The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan - Conrad Flynn Part 2 | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

On this provocative episode, Billy Corgan sits down with returning guest Conrad Flynn to explore the uneasy intersection of fame, power, the occult, and modern celebrity culture. Their conversation moves beyond headlines into the architecture of influence, the blurred lines between entertainment and politics, and the deeper question of who actually shapes the cultural narrative. They debate whether the surge of occult symbolism in pop is pure marketing, spiritual theater, or a reflection of something deeper—and whether rock’s once-defiant cultural voice has quietly been sidelined. Corgan also reflects on the personal cost of fame, the realities of industry manipulation, and why faith, truth, and integrity are the only antidotes to a rigged system. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It's better off for everybody if we actually just don't start opening these doors. If there was all this understanding and knowledge, why does it go on and then why does it stop going? They get into the occults, they do rituals, and it coincides with their success. The public can't help but get into an argument about, is this not true? One of the British members of parliament, that was one of his colleagues. Jeffrey Epstein's essential father-in-law. I have watched where incredibly powerful people seem to be above the law. I mean, look what happened in the last few years, with celebrities.

I don't bring this up. We've got to go viral here. Keep going. Conrad Flynn, welcome back to the TMO show. The first guest I've ever had back. I'm excited. This is our own double album. Well, it's Kiss Alive, too. I think that's what we're going with. Anything you want to jump in on before I go down my particular rabbit hole? I mean, we've caught a little fire online.

That's interesting. We've good business together in wrestling parlance. Yeah, well, I want to ask you about wrestling at some point. Sure, yeah. Well, I'll actually ask you. A friend of mine wanted me to ask, you once said that in music and rock history, the logic of wrestling and marketing is very similar to how pop works. In terms of pop stars are marketed or can be marketed in a way that's not unlike wrestling.

In terms of getting someone over, marketing, what's kind of group, are there any acts, including a smashing pumpkins, that you have ever analogized to a pop act? We're like, this guy's kind of like, it's like I know Bob Dylan was famously influenced by Gorgeous George. Oh, I see. David Bowie and Glam took itself from this British wrestler in your work with NWA or in wrestling.

Have you ever noticed, like, what did you mean by that? And do you have any analogies to that, to wrestling and pop? I just think it's the, what I, attached to is it's the mechanics of getting people to buy into an avatar. Right. And as the audience leans into the avatar, the artist or the person behind the avatar leans into it too. So you create almost like a third person. Right.

Hulk Hogan, his real name was Terry Belia. He wasn't Hulk Hogan, but he became Hulk Hogan. John Wayne wasn't John Wayne. He became John Wayne. Right, right. So I'm sort of fascinated by the mechanism of creating the avatar and how, whether it's a Bruce Springstring or John Wayne or a David Bowie, they figure out that they can sort of work with this third entity

that exists between the audience and the person holding the marionette strings. Well, that's something that Gorgeous George, the wrestler said to Bob Dylan in Bob Dylan's memoirs. He said that they passed each other, and Gorgeous George said, you're getting people to believe in it. And Bob Dylan says, I'm not 100% sure that's what he said. He's like, that's what I thought he said. And that's what's more important is he said, you're getting people to believe in it.

Yeah. So wrestling is the overt expression and acknowledgement that that is what is actually happening. And now that the business has been exposed since Vince McMahon came out and said, okay, it's not real. Cirque in 1989, now we have a lot of people actually exploring that through wrestling fan sites and on wrestling, podcast like is the is so and so doing a good job of the avatar right music seems to be behind this particular curve culturally people still want to believe that lady gaga is lady gaga all the time right right right right and as someone who came out very early in the process of the 90s and actually started talking about these things and paid the price for it because people did people wanted me to be a rock star

not somebody explaining what a rock star is right um and now of course it's out it's all very outward, but I still think it's funny that the public is still enamored with the idea that people are these people 24-7 when it's obviously, it's patently obvious that they're not. Right, right, right. So I don't know if that answer your question, but I tend to spend more time in the mechanism. And in essence, why is it that the public, by and large, is fascinated with this mechanism, which is now in plain sight? Right, right, right.

Well, as you said, you do a character long enough or a schick long enough. You can kind of become that thing. You kind of disappear into it. Yeah, and I've known very famous rock stars that at some point you go, wait, are you still in there? Because a few years back, I was talking to the real person, and now I'm talking to this avatar. Right. And, oh, by the way, I know you're not the avatar, so don't try to run the game of the avatar on me. Right, right, right.

And a lot of times in those circumstances, you actually get pushed out of the circle. Right. Because they don't need somebody saying, no, no, no, he's from Ohio or he's from Iowa. Right, right. They want to really believe. He's not a real cowboy. You need to go along with the Munchin version. Like, whatever is the creation, you need to go along with it. You're going to be pushed out of the item, at least in that particular fiefdom. I found it hard in the success of our first interview together.

I find it hard because people will mention the clips and stuff that came out. Sure. So I'm going to put it on you. try to explain to people what you actually do, because I find it hard to explain. I mean, I'm a writer now. I was developing these different projects about rocking the occult and some other Hollywood stuff.

But as right now, I'm working on the substack. So you're out of work is basically what you're saying. I'm always kind of half out of work doing stuff. I mean, how else do you have time to read so many weird books? That's it. No, but things are coming along. But what is right? Writers your most comfortable?

is the main thing. But like, nowadays it's amorphous. Like, I've been doing podcasts and that requires some time and I'll probably, you know, do my own podcast soon. Yeah. Or maybe you're creating some form that we haven't sort of figured out yet. That's, see, that's the publicist answer. That's great. He's not unemployed. He's doing too many jobs. He's doing all the jobs. Well, you do have publicist DNA in there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because I find it hard sometimes to explain to people how you fit in because, as you can imagine, well, most people want to say, well, he's this. Right. Right. And I found myself struggle. with the word.

You can just say writer. That's very funny, because this is conversations I have with people for the years, or people who are even close to me, like, I have a hard time telling people like what it is you do or who you are. And I'm just like, you know, a writer, reader, enthusiast, but yeah, writer is pretty much the main thing. So, real quick, for people didn't see the first episode, you have a substack. Yes, yes.

We have the Flynn effect, which I started a few months ago, and it's pretty much some current events, but a lot of history, secret history of pop. We did one on the secret history of the Wizard of Oz, the occult history with El-Frank. Fascinating. Yeah, we did that. I'm doing one right now on the similarity of the new left of the 1970s and the way that they kind of glommed on to John Lennon and the way that the new right kind of glammed on

to Kanye West a few years ago, kind of comparing Groypers with the yippies and Abby Hoffman and McQuentes. There's a picture of, Abby Hoffman, where he looks exactly like Nick Fuentes, pointing directly at a camera that is eerie. And so I'm doing a thing right now about how these countercultural or subculture things, they tend to repeat. And, yeah, so it's essentially by... Okay, so let's explore that for a second. So do you think it's in some ways it's these representative avatars? Like, are people responding to the same sort of signals? Yeah, well, it's same thing in music where people want certain kinds of figures and they

they want certain kinds of things to identify with. Well, I don't know Mr. Fuentes. He's from Chicago, my hometown. It's good you don't know. It's good you don't know. That's he can get out of the way. I'm fine to know anybody. I'm not afraid of anybody.

But what I would say about Nick Fuentes, if he, well, I think he did interview with Tucker Carlson, but he talked about, let's call it his origin story, how he had been into this political, whatever you want to call it, he's in Firestorm or, but he, he in many ways kind of, feeds into this concept of an avatar, you see, because he was just a student, and some things happened,

and it kind of pushed him in a particular direction. And this is his story, I don't know. It's true or not, but he basically says he had no plans on being this person. Right. But so it becomes, at some point, it becomes the idea of the object and the observer. Right. At one point does the object

become aware they're being observed and start to lean into the observation? Well, that's something one of my favorite writers, Eric Hopper talked about, where he's like, the people you know can almost cast you, you as something like they're a director, a casting director. I love that you say casting because this is very,

this is something I'm very interested in. Well, that's just it. So yeah, the way other people's perception of you can turn you into something because they want you to be that thing. I mean, as a rock star, I was talking to my friend, Jake about this last night, because he's worked as a Hollywood writer for a long time. And we're talking, he's talking about egos

and the way certain people can get bad attitudes. And we were saying, I know this a little bit from my grandfather, but also just from the world of publicity, the way other people want you to be a certain jerky rock star. Not to take the onus off a bad behavior, but the way that people in your circle wants you to be this big authority figure and they want you to not be a pushover or they want you to be glam, ends up encouraging people potentially take on the kind of bad attitudes they wouldn't otherwise have because people in their circle are like, come on, I'm not dating

Billy Corrig and the regular dude. I'm dating a rock star. Don't let them talk to you that way, be this thing. And the way that you see other people wanting you to kind of be this thing, again, not to take away the personal responsibility of bad behavior, but but other people's desire for you to be a thing can, of course, encourage you to be dead. Yeah, I, I tried to create a clear delineation between my public and private personality when I was very young, and I continually ran into people who expressed overt and outward disappointment that I was not living up to the image they thought in their mind. Right. Now, when it extends into your family circle and your friend's circle, that's like, let's call it.

That's the first iteration of it. Sure. what are they expressing? They're expressing, like, shouldn't you be more into this? Right. The second iteration is then the public version where somebody, because they've seen you in a video

or a magazine, shows up and they can't understand why you don't match what they have in their head. Right, right, right. And that's why oftentimes, say, most rock stars and pop stars are sociopathic because they quickly figure out it's a lot easier to play along. Right, right. Oh, like, oh, you think I'm this spooky guy who lives in a basement.

Right. I'm just going to play it a spooky in the basement. That would be a fascinating. is testing for sociopathie amongst pop stars, a controlled test. That would be, that's something we should get funding for. I would bet a lot of money on that one. Yeah, to go back really quick to the Nick Fuentes thing,

a piece I wrote about a month ago was comparing people like him and a lot of podcasters like Andrew Tate as essentially the new gangster rappers where they get in front of a microphone and they say like the most heinous, make your mom cry stuff, and that that's the kind of modern purpose they serve. And I was talking about how commercially rap has been on the decline for the last few years. And only half in jest do I point out that, like, the rise of certain kinds of podcasters tie in with this idea of like, this is like... Well, sorry to interrupt you, but I think it's the idea. The thing that flashes is in my moment is like who's on the mic.

Right. Right. And whoever can step up and get on the mic and get the attention, well, that's where the energy is going to flow. And the money. And right now it's really in the podcast space. Right. So, yeah, so that's, you know, the bad boys is microphone. So you're stepping into the ring here soon, right?

Yeah. You're getting on the mic. I already am. This is recording, aren't we? So this is my mic, but, but you seem to be doing a good job of subverting it. Yeah. So let's, one last thing. Because, you know, we are sort of openly kind of playing with the game of avatars and self-reflection.

So now that we've entered this particular space, And in the conversation that we had, clips went viral. Sure, sure. A lot of stuff that I said during it and stuff that you said during it. I was surprised people were as interested in it as they were. I'm not surprised if you were interested in that. When I saw those clips, I'm like, this will go viral. Yeah, yeah.

I'm like, when you're talking about, like, being approached by people. So not to be overly reflective, but it feeds into what we're going to talk about. But what's your impression in that in the short term? Because, you know, you're entering into your own public sort of avatar phase. Sure. Oh, I mean, like, it is. As you said, and it's very, very true, people end up having an idea of you that's based off this person that does and doesn't exist. It's the public avatar, I mean, occult concepts like tulpahs or whatever of you, or it's like this third created creature that isn't you.

And so at some point, early on, again, the sociopathic nature of being a pop star or any sort of public figure, you have to, like, pathologically turn off certain kinds of criticism in the sense of you can't listen to it all. and they're usually criticizing something that exists a little bit independently of you after a certain point. I'm not at that point, but you certainly are, where it's like the Billy Corgan that exists as an idea or as a cartoon. At some point, you're like, oh, I'm not that guy either. I get a kick out of that guy, you know. Yeah.

Yeah, I've been through this a few times, so I, you know, I just saw the wave coming in, and I just kind of let it wash over everything. Oh, yeah. It is, yeah, a wave. because the one thing I have found, and I'm going to put quotations around the word truth, when you speak something akin to the truth, and let's call it universal truth, not man's truth, because that's always arguable. But when you speak to universal truth, you get this kind of kick-back reaction. Right.

And it creates a cognitive dissonance, which is, is that true? Right. you see some of the some of the grand public figures of our times of course at the 20th century who work in this polemic where they throw out something that's what they would in in publicity terms called red meat right they kind of throw red meat out right the public can't help but get into an argument about is this or is this not true and i at least in my own particular case have learned that if you say things that are essentially universally true right the argument is irrelevant because the argument is because people haven't actually thought the thing through it. Right. It's just dogma or cliche. Their natural reaction is to personalize it, and you'll probably learn this yourself. They'll personalize it and they'll make it about you. Right. You know, they'll start attacking your song or, you know, your failed career,

or whatever they, whatever conceptually they think where your avatar is. Right. And even talking about avatars, you know, as I move through life, I deal, of course, consistently with, let's call it the general avatar, what people think I am. Right. And it's kind of over 30-something years. It's kind of fallen into kind of a group. Sure, sure.

But then every once in a while, you step into a place where you realize that your own conception of your avatar is out of step with the person who has some conception of you that's 10 or 15 or 20 years old. Right. That's interesting too. So then you almost get into time phase alignment where the where are we on the avatar arc? Right. Because I'm living in the avatar today. Right. And I saw people's reactions to some of the stuff that we said together. And that's somewhat consistent with where my avatar is sitting.

Right. because I've been bubbling on the outside of culture for about 20 years. Sure. And many people went out of the way to basically say that that avatar was dead never to return. Right, right, right. So my resurrection of sorts and of Prince once said,

you know, what comeback I never left. Right, right, right. But now you see people not only wrestling with whether or not what I'm saying is true, they're also wrestling with the idea that how is he still standing here. Right, the different, like we were saying, the cartoon versions that they want to bring out. And like, this is still a cartoon version of me.

This is also an older version. version of me. You're getting into something I was talking about last night. So when the actor Matthew Perry, you know, he passed away last year, but a few years ago, he released his memoirs. And he caught some flak initially, Matthew Perry did, because he made fun of Keanu Reeves in his memoirs. But what's key about this, when ties in what you're talking about, he was making fun of Keanu Reeves essentially for being like a dumb guy or a dufous. He was making jokes about Keanu Reeves that were popular in 1995. Because in the mid-90s, people loved the idea of making fun of Keanu Reeves, essentially as if he was his Bill and Ted character.

That was his, you know. I don't remember that, but okay. Oh, no, it was a, yeah, before, but in the last 20 years, Keanu Reeves went from being a guy that a comedian would make fun of for being dumb, which wasn't true, but was the, you know, the nature of the joke about him, to now Keanu Reeves is essentially the new Bruce Lee, where, you know, people will misattribute Bruce Lee quotes to him and be like, you know, be water, Keanu Reeves. In other words, Keanu Reeves has gone from being a guy whose avatar is the dumb stoner guy. to being this worldly-wise, mystic Hollywood actor. Now, Matthew Perry didn't know that because, for what, you know, he wasn't keeping up a...

Oh, so he was still in the mindset of... 19905. But it was, but people thought, they're like, what is Matthew Perry's problem with Keanu Reeves? Not realizing he was just essentially doing a very old joke, not realizing that he didn't know how old this joke was. And the things have actually flipped in the, you know, quite the opposite. Keanu Reeves is now a philosopher and like a sage. He didn't, you know, that's the new schick.

But to your points, people can have an old, old cartoon version of someone that not only is so outdated, but the opposite has happened. So, I mean, it's sad now with the Matthew Perry's dead, but people didn't know, like, he was only making fun of him because this is what he remembered in 1995. Well, the way I actually, if you want to talk about the mechanism of avatars, the way I actually subvered that process of people being stuck on my old avatars, I allowed him to die. Really? Yeah. I committed kind of a public sepacu with the character. And even my therapist at the time said you did a good thing. That's wild.

He said they needed a body and you gave them one. The Mishima of Pop, you know, that's really... Well, we'll see if it works. We're still in this transitory phase here. But thank you for being on the podcast, because this is part of my outward war against the... No, let's do it. This is fun. Because here's the thing, it's very Philip K. Dickian, if that's even...

Oh, yeah. But it's... Now we're into the battle of the avatars. Right. Well, totally. Do you wait. up because I want to make sure that lands. Do you understand what I mean by that?

In terms of there being different pop versions of people that are totally plastic or created that aren't real, but they're different versions. Let's take it out of the realm of music for a second, because I think it's a, because we're, as we take this, we're in the midst of the NFL playoffs. Right, right. I was watching a quarterback talk about their perspective

in what ultimately became a season that ended with the loss. It's pretty typical. Only two teams go to the Super Bowl, one wins, da-da. But the person was talking almost from this, I don't want to say what it was, but they were talking from the standpoint of they were actually beginning to build their avatar publicly, that their goal is not just to win Super Bowls, which in the world that I grew up, and that's all that matters. Right, right.

In fact, there was a period in the NFL where they didn't want to show the players' faces and they were happy they were behind masks because they could basically market the NFL, what they called the Shield. Right. And then eventually Tom Brady came along and they realized, no, wait, it's actually better for business that we market these people. And now down the line, of course, now we've even intertwined pop music into the NFL with the oncoming marriage of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey. The point that I'm after was I was stunned and somewhat pleased because here was a professional athlete in the prime of their youth and capability, already consciously talking about. not having yet won a Super Bowl,

already consciously talking about that their plan isn't just to win and win a Super Bowl, their plan is to build the avatar. Really? Well, because in the professional sports world, if you have a long tail on your logic, your real money is going to come after you play.

Right, right. You're going to go on television, you're going to be in commercials like Peyton Manning. So I think you see now the consciousness of the professional athlete that how they play and the way they market themselves, including how they dress walking into the arena, is part of building the avatar.

Oh, totally, totally. When they lose, they're like, not only did I lose it, I'm not going to get that cameo in an Adam Sandler movie now, because I'm not... But you could also argue losing the right way as part of building the avatar. Well, my grandfather, in 76, he had this battle the network stars race with...

Tell everyone who your grandfather is, for those who didn't see the first podcast. TV's Robert Conrad from Hawaiian I, Wawa West and Black Sheep Squadron, a bunch of television movies. Notorious Hollywood tough guy. Hollywood tough guy, some would say hothead. And from millennials, they know him as the cop and jingle all the way,

which for millennials vastly outshines anything that their parents know him from. But he did this one of the earliest celebrity reality TV things with the Battle Network stars in 76. Which I used to watch. Oh, I mean, there was only three channels, so everyone kind of watched. Everyone loved battle. But it's the hottest thing on TV. But there was a race he had with Gabe Kaplan. And it was...

That sounds like an S&L sketch. Oh, no, I mean, it was. It was a proto-S&L sketch. So there's a race between he and Gabe Kaplan because they couldn't figure out who was the winner of the last contest. And so Gramps says... Was it a worked finish?

Well, that's... It might be... Oh, you know wrestling. It may have been. Well, so to your point, it worked out that Gramps lost this race. So Gramps, who was this athletic guy from the Wawa West, he's considered to be this athlete

and he was. But he says to Gabe Kaplan, you and me are going to race, and the winner of this will win. in the whole thing. And this is unscripted, battle the network stars. Like, this is really hot reality TV. And I mean, like Bill Simmons, it's like his favorite YouTube clip of all time.

Graham sends up losing the race to Gabe Kaplan. Because Gabe, he doesn't look as athletic as Grams, but he was a former track star. Grams's 41, a huge smoker. Gramps gets smoked by Gabe Kaplan. It was this big shocking thing. It would be like Adam Sandler beating the Rock or something in a something where you're like, really? I wouldn't think. But to your point about it's better to lose, had my grandfather challenged him, been a bully, and won, it would have had a Disney sports movie villain tone to it.

But the fact that he lost and the underdog won, the surprising guy that played the nerd on TV one. That's what makes me think it was a work. Gramps was too mad for it to be a work. He was too mad for it to be a work? Well, how about this? Was the setup for the winner-take-all race made me a work? I've heard from someone say that they were the one that said, grams, she should suggest their race.

So, yeah, as you know, the way show is... The Carney and me from Russ identifies the con. There's a producer that's like, Billy, you should go say this at the award show. Okay, so if people didn't see our first episode, we kind of dove into this air of your coming expertise, which is the occult and music. Right. The occult and culture, maybe is a better way to say it. So let's start here.

The granddaddy of them all, Crowley. because he's the go-to, you know, Crowley's influence in music, people being influenced by Crowley in terms of writing music. And, of course, there's the great association between Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, even buying Crowley's house and living in Crowley's house. Buying his books. I've got a story that's the granddaddy of all rocking the car stores.

Okay. Jump in. So the guy that Jimmy Page bought his Crowley books from was a famous labor member of parliament named Tom Drive. Now, Dryberg, he was Alastair Crowley's anointed successor back in the 1920s when he was in college. He was also a kind of, he was anointed as a baby by C.W. Ledbetter, who was also an occult leader and Conachroley's rival. So long story short, Dryberg becomes a member of parliament, becomes a spy. He was part of George Orwell's list of 39 people that George Orwell gave the BBC, where he's like, these guys can't be trusted to do anti-clos. communist propaganda. They're actually fellow travelers or spies. And so long story short, this is the,

this is, Billy, the best actual, like, rock in the occult. It has everything and has an A-list rock star. So in 1967, when the Rolling Stones are famously in there, we don't quite know yet what we're going to do phase, where the early version of the stones from 63 to 66 is starting to wear a bit thin. Is this where they go psychedelic? Yeah, this is where they go psychedelic. They also almost do, like, music hall, but the between the buttons era of like, I guess they're going to have top hats now. Like, it gets a little bit, they're getting lost, and they fire Andrew Lou Goldham. So Alan Ginsberg wants to introduce Tom Dryberg to Mick Jagger. And Ginsburg, you know, legends of the counterculture, but also famously like, according to,

you know, member of Nambla, pedophile, like, you know, some very serious stuff with that. You know that about Allen Ginsburg? I've heard the stories. Yeah, yeah. So he- So I, I mean, no, but I like putting it out there because in my way of doing business, it helps if I have a three-dimensional impression of the person. All people are people, yeah, regardless of whatever, Hannah's stuff they get up to.

But, um, uh, so Alan Gensberg wants to introduce Tom Dryberg to Mick Jagger. And Dryberg, again, is a spy. He has his own, like, you know, he's Alistair Crowley's successor. He's also later accused it. When you say his successor, what is the... So Crowley had wanted him to be the new world. which is this Messiah figure, like Judeo Krishna-Murdy was another one. Sure.

And that was C.W. Ledbetter actually was the one who anointed Krishna-Murdy to be that. So the idea was essentially that Crowley thought he would be this messianic figure that would usher in the next age of... You could argue that he did. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. In his way, with sex drugs and rock and roll, he did do that.

And Tom Dreiberg, he sold his Crowley books to Jimmy Page. In other words, Dryberg is a member of parliament. Friend of Evil and Waugh is like, you know, kind of into some freaky stuff. He's a spy. And it goes to Mc Jagger, not unlike your viral clip talking about you were approached to, you know, by whoever. And he goes to McJagger and he goes,

I would like you to become a member of parliament. He goes, you represent the youth. You know, we really want to harness your rock star things. He goes, I believe in the revolution again. Thanks to you. He goes, you really brought back my like socialist revolutionary instincts. And this is 67.

And McJaggers, like, well, I don't know if I want to be a politician. And Dryberg's like, well, you can just be a figurehead. We just need you to be the guy who's, you know, the public face of this stuff. But it's the fact that a guy who is a spy, a guy who has like, you know, p-word, pedophile ties, Dryberg, a guy who is Crowley's successor, sold his stuff to Jimmy Page, that he approaches a rock star. And it's like, we want to kind of pull you into this scene. Yeah. One of Dryberg's colleagues, I mean, it's a big body of colleagues, at the time was Robert Maxwell, Gailene Maxwell's father.

That was also one of the British members of parliament. That was one of his colleagues. Jeffrey Epstein's essential father-in-law. So that could also be a coincidence, but at the same time... Is it true that the father was also Mossad? Well, that's widely considered, too. So that's another spy case. And Crowley was not only a spy.

My friend Rick Spence, he's a historian, he wrote a book, Alasdair Crolley 666, about his spy work. So in other words, there's a lot of spy intrigue. There's a lot of like the ickyest eyes wide-shut stuff. Okay, so let me step here for a second. So I don't want to go too deep into it because it's certainly not my air of expertise.

Sure. But there's this kind of constant swirl around occult behavior, political classes, uh, aberrant sexual deviancy, including pedophilia or pederasty. Right. What is your general take on that? Is it, is it, is it, is it is, is it organized in your mind or is it just power likes darkness because there's some sort of connective tissue there, you know, because what people will say is, and it's, it's similar to the rock argument. Right. It's like, well, yeah, you give, you give, you give, you give, you give,

people a bunch of money and a bunch of power, they're going to go crazy. It doesn't mean they're worshipping Satan. It just means they just get into some freaky stuff. Well, that seems to be also partially what people are still trying to sort out with the P. Diddy cases. Right, right, right. Because invariably, and I have been in these situations, I have watched where incredibly powerful people seem to be above the law. Right. Well, and that just as a sort of an emotional comment, that's a weird place to be when you realize you're hanging out with somebody who doesn't play by any rules, including the speed limit.

Well, that's a big question. I think we can answer a lot of it or some of it. That's what you're here to answer. No, I'm here to answer all the big questions. First of all, the ditty thing. So, like, we talked about that. And I talked to some people that know Hollywood, and they said to me, like, you're absolutely right

in terms of the purpose of certain kinds of elite sex parties and whatnot. It isn't that, celebrities have a hard time getting people, getting women, getting boys. It's the fact that having a relationship or flings with people and not having extracted from you, whatever the celebrity told them. I'm going to introduce you to my manager. I want to read your script. Having the blackmail of having slept with someone and then that person coming back to haunt you, those parties serve a very valuable purpose. But I'm talking about the phase between, let's call it, crazy behavior over here,

occult, weirdness, celebrity, fame, models, billionaires. Right. And I've run enough in those circles to know the vibe. Right. And where the government sort of seems to get involved. What is your take on that? I think there is something there. I think that even going back a few years ago, with the QAnon stuff, as crazy as a lot of it was,

there were accusations Democrats could have made back to Republicans about high-ranking Republican politicians who were famously pedophiles and caught up in certain stuff. And the fact that Democrats never thought to answer back those accusations to like the Dennis Hastert thing from 2006, remember that? Of course, yeah. So it's like he was three heartbeats away from the presidency. At any point during the Q&N thing, Democrats could have pointed back to Republicans and said, you accuse us of being pedophiles.

The Speaker of the House was a convicted pedophile. Yeah, it was notoriously absent certain facts and evidence that somehow didn't seem to make it into the public frame. Into the conversation. So that to me, and this is just my, what I infer from this, the fact that they never thought to like, to bring up Hastert being in jail for pedophilia and being three heartbeats away from the presidency indicated that it's like, it's better off for everybody if we actually just don't start opening these doors and bring.

Well, that's very, sorry, there's very obvious to me that there's sort of a gentleman's agreement, that there's things that they don't, they'll lobby. whatever mental hand grenades they want to lob, but they won't lob those grenades. Or another one, Madison Cothorn. Remember him from a few years ago? Madison Cothor. He came out and said, yeah.

He's like, there's like orgies and sex parties. And he was elected a congressman. I believe he was wheelchair bound and handicapped. And he was like, he's like, yeah, there's all these parties I get invited to. Gone. Immediately. Not only that, no one brings him up. No one makes fun of him.

He is just memory. No, he was memory gold. So as you know, just the fact that some things happen and some things aren't brought up, and some people aren't even brought up again as someone to kick. But Q&ONN, sorry, but Q&ON is a perfect example of where it was so obvious to me from my sideline that was some sort of government op.

In op in terms of... It was all counterintel. It was there was, it was sprinkled with enough kernels of truth that it would hold some fascination, but it was not to get to any truth. It was actually to pull everyone away from from something that and and when I see those things happening at least again from my own perspective I don't know what the purpose is I just know what's happening right well I'm sorry I once said something

I was I was invited to a Nantucket symposium where they bring a bunch of people in to talk and I can't think of the gentleman's name Casey Nystatt Nistat he was on CNN for a heartbeat he was a he was a social media early YouTuber gained a lot of traction CNN gave him a huge contract. He'd just gotten this big contract. And he was brought in to talk to me in public in a, in a former church or a current church. And who's sitting in the front row, but Norman Lear, arguably the greatest television maker ever. And during the thing, and I said to Casey before the interview, you know, you can ask me whatever you want. It was ostensibly a conversation about culture. And I think there might have been video of the interview if people want to check it out.

And the entire interview was him going after me. Really? Yeah. Not in an overtly aggressive way, but in a way of calling me out about government conspiracies and things like that. And I thought it was very strange, right? This is classic. And I've been through with the New York Times and every row. So suddenly I find myself in a situation.

Now I'm on trial. Right. With Norman Lear sitting in the front row. Right. And the key moment in the conversation, at least that I remember, and again, this is a full church in the middle of the day in Nantucket. And I've been flown in to talk. Right. Why me?

Why'd they pick me out of the lineup? Okay, don't know. And this is a few years back. It wasn't like now where I'm sort of getting a lot of attention. Okay. So the key moment says, you know, it's a lot of these, well, like if I was playing contrarian with you, well, how do you know? Right. How do you know he was Crowley's successor?

Right. How do you know this and how do you know that he gave Jimmy Page those books? Right. Like playing that way. Sure. So suddenly I'm being kind of somewhat grilled with this August audience. You're showing footnotes and books and stuff like that. Yeah, we're not talking about writing songs.

We're talking about, like, how do you account for your contrarian opinions in public? Right. And how do you know these things? And I reached for analogy and somehow it landed. And I said, well, you know, sometimes when they examine the stars, they know that a star is there, but they can't see it. Right. And how did they know it's there? Because they see its gravitational effect on the other stars.

Right. And I said, so I know enough behind the wizard's curtain to see, I can see the gravity pulling things left and right. I don't have to see the source of the gravitational pull to know it's there. Total silence in the crowd, which is how I knew it landed. Right. Okay. So after that, who pulls me aside but Norman Lear, he's now passed away.

God bless him. Sure. And he says, we need to have a conversation. And he said, when you come to L.A. next, let's get together and have lunch. I want to sort of have a real conversation with you about these things that you're poking. Sure, sure. And my wife for years said, you really should. And I said, no, I know what that conversation is.

And where was it? Well, in my estimation, and God bless Norman Lear, was to kind of get me back in line. And I don't mean knock me into line. It's like, look, kid, yes and no. I see what you're saying, but the world doesn't totally operate this way. Because it's my contention that people at the highest court of powers are pretty aware of how the game runs. Sure. These are not stupid people.

They're, in fact, they're a lot smarter than I am. They're very smart. So why are they willing back to the avatar? Why are they willing to let one narrative go on in public, why behind the scenes they're kind of running this other game? That's the crux of what I'm sort of after. And where, you know, you and I can play the parlor game about this person in this period of time.

But I think the bigger conversation, I think part of what drives you is, is why are we having two different stories? And when most of the American public in particular, at least the public in the West, is fully aware there is another story. Right. why are we willing to accept and not try to try to bring the two stories together and kind of agree.

Now, of course, the thing people say is a common set of facts. Well, when I hear that, that's when I want to run. Sure, sure. Because that's just another mechanism of control because who decides what facts are. Right. Well, this just gets into something you and I talked about the first time, I think, which is the Cosby story, where it's like, I don't think anything woke people up to the fact that a lot of entertainment isn't what it seems like America's dad in the 80s. the guy that in 1983, if you wanted to sell something, the American public, you got Bill Cosby to sell Jello Pops or whatever. He was that trusted to find out later that he was abusing women, drugging them,

raping them, and that people kind of knew about it. Or like, you could make jokes about it on Tina Face 30 Rock. It was that kind of like, we know about it. We can't do anything about it. That happened before Q&ON. But when people are like, well, why are people questioning whether all these people in Hollywood or the music industry or actually these dark figures, Well, if you take America's sitcom dad and you expose him later or it's revealed that he's not at all in this kind of, like, yeah. So play the game here because I'm still after the kind of bit, is there a connection between government entities and, and let's call it the swirl culture. Right. If, if let's use Mr. Cosby as an example. If it was known, and again, I don't know enough about the facts of the case, but obviously he was convicted. If it was known that he was engaged in unsundry behavior, does somebody somewhere along the way decide to sort of basically flip the switch and say,

okay, and why would they flip the switch? And let him do that until a certain point. That's where people get into the sort of the P. Diddy aspect of it. That's part of the crux of the Epstein story. Right. If there was all this understanding and knowledge, why does it go on and then why does it stop going on? Right. No, I think there is something to that.

It's a question of why does the Department of Justice decide that month to finally rein in Sean Combs? Why did they decide to finally arrest and go after Jeffrey Epstein that month? Did they have something on some very powerful figure that was just like, you know, we should probably finally rein this in now? I think, yeah, I think that's the case. Okay. Would your theory be that it's governmental or is it just convenient because it's- It's governmental. In the case of Diddy, were there certain public figures that were then at that month about to, like, be in the public eye a lot more and they probably wanted to go through? Is it where they burn the lower person in the pyramid to almost create a firebreak? No, I think in the case of Diddy, I think you had him having those parties for 20 years. I mean, you talked about, like everyone, you know, you've gone to adjacent parties where you're not necessarily going into all those rooms, but it's a puff daddy party from the 90s. It's a very popular thing.

Were there current politicians or figures who were no doubt at those parties that in September of 2024 or August of 2024 were probably very concerned that over the past 20 years, they were definitely at some of those parties, not necessarily engaged in anything like sorted, but they were at them. And could that have wrecked their political career? Oh, I see. If through the vast, Sean Combs, you know, close. That's like saying, I think we're saying the same thing. It's like, does somebody say, this is getting too close? So now we have to crisis. Yes, I think obviously in the Sean Combs,

why the Department of Justice at the time chose to raid his place in September of 2024, two months before an election, I think is pretty obvious. Or not obvious. I think you can make a great case for why they chose two months before an election to make sure there was, there were absolutely no cameras. So do you believe there's an independent apparatus

that exists within the federal government agencies that sort of operates on their own sort of volition? I mean, there's... Or are there multiple... I mean, like... I think that's where most people get lost, and I don't certainly have any particular information,

which is if there's a man or a woman or people behind the curtain, well, even if they're directing people, how do they direct them? That's a very good question about networks and how that works. I think there are informal networks. This is my take, and I don't claim to be too knowledgeable on this, but I think that the analogy is to the entertainment industry where someone can be a huge, huge, like, film mogul? And could that person make a few phone calls that would end the career or do something

as someone in the music business, despite the fact that the person making the call is in film? Of course, because they're a big, big player in the general network. So I think could there be someone who isn't necessarily even American, but they're a big enough person, media-wise, government-wise, that they can affect one of these government agencies? Like, of course. That's the thing. You were in Nantucket. All elites kind of at the highest level know each other and kind of, if not get along, they'll kind of know each other. So it's not. That's what I'm trying to say is, is occasionally I get sort of dragged into this world.

I chose to get out of that world, early 2000s, but I get kind of dragged back occasionally. In this case, the Nantucketka thing is somewhat sort of innocently, right? Right. Like, why are they calling me out of the blue? Why do they want me to come to this thing? Why am I on stage in front of a live crowd with this person who suddenly decides to kind of go at me about issues, which are like, in my mind, I wasn't, my take, and because I'm sort of a fluid personality,

was, okay, if this is what you want to get into here, that's fine, I have nothing to be afraid of. Right. Well, no, this gets into something we haven't talked about with my family background. So half of my family, well, on both sides, you have Hollywood, but on one side of my family, I have relative, I spent a few years growing up on Cape Cod. Okay. So I grew up on Martha's Vineyard for a few years.

So you know that crowd. I know that crowd. And so this is the other side of my interest is that as a boy, you would say, see who would vacation on Martha's Vineyard. And you just know that anyone who was important in politics or the media, they all hung out there. And so again, you were on Nantucket, the sister island to Martha's Vineyard. It's a very important network where anybody who's anybody informally make decisions or have just conversations about like, what do we think about this politician? What do you think about that guy? So by even bringing you to Nantucket, that is like a hub for where

certain kinds of important people do this sort of thing. Yeah. So it doesn't surprise you. surprised me that, like, on a more mundane level, you may have ticked off someone in that circle who's like, who is this guy? Let's get Billy Corgan out here to talk about this. I mean, you know, they didn't bring you into middle America or to Florida or even Manhattan. You're in essentially the very wealthy elites playground

when you were asked to go to Antioch it. You look at where you were brought. So that I know as a boy on the vineyard is like, especially in the summer, and it's not necessarily nefarious. It's just wealthy people like to know other wealthy people. But that's where stuff shakes down. So that always intrigued me. It's like, what's the actual economics of this?

What is the actual network of this? But, yeah, the Vineyard, Nantucket, that's ground zero. Yeah, I guess the question that can't be answered is how much of an organizing influences there are actually, you know, because the next question I want to get into is, is with pop music and I certainly gained some traction by pointing out that pop had more connectivity to Satanism than rock music. Of course, that got a few headlines. And I'm not surprised by that part of it.

But when you look at the pop music landscape, let's say, over the last 10 to 15 years, when it's been incredibly dominant. I mean, it's almost been hegemonic, you know what I mean? It's like it's almost so ridiculous. And in fact, there continues to be, even as we sit here and tape today, there continues to be a true schism in the music business between pop's alleged influence, and yet Rock's dominance as a ticket seller. And it seems very strange to me

that there seems to be a vast disconnect between the two entities. And in my estimation, there's this kind of inward power struggle going on because as Pop continues to try to maintain its hegemonic kind of control over the culture. And now that Rock's been marginalized, really, for the first time in the history of rock and roll,

the last 15, 20 years, you could argue Rock's been at its weakest point since Elvis showed up. What do you see in that landscape in terms of the occult? And, you know, because, you know, we've all seen the videos where people are holding the triangles I referred to in our last interview. But what do you see? I think it's a couple things. On the one hand, some people do it cynically in the sense that they understand if we throw in some occult symbols and throw in some free mason stuff, this is going to gain.

This is going to get traction. So on some level. Attraction with who? With people who want to read into it and try to figure it. figure out is this possible? You think it's a parlor fun game or you think they're actually speaking? Some of them, I think, do it for real, but some of them know at this point that if you do put these symbols in videos, it's going to get eyeballs on it.

Okay. Some are just doing it because they know that, yeah. But I'm saying, do you delineate between somebody being edgy and somebody signaling? You always, you can't always know. Some of them I do think obviously signal. I was talking to a buddy last week and he was telling me about some of these young rappers and stuff. telling me the extent to which, you know, in pop music, these guys are into the occult,

and they're talking deep occult history fingers, like Manly P. Hall and all this stuff. And I'm like, these are like rappers who are into Manly P. Hall and not just Alasor Crowley. And also just the popularity now, he was telling me of like sex rituals and sex magic and stuff. And that's stuff that goes all the way back to the Bible. And the New Testament when they talk about temple prostitutes, the women that are at the temple for spiritual reasons, where you would, you would have a relationship with them, but it's for a mystical or spiritual reason that you're trying to do it.

He's talking about how popular that is with very, very young people and even with some pop stars. So there is that undercurrent. Really quick, a friend of mine, I'm Rick Spence. I asked him, like, when are you going to do an episode on, he has this podcast called Strangess as It Seems that covers a lot of this stuff?

And I said, when are you going to do a Jeffrey Epstein episode? And what he says, he says, I'm just going to put Jeffrey Epstein under my sex magic episode. In other words, he just filed him under people who use sex ritualistically in a kind of eyes-wide, shut sort of way. Okay. So in other words, that was a long way of saying, it's multifaceted. Some of them do it earnestly to signal. Some of them do it as a marketing ploy.

But it's like omnipresent in almost every aspect. What would you akin that to is to say, you know, people talk about a fourth turning. Are we in a particular moment in time? if you believe in the spiritual battle, is the devil winning? Like, what is, how do you read all that? Um, it works for them in the sense of like, a lot of them, they get into the occult, they do rituals,

and it coincides with their success. And so they, the more they do it, it's popular. It works for them. Also, I think there's also probably a demonic aspect in terms of they're just naturally attracted to it for lurid spiritual reasons, but I think it's, it also just works for them.

So does somebody watching this on their iPad somewhere that may be rolling their eyes? What would you point to to say to them, this is in your estimation, evidence hiding in plain sight? Well, I would say this. There's a quote of keeping meeting to bring up, but I never do. And one of my main interest in wanting to do this project was someone I brought up on the Tucker Carlson show, current 93, which I'm sure all Tucker Carlson audience members are familiar with current 93, But I brought up, meant to bring up this quote by David Tibet, who was friends with Genesis Peoridge, you had great things to say about in terms of his influence as an artist.

And David Tibet, he's like more of a Gnostic, but he's like, you know, evil entities, demons are real. He goes, I believe in like a literal Satan. He goes, and of course, some of this, people could dismiss it as mere drug use or whatever, but David Tibet is not a Christian. He's not Jewish. He's not Muslim. He's just someone who's dabbled in these things.

And he's part of a very influential or, you know, industrial, not even not industrial, but, you know, it's hard to quantify their music. What if we spend the next hour trying to quantify goth, Billy? The next hour, we just derailed it, and we're just trying to figure out the exact definition of goth. No, but someone like David Tibet or Stash Klosowski, who I talked to you about talking about the demonic evil entities, and they're doing so in a way as an occultist,

not as someone who is talking about it. I see. But I'm saying is to the punters in the crowd, what would you point to in popular culture that says this, this to me is evidence in plain sight that what I'm talking about isn't just theoretical? It's what's that quote about one of those, this architect where he says, if you want to see my work, just look around. Every aspect of pop culture or pop music does this stuff. Like, it's like saying what aspect of American pop culture strikes you? But when we look back at clips of the Mamas and the Pappas, they weren't throwing triangles. They weren't wearing freemason garb like I have on.

stage. I mean, what do you, what do you, what do you want people to see in culture that you do? If you, to you, it's so obvious, it's painfully obvious. And you're a tour guide here. Right. Give people a few things that you can point out so that they can jump down their own rapid hall. Sacred geometry in Ariana Grande videos, Carrie Pady's. Katie Perry's. Yes. That's her wrestling name. Katie Perry's, you know, Egyptianology and, uh, you know, Egyptianology and, uh, you know,

self-conscious Illuminati symbols. You know, there's even like witch light things that, like, Taylor Swift has done some, like, vaguely witchy videos. Nothing to a cult, but just, you know, kind of playing with this idea of the pop witch. Every artist does it or has some version of it, generally speaking, that's in the pop sphere, to try to pinpoint any one of them.

But those are just three examples. Like saying, name something sexually suggestive in pop. It's like, I don't know. No, I'm just, because, because, It's not, I'm in the crowd that knows these things to be true for me. Right. But I know there's also an element that sort of doesn't get it because they say, well, what's the big deal? Right.

Or, yeah, you can watch some YouTube video about somebody throwing up triangles. Right. It doesn't mean anything to me. In essence, you know, the average American, rightly so, says, how does this have any effect on the way I see the world or my life? And I think I don't want to make the case for you, but in my case, I'd like to say, you know, you should at least be aware of the influence of these things. Right. And even if you don't want to get into the spiritual battle quotient of it all, you should be aware that these things have an influence. And as someone who believes in the greatest, what do you call it, not antiseptic, the greatest antibiotic or whatever is the light, disinfecting.

Yeah. I'm a big believer that light is weird. where we're all going. What would you say is the biggest infillate? Like, if you were to answer the question, what would you say in terms of the influence of this on pop and its effect? Or even as an artist or having been a legend in this sphere,

what have you seen where you're like, I've seen this firsthand in terms of the influence this has on people? Well, I take it in a slightly different direction, because the symbiology to me is pretty obvious, but I also think it's pretty ham-fisted. Most people are not operating in a sophisticated way when they deal with the symbiology.

They're doing kind of like spooky 101. Right, right. I tend to go down this particular rabbit hole, and it might illuminate what I was trying to say about what I said, you know, that pop has more connection to Satanism than Rock does at this particular moment in time. When you, it's the classic Hollywood story. You know, Mary Jane gets off the bus in 1934 with, you know,

a twig of hay in her mouth. And two years later, she's doing sex shows for Hollywood execs, and she never gets her Hollywood dream. Right. That's a tale off. told. Paul Schrader in a career at this. Okay, so it's, I don't know, but that's beyond my knowledge base. But the exploitation of innocence or the exploitation of the dream is part and parcel to what this town operates on. When I see a mechanism or sorry, when I see a system built up that is not that dissimile than porn, that is about exploiting human capital.

and narrowing and narrowing the definition of what makes something popular. Right. So it can be commoditized. That to me is the heart of evil because what you're doing is you're giving people binary choices which aren't binary choices at all. Right. Hey, you can get back on the bus to Kansas or you can do it this way. This is the way that it's done. And I've seen a systemizing or a system put in place in the last 20 to 25 years that was already there and existed in Hollywood. But it's actually, publicly commoditized now. Right. And if you want to, I don't want to name names because it'll turn into some sort of personality battle and it's not. What I see is these artists are given binary choices and as the choices narrow, they become more and more pulled into the dark sphere of influence. Right. Because that's the best way to get business done. Right. They may not necessarily

consciously recognize the energies that they're playing with and also realized how they're being exploited. Right. So that exploitation is that at the heart of my satanic charge. Right. Because if you take something pure and beautiful and wonderful and most people who are incredibly talented have a certain purity to them, you could even argue a divine spark that attracts millions to them. The exploitation of that is at the heart of, to me, the exploitation of human capital is

at the heart of what the devil is about. Right. I agree. I think what the... Does that make sense? No, it does. And you brought up some things I've thought about and you articulated very well.

David Bowie once said, this is during David Bowie's peak, 1976, L.A. meltdown, where, you know, he was having people, a witch to do an exorcism on his pool and stuff when he lived on Doheny. Didn't a lot of that have to do with cocaine, though, too? Yes, yeah.

But as Marxist would say, it's a dialectic. But, yeah, he was, you know, he said Los Angeles is the worst horror movie he's ever seen, Hollywood was. And I think one of the key things, to your point about binaries, about Los Angeles, that takes a while for people to understand, but I think it's true to what you said about pornography versus Hollywood, is that one of Hollywood's...

most...it's idea of glam, which, by the way, the concept of glam is an occult concept. It goes back to the idea of occultism and casting the glamor, casting a spell over the eyes of something that isn't real. No, glam comes from the occult. It's essentially a visual spell, and making you think something real when it's not. That's what glam comes from.

But see, the true spirit of glam is fun. Yeah, glam can be fun. In terms of how it's being expressed in the arts. Right, right. But I'm saying it's origin. And with Los Angeles and Hollywood, the best spell there is, in a way, deals with the divining line between the Valley and LA proper, where it's like, to your point about pornography, in LA, they give you this idea that on the north side of L.A. is the valley, it's seedy, it's underbelly, we exploit people. But this is Holly.

or we don't do that, where this is, where you can take your clothes off on camera, but this is good. It isn't porn when you do it with us. And that whole thing, that whole binary, especially as Hollywood struggles, and some would say dissolves, it's the binary is being shown to be a false one, where it's actually, in my opinion, all kind of the same industry.

And if you remove the Hollywood Hills, and you just had a huge flat land between the valley all the way to South Bay, people would understand, this is all more or less dealing with the same concepts and dealing with similar kinds of exploitation. But what Hollywood does is they'd like to say, well, that's the CD, that's pornography. We don't do pornography because you're working with a European director.

But that's my main thing. That's the main lynching take I have on LA is that the border of the Hollywood Hills is a literal metaphor for how people don't see. This is all kind of the same industry. The CD stuff, the North Hollywood stuff, the porn stuff, the glam stuff. The entourage stuff.

It's actually all the same business. Don't try to separate it. Yes. I mean, it's certainly a town built on exploitation. I mean, that's at the heart of it. And the argument is, well, you know, it's Faustian. Right. You know, in exchange for this thing that only you have, you, the star, you get, you know, riches beyond your wildest dreams.

You get immortality, which goes back to the NFL player I was talking about. He's literally talking in terms of immortality why he's still playing. He's like, let's win two playoff games. Really quick, about Alastair Crowley. You know what one of Alistair Crowley's side jobs was? He was a pop music manager for a girl group. Okay, that's a new one to be. Yeah, but isn't that, is that not...

What was the girl group? I don't know what they're called, but there was like... He wasn't a very good manager. No, it was four or five women that he managed. But does that not make sense to you that Alexer Crowley was also a manager? That he was literally... Well, Kim Fowley notoriously, you know, uh, uh, manager.

the runaways and exploited the runways. And I actually had a run-in once with Kim Fowley, where he spent two hours trying to seduce me into his world. It was very interesting. Now, see, that should be a movie. That's the Paul Schrader movie I want. We're not there yet. What do you think, and this gained some traction

from our first interview, my assertion that pop, of course, has been dominant in the cultural art in America on the musical side of the equation for at least the last 20 years, but my assertion also that don't people find it strange that rock, which has been the dominant social changing force of the 20th century, has been essentially sidelined, and my argument is on purpose. I think... Am I being...

Sorry, there's a part of being, am I being an aging rock star who's complaining about a changing of the guard, or is there validity to that assertion? I think there's validity to it on a couple levels, but the main one I think you could also look at is economic, where to swap it out for pop where the pop star does not write their own music, to undo the Dylan change from the 60s, where it's assumed on some level that this person is also the talent that's doing this thing.

It was also critical to the business model that you had to believe the artist was singing their song. Right. I wrote this, this is coming from experience. And however, as you know, we're talking about wrestling, however much that could be dick at some point. It's like my grandfather also was the publicist for the monkeys. And the monkeys at the time, their whole thing was they're not writing their own songs. This is faith. Well, the, the monkeys' rebellion and, you know, Mickey Dolan sat in that very chair and we talked about it.

The monkey's rebellion was about, oh, yeah. Taking, you know, taking back the power that they perceived that they had. Well, the only, my dad was, the only movie premiere premiere. My dad's ever gone to was the monkey's movie head, 68. That is the only movie premiere. It's a very, Avonkvaard Goddardian. Mickey Dolans and I talked about Head for about 20 to 25 minutes, I think much to his irritation. Well, there's a book written about Head. I don't know if you've seen it, about Head being a cultural watershed moment, that the monkeys basically made a movie making fun of the monkeys where they were still the monkeys.

And it's a long book about it. And so I wanted to get Mickey's take because obviously he was there. And he found it kind of almost overly wrought and overly intellectualizing the monkeys thing, which is, I guess, hard to do because it's certainly been over-examined. Sure. But I think it's actually been under-examined because the monkeys become the parable of what's to come. Right. The monkeys are not the warning of what to avoid.

Right. Because if you stop the clock in 1966 and say, take your pick, the Beatles or the monkeys, you'd say the Beatles win every time. But the monkeys end up being the model that comes in. Right. We don't have 20 Beatles now. Right. But we have 20 monkeys.

There's 20,000 monkeys. Okay, sure. But no, that's, I like that point. That's, um, head as a, as a precursor to modern pop. And to your point, to your question with Mickey Dolans, it's easier to control the group when the talent, not to say that a lot of pop stars don't have a lot of talent. A lot of them are, you know, showcased that have been doing it since they were kids,

but they're not, they're not writing the material. It's different from them in a lot of ways being a full-fledged artist. This is a very raucous take. But, but, uh, it's easier. from the standpoint of the label to shuffle people around when the talent requirement is much lower. So you'd argue it's partially an economic driver. Yeah, but I think what do you think? A spiritual component, a...

I think, and I will say it overtly, I think that Rock has been purposely dialed down in the culture. When would you say that began in the 2000s? Late 90s. I think the first, and again, this gets wizard behind the curd, right? Somebody's going to say, well, how do you know or who was the wizard behind the crew? All I know is I saw the gravity shift, okay? If you were at MTV or around MTV, 1997, 98, suddenly they decided Rock was out, when Rock was still very, very high up in the thing.

And it was replaced by RAP. Right. They immediately changed the way they, their standards and practices, Practices immediately shifted. Right. So now that things that weren't allowed were suddenly allowed, people were waving guns. Okay. So some people assert that the CIA was involved in all that, again, above my pay grade.

But I saw it happen. I did witness it happen. Okay. Right. And of course, great music came out of it. So it's not like it's not a barren wasteland where something was pushed in that replaced something. Qualitative things and great artists came in, but there was this overt shift.

I saw it happen. Right. And then now, as you pointed out, rap is seems to be waning in terms of its cultural influence. Right. Pop is completely dominant. Rock is probably the most dominant ticket selling thing in the Western world. And yet there's almost no representation of rock and culture. Right.

So why do we have that schism? I think they purposely dialed down the ability of rock stars to have a voice in the culture. Well, that stuff does go on, to your point. Or, sorry, dot, dot, dot, dot, or, or those who exist within the ecosystem are basically, you know, they know the color between the lines so they don't have to worry about. Well, and that's, I mean, we should have, you and me and Mickey Dolans talk about this. And that's exactly what head is about. You know about the story of the 80s biggest band and their CIA backing? Do you know about this?

After you. Okay, so it's Miles Copeland Jr., the father of Miles Copeland III. the manager of the police, and the drummer, Stuart Copeland of the police. So Miles Copeland, Jr., famously, was like, they're at the beginning of the CIA. He's also one of the early contributors to National Review, which Murray Rothbard, who's famously,

like, National Review was started with CIA money because he was antagonistic to this. Well, that's why I don't read the National Review anymore. Right, right. Rothbard was right. But so in the early 80s, it was actually a funny backstory. So Copeland used to spy on the British agent Kim Filby, who's the basis for Harry Lyme, Orson Wells, and the third man. He's British agent who defected to Russia. He was a secretly a Russian agent. And he's Harry Lyme, Orson Welles, and the third

man. So he would spy the father of the police, essentially, on Kim Filby in the 50s and 60s, when the members of the police were little boys. They remember meeting this future spy. What's funny and ties into the history of 80s rock, Kim Filby's good friend was Ronald Mallor. whose son, Joe Mallor, Joe Strummer. So you have the biggest group of the 80s, the police, whose father is instrumental in overthrowing countless governments. He's written a whole book about this from 89

called like, it's called like the player in the game or something. It is so pulped. It goes for like a grand on Amazon. There's no digital copies. It is a pulped book because he talks about his whole experience in the CIA. And Copeland's, you know, junior, not the son. He once said, he goes,

Well, you know, the police were a SIEOP, the band. He said, he goes, okay, I didn't hear. This is all news to me, so this is my reaction. Which made Sting upset. But he goes, he goes, yeah, the police were a Siamap. He goes, you know, we wanted to see, you know, having that big of a ban with 70,000 people. But his book from 89, he talks about overthrowing governments. He talks about the evolution of the CIA.

But there is that funny connection where he would spy on Philby. And Philby had a timeshare house that Joe Strummer as a boy would come stay in with Philby as well. You had the police, you know, vaguely right-wind-coated CIA, and then you had the clash famously left-wing-coded, both knowing Kim Filby, the basis for Harry Lyme, the great noir spy. So that is a great rock and roll secret history. Okay, so stop one second.

So, to me, as a rock person, okay, that's a lot to chew on. That's, yeah. Okay, but. We'll take a 10-minute break, and you're like, okay. Okay, but take it one step further. Because I think this is kind of what I'm after today. For those who get caught up in, is this true or is this not true? Let's just talk about it from a systemic point of view.

Is your assertion there that there is governmental influence that maybe even the artists are not aware of? The artists are aware of it because Copeland III, the manager of the police, he said Donald Rumsfeld, who also a Chicago guy, Donald Rumsfeld, coincidentally, he dated my grandmother when they were teenagers in Chicago. So that's how big the sci-op goes. apparently. But no, but... You know, somebody right now is typing your part of the sign. Oh, yeah, yeah. He's secretly Rumsfeld's grandson. Rumsfeld called

the manager of the police around the mid-2000s. And he's like, how can we win the hearts of the Middle East through music? How can we use music to... So to your point, this stuff is really basic in terms of like, as you know, music is very powerful. Entertainment is insanely powerful. If the government was not trying to recruit people to influence it or to control

Or they would not be doing jobs. Well, the way I've quantified it, if that's the right word, in my brain is if you run everything, right? Culture in many ways is the thing that can be curated and controlled, but it has to have an organic kernel. So, for example, when I talked about rap supplanting rock at MTV, circa 97, there was an organic impetus there. Right. The energy behind, you know, rap groups like the NWA was real. Right, right. I mean, I was listening to them. It's not like, it's not like suddenly they dropped out from another planet. Right. Right. They represented something that was happening. Right. Okay. So the point I'm after is when you, when you see these shifts, these organic shifts and they're based on sort of a kernel of energy or let's call it a kernel of organic energy. Right. I guess what I'm after is is, uh, undoubtedly the police is one of the great bands, the clash were one of the great bands.

Right. Is it, I'm trying to get, I'm trying to nail down, because obviously it's easy to just talk about, like, these people are connected, and then there's a sort of an insinuation there, and in your case, you're not insinuating. But my point is,

how much of it do you think is actually people being pulled forward, or they, or they, I mean, I don't feel like people are being walked into a room unless they're at the highest levels. That's a different conversation. But I'm just saying, it's, you know, Sting at 18, you know, did somebody say, yeah, we're going to use him or, and, and they become what Hillary Clinton called useful idiots. They become part of something that they're not aware of. But in your case, you're saying they are aware of it.

Well, I think in the case of like, let's say, the Mick Jagger thing we're talking about earlier. Sure. One of him as a figurehead to have Mick Jagger. I know what I'm talking about the specifics of this particular instance. Oh, of the police? Because you're talking about very specific associations, which I've never heard of before. Right. And I take you at your word. Okay. I'll give you the e-book. I took pictures of each individual page because I'm like, I'm never going to get this in their library loan again. Sure. So, but I'm saying, okay, so let's say, let's just play a game, like, because I'm more interested in the system than I'm in the actual actors. Because I think you need to go to the heart of the drive of the thing as opposed,

because somebody's, if it is counterintel pro or it is, it is government-backed stuff. Right. Well, there's always going to be a smoke haze in there somewhere. It's purposely a trail that's almost impossible to follow. Sure. So, okay, so let's play this game. So is there an institutional aspect here where somewhere in 1982, somebody goes, right, the clash represent this, the police represent that, we're going to get in behind, and we're going to position them in this particular way, because there are assertions that people have been pushed and propagated. Right. I'm making the argument from the other side, which is from my position, I can see where people are kind of in a lane and they're pushed because they're safe in that lane. Right. I think that in the case of the clash and the police,

the clash thing is more coincidental. I don't think the clash per se pushed by any government, but I think with the police, and especially with their father being, like, oh, yeah, they had government backing or whatever, which again, Sting didn't like. But did Sting say something about it? When you say didn't like it, what does that mean? It's in Copeland III's memoirs.

Sure. But when you say he didn't like it, what does that mean? He was like, I haven't read the memoirs yet, but I read the article summarizing the memoirs. And Sting in this case was like, I haven't read if he negated it, rebuffed it or downplayed it. I don't know which of those, but I just know that like Sting was annoyed by that. Well, it would be too if somebody said, well, you were, you know,

you were a mildly talented person. We just chose you out of a lineup because you were useful to us in this particular way. We wanted you to run through those fields of gold in Sting's case. As part of the CIA, fields of gold. Yeah. I mean, could the State Department have given them money or wanted them to push something. Again, you and I talked about this last time,

Henry Pleasance, the music credit from the 50s, was a CIA agent, and the fact that he was a musician traveling the world was the perfect cover for that. Because, as you know, it's like, you're a musician, as we all know. If you're in Asia tomorrow, no one asks questions because it's like, well, you could always say,

private show, getting paid a fortune for it. Done, no questions asked because it's the nature of a big musician. So musicians are perfect for recruitment in that way, because unlike actors, who it's like, you're not going to shine it to film, commercial. I remember the, I remember the esoteric point that I was after and I got lost in it. Okay. Sorry. No, what I was saying is if you run everything, right, let's say the government does run

everything, but culture requires an organic impetus. So in that way, if you follow my math, if artists rise organically from the streets, using the term liberally, you know, in my case, a middle class high school, if you rise up from somewhere and you make yourself known somehow, It seems to me that somewhere you end up on a list. And I don't mean it's a list of anything bad is going to happen to you. You just end up on a list of influence, meaning these people, and as I've said to friends in private, America is what, 320, 320 million people. No one's ever quite sure. Right.

Over 300 million people. Well, if you fall within the category of one of the 1,000 or 5,000 most influential people in the country, wouldn't something, in those corridors or power be somewhat responsible to somebody say, keep an eye on that and let us know if we need to do anything. Yes. And you can see it in all manner of ways. It's not all nefarious. It could be suddenly somebody gets an ambassadorship. Somebody's put on a USO tour, somebody, you know, there's ways to kind of pull people into systems. And the more that you're integrated into a system, the more likely you are to sort of go along with the system because debunk the system means you're going to lose the privilege of the system or the access.

Right. I agree with that completely. I think those things do exist, and bureaucrats would love to sit there and compile those lists. That's actually a great job. I want you to figure out the 200 rock stars that we need to actually know about. And you're like a 25-year-old State Department employee. That's a fun job. Don't you think that's a reasonable thing to ponder? It would be insane for them not to do it.

It would be, well, I should say it would be incompetent and it would be foolish for them not to know who those people are. If you look at, I mean, look what happened in the last few years, with celebrities, I don't know, bring this up. We got to go viral here, keep going. Okay, the Kanye West thing. So Kanye West has done innumerable harm the last few years going full Nazi in the last three or four years. And at the beginning of this, I talked about how similar this was to John Lennon, where John Lennon, in 71, had his green card pulled, and they were going to deport him because of his work with... There's even a documentary about it. I have not seen it, but it's called the one-on-one or something like that.

But the documentary is called John Lennon versus the CIA or John Lennon versus U.S. government. There's a documentary about it. But John Lennon had his green, they wanted to deport him because of his influence. Well, he was definitely hanging out with an interesting crowd. Oh, he was hanging out with the Yippeys and stuff, you know, Hoffman and Rubin and stuff. So when you have someone that's that famous who is doing stuff that's considered subversive, again, regardless of what you think about either of the politics on the left of Lenin, or on the right with Kanye West,

it has a tremendous influence. And for Kanye in the last three or four years to have been popularizing all kinds of anti-Jewish stuff has had a tremendously negative effect too. So by not, and I mean this in a positive way, to not be trying to make sure rock stars are not going to go crazy and popularize like the protocols of the elders of Zion

is a pretty pro-social thing to check on in terms of like, hey, some handling. But let's take one step backwards. Yeah. on Mr. West. Because, again, this is, this is my perspective and my advantage. Sure. Yeah, I'd love to hear this. Okay. So, this is probably half true,

but why we were recording our album Melancholy Infinite Sadness, just down the block, like literally a block away, Kanye was working at the gap. That's my understanding of the story. That's, wow. And although I've never talked to him about, I got the impression that some of the things that I was doing publicly in the 90s had some influence on his, let's call it, strategic thinking at the onset of his career by playing a contrarian. You kind of create this polemic that I talked about before. This is all just sort of to set up the story. But so us being Chicagoans and seeing his rise as a star always had a particular interest to us because he's local and there's not a lot of people who come up out of Chicago and have that level of. of influence or that level of fame. But at some point, it became obvious to me in particular that somebody flipped the switch on

him and decided to push him to the moon. And I would point to, because I have spoken about this publicly, because I'm not trying to wait into it all, but things that he did, particularly that comes to mind, was when he would jump on stage when people were receiving an award, he would hijack. Sure. anybody else in the music business, if they had done that, they would have been canceled. Sure. And I don't mean canceled, socially canceled.

I mean, they would have canceled them because it's just bad business. Right, right. But for some reason, he was allowed to persist in this, in this, and you could argue was rewarded for it. Right. I was once asked on Australian television live morning, good morning, Australia. What I would do if he jumped up on stage when I was receiving an award night, I said, I'm from Chicago and all respect to a fellow Chicagoan, but I would have knocked him to fuck out. And that would have gone viral.

That would have been a big clip. It's out there if you want to watch. Yeah, that's, no, if he had actually done that. So what I'm saying is, and the reason I'm going on this whole thing, I'm trying to make it interesting. No, no, this is, trust me, this is very interesting. Okay. The reason I'm setting this all up is I saw someone who had real talent,

but was pushed to the moon to use the wrestling term. Pushed, in my estimation, in a way that felt like there was some other controlling aspect. Sure. at work. And when people look the other way on what I saw as poor form behavior, where I know if I'd done it, I would have been thrown in the dustbin of history. You don't have to be a mathematician to do that math. Okay. So I see the setup over here. So, yes, I agree with you about, let's call it, the fall and his poor public behavior since. But I'm just as fascinated with why he was put in that position in the first place.

Because I can't think of anyone from that genre of music that has been pushed to that level. Well, and remember when he... Can you? Not like, I mean, not like that. That was a very unique thing. And to your points, when he started to go off the deep end, remember he was doing screenshots of the text he was getting from Diddy. And Diddy was like, don't do this.

Don't do this. And Kanye was saying, don't kill me, Sean. Like, don't murder me. I'm like, I'm walking off. reservation. Okay, but so what do you after here? Because I, because there's a lot to, well, to go back to our earlier thing about like, why was Sean Combs allowed to operate this for so long when apparently was, if not an open secret, a lot of people knew about it. It's interesting that when Kanye West was having his meltdown, which included, of course, many horrific aspects,

but was him essentially saying, no handlers, I'm done. The person that was trying to rein him in was Sean Combs, the guy that he had, you know, very much ushered in his success, that he has a very close relationship with Sean Combs. Sure. You know, one critic. Okay, so it's, but it's your argument, sorry. Go ahead and finish the thing we're saying. I'm just saying it's, his rise with Combs is very interesting, entangling the relationship there.

I'm tangling kind of the macro music. But I said the same thing about, about Puff Daddy. And I worked with Puff Daddy back in the day, so I was part of it all. But my point is, uh, he was pushed to the moon too. Right. In his generation, right, right. In that same era of the late 90s. Right.

Like, he went from, you know, basically in obscure. music producer to running the world within five years. Yes. And for people who don't follow the mouth of what I'm after, Elvis didn't at running the world within five years. Madonna didn't run the world in five years. Prince didn't. Michael Jackson didn't.

Right. So why did they pick that guy to run the world? Right. And when I say running the world, they were suddenly, he was suddenly running the world. Right. He had power that was like way beyond the means of just a very successful music mogul. apparently I've seen it in that documentary I have seen yeah that that's I'm saying I witnessed it from from the

sideline of the whole thing so I'm when I'm after is and I know people will personalize it and they can if they want but I'm saying is I'm more pointing to the Wizard of Oz part of it all which is yes you can talk about the personalities but I'm watching the movement of energies right right why was certain energies that seem to be cloistered and behind the scenes rally behind certain personalities and push them past what would seem to be even business savvy.

Right. That's a great question. I think there is something to that. I think there are people who obviously push and elevate certain stars. Sure. So back to Mr. West, if he was put in this particular position of power. Right. And certainly, I think, before his public crashing out, you know, his worth was estimated

at somewhere between one and two billion dollars. That's a pretty big crash up. Let's just play the game from a slightly different angle. and it's in no way to encourage the behavior, because I, too, was offended by it. But is there any point to his crash out? Do you see anything in him raising his hand saying, I don't want to be part of this thing

that I've been sort of wound into? When you're that big of a celebrity, you're your own industry. You're not just one alone artist. And so his freak out, I think, obviously, is part of some general, I'm imbuckling the seatbelt, I want out of it, of the whole music industry complex. The logician, is that the word logician?

Well, if it is, it is now, brother. I know how this word. The logical person in me says, you know, you can do it a little quietly or you could just make an album about death like I did, and blow your career up. Right, right, right. There's a world where in 2022 you actually call him and you're like, brother, we're going to make a double album together.

And we're not going to go crazy on Jewish people. We're just going to make a double album. And that's a much better version of this version. This doesn't go anywhere, but it is interesting to how these things work. There was a moment in time where, I don't know, I'd said something in an interview or something, and he called me. Kanye. Really? Never talked to him, had never been him before.

Still have never stood in his presence. And he called me, and it was like one of those things like, okay, get on the phone. And it was almost like he was poking around if there's anything I wanted from him. And I didn't want anything from him, so the conversation kind of went nowhere. it almost felt like a little bit like a kingmaker who calls out and says, you know, do I have something you need? That's very strange. Yeah. What general era was?

It was like five years ago or 20 years ago. This would have been seven or eight years ago. That's very strange. Yeah. And it was after my comment about saying I would knock him the fuck out. Was it soon after or much later? No, no. It was a few years after that.

That's very strange. I mean, what's your take when rock stars and pop stars have certain freakouts? I mean, we're talking about it. But it's like, do you always relate to them on some level in terms of life? Absolutely. Yeah. Again, it's hard because the way people's brains work in social media land these days. So, again, no endorsement of the opinion or the behavior.

Sure. But can I understand the freak out? Absolutely. Right. Absolutely. Right. Because I think the hardest thing for me navigating the music business for over 30 years is understanding that you're in a rigged game.

Right. And a sane person, when they wake up and they realize they're in a rigged game, goes, I'm not going to play the game anymore. Right. The only problem is it's the only game until the last 10 years. And tell me this, if you're talking,

let's say you're talking with a pop star is 22, 25, and they're doing all right, but you may see signs of a future former Disney Channel Star crash out, or you just see something. There's one that comes to mind right now. That's super talented. No, what would you say to them

if you have like a few minutes with them in terms of like, hey, you know, it may get, it's already crazy for you. In case it gets crazier, here's how you can kind of keep your head on straight. Here's what helped to me. I would start by saying, you're invariably going to come up against some sort of wall that you cannot navigate with your charisma, your talent, or your alleged power. And you will start to realize that most of the people around you are, they're transactional. Right. And that's a hauntary moment. I went through that and had nothing to lean on and went crazy and in many ways kind of committed

career suicide, which is not important for our conversation, but been there, done that. The only solution I found was God, and before somebody rolls their eyes, my argument would be if you believe in God or you believe in a higher, let's call it, four. or organizing principle of life, you can put those two together. In my estimation, love and truth are the same thing. By leaning into that part of my understanding, my intuitive understanding, and my faith in the world and my faith in humanity, I actually found something that was antidotal to the system that I'd been brought up in. And that was the only way I was able to navigate it and eventually wander back to a musical career that's been quite successful for the past

10 years or so. But that was very, very hard to do because in essence, you have to deal with this bunch of dark stuff behind curtains. And you never know. I call this the land of maybe. That would make a good fantasy novel for kids. I've had 100, I've had 100 meetings that all went well and no one ever told me now. The phone doesn't ring again. Right. Right. Well, as you know, And when you start having something they want, which I have started again, then the phone starts ringing again. Right, because they don't want to have said no to you. They want to have said no to you. I never said no to you. Like, we're still good. Oh, absolutely. I was just on vacation for months. Or 40 years. But I want to say one more thing, because there are pop stars that I have a, I don't know them, but I have a personal affinity for it because I see their talent. I see their charisma. I see how they have an incredible opportunity to,

you know, kind of throw up the Satan be gone part of the business. It's very difficult to do, and I understand the temptations, and I understand how they're probably surrounded by about 400 yes people, and they often look like stylists for some reason. That's a joke. It's so hard because I have had these conversations in private with many young artists, and to explain to them, there's no way not to make a deal with the devil in this big,

is, but you got to understand at what price. And if you can balance that, there is some way to kind of get through it. In my case, because I do get asked the question from 20-somethings, what would you do in this system? I say, I'm not really sure other than to, you have to build your own system. You have to build your own, you almost have to be your own record label. You have to be your own publicist. A lot of young artists figure out let the marketing part because they learn and gain social media to their benefit. But they don't understand how to sort of navigate the people actually have their hands on the levers of power. That makes sense.

And one more point. And I would argue it as a supposition for anybody that's this deep into the interview. Is it reasonable to think that people actually run a particular business? It could be superconductors, it could be the music business, that at some point along the way, they get calls or inferences from people above them in the power source. structure, not the power structure of that particular business, but the power structure of the world that say, we don't like that you're doing that, or we do like it doing that, or we'd like more of that and a little less of that. Does that seem reasonable to be? I think most common sense

people would say, yeah, I can see where that's possible. Does it mean they pick up the phone and say, we want you to get rid of pop star ex and we want me to push pop star Y? A red phone too, right. Not really sure about that part. It might be more of a title type of thing. Like, this is coming, this is gone. Right, right, which is something that I said I witnessed and and experience personally. So it's hard for a young artist, particularly in their 20s, you know, young and full of ambition, and they actually do have something to contribute

to point to them and say, look, you need to look at the historical arc of this and understand where the political agendas are not going to help you, where your ability to generate money and resources and attention are not going to help you. You're going to have to rely on something far greater. And the only answer I have for that connects to what I would call the godhead,

or let's call it the spiritual history of humanity, which is if you don't stand for truth, you don't stand for love, if you don't stand for integrity, you will eventually pay. If you're paying with the devil, you'll figure that out when we leave this planet. Right.

But you will pay. Right. There is no other way around it that I have seen personally. I think they find that helpful. That's, they could use that advice. I have a question I wanted to ask you. Because I was reading about the David Bowie's 76, Rolling Stone interview with Cameron Crow.

He's talking about, you know, in his boy was in his own weird kind of politics. And he was saying, you know, at concerts, he goes, you know, at their worst, a rock concert, like I feel like I'm a fascist leader. He goes like, I have so much control. Well, he had the haircut too, going on there for hot. That was the whole thin white dick thing.

But he's like, I have so much control. And, you know, you have examples of concerts famously gone tragic, Altamont, the Travis Scott concert. And in hindsight, people always point to the vibe the concerts or Mc Jagger having a, he had a Greek tattoo that said the end at Ultimads and Travis Scott had stuff symbols up, but people read into you after the fact. But people always say, yeah, the environment, the vibe at these shows was very bad. I wanted to ask you, as a performer, but also just as someone who's been at shows, a ton of shows, what's the darkest environment

you've ever been at a concert where you're like, boy, this is either where you're performing and you're like, this is kind of spooky or something bad's going to happen or a show you've attended where you're like, is this going to end with someone dying? This is like the atmosphere here is... We have had people seriously injured at our shows, and we actually had a horrible incident in Dublin Island where a young woman was killed in the mosh pit from just the violence of the mosh pit. So I have experienced that.

But I would point to something slightly different. If you and I were just sitting around having a cup of Madame Zuzzi's tea, I, I would I would say to you invariably, if you deal in rock, you are dealing in shamanic energies. Sure. We talked about the Robert Fripp quote about that. Remind me, please. He had said something when he was with King Crimson

that the energy in a rock concert is such, that if you directed it in the right way, he believes you could make the world rotate backwards. He goes, the amount of energy of people, not only hearing the music, but being put in a certain state because of the music plays on the emotions. Hence, whether young rock artists, understand this intuitively or not pop is after a different type of shamanism maybe we can pick that up in our

third interview but um uh in our case tribal drums extremely loud guitars slightly detuned at any given moment so you're dealing with messing with brain hemispheres right and of course we all know that the drums are probably the most primal way to get somebody to unleash their kind of inner inner self with a capital S. So when you're standing in front of, you know, I think the biggest concert ever played was 220,000 people. Wow. But commonly, you know, let's say it's 5,000, 20,000, somewhere in that range, and

the bigger festival is 60,000 or more. You're dealing with a lot of human energy flowing in one particular direction. Right. And the, the shamanic part of it or the, let's call it, the Zen warrior part. of it is you've got all this energy and your your capability if you're skilled is to create a loop in essence refract the energy back or feed into energy so it creates an energy loop and i will say there have been times in my life where the energy is so pitch intense that um it's almost hard to describe other than when i've had peak drug experiences something goes on in your brain and i

assume something's going on in a lot of the audience's brain i don't know know if it's dopamine, but there's that concept. If you've ever done drugs, people say, you know, the brain can produce everything. Your brain is capable of producing LSD and DMT and all that stuff. So who knows what goes on there. But I have stood in those moments of what feels like utter chaos. Right. It doesn't necessarily mean violence. It just means there's a chaotic element that is impossible to describe. And it is in those moments where the megalomaniac and yourself does ponder the idea. if you said, I think we should do X or Y. I'll tell you one quick funny story, and it cost us dearly.

We were playing a concert somewhere in the Midwest, and we had checked out from the hotel, which was across the street. And I said during the concert, hey, there's a party after the concert in James' room, James from the band. And because we had checked out of the hotel, I thought, okay, great, we're not there. Sure. Well, 3,000 kids showed up at the hotel.

It was a locked floor, which I also considered when I was making my joke. And people took the elevator to the sixth floor, went through the top of the elevator, broke into the closed seventh floor, and destroyed the seventh floor. Oh, my goodness. And I got a call the next day from the manager saying, did you tell everyone to go across the street for the party? You have to pay for that? Wow. So that's the Billy Corgan Party planner career was off to a very slow day. So it's a bit of a jokey thing.

But again, I've seen the worst of it in people being seriously injured. I've seen incredible moments of sort of, wow, if you could harness this energy, not me, but if you could harness this energy, you know, there is that little bit of that we could change the world. Sure. Consciousness drives in. But it is always subtextually based on the ability to uncork that energy. And artists that are effective at that know how to do that. particularly if you play in a band to place really loud. That makes sense.

And you can see why, to go back to Abby Hoffman, he thought he could get up and give an important speech at Woodstock. Yeah, good luck. And remember Pete Townsend famously hit him with his guitar. As he should have. Right. So that was, he was the original Kanye West, actually, Abby Hoffman, getting up to take the mic.

And Pete Townsend goes back to what I said about Connie. Pete Townsend was you. He's like, no, you were getting hit with this guitar. There have been moments where the crowd is so out of control, not so much these days, but the crowd was so out of control that I had to stop the show and say, okay, nobody else can get on stage. This needs to kind of dial it down.

Right, right. And invariably, the crowd starts to revolt against the messenger. And in every single instance, I said the same thing, and it must have happened 40 times. I would stop the concert and say, if one more person gets on stage, okay, I'm going to hit you with my guitar. And invariably, I would get flipped off and booed,

and I'd say, okay, I'm six, three, two hundred twenty pounds, try it. Right. And not one person would get on stage. Now, think about, now just stop, pump the brakes on that. It's not even really meant to be a boast. We are four people in that instance standing in front of 8,000 people. Okay, if those 8,000 people want to get on stage, no boast is going to stop them. So what is it about the projection of the moment or the sense of power or even your own,

even your own delusion that convinces you that the four of you can stop the 8,000 of them. That sounds like a Mr. Beast YouTube show where it's like four people with instruments versus 60,000 people in the crowd. That sounds like a YouTube contest show. Yes. So again, ultimately everything we're talking about is similarly rooted. It's the dynamics of power. And spirituality, too, of whatever is running through you at that time. Sure.

And where are you sourcing from? Right. If you're sourcing from a shamanic place, but it's integrally rooted in the godhead, you're probably going to be okay. If you're going the other way and you really want that chaos and you want that chaos to feed something in you, you're asking for it.

Really quick, you're getting into something there with the drums. There's a book from the 50s by William Sargent. It's considered like the best book, what's worth, on brainwashing. It was co-written with Robert Graves, the poet. But he uses that woman, Maya Derry, that we talked about who went to Haiti to study voody possession and but there's a whole chapter and apparently was very influential on erron hubbard on um on drums and uh and the whole book was

influential on hubbard not the chapter the drums but this whole thing on the nature of drums and the nature of brain waves and the way drums are the easiest way to agitate people you've taken a full circle Alastair Crowley and El Ron Hubbard. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. See, just leave it there. Is there any truth? Here's the last question.

Is there any true to the idea that they had a bet? That who? Elron Hubbard and Alistair Crowley had a bet. I've never heard that. What's the nature of the bet? They both said that we're each going to start a relation and let's see who wins. Well, I'll tell you who said he, I'll tell you who said that he told that to El Ron Hubbard, and this would be the third episode because we'll jump into another sphere of entertainment.

Del Close, the shaman from Chicago, who was S&L's comedy teacher, who knew Charles Manson and El Ron Hubbard, Del Close, who, again, who's taught everyone from Bill Murray to Tina Fey to Stephen Colbert, comedy. And he was a wican priest. You're talking about Del Close,

the guy who was the Ranness Second City? Yeah, he was, yeah, the improv teacher. But he said, he was the one that told El Ron Hubbard the real money isn't starting a religion. So that can be our third conversation. that the occult side of comedy. Let's see if we survive this conversation. All right.

Conrad, thanks again.