The Joe Rogan Experience - #1881 - Rick Rubin

Episode Date: October 12, 2022

Rick Rubin is a record producer who has worked with multiple award winning artists including the Geto Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Public Enemy, The Cult, Danzig, Kanye West, The Beastie Boys, Black Sabbath, and Johnny Cash. He is the co-founder of Def Jam Recordings with Russell Simmons, and head of American Recordings www.tetragrammaton.com

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. Rick Rubin, ladies and gentlemen. It's a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance. Same. Happy to be here. I'm happy to have you here, man. I'm excited to talk to you.

Beautiful place. Thank you. And if you see shooting stars across the ceiling, you're not tripping. Okay. Every like 40 seconds or something, a star shoots across the ceiling. So what's happening, man? Just hanging. You wrote a book.

I wrote a book. I'm excited to read it, man. Yeah, I'm excited for you to see it. You've had a wild life, brother. It continues to surprise me on a regular basis. Does it? Every time. It's like one thing after another.

So much of it's unintentional. I would say all of it's unintentional. How so? From the beginning, I never thought any of the things that I'm doing were possible or realistic. And I just did things out of the love of them thinking I would have real jobs. And, you know, like the thing that, that my passion would be my hobby and I'd have a job to support my hobby. Yeah. And it just magically turned out different than that without me knowing it was

possible. That's the best kind of story. I love those stories. Because when someone just follows their passion and it just leads them to being one of the baddest motherfuckers in music. How did you get started? I just started making, I went to, was in a punk rock band first. And I recorded a couple of punk rock things with my band and liked the feeling of being in the studio. It was fun.

And hip-hop was just getting started at this time. And I would go to, there was a club called Negril on 2nd Avenue in Manhattan downtown. It was a reggae club most nights, but one night a week it was hip-hop. And this was when hip-hop was, it didn't really exist other than in the Bronx, Brooklyn. And it was this tiny little scene of people playing music in parks, really. It was not a, it's hard to explain how small it was, how much of a sub-genre it was in these days.

So the fact that you could see it downtown was a big deal because it didn't really exist anywhere. You didn't hear this music in clubs. You didn't hear it. And there were very few at this time. Twelve-inch singles would come out, and there would be, I don't know. I don't know if there were more than 30 or 40 rap songs in the world at this point in time. But there were these clubs where stuff would happen. And at this club that I went to called Negril, what you would normally only be able to see at a club in Harlem, like

there was a club called Broadway International and there was a club called the Disco Fever, was brought downtown and people downtown could see it. So I started going every Tuesday night. That's when I was going to NYU. And I just loved the music. And then I would buy every 12-inch single that would come out when it would come out. would buy every 12-inch single that would come out when it would come out, and none of them sounded like what it sounded like at the club. It wasn't related at all. How so? Live, it was much more of a raw. It was like DJs and breakbeats, and it was harder.

Whereas the record sounded more like an R&B record, but with somebody rapping on it. But it wasn't what we know as rap today. That's not what those records sounded like. They were live bands. They were made by people who made other kinds of music. So they made them the same way they made other kinds of music when hip hop was really different. So I started making hip hop records really with the idea of, I just wanted as a fan to hear what it sounded like in a club. So it was more almost like a documentarian style.

And I would just start documenting what I heard and making things that sounded more like the energy of a club, which was again, different than these slick records. And part of it was because I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have any training or skill, but that allowed, that was what allowed it to be new was it wasn't doing it the regular way. It was doing it the way of hip hop, which didn't yet exist. And so how did you get in with the artists and start producing stuff? I started meeting them the first, my favorite group at the time was called Treacherous Three. And they were on a label called Sugar Hill. Their best, they'd put out three 12-inch singles that I loved.

Those were the best 12-inch. They still sounded like R&B records, but they were the best of the rap records you could get at this time. Those first three came out on Enjoy Records. They had a red label. And then they signed to Sugar Hill. And when they signed to Sugar Hill, they put out an album and it didn't sound, it's like, wasn't good like the ones on Enjoy. And then one night,

Treacherous 3 were playing at that club Negril. And I met them after the show. Kumo D was the lead rapper, you'd say. And I went to Kumo D and just said, and again, I don't know anything about the music business. I don't know anything about the music business. I don't know anything about what anyone does. I don't know that there's such a job as a producer. I don't know any of this. I just said, you know, I'm your biggest fan and this, your new album doesn't sound like what's good about you guys. And let's go go let's work together to try to make something that's as good as you guys are and he said well we're signing sugar hill we can't really do that but you should talk to special k another member of the group he's got uh a brother tila rock who's a really good rapper

and you could do it with him it's like okay, okay. And that was the first record I made was Teela Rock. Wow. And so did they recognize once they heard that sound that, yeah, this is more like what we're doing in the clubs? It ended up getting very popular. It took a long time. It probably took 10 months to really have impact in the New York scene. And it did.

And it was a really popular song. What was the difference in the way you were doing the sound versus the way the sound was on the sound? We could listen to it. Like, if you listen to it, you'll hear the difference. I can describe it. But if you listen to it, you'll really understand. OK.

Tell Jamie what to pull up. OK. So a typical rap record at that time would have been Curtis Blow the Breaks. So if you listen to that, you'll hear what rap sounded like. And then after that, we'll listen to Tee La Rock, It's Yours, and you'll hear the difference. Okay. Jamie will find it. So this to you, and how old are you at the time? Just starting. So first or second year of school, whatever age that is.

So like 1920. Something like that. Wow. Clap your hands, everybody, if you've got what it takes. Because I'm Curtis Lowe, and I want you a superstar, breaks to win and breaks to lose, but these here breaks wrap your shoes, and these are the breaks, break it up, break it up, break it up! You hear guitar, you hear bass, you hear drums, and it's a band playing, and it sounds like it's at a party, and then there's rapping on top of that. And now play It's Yours.

Mmm. This is just a drum machine. Commentating, illustrating, description giving, adept with expert, analyzing some other musical myths, seeking people of the universe. This is yours. Ahhh. And there's scratches. Oh. Do you like it? and there's scratches now you haven't really heard that on records yet

because it was what would happen live in the DJ the DJs were the musicians but to people who made other kinds of music the DJs were only playing back a band so they assumed the record's supposed to be a band playing and my assumption was that's not what it was. It was the DJ playing a drum machine

and playing parts of records that that's what was exciting. That was the music of hip hop. The rapping on top could be the same but the music of it was different. Who was the first person that started scratching? I think, um, I don't know that much about it, but I believe it was, uh, DJ Kool Herc is the considered the inventor, but I'm not sure if that's true. I wouldn't, I'm not the best person to ask. What a wild idea and revolutionary. It's like

changed the way people thought about music and particularly like hip hop music. It became part of it. It comes out of the idea of the break, starting with the break. So the break is you have a song that has all different parts in it, a traditional song, but there's one little part in it that has a cool drum beat or a cool little percussion part. And what a DJ would do in those days was they would play just that little snippet of the song, might be four seconds, and they would have two turntables

and they'd play four seconds here, and then four seconds here, and then four seconds here, and four seconds here to create a longer piece out of this four second loop but there was no such thing as a sampler then so it only happened through live playing it and then when did people figure out sampling and when there was a lot of times sampling was maligned right in the early days

people didn't sort of understand they were like oh you're you're taking other people's music but it was not just that it was a creation of new music with samples it's a it's a long conversation the first part of sampling is the way it was used in hip hop in the early days. So I was saying we would use a snippet of a record and then sometimes we would even create a tape loop. So you would take a little piece of music on tape and then have it come back around and you'd edit it and splice it. And there's at least one song on the first Beastie Boys album that uses that technique. But it was about extending these pieces of music to create something new. And hip-hop from the beginning was always a form of montage.

It was finding things and making something new out of it. It wasn't finding things to make it sound like it sounded. It was finding something and changing it into something new. That's what was exciting about it. And this montage process is the basis of hip hop. And up until the time of It's Yours, we didn't really hear it on the records because people still were making records using traditional methods, non-hip hop methods. Did you get a sense like while this was all happening of how that was, this is like a completely new music genre. This is a whole new music scene. Like it must have been very exciting.

It was. Being part of it was very exciting. And loving been very exciting. It was. Being part of it was very exciting. And loving it was exciting. And there was a disconnect between that and the outside world. Because the outside world didn't recognize it, didn't even recognize it as music, much less something that was good, you know, like that could be good. It was viewed as this other thing, not music. Other thing.

Yeah. That's how it was described. I can remember being in, once Def Jam happened and we started having a lot of success putting out music, and I'm still probably at NYU, labels would come around and wanna be involved in one way or another, and one label asked, it's like, what do you attribute the success of this to? After all, it's not music. Now these are people in the music business who are wooing us, wanting to work with us,

and they're telling us they don't hear it as music. That doesn't even make sense today, right? No, no, no. Now it's, the world has changed. The world has changed. Wow. But it was a completely alien, underground form of music. And because people were rapping instead of singing, that was

one piece that didn't, wasn't understandable. And then because the music was like it's yours where it's it's a drum machine there's no melody there's no it's it was too foreign at that point in time for people to understand it as songs wow it's hard to it it's shocking. It's ridiculous. And, and in, in some ways, like there's a song I produced with Run DMC and Aerosmith, Walk This Way. And the whole purpose of doing that was to demonstrate this is music. This is music. And this is not only is it music, it's familiar music. music and this is not only is it music it's familiar music you're just not you're not seeing it like you're you're somehow removed from what's happening but it's easy to see if you so again if you create a demonstration so that's what walk this way was was i looked for a song that was familiar and that the way it was written in the original version,

the Aerosmith version, the phrasing of it was essentially a rap record. The verses are it's not melodic. It's all about the phrasing. That's how rap works. And the beat, you know, the intro was psst, tat, ba-boom-boom-tat, was already a known breakbeat in the hip-hop world. They had never heard, in hip-hop club, no one had heard of Aerosmith, no one had heard of Walk This Way, but they knew the Toys in the Attic break,

which was just that beat, not the song. Wow. Yeah, let's song. Wow. Yeah. Let's listen to that. Can we play the intro to Aerosmith's Walk This Way? I remember when you did that. I remember that being a very polarizing song. Absolutely.

Because people didn't know what to think. It's like some people thought you were ruining Walk This Way by adding Run DMC. And some people were like, why do you have Run DMC with rock and roll? It doesn't make any sense. Just that long. That piece is the Toys in the Attic break. Because it says Toys in the Attic on the record.

Just that. So if you went to a hipic on the record. Just that. So that was, so if you went to a hip hop club, you might hear that. Wow. But I grew up on Aerosmith and I grew up on ACDC and I grew up on Ted Nugent. You know, I grew up on rock and roll music. And when I saw this disconnect, this was the way to bridge the gap just to explain what was happening. Wow. How was it received in the music business when you did that?

I guess the first thing was radio. I remember, I guess it was WBCN in Boston. Yeah. Played it once. Mark Parenteau? I can't remember if it was Mark Parenteau or who else was there? Charles Laquadera? No.

Tell me another name. God, that's hard. Like DJs. The Morning Mattress was Charles Laquadera and Afternoons was Mark Parenteau. Yeah, I don't know that it was either of them, but it might have been. Again, I don't remember. I just remember that BCN played the song and it was a big deal also because it was a rock station playing a hip hop record. And I remember that there was this outrage from the audience, you know, take that garbage off. And then within a few days, it was the most requested song on the station. Wow. Yeah, so it was like it definitely divided the audience. Yeah.

But the best things do. That's what's really exciting. When you hear something new and you don't have a reference for it, your first reaction might be to push it away. I remember the first time I heard the Ramones when I was in probably junior high school, and I heard the Ramones, and that was the first really punk rock fast music I ever heard.

I don't think there was any before the Ramones. So if you're used to hearing normal tempo rock and roll, and then you hear the Ramones, I just laughed. It just seemed like a joke. You know, it just seemed ridiculous. And then eventually it became my favorite thing. How did Aerosmith react? Did you come to Aerosmith and try to bring it to them?

Did the label come to them? I just had the idea of doing the song and recording the song with Run DMC. And then the label said, why don't we reach out to Aerosmith and ask if they would participate? And I was like, that sounds crazy to me. But if they'll do it, obviously I'd love it. You know, I loved that band growing up they were one of my favorite bands growing up so that seemed like a dream and then they came and we did it wow that that was a groundbreaking moment in music it really was if you really

stop and think about all the ripples that came out of that particular song, that song introduced so many people to hip hop and I'm sure so many hip hop fans to rock and roll and run DMC. Absolutely. Combining with Aerosmith is like the perfect combination. Two iconic bands. But also at that point in time, Aerosmith had fallen on hard times. I remember I saw Aerosmith play at Nassau Coliseum, sold out, incredible show. And then six months later, Aerosmith were playing at a club on Long Island called Speaks, which was like where the cover bands would play. Six months? Six months.

What happened? I don't know. I don't really know. I think maybe Joe Perry left the band, which was part of it. But I don't know how you can go from that popular to in this new condition that quickly. But it happened. That's wild. Yeah.

I wasn't aware that that had happened. That doesn't even make sense that something like that can happen in six months. Nassau Coliseum, which is like- Sold out. $15,000, $18,000 something. Jesus Christ, to a club. Yeah, maybe 600 person club, like a big club, but still a club. A big fall.

A big fall. Wow. Yeah. In six months. Yeah, really quick. So was it a scandal when joe perry left is that what it was was it like everyone was upset i don't know i really don't know so they did that and then did that song bring them back that's on brought them back wow yeah holy they had actually put out an album called Done With Mirrors, which was like their comeback album before Walk This Way.

And that was not well received. And then Walk This Way came out. And then it both broke Run DMC in a mainstream way and rebroke Aerosmith as a mainstream group. Wow. So then what happens with you after that? That song obviously is this giant smash and things just start happening then? Things start happening right from the beginning. Honestly, the whole thing was miraculous because I'm working in this form of music that people

don't think is music, nobody likes and nobody cares about other than the, you know, 200 people at the Negril Club that I would go to. And then bit by bit, the first album I produced was LL Cool J. He was 16 at the time. And the way that, the way I met LL was because of the It's Yours record, the Tila Rock record that we listened to, it had Def Jam Recordings name and the address, 5 University Place, which was my dorm room at NYU. And we started getting demo tapes to the dorm room. And Adam Horowitz from the Beastie Boys was listening to all of the demo tapes and he found the LL tapes. Like, you should listen to this one. And we listened to it and we made us really laugh and we liked it.

So much of it has to do with humor. Like, when it's good, it makes you laugh, even if it's not funny. You know, like the surprise nature of things, when you hear the unexpected, you laugh and it feels good. It's a good feeling. And I remember we laughed a lot at LL's. As a matter of fact, on LL's demo tape, the first thing he said before he started his demo rap was, he said, let me clear my throat. And then he started rapping. But he only said that because he turned on the recorder before he started rapping, but it wasn't supposed to be part of it. And we just thought it was the funniest thing, let me clear my throat. And then on the Beastie Boys

record, we have a song where in the middle of of the song we stop the song and ad rock says let me clear my throat and it's really based on hearing it just this funny thing that didn't really make sense complete inside joke and um so so we were making these things that were completely insider, personal, no expectation. You know, there was no expectation that anybody would like any of the things we were making outside of our small group of friends. And what you were doing, too, was that's a completely unique way of making music that really didn't exist before. Like having, like, not just having samples, but having things like that. Pausing in the middle of a song,

let me clear my throat. It was definitely odd. It was very free. Yeah, free is the great word. That's the great word. Very free. It was experimental. And it was intended to be fun and exciting and hard

and all the things that we liked in music, but again, with no potential upside, no expectation that it was for anyone else. Well, speaking of experimental, Paul's Boutique is one of my favorite albums ever. It's incredible. It's fucking great. And that was such a radical shift from the first album.

Absolutely. I didn't produce Paul's Boutique. That's what's different about it. Radically different. And miraculously beautiful. Beautiful album. Yeah, just completely different kind of music. But it speaks to the sort of freedom of that time.

Absolutely. People would take these wild chances like that. I remember I was with Chuck D at the Mondrian Hotel in Los Angeles, and we had gotten advance of Paul's Boutique, and we listened to it together, and our minds were blown. We're just like, this is the future. It was so good, and we loved it. And then it came out, and it ended up not being, at the time, it was so good and we loved it and then it came out and it ended up not being at the time it was not wildly successful yeah that's that was strange to me at the time because i was i don't

understand why people aren't loving this this is so interesting so good so good but it's just like i think then is that what happens let's like now there's like a form that people accept for hip hop. There's like a form that people accept for a certain band at that time. And then Paul's Boutique comes along. It's like, well, now we're going to try something even wilder. It's always been the case that people come to expect or the audience comes to expect a certain thing. And if you veer outside of those lines, it's often not well received.

And an example also, even Public Enemy, when we put out the first Public Enemy record, none of the, at this point in time, there were already stations playing rap music, like master mix shows on WBLS and KTU would be like Saturday night they'd be playing rap music but they wouldn't play Public Enemy they would play the instrumental versions they wouldn't play Chuck's vocals because he didn't sound like the other MCs at that time and and he even has a line on the second Public

Enemy album about some say no to the album, the show, Bum Rush the Sounds I made a year ago. It's like last time you played the music, this time you'll play the lyrics. I don't know why anybody would listen to Chuck D and not think it was fucking awesome. He's incredible. Isn't that crazy that someone would think that his lyrics or his voice is not good? It's insane. It's insane.

I mean, it's iconic. But it was just new. It was just new. And what he was talking about was new. So it just wasn't what was in the culture at the time. But often the best things. I remember at the time that LL came out, another record came out called Roxanne Roxanne by a group called UTFO. And UTFO was a much bigger hit than LL's song,

but over time, the consistency of LL's artistry bypassed UTFO. But sometimes the thing that catches on isn't the – it's a short-term thing, you know? It's a short-term taste. Yeah. One of the things that I found interesting about hip-hop was I can really remember this clearly because the first time I listened to N.W.A., I was on a treadmill or a stair climber machine and I was in Boston. And I was like, this is fucking crazy. It's incredible.

Like these guys are it's it was so wild and so violent and so hard. I remember thinking, like, holy shit, this is popular? I remember thinking, this kind of music is going to have ramifications on society. Because it was so powerful. And shocking. Like I'd never heard that kind of violence and that extreme lyrics and just their depictions of real life in South Central L.A. And I mean it really ignited this completely new branch of hip hop in a lot of ways. Absolutely. It was – I had pretty much left hip hop at that point in time. Um,

once, once hip hop, so when we started doing the stuff we were doing, hip hop didn't really exist. And then all of a sudden it got popular. And once it got popular, it, it felt like the community changed. And it wasn't people getting into it out of love for hip hop or wanting to continue pushing the boundaries of what was creatively possible. It just started all sounding like records we had already made. And it just wasn't interesting. It felt like derivative. Everything was derivative at this point.

So I started producing other, produced Slayer and, you know, Danzig, different kinds of music that felt more challenging to me in that moment, um, that just spoke to me more. And then I heard NWA, actually it was Easy E. NWA hadn't recorded yet. There was the Easy E album, which is the first album from Dre in the sound of what became NWA. And it blew my mind. And I went to California to meet with them. And I actually visited in the studio when they were recording straight out of Compton album. Yeah. Incredible. Wow. That's fascinating too, that like this new thing emerges and then people just imitate the pattern of success like whatever the successful pattern of that music yeah it wasn't it wasn't out of artistry it was out of oh this works let's do

what works yeah and for someone like you like you you seem to go on feel a lot or just like what resonates with you that's it it's. Everything I do is just personal taste. And it's what the book's about is like really for people to trust, artists to trust in themselves, make something that speaks to themselves, and hopefully someone else will like it. But you can't second guess your own taste for what someone else is going to like. It won't be good. We're not smart enough to know what someone else is gonna like.

You know, to make something, well I don't really like it, but I think this group of people like it. It's a bad way to play the game of music or art. You have to do what's personal to you, take it as far as you could go, really push the boundaries. And people will resonate with it if they're supposed to resonate with it. But you can't get there the other way. The other way is a dead end path.

When artists are not successful yet, though, it's very difficult for them to find who they are. Because they're always just trying to figure out what's the path to success, which success seems to be the carrot at the end of the stick. It's like there's always this something. These guys have all this money. These guys have all these cars and these big houses. How do I get that?

How do I get success? How do I fill up an arena? How do I become successful? And so there's this temptation towards imitation. Yeah. It's a dangerous path. And if you're getting into this business for that outcome, if that's the reason you're doing it, chances are it's not going to work out. Most of the time. Yeah. That's not what makes it. What makes it great is the personal.

Yeah. With all of its imperfections, with all of its quirkiness, that's what makes it great is the personal. Yeah. With all of its imperfections, with all of its quirkiness, that's what makes it great. You know, how you see the world that's different from how everyone else sees the world, that's why you're an artist. That's your purpose in sharing your work with the world. And that seems to be the case with everything,

with literature. It's definitely the case with everything, with literature. It's definitely the case with stand-up comedy. Everything. We experienced that in stand-up comedy where there's these kind of derivative voices, where they're kind of like finding what they think other people want to hear, and they start saying it because they've heard other people say similar things that are now successful. Other people say similar things that are now successful. And even if they have some sort of a short-term success doing that, it's not revolutionary.

It doesn't change the world. It doesn't last. You know, it can be a momentary thing. But it's never the thing. It's the people who you first see and you might not like that you come to like because you don't understand them at first. Those are the ones that change the world. Those are the ones that you dedicate your fandom to for life. Yeah, I remember when Cypress Hill came out.

At first I was like, man, I don't know about this. That nasally voice that B-Real had, I was like, I don't know about this. You know, that nasally voice that B-Real had. I was like, I don't know about this. And then within like six months, they were like my favorite. So good. So good. His voice is so good. And it was also like one of the first cannabis-infused kinds of music.

You know, they were so not just cannabis-inspired, but they would sing about it. They would rap about it. Yeah, and also Snoop as well would lean into that. Well, and then The Chronic, of course. I mean, literally the cover of the album. There was something about, or there is something about someone like that that is completely unique. I think what you said, you said perfectly. That's what changes things, and that's completely unique. I think what you said, you said perfectly, that that's what changes things and that's what lasts,

whereas something that's derivative or someone's just trying to do things that they think other people are going to buy that's going to be successful. You might start out that way, and hopefully you can deviate and find your own voice, but if you don't, you can't keep imitating. Yeah, and who cares? It's a waste of your life. Deviate and find your own voice, but if you don't, you can't keep imitating.

Yeah, and who cares? Right. It's a waste of your life. Right. If your goal is to make money, go work on Wall Street. Right. Do something else where there are ways to make money. I think it's more of that. But if you're going to do it in art, it's different.

I think it's attention. I think they want the money, yes, but they also want to be stars. I think it's more of that. But if you're going to do it in art, it's different. I think it's attention. I think they want the money, yes, but they also want to be stars. I think that's the thing. That's the real carrot. It's like the money is – that's big. You see the other side too. There are so many artists who are shy, private people. Yeah.

And it's difficult for them to deal with any kind of success or, or, uh, fame. It's, it's a weird world. And even, even the ones who think they want that when it actually happens, it's a shocking, it's not what it's cracked up to be. Obviously there are great perks. Yeah. You know, there it's nice. It's nice to be successful. And there are things that happen when you're successful that you're not expecting. And things become a lot more complicated in your life. And it can shrink your life to the point of, you know, I know some rock stars over the years who literally never left their house or did anything. Tom Petty would be a great example. The only thing Tom Petty did was record music,

tour, watch television, read books. He never, he wouldn't go out to dinner, he wouldn't go anywhere because if he went out, someone would be, oh, it's Tom Petty. And it just made him uncomfortable. It was too weird. And for the people who really buy into it who who like that that can do a whole other trip you know they like in wrestling they say living

the gimmick you know yeah yeah that happens with comics too you lean into your audience you lean into what you think that they want to hear and then you become them how do you how do you um lean into what you think that they want to hear and then you become them. How do you, how do you, um, stay true to your voice as a comedian through success, through, through the ups and downs of doing it? How do you stay true to what you're doing? One thing I do is I don't read anything that anybody says about me. Great. That helps. And two is I spend a lot of time alone. I spend a lot of time alone. I do almost all my working out alone, all the sauna time and cold plunge and writing. I spend a lot of time just thinking and not thinking about what people think about me,

just thinking about what I like, what's interesting. about what people think about me. Just thinking about what I like, what's interesting. And I think one of the things that really tempers me or keeps me sane is the workouts. Because they're so brutal and they're so hard that everything else is easy. And I think that's something that's missing from a lot of people's lives where you deal

with the anxiety of fame and celebrity and just the attention and all the demands on you. And it's kind of overwhelming. And if all you're doing all day is like dreading those experiences, like if you're Tom Petty and you're hiding in your house, you're dreading going to dinner or dreading going out. Then those moments do become too big to deal with. And then you just want to get away as quickly as possible and go back to your house. You know, I mean, you see it in people that become famous you know as i've become friends with more and more famous people you see the and they're always like asking questions of other people that

are also famous like how do you deal with it like what is your solution and um i think my solution is the best one for me i don't think there's – I mean I think psychedelic drugs help a lot. It's just these big resets. These big resets where you're like, OK, this is all bullshit. Like all this little weird game you're involved in with life and society and culture. It's fun and it's great and it's meaningful and it's fun for other people but it's kind of bullshit. Because the real thing is so much weirder and so much greater

and it's everything is connected in some very bizarre and unseen way. And that humbling experience of the psychedelic connection is also a nice way to just like, just check you. Just put it back into perspective um but for day to day you can't really just trip balls day to day it'll just be too weird so day to day for me it's

it's the workouts like it's it's doing things you don't want to do and doing them rigorously and uh and then when you get over it, there's also these physical changes that happen, the endorphin releases and the alleviation of anxiety, which I think is critical to being able to manage those states of, of fame. Um, but you also got to have perspective and realize like, Hey man, like this, this is just what comes with it. And, but the most important thing is like, Hey, you're getting to do what you want to do, which for me as a kid, you know, starting out doing standup when I was 21, it was like this impossible idea. The, the, the impossible idea was just being a professional. Like, God,

wouldn't it be great to not have a job just Just to be able to get money from stand-up? It seems impossible. How did it start for you, stand-up? How did you know that that was your path? Just open mic night. You know, my good friend Steve Graham, who was an ophthalmologist at the time and a flight surgeon, this, like, incredible guy that I'm still good friends with to this day, he's the one who talked me into it.

He's the guy I did martial arts with. And he was like, you really should be a comedian. Because you were funny in real life? incredible guy that I'm still good friends with to this day. He's the one who talked me into it. He's the guy I did martial arts with. And he was like, you really should be a comedian. Because you were funny in real life? Because we would all have to spar and everybody would be really nervous and I would make everybody laugh. I'd do an impression of one of our friends and I'd just be talking shit. Or we would be going to a tournament, which was really scary. So we'd all be to a tournament which was really scary so we'd all

be on a bus together somewhere and uh you know it's like all these guys going to go fight and i would be the one that made everybody laugh it was like gallows humor yeah and uh i i would love it i loved all the attention of getting everybody to laugh so i would be the funny one and it was healing because you made everybody feel better and it served a purpose. It did. It was a giant relief bow. I was just releasing all the gas in the room and everybody would laugh. And it was like a break from the tension.

And, you know, at the time I was like 16, 17 years old. And then when I was 19, Steve was like, you really should be a comedian. And I was like, come on, man. You think I'm funny because you like me. I go, other people are going to think I'm an asshole. And plus, this is like Boston conservative late 80s, early, you know, like the late 80s people were fucking pretty conservative about like what they thought was funny. And until Kinison came along. And then Kinison came along in 86. And that was

right at the time when I started to consider it because I was, it's a funny story. I probably told this on the podcast before, but I was working at the Boston athletic club, which was a fitness club in South Boston. And I was like a trainer. I was teaching people how to lift weights. And there was this girl, I think she was a volleyball player. She was like big. She was like 5'11", like really athletic, big personality. She was hilarious. She was really funny.

And she worked the front desk. And she knew that I loved comedy. And she said to me, you've got to see this comedian. I saw him last night on HBO. And she takes me outside to the parking lot to tell me, because the bits were so outrageous, she didn't want to do them in the lobby. She takes me out in the parking lot, and she's like, and this fucking guy is doing this bit about homosexual necrophiliacs who are paying money to spend all this time with the freshest male corpses.

And so he's lying down, she lies down on the street, on the asphalt in the parking lot. And she's like, I'm lying there thinking, okay, I'm dead now. I'm going to be with Jesus. Like, oh, hey, what is this? It feels like some guy's got his dick in my ass. You mean life keeps fucking in the ass even after you're dead? It never ends. It never ends it never ends oh she is making me howl with laughter in a parking lot it's just me and her she's just reciting sam

kinnison and i remember thinking what that is crazy and i was laughing so and i had to find sam kinnison and so uh i got a cassette i think it was like so I got a cassette. I think it was like a VHS cassette. And I think it was at like Blockbuster or one of them type of video stores. And I brought it back to my apartment. And I remember watching it thinking, holy shit. This is comedy? Yeah. Like that was the first.

Because I thought comedy was Jerry Seinfeld. Comedy was Richard Pryor. I wasn't those guys. And I would watch Evening at the Improv or The Tonight Show, and these guys would have the blazers on with the rolled-up sleeves. I'm like, I've got to dress like that. But it wasn't me. I saw Kinnison.

I was like, that's comedy? And that's when I started to listen to Steve. I was like, maybe I could be a comedian. Because if that wild shit could be comedy? Because I was just too wild. I mean, I never could keep a real job I was super undisciplined with everything other than martial arts and all I was doing was I traveled around the country trying to kick people unconscious that's what I was doing

I mean that's what my life was because so to me my life was so extreme and so filled with violence and so wild that this stayed sort of sedate existence of like, did you ever notice? There was none of that in me. So, Kinison was the first thing that I saw. I was like, wow, maybe I could do comedy. That's amazing. And so much humor comes out of the extreme pain, discomfort. comes out of the extreme pain, discomfort. Um, it's...

You were in the right place for it to work. And the fact that that was your life would make you a different kind of comedian than those other comedians, which is a great thing. Yeah. Well, and that girl. God, I wish I stayed in touch with her. I don't even remember her name. She was awesome, though. She was awesome though. She was just fun.

She was just a funny girl. The fact that she laid down on the parking lot and she's like, oh, oh! Sam did too. Sam did it that way too. She reenacted his bit on this parking lot. But the fact that she did it, and she was so crazy she acted it out.

She was basically my age. So we were both like 19 at the time. And it was just, I couldn't believe it. I remember when I first saw Sam and it blew my mind and I loved him. I was really a Rodney guy. Like I loved Rodney Dangerfield. Loved Steve Martin. Loved Monty Python.

All things comedy. I went through a phase after being a little kid of listening to music like British Invasion, Beatles, Monkeys, that kind of music when I was a little kid. Then I stopped listening to music and only listened to comedy for years until junior high school when I started listening to hard rock. Wow. But I remember seeing Sam and being blown away. And I was already doing music at this time and had a label. And I went to find him. And then I found out he already had a record out away and I was already doing music at this time and had a label and I went to find him and then I found out he already had a record out and I was so bummed we didn't have a record out but he was signed to Warner Brothers I was bummed and then and then I

saw Dice and Dice blew me away and um I saw him first I saw him on the rodney hbo you know young comedians whatever it was called yeah i don't know what it was called and um and it was just i don't know he did 10 minutes or something and it was insane it was it was a perfect nice set and it was another one of those like when i first saw sam it's like he's not it's a very different character than Sam, but it's as hard and as extreme. And I just loved it. And then came to L.A. and I saw that he was playing at, what's the name of the club, the comedy club next to Greenblatt's? Laugh Factory. He was playing at the Laugh Factory.

I watched him at the Laugh Factory. It was incredible. After he got off the stage, he walked to Greenblatt's. Laugh Factory. He was playing at the Laugh Factory. I watched him at the Laugh Factory. It was incredible. After he got off the stage, he walked to Greenblatt's. I followed him to Greenblatt's and we spoke as he was ordering at Greenblatt's and started making records together. Wow.

You guys did The Day the Laughter Died, which is one of my all-time favorites. Look at that. Yeah. The Day the Laughter Died, cassette one, which is one of my all-time favorite comedy CDs, specials, whatever it is, recordings, because it was so crazy that he did that. It's crazy.

He's in the peak of his stardom, for people who don't know the story. I mean, this guy's selling out Nassau Coliseum, and nobody had ever done that as a comic. He sold out Madison Square Garden two nights in a row the week we recorded The Day the Laughter Died, just to give a context of what was happening. So for people who don't know, when you see Dice perform in HBO and you see his specials, it's polished material. It's sharp punchlines.

He's killing it. He's like, oh, what's in the bowl, bitch? It's powerful shit. So then he goes to Dangerfields with basically no material and just fucks around and just fucks around for two hours. Yeah. It was incredible. What started it was I would go – he would go to the comedy store most nights and I would meet him at the comedy store most nights. And most nights he would be great and the audience would love him.

But certain nights, wrong audience, mood he was in and he could – even when he was already dice and he would bomb. And he could bomb, even when he was already dice, and he would bomb. And for me and Hot Tub Johnny, I don't know if you ever met Hot Tub Johnny, me, Hot Tub Johnny would sit in the back. And for us, the funniest shows were when he bombed because his reaction to bombing was so funny. Whether it was pushing harder, like he's already doing aggressive material. And then when he's not getting the response,

he goes harder and people like it less. And it's so funny. It's because he just seems like a guy having a nervous breakdown. You know, it's like, it's so crazy. It doesn't feel like comedy at all. It seems like this other thing, a guy losing his mind and, you know, turning red

and sweating and screaming and nobody likes it. And we just died. And then in honor of doing The Garden, I remember saying, it's like, Andrew, how about instead of recording The Garden, let's try to do a set at Dangerfields and let's find out what night would be the least, like the most suburban, like not anyone who likes comedy,

people who are just going to a club because they're traveling through New York. You know, like the people who will most likely not like it and let's record that. And he's like, great, let's do it. I'm in. So it was great. But the ego, like most people's ego

would not allow them to have something like that as a recording and then just release it for- It was incredible. We thought it was the funniest thing in the world. One of my favorite parts of that cassette or that recording is when some guy in the audience goes, you're about as funny as a glass of milk. Has anybody ever sampled that?

If you listen to the recording, you'll hear me and Hot Tub Johnny in the back laughing. The only people you hear laughing on that record and The Day The Lefty Died Part 2 is us. And we're going crazy. It sounds like he's hitting punchlines that are just almost like he's speaking another language. Yeah. Yeah, it's no reaction. But he's hitting them hard like they would kill.

Yes, and you hear nothing. Ow, we're back! Get it? For comedians, there's a guy named Mike Donovan who was like a comedy legend in Boston. And at the time the Day of the Laughter died, I was just a beginning comic. And he pulls me aside. He goes, you've got to listen to this. You've got to listen to this. It listen to this you gotta listen this it's fucking

incredible he goes it's fucking incredible he goes he was he just bombs he just goes up in front of this audience they have no idea he's gonna be there and he fucking bombs and i was like why is that good it's like fuck you listen you got so you know dunavan who had been probably doing comedy at the time 15 20 years, he knew the formula. Anybody could kill. You get your right set, hot night, hot audience, you can kill. But this guy fucking doing that. And Donovan is like, he barely breathed because he's laughing so hard.

Because he's talking about Dice doing an impression of Nixon eating ass. He's talking about eating a woman's ass i do i was like nixon in that ass he's doing and it's fucking so ridiculous stupid and donovan is crying laughing tell me about it's like wow i gotta go get it and i remember listening to it and i guess at the time i was like 21 or 22 i was so confused i was like what the fuck is he doing weird he's dice like the first like the first one that first cassette dice incredible i listened to it i was 19 years old i was in my car parked in front of my house with this girl i was dating at the time and we're sitting in the car just howling, laughing at this cassette. And then he puts out that. Yeah.

And he just like, no one knew what to do. Yeah. That was... What was his reaction to the reaction of that? I've never talked to Dice about that. He loved it. He understood performance art. You know, he liked things that were different.

Yeah. He liked doing not the regular thing. Yeah. And we had already done, I think at that time, we had maybe done either three, probably three full regular comedy albums by this point in time. So it was nice to shake it up a little bit.

Boy, did that shake it up. And how did that affect his career? No effect. Not positive or negative. No effect. That's crazy. How is that possible? I mean, comedians liked it.

But it was, you know, it was meta. You know, it was an inside joke. But it was a two CD release. That was part of the beauty of it. I remember we even put a sticker on it. Something like to the effect of two hours of new material, no jokes. Because it's what it was. It's like really no jokes.

How was it reviewed? The same as people hated him. Reviewers hated him always. There was a story in, he played for the garden shows. There was a review in the Village Voice that was like, the Village Voice was a big format newspaper. And it was two entire pages of a review comparing it to a Nazi rally, a Hitler rally, that it wasn't funny at all, that it was just, this is the worst of society. Wow.

Just didn't get it at all. They didn't get it at all. Well, there was a time where he was ostracized by mainstream media in a way where it was like they were I mean he was Kennison got it a little bit he definitely got it but not like dice like dice got the full broad remember he's banned from MTV yeah and they were trying to say that you know well I was like Kurt I remember Kurt Loder talking about it like this unfunny you know comedian dice claim like but everybody was laughing yeah like what do you mean unfunny when you this unfunny you know comedian Dice but everybody was laughing

what do you mean unfunny when you say unfunny you mean your own personal taste like do you apply that to all music do you say that about other bands is this shitty band do you say NWA sucks because they're violent another part of it is that they would always to

vilify Dice they would always quote his jokes in writing. But if you don't see that character telling that joke, it just sounds horrible. I have a whole bit about that. I'll tell you about it off the air. But that's a real thing. It's like they would vilify him and portray him as if he was hateful when all he was doing was trying to make people laugh and succeeding tremendously in doing that and obviously mocking himself too i mean it was

a character it was the clearest it was ridiculous his name is andrew silverstein yeah okay and andrew when he would go and i love andrew to death being friends with him was one of the most surreal things at the comedy store because I was such a fan when I was a kid. I never got to meet Kinison. And I only got to meet Hicks very briefly. I mean, I literally said hi to him. That's it.

When I was an open mic-er in Boston. But I got to be friends with Dice. And I was mostly just doing the store at the time. And Dice pulled me aside. And he said, hey, you should do the road. He goes, you're fucking funny. You don't need these cocksuckers. He goes, these people telling you what to do and fucking you got to dance for them, do the show.

He goes, you could make a lot of money on the road. You should be doing the fucking road. And I was like, I should do the road. Dice told me to do the road. I'm going to do the road. And I started doing the road. That's when I started like I called my manager up and I said, let's start doing clubs in all these different cities. So when I wasn't doing news radio, when I wasn't on television, I would go off on the weekends and I would go, you know,

do fucking wherever, Houston, Phoenix. And I started doing the road because of Dice's direction. And how different was it doing comedy for people not at the comedy store? It was amazing. First of all, it made me a real comedian. Well, the store made me a real comedian, but the road made me a real headliner because I was doing an hour in these towns and I was doing two shows Friday, two shows Saturday,

and I was getting the feel of different vibes, and that's really when I fell in love with Texas. It was 97 when I started coming to Texas, 98, and they were just so rowdy and fun and free, and there was a different, there was a rebellious friendliness to them. And I was like, God, I love these people. friendliness to them.

And I was like, God, I love these people. And the first album I recorded in 99 on Warner Brothers was the I'm Gonna Be Dead Someday. And I did that in Houston. And I did it really, like, the touring and all that was because of Dice. That's what

really ignited me, ignited my inspiration to go do that. And there was too many guys that were just staying in town. And everybody at that time in the 90s, and it was kind of starting to die off, but there was this thing where everybody wanted a sitcom. That was the Holy Grail. I mean, the real Holy Grail was The Tonight Show.

But that was out of my reach. I was in my fucking 20s. It was not going to happen. But the Holy Grail was getting a sitcom because you could be Tim Allen. You could be Jerry Seinfeld. You could be Roseanne Barr. You could be Brett Butler. And if you got a sitcom, man, you were the fucking king.

And, you know, they would make a sitcom around you. So I had had a development deal at one point in time. And then I got on this show. It was this crappy show on Fox. And so I was on that path. And then I got on news radio, which was great. And then the path after that was obviously get your own sitcom. But Dice was like, fuck that.

Like, you should, you know, and this is that Dice had his own show, Bless This House. Remember that? And, you know, it was like, he was like, that's not the way. The way is the road. The way is comedy. You're a fucking comedian. He also made a movie, if you remember, Ford Fairlane. Yes.

And I remember thinking, this doesn't feel right. From the beginning, it didn't feel right. It felt like, what's so great about you is not in this movie. Right. Right. It was like homogenized milk. Yeah. You know, they pasteurized it and homogenized it and took all the enzymes out of it.

And it's like, I guess this is not the same thing. And, you know, the way that people reacted to Dice in the mainstream, you know, the hatred from the mainstream really caused him to crack. You know, do you remember he appeared on, I can't remember what late night show it was where he cried. Yeah, I think it was Arsenio Hall. Maybe. And he really changed his act after that. But not because it's what he thought was funny. He became a comedian because he wanted to be loved.

Yeah. And even though he would go out in front of 20,000 people screaming, adoring fans. Yeah. People would write terrible things about him. And it didn't compute. And somehow he just felt like, you know, they don't see me. They don't get me. And it really hurt him.

It really hurt him. Well, it was bizarre to us, comics, because we got him and we loved it. And so we were like, why does he get so much hate? Like, it was so confusing. And the internet didn't exist back then in that sort of form. So it's like he couldn't find like fan – like today we'd have no problem. Like sure, like MSNBC hates him. But all the YouTube people would love him or a lot of them would.

He would find his voice. He would find his voice. He'd find his audience. And I don't think that Arsenio Hall moment would happen today. He'd probably push back against it. But back then, the only reviews you heard of him were negative. Yeah. It was all negative. Yeah.

And you had to, like, be a quiet Dice fan. Like, you had to, like, almost not tell people you were a Dice fan. I equate it to, like, how it was to be a Kiss fan at one point in time. Hip hop music was the same. Hip hop was like villainous music. Hip hop was like the original, in the mid 80s, hip hop was the first populist uprising in New York City.

You know, it was like taking music out of the conservatory and bringing it back to the street. Yeah. And the powers that be did not like that and wanted to cancel it and tried to cancel it. That's when the whole PMRC thing happened and they were trying to ban rap music. Yeah, it was Al Gore's wife.

Remember Tipper Gore? Al Gore's wife, Tipper Gore, at the time, was the one who was, like was leading this fight against these lyrics. Because to a lot of these house moms and shit, they would hear those lyrics coming out of their son's bedroom. And they're like, what the fuck is this? What is going on? But also, they wanted to negate Prince. They wanted to cancel Madonna. They wanted to cancel a lot of stuff. It's been going on for a long time, this pushing back against art that you don't understand,

you know, that you're too old to understand. Well, it's just, you know, the non-accepting of other people's interests or other people's, what other people enjoy. of other people's interests or what other people enjoy. There's a lot of stuff that people really love that I don't get. I don't have the Grateful Dead gene. I have friends who love the dead. I hear it and I'm like, maybe if I did acid, maybe that's what they say.

But I don't know. But then I'd hear the Allman brothers. I'd be like, fuck, yeah. It was like, for whatever it is. It's like whatever your personality is, your life experiences, you know, the place you grew up. Like, that shit resonated with me. Or the right, finding the right way in. Like, the Grateful Dead didn't speak to me for a long time until they did. And I found the way in.

And maybe I'll share something with did and i found the way in yeah and um maybe i'll i'll share some something with you that might find find a way because it's always nice to find something else to like yeah well and then there was stuff that i liked that was like very different than that like i was a giant cool g rap fan i remember listening to cool g rap when i first moved to new york and i was like god damn this guy's good. He to me is one, I mean, he's one of my all time favorite hip hop artists. And to me, like the most underappreciated, I mean, you go back to listen to like cock blocking, that is a fucking great song. He has so many, the ill street blues, so many great hip hop songs that i remember listening to them at the time going why isn't this

bigger like why don't more people know about this why isn't this like you know to this day you know people will go back and they'll talk about like nas who's fucking incredible and they'll but cool g rap slips by like how the fuck go listen to that shit cool g rap was incredible incredible you never know sometimes it's not based on how good it is you know like it's the stars line up at certain times for certain things to happen and they happen and sometimes you can make something great and it doesn't connect for whatever reason i found this out from making a lot of stuff like yeah sometimes you make two things that you think are the two best things you've ever made and one of them connects with the world and one of them doesn't. And it might not have anything to do with what's in the art.

It might have to do with, oh, it came out the same day as this other thing came out and that got in the way. Or there was a bigger story at the time or there was some other – who knows? Or it's not the – it's not in the cards for that person to have that success. It's like there's so much to it that we don't understand. Yeah. All we can do is make something good and put it out and hope for the best. And that's all there is. We never know why things – why does something work? there is you we never know why things why does something work even if you make a piece of art you might and it works you may not know why yeah it's mysterious it is it's mysterious i'm gonna

use restroom yeah yeah go ahead go ahead we'll be right back i'm so glad you liked the day the laughter died oh my god i fucking love it fucking love it. It's so funny. It is. It's so crazy. Yeah. Well, it's just so bold. Yeah. And knowing Dice, as long as I've known him and seen so many late night sets,

like some of my favorite sets of Dice, Dice would go up in the OR and he would have like a challenge he would do where he wouldn't talk for as long as possible. And so he would go in front of the mic and everybody would be happy to see him and he'd go. He would just stand there and just stand there like about to talk and not talk and go like minutes minutes without a word And the comedians were fucking dying and there's like 40 people in the audience and they were so confused Yeah, and my favorite dice was Insulting dice where dice would find some look at you. He'd find some guy in the audience and just tear him apart Just insult the shit out of him and the guy would

be like what the fuck man and we would be crying crying laughing and dice would just just just fuck around like he had no problem with bombing he had no it was fully confident while no jokes and no laughs. Fully confident. He often didn't prepare material. Like, I'm friends with Chris Rock, and the difference in their work ethic is radical. Radical. Like, Chris is always writing, and Chris is meticulousulous and it's always game on. Yes. And when he's on stage, it really shows.

Well, Chris, though, Chris will take a lot of chances on stage, too. And Chris also has this very unusual approach where he will, like, purposely try to find the beats and and you know and leave dead air because he's finding these beats and like stand on stage the comedy storm like what else what else and I'll have it like where he's you know he's just like thinking and like the audience is like I'm right I'm ready to see bring the pain I'm ready to see you the Pain. I'm ready to see you crushing. Like, why are you not crushing? And he would even say sometimes, he would follow people and be like, relax, relax, not going to be that good. Relax. Because he was working on new shit. And when he

worked on new shit, he was working. He was working. This audience, I know you're here to see comedy and you're happy to see you know comedy and you're happy that Chris Rock just showed up but Chris Rock was not announced yeah so it wasn't like this was a big production and he was going to do his very best material he was there to try to put pieces together yes and he would have a team of comics in the back guys that he'd hired great comics guys like Richard Jenny Nick DiPaolo. And these guys would listen to his material and then they would all talk about it afterwards. And they would find whatever the embers were. to find the beats and that's what he did and that's why he created so many great specials because he had that work ethic because he had that he was an he was an artist but he was also

like he was he was a craftsman you know he was crafting absolutely i just saw him play at the o2 arena a couple of weeks ago and it was the funniest I've ever seen him, which is unbelievable. He's on fire right now. He's on fire right now. Yeah, it was insane. Will Smith slapping him, I think, woke up. I mean, I haven't talked to him about this.

My impression was that I think now he understands that those people, those Hollywood people, are fucking crazy. Those Hollywood people are fucking crazy. They're all in this weird, bizarre cult of of actors and our heroes and these are the most important people in the world. And these people that win these awards and make these films, they're the most appreciated, most respected. And him getting slapped and then him trying to go back to comedy and seeing Will Smith just meltdown in front of him. And generally, that moment was probably the end of how anybody will ever think of Will Smith again, as this movie star guy who's this happy guy with this family who's putting together all these incredible films and goes

on to win the Academy Award that night, goes on stage and they applaud him after he just assaulted one of the greatest comedians that's ever lived over the most innocuous roast joke. The most innocuous. You know, I loved you in G.I. Jane. Like what? That's it? It's so mild.

And I think him seeing that just fired up that fuck you furnace. It's unbelievable. All I know is it's the funniest I've ever seen him. And I've seen him funny, you know? He's angry now, though. He's on fire. And it's great. It's great.

Him and Chappelle were playing together. And both were, couldn't have been more different and both incredible. I've never been to the O2. I was there to the O2 for UFC once, but I'm there in two weeks. It was surprisingly good for comedy. I was on my way there thinking, prepared to be disappointed because I don't usually like comedy in a big venue like that. I like it better in a club. But somehow, it felt intimate, and it completely worked for comedy. Yeah, Dave loves it. He was excited that I was going there. We were talking about it, and he was saying, like, it's a

great room. It's a great room for comedy. But Dave's got that arena timing, you know. He does a lot of arenas now. You know's he knows he can take like we just did Columbus together a couple weeks ago and he can take a fucking giant room and thousands of people and make it feel like you just hanging with him in a living room somewhere or in a small club he can transform it but it's just like the different ways of approaching comedy, it's got to parallel with music, right? I mean, there's got to be some artists that, you know,

they just want to riff. They want to figure it out on the fly. They want to do it all, you know, almost off the top of their head. And then there's other artists where every single word has gone over and meticulously analyzed and pieced together. Yeah, there's no right or wrong way. And you just have to find your way and whatever works for you. Yeah, I've worked with artists who do it completely different ways.

You know, you'll see like Eminem, he's always writing in a book always writing all the time and he's always got notebooks writing and I asked him it's like are these all you know rhymes to use he's like no no no it's like 99% of what I write I'll never use just to stay engaged in the process of of writing and finding new ways to write so that it just when i need it it just comes and then um jay-z would doesn't write anything down yeah and he just listens to the beat and hums hums and then goes into the goes on the mic you know 20 minutes later and just says a whole complicated verse. A complicated verse. I don't know how he can remember it, much less have just written it

and just be able to do it, like, free. It's wild. Does he practice on his own? Does he create these raps on his own, like alone? Or does he only do it when he's talking to people? Does he only do it on stage? No, no, no. This is for a record.

Like when we were recording 99 Problems, I played the beat for him. He likes the beat. And then he says, okay, just keep playing it. And then he sits in the back of the control room on the couch. And you just hear him humming like, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm. As I say, 15 or 20 minutes. And then he jumps on. He's like, okay, I got it. And then he goes in, no, no paper, no writing, nothing and delivers the whole thing. And then says, let's try it again. And then he does

it again and the words will be the same, but the phrasing will be different. So it's more like an improvisational solo. You know, if you have a melody, you could play the same melody with putting emphasis on different parts of it. So he does it. It's not the same. The words are the same or close to the same, but the feeling of it and the rhythm of it changes when he does it again. And he does it a few times and he's like, okay, I think that one's good. And, but did you ever ask him these things that he's saying? Has he said them before? Does he? He's not, I know he hasn't because it's because it's happening live in the room in this moment. But it's not like he's not – even though it's live in the moment, it's not like things that he's thought of before.

Just all off the top. Yes. Wow. Yes. In that moment. It's insane. That's incredible. I like it.

That's incredible. Yeah, he's famous for that. He's famous for having it all in his head. But instantaneously or, you know, relatively instantaneously. Does anybody else do it like that? Like Nas does it. Nas writes. I've never seen anyone else do that. Wow. It's not uncommon for singers or rappers to hear something and immediately start like automatic writing where they'll

just start saying nonsense words. The first thing that comes to mind over the beat where you can feel a shape of what it can be. Yeah. And like we just made two new albums with the Chili Peppers. The second one just came, just coming out now, I think, but the first one came out like six months ago, but two double albums. And the way Anthony works is he'll hear the music and he'll sing along, but he'll sing along with an idea of a melody, but he doesn't yet have words

and just sing nonsense words and just sing along, making up nonsense words automatically real time and then listens back and says, oh, okay, this phrase in this spot sounds good. And this phrase in this spot sounds good. What else goes with that? And then it's like a puzzle where you fill in the rest. It's like, you don't necessarily have an idea of what the song is going to be about, or you might not even know what the song's about until you finish. You might not even know after the song's finished what it's about. You might not know for years what it's about because it's like a dream. It comes from the subconscious. It's a great way to work. It's a great way to write, to just participate with what's going on

in a free way and then listen back to what you did and look for clues, look for where, where is the connective tissue here? Are there any things here that sound like they belong there? Dan Auerbach from the Black Keys, he does that. He says he gets really high and he just makes up words. Like he'll make up words to the music and just try to find how it works and he's not you know, he's just trying to figure it out as he's doing it and

There's like There's parallels to comedy I think because in comedy you can write things and I do I write a lot of things but sometimes when you're on stage there's like a There's a path that just like opens up and you know that this is the way to do it. It's different than the way you wrote it. Yeah. Because the audience is there and you feel it because you only feel it when you're performing.

But with comedy, the thing that's so different is the only way we ever know it's any good. The only way we really can create. You can't create an event. I mean, maybe someone can. I heard Cosby used to do that. Cosby used to just write it all out and then he would go on stage or have it out and then not even need to rehearse it, not need to work it out in front of clubs. He would just do it in front of giant audiences and it would be done. But most people, they're creating with the audience. And

until you have an audience, you don't have any idea how the bit really comes together. There might be a setup that you thought was just a setup, and it gets the biggest laugh of the bit. And you're like, what? I didn't expect that. Does it change from night to night as well? 100%. Changes from night to night. Changes depending upon your opening act.

Changes depending upon the mood of the club Tuesdays are different than Wednesdays everything's different you know it's like it's one of the reasons why it's important to do I always call it cross training I'm like you can't just do arenas you got to do little clubs you got to do theaters you got to do everything you got to do clubs where they don't expect you to go up you got to do clubs where they know you're going to work on new material you got to do clubs where they don't expect you to go up. You got to do clubs where they know you're going to work on new material. You got to do clubs where this is a fucking recording. This is a big one, you know, ready, polished, set, go. It's all different. And it all comes alive while you're performing, which I guess parallels with music. But the benefit of music is you can create it in the studio you could put it

together in this and you can make fucking incredible music almost in a vacuum because you're you don't need the audience it's it's you you're it's you and the people you're working with and you put it together but we need people it's like we we have to they they're an integral part of the process. The audience has to be there. How does it work for television? If you're doing it like if you're doing comedy for television and there's no audience, how does that work? In what way?

What form? Comedy for television. It's a sitcom or whatever it is where there's a joke and there's no response coming back or in a movie, there's no response coming back. Well, you have table reads and, um, the, in the table read, you find the beats because in table, oftentimes it's like very fake, which is really weird. Cause one of the things that happens when you're on sitcom is the producers and the writers will laugh really loud at their jokes i see and uh kind of fake sometimes like they've heard the joke a hundred times before and so you walk into the room like why didn't you tell me that yesterday and it was like and like you know it's it's off-putting for a comic and you'll be like hey you know you guys are fucking killing me with this fake laugh.

What they're trying to do is provide you with a feel of how the audience is going to laugh. But they're also juicing up their own writing. Yeah. But also, how do you know how the audience is going to react? You don't. You don't know. So you do a first, like, we had the benefit of working with Dave Foley, who's brilliant. And Dave Foley was one of the kids in the hall.

And Dave Foley was essentially like an uncredited producer on news radio. So when we would do run-throughs and takes, Dave had this incredible sense of how a scene should go. And so when we would do run-throughs, we would go over the script, and Dave would go, well, this is, how about instead of this? Why don't you come in this? Why don't we just cut this part out? And you come in here, and you're just angry because of something that's incorrect.

You're angry because of that, and then Matthew comes over and says that, and Lisa comes over and says that, and then we end it with this. And then he would just rewrite the whole fucking scene. And so the brilliant – one of the more brilliant things about the producers and Paul Sims, the writer of that show, the head writer of that show, is that he would let you do that. He would let you come up with a totally alternative punchline. And then he would sit there and laugh and go, yeah, yeah, keep that, keep that.

Okay, let's do that. That's the new scene. And he would let you fuck around with it. So it gave all the performers all of this freedom. And it also allowed the thing to come alive while performing it the same way you would kind of do stand-up. Like you would figure out the beats while you were actually doing it. And then you really didn't know until the audience was there. then when the audience said there's just lines that i didn't

think were good and i would say i don't know do we have a better line for this and they were like just try it just try it i'm like okay i was like didn't believe it and i'd say the line and i'd get a huge laugh and i'd be like what the fuck like i didn't see i didn't think that was funny you kind of don't know and sometimes you know sometimes the line's so good always done with an audience there yes yeah well that kind of multi-cam you know you're always doing it with an audience I've never done a single cam uh show like that you know a show like the office right that's hard curb right curb has got to be the hardest because Larry's not even a script right no script

Yeah, you're just like you and I are in an argument about who stole cigarettes or whatever and then you just run with it Yeah, so the casting is really important very important and the vibe of the set is very important Yeah, it's got to be this you know this thing where everybody's working towards the same goal and It's got to be this thing where everybody's working towards the same goal. But when you watch Curb, one of the brilliant things about Curb is because he doesn't have that script, people are talking the way they talk in real life. They kind of talk over each other and they pause when the other person is talking and then they chime in, and it seems like a real conversation versus like Big Bang Theory or one of those shows that's more formulaic, like Set Up, Punchlines, where you're like trained monkeys and you're teaching them how to get a piece of candy. Like da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da, ha-ha-ha.

You know, Larry, the way he does it is so different. And it's one of the best sitcoms of all time. And if you watch Curb, particularly like the early seasons of Curb, I remember thinking like, oh, this is why Seinfeld was so good. This is why that show was so good. Larry David's a goddamn genius. Yeah. So funny. Yeah, and that's his process. And Seinfeld was incredible too.

Incredible. Both. So funny. Yeah. And that's his process. And Seinfeld was incredible too. Both shows. Incredible. Well, he's one of the, Seinfeld is one of the absolute best observational comedians that's ever existed. And the best at the flow and the sound and part of what he was doing was the way he was doing it. Like he had a flow. And that flow was infectious and it was contagious. And you would like fall in love with the way he talked about things. And he was so casual and confident in the way he was describing things. And he would just go. And he would improvise too. I stole something from Jerry in that he would do his whole set and then afterwards he would take questions from the crowd.

And he would just riff. And I was like, God, why don't I do that? What a great way to come up with comedy. You already did an hour of comedy and then go up and take questions. And I was, I think I was 20 years old. I saw him at the Paradise, which was a comedy club. It was next to Stitches. It was a rock club in Boston.

And he was a little too big for Stitches, so he would do the Paradise, which was still at the time relatively small. I want to say it was like 400 or 500 seats. And he did his whole set and then killed. And then afterwards just took questions and would riff. And it was genius. And this was after the Seinfeld show already happened or no? When did Seinfeld start?

I don't know. I think it was before Seinfeld. What year was Seinfeld? I think 90, 91, somewhere in there. Let's find out exactly so I can tell you. Because I'm curious. If it's 90, 91, then it was before. Then this was before Seinfeld.

This was when he was just a popular comedian. First episode, 89. July 1st, 89. So that was probably two years before that. I'm saying this is probably 87. Wow. Yeah. It's a boat.

I could see it more for someone who has a popular TV show than for someone who's a comedian to do that. It's very interesting. I think it's how he worked out material. I think that's how he would fuck around. And taking suggestions from the audience, I was like, that is such a great idea. Because he already killed. The show was over.

They already knew they loved him. It was an amazing show. You already got your money's worth. So now he would just go fuck around for 15 and do it like an encore like he would leave the stage come back I don't remember if he left the stage. I'm trying to remember because it was a small stage It wasn't a big place He might have just stepped aside grabbed a glass of water and then come back or he might have actually gone

Through the curtain and back. I don't remember must have been really exciting for the audience just to feel like, okay, now the show's over, but we still get to hang out with Jerry. Yes. It's even more personal. Yeah. And for me, it was only like, I'd only seen a handful of live performances at the time. So for me, I'd seen like an open mic night once,

which was bizarre because that was inspirational. Rich Jenny had a great observation. He said, one of the great things about terrible comedy is it gives other people the confidence to do comedy. Because you'd go to see an open mic night and the people were so awful. You're like, oh, the expectations are not that high.

Like, I thought I had to be like Richard Pryor. It's so daunting. So the obstacle was so far away. It was so out of reach. But then you would see people that were amateurs, that were clunky and terribly like, okay, at least I won't be as bad as that guy.

And it gives you the confidence to give it a try, just to fucking see what happens. And the feeling of going on stage for the very first time, I'll never forget, was so alien, so bizarre. Just to hear my voice in a microphone. How many people were there? Well, a bunch of my friends were there. So that was like 10% of the crowd, four or five of my friends, maybe 50 people. But there was a guy named George McDonald, and he would have this thing called Comedy Hell.

And Comedy Hell was open mic night. And he was a professional, so he would joke around about how this is comedy hell, and you're going to watch people bomb. It's going to be terrible. But then you'll see professionals that night, and they'll go up. So the first night I ever went to see comedy i got to see people that were awful and then i got to see like a couple of like real world-class comics would go on stage and kill for 10-15 minutes i was like wow just the contrast and the difference so you got to see the levels of it it's like getting to see someone who's taking their first jiu-jitsu class versus a world champion black belt and you're like what the this

is what a journey that is and just to see the way i describe it to people i say stand-up comedy is like you're making a mountain one layer of paint at a time that's what it's like when you're starting it's like you you you go there and if you see seinfeld like oh my god that's a mountain it's already there i mean you realize like thiseld, you're like, oh, my God, that's a mountain. It's already there. I mean, you realize this is one layer of paint at a time. 13 sets a night hopping around Catch a Rising Star and the fucking cellar and going to all these clubs in New York and then puts it together and then takes it to Boston or takes it to Cleveland or takes it to all these places. Yeah. That's wild.

Yes, I stole that move of going on stage afterwards and taking suggestions from the crowd. Great idea. Well, it was genius. And it's just a smart thing to do, to do his whole set and then fuck around. Yeah. Did you read Born Standing Up, Steve Martin?in yes yeah such a great book it's a great book it's interesting him talking about you know setting a setting a deadline you know if i'm not successful in 10 years whatever it is like a long time then i'm gonna quit and he gets to the

10 years and he's not successful and he just keeps going because there's nothing else he wants to do well it's there's nothing like it there's nothing like killing there's nothing like performing you know and my friends and i we we talk often about people who quit comedy and like how do you quit like a lot of us almost quit during the pandemic or resigned ourself to the possibility that it's never coming back. You're sitting there in your house every day and you're like, I guess I could get used to this. You know, at least I don't have the anxiety of having to perform and, you know, I could just fucking find some other way to make a living. And at the time I was making money doing podcasting. So I was like, okay, maybe I'm not doing comedy anymore. And a lot of us wanted to do it.

And Ron White, he's the best example because he was like well i think i'm gonna retire i'm gonna take my boat and fucking you know just you know play golf every day i made a shitload of money i don't give a fuck i'll sell my jet you know and he he was just resigned to not doing comedy and then tony hinchcliffe had a show at the vulcan gas company here in austin and he was like just do a at the Vulcan Gas Company here in Austin and he was like just do a guest set just come on do a guest set and Ron was like man I don't know I think I'm fucking done and then um the next day after Ron had said that Tony was like so have you thought about it you're gonna do set tonight he goes oh fuck yeah I'm doing a set I'm doing 15 minutes

and so he had gone over his recordings he had an iPad and his girlfriend said that he was like listening to recordings and writing shit down. I was like, oh, this would be interesting. And so we're hanging out and we're in the back of the club and Ron White goes on stage. And the first sold out show, first thing that happens because people are so excited to go out. And this is in mid COVID. These are wild wild reckless fucks in the middle of a pandemic no not a mask in the place everyone's drinking and in laughter is like the worst way to not spread a respiratory disease you know they're you know they're they're exhaling into giant bursts of fucking particles and spittle and you know r Ron White goes on stage and fucking murders.

Murders. I mean, like he had never missed a beat. Wow. And the audience, first of all, just goes insane, because he's from Texas. Yeah. So they see him, and they're like, that's our guy. He comes off stage, and I'm going on after him,

and he grabs me by the shoulders, and he goes, whatever the fuck we have to do, we're going to keep doing this. He was so fired up. I mean, he just grabbed my shoulders. Yeah. Whatever the fuck we have to do, Joe Rogan, we're doing this. Yeah. I was like, we're doing this ron how do you put up with having to travel and having to sleep in strange places and all the the drudgery of going on the road yeah for that little hit

of the excitement to being on stage it's not just the hit it's the knowledge that the knowing that you're giving these people an experience they're having a moment they're having a great moment you're when you're entertaining a group of people like that you're taking them on this wild journey of laughter and ideas and they leave like that you just hit them with a drug you just fucking boom he just dropped this drug on them and they they walk out of there feeling better beautiful and it's and it's for everyone it's like you feel better they feel better everyone heals in the process a hundred percent amazing you know and it's your responsibility to do that work so that that can happen again and you got to be on point and you

got to go over your notes and you got to be prepared and you got to do a lot of sets so that you're polished and smooth and confident you got all the beats in your head and then you also have to be loose and relaxed so that it can flow and then you can you can adjust to some chaos if something happens in the crowd and it's the best in the in the studio recording it's it's similar in that there's a lot of time where nothing good is happening. And it's out of our control where everybody's playing and they're doing their best, but it doesn't matter for whatever reason. When you're listening to it, it's just not great. Right.

And it's just really a game of patience of waiting or trying different things. Like, how about if we do it like this? How about if we do it like this? Let's try it with the lights off. You know, let's try it with, you know, like crazy things, whatever it is. Turn the lights off, see what happens. How much, how important is the ambiance and the setup of the studio? It's really important.

ambiance and the, the setup of the studio. It's really important. The, the, one of the, one of the things that's most important is the feeling of like, um, I'll, I'll use the word like a protected space where you feel like you could be very vulnerable and it's okay. You know, a place where you could be naked and it's okay. So the safety of the environment, if you, if you feel like you're going to try something and someone's going to tell you that was no good, that wouldn't feel like you want to do that again. So part of it is the, like the headspace of less people around, no audience. Literally, it's set up similar to this where it'll be the producer and the artist, one engineer, and nobody else. And if it's a band, it's just this group of people, the least amount of people, not friends hanging out, not anybody watching.

So there's a sense of we're there to work. We're there to really do something. But we're also there to play and it's free. And there's no expectation that it has to be good. There's no expectation that it has to be good. And we try to have as far of a, like no feeling of deadlines or we have to do this by this or this is going to be the first single. Never any talk like that. It's more let's have fun, make music, let's see what happens, and then down the, we'll look back on it and see if there's anything good there. Then in terms of the physical location,

you want to create a space where it feels like a place you want to hang out and it's a good feeling. And sometimes we'll do something like on the first album I produced with the Chili Peppers, we recorded it in a house instead of recording it in a recording studio because they had made four albums prior to that in a recording studio, and they had told me none of those experiences were good. Not necessarily because of the studio, but it was just an interesting point. They had four studio experiences.

They didn't like any of them. What can we do to do something different than that? So we rented this big mansion and we recorded Blood Sugar Sex Magic in this house. And it was very, a different experience for them. So instead of it feeling like the fifth album after four bad experiences, this is the first time we're doing it in a house. And it was like an adventure. Just now we were, a few months ago, I wasa rica recording a new album with the strokes and we rented this house up on the top of a mountain and set up the band outside

so they're playing it's like they're doing a concert for the ocean on the top of a mountain was incredible and we did that every day playing out. I'll show you videos later on. And they didn't want to leave. It was like the best experience. So it's, in a way, adding the adventure element, especially for someone who's done it multiple times. You know, if it's your first time, your chance to go into the big professional studio is really cool. is really cool. But if you've done a bunch in a big professional studio, what else can we do that'll spark the feeling

of we're doing something new and different? Mm. Yeah. I can imagine what it's like for them to just, Blood Sugar Sex Magic was so fucking good. And it had so much power to it. There was like, you know, Give It Away is such a great fucking song.

I love that song. God damn, that's a good song. I love that song. But it's just, there's so much, it's so alive. Yeah. I wonder how much of that had to do with that. Impossible to know, but it certainly didn't hurt. Right.

And, you know, we did it that way, and you like it. So, again, we can't, we don't know that that's what it was. The songs were good. It was the right time in their career. John and Chad were both in the band and they were really locked in and playing well together. And that lineup of the Chili Peppers is the band now. It was a great moment for them.

Yeah. Yeah. That was in the house. This is in the house. Yeah. Wow. It was so cool. That's pretty dope.

I want to ask you a question. Which sounds better, this... or this? He doesn't try to plug us into a certain formula or he doesn't have a way that he works and tries to make us like that. He's just trying to bring the most out of us for what we are. And, you know, he manages to keep his emotional distance from the music and have his objectivity, which is, you know, what he has to do, especially because we're so completely caught up in it. We run on pure emotion. That's because we're so completely caught up in a we run on pure emotion

that's what we're all about and we're making an amazing amazing groundbreaking revolutionary beautiful artistically heightened incredible record if baron von munchhausen had ejaculated the four of us being the red hot chili peppers onto a chess board i would have to say that rick rubin would be the perfect chess player for that particular board. That's so funny. What a great quote. What a great way to end that. Amazing.

Your job is such a unique job. That job of, it's like you're part muse, you're part director. It's like a coach. It's not unlike a coach. It's helping to get the best performance, talk about if the material is good enough, how it could be better, create an environment where it's exciting to do what we're going to do. And make any suggestions, not just as it relates to the task at hand, but anything you can do in your life that would benefit the task at hand. And when you decide to work with an artist, how do you make that determination? Do you meet with them? Do you hang out with them? Do you have

dinner? Do you hang out at their house? How do you know if you're going to out with them? Do you have dinner? Do you hang out at their house? Like how do you know if you're gonna vibe with them? We usually get together and talk and it comes more from the energy in the conversation. Can feel it. And if we share a way in, like the Chili Peppers had asked me to produce them before that and I went to a rehearsal and the energy wasn't right. Like I could feel,

so I didn't know what it was. Um, but the energy in the room didn't feel good to me. And it turns out at that time they were really heavily into drugs, like, like serious drugs. And you could see this, like, these are not people who trust each other. You know, that, that was a feeling in the room. It was like just the way they were looking at each other, it wasn't like we're doing this together. It was more like apprehensive of each other. Oh, wow.

And I just remember the feeling in the room was like I don't want to be around them. I didn't understand it. I didn't know what it was. What drugs? It's probably heroin and cocaine. And so they were probably burnt out and fucked up and their mind was frazzled and paranoid. Whatever it was, you could feel, all I know is,

you know, I've never been a drug person. I came into this room and it was like being in a different, the energy was different in the room and it didn't feel like I want to be in this energy. Mmm. But then I met them right before we made that and they were like transformed. It's like, great, let's do it.

So they got out of it. Yeah. And sometimes it'll be material. Like the Strokes had asked me to produce them several times in the past and they would send me demos and I listened to the demos and I just couldn't see a way in.

Like I didn't have any thoughts. I didn't know how, I didn't know. I didn't think I had what they needed. Um, but then they sent me this for the last album, which was the first album I produced with them. Um, it's called, um, I can't remember what it's called. Um, the, they sent me these demos that were probably the worst demos they ever sent in terms of, you know, like a 20 seconds into an iPhone would be at one song, like completely bullshit demos. But I could hear in those, this is going to be good.

Like I can see these little seeds are exciting. And I'm curious to know what is, I like this little 20 seconds, what's the three minute version of that like? And I'm down to go on that journey with them to discover it. Then there's a band called the Avett Brothers I worked with and I remember I met them

and just, I just loved them as people. They were the most beautiful, soulful people I ever met. I, I, I've never hung around people who were so nice and I just loved it. And, um, actually Judd Apatow made a documentary about, about them, uh, called May at Last. And he called me after and he's like, that was the best experience of my life. He's like, uh called may at last and he called me after he's like that was the best experience of my life he's like we don't know any people like this you know we hang out with crazy comedians and you know like these are like actual nice people it's weird and so just that alone yeah just like i want to be around this whatever this is yeah i want to be around these guys and any chance i get hang out with them, life's better if you're hanging out with the Avett brothers.

Really? Absolutely. Beautiful people. That's awesome. Yeah. You must get inundated by requests for people that want to work with you. Yes and no. But, I mean, how do you – I mean, I would imagine there's a lot to filter out.

I'm kind of outside of, I've always been sort of outside of the industry. So I'm not in the normal channel of where things get plugged into. I'm not on any of those lists because I just kind of am outside. I don't know why that is, but it's always been that way. But how do you get comfortable with what, do you just accept who you are? Do you just go on instinct in that regard too? Always. Always.

Everything is on instinct. Wow. There's a valuable lesson in that. there's a valuable lesson in that. I mean, imagine like a lot of the things that you're saying would translate to so many different endeavors, not even just art. Just because I think it all is art. I think when people create anything, it is art.

You're just creating in different formats and different structures, art. You're just, you're creating in different formats and different structures, but the best stuff seems to come out of that unique aspect of your own perspective, your own thoughts, your own, whatever creativity is. Yes. Being true to yourself. And it's what the book's about. And it's not about books, not about music. And it's not about book's about and it's not about – the book's not about music and it's not about painting. It's about if you want to live in a creative way, which will benefit everything in your life, be a better person in your family, be a better – if you're starting a new business, do a better job of starting a new business. It's all the same. I know, I don't really know anything about music. It's more a way of looking at the world and wanting it to be the best it could possibly be and doing whatever it takes to be the best it could possibly be and being true to

knowing that no one else knows. You know, I'm not saying I know, but that everyone's idea is as valuable as mine. You know, we're all creators. We all have the chance. If we can be true to ourselves and show it, at least that's been my experience. You know, because I've, I never went into anything thinking anything was going to be successful at any point in time. It's always been, I make this thing because I like it. I'm excited to show it to my friend, you know, a friend or two friends.

Can't wait till they laugh at this. That's it. That's the audience. And when you set out to write this book, what was the start process? What made you initiate it? I'll tell you the way it happened. I got a call from Robert Hilburn, who is the music critic of the LA Times. This is probably eight or nine years ago. And he was writing the definitive book about Johnny Cash. And I got to work with Johnny Cash for the last

10 years of his life. So the last few chapters of that book was going to be about my time with Johnny Cash. So he asked to spend a few days with me. So we hung out and he asked me a lot of questions and we listened back to some of the recordings. And I tend not to listen back to things I've worked on in the past because I'm always working on something new. And I've listened to it a million times when we were making it. There's no reason to listen back to things I've worked on in the past because I'm always working on something new and I've listened to it a million times when we were making it. There's no reason to listen back. So, so it was interesting to go back and listen with him to answer questions. And I listened back and I, and I learned through those conversations, I learned about my relationship with Johnny that I, that I didn't know that I knew. Do you know what I'm saying?

It's like through the questioning, I had a better understanding of that relationship and it was interesting to me and I liked it. And then I thought, okay, if this is what book creation could be like, where I could learn something and if I learn it, I could share it. And what can I possibly share that would be helpful? And I thought, well, I only get to work with a handful of artists every year. Wouldn't it be great if the things that happen in the studio or this way of looking at the world could be available to other people. That was the idea is like, how, how do we, and I, and I didn't know what it was. I still don't really know what's in the book. It's, it's, uh, it's the information is fleeting. So if you ask me, you give me a hypothetical question,

or if I think back to something that happened in the past and a good outcome happened, I would try to reverse engineer why those decisions were made. In the moment, they weren't made for any thoughtful reason. They were made out of reactions or trying something. But they're rarely based on a principle. So the book was trying to reverse engineer all things that have worked out to see if there were principles underlying that could be applied to other things. And that's what the book is. It's all useful tools that have led to good things.

That said, nothing in the book, the book's not about me and there's no example of anything I've made in that book. It's the principles by which the things got made and a way of looking at the world and a way of being in the world, which is the subtitle of the book is A Way of Being, I started, when I started, I thought it was going to be about how to do things. And I realized it's how you live in the world. It's how you see things all the time, 24 hours a day. How you experience the world is what makes you the artist that you are or the creative person that you are.

And that's what the book shares, that information. Why the bullseye? It's funny you say it's a bullseye. That is a bullseye. To you, it's a bullseye. Or a reticle. It's like a dot on a bow site. It's the alchemical symbol of the sun.

That's one thing that it is. But it's open to interpretation. Like many things. Like everything. Yeah. Like everything. It's an invitation to think about why is that there? And if you look at the back of the book,

so what's that? If the front is a if you look at the back of the book, so what's that? If the front is a target, what's the back? The lens and the target's a dot. I mean, that's how I would look at it. But that's you based on your experience. And that's also what the book's about. It's like everything we do is based on our experience in life. Yeah.

You didn't make up the idea that that's a target. Your experience of life tells you that's a target. My experience of life is that's the alchemical sun. Someone else's is that's a circle of people sitting around a fire. It's a lot of things. But we all see it differently. it's a lot of things, but we all see it differently. And the more open we can be to the different interpretations allows us to make better stuff because we start looking for connections in the world. You'll notice something on your drive that doesn't make sense, or someone

will recommend something to you that sounds like that's not for you. In the past, when someone would recommend something to me, it sounded like it wasn't for me. It's like, oh, okay. Now, if more than one person recommends something to me that sounds bad, I always check it out because it's like the universe wants me to know about this. The way it tells me is a couple of people came up and said, why don't you check this out? That's, if we listen to what's going on around us, you can overhear a conversation in a coffee shop and it is the setup for an idea that you're talking about, the right way to say a particular joke that you're working on. You hear a phrase. It's not a phrase you commonly use. You hear someone else say it. My experience is when you are open and looking for these clues in the world,

they're happening all the time and they're happening often right when you need them. There's a story, there's a song, a System of a Down song called, I think it's song Chop Suey, I think. And there's, it has this big, do you know that song? It has this big bridge section in it where Serge, the lyric writer, the singer, lyric writer,

didn't have words for this one part of the song. And we were sitting in the library in my old house. And he said, I don't have words for this. And we were finishing. It's like, OK, any ideas? He's like, he didn't have any ideas. And I said, OK, pick a book off the wall. I picked a book randomly off the wall. I said, open it to any page. Tell me the first phrase you see. He opened it. First phrase he sees. That's what's in the song. And it's a high point in the song.

It's incredible. It's like magic. What was it? It's the part farther unto your hands you have it. Why have you forsaken me? Yeah. I think it's right here. It's the part farther unto your hands you have it. Why have you forsaken me? Yeah. Yeah. I'll try to.

I think it's right here. It's wild. Play it from a little before so you see the context. It doesn't really make sense in what's going on. It's rad. Why don't you leave the kids upon the table? Here you go. What are you going to do?

You wanted to. Never rush about a little makeup. You wanted to. I discussed the baby with a shake up. You wanted to. Why don't you leave the kids upon the table? You wanted to Pepper Rush about her little makeup, you wanted to How this guy's a baby with a shake-up, you wanted to Why'd you leave the kids up on the table, you wanted to I don't think you trust in my self-righteous suicide I cry when angels deserve to die In my self-righteous suicide

I cry when angels deserve to die Father Father Father Father Father Father Father Father

Father Father Father Father Father Father Father Father

Father Father Father Father Father Father Father Father

Father Father Father Father Father Father Father Father

Father Father Father Father Father Father Father Father

Father Father Father Father Father Father Father Father

Father Father Father Father Father Father Father Father

Father Father Father Father Father Father Father Father Father Father Father Father Father Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, Father, I have a to the words to the words to the words to the words to the words to the words to the words to the words to the words to the words to the words to the words to the words to the words to the words to the words to the words to the words to the words to the words to the words to the words to the Why have you forsaken me? In your eyes forsaken me In your thoughts forsaken me In your heart forsaken me Trust in my self-righteous suicide? I cry when angels deserve to die. Am I self-righteous suicide? I cry when angels deserve to die

It's radical. Yeah. I get chills. Yeah. So cool. It is so cool. So when you start writing and you decide that you're going to do this, are you writing longhand?

Are you sitting in front of a computer? Are you dictating? All interviews. All through questioning an interview, recording, loads of conversations. And it's just random, just looking for information. And it got to the point where it had like a thousand pages of information. And then the task was getting from that format into the book. And that took, it took years, took four years to get the content.

And then it took three years to get the form. So it's been a long process. Wow. And so you, you have this idea to do it. And then as it's coming together, did it become what you initially thought it was going to be or did it become its own thing? It became its own thing. The only thing that I wanted it to do was to be helpful to someone who wants to make stuff. That's the purpose of the book.

be helpful to someone who wants to make stuff. That's the purpose of the book. So that was the only aspiration was at the, I know that it's done if someone reads this and it makes them want to make something. And there was a version of it a few years ago that was really beautiful prose, but it didn't give me that feeling. It didn't feel like a call to arms. Whereas this book, I feel like I read this and I want to make something right now. So the first version, what did you do with it? It still exists. So you just decided, let's try again in a different form. Yeah, but it has more to do with the form because the information was similar. Formation was similar.

It just didn't find its best. Like one of the breakthrough ideas was in the old version, there weren't sections. It was just like one long thing. It wasn't chapters or anything. And I read that and every time a new subject came up, I gave it a name. And originally it was 68 areas of thought. And those were things that came up that I thought, okay, even if it didn't do a deep dive into each of these areas of thought, this is something related to creativity that's interesting. So I had this list based on an earlier version of the book, this list of topics. And then I did another round of interviews referring to what the reference was in the

old version and then another set just using the words. I'll give you an example because one of the areas of thought is collaboration. And you would think collaboration is about working with other people. That's not what that section of the book is about. So if I were to do it just based on the word, I would probably go to collaborating with other people. But when I knew the context, it would be different because what collaborating is about is we're always collaborating at all times with the universe. That's how it works. Like, we're taking in information, we're vibing on it. I'm looking at this skull and I'm looking at the teeth. And then if I were to say something about it,

it wouldn't be, it's like, it's not really my thought about this. I can say, oh, it's cold. It's this piece. I'm collaborating with this piece to understand something or to have a point of view into something. So the collaboration section is about how we're always collaborating with everything we've ever learned in our lives.

You were collaborating with bow hunting by seeing a target. That's a collaboration with something you've learned. If you never bow hunted or never shot anything, I don't think that would seem like a target to you. If you were an eye doctor, I guarantee you wouldn't think of it as a target. Right. So we're always like how we're in the world impacts how we see everything. Then there's another section in the book called cooperation, and that's about working with other people. And that section's about having worked with a lot of bands, I see that there's often this friction where,

and I'm sure you've seen it in a writing room for comedy, where people are trying to get their idea in. That's not a collaboration. It's something else. that's not a collaboration. No. That's a, that's, that's, um, it's something else. A real collaboration is when everyone who's there is working together towards whatever is the best thing for the whole thing. Yeah.

And whether it's your idea or someone else's idea, it doesn't matter. And if you're invested in the collaboration, you want the best idea to win. You don't want your idea to win. And so it's just things that you can – habits you can – things to watch out for and habits you can develop that will make you better at working with other people in that section, for example. And you got the first version, which you said was great prose, but there was something missing, whatever that was. How did you make that determination and why did you decide to try again?

I read it and I felt how it made me feel. I read it and thought about how it made me feel. And I felt like there were a lot of words that – nice sounding words, but it didn't feel essential. Essential. Essential. I want every sentence of the book to have to be there. I want it to be the most concise and the most specific. the most concise and the most specific. And it's explaining, sometimes explaining what I'll describe as technical things.

It's almost like I see things as like a machine, like the world's a machine and the way the gears work together. So I could look at a description and say, that sounds like the machine, or I could read a description and say, well, that's not how that machine works at all. Do you know what I'm saying?

I don't know if I'm explaining it clearly. No, you are because you're explaining it the way you feel. You're using words that are sort of making a facsimile of feelings. You know, whenever someone's saying something and they're trying to describe a feeling, you're like on a dance together. Like, where is this going? You know, I feel what you're saying. I understand what you're saying. But it's a bold move to take something that was, you know, you're done.

And you're like, nope, it's not it. It's not done. It's not done. It's never done until you think it's great. Like it's, uh, I had an experience happen, uh, a few months ago where we were living in a new house we bought in a little town in Texas. And we were asleep and we just moved in. We bought the house maybe a year before and we had some work done on it and we were excited to stay in it. And we stayed in it and it was the end of the first week of staying there. And in the middle of the night, my wife, I'm sleeping.

My wife is sleeping. We're all sleeping. My son sleeps in bed with us he's five years old um my wife wakes up grabs raw my son's name is raw and screams fire and runs out of the room we're're on the second floor. And I'm thinking, she's got this. All good. I'm going back to sleep. And I went back to sleep. And that was my first mistake. Then-

You went back to sleep after she screamed fire? Yes. Because I assumed, ah, it's a little fire in the kitchen. She's going to put it out. What a bizarre assumption. Yeah. That's me.

That was my assumption. She takes care of everything. I know she's going to handle it. Right. Nothing that would upset my sleep. I know she's got this. Right. She's very capable.

So I go back to sleep and then I hear her screaming for help from outside. That wakes me up. And I go to the window in the next room to tell her to stop screaming. Is she crazy? What are you doing? So I go to the window, open the windows, like stop screaming. What's going on? And she's like, fire, fire. And I said, where? She's like, the house. I said, where? The whole house.

Jump. Now I'm like 15 feet up and it's a brick, a brick floor. And I still don't really understand the severity, although I do hear her excitement. So I think, okay, I'm going to find a way out. I'm not going to jump. I'm going gonna find a way out I'm not gonna jump I'm gonna find a way out another very bad another bad call on my part go back into the house and open the door to where I think the stairs are met with a ton of black smoke go down on my hands and knees and start scampering towards the stairs,

hit a wall, start scampering around the wall. I'm just moving around, running into walls. And I'm not able to breathe. And everywhere I crawl to find the stairs, I'm hitting a wall and I'm starting to like lose consciousness. I don't know if I was losing consciousness, but I was definitely fading. And I had the thought, okay, I know Moody, Ellen, and Ra are outside. They're safe. Family's safe.

And I'm so happy the book's done. Jesus Christ. Because the book is going to live on with whatever information I have, it's in the book. So I'm okay. I can, it's going to be all right. Wow. And then I'm still scampering because crashing in the book. So I'm okay. I can, it's going to be all right. And then I'm still scampering because crashing into wall, crashing into wall. And then I end up on the whole opposite

side of the house. No, not what I was going for at all. And I, uh, open a window, push out the screen. And by now, because Muriel has been screaming for help the whole time, some neighbors came and they're outside and they're like, jump, jump. It's going to hurt, but you'll live. And now I'm so happy to be out the window and being able to breathe after not being able to breathe. It's like, no, I'm fine. And they're like, you're not fine. And it's like, no, no, I'm fine. I can breathe. And they're like, get out, get out. And they tell me to climb onto a tree and I climb out. I breathe a little bit first, but in my mind, I'm fine. Because if you go from not being able to breathe to breathe, the world's a good place. So I climb out, I hang

onto the tree and they, at this point, they find like a six-foot ladder. I'm 15 feet up. They bring the ladder around. They prop it up against the tree and then these two neighbor guys climb up the ladder and they grab my legs and they like guide my legs down to the top of the ladder. And I make it out. And then – and my pulse ox was 82 and I got out of the building and then

what's normal 99 98 pulse ox you know pulse ox yeah yeah it's like

you want to be as close to 100 as possible but I felt I felt fine like I felt like I'm okay and then I'm walking and they're like, okay, we can't walk next to the house because the house is really burning. And they walked me out into the street. And then I said, okay, I have to sit down. And I just sat

down in the middle of the street. It's in the middle of the night, felt like four o'clock in the morning. And I sat there and in three minutes, I watched this hundred year old two-story house, completely burned to the ground, flames higher than the trees. It was insane. It was insane. Wow. The going back to sleep is so crazy. Yeah. That's 100% the opposite of what I think my instincts would be.

Yeah. Wow. So did she smell smoke? that's 100% the opposite of what I think my instincts would be. Yeah. Wow. So did she smell smoke? Did she see fire? She heard crackles and thought someone was in the house. So she heard what sounded like someone walking in the house. So she went down to check and she saw the fire and then came up to get rot and scream at me to get out

and I went back to sleep. Jesus Christ. Wow. So you were three minutes away from dying? I would say a minute. Jesus. That's such a horrible way to die too. Wow.

The crazy thing is that you were happy the book was done. That was the key. That was the, it was the, it was an interesting, I would have a very interesting story related to this, which is Lex. I did Lex's podcast maybe five days before this, four days before this.

And we're talking about art and music and what you'd expect a conversation with me to be about. The only things I know about or care about talking about. And it's and long interview. And in the middle of the interview, he asked me, uh, are you afraid of dying? And it was completely different than the whole rest of the conversation. And it was the weirdest question. And I answered the question and then I went home and saw my wife and I answered the question, and then I went home and saw my wife, and I said, it was a really interesting interview, but he asked me if I'm afraid of death.

It was so, it didn't make any sense. Non sequitur in the course of this interview, and then four days later, this happens, and then the next day, there's a clip. The first clip I see from the Lex interview is him asking me that question and me answering about death. After this thing just happened. It was unbelievable.

What was your answer? I can't remember. You can find the clip. You want to find the clip? Okay, we can play it. I think it's actually interesting. Yeah, let's play it. But that's like saying I don't know the information in the book.

It's like when you're in the moment, you answer the question, but it's not like a rehearsed answer. I don't know. Well, more than anybody I think I've ever met, you're on instinct in that way. And it's almost like you consciously try to stay in the moment. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. I don't think that knowing anything helps. I don't think there's anything to know.

I think we're here and we're in this and we pay attention and we, it's almost like we're animals and getting in tune with our animal selves. It's very animal what we're talking about. Yeah. No, it is. Is that why you're into like physical things like cold and sauna. Are you into those to just feel the animal part of you, to feel the body? I was sedentary my whole life. I was in – I basically laid on a couch listening to music my whole life.

That was my job and what I did not for my job. It's what I like to do and that's all I did. And then, um, and I was vegan for 22 years and got very big. I weighed 320 pounds, 318. Wow. At my max. With no exercise. So it's only just not good. Huge. And I went out to lunch with, uh, Mo Austin,

who just recently passed away, who was, uh, who was Frank Sinatra's attorney, and then he ran Warner Brothers and Reprise. You might have met him through Warner Brothers. If you were on Warner Brothers, Mo Austin was the chairman of Warner Brothers Records. Beautiful guy. He signed the Sex Pistols. He signed Jimi Hendrix. He signed Black Sabbath. Amazing guy. And he was one of my mentors in the music business. He signed Black Sabbath. Amazing guy. And he was one of my mentors in the music business. And we went out to lunch one day and he said, you know, Rick, I know you watch what you eat and you take care of yourself, but you're really getting big and I'm worried about you. And I want you to, I'm going to get the name of a nutritionist. I want you to go to my guy and do whatever he says. And I said, okay, I'll do whatever you say, knowing it's not going to work because I've been overweight my whole life and nothing ever worked.

But you didn't look overweight in that red hot chili peppers thing. That was a weird moment in time. It was like a weird moment. I had just moved to California. I worked out with a trainer that Dice connected me with for the first time and got and was in – I still was not in good shape, but I was in better shape than at any point prior to that. And that was before I became a vegan. The vegan thing really took me down a dark path. How so? Well, I was eating chicken and vegetables and I was healthier then. And then a friend of mine gave me a book called Diet for a New America. And he said, if you read this book, you're not going to want to eat chicken anymore. And I said, well,

I already gave up everything else. You know, I'd given up, I'd given up red meat. I'd given up, um, soda. I used to drink a 64 ounce Pepsi with every meal. Um, you know, I grew up eating Jack in the Box and McDonald's every day. I grew up on fast food. My mom was a terrible cook. So I didn't have a good relationship with food. And then I started giving things up when I was in college. And I'm not even sure why.

I don't know why. I don't know why I decided to give up Pepsi-Cola and start drinking a pitcher of iced coffee instead, which is what switched. But I didn't know why I did that. I just did that. And then I stopped that caffeine and just drank water. And then gave up red meat, gave up basically everything other than chicken and vegetables. And then I started getting in better shape when I was eating chicken and vegetables.

Then I met Dice's trainer, started training, got into better shape. And then I read this vegan book, became a vegan. And then it all went the other way for 22 years until I got very big. And what about veganism got you that big? It's a carb-only diet. It's just carbs. But were you eating vegetables or were you eating pizza? Vegetables, pizza, whatever.

Like whatever they serve in the vegetarian restaurant. They would serve like a tofu steak with a gluten brown sauce. You know, super unhealthy stuff, but I didn't know. I thought I was eating healthy. It was just bad information. And so what shifted? What did you do to shift it?

I read a book, so now I'm big and I'm unhealthy, and I read a book by a guy named Stu Middleman who ran 1,000 miles in 11 days. And I remember thinking, how can it be? How can we both be human beings? And if I walk to the end of the block, I'm exhausted and out of breath, and there's a human on the planet who can run 1,000 miles in 11 days. I don't have good information.

I'm doing something wrong. Because it's not like I was lazy. I was diligent. I just had bad information. It's hard being a vegan. It was hard being a vegan, harder to be a vegan then when nobody was a vegan. You know, there weren't vegetarian restaurants all over the place. There was one, vegetarian restaurants all over the place. There was one. There was Real Food Daily. It was the only place you could eat. So I read the Stu Middleman book and he talks about meeting this performance expert, Phil Maffetone, who changed the way he trained and that's why he could run a thousand miles in 11 days. So it's like, okay, Phil Maffetone is the answer. I email Phil Maffetone. I want to become your patient.

And he said he just retired, gave up his medical practice and isn't doing that anymore. And he gave up doing medicine to pursue his dream of being a songwriter. And I said, well, I work in music. Maybe you can mentor me with my health and fitness, and I'll help you with your songs. And we became friends, and he started treating me. He very much wanted me to eat animal protein, which I wouldn't do because I was a vegan.

He got me to eat fish and eggs to get animal protein, neither of which I liked at any point in my life. Growing up, I didn't eat eggs and I never liked fish. So he said, don't even think of it as food. Just think of it as medicine. You need this medicine. And I started eating fish and eggs. And he ended up living with me for two years, Phil. And he was with me all the time. He trained me. He got me to do heart rate-based cardio, doing stairs, but still super low level. I was still big, but still getting my system turned back on, getting my vitality back. And I got much healthier working

with Phil and I didn't lose any weight. I might've lost five pounds over two years. And he's living with me. And he said, I watch everything you eat. I watch how you train. He said 999 people out of a thousand who are doing what you're doing, all their weight would fall off. For some reason, yours is not coming off. Couldn't figure it out. And then I was thinking, well, my mom was obese. It's just a genetic thing. I've always been overweight.

It's just what it is. And then the thing happened with Mo, where I was really big. Now I'm healthier, but still big. Go out to lunch with Mo. He sends me to his nutritionist. I go to see the guy and he puts me on, uh, seven protein shakes a day, like egg, egg, white protein, seven a day. And then fish

soup salad for dinner, like super low, low calorie, high-protein, no-carb diet. And in 14 months, I lost 130 pounds. Whoa. And it was like a miracle, because nothing, over the course of my life, nothing had worked. I guess in some ways, when I was doing chicken and vegetables, it worked. Why didn't you go back to chicken and vegetables,

if that worked? Because I believe veganism was good. It's like I was brainwashed. So did you believe it was good for the planet? Both. The healthiest diet in the world. How was that possible that you could look at your own body, though, and the effects that it was having on it?

It didn't make sense. And you were just, there's something wrong with me. Something's wrong with me. It's not wrong with the diet itself. Yeah, it's not the diet, it's me. So what is it like when you go on this very low carb, high protein diet and lose all that weight? It changed my life more than anything else that has ever changed my life. And it taught me something. I've always lived in my head. I never lived in my body. I always lived in my head.

And now I started feeling like I had a body to go with my head. And it was an interesting feeling having never had that before. And I met Laird Hamilton on the beach. I was working, I think I was working with Kid Rock at the time, and Kid Rock introduced me to Laird and Don Wildman and this group of Malibu athlete guys. And Chris Chelios, first person I ever went into a sauna with was Chris Chelios, who was really a fanatic sauna guy for 30 years. And he played in the NHL longer than anybody, years and he played uh in the nhl longer than anybody and he blamed sauna on his ability you know gave credit sauna for his ability to play for as long as he was able to play so started doing

sauna with him and then laird invited me to start training at the gym which was like, seemed crazy. But I liked him and was so inspired by him. And he was so different from the musicians I hang around. I never hung around athletes before. So seeing someone who's seeing people, meeting people who are good at anything is interesting. And to meet someone who's so good, world-class at something so foreign to what the people that I know who are world-class at stuff, it's like a different universe. So I wanted to go to hang out with Laird, really just to hang out with him and see how he thought about the world because he's such an interesting character.

see how he thought about the world because he's such an interesting character. And I started going, I remember when I went the first day, he said, okay, let's do some pushups. And he asked me, and I couldn't do one pushup. And I said, I can't do it. I can't do it. He's like, no, don't say you can't do it. Say you haven't done it yet. And he would break up a movement for every exercise. If I couldn't do it the full way to start, he would have me do a piece of the exercise and then another piece and then another piece and then put the first two pieces together and then put the second two pieces together and finally put all three together until I could do things. And with his help, I went from not being able to do one pushup to working up to 100 consecutive push-ups, which was,

couldn't believe it. So what I learned through this process of both listening to the nutritionist and listening to Laird in the gym, I gave over control of myself. But up till that point, I always thought I knew what was best for myself and what the I thought was best for myself was being a vegan but when I gave myself up to in this case other people I lost weight I got fit my life changed and then started doing the ice and sauna was another part of it. And the ice, I was terrified to go on the ice at first and then worked up to, you know, sometimes we'll do 30 minutes in the ice before even getting in the sauna. Like insane. 30 minutes?

Absolutely. How cold is the ice? 39 degrees. 30 minutes? Yeah. Wow. If you do it every day, like that was during the lockdown. We're in Hawaii.

And we were doing sauna and ice every day. Are you doing it 30 minutes consecutively? In that case, it was 30 minutes consecutively. So just in there, up to your neck, 30 minutes. In there, up to your neck 30 minutes i keep my hands out i sit like this i blow into my hands and focus on the heat the sensation of the heat in my fingers you weren't worried about hypothermia you weren't worried about anything no because you'd built yourself up to that yeah i couldn't i couldn't have it. You know, I wasn't forcing myself past what I could do.

If I got too much, I'd get out. What's the benefit of being in there for that long, though? It was just like a game. It's like during lockdown, something to do. Like, let's see how long we can go. It's like you get to five. Let's say we typically did five minutes between rounds. So you do five minutes.

It's like, I feel like I could stay longer. Let's stay longer. Let's see. I was doing it with my other friend, Jack. We would both do it together, and we're looking at each other in the sauna. I could stay. You want to stay? Stay.

And, like, maybe we got up to 10 minutes once. Then we got up to 15 minutes once. And it was just like seeing what you could do. So are you going from sauna to the cold back and forth? Back and forth four times. But we started in the old days, we would do sauna first and then cold and back and forth? Back and forth four times. But we started in the old days, we would do sauna first and then cold and back and forth. And then we started doing cold first just to like, it was like a challenge. It's harder to get into the ice, not coming out of the sauna.

One of the tricks that I would use to get into the sauna, into the ice, was staying in the sauna too long and psyching myself up. I just want to cool off. I just want to cool off. I just, you know, like talking myself into jumping into the ice was like the best gift. Right. So then it's like, okay, so now I could do it that way. And then once I got comfortable with it, it's like, okay,

can I just jump into an ice tub and just stay there? And it was just fun to try these things. It was just experimenting. And what did that do for your body? It was great. First of all, I would say the number one thing that it did was put me in a great mood. I would say that I can be moody at times and nothing has made me feel better in my life than the combination of the sauna and the ice back and forth. By the fourth round, you do not have a care in the world. And whatever difficulties you have in life to deal with are not as bad as getting in the ice, whatever they are. It's like you described earlier with your workout, same thing. whatever they are.

It's like you described earlier with your workout. Same thing. So if you're doing something really hard, then the things that seem hard in life don't seem so hard. Yeah. Someone said this once, that the worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you. Doesn't matter what it is.

It could be you got a scratch in your car. I can't believe this. That's why spoiled children, like spoiled children cry about things that's just nonsensical yeah like why the fuck is wrong with you why are you getting so upset about this because they've never had anything bad happen to them yeah so their ability to be resilient yeah resilient i had that issue as well because i grew up in a way where I was never challenged and I was not resilient. Yeah. And then I've gotten better at it since I went through depression. And that was also part of getting to the resilience through, through depression. And so what is your diet like now?

Um, pretty close to carnivore. We just came, we were in Italy for four months, so the rules are different in Italy. Yeah, I go off the rails in Italy. Yeah, and I definitely gained weight, and I don't feel great about it, but I'm excited now when I leave here. I'm going right back to, I'll probably do shakes now to get back to where I want to be,

and then I'll go more carnivore. And so the shakes are just a calorie deficit thing? Yeah. And there's something about, again, according to the nutritionist who I saw, having the protein all through the day. Because when we do carnivore, we usually intermittent fast and just eat twice a day or maybe even, you know, twice a day close together and eat just meat.

Often I'll be the least strict in that I might have a romaine salad with my, mine, which is not carnivore, but I will have a romaine and it's just romaine and olive oil and salt and steak and butter and salt. So I'll probably do the shakes just to cut weight. And what's in these shakes again? It's egg white protein? Yeah, J-Rob egg white protein.

And what do you mix it with? Water. And it tastes great. Yeah? It's good. And sometimes I'll mix in coffee if I, you know, if there's too many of them and it starts tasting boring, or I don't like the vanillas as much as the chocolate, but if I mix a little bit of vanilla into the chocolate, it's like a new flavor.

Find ways to keep it interesting. And do you have goals in terms of like body fat or weight, or are you just trying to feel good? Just trying to feel good. I would say that when I – I'm just trying to feel good. It's like if I weigh myself and there's – if the numbers are going up, I'm aware of it. And if the numbers are going down, I'm aware of it. And it's better when they're going down than when they're going up. But I'm, I've never really been a goal oriented person. I, I, it has never been, I don't set a goal and work towards it.

I like working on something and when it feels good to me, then I know that it's good. It's like the goal seems like a false—it's like a fiction, you know? I think the goal is just to get people to work. And then along the way, you find what you're really trying to do. But the getting people to work thing is oftentimes the most difficult. I was going to ask you that about music. Like, how difficult is it

and how important is it to have people that are disciplined that show up and do the work? Because a lot of artists are very impulsive. And oftentimes, one of the things that comes with impulsiveness is this unwillingness to sit and be uncomfortable.

Yeah, the best ones will work through that. Yeah. That's part of, it's like there are a lot of talented people who never make it because they don't have the work ethic to make it. It's not just talent, like talent's a piece. And you could argue for some people the work ethic to make it. It's not just talent. Talent's a piece. And you could argue for some people the work ethic trumps the talent. Chris Rock's a great example. When I first met Chris,

he was my comedian friend who wasn't very funny. And I know him when he wasn't funny. And he was my music friend because he's got great musical taste, and we would just hang out and talk about music. And then I saw him get funny, and it was remarkable because he went from okay to all of a sudden incredible. Couldn't believe it. Just hard work. Just hard work. All hard work.

Hard work and determination and some understanding of what you're trying to do. Yeah. Wow. Wow. This is such a valuable conversation for people. It's valuable for me, and I already do it, you know? Wow. It's like you need to hear these things from different people, different journeys, you know, and try to understand, you know, we're all the same in some way.

Some core essence of our being, we're all the same in many ways. We all want to be loved. We all want to be happy. We all want to be appreciated. We all want to be surrounded by people who love us and who we love. We all want to be surrounded by people who love us and who we love. And then it's expressing through creativity and art and creation and this thing. But very few people figure out how to do it the way you're describing it.

And I think it's really magical what you're saying because it's such a pure pursuit. The purity of it is what's most inspiring about it.'s very you're really just trying to do it you just whatever it is it you know that it really shouldn't even have a word yeah it's a thing you're trying to get to yeah words words are insufficient for what we're thinking about. Yeah. And that's probably the hard part about putting that down, right? Yeah. In a form where people can digest. Really difficult to do.

That's why it took so long. And as I say, it's elusive. Like I can read through the book and read something and like, wow, I didn't know that. You know what I mean? It's me now. I'll still have these like epiphanies reading the book because it's heavy stuff and it's not understandable. We really are talking about magic. We're talking about the universe conspiring on our behalf if we let it.

And to be in this flow of catching these waves that anyone can catch if you're trying to catch it, you're open to it it you're open to it you see it coming you you you take off on every chance you get and sometimes the ride happens and it's remarkable it's remarkable how it happens and it doesn't come from it's not preconceived it's not an idea it's it's through the doing these uh these things that want to be that the universe wants to happen now comes through us and if it if we don't do it maybe someone else will do it have you ever had that experience where you have an idea for something and you don't do it and then six months later you see that someone else has done it it's not because they took your idea it's that it's time for that and you don't do it and then six months later you see that someone else has done it, it's not because they took your idea.

It's that it's time for that. And you can act on it or not. And the artists, the best artists are the ones who have the best antenna for this material that's available. It's coming through. The best comedians see the best jokes. They see them coming. We all live in the same world.

The way you see it, you have the best joke because you see it best. And one of the reasons you can – I believe that you can see it best is because you don't believe what the structure around you assumes to be the case. I mentioned before, I grew up watching pro wrestling and I still watch 11 hours of pro wrestling every week, something like that. There's a lot of wrestling on TV. And I love pro wrestling. It's the only sport I watch. Really? 100%.

Pro wrestling. Wow. And I feel like pro wrestling is where it's at because you don't know where the line is. We know that the people involved are working together to put on a good show. I like that. They're not guys trying to hurt each other. They're trying to put on a good show. I like that. They're not guys trying to hurt each other. They're trying to put on a good show. I'm with that.

I like that better than watching guys trying to hurt each other. So I like that they're putting on a show for the audience. But they might have beef in real life and that might work its way into the fight. Or there may be a storyline where one guy steals another guy's girlfriend and that may be true and it may not be true and you never know. And I feel like the reality of wrestling is closer to what the world is really like than we think. We think, oh, that's fake and the world is real. I think that's closer to how it really is. Everything is like wrestling. I would have never anticipated that.

I would have never anticipated you have a love for pro wrestling. It's the best. It's the best. It's the best. I got to get you together with Tony Hinchcliffe. It's the best. Does he love it? Oh, my God.

You know who Tony is? Brilliant comedian. Brilliant. He's the host of the best live television show, the best live comedy podcast in the world. It's called Kill Tony. And it's a show where he takes stand-up comedians he has professionals that come and sit on this panel and then amateurs will go up and do one minute and there's this incredible band behind him the band is like some of the members are the guys that work with gary clark jr and just these incredible musicians and they play along with it and then these people go

up and they do one minute and then tony asks some questions and riffs with them and he fucking loves pro wrestling he loves it so here him hearing you talk about this is going to give him a boner it's the best it's the best it's so wild so surprising makes you feel good i don't get it. I don't get it. Really? I don't get it. It's the most relaxing thing. It's the only thing that relaxes me.

That's so wild. I'll watch it before I go to sleep, and I sleep good. If I watch wrestling before I go to sleep, the world's a good place. I am so engrossed in the world of martial arts competition. To me, it's nonsense. It's just like, you know, I get that people like it. I don't understand it. To me, it's just like, yeah, yeah.

But they know what's going on. This is fake. And it just... Yeah, it's different than that. Fake and real is not what it is right something else well also what you're saying like people trying to hurt each other that's not what it is either they're not it's what my description of mixed martial arts is high level problem solving with dire physical consequences and that there's there's this thing that they're doing

where they're trying to achieve excellence in this insanely difficult endeavor and through doing that you create some of the most exceptional people i've ever met because they're the people that can rise and figure out their own bullshit through all this chaos and through these moments and there's so many variables in there like fatigue, mental and physical fatigue, because so much of fatigue is mental. You know, when you're inspired, you can do more work. And how do you decide when to turn up the gas, when to hit the gas, and when to coast, when to attack, when to defend, when to move, when to lure your opponent into a false sense, when to set traps. And to me, I'm just so engrossed in that world.

It's like physical chess, would you say? Yeah, it's more so because chess pieces are limited in their movement. I see. Whereas with mixed martial arts, there's so much creativity that's happening while it's going on. And again, these people that are the best at it are some of the most interesting and exceptional people that I've ever met.

And some of the nicest people. I bet. Which is really weird. Because you assume that people that beat people up are just brutes. Has to be some level of respect to be good at something like that, I would imagine. The great ones. Yeah.

The great ones have a level of respect and the discipline is unparalleled. I only watched it at the beginning when the first Gracie. Hoist. I saw Hoist. Yeah. And that was fascinating to me because I didn't understand it at all what was happening, but it always seemed like he was losing and then the other guy would give up eventually. And it was like, I don't even understand what's happening.

It's so wild. Well, that was one of the challenging things about my job when I first came aboard with the UFC is to explain that aspect of it to the casual, to the person that's at home. Like when someone's, like if Hoist was, I never, I commentated some of it to the casual, to the person that's at home. Like when someone's, like if Hoyce was, I never, I commentated some of Hoyce's fights, but later in his career, or one of Hoyce's fights, the challenge is to explain the jiu-jitsu. Because everybody kind of understands, oh, that guy just punched that guy, that guy that just kicked that guy, that makes sense to people. That's an impact. He got hurt. But when you watch a complicated technique like an omoplata,

omoplata is a rare move that rarely gets pulled off in the UFC. I think Ben Saunders and maybe one or two other people have ever pulled it off. It's a shoulder lock. It's fairly common in Gi Jiu Jitsu because of the friction involved in wearing the kimono. But in MMA where it's slippery and there's punches and all this, and it's a technique where you isolate a person's shoulder, you throw your leg over the shoulder, and the shin goes across their face. You rotate behind them. Your leg is wrapped around their shoulder. Their arm is pointing. Their hand is almost like scratching their back. And through the leverage of your legs and your upper body controlling their body, you

put extreme torque and pressure on their shoulder until they're forced to tap. And to explain that to people while that's going on, explain how this person's setting this up and what they have to do next, and to try to explain it in a way that's gonna make sense to people that have never felt it, they don't know what's happening, and just to convey my excitement

of this very difficult maneuver being pulled off. Would that be as dangerous as, let's say, a figure four leg lock? Nah. A bunch of wrestlers got mad at me because Tony and I were watching pro wrestling. I was trying to explain how dumb a figure four leg lock was because I was like, he's literally giving up an inside heel hook. Because inside heel hook is one of the most devastating submission techniques because once someone gets it, the time you have to tap is so small hook because again inside heel hook is one of the most devastating submission techniques because

once once someone gets it the time you have to tap is so small before your your knee gets ripped apart yeah and so a figure four leg lock you will never see in a jiu-jitsu competition because as someone said it doesn't work so as someone's setting up that figure four you're literally giving up an inside heel hook it It's pretty funny. Yeah. It's kind of funny in that regard, that you're doing this thing, but this thing in the real world is the worst thing you do. But in pro wrestling, it's like,

oh, he's got the figure four leg lock. It's great. And the crowd's going wild. Going wild. I remember Ric Flair telling a story, because Ric Flair's famous for doing the figure four. That's his finishing hold. And he didn't invent it.

Someone did it before him. And he remembers the first time it was put on him, he was so afraid because he believed it was as deadly as the announcer said. It's so funny. Yeah. There's some techniques that really do work, like the Boston Crab. Yeah. That's a real move. And guys have done that in MMA, and it's crazy when someone pulls it off.

It's only been pulled off a handful of times, and it's usually a mismatch. It's usually someone decides to pull it off. Yeah. Because they're like, I'm beating this guy so bad, dude, I'm going to put a fucking Boston Crab on him. That's so funny. But it works. Boston Crab works. Yeah, here a guy's got it.

Cool. Yeah, he tapped a guy with a Boston Crab. Yeah. Look at that. I mean, you have to understand, that guy on top must be so much better than that guy. To get him into that position, I mean, that guy's got to be hilarious. Because that's a funny move. That guy on the bottom's got to be hilarious because that's a funny move. That guy on the bottom has got to be so bummed out too.

So he just gets on top of him. He's like, oh, here it is. He's setting it up. He knows what he's doing because, look, see, he turns to him, punches him in the face, and then the guy flattens out. The right move is to turn and face him belly to back because belly to back you get the rear naked choke. This guy must be hilarious.

Because setting up this is like he's being silly. Look at it. He's got his tongue out and everything. That's great. That fucking never happens. Maybe he's a Shawn Michaels fan because I think that was Shawn Michaels. Wrestlers now don't call that a Boston Crab anymore because it's...

What do they call it? That would be a sharpshooter maybe. The Walls of Jericho? Yeah. That's it? That's what another video's calling it, yeah. It's a fighter pulls off Walls of Jericho but it's the same clip.

But it's called different things depending on who... Walls of Jericho is Chris Jericho's version of that. Right, right. That shit works. Yeah, yeah. That one, it's...

You would never get a guy in that. I mean, unless you're that much better than the guy. You could say that. That guy was already done. Because when that guy goes belly down and he's reaching for his legs, that guy stayed belly down. He's done. Yeah. A guy who is good would go to one hip.

You would immediately go to your side and you would hip escape. And you would put a hand on the hip and you would try to get to a defensive position which would either be half guard that's how wrestlers get out of it so they turn to the side yeah they like turn to the side and then put their head under and they can get out yeah well it's real wrestling like real actual catch wrestling was the that's the the beginning of pro wrestling. Catch wrestling was catch as catch can. Was like a very brutal physical form of submission fighting. And these guys like Farmer Burns,

back in, I guess it was the turn of the century, would go on the road and they would go to carnivals and they would compete with any man who wanted to get in the ring with them. And they would have these submission matches. And you could either pin a guy, you can win by pin, or you could win by tap. Or a guy would tap out from a submission. And there's a lot

of techniques that came from catch wrestling that are applicable today, including there's some catch specialists that compete and win against very high level guys in submission matches and against jujitsu guys, including the Gracies. One of the best examples is Josh Barnett. Josh Barnett is the youngest guy to ever win the UFC heavyweight championship. Elite, top of the food chain, professional mixed martial arts fighter,

who's also a catch wrestler and a huge fan of pro wrestling and has competed in pro wrestling in japan done it in america does commentary on pro wrestling is just a huge pro wrestling uh proponent and connoisseur and josh would use catch wrestling techniques on elite jujitsu fighters and tap them. And it's a big deal. There's a guy named Timothy Thatcher in pro wrestling who I think comes from the catch world, and he's pretty treacherous. Oh, yeah.

Well, it's a very violent form of submission wrestling because wrestlers compete very differently than submission fighters. Wrestlers kind of go all out and sprint because matches, although you have to have incredible endurance to compete in an amateur wrestling match, there's a time limit. And these time limits are fairly short in comparison to, say, like, Gordon Ryan, who's the greatest jiu-jitsu athlete of all time, who's only 27 today. Wow.

And he is one of the most disciplined people I think I've ever met in my life. And one of the most driven and intelligent. Trains 365 days a year. Doesn't matter if he's sick. Doesn't matter if he's tired. He'll just train less hard. Trains every single day. Holidays, birthdays, fuck you, you're at the gym. And he has these no-time-limit submission matches against the best jiu-jitsu fighters in the world. And people are terrified to compete against him in this because it's a matter of time before he gets you.

And so he has this slow, steady approach where he's slowly ramping up the heat. Incredible. And slowly putting his foot on the gas until the guys start to break and then he gets them. And he was competing recently against this guy, Felipe Pena. And Felipe is also elite, world champion, top of the food chain. And Gordon got him to quit at 45 minutes. Because he was so on his way to getting defeated. But his pace was a pace that was set up for time limit jiu-jitsu matches.

It's a lot of explosivity, a lot of quick movement, a lot of technique. But it's also you're recognizing that you can only do this for so long. Yeah, he's a sprint expert. Exactly. I have to use the restroom again. All right. I think I'm going to use the restroom too. Then we'll come back and wrap this up.

Yeah, yeah. I'm going to watch the catch wrestling guy you mentioned. Yeah, Josh Barnett. Yeah. There's a ton of stuff about him on the internet and great mixed martial arts fights and a lot of submission grappling matches and all kinds of stuff.

Cool. I would have never imagined you for a pro wrestling fan. That's the most shocking thing about this conversation, I think. It's the most fun. Have you ever been? To a pro wrestling match? Yes. Where did I go see?

I definitely saw one when I was younger. And I think that was it. Tony's always trying to get me to come to see WrestleMania. He's like, if you go to WrestleMania, you'll get it. You'll get it. It's actually better on TV than in person, honestly. Really? Yeah, yeah.

Why is that? Because the commentators are a big part of it. And the commentators are super funny, wildly funny. Everything's a crazy exaggeration. Like I can remember one call from a WrestleMania from childhood where one of the Japanese wrestler would throw some, you know, had a little bit of salt in his palm and throw it in the guy's eyes.

And Gorilla Monsoon was the commentator at that point. And he said, he just threw about five pounds of salt in the man's eyes. You know, everything is just insane. But that's the show. It's like the show isn't, it's this other, it works on this other level where everything is ridiculous and insane and you're not going to see a fight. Do you know what I'm saying? Yes. If you reframe it for I'm not going to see a fight.

I'm going to have fun seeing this crazy show. It's like the circus. Right. And it really is. And it's edgy. Like they'll do crazies, you know, women getting hit with chairs. It's insane. It's completely wrong.

But that's the – what's so cool about it is that they cross lines in the name of telling the story where it's like a bad guy could do something really bad because you're supposed to hate them and boo them. So they do something really vile. And it's funny because it's so crazy and you can it's funny because it's so wrong. It's like with dice, you know, like a lot of the jokes were the foot. What was funny about it was it's wrong. Do you know what I'm saying? Like knowing that it's wrong is where the humor is. Is that the only thing you consume on television?

Mainly. I'd say I watch some documentaries. But mainly wrestling. That's amazing. It just takes so much time. There's so much. And it's not like watching a fight. Right.

It's all this, like a soap opera. There are all these storylines that keep going. If you miss a week, you're not in the story. Oh, right. Yeah, it's all these, it's like the matches are the least of the story. Sometimes they'll resolve themselves in the ring, but the storytelling rarely happens in the ring. It's part of it, but it's not the big part of it.

Have you ever talked to Billy Corgan about this? Yeah, yeah, of course. When I had him on, I thought that was surprising. I knew that he owned some pro wrestling organization. It was one of the owners. Yeah, he owns some pro wrestling organization. It was one of the owners. Yeah. I thought that was hilarious. He owns the NWA now.

Yeah. I actually started a pro wrestling company called Smoky Mountain Wrestling in the 90s at a time when wrestling wasn't serving me. You know, as a fan wrestling changed and it became a different show in what way um the real wrestling is really

edgy and crazy and like it's outlaw and something happened when Hulk Hogan got popular WWE maybe even been WWF back then, changed to be more like aimed at little kids. And when it became aimed at little kids, they were more like everybody was dressed like a superhero and it was goofier. Whereas the other wrestling was more like badass barroom brawlers. So it was different. One was like a Western, one was like a kids' show.

So when wrestling turned into a kids' show, and WWE was the biggest, the other league used to be called the NWA, and it became WCW, and WCW followed suit, and they started chasing kids also. So for all of the real wrestling fans like me, nobody was doing wrestling anymore. Everybody was doing shows for kids.

So just again, as a fan, I want wrestling, so I funded a league to start in the South that was more like real wrestling. And then the Attitude Era happened in WWE and they turned back into being hard wrestling. The Attitude Era. Yeah, that was like Stone Cold Steve Austin and Triple H and...

where it got more like it's not for kids anymore. Got serious. I want to watch pro wrestling with you. We'll do it. I want to sit down with you while you're watching pro wrestling. We'll do it. We'll watch some highlights. Okay.

You're going to love it. Because you have a good sense of humor. If you have a good sense of humor, it's the most fun. It's the most fun. Just can't think of it as a fight. And you can't compare it to anything else. It's its own thing. Maybe that's my problem. Yeah. Maybe my't think of it as a fight. And you can't compare it to anything else. It's its own thing. Maybe that's my problem.

Yeah. Maybe my problem is like wanting it to be real. Yeah. It wouldn't be better if it was real. That's the thing. It wouldn't be better. This thing is better as it is. There's good versions of it and not.

But when it's good, it's the best. So when you started your own organization how did you go about doing that how did you get talent how did you find the right people so in wrestling there were wrestlers and there were managers there are less managers today than there were but there's still Paul Heyman manages

Roman Reigns the head of the table who's current champion longest reigning champion in decades, I believe. And the best managers were always really entertaining, kind of like comedians. And the best ones of all time were Bobby Heenan, Jim Cornette, and Paul Heyman.

And when NWA turned into WCW and started going soft, Jim Cornette left wrestling and he's one of the great minds of pro wrestling. And I met him and through him, I talked about, we talked about together. It was really his dream, but it was, we had the same dream.

We both wanted real wrestling at a time when wrestling was going through this, turning into a kid's show. So he managed it, and it was based in Louisville, Kentucky, which is where he lived. And so you would go to the events? Rarely. I went one time. So you just set it up.

Set it up, funded, and he'd run stuff by me, and I would share my creative opinion, but ultimately it was his show. And you were just doing it because you wanted that kind of thing to exist. I wanted, I felt like I'm the audience, nobody's serving my needs. Same reason I started making hip hop records,

same thing, it's always been. Everything I make, I make it because if someone else would make it, I wouldn't have to make it and it'd be fine. I just want to like stuff. So if I can see a way to make something crazy and interesting that probably no one else is going to make, then that's the thing for me to make. Is there anything else like that in your life that's unusual that you're involved in creatively? I don't know. I don't know how to answer it

because to me it's not odd. So I don't know. It's just whatever you like. Whatever you like. Yeah, there's no right or wrong. It's like we all like what we like. Listen, that's a beautiful way to live life. I mean, it sounds like you've got a fucking formula.

And not just that, something that's, I think it's going to resonate with a lot of people. I really do. It's really, if you think about it this way, if someone were to give you two plates of food and say, taste both, and you taste both and say, okay, which one do you like better? That's not a hard question to answer usually. Right. That's all it is. It's as simple as that, as like try to get it down to two choices and say A or B, which one is better. And then continuing setting up A and Bs.

Keep – and you know it. You taste it. There's no other – you just have to block out any other, oh, what so-and-so is going to say or what this one does or what that other person did or what they're playing on the radio. None of those things matter. All that matters is when I hear this, do I want to lean forward? Do I get excited? Or do I feel like I want to change channel or want to put on something else? If I want to turn it off, it's not for me.

If I'm excited and want to hear more, great. And that's all, that's everything comes down to that. That is one of the most insidious things about social media is that it gives people so many of those, what does everyone else think about what I'm doing thing. It doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. It can't. If you're aiming towards greatness, you don't get there by what other people think. Yeah.

It doesn't work that way. It doesn't. It really doesn't. And so many people are intoxicated by other people's opinions. I mean, that said, when someone likes something, it's nice. I'm not saying you don't care what they think. Right. It's nice, but you can't make decisions based on what anyone else thinks.

Right. on what anyone else thinks. Right. It's again, if I make something and if I have a choice for people to like it or not, I would hope they like it. But I'm not changing one note with the idea of they might not like this so I'm gonna change the note. Never, ever, ever.

Not one note, not one word. I think that's the best way to end this. My pleasure. Thank you very much, brother. Thanks for having me, man. It was fun. The book is called The Creative Act, A Way of Being. Rick Rubin.

It's available now. Did you do the audio version of it? Not yet, but I'm hoping to. I know there will be an audio version. If I can do it justice, it will be me. If I can't do it justice... Oh, it has to be you. I'm going to try.

It's got to be you. You can do it justice. You can do it. It's like acting. It's not just reading. Reading out loud is a very particular thing. It is, but it's got to be in your voice. I'm going to do everything I can to make it happen.

I have all my faith. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. Bye, everybody. Bye.