Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen Made People Proud To Be American with Jim Cullen

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

Jim Cullen, author of 'Bridge and Tunnel Boys: Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen and the Metropolitan Sound of the 21st Century', discusses the similarities and differences between these two iconic musicians. He explores their backgrounds, their impact on popular music, and their representation of the American dream. Cullen also touches on the reasons why Billy Joel stopped writing and the factors that contributed to the success of both artists. Overall, the conversation delves into the cultural significance of Joel and Springsteen and their ability to capture the essence of the American spirit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's never too early to plan your summer story in Europe with WestJet, from rolling countryside to cobblestone streets. Begin your next chapter. Book your seat at westjet.com or call your travel agent. WestJet, where your story takes off. Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and this is Open Book, where I talk with some of the brightest minds out there about everything surrounding the written word from authors and historians to figures and entertainment,

neuroscientists, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Sorry, I can't resist. Before we get into today's episode, if you haven't already, please hit follow or subscribe, wherever you get your podcast, and leave us a review. We all love a review, even the bad ones. I want to hear the parts you're enjoying or how we can do better. You know, I can roll with the punches, so let me know. Anyways, let's get to it. Today we're in for a real tree of an episode as Jim Cullen takes us on a journey through the lives of two of America's greatest icons, Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel, through their music, both men capture the hopes, struggles, and dreams of everyday people, becoming cultural legends

and voices for an entire generation. Jim unpacks their artistry, impact, and explains why their stories still resonate so powerfully today. I hope you'll sit back, turn up the volume, and enjoy the great conversation with Jim. So joining us now on Open Book is Jim Cullen. He's a teacher, author, and historian. And he wrote an absolutely outstanding book. It's called Bridge and Tunnel Boys. And I technically am a bridge and tunnel boy, Jim, although I can't sing. It's Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, and the Metropolitan Sound of the 21st century. And it's just great to have you here. I understand you're also a fellow Tufts alum and a Long Islander. I had Saul Gittleman on open book. I don't know if you remember the provost. Of course I do. He just wrote a new book on higher education, and Saul has been a 40-plus year friend of mine,

very big influence on my life, helped me get into Harvard Law School. And, of course, I'm one of the few goys out here on Long Island, knows the difference between his Shagetz and his shicks up because I took his course in Yiddish literature. But your book was fascinating to me for a number of different. reasons. I've got to know Mr. Joel mostly, not Bruce Springs in as much, although I've met him a few times. These were two icons of my era. I'm a 60-year-old guy. I've also interviewed Bob Spitz, who was the author of the Led Zeppelin book. I don't know if you've read that book, but I would recommend that to you. He joined us on Open Book a few months back.

And these guys represent a capsule in time for people of my generation. Of course, I'm more biased towards Billy Joel because I'm a Long Islander and my buddies that across the Hudson River are more biased to Bruce Springsteen. But why write this book, sir? Give us a little sense of your background. Tell us why you wrote this book. Why did you pick these two guys and not somebody like a John Bonjovi as an example? Well, I guess I'd start by saying that like you, I'm a bridge and tunnel boy. I was born in Queens. My father was a New York City firefighter. I did leave for a little while in Port Washington, so we overlap there as well. Um, um, I, um, I, was the first person in my family to go to college, and I bring that up because I didn't grow up in a house where there were a lot of books or educated people.

And instead, my introduction to the wider world was through Top 40 Radio. And so, you know, I was an obsessive listener to pop music and a follower of the Billboard charts and that kind of a thing. And Billy Joel, you know, for those of us of our ilk, was, you know, in his capable presence. And I certainly enjoyed him a lot. although I didn't really think of him in this obsession, nor Bruce Springsteen, for that matter. I had older cousins who really were serious Springsteen fans. And then at some point in high school, I just sort of had this epiphany where I realized that this was a very exciting person and that I wanted to be a part of this larger drama that we were all participating.

And of course, that's what's the great thing about pop music is that it creates, you know, kind of communities. And when I went off to Tufts and I did a thesis there, which I tried to put Springsteen in the wider context of American history to see him as the air of Walt Whitman and it's John Steinbeck and so on, and ultimately wrote a book about him that has just been reissued actually in a third edition. It's called Born in the USA. But the book came about in kind of a funny way because I had pitched a project to an editor who turned me down because he said that his Balawick, his area was regional studies and what I was proposing was not really a regional book and therefore he wasn't in a position to say

yes, and of course that was understandable. And it just got me thinking not really actively, just sort of passively about, you know, what I could do, you know, for someone like him. And this project just sort of snapped into place very quickly. I had actually thought about doing a Billy Joel book years ago that sort of put it aside. And suddenly, and I think you can, we can all intuitively understand that, you know, these guys have a lot in common. I mean, they were born within six months of each other. One was born east of the city. One was born southwest of the city.

You know, they signed to Columbia records within months of each other. They issued their first records within months of each other. They hit the big, after having a couple of records that didn't do well, they hit the big time within a year or two of each other. They both married models. You know, so there is a way in which they led a remarkable sort of parallel life. But above and beyond that, I was sort of interested in the way in which they represented a specific cultural ecosystem. that they were both part of.

You know, those of us of the rock and roll generation, you know, we don't really think of greater New York as a cultural hotbed. Certainly the music business has always been centered in New York. But when we think about rock and roll, we think about the Mississippi Delta, you know, or we think about, you know, Bob Dylan coming from the hinterland. You know, we don't think about, you know, Long Island or the Bronx. But as I began to look into this, I began to realize that, in fact, there really is a very rich tradition.

And it does have a distinctive style. And it goes back to the very beginnings of popular music as an entertainment genre, you know, with someone like Irving Berlin, who is, you know, a Russian Jew who comes to the city, writes hit songs over a period of years, sort of has a career. And it sort of goes forward from there, you know, whether you're talking about someone like Frank Sinatra or whether you're talking about, you know, Dion Demucci, you know, coming out of the Bronx in the early 60s or, you know, all the way, sort of all the way through, the 11 spoonful. You know, the shore sound at Asbury Park, you know, Brandy or a fine girl was a number one record in the early 70s. So these guys actually didn't come out of nowhere. They came out of somewhere pretty specific. And it's really reflected in their musical styles. But it's also reflected in the values that they came of age with.

Well, I mean, they came across to us. And again, like you, I have humble origins. My dad was a crane operator. And since you lived in Port Washington across from Bar Beach, which is now a golf course, that was a large sand mine there. And my father went to work there at age 20. He spent 40 plus years there, started as a laborer. He was a crane operator. And then he was a dispatcher where he weighed the sand coming out of the trucks.

You know, they were loaded by conveyor belt. And I grew up in that town. And you may remember ghost motorcycle. Do you remember Ghost motorcycles? I don't know. No. When you joined. Okay, so that went out of business in 1995, but from 1953 to 1995, my uncle, Sal DeFio,

decorated World War II veteran, had a motorcycle shop in Port Washington, and a frequent visitor to that shop was Billy Joel. And so I met Billy Joel for the first time as an impressionable 18-year-old on Main Street in Port Washington, across from Finn McCulls, is where my uncle's motorcycle shop was. And Billy would come in there. He could not have been nicer to the people there. And of course, he told us the story about how he drank shoe polish. He was very depressed, almost committed suicide. And when he finally broke out and made it, he made a solemn promise to himself that he would always be cordial to his fans. And he was certainly that way at age 33. And he looks that way at age 75. But why, though? Why did these guys,

who are rock and roll, Hall of Famers, superstars, how did they come across more regular than their 80s contemporaries? Well, that's an interesting question. And, you know, I think part of that goes to their backgrounds as well. I mean, I'm kind of interested

hearing you talk about your background in Port Washington because although I only live there for a brief time, you know, I know enough to know that it's a fairly affluent town overall. And so living, you know, living the way that you did, and for that matter the way that I did, I mean, there is a little bit of a,

you're pressing your nose against the glass a bit. No, no, not a little bit, sir. I grew up in a town where my contemporaries were driving around on BMWs. Yeah, yeah. You know, my dad was making $33,000 a year working the crane, but let me tell you something about that town, and I think you'll admire, appreciate this, I was blessed to be in that town because they had a great public school system. Yes.

And so that public school system, plus my grades got me into Tufts. And I had to borrow a lot of money to go through Tufts, but that was really how my career started, and I'm a direct beneficiary of that wonderful public school system in Port Washington. It was very memorable for me as well. And this is sort of relevant for thinking about Bruce Springste and Billy Joel, because we think of them as kind of the avatars of upward mobility, which, of course, they were. But one of the surprising things I learned when I started working on this book is that they're actually products of downward mobility, that their families experienced significant setbacks in the generation before they were born. And that experience,

really did, you know, cast a shadow on their, on their childhoods that, that, that, that, that lingered for a long time. And so they were, they had that, that vector, that grounding that's part of their story. But at the same time, they were born at a remarkably fortuitous moment. I mean, they were born at like the, the exact, um, point of the baby boom when things are really starting to, you know, take off. And, you know, you and I, of course, went to Tufts and we via educations, but they came abage at a time when you could actually contemplate not getting a college education, you know, not that it was, not that there was necessarily good advice or that their families were happy about the choices they made, but, but there was enough room in the

society, there was enough room in the record business. There was enough room for, for these incredibly passionate, devoted people, you know, to do what they most wanted to do. And, and, you know, that to a certain, to a certain extent, I mean, there are always people like that. There will always be people like that. But they were also very lucky in terms of the circumstances of the environment in which they came of age. Well, well, well, well said. Let's go to Billy Joel for a second. Man, he'll be mad at me for saying this. I'm going to say it, though. I feel like he was the less popular of the two for some reason, even though his songs are prolific and he has great popularity today, but growing up in the 80s and you even described this in the book, the

favored son was Bruce Springsteen. If I'm wrong about that, please tell me I'm wrong, but if I am right about that, can you give me some insights, sir, as to why I'm right about that? What did you think was going on there? Well, in a narrow sense, you're wrong in that I think Billy Joel has had more hits and sold more records if you towed up, you know, overall. And even in, even in their moments in the 70s. I mean, Springsteen was not really a pop star. Billy Joel really was a pop star. But in a more important sense, I think, I think that you're right. And there are a couple of reasons for that. I mean, some of them, you know, reflect, I think, well, I think one of the reasons for this is the nature of, you know, rock critics and the media that grew up around them, which came

of age at around the same time. And Bruce Springsteen, you know, is somebody who had, you know, pretty impressive social skills from the very beginning. Billy Joel, I think, had a little bit of a chip on his shoulder from the very beginning. Notwithstanding, you know, the, you know, encounters like the one you describe. Springsteen also had the great fortune of encountering John Landau early in his career, who, you know, basically steered his education and, you know, helped him, I think, manage. And of course, he was a part of the rock critic establishment. So Springsteen was a critical darling, you know, from the outset in a way that Billy Joel wasn't. And, and Joel, I think that chip on his shoulder, you know, hurt him in terms of his image management.

I think that's true to this day. I mean, you know, I get a little bit impatient sometimes when I listen to Bruce Bainsteen because I feel like every sentence that comes out of his mouth has been burnished with an inch of its life. You know, like he's very sort of self-conscious and careful and, you know, and so on. And, you know, Billy Joel, I think, has, you know, spoken from the cuff a little bit more to the point of making, you know, mistakes, like reading bad reviews from the stage, you know, when he's sort of upset about it. You know, I do think that overall,

Joel is the better musician. He has a classical training. His songs are dissentatively complex. Springsteen, I think, is the better writer in terms of, you know, in terms of lyrics and storytelling, which of course is more accessible to this sort of, you know, print media folks. I always say that, you know, if they had been born in an earlier generation,

Billy Joel would have been writing songs for Broadway and Bruce Springsteen. would have been a short story writer in magazines, you know. So to a certain extent, it reflects their sensibilities. It reflects the establishment of which they came of age. And it reflects the kind of work they've done. Favorite Billy Joel's song. Hmm. That's a tough one.

I really like, I really like piano. I mean, Captain Jack, if you're going back, if you're going back early, you know, I think that a song like River of Dream. dreams is, you know, 20 years later. I mean, he produced consistently good work over a period of time. And, you know, maybe we'll talk about his decision to stop and what that reflects. But what's really marvelous about Billy Joel, I think, is the way in which he is a tremendous gifted mimic. And I mean that in terms of, I mean, he doesn't mean version of porn to run, which I'm sure you've heard. But, but he is able to sort of capture the essence of earlier generations of pop performers and yet sort of put a top spin on it. You know, River of Dreams is a great example of that, because because he does this duop thing, the tokens, the lion sleeps tonight kind of a thing. But then he imbues it with this meditation about middle age. And so he just adds a whole other dimension to this catchy pop tune. You know, that's really his extraordinary gift, I think.

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If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone. close to you. Peace contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor, free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. So I got to ask the same question, favorite song for Bruce Bracing, and then I want to get into why Billy stop writing. I think it's a great topic, and you do address it. What's your favorite Bruce Springsteen song?

Well, it's funny, my favorite Bruce Springsteen song, I feel almost guilty saying about, saying this because it sounds like I'm a little bit fussy or too much of an inside dopster. But I think my favorite Bruce Springsteen song is This Hard Land, you know, which he wrote around the time of Nebraska, but never actually ended up making an album until he put it on sort of greatest hits. It's like a beautiful distillation, I think, of his entire vision, you know, in terms of hope and sorrow and all that kind of stuff. I also am deeply fond of the song that he wrote for his mother, The Wish. You know, he, Springsteen wrote so many songs from his father. that's a great sort of saga.

But the depth of the affection that he shows for his mother, who is his Italian mother, the light of his life, and that expressive Italian Catholicism, which I'm sure you know well, you know, was such a big part of what made him the great artist that he is. And why did Billy stop writing? Well, at one level, I think it's as simple as a matter of not enjoying it.

I mean, he has often referred to the piano as that beast with 88 teeth, And I think, you know, I think we all know people that, um, for whom, you know, some writing, whether it's writing music or writing words is torture and it's, and it's hard to do. And, um, and so I think that that was part of it. I think part of it is that a perception on his part that, that maybe, you know, the quality of the work might have been declining. And I think overall, I think you can, you know, you can make, you can make a case for that. I mean, for me, the irony of Billy Joel is that he's at its weakest in my view when he just tries to do straight rock when he isn't trying to invoke, adapt, you know, allude to sort of earlier

generations. Springsteen, you know, his work, I wouldn't say, has gotten better at time. And indeed, I think in some ways it's gotten weaker. But he has a different makeup. I think he has a deep need for this. And I think he values work for the sake of working in an important sense, because clearly he's not doing it for the money at this point. And he's, you know, he doesn't have the platform that he once did. It's just a, you know, that many of us have. I mean, we just don't know what to do but work. You know, it's the source of value and meaning in our lives, even if it's not necessarily immediately remunitive or, you know,

or something that has a clear payoff in another sense as well. Your book made me think of something that was dying to ask you, which is probably why I invited you on. So this is the central question. So I want you to think about the answer before you respond. Okay. We both are attracted to musicians and music. who both like songs.

I'm sure you have your own playlist on your phone or your car, as do I. And yet we also know there are thousands, if not millions of unbelievably good singers, talented songwriters. They never break out. They never turn into iconic figures. Yet the two men that you're writing about, they do. And they do for different reasons. and I guess this is a Simon Cowell question. What is the X factor that you look at?

Or what do you think knock them into the stratosphere? And yet there's thousands of other people that could probably have the scale and range of Billy Joel's voice and perhaps even be as good of a songwriter couldn't get there. Well, there are two necessary but insufficient initial answers to that question. The first, which is perhaps the least satisfying but must be said, especially in the context, the way you're framing the question, is that they were lucky. I mean, luck is always a factor in the outcome of careers, and, you know, it seems impossible to ignore that in their case. The second answer is that I think one can say that these were, objectively speaking, unusually talented people.

I mean, they, you know, as we talked about a lot with Joel, I mean, you know, his ability to craft a hook, a catchy tune, you know, is, you know, is demonstrably. attractive because he's been able to, he was able to do it over a period of time. I mean, you know, in pop music, you know, you can cruise for a while, but your, your chance in the spotlight is brief unless you've really got something to say. And Springsteen, of course, you know, as a writer, as a, as a kind of proto-literary figure, although, again, one with a great musical, you know, background and a sound that he forged. So anyway, so on one hand, you can say that they're lucky. On the other hand, you could say that, hey, they're really great. But I think the real answer to your question, actually, and there's one other thing, there's four parts. The third part is again the moment in which they arrived. They arrived when there was an infrastructure in place where they could succeed. You know, there was a, there was a fat and happy record business that was willing to underwrite these guys for a few years and have a few misses until they found their way. That's not, that's not there anymore. You know, they, they, they could and did tour for years to support their records. So, you know, part of their luck is the moment in which they arrived. I mean, they could, if you assume that they'd be successful

today, and I'm not sure they would, but if you assume they did, it wouldn't, it would happen differently. It would have to happen differently. But the last and perhaps the most important, or at least for lack of a better term, original answer, I can give you to the question, is that I think that both of these guys, and this goes to the title of the book, were able to compellingly embody an American myth of upward mobility about which they had some self-of-of-sumability, about which they had some self of some sense of self-consciousness and were able to articulate for a generation of people who could really relate to it on some visceral level. And I think that people really responded to that and still do.

No question. And this is a little bit of a follow-up question. But when I think of Billy Joel and I think of Bruce Springsteen, I think of a celebration of America. It's a gritty America. It's an aspirational, like you say, upward mobile. mobile America. There's a sweetness to glory days and there's a sadness to Allentown. But they're both capturing something about the American spirit of perseverance and trying to reach your dreams. Am I getting

that right, sir? Yeah, I think you are getting it right. And there's a crucial ingredient here of love and loyalty. You know, they love the country, they're loyal to the country. And it's Precisely because that love and loyalty is so palpable that they have a certain kind of credibility or seriousness when they're critical of it. It's just that much more compelling and believable. You know, when Billy Joel talks about Allentown in 1980 or when Springsteen talks about the river, I mean, that's what makes the tragedy all the more painful. And on the other hand, that's what makes a song like Born in the USA. so ultimately ennobling, you know. I mean, I don't think Leahy Coco was necessarily wrong to think that this could make a good Christiurk.

What he sensed correctly is that it's a song about resilience. And that's a song about, you know, it's a song about, you know. Coming back. Yeah. Yeah, look, the 80s were about the American renewal, right? And so that captured the essence of all that. Before I let you go, you publish another brilliant book in 2003 called The American Dream. How do you view that book now? Tell us a little bit about that book.

Yeah, actually, that book came out in 2003. That goes back away. I meant to say 2003. I'm sorry, I said 23. Yeah, you know, that's a book, you know, you won't be surprised to hear that, you know, came out of, you know, my own experience. It's not in any way autobiographical. But one of the points I was trying to make in that book, and I think it's important in terms of the contemporary conversation is that, you know, people tend to think that the American dream consists entirely of this notion of. of economic upward mobility. Of course, that's a big part of the story, going back to Benjamin Franklin. But that's not the only American dream, right? And the American dream was a dream of religious freedom for the Puritans. It was a dream of political independence for the founding fathers. It was a dream of equality in terms of Martin Luther King. It was a dream of homeownership,

which was such a big part of the drama of growing up in greater New York. And, you know, I think that we need to remember that. You know, one of the, And this is something I'm struggling with even in my own work now is that, you know, you and I and people our age, you know, came of age when there was a mythology that still felt available to us, the mythology of the American dream and the mythology of the frontier. You know, John Kennedy could talk about the space age in the context of covered wagons, you know, the myth of the good war, you know, whether the good war was to end slavery or whether the good war was to defeat the Nazis. One of the difficult, dare I say tragic aspects of contemporary life, those myths have been really hit hard, you know, and that's a complicated matter. I don't want to start pointing fingers, you know, but the reality is that we can no longer unselfconsciously invoke them as easily as we once could.

And that, I think, makes people like Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen all the more precious to us, even as we try to reimagine an American future. that is grounded in what we love and what we're loyal to. Okay, it's beautifully said. We're down to the point of the podcast. I call it the five famous words for my podcast. Me and my producer, we come up with five ideas, words, phrases. We ask the author to react to them.

You can give me a sentence or a word. Let's start with Scorsese. Scorsese is a great, tortured, exponent of the American dream and all its glory and squalor. Yeah, of course, and what we're talking about, Jim and I,

is Martin Scorsese, the Academy Award-winning film director who's about to do a biopic on Frank Sinatra, so that'll be interesting. We'll see what happens there. I'm going to say 1980. You say what? 1980 is a turning point

of a society that is preparing to enter Indian summer. It has been beset by doubt, There are dark shadows in the land, but there's also a sense of hope on the horizon that's inaugurated by Reagan's election and a bunch of other things that are following in its wake. Yeah, and it's fascinating because the New York Times in 1980, I was age 16. They wrote, is America able to recover from the malaise? And Jimmy Carter talked about. Time magazine wrote an essay called The American Renewal, What We Needed to do.

And two or three years later, we came out of the recession and felt, felt pretty good about ourselves. And, of course, we had things like Top Gun in the movie theaters, which is, you know, Uber patriotic. The American Dream, Jim, I say the words, the American Dream. You say what? Well, let me just back up just a second enough to say that, as it so happens, I've written a book called 1980, it's sort of a chronicle of the year.

But in terms of the American Dream, it's the myth of my life. You know, it's the organizing principle by which I. I've understood the way the world works and measured its, you know, successes and deficiencies of the country. The last name, Joel. I say Joel. You say what? The prophet of post-war America. Okay. I say Springsteen. You say what? Hmm. The author of the New Testament. So it's a it's a it's a treatise on how to live.

It's a treatise on who we are. Yeah, both of those things. And, you know, again, you know, you and I are the same age. And I think one of the more powerful aspects of this, and I'd be interested to get your reaction to it. You know, Springsteen is a dozen, 12, whatever, dozen years older than I am. And I've always kind of viewed him as a kind of big brother that I never had in terms of

This was a guy who, you know, shows us, you know, how to mess up a relationship, how not to mess up a relationship, how to grow old gracefully, how to express patriotic dissent. I mean, there is a way in which, you know, he is just such a powerful model and exemplar, not necessarily in a, like, do it this way, not that way, but dramatizing the consequences of the choices that people make. Absolutely. Well, listen, I mean, I'm fans of both. And I have a lot of respect for you. Sir, the book is outstanding. The title of the book is Bridge and Tunnel Boys. I really love that title.

The title is Bridge and Tunnel Boys, Billy Joel, Bruce Brainstine, and the Metropolitan Sound of the 21st century. Jim, thank you for joining us today in Open Book. It was a real pleasure. I appreciate the opportunity. You know, what a fantastic story of, of course. course, Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel, sort of a weird rivalry between us here on Long Island and those friends of mine that are in New Jersey, the truth of the matter is both of these amazingly talented people are from the tri-state metropolitan area. So there is a mutual love affair

up and around the city. But what great memories of Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteins? What a great era in American music. And it was thrilling for me to have them both on. Of course, Billy goes back with my family a long ways, and so it's always fun to talk about him. Ma. Yeah, Ma, you're ready to be on the podcast, Ma? Of course you are, right? Okay, so today my guest was a writer that talked about Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen. But you have a relationship with Billy Joel, don't you, Ma?

Yeah, of course. Okay, and what was he like as a guy, Billy Joel? Very nice, very humble. Very down to earth, right? Right. Yeah. Did you meet Bruce Springsteen, too? Did he ever come through the motorcycle shop?

No. Right? Yeah, but I know. If he did, I never met him. Okay, but do you like Billy Joel's music or you, are you not into Billy Joel's? You like Andrea Bocelli, right, Mom? When I come in, all you have on is Alexa, Zambria. But you've met Andrea Bocelli, too, right?

Yes, of course. Right. So you just meet all these people, right? Yeah, thanks to go through my brother. I met Forbes, too. Malcolm Forbes, too. Malcolm Forbes. I remember that.

Yep, yep. They all came into the motorcycle shop, right? Billy, John, was fine five cents. You know, I found him that way, too. You know, I remember one day I got a chance to take him to Carlos Pizzeria. I was 18 years old. I think Billy was 33. And, I mean, he thrilled all the high schoolers when he walked in.

He had like a little motorcycle jacket on. And we were, I think we were changing his flat tire or something like that. And he said, let's go get a, let's go get a bite of pizza. You know, he's just a regular. Regular guy from Long Island, right? Oh, my God. Man, you remember everything, Mom. Of course.

You know? I'll tell you something embarrassing. Okay, I didn't want to leave Billy. I was picking up a bike and he had half a tank of gas. And so I wanted the siphon the gas off for him, put it in the other, into the new bike. And me and my cousin, you know, Bobby were there. And the way you're siphon gas, you've got to suck into the tube to create the vacuum. and then you throw the tube into the other tank.

Of course, you know, I didn't understand how to do it. And the gas went into my mouth. I was like, that was disgusting. I still remember it. It's only 40 years later. But Bruce Springsteen, you listen to his music, ma, not really. No. No.

All right. All right, but you like Billy Joel. Yeah, no, of course. I know, okay, Mom. We know, Mom. Yes, Mom. Yes, Mom. Oh, my God.

before you make my okay ma you're too much ma all right i am anthony scaramucci and that was open book thank you for listening if you like what you hear tell your friends and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast while you're there please leave us a rating or review if you want to connect with me or chat more about the discussions it's at scaramucci on twitter or instagram i'd love to hear from you i'll see you back here next week. When a country's productivity cycle is broken, people feel it in their paychecks, their communities, their futures. What does this mean for individuals, communities, and businesses across the country? Join business leaders, policymakers, and influencers for CGs' national series on

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