things that are original that sit outside the sort of box of what West Lang. West Lang. West Lang. Well, that jacket's sick. Yeah. It's sick. Like the Westling stuff is sick. So this is like an Amiri Westling. Lab and Wes, I met from you guys. I met from Wes from you. Yeah, yeah. Um, but the thing is, is that originality meets originality where it's at and Wes wouldn't just do someone. No. Oh my God. No, no, no. So Wes, like, Wes was a hard. Yeah. He's a, he's a artist. But it makes it so much better, right? So much better. You know, how many years did you talk to West for it?

You guys. Every year that I met. I'm like so like seven, eight years. And by the way, and it was always, no. Because it's either the great. Dead or nobody. Right. And he did the Grateful Dead and that was it. Like, and even that was short. Like he did the special whatever. Y'all are the new Grateful Dead. Yeah. Exactly. That's what I'm saying is, it sounds crazy. But Avenge Sevenfold, when you think about cultures and cultures that seep out because you could say metal or rock and roll, but at the end of the day, it's a live music culture. Yeah. I can't even say those words anymore. I just don't even know what to describe you. What are you? When I say metal, I feel like I'm cheapening us.

And not to cheapen that genre. John is amazing. Yeah. But I just, I just think it's, we just do something a little different now. You can't box it. No,

you can't box it. So to me, it's like the fact that you guys collaborate with West Lang says everything about where the band sits in the kind of timeless music culture of music and not putting it in a box. Yes, there's some metal. There's rock and roll. There's also a little bit of country.

There's a little bit of everything in there because it's just music. Yeah. Someone like Wes, I didn't look at it as like it was going to help us in any way other than I love his art so much that I wanted to introduce our fans to that. And I wanted to be represented. Like when I first saw his stuff, I said, I would do anything to have one Avenge sevenfold shirt with a piece of West Lang's art. Right.

And now we've got a full album cycle and the guy is the best. We love West. Yeah. But I love that he has this hot. He loves it too, by the way. I think he does. He does. He loves music. I know he loves music.

His ability to hold a high standard for himself for his whole career is what made it so attractive to me, right? To like, and that's what I like. I like when things are outside the box. They're unique and they play by their own rules. I think you guys have done that. I think there's a very few handful of bands that do it. And you're right.

There's a bunch of artists that are playing Chase the Ambulance, right? What worked before? What worked before? Great band name. and all you do is the local trend or the current trend you're always a year behind so i don't know i i just i'm just drawn to it and i think that you know as we've gotten older i don't even know like what you were talking about with it's funny because we wanted to be the biggest bands in the world but we went the exact opposite way about it right you would think the how do you become one of the biggest

bands in the world oh you do the things that all these other bands did and for some reason our bands did the opposite, which is how you kind of get around to that point, right? Which is, I don't know what was, it's just something insidey. Maybe it's like that, that punk rock rebellion of like, I'm not doing that because everyone else did that. I don't know what it was. I can't even get inside my old brain and what I used to think. But I do know one thing of Ensenwald always did is we did the unexpected.

And we were completely unapologetic about it. And I'm so grateful now being 43 years old that every one of our records are like this little time capsule of doing something that was not popular at the time. But they all came around at some point and were able to be respected because they're just unique to that time period. And I think as you get older, you just have to keep pushing even harder because it's so easy to kind of fall back on eight records and go, oh, well, like Ryan Downey told us this, you guys have every opportunity to be boring and you've rejected it. And I think, you know, rewriting something or treading those old, you know, roads that we've kind of built just isn't exciting.

Yeah. We just want to be excited. Like, I want to go do things that just make people scratch their head and they go, maybe I'll get it in five years, maybe not. But the band was having fun. Like they want to be here. We all know touring, doing the records, that can either be awful or it can be the greatest thing, the greatest life experience.

It just depends on your mindset and how you set it up for you and how you want it to be. tour the way you want to tour tour, tour when you want to tour, make the songs you want to make, record them the way you want to do it. Be where you want to be. Be where you want to be. That way whenever you're there, you really not only do you enjoy it, but everyone else there can feel it if you want to be there or not. Yes. And there's a vibration that happens when someone doesn't want to be there. Right. When someone doesn't fuck with you. Yes. There's that vibration as a singer when you're having a bad night and all I do I want to do is get the hell out of there. This is not working. Then there's the nights where it's on. fire. And I know that there's no way I can fake the bad nights and be a good night. A better pro probably could. I'm like, you can read it on my face. I am so bummed that this isn't working out, right? And then when the good nights are good, it's like, I am the king of the world. This is amazing. And everyone, you can just feel it coming from everyone. And I think, you know, with records,

with everything in life, you have to be the same way. I mean, we have one shot at this thing, right? And just you got to try to be happy and be creative and I think through the years. I think it's interesting too. It's like where we've come to at this point and why would, you know, the editor of Revolver call us and ask us if we all want to do a cover. It's interesting because if you looked back, I don't know, 25 years ago, it would never happen. But we've, all three of us sort of with the same mentality and just not really giving to fuck about anything other than just forward progress in life, period. I think that even goes through to like our like just journey as like men and wanting to be like good dads and wanting to be you know uh that mentality is the same

in our music we've met i think at a very interesting like point now like with you know and now when you think about music like there really isn't the genres are not as it's it's it's all they're not defined you know and i think that like that's something that i just love to see love to see happening and i think that you know sitting down today it really sort of like captures that like if you look back 25 years to now. I like to think that all of us of that mentality, we're a part of helping evolve that. 100%. And also helping for the bands that are getting started right now. Well, also, I was just thinking about it. I don't know why in my head I had a picture of a table of guys who could sit here and all contribute to this conversation. And if you guys came to mind. And I was wondering if you guys had any other people that come to mine. But in my mind, there's guys that come to mine. Sam from architect. could sit at this table and have these conversations. Noah could sit. Noah from Bad Omen's could sit

at this table and have these conversations. There's a lot. But I like giving credit out there to other guys and bands that I see being themselves and doing interesting shit on their own terms at their own pace. I think Poppy sits at this table. Yep. Easily. I think we're very lucky to be surrounded by people who are a lot like us, like that they see the like, you have. You have, to make your own way. The sooner you make peace with that in these creative endeavors we do, bands, businesses, right? Like with bitflips, you didn't ask anyone's permission, you didn't go around and try to get someone to believe in you first. You just started fucking doing it. And then you were finding people that understood it and bringing them on and like building this team.

It's very hard. It's chaotic. And it's also, there's so many waves we were talking about, we were texting this yesterday or the day before. There's so many waves of the way that things change. And I want to get to bit flips. What I'm interested to hear if you think, like, who are the other personalities and figures that you think have the same conversations or kind of live in the same way? Or people that just you admire, respect. You say West Lang, you say people like, it doesn't have to be musicians, but I think out there, there's a lot of musicians. I think plus Malone's one of those people. Post. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. know any of the people you know who they all are. I don't know them personally. There's certain people

we just respect immensely in the industry, right, that are creatives. This guy Lance Drake that did our VR concert, very smart creative guy. West has obviously come top of mind. As far as musicians, people I really respect what they're doing. I don't know Julian Casablancus, but I love the voids. So the voids to me is, I think they're the greatest rock band in the world, whatever they are. Like, It's just so creative and interesting. It really gets my mind going. I think Bring Me the Horizon's done a good job of being, you know, forefront of whatever's happening now and that sort of thing.

Pushing the envelope. So I'm sure there's just a ton of people that are just in their own little pockets doing their own thing. I like talking to anybody that's just kind of can see the kind of the whole thing happening from a higher perspective, right? I always think about looking down on the music industry, what we were just talking about in the back room, always being behind. Right. And they've really flubbed a lot of things that were very easy to see coming in retrospect. And one of them, one of the things we were talking, we were kind of correlating it to the idea of blockchain and the financial systems.

And right now, you're starting to see rumblings of the dollar and you're starting to see, oh, I can move money quicker with stable coins. The blockchain is useful. It's not a total scam. It's all these things that 10 years ago you could have said and you're getting laughed out of the room, right? Even now there's people that just don't believe it until it happens. Technology has done that with the music industry, with streaming. It was not a problem until you were buying stacks of CDs this big and ripping every single thing off of Limewire and Napster. And all of a sudden they said, oh my God, this is a problem.

We didn't get ahead of this. And then they had to make, you know, amends with a guy that just went ahead and did it anyways, which was Daniel Elk in Spotify, right? And all of a sudden you're playing by his rules. He's the billionaire and the music industry is trying to just be on board, get some equity and say, please, like, put us on some playlist. If you're an artist that can kind of see the, you know, from 500 miles above, you're going to have to ask yourself, okay, what can a label do now?

What can the industry do? What can they give me and what is it worth? Do you have MTV? Do you have radio? Do you have drivers? Should I be paying a record label 75%? cents to my dollar for everything you do. Can you do anything for me? What genre am I in? Have you been able to do anything in this genre? Or is it a genre that is more word of mouth? Or is it a TikTok

genre that they take it and they put gasoline on it? You have to really think about these things and have the balls to not go to your family dinner and go, I signed to a big record label. And so your grandfather, your parents are impressed and go, no, I'm staying independent because X, Y, and Z. Right? I understand it. But there's a, there's the big dick play where you want to go, you think you made it because he was signed it. Validation. But you have to ask yourself, do these people even know what the fuck they're talking about? They don't. I always tell this story. I've told it a million times. Dave Farrell, playing him life is but a dream, those guys in Lincoln Park. And he's like, would you care, we're in a restaurant, probably 100 people in there. He's like, how many people

in this restaurant would you care about their opinion of your record? And I'm looking at these people, right? And you know, you're like, zero. Zero. Like, he's like, and this, you know, he kind of extend that across the world and that's art. You put it out and there will be people that connect, but you can't go on their terms. They have to come to you on your terms. And so I think the biggest thing with musicians is teaching them that yes, you may not make it and maybe you will make it, but you'd rather fail on your own terms than fail in a system where they shove your record into a back room and it never comes out or they do some stupid edit or they tell you to make some stupid music video and you don't back it and all of a sudden you're in a situation where you failed because of these people's ideas

that have nothing invested in you other than can we call our shareholders at the end of, you know, the quarter and did we make money or not? But also winning, if you win that way too, right? You feel like a fraud. It doesn't mean that there aren't people that will contribute good ideas that you'll back. That's different. If you go and put on a birthday clown costume and you go and have a hit song and then you got to wear that birthday clown costume. No offense to the birthday clowns out there. No offense to the birthday clowns. By the way, the guy with the birthday clown, you know, idea doesn't have to wear the birthday clown.

He doesn't have to wear it. Or the clown outfit, yeah. And all of our dumb costumes, we always came up with ourselves. That's why they were so fucking cheap. There you go. I just want to live video. We threw that together the night before. Remember?

That was fucking crazy. By the way, crazy outfits are in the spirit of rock and roll. I mean, I remember when we were just trying to outdo ourselves on stage. Yeah. Like, I bet you won't wear that. I bet you won't wear that. And that's fun, right? That's not a label telling you like, hey, guys, put some glitter on your chest.

Yeah, it's the motivation behind it. You know, I think it's just the thing that people connect to is if you're being authentic or not. Right. If we looked stupid 20 years ago, it was on our turn. That was my decision. That was my decision. It's funny. You know, Sparrow yesterday, we were riding in the car and he goes, out of nowhere, he said, you know that if you Google Liberty Spikes, Uncle Benj is like half the page.

That's awesome. And I was like, he's like, where did he come up with that? And I was like, he just like punk music. Like Liberty Spikes is an old thing. It's as old as punk. And he's like, really? And I was like, he's not like versed in punk as much. And he's like, really?

And I was like, yeah, yeah. He just like, he's a fan of punk and he's listening to Punk. And he did the Liberty Spikes. And they just so happened that they got a picture of him. And he had Liberty Spikes or like 50 pictures. Yeah. Well, for like you had Liberty Spikes for like a year of your life or whatever. A whole series of Knox.

gelatin? Oh God, I was using Aquanette. Okay, I would use Knox gelatin. It was like a rock. Like the, I had Liberty Spikes for a while and my, I remember going downtown with my parents and they hated the look, right? It looks loud. And I like have acne and Liberty

spikes and we get in an elevator with this couple and this guy's like, cool hair. Right? And I thought he really thought my hair was cool. And I was like, see Dad and he's like, he was making fun of you. And I was like, oh. But yeah, Knox gelatin, because what would happen, you put the jello in your hair and it would make it hard as a rock but then it would give you more zits

and so you know that was oh yeah and you'd have to leave it if you wanted it like on tour especially you would leave it for i was there man i remember a warp tour where i didn't shower for three weeks it's pretty cool and i just and i just no but i did do i did do like outdoor you know i would like freshen up you know but like i didn't shower but uh but speaking of the rev that i mean the memories, I still have random memories. And I feel like that was one of the things that I think brought our bands even closer. I think at a young age, having never, never having to suffer a loss like that. Never having a loss like that. And I think going, you know, watching you guys go through that was, for me, I think it was like a bond, a bond. It's just something that just like really bonds you.

And I'll, I was telling my wife a story like maybe like a month ago, just. random thing popped into my head and I still laugh about it the conversation I was we me and Jimmy were in Vegas and there was some big shot there and he told him me he's guys talking talking talking it's like owned like some like all like half the radio stations in the country or something I forget I can't remember someone someone else would have been like oh I'm sitting next to this guy and we ended up there randomly and he was going on and on and And then, and I'm kind of like, you know, more diplomatic, you know, than Jimmy was. So I was like, so I was like, I was just like trying to be nice.

And I was like, oh, oh, wow, cool, man, you know, it's going on. That's a lot of radio stations. Oh, yeah. And then. You must be really rich. The guy talking and Jimmy just looks over and goes, I'm going to kill you. Not today. Not tomorrow.

And you know, you had out a few drinks. You had out of a few drinks. You know, so you had that little. He got that little, like, a little slagger. He was like, not tomorrow, but one day. One day. He's so funny, man. He's just kind of shaking his head.

He was so. One day, I'm going to kill you. Oh, my God. And the guy didn't know what to say, got walked away. Fuck yeah. Yeah. He saved you guys. And we just laughed.

That was, you know, like his way of not dealing with bullshit. Next record didn't do too well at radio, but. We were banned on half the stations. No, it was, it was funny. Oh, man, just random memories. But having, having history is like, you can't pay for it. No. You can't.

No. You were there. You were there. I remember another, another band that, you know, during that time, like, we got really, and we were really close with Mike M. But they came to my house after Jimmy. And I remember just sitting with all those guys. They stayed with us for like a couple days.

You know, just hang. And it's like you really, really realize your friends and the people that he touched and you hear all these stories, but all these conversations that happened that you never knew about or these moments. And yeah, it's always, it's hard. It's nice, though, to, and that's what we are, humans that kind of you rally around people at your wedding. At your wedding.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. That was great. Yeah. That was great. It was like 7.30 in the morning. And me and Jimmy were the only one. one's in the pool just like the two of us just like what do you want to do now at least we have

video of him at the wedding and that's his beard was like he looked like a full on homeless person the rev great the red the red legend legend had a very low tolerance for bullshit yes was just as funny as could be the cutting look if he if he if he didn't vibe with you if somebody was a liar. If somebody was bullshitting, if somebody had you know, it's just like that guy right, like he's flexing or whatever. He had a very like direct

way of cutting shit off or, you know, it's just like those people that are, it's like a I don't know, it's like a purity or something. It's like get the fuck out of here. Yeah, totally. But there's a very like childlike pureness to it. Yeah, for sure. It's, you know, there was a funness to it. Yes.

You know? He was the best. And then then you have that those moments where he's on your side, so you're, you think it's great. Yeah, he's on your side. You know what I always found interesting about you guys? It's like somehow in the world,

you're an incredible singer. I love your, like not just your voice, not just the, the soul of it, but actually the technical stuff you do that like, you make look easy, but it's actually like,

I'll try to imitate it when I'm singing along and I can't. But then the other guys, like, the fact that me, Brian and Jimmy grew up in that little, met when your kids. I know. Like I would put, I would put you guys up, like if we went the categories and just like went

one to one, right? Pound for pound. The pound for pound, one player at a time. Yeah. Like pound for pound. You could put you up against anybody. And you met as kids in school. I know.

Like to me, like I think about that sometimes. That's like how that happens. You know, it's like. That's my favorite thing about Avenge Sevenfold is. Usually you get a band that has the musicality, but not the songs. Yeah. Or you have the songs, but not the musicality. Right.

With you guys, you have the songs and the musicality. I would say Brian is probably one of the greatest living guitar players. I'm with him every day. I agree. I don't see any, like, I sit there and watch what he does and how he keeps trying to push everything forward. And it's never, like, rested on anything. And he's always moving on. Even if people are like...

But it's not ego-driven either. No, no, no, no. It's like purely like a... like a he explores right he like really wants to figure out okay I'm kind of like I kind of like that tone but I can't get that on a guitar so I'm going to run my guitar through midi and then I'm going to have it come back and then like he's just doing stuff but doing that and writing earworms with your guitar lines because all his guitar parts are two different things it's two different things to have to have the melody to be able to write melody like that and perform it the high level

that's what I'm saying is like his guitar parts always scratch the itch for me he always, he, he's kind of allergic to guitar winkery and what you think is good for him, right? He doesn't, he doesn't want to be that guy. And so for him, it's always a song first. And he's, he's a disciple of the Beatles, you know? And like, to him, it's like, we'll never write a song that good. We'll never do that, but let's try. Right. And it's like all about the song. It's not about, it's more about production techniques and vocal melodies than it is about him noodling around the song. And so I think having that mentality is just, even with Jimmy, it was also, it was also, musical it was like he was putting the drums as like a like another instrument instead of

what can I do you know and and I think that keeping that mentality was it was about and at the same time man and at the same time he was a wild animal so it's it's not like he leads through so it's not like he was like this like you know studio guy that was like he was a wild animal you were capturing like when you guys you know did those records like you were literally capturing like footage of a wild animal. Yeah, like lightning in a bottle. But, but he could go toe to toe with any studio guy. Like, that's just why that's just crazy to me.

You guys grew up that you, you know, somehow these kids were just in the same spot. Well, Jimmy was the one that started it all for us because I wasn't a musician. I was a fan of music. And going into his room when he was in fifth, sixth grade and he can play all the Slayer records, it just made me sit there and like, oh, this is crazy. And then, you know, he's playing with all these. He's at college, going to colleges and,

in their ensembles. And then Brian was obviously wanted to be a studio musician. He didn't want anything to do with writing original music. He didn't think he could. But then he met Jimmy. And he's like,

oh, Jimmy can. Like, oh, I can do that too. And then he started helping and then that became what the band was, right?

It was like, all because Jimmy. It was because he was so musical and it was so, so wild. It was so abstract and not by the rules, which was what was so cool.

And we can't forget about Johnny. We can't forget about Johnny. That's my boy. Johnny is, he used to just come down the street and bug us every day and play Primus with Jimmy and then eventually he got in the band. Yeah. So I don't know. What a band. What a bunch of guys, man.

I mean, going back and like looking at it all, it's wild and it's fun. But I, and the thing is you got to keep that spirit as you get older. I just don't do it. Like I love that like, maybe you guys can shed more light on this, but you guys went away for a little while. Like what was the why? and then what made you want to come back and do a record? Exactly what you're saying. I think unconsciously and more consciously as we got older,

I think we felt like we needed to get back to life. And I think you have, like they always say, you have a lifetime to write your first record and then every record after that, you're just writing records in like a short period of time. And I think like we went on the ride, we had the experience and it was great as a band,

but then it became very hard to tolerate everything else. and I think we refuse to submit to anyone's idea of us, anyone's rules, anyone's telling, if you tell me to do something, I'm going to do the opposite. I think at the point where in like 2013-14, we made the Madden Brothers record, but we even say that that should have been a good Charlotte record,

but I think at the time, we got together in high school. Yeah, we got together in high school. We had to evolve as people, apart and as a group and learn how to be in that marriage together and it's been an amazing journey together i fucking love my band uh the four of us since we were teenagers um is really special history you know sitting here talking about your own band what that means it's more than the music yeah it's like that's your history that's my when i think of like my past i think of my band i think of my that's my

familial group yeah um because we all kind of come from broken homes and like that's our our core group solidness. But we also all had to grow up. His parents are still together. Solid. But he understood our, he was there on the ride. He was there. He was there on the ride when like we were like moving around. We were homeless. We were living with people. Like he was watching that whole thing. He's seen us all the way. Paul's always been like my day one. Like he's so solid and he knows me so well. And we don't have to talk. We don't. It's just deep. It's like brothers, you know.

And Billy was like this metal kid, which I loved. I'm a huge metal fan. And I think like you guys with metal, we are with like punk and pop punk. You guys love the metal crowd, but you're like, you're not going to dictate what we do, though. Like we have to, we're going to lead you guys. And we, I think we came, we sort of, when we came into it, we got put into the, you know, the warp tour. You know, bad religion. I mean, back then it was a, you know, it was no effects, bad religion, rancid, social distortion.

Pennywise. Penny wise. It was a tough crowd for us. It was a tough crowd. It was a tougher crowd, I think, then you find now, it was a different culture. Now, genres don't mean as much. But we were always, even as kids, like, yeah, but you guys aren't going to dictate what we do. You know, even if we could in a room as like the new kids or the smallest guys in the room,

I think our hearts, we were lucky to have a little bit of heart to go like, wait a second. No, like, we like you guys, but we like you. We want to be friends. But we're not going to back down. We're not going to back down though. And you're not going to dictate what we do. And I think that like we kind of balanced each other. Yeah, Billy was like, you know, I think how I got into you guys was like Billy was like, I think, you know, was right off the bat introduced me to you guys and a bunch of other stuff.

But going away, I mean, I think you have these long childhood friendships. I think we also needed to reclaim ourselves. I think when we got in the mix of everything in the business, I think the only mistakes we ever made was trying to please people. And sometimes you'll have like this big shot A&R guy who's like, you know, done all this stuff where you'll have, you know, an agent or a manager. And you don't think of it when you're a kid that they just want you to do this so they can cash the check, get the commission and you don't care about money.

And keep the train rolling. And keep the train rolling and do his little, you know, not have to deal with headaches. saying no to people because that can be hard. So I think we kind of got caught in some places where we did some things that weren't authentic to us, but it wasn't out of, it was only out of wanting to be good partners and wanting to make everyone happy and just be like. And have a career. Yeah. And I think we were driven a lot of approval. I think like whatever our self-esteem things, we had to go away and work out. You know, like now in our heads, we weren't thinking they just got a $250,000 check. Yeah. So they're patting on the back. In our

heads they were like you guys are you guys are hardworking you're talented you know and I think that was what drove us was like we wanted to I think we want to we really did want to please people I think someone pat us on the back is the biggest reward we could get but I do think that going away for so long was us we need to grow up and we needed to I'd rather if I go away and this thing doesn't last it wasn't strong enough to last if I come back and it's still here then it's meant to be and I really felt like we got to that place where we have the confidence to do what we want, when we want on our own terms. You guys have always looked up to you guys for that way because it always felt like you were making. You never went off that path. Yeah, it felt like you always made decisions and I always admired

that. And I tried to be that way. Like Ben said, I think we did in a lot of ways. At the heart of it, you know, I also think we needed to become the men we dreamed we could be. Yes. It seems like you guys coming back feels a lot more confident. And it feels like he could take it or leave it. We might show up, we might not. If we're there, it's a big deal. Yeah. If we're not there, there's a reason. Yeah.

Right? And it feels like, well, I always tell people that's like, how can you write records back to back when your only life experience in between your last record and your new record is just being on the road? It's being on the road. There's no, there's nothing. At that point, you're just moving cords around. And you're right. You're right. It's like, okay, there's going to be the same version of what it was.

You have to, yeah, you have to go. You have to like, you have to, I always tell people like, you have to like, we felt like that before the stage. After the stage, we'd put a lot into that record. we took seven years off. And it was, every single experience was forming that next record. Right? And it wasn't,

or you're going to get part two, right? You go on tour for two years, you come back, it's like, oh, what are we right about now? And part two is not always bad.

Not always. But you got to do, you can't do part two every time. No. You just got to do what you, if part two is what you want to do, then do part two. I would say that this last decade,

give or take, I arrived to, for the first time in my life, life. I think in the beginning I was trying to make it for some major reasons. Number one, poverty, just to get to a place. So that was my original mission. Yeah. Was like, be okay. Then I discovered the art and I actually like writing songs and I actually want to be a good songwriter. Start chasing that and I want people to like me. I had a low self-esteem growing up. I just had a little bit of a run. We always like the, I hope they like

other but like we got picked on and all that the 90s you remember the 90s so you were yeah you were more of a fighter but um well you i got hurt a few times but i didn't get picked on right how we define picked on um it felt to me like i was being picked on but i'd say the last decade was the and credit to my wife credit to my kids, credit to my friends, my community of like finding my place in the world where I can stand by what I do and I don't give a fuck what anyone thinks unless I respect them and they have some valid feedback they want to give me. That's different than a comment. Yeah.

Right. The peanut gallery is a different thing than your friends going, hey, that thing you're doing. Can I tell you what I think? I think if you did this or whatever. So I think I had to grow up. Because at some point in life, no matter what you've been through, like you said, last time we talked on this show, you said, we're all dealt different cards. But at some point, you have to look at the cards and play the cards you have and make the most out of where you were dropped on this planet and what body you were dropped in. And you have to at some point stop going why and just start fucking going forward.

And this is it. I get to be me. This is what I was. Just take your, take your karma. Like, like, your karma, not in the sense of like, if I do good, it'll get good. The karma of just like, wherever, whatever reason I landed here in this situation, my karma is in this lifetime, I'm going to, I need to work on, I'm to learn this. And so the emotional journey and anyone out there listening, I say this stuff really

so that hopefully someone listening hears this. You are not helpless. You got to fucking go forward and figure it out. I don't know what else to tell you. Shit happens sometimes and we are all dealt different cards. I will give my sympathy for a second, right? And I will listen to someone and go, yeah, that sounds like bad luck. Okay, now we just got to fucking go forward and figure it out.

And I think we started doing that at a young age, but we didn't actually realize how powerful we were at that because we felt like we were surviving. But in our older age, we realized how powerful those kids were that the same as your band. Just start in your fucking bedroom and start figuring it out. No one gave you permission. no one gave you any help you guys just did it and you didn't ask it no one's really going to say that that's a great idea and it's the same thing you're doing with your businesses right and it's the same thing you're doing with businesses and it's the same thing we're doing with ours we're not trying to do anything other than what

we think we should do because we want to solve a problem maybe we had right and that to me is what we started doing when we started MDDN 12 or 13 years ago or however many years it has been now And so now it's, we flipped it. We used to serve the career because we were afraid. If I'm not in Good Charlotte, do I mean anything to the world? Am I important? And I got over that. I was like, you know what?

If I'm not important to someone because that, then I don't want to be important. Right. And I don't care. And then I started just doing shit that outside of Good Charlotte. And then I came back to Good Charlotte with like real love and appreciation for the things the right way. Like, I was waiting there for you.

Yeah. So, uh, let's talk about bit flips because I think while we, well, we, well, you know,

while we have everyone listening, um, I think, again, you're doing something similar to what we're doing in terms of just like, you basically building something you wish you had. Yeah. I think.

That you need. And that, and we're, we're now. We're using it. We're using it. Well, yeah.

And, and I appreciate it that you guys have confidence in trying something because we all know, trying new stuff is tough in this industry. But I think for me, it's when I see the hornets nest of the music industry trying to figure out, you know, what's going on and what the next steps are, I am super grateful that I live in a time where there is no, like, pure cut, you know, path to success. There was a time when eventually we had our left foot in one way and the right foot in the other.

And what I mean by that is we came up. in 1999. You could still sell CDs. You could still buy space on the N-cap. You could still get at least enough radio play to see if it researched well. You could go into K-Rock and maybe get Stryker to play it. We still had a paper mailing list at the merchant table.

You guys were on TRL. You brought us on. You still had the ability to do things with a half a million dollar music video budget. Right? But at this time, what was happening was the whole industry was changing, not from the music perspective,

but from a technology perspective. And technology at the end of the day is how we listen, how we, you know, how we adapt to what we're doing, how we view this stuff. So you have YouTube coming online. You have the internet being invented.

You have, you know, Limewire and Napster. You have all these things happening in the music industry did nothing. It sat there. And now we have a situation where everything has been blown to bits. And so you have to look back and go,

okay, well, how can these people serve me as an artist? Because the artist should be working on the songs. But once you have the songs done, how can this person serve me in terms of a record label or management or agents, whatever it is? And what do they deserve for what they can, and I agree with you. There are people you want to listen to. And I agree with like being a global brand like you guys are. You got your band is global.

Our band is global. You do need like actual people like, you know, a thousand people around the world pushing and working. They're transactors. Yeah. And they're transformers. So they have to exist and there's good ones and there's bad ones. There's versions of it.

And I think the world is getting even less of that. I think it's getting so, you know, not to use the word singularity, but the music industry is becoming so singular in terms of where you get it, where you hear about it, yada, yada, yada. So our band, because of a major label and because of being on record labels and we give them credit where it's due in that time, it got us to a point to where now. we can kind of take all the safety nets and the parachute off and go, okay, well, what is in front of us now? If I'm going to make a step from day one, how do I make that first step? And to me, it's looking at all the new technologies.

Blockchain really stood out to me as something because when I looked at the music industry, I said, there's a merch company that doesn't give us who's buying our merch. There's a record label who's not telling us who our fan is. There's Facebook, Instagram. They're not telling us who our fans are. In fact, they'll change the rules on us and charge us. That's how they make the money. I am the product. that point, right? They are taking all the money. Then I'm looking at ticketing. Ticketmaster wouldn't tell us who is buying all of our tickets. That's their customer, not ours. Right? And then I'm looking at streaming. Well, who's listening? Well, that's Spotify's customer and that's title's customer. That's not your customer. Well, actually, if you look at it, all those companies are standing on the shoulders of artists. And so when I saw blockchain, I didn't think of NFT price go up. I didn't think of, you know, Bitcoin.

Obviously, those are different conversations. And we have, you know, I wasn't thinking of all these things. I was thinking, these are pieces of data, the fan, and how do you make the fans experience better while collecting that data and being able to reach out to them? So that you can super serve them. Well, and also we're the only one, where the artist in general are the only ones who purely genuinely like care above all about the fans' experience.

Right. And we have none of that. information. Yeah. Unless you get them to sign up on a mailing list, right? And then you're just sending them emails every once in a while is what it is. So my idea with Bitflips was to make an completely comprehensive flow of everything a fan would do with an artist, listening, purchasing, going to events, all of it, and putting it

on some sort of reward card, right? This is your user profile. You get rewarded. And then you'd go, well, Matt, how do you make their experience better? Well, it's easy. you give them your time, you give them access to the front of the line, which most of them want,

you give them access to early tickets, and you give them ownership of all these things. Now you prove that you're a fan and you have ownership whether you want to use it, sell it, or give it to somebody. And the blockchain is the only thing I've seen that allows you to do that.

People can come at you all day and go, make your own database. Oh yeah? Well, how am I going to get the information from all these companies that are taking it from us? How am I going to have that user database and be able to give somebody something

that's not like a user code and tell them that they can sell that. The person to steal it from you, take it from you, right? So there's all these things that blockchain, and we were talking about this earlier, all I've seen in the press for the last 10 years that I've been involved in crypto

is how bad it is and how much it's a scam. Today I'm starting to see all the, we were too late to the puzzle, now you can move money around the world, and it's how it works. It's how it works. And all of a sudden, oh my God, what were we doing?

We weren't paying attention. And so I don't want the music industry to be again behind the times and then all these new artists are going to come up and they're locked into shitty deals giving 75% of their earnings away when the label really doesn't have the tools at that point to do what they can do themselves and give the fan a better experience. That's the thing. Yeah. So that's why I love bid flips. And I think that the thing for every fan listening has to know no matter who the band. is, no matter who the artist is, nine out of ten of them, have the same heart. You actually just want the fan, you want them to have early access, you want them to have a great experience. You

want them, it's not a monetization, a money thing. It's an actual thing that you, it's like when you're in the studio making these records and creating this to share with people. It's like someone who cooks a meal and wants to watch someone enjoy it. It's, it's, that's the experience of an artist. Well, and let's be really honest here that you go, where is the monetization for revenge sevenfold. The idea is that you made that amazing meal, those people will come back. Yep. And they're going to want the next meal and the next meal. We want to make people's experience so good of being this fan that being a fan anywhere else is like, why aren't they doing X, Y, and Z? Because they want to buy the merch. They want to rep it. They want to have their communities

of people that outside of Avenge Sevenfold, they can go hang out with and meet up with. And the feeling that you get when you see a fan, a kid, you know, someone who's grown up, wearing your merch at an airport or interesting. The best feeling is more valuable than any amount of money you could ever make off of selling that t-shirt. And that's the thing I think fans need to know is that it actually means like you get something from it that money can't buy. For sure.

And I think that's what bit flips is it's actually all the stuff you explained, I think and articulated is important. It's going to work. Oh, there's no doubt. There's no doubt. It's going to be a climb. It'll be a mountain. It'll work at some point.

If it's us or if it's not us, at least we started it. And I know that sometimes people are too early to things. Listen, I, 10 years ago when I was getting into Bitcoin, everyone thought I was off my, out of my mind, right? And you talk about it and you talk about the technicality of it, what it is. There's no way that's going to happen. Hey, the helicopter you came in on today. I would never do that.

The Bitcoin helicopter. Yeah. After Kobe, I will never take an helicopter. Yeah. But even that, even that to me, it's, it's something. thing that makes humanity better, right? We've all, and not to go on a Bitcoin tangent, but we've all sent money to Europe or to a family member somewhere and you've been completely destroyed on charges and it's going to settle in three days at your bank and bring in your passport to make sure you

have authentication to get. No, we have a thing now that just 10 cents shoot money across to people. We were sending money to Ukraine during the war and they were sending pictures of them getting the Ethereum and then buying all the vests and protection for these families that were getting bombed by Russia. There was no way we could get money in at that point except through a cryptocurrency. Now, so there's so many things if you just look at things in a different way, there's use cases and you know really smart people. You have to trust that really smart people are going to figure out the unlock, right?

At the beginning, it's always the internet in the beginning, right? The internet in the beginning was a shit show for investors. everyone's buying pets.com and all this stuff. But with no idea, well, do you have a pet store? Are you going to, you know, like, right? Like, what do you need this for? Well, now can we even imagine the world without websites and the internet? It's just we all live on it daily.

And it's at the time that it was like, oh, it's a fad. It's what we, it's like our whole thing with feeps is we believe, okay, the old record store experience that we used to have that's necessary. Go to the record store, read magazines. find a record, see a band, go and buy the record, and you hold it and you pay for it, you buy a t-shirt and you like leave the record store and you have this music experience. That's gone. There's boutiques.

Yeah. But it's not like what it's not the rich experience you had at Tower Records or at, uh, it's not quite, well, well, all those. You have to search it out, you know, and I think that there's a, there's a ton of like mom and pop shops keeping it alive, but it's not quite as accessible. If you ever think back when we were kids, it was very extreme, and now it's a niche thing. And then you go on Amazon and it's junky and clunky and you can't tell which it's from where and who's it official? Is it official?

Yeah. And is it like someone just printing shirts in their basement? And it's very hard. And Amazon isn't managing that well because they don't know the music business. Music business is such an interesting. So, Veeps, we think of it as like if Tower Records, MTV and Netflix had a base. it would be something like a world where you go in and there's endless content, all the bands, you watch a documentary, and you see exclusive and you see merch. So bands all have merch. You see vinyl, exclusive vinyl and just vinyl and collectibles and things like that. And it's very much in step

with the record experience online, on the platform, on your Apple TV, all happening in a modern way that we think is and likely will end up transacting in cryptocurrency and all that. But for us, it was like, where does the music business just... Well, like you said, what, 2002 maybe, when we were able to take you guys on MTV, where would we do that now? Well, you know, it's like, where can we discover that isn't, you know, like for us, we were just like, well, I guess we got to build it. And, like my music, my

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I think you know, I watched a few things on Veebs and it's the only place you can get things that I really want, right? Like the dying outward. I remember the moment it came out, the countdown and I had purchased that, you know, like, there's a bunch of things on there that. That's a good documentary. It's great. And I just wanted and those are interesting people, right? You're like, I just want to know what the hell's going on here.

Yeah, yeah. And so like, I just think it's, it's modern, it's cool. And you need those curators. You need that network effect. And it's music first. Yes. It's music first always. It's not anything else. It's little shows like this and big shows. It's music first and it's a world. So it's going to take a long time for it to emerge because it's a tree that's growing. It's a big, it's got roots though. Like artists really fuck with it because Veeps puts artists first. It's just period.

But that's why I like Bitflips because I think there's a world somewhere in the future where those two things collide. Also, too, I think it's really important for Bitflips. And I feel like you need to do something on this where there's a link in the description or something for young bands. because I think that the new bands, that start using it early. That start using it right away. Yes. Like right away from day one.

Yes. Like to me, that's where the younger generation, if you give them a tool, they use it. 100%. Most of these things that emerge come from things that start off that way, right? Like it's with a Venn sevenfold, we've basically had to tie a thousand pound weight to us and drag it.

Because a lot of these fans are either resistant or they're older. and they don't have the time for it. Yeah, the adaption's harder. Right. They understand their American Express card and they understand American Airlines, but as soon as you have to, you know, the music thing doesn't,

it's brand new, right? It's like, it's like why, right? And I think that when you have an artist coming up going, this is from day one, this is how we do things, you foster a community that just understands inherently and everything that comes out of that from day one is just it's inherent to what they're doing.

And that's usually what happens. And it's like what they say, right? It's like the big companies, it's the innovator's dilemma, right? You have these big companies that can't move because they're so stuck in what makes them money already. And it's what the really smart people are working on in their basement on the weekends. That's what becomes the next thing.

Can you imagine if we all had bid flips from our first records? Imagine how big those user bases would be of like fans and how much you could super serve everything. You would have so many people. Think about all the email lists and different iterations and how many fan clubs we've all started and they've dropped and they don't work or this or that.

The next 10 years is going to be about building and growing. And then at some point, you're going to have all these partnerships with all these institutions in different ways, right? Because everyone needs innovation. And then at some point, whether or not you're bought by someone because,

not because you want to be a billionaire, but because the strength of together and the need to integrate is deeper than just the partnership, right? That's when a good sale happens. when they need what you do so bad, it just makes sense for this number of artists and everyone using it for you guys to integrate. That's probably the only situation where that kind of thing happens or you just build an institution. But that takes a decade and a half, two decades,

right? Yeah. But I know the reason I know you'll do it is why you're doing it. It's not about the size of the money. It's about the actual experience and the innovation. And all the real The decision has been towards user experience. And that's it. That's the key. Put that first and it'll just keep being, and it'll be built by the artists that use it. Like VEPS, the early seven years,

it was built by everyone who used it. They were like, this is broken. This doesn't work. We had a bad experience with this, but they believed in it, the idea of it. Is it easier to dream forward for something like bit flips or for the band?

I think the band, musically is the North Star, right? like whatever the music and it kind of, that's like so natural. Yeah. I think you live and breathe it. You live and breathe it and it's like just like his artistic expression. Nothing really gets in that bubble of us writing and then recording with people that we trust and love.

But I think the music industry has been the most shocking to me because I've talked to a million managers now that I never would have talked to. And the problem with something in the music industry is that you have to convince the manager who doesn't want to. to get fired and they don't want to do anything new because they can get fired. Too much work sometimes too. An artist who wants to complain but doesn't actually want to try anything new because they're kind of audience captured by their fans. The reality of the work they don't want to deal with. They just want to complain.

Right. You have fans that have heard so much bad stuff about this particular industry that they want to shut it down right away. So the artist doesn't want that backlash. And if the manager brought it to them, the manager is going to be in trouble. And then if you look at it from the label side, they played that game for a minute when NFTs were happening in 2001 and there's no one there really that saw it from a technical perspective. They saw it as a, how can we sell bullshit to people? Right. They didn't see the

application. Well, and then think about how much they did that to people. We're going to sell you 2100 records of our record on the blockchain and you all own the record and it's going to be a thousand bucks each. And you just ripped off a bunch of fans for something that makes no sense. Anyone sensible could see that that was never going to be good. Right. And so now you have this, you have four groups of people that don't either understand it, don't want to lose their job, or don't want to try something new and are afraid because they've heard bad things. So I have like a multi-prong battle going on. And so what I've done is just internalized and said,

we are going to make Avenge Sevenfolds Deathbats Club. And what we do so fucking good that it's just going to have to spread like a disease from the inside and bring people on like you guys and other, there's a few other artists we're talking to that can just handle it, right? And understand that this is new and this is going to be great and you're going to hear shit from the outside, but the inside is going to be very cool. And that's all I can do at this point because I can't go talk to these people and just have them give me the bullshit and then know that they're walking back in a room and they can

be convinced within one second by somebody on their team that doesn't know what they're talking about. I've seen it so many times now. It takes a lot of guts too because, you know, you go from having your experience in your band. That's how you got into the music business to doing something like this. And it can be humbling because, you know, people get on, come to the meeting or get on the Zoom or do whatever. And it's like, well, show me. Oh, it's the guy. Show me. Show me. But it's also, it's the guy. It's the guy from Good Charlotte or it's the guy from Avenged Sevenfold. And they can't see anything other than that.

And I think it takes. How am I getting, how do I make my money? How do I make my money? Let me, let's zoom out for one second. I know we got to end this in a second. Zoom up for one second. You want an ecosystem that the fan and you control so passionately that these people are just diehard and you're making more diehards every day. You tell me how that's going to make you more money. No, I can't tell you how to siphon money off them from day one. No, I can't tell you to sell them a fucking JPEG for $1,000 and going to hand you a million dollar check.

But what I can tell you is how to build something so that in 10, 20 years, you have such a robust ecosystem that they are happy, you're happy, and it's just flowing in a way that is just very natural. Well, that's because we all think the same way. The money is whatever. It's a byproduct of things going well. Yes. If you build Disneyland, if you build your version of Disneyland, that's what all this is for me is like trying to, right? You're right. You're loyal. Just come into the world and experience. That's what Veeps is to me. It's a world that's growing. And every artist that comes in and starts to put their stuff in, they see it. And it like it's growing it's gonna take time i think we're 10 years away from it being like a full grown

like that's why we might all be too early but we're always early we all might kickstart something and then you know it comes back think about all the the startups and the i you know the iCO iCOs the the nfts all those things that happened within 2021 to now and now look at now all gone all gone because they were just they saw it and it was too early and it was about the money it was about the money a lot of them yeah right but there's a lot of things that have survived and and and the same thing's going to happen with you guys and us. And at the end of the day, I don't even care. Yeah. I just, I want to be involved in it right now. I want to make my own little corner of the internet. That's like, really fun. It's like an arcade from the 80s. It's like, it's compelling. It's

compelling. It's compelling. And I think that's the way to live. I think for anybody out there is like, just do shit that's compelling. I think that you have to create music from the same place. If you create music, thinking about the money, you're fucked. The music's always been easy, right? when you talk about like what's the easiest thing. The music's easy. I get with my guys and we just start listening to the things that we love. And we're like, this really blew me away. This was really interesting.

And we start like ideating. And then like you know, I don't give a shit what that, how many tracks are going to be on it? What that's all going to look like? I want to get our boy Wes Lang and be like, yo, here's some songs. What do we do? Like that's a creative process. And there's not one person outside of that band that has any say in it. Right.

And it's like, that's easy. Like that's the fun part. That's the fun part. Well, thanks for coming. Thanks for having me. I always love seeing you guys. Thanks to Revolver for the cover. Yeah, this idea.

Great idea, guys. And yeah, thanks, Matt. You're awesome, bro. You guys are awesome. Thank you for listening to Artist Friendly. We really appreciate it. If you like the show, you can also follow us on Spotify. You can follow us on Instagram at Artists.

And you can watch us on YouTube and Veeps. Leave comments. I always read them. See you next time.