The Tim Ferriss Show - #184: Shep Gordon - The King Maker on His Best PR Stunts, Hugest Failures, and Practical Philosophies

Episode Date: September 6, 2016

Shep Gordon (@SupermenschShep) has been named one of the "100 most influential people" by Rolling Stone magazine. He is the man behind some of the biggest names you've ever heard. If you like the storytelling and lessons of Cal Fussman, you're going to love this one. Shep has worked with, and befriended, some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry, from Alice Cooper to Bette Davis, Raquel Welch to Groucho Marx, Blondie to Jimi Hendrix, Sylvester Stallone to Salvador Dali, Luther Vandross to Teddy Pendergrass. He is also credited with inventing the "celebrity chef" phenomenon, which revolutionized the food industry and turned the culinary arts into the multi-billion dollar industry it is today. He has worked with Nobu Matsuhisa, Emeril Lagasse, Wolfgang Puck, Roger Vergé (and many others, including his holiness, the Dalai Lama.) Anthony Bourdain, a huge fan of Shep's, released a memoir detailing Shep's life and adventures, titled They Call Me Supermensch: A Backstage Pass To The Amazing World Of Film, Food, and Rock 'N' Roll. I've been reading it, and it's fantastic. Imagine it like Animal House meets Harvard MBA. In this episode, we discuss how he made clients famous, and some of his biggest PR stunts (and flops). Enjoy! This podcast is brought to you by MeUndies.Have you ever wanted to be as powerful as a mullet-wearing ninja from the '80s, or as sleek as a black panther in the Amazon? Of course you have, and that is where MeUndies comes in. I've spent the last six months wearing underwear from these guys 24/7, and they are the most comfortable and colorful underwear I've ever owned. Their materials are 2x softer than cotton, as evaluated using the Kawabata method. Check out MeUndies.com/Tim to see my current faves (some are awesomely ridiculous, like the camo). This podcast is also brought to you by Audible. I have used Audible for years, and I love audiobooks. I have two to recommend: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman Vagabonding by Rolf Potts All you need to do to get your free 30-day Audible trial is go to Audible.com/Tim. Choose one of the above books, or choose any of the endless options they offer. That could be a book, a newspaper, a magazine, or even a class. It's that easy. Go to Audible.com/Tim and get started today. Enjoy. Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast.***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Friday subscribers. So check it out. Tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. Hello, boys and girls, kittens and squirrels. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers, the best of the best in many different worlds, whether that be chess, military, or in this case, entertainment. Now, I've wanted to get Shep Gordon on this show for probably a year and a half,

two years, and it'll be very clear within the first few minutes of this conversation why. He has been named one of the 100 most influential people by Rolling Stone magazine, and he is the man, he is the icon behind the icons, behind some of the biggest names you've ever heard. You can say hello to him on Twitter and Instagram at SuperMenschShep. If you like the storytelling and lessons of Cal Fussman, you're going to love this episode. Shep has worked with and befriended and has some incredible stories about and hilarious stories, which you're going to hear. Some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry from Alice Cooper to Bette Davis, Raquel Welch to Groucho Marx, Blondie to Jimi Hendrix, Sylvester Stallone to Salvador Dali, Luther Vandross to Teddy Pendergrass. And his job was in effect, he had many jobs, but to make them as famous as possible. And we dig

into how he did that, the PR stunts, the biggest successes, the biggest failures. There were quite a few that blew up right in his face. On top of that, he is credited with inventing the celebrity chef phenomenon, which revolutionized the food industry and turned the culinary arts into the multi-billion dollar industry that it is today. He worked with all of the first wave of the now known as celebrity chefs, Nobu Matsuhisa, Emeril Lagasse, Wolfgang Puck, Roger Verget, and many others. And then on top of that, he's done quite a bit with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and it doesn't end there. Now, Anthony Bourdain, a huge fan of Shep's, has released a memoir detailing Shep's life and adventures titled They Call Me Superensch, a backstage pass to the amazing world of film, food, and rock and roll. And I've been reading this and enjoying every page because it is hard to conceive of

how many stories and life lessons Shep has. It is like the most titillizing, titillizing, is that a real word? The most sort of raucous drug-infused party story combined with the best MBA you could possibly receive. So without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Shep Gordon. Shep, welcome to the show. Aloha. I am so happy to be here. Thank you, Tim, for having me on. It's my pleasure. And I was mentioning before we started recording that about a year ago, I took my family on a trip for Christmas, and we all sat down and we watched Supermensch. And the collective thought was at some point in time, you need to connect with this ship character. So I'm very excited to have you on the line.

And could you place for the people listening where you are at the moment? Yeah, I'm on a beautiful white sand beach called Kiaba Kapu Beach on the southwest shore of Maui. You might be able to hear some waves rolling in the background. And I'm sitting on my porch, which overlooks the ocean, and feeling very, very lucky. And how did you end up in Hawaii? Because I know it's a very important place to you. And not only that, but your home has been a refuge of sorts for many, many people, including

notable folks for decades now. But how did you end up in Hawaii? Like many things in my life, partly by accident, partly by taking action, I wanted to quit smoking. This was back in the early 70s. And I had read about a house that Colonel Tom Parker, who was Elvis Presley's manager, had rented in Honolulu and brought his office over to a big spread. And Colonel Parker was a hero. I said, oh, my God, if I could sleep in Colonel Parker's bed and quit smoking, what a cool thing to do. So I rented the house. It was in Kahala in Honolulu and brought a bunch of people from my office over. Sadly, we weren't environmentally conscious in 72. And I remember we all threw our cigarettes out the window driving in from the airport. And I just got in with the wrong crowd in Honolulu. It wasn't working at all. My spiral

was sort of going deeper. And I decided I had to leave Honolulu and go to an outer island. I had a friend who had a tour going to the outer island. And in those days, they had a hydrofoil. I took the hydrofoil, put one foot on the dock in Maui, and turned around to my friend and said, I'm living here the rest of my life. And I just feel different in my skin here. It's been very magical. Now, if we were to look at rewinding the clock and a shift in location, how did you get your start in the music business for people who do not know the backstory? Another great accident. I have great accidents. I was always a child of the 60s, a liberal Jewish socialistaning activist, very active against the war, active

against ROTC, and always had a vision of myself as a young man as like a savior on a white horse charging into trouble. And so I took a job as a probation officer. I had long hair. I was using psychedelics, And I thought, what a beautiful thing to bring love and peace to a probation hall, young kids. It was a Reagan era. I thought they were being misused, misguided. And I went to California, got a job as a probation officer. Didn't work. Sort of got beat up by the kids the first day. And realized I was not going to change the system by being a

probation officer. And drove into Hollywood late at night, didn't have a lot of money. There was a small motel that had a vacancy sign. Checked into the hotel, had a balcony. It was exactly Hotel California. It was two stories around the swimming pool, palm trees, a life I didn't know. Went out on the porch and took a little psychedelics. Felt a little sorry for myself having just been beat up at a jail, but also felt amazingly

empowered to be on my own in California, free, healthy. And I heard someone screaming down at the pool, a girl, and having just come from a to be on my own in California, free, healthy. And I heard someone screaming down at the pool, a girl, and having just come from a jail, my brain for some reason went to violence and I thought she was being raped. And I ran down to the pool and separated these two people and the girl got very mad, punched me in the mouth.

They were making love. I took the wrong guess. And in the morning when I went down to the pool, the girl was Janice Joppa and, um, around the pool was sort of the Hollywood wax museum. Jimmy Hendrix, um, Jim Morrison would come and go, um, the Chambers brothers who were very big in those days and I was big fans of. And my journey began one day. Lester Chambers said to me, what else do you do for a living? Because I just thought it's selling some psychedelics to everybody at the hotel. And I said, I don't really know. And he said, are you Jewish?

I said, yes, you should be a manager. And he introduced me to Alice Cooper. And I've managed him for 47 years. So I'm replaying the documentary in my mind. And it seems like, as you mentioned, you've had some fantastic accidents. But you've also created some incredible things in your life. And you seem to be a master PT Barnum of sorts. And I was hoping you could discuss some of your favorite stunts that you've put together because the one that jumps to mind, and I'd love to hear about a few of them, but at least one that comes to mind was the broken down truck in London.

But you can tackle them in any order that you'd like. But I just think these are so genius. I'd love for you to explain a few of them. I start with Piccadilly. My philosophy was that you didn't have to wait for history, that you could create history. And we were in the entertainment business. So different than maybe in politics where you create history, there aren't really victims. So I always felt good about creating history in an entertainment sense.

And the key to really managing an artist was to try and understand what, what is it that appeals to their audience? What is, if you can get it down to a word or two words or three words, sex appeal or rebellion appeal. There's broad categories that if you can tap into, you can pick up a big audience. And with Alice, we realized very early on it was hatred of parents, that every child at some point in their life rebelled against their parents. I live through it now. My kids came home with hip hop music and I was like, what are you doing? And I knew hip hop music would be gigantic because that's the way life works. It works that way in clothes. It works that way in everything. So I knew my focus. My focus was getting parents over the breakfast table to tell their children, if you dare buy an Alice Cooper record or go see him, you're grounded.

If I could accomplish that. So I never really cared about the music magazines. I cared about Newsweek, Time, the network TVs. I cared about the things the parents watch, not the kids. Because I didn't really know how to get the kids except for paying. This was the payola period. It was paying for hit records and we didn't have money. So we start making some progress in America. It starts working. We start pulling stunts off. Alice, we get very lucky with the chicken incident where I threw a chicken on stage and the press thought that Alice bit its head off and said these horrible stories about him,

which broke him wide open in America. And I assumed it spread to England. I get to England. There's no ticket sales. And I'm now trying to figure out how do I, in a matter of 10 days, get every parent in London to hate Alice Cooper? That's not an easy task. And so I go in, and there was a brilliant guy working at warner brothers

who was the uh the fifth beetle derek taylor he was their pr man and he was brilliant and he said tell me about this alice cooper he had never heard of alice cooper and i told him and i told him what i was thinking we started talking and i said is there anything that all the parents in London watch or do or see? And he said, well, the morning shows are gigantic because everybody checks in for the traffic before they leave home. There's helicopters and it's it's really big. It's like our TV in Britain is very boring. This is something that gets a lot of views. And what's the what's the busiest traffic in the morning at

rush hour and he said piccadilly square it's always backed up and out of that developed this we had just done a photo shoot with abaddon which was alice naked with a snake covering his genitals so i said to derek you know we just had this great shot and i took it out and said what do you think about putting it on like a flatbed truck and breaking it down at Piccadilly? Would that piss everybody off? And he said, yeah, come on. And I said, we could do this. And he said, you know, we can.

And he found a driver and he paid for the truck through Warner Brothers. And we asked the guy to break it down two or three times until they arrested him because we knew they would arrest him. But that was our story. And it hit the morning news. It was helicopters. Traffic was backed up 30 miles. We had you have to remember, this is 72 or 73. We had girls on the edge like that, there's so many things that don't work. And, and I think I just, I just gave a talk to a bunch of, uh, DJs and business guys in that world. And what I tried to get across is that the failures are almost more important

than the successes. That's really what separated Alice and I from so many other managers and artists. And what made his career go so long is because we were both allowed to fail and we supported each other. So here's a great failure story. He gets his first stadium show, Three Rivers Stadium, Pittsburgh. And I'm trying to think, what do I do? It's a baseball stadium. We have to do something really Alice Cooper-esque because everything's going to be so small on a tiny stage. Even in those days, I don't even think they were using screens in concerts. This was really early days.

And it was, I think, the first stadium show, maybe other than the Beatles at Chase Stadium. There were very few stadium shows. So I said, I got it. Shoot him across the stadium out of a cannon. How cool would that be? Alice Cooper going through the stadium. So I go to Warner Brothers, who built all our props. They did the guillotine, and they did the gallows. The guy there was so nonchalant about it, he said to me, after I explained to him what I wanted, he said,

what period cannon? You've got to be kidding me he said no world war one world war two revolutionary war and i said give me your best canon he went to a drawer and he took out blueprints for a canon with someone in it to get shot across it he didn't say stadium but it was was the trick. It was a shallow bottom. The trick was Alice would crawl in the cannon, go into a bottom that was pitless. There was a dummy already dressed like him, looking like him. He would crawl out of the cannon, run around, get driven around to the other side of the stadium. We would do some shtick with flames, getting ready to blow up the cannon. When he got there, bingo, and it would go across the stadium, we would do some shtick, you know, with flames, getting ready to blow up the cannon.

When he got there, bingo. And it would go across the stadium and Alice would come out triumphant. Well, we did it the first night for rehearsal in the cannon, which was 40 feet long and six tons. The dummy came out and it went maybe one foot. Just flopped out. Yeah, just flopped. It was the worst thing I ever saw, but Alice couldn't see it. He was in the cabin on the side. So how was it?

I said, the worst thing I've ever seen in my life. And I made a very rookie mistake, which I never made again, which was advertising what we were going to do. Oh no. So it's three river stadium. They're on the radio going,

watch Alice get shot out of a cabin. Watch out. And we sold out and we had press coming in the night before to send stories back to the news because that's all you had was like the six o'clock news and they wouldn't have been able to got so um so now what are we going to do how i said go to sleep i'll figure it out he wakes up and in the hotel were um fire extinguishers that had foam so he said what are we going to do i said go to sleep i'll figure it out he wakes up and in the hotel where um fire extinguishes it had foam so he said what are we going to do i said it's going to be a giant penis these two balls on it filling it up with this foam you get on it and rub it and lick it and just masturbate it to death and the foam will come out 40 50 yard you know rose it'll be fantastic and i'll figure out what I tell Pittsburgh.

So he gets in and he rubs it. He works so hard and it drips out. It's worse than the night before. A little drop. And now this is a time when most managers and artists would be choking each other to death. That is the point I want to make out of this story. Now, why is that, though?

Because I'm a manager. I've thought of it. I put him on a stage in the most embarrassing situation. Ah, I got it. Right. As a normal human being, not to mention even an artist, you would tend to give the guy grief who put you in this horrible situation. It's horrible.

And it was all on me, 100% on me. I write the shows with Alice. He lets me do everything. It's 100% And it was all on me, 100% on me. I write the shows with Alice. He lets me do everything. It's 100% on my shoulders. Instead of it, he said, can you cover it? And I said, yeah. And he went to sleep. And I stayed up all night.

And I figured out, OK, how do I turn this disaster into a gigantic win for Alice Cooper? What would be even bigger for Alice Cooper? Because we're sold out, so that's OK. Even bigger for him than getting shot out of out so that's okay even bigger for him than getting shot out of the cannon and here's what we did he showed up the next night the cannon blew up he was in the cannon when it blew up the tv crews were there they watched him getting taken off into the ambulance we announced from the hospital that that it wasn't serious and that he was going to come and do the show. And we did the show with him in a wheelchair and nurses and doctors, everybody giving him plasma.

Nothing happened to him. It was all a setup. The front page paper was about how great Alice Cooper was. What other artist in the world would come and put a show for his audience from a wheelchair. So, you know, out of that failure came even a stronger bond. And I think, you know, that's one of the important lessons to learn from that is that if you're it takes a family to make a business as much as a family as a as it takes to make a family. You know, it takes a group, a town, a village, and the people you work with. You need to allow them to fail or they'll never really win because both are tied so closely together in the creative world.

Now, I want to underscore a few things and ask a follow-up question. The first is, you talked about aiming to upset the parents in, say, London or the UK. So in a way, you're doing almost the opposite of, for instance, the founding editor of Wired Magazine talks about 1,000 true fans and trying to find your 1,000 true fans, but you did it indirectly almost by trying to find, targeting your 1,000 true haters. I mean, finding the people who would do your advertising for you by disliking you, which I think is just so interesting. For a very specific reason. I think that art is a very narrow window when it comes to personal choice.

The largest entertainment figures of our decade all had one thing in common hatred of parents the beatles were horrible the rolling stones pissed on gas stations bob dylan comfy jazz guys with dopers it's there's only a few things that every single person goes through they go through rebellion if they don't go through, they end up on a rooftop killing people. So my attempt was to pick up rather than get a thousand people who loved Alice for what Alice did. If I could make him the face of rebellion, I had a huge audience to pick from. And in 72, it was the biggest tour of the world.

And before we started recording, we were chatting a little bit about, and we didn't get into it because I've, speaking of rookie mistakes, I've learned that it's best to talk about it when you hit record. But we have a mutual friend, maybe others, but at least one mutual friend in Rick Rubin. And he's said to me before, the best art divides the audience. I 100%, that is such an educated statement. And I think we'll definitely come back to Rick. You mentioned the rookie mistake of announcing what you were going to do before you did it.

Are there any other particular rookie mistakes that you made or that you see managers making? And this might be a good time just for people who are outside of the entertainment and music worlds to define what a manager is exactly. What does a manager do? I think it's not a curriculum profession. So I think it's a wide range for me as a manager. I always envisioned my job was to get an artist so he didn't have to use his second name. That to me was my focus to make him an internet,

you know, no one that says Alice who are Luther, who are Groucho, who are Raquel, who, who are my clients. There are other managers who are very, very dollar orientated, who can squeeze blood out of a dollar. There's other managers who are

great at getting Coca-Colas. Meaning actually fetching the beverages for the artist? It's really an artist-driven profession for the most part. It's what they're looking for and what they need and what they're willing to share. And it's a very wide range. I think, for me, the really talented managers are the ones who get ahead of their client by six months or a year and go, come this way and notice a pothole right here be careful um who really have a vision of of what the audience is what the attraction is how to put it in a picture frame that doesn't compromise it doesn't make the artist chase the flavor of the months but uh knows how to promote the essence of what they are which gets so much to what rick rubin's comment was, that once you have the success and you have your audience,

you're never going to keep them out of rebellion because they're going to drop off in five or six years. Rebellion goes bye-bye. So it's a matter of taking that and taking the essence of what this artist has creatively that makes them a great artist and putting that in the picture frame that the people who picked them up by these broad strokes say, yes, that's that I can relate to. I want to stay with that. So what he said is so brilliant. I never really thought of it like that. I always say it's the other side. You pick up your broadest audience by social revelations rather than art,

because that's obscure. But what he's saying is perfectly right so each one of those artists depending on what they want to do with their art is very different some making the most money is the most important some being the most famous is the most important some not being told what to do is the most important so different than a doctor or an accountant there's no real curriculum and nowhere they really learned to be a manager. I'm going to come back to the rookie mistakes question, but I have to bring up because it was one of the most hilarious portions of the doc with Mike Myers, which was a flashback dramatization, a reenactment of getting one of your clients to agree to have you as a manager, but there was a competition of sorts. And I was just thinking to myself, this is not the type of thing when you said there's

no curriculum. This is probably not the case study that would be used in an MBA program about music and entertainment management. But I'm guessing that you remember which example this is. Could you please replay this for folks? It's funny because it's in some ways not my proudest moment. I was impressed nonetheless, proud or not. It's something I never would have ever talked about if Teddy, it regards an artist named

Teddy Pendergrass. And he was a very macho Afro-American artist. I would have never talked about this if he hadn't actually written it in his book, which amazed me that he would have been it. It was early on in my career. I was very successful and had a great reputation, which didn't exist in the management business at that time. And one of my clients was Groucho Marx. And the executor of Groucho Marx's estate was a gentleman from CBS named Goddard Lieberson. And he was very good to Groucho. And he was a legend. And my armpits got sweaty every time I went to see him. You know, he was a living legend. And he had someone in CBS reach out to me to ask me if I would manage, go look at, meet with Teddy Pendergrass to manage him.

He was a very important artist to the label and they would like me to be involved. And you couldn't say no to Goddard. So I went to Philadelphia. I didn't really like the show, but I realized that the fellow named Teddy Pendergrass was actually the lead singer of Hal Melvin and the Blue Notes, who were one of my favorite groups. So I went backstage. It was a long line of Jewish managers. the lead singer of hell melvin and the blue notes who wore one of my favorite groups so i went backstage it was a long line of jewish managers there were all these great characters sid scheinenberg who had all these companies his name was sid arthur i think was arthur shot uh and it was sas so he had sasko masco fasco dasco fantastic his letterhead was fantastic

he managed bb king and a bunch but there was all these great jewish managers backstage so i didn't even bother going in i went home about a week later they called me up how was the meeting didn't take the meeting please mr liverson would like you to take it would you go back down and take the meeting i go back down pull up to his driveway he's a white rolls royce with license plate teddy i go up to the penthouse, this beautiful girl in like a lingerie opens the door. Then this most beautiful man I've ever seen in my life comes walking in. And I completely dropped everything I was going to say. And I decided this is, I don't really, this is not going to happen. And let me just get out of here. So I said,

listen, man, there's not a lot of things I know in life, but there's one thing I know for sure. You have no credentials whatsoever to figure out which one of us fast talking Jews is telling the truth. You had the best group in the bunch and there's no way you're going to know who's telling the truth. So here's what I suggest. Let's get together for a weekend. Bring the best drugs you have. Bring the best women you have. Bring the best booze you have. And let's just party. And if you drop before I do, I'm the wrong guy for you. I mean, if I drop before you, if you drop before I do, I should be a manager because when you collapse, I'll be able to take the money from the gig out of your pocket and save it. And he looked at me like I was completely out of my mind, as he says in his book. But then he said,

yes. Oh, shit. Now I got to do this. And we met in New York at a hotel and we did what we said we were going to do. And he collapsed a couple of days later. And I managed the rest of his life without a contract. And by the way, never collapsed again. And there were at least a few, I suppose, innovations, we could call them, that came of that collaboration. I think for me as a manager, that may have been the crowning point of creating history because it was so focused. And it was, I had an artist who was big enough that I had the luxury I could do it. And I had an artist who completely, completely trusted me because all we hit were headwinds but the concept was i was trying to teddy sex appeal

was unbelievable the amount of panties we would get on stage and bras with phone numbers the reaction of even old jewish women but unbelievable the sex was just unbelievably strong songs his His producer, they allowed us all to really drive it. So we produced a stage show that went to that. We produced songs that went to that, close the door songs like that. That really highlighted sex, not romance sex.

And then I was trying to say, how do I tell this to the public? How do I really get across that? This is a black Elvis. How do I get, I have every black person in America. How do I get the white audience to see it and really get it and understand it? And I came up with this concept out of a very angry moment at one of his first shows where I had to wait backstage while this bevy of women went into his dressing room.

And I was really angry. And I said to him after I got to see him, I said, you know, this is crazy, man. We should do shows for women only. That's it. So that I have a chance, but maybe in the, in the house with the women and, um, we both looked at each other and said, can you do that? And I said, I can do it. And everybody fought me. They lawyers from the halls called me up. It's, you know, it's, um, bigotry. I said, no, no, we'll sell tickets to women. We're just going to say for women only. And that's what we did. We devised an ad. We did concerts across America, radio city music on New York, Greek theater, LA. We did concerts for women only. We had a hundred percent women. I don't

think one man showed up at any of them. Um. We gave out chocolate teddy bear lollipops, which was so hot. And then we got to, well, we went to advertise it. I got to a challenge point, which was there is a line between saying what you are and being arrogant about what you are. And when I saw the ad with this picture on it, I said, for women only coming out of Teddy is a little arrogant. So we, we ended up not using his picture. We got a stuffed little Teddy bear that every girl loves. And we put an old note on it that said, come spend the night with me. Love Teddy. Really soften it up. And it sold out in like a second, and they were fantastic shows. And then I was managing Luther Vandross, and I said,

okay, how do I apply that same set of principles to Luther, who's not sex? Luther was romance. Luther was all about whining and dining and the anticipation and how beautiful romance is. So what I did with him, which I thought was not as focused as Teddy, but the same highway, which was we gave out to the top radio stations in America, a contest where you could win Luther marrying you on the air. So it really drove romance. And I think weddings, if you look at statistics, Luther's music for that decade was probably the most played wedding songs.

So anyway, that's how you have fun and that's how you develop an artist. But all those things, to get back to failure, take an artist and a manager trusting each other to go out on a limb. The question of failure, the question of mistakes made, are there any other rookie mistakes that you see a lot of people making in the position of something like a manager or that you made that come to mind? Any particular sort of archetypal or critical mistakes? Yeah, I think it's less a list of mistakes than it's a mistake of intentions. What I see,

at least from the people I see and talk to, is they're not in the business really for service. They're in the business for greed. And out of greed, you just do stupid things and your vision's blurred. If you're in it for service to your artist, which is really a manager. I mean, again, there are different types of managers. There are managers who are power guys who I get it. They build empires often and they're great for their artists. But I think, you know, I have an assistant who has a daughter

who's being sought after by everybody in the music business, record companies, managers, publishers. She's a beautiful 21 year old girl, Lily Miola. And I see the difference between the phone calls that come in for her and the things that I do for Alice. Like I wake up for Alice. And I think about how am I going to enhance his career? How am I going to, you know, right now we're running Alice for president. We wrote into the show a piece where Hillary beats up Donald Trump in the show. And we have an Alice Cooper president. We're selling T-shirts. We're going viral. We wrote into the show a piece where Hillary beats up Donald Trump in the show. And we have an Alice Cooper president.

We're selling T-shirts. We're going viral. And it's fun. It's funny for us. But it's me waking up and thinking, what can I do to add to Alice's career? And most of these young people I see coming around, when I sit and talk to them and they ask for advice, they're not asking advice for their artists. They're asking advice for them. How do I get more clients? How can I get a piece of publishing? I think it's a general rule maybe for humanity as our civilization moves along. But I think it's motivation more than actual things wrong. Because I think, again, there's no school for management. So every

manager is going to make lots of mistakes. It reminds me of a story I've heard you tell. I think it was in a commencement speech, actually. I might be misplacing that, but you were talking about a guide to cooking rice from, I want to say, some type of... From His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. Exactly. And 90% of it or more was about the intention of when you select the rice, when you boil the rice, and only perhaps 10% of it was technical. Let me ask you, how do you maintain that orientation or how did you come to have that service orientation?

Because of course, I would imagine all things equal. You want to be financially successful as a manager so that you can do the things you want to do and so on. And I guess it's a byproduct of making your clients financially successful. But how did you maintain that lens of service over greed? Did it ever get the best of you and then you correct course or has that not been the case? It's a very timely, great question because I really thought my life was completely random and I couldn't understand any of the decisions I made. I never questioned my decisions. You look in the mirror and you say, why would you possibly do this? It doesn't make any sense. And things like, as a manager, you have a right to commission the life

of the projects you work on. So I worked on the Beatles anthology record, for example. I have a right to collect commissions on that. I always chose not, if I'm not working with the artists, I didn't want to take their money. So I chose never to do it. Which when you look in the mirror, you say, what are you, a schmuck? To yourself. But if you have a strong foundation and you can feel that foundation, which is, you know, I shouldn't really be making money off this. They're going out and living their lives. It's their life.

It's not my life. You go back to it. And I always thought all those choices were just random. Like maybe I was, it was ego thinking I was a good guy or I don't know what the motivation. And when I wrote the book, I realized that I'm actually living my father's life. And he was a man of pure service, pure service to me and my brother. And he really gave up almost everything else in his life, but was joyful because he was serving us. And as I met mentors along the way, Roger Verger in particular, I saw how he was the first person I really met who was very successful and very happy. Most of the people I was meeting, I would say 99% of the people I met in show business who were the kingpins were miserable.

They were cheating on their wives. They were alcoholics. They were just miserable. They were just drowning in the pain. And I think that my dad first and then seeing the mentors made me think, you know, you're going to die with the money. Enjoy the moments you hear on the planet. And if service is a way to enjoy it and comes naturally to me, I don't want to fight it by falling into the traps of all those normal traps of greed and stuff. I'm good enough at what I do that I can make a living.

I've heard, and I want you to correct me here, but that it took something like 10 to 12 years for Mike Myers to get you to agree to do the documentary. Maybe you can give me some color there, but the follow-up to that is going to be why a book? Why do a book? Yeah. I've always cautioned my clients when I started working with them that if I do my job perfectly, I have a good chance of killing them because I will make them so famous that they can't survive. So I've always had a very corrupted view of fame. I realized that's what I do for a living and I'm good at it and it can provide great stuff for people, but they have to be prepared that they're going to take a fall and hopefully get up from that fall. So the last

thing I really wanted to do was test myself. Why would I really want to, you know, it didn't make any documentaries aren't financial. I didn't view it as being of service to anybody or anything except my ego. And I didn't want to have to deal with fame. I just didn't want to have to flirt with it. I saw too many people I love fall victim to it. So I said no and laughed. And then I had some near-death experience and didn't know it, luckily. I mean, it was beautiful. And I woke up in a hospital room, very drugged out. And by the second day, realizing I was very alone, that my life was fairly isolated. I was in a hotel room. I mean, a hospital room. I just almost died, feeling very high. And I think

very starting to feel really sorry for myself which is unusual because I'm usually feeling how lucky I am and right in the middle of that Mike called hey chef how you doing I said you know I'm really doing miserable it's one of the few times in my life I can't find the footing I'm like sort of kind of lost a little bit. And he said, well, how about doing the movie now? Now we have like a really dramatic moment to go to. And I think my ego probably said, because I was feeling sorry for myself. I said, yeah, yeah, maybe that's a good way to come out of this thing if I live. Let's do the movie.

So I got well. Got some good help from my friends. And maybe a month later, I remembered that I had told him we would do the movie. So I called him up. Hey, Mike, how you doing? Great. I said, you know, did we have a conversation when I was in the hospital? I said, do the movie.

And he said, yeah. He said, go ahead and do it. I staffed up. I got six people. Okay. And I really assumed that my cousin in San Diego would see it.

Or that he would abandon the project. I didn't... It was hard for me to think of it as real. And I knew Mike socially. I didn't know him professionally except enjoying his talent. And I didn't realize how driven he was. And he spent the next year of his life,

seven days a week, 24 hours a day on this thing. I did nothing. But I remember about 11 months into it, I got to New York and he invited me up for a cup of coffee and say hello. And I went up and I walked into his apartment. It was like walking at the csi it was pictures of me every my life all over every wall you know what csi the way they had

the criminals yeah right right right so uh and the movie came out and um at first I was really embarrassed, especially with the name. I couldn't look anybody in the eye when they'd say, oh, oh, I hear you got a movie. What's it called? And I would feel my eyes go down to the floor and I would say, Superman. I could not look anyone in the eye. And the film company asked me to come out for a screening somewhere in the midwest it was the first time i had seen it with the audience it was at some film festival and i was really embarrassed i mean like a truly embarrassment super mentioned like oh my god this

is this is so egotistical uh so not what it's so not what my vision of myself is but so i started questioning my vision of myself but anyway as the movie's over i walk out into the lobby and it's very aryan couple they almost looked at the top of a wedding cake right they're standing there and the woman had tears in her eyes and they just stood in the corner they waited for everybody to take pictures you know the things that happen after a screening and i walked over to him at the end said oh so heckle we wanted to talk to you we just moved here from saint thomas and our children had grown up in there we were empty nesters and we came back and we realized we have so much to be blessed for and we just don't do enough good stuff. And watching the

movie made us realize we have to change that in our lives. And we'd love to start with you. And we don't have much, but we're hunters. And you said you like to cook and eat. We have a lot of venison in our freezer. Can we give you some venison? And I went back to the house, got the ven and it turned out my roommate in college was there next door neighbor in St. Thomas. They had a picture of him. Oh, wow. When I saw the effect it had on those people. And then I came back and I started getting emails and calls.

We spoke about Rick Rubin before. That's how we reconnected out of nowhere. I hadn't seen him in 30 years. He got a hold of me and said, can I fly over to Maui and spend spend some time with you i saw the movie and i really could use some time with you and he came over i hadn't seen him in 30 years so it affected all i get the first thing i package i got when i got home was a this beautiful bird cage came from africa and it had like 50 white silk flowers in it and one pink one. And this four-page letter from a girl, 19-year-old girl, who said, listen, I'm not different than the other flowers, but I know if you would let me out of the cage, I could really help my people. You know, just these things coming from every corner.

So that was sort of a side note. And I had a friend, Roy Choi, a chef who had a book signing in New York when I was there. He's on Anthony Bourdain's imprint. And I never met Anthony. And I was a huge fan of him. At the book signing, he walked over to me and he said, hey, I want to do your book. Maybe this is a moment where I can try and figure out what motivated me and maybe if there's anything and what motivated me that other people can use maybe some techniques that I never was aware of but that I can find by looking backwards and that's really the exercise and they agreed that

if I didn't want to put out the book I could give them back the money and we just ended so that was the journey for me was to try and see, is it, Michael always said there are these interconnections. And I always thought of my life as random to see, are there, are there connectors that could help other people along the way? And hence the book. And what impact would you like the book to have? I would like people to realize how lucky they are. I end the book with maybe the, one of the things that maybe I can add to some people's lives, particularly here in America, which is just the way you drop out of the womb.

You won the game. You won it already. You're in America. You have a chance. You can get clean water. You get food. Hopefully you get some love. There's not a bomb dropping on your head every second. That alone is something to meditate on every day how special you are and how rarefied it is to be born into something like this and then maybe the second thing is to try and see the miracle in everything so that when you see somebody who your your initial reaction is hatred or you see a snail walking on the ground and your initial reaction is kick it out of the way to try and see the miracle in it if you see the miracle in it because everything is a miracle you're not going to be able to hurt it you're going to have a different attitude towards

it to the person you hate you're going to feel sorry for that they don't see the miracle in themselves and sorrow is a much better emotion than hatred, selfishly for yourself. And in there, there's also practical, you know, how you try and make business into compassionate business, how you try and make it a win-win, not winners and losers. And I talk a lot about how you create history, things like guilt by association, taking a non-famous person and putting them next to famous people, the fame starts to bleed off. And we live in a fame-driven world. So for commerce, fame is important. So I want to ask you about regular practices in your life related to Buddhism and appreciation in just a minute. But since you brought it up, could you describe what you did

for Anne Murray that pertains to your last example of that fame by association? Yeah. Anne was a great example of guilt by association. She's a wonderful singer, one of the purest voices I've ever heard. She was a school teacher in Toronto, went on a TV show for the summer and sang a song called Snowbird, which became a number one record around the world. Huge impact.

But she was very, very, very Canadian white bread. But she wanted to make it. She wanted to be on Midnight Special, which was a big show there. She wanted to play in Vegas. She wanted to do all the things that stars do. But she wasn't a star. She was a girl who had a hit record that nobody really knew who sang it. So she came to me for management. And one of the first things I did with her was try and,

because the song was so big and so strong, I knew that I could include her and stuff if I had her with important other people. So I booked her at that time. Alice Cooper had a group called the Hollywood Vampires, a drinking group. And it was John Lennon, Harry Nielsen, and Mickey Dolenz from the Monkees. Big faces at the time, particularly John Lennon, who was in his dark era and was not being seen at all when he left Yoko for a while. He was in California. Everyone knew he was there, but nobody was seeing him. And the press were anxious to see him. So I He was in California. Everyone knew he was there, but nobody was seeing him. And, um, the press were anxious to see him. So, uh, my book during California on Thanksgiving,

which I thought was a very funny cause she was Canadian. I tried to make it all as absurd as I possibly could. And, um, I got the guys, I went to see the guys and I said, I got that on my hands and knees, and I used to drive them all home at night because they all got too drunk to drive, and nobody could afford cars, so I was the designated driver, so I got that on my hands and knees,

and I said, guys, I'll drive you all all the time, but you got to come help me with this girl from Canada who is so opposite from you that if you guys would stand next to her, I could help make her famous and I'll drive her forever. And they came down and we got this great picture of Anne Murray, John Lennon, Harry Nielsen, Alice Cooper, Mickey Dolenz, which went out around the world. Immediately Midnight Special called up to have her host the show. And, oh, by the way, you think she can get John to come with her?

Well, we'll try. And we did try. Rolling Stone called up for a big interview. She made a bunch of covers with the picture. And for the next year or so, we sort of dangled a little bit that maybe John or Alice or somebody would show up. And the rest is sort of history. She got a long-term contract in Vegas and life went well for her. I didn't know the contrast aspect of it that you thought through because when I looked at the photograph, she does pop out almost like she's superimposed on top of the photograph.

She really pops out. Oh, man. I don't know if she ever forgave me for doing the pictures. She thought she was compromising her career. Seems to have worked out pretty well. Now, you mentioned Roger Verger and a lot of people associate you with music, but you're also very widely credited with creating the celebrity chef phenomenon and movement. How did you meet Emeril Lagasse? I met Emeril on a trip to New Orleans.

I had started to become a little bit of a foodie because of my association with Mr. Verge. And down in New Orleans, there was a chef named Paul Prudhomme, who was very famous, the only really famous chef. And I had a friend of mine who had just taken over a large record company, EMI. And we went down for Jazz Fest and it was his birthday. So I got a hold of, I think it was Mr. Regé or somebody who made reservations at Paul Prudhomme's for the two nights we were going to be there. And we went the first night and it was not a good experience, so we decided to go somewhere else the next night, and we went to a very touristy but well-respected operation called Commander's Palace. Oh, yeah, very famous.

It served 1,000 meals a day, and we had a reservation. We get there, a little guy with half glasses that doesn't look at us at the maitre d' stand says, 45-minute wait, take him to the bar. And to get to the bar, he walks through the kitchen. And I caught this guy's eye, and he came over and gave me a big hug. I had never been there. And said, you guys taken care of? And he said, hooked up, I think was the word he used.

I said, no, as a matter of fact, we've got to go stand in the bar. So he took us to the bar. He poured us champagne. Came back in five minutes, took us to the A table and proceeded to bring every course up to the table with the help. And every time he'd leave, we'd say, who does this guy think we are? And he's treating me like I'm his best friend for life. But we didn't want to blow our cover. When the meal's over, I said to him, OK, who do you think I am?

And he said, you know, I have no idea. I didn't know if he knew about Verge or not, which was always like an underpinning. Maybe he knew I was Verge's friend, but he said, no, it's boring here. Once a month or once a week, I pick someone coming through the kitchen who I think wants to go on a ride. I take them on a ride and he took us on a ride. And then he gave us a note to go to Tipitina's to see the Neville brothers, which was sold out and poured a old bottle of cognac at the four paper cups for us to leave. Wow.

And maybe a couple of years later, maybe a year later, a year and a half, two years later, I ended up in a unique situation with, um, 50 or 60 great chefs, um,

who asked me to manage them wolfgang puck nobu a whole and paul prudhoe had a bunch of a whole big group of chefs and i remembered emerald and how he treated me and um i said you know i'll do it but there's one guy in new orleans i want to bring him emerald and gossy and they had all heard of him I didn't realize at the time he had just opened his own restaurant. That's why they had heard of him. And I called Commander's Palace to tell him what I was doing and see if he wanted to join. And they said he opened his own restaurant and it was Emeril's. And our journey began.

Wow. I mean, we could go into so many different rabbit holes with all these stories, but I'd love to talk about some of your practices, current practices. So we were talking about recognizing the miracles and by extension, appreciation. What practices do you have in your life to help cultivate that and maintain that perspective? I wouldn't say that I have a discipline. I'm not a practicing Buddhist and I don't really practice any hard and fast disciplines. What I try and do in my life is Joseph Campbell always talked about going into a quiet room for 20 minutes and doing what makes you happy. Um, and what I try and do is schedule. I know things that make me happy. I know being in a jacuzzi makes me happy.

I don't know why, but I get in a jacuzzi. I sort of leave my body. I space travel. I deal with issues that I don't deal with when I'm in my body or, you know, perceived to me to be in it. And that 15 or 20 minutes, I usually say is like a tuning fork. I do that. Cooking, for me, gives me that same head space. and that 15 or 20 minutes, I usually say is like a tuning fork. I do that. Cooking, for me, gives me that same headspace,

so when I get to a point where I'm starting to get confused, I'll go to the kitchen and cook for a half hour, and that sort of brings me back to a place of thankfulness, consciousness, focus. It just brings me back to where I want to be. And I think for me, those are the two that I really use as my foundation when I'm truly lost. I go to those two and I try and, but I think, you know, I, I think, um, if you're lucky in life, you find, you find those things that, that, that get you back to what's important because there's so much fool's gold. There's so much noise that to really stay focused

on what's important and what makes you happy and, and what is compassionate is difficult. And I think needs constant retuning. What, what have you noticed? I mean, you mentioned the dangers of fame and how a lot of these celebrities just become moths who are consumed by the flame, so to speak. What separates the people who get killed by fame versus the people who do not? Well, I think the one thing I always say fame, and I realize that I need to put a qualifier on, which I didn't do in the movie or really in the book. I need to qualify it by saying that the fame that I've dealt with for most of my life was fame attained by people who were in front of large audiences in real time. So 90% of my artists who achieved fame had a live people applauding in mass amounts, as opposed to film stars, as opposed to authors, as opposed to people who got fame in other ways.

So mine is fairly slanted. And I think, so for me, my, until I really wrote the book and started to think about these things, my, my saying those words was because the people in front of me were normally trying to be headliners in stadiums. And for that subgroup of people, I think rejection is so gigantic to get to a place of success that there's normally something driving them some hole somewhere in their life something that they need filled maybe it's love from other people maybe it's so i don't know in each person it's different um maybe that they don't have a personality so that's their personality but when you get to filling a 30,000 seat hall for the most

part whatever that hole was doesn't get filled and that's when the real problems begin and that's what you see in artists when they're selling 300 and 400 seat halls they're fine they may have it drunk but when they're headlining stadiums

now they go to rehab. It's part of the tour. 65 days, then we'll go to rehab. I think my view of it is very slanted. I think there's so many common things about it.

My first glint of fame was they were playing the movie at the Tribeca Film Festival and Michael Douglas was doing a talk with me. And I was walking to it. Walking for me is one of the things like the jacuzzi or the cooking. When I'm walking, I don't put headphones in. I sort of space travel and deal with issues. I'll deal with a topic that's been on my brain.

And I love that. That's what I love about walking. I walk five miles a day here. I walk in New York a lot. Um, and it's quiet time because I'm not famous. So nobody stops me. Nobody cares. So I'm taking my walk and the very nice lady said she worked at cnn they had just screened the movie did i have a few minutes to talk to her i stopped for a minute she explained that she had been trying to get into management and production she had had problems as a child at home she wanted me to talk to her about how i overcame those insecurities of youngness to become who I am. And my instinct would be to be thankful to be able to help him. Those are the moments you want in life where you can, you know, help somebody who needs help. And, um, but I couldn't,

I had to get to be at, at, at the theater. And as I was walking, I started and I explained to him, really sorry, I gave him my email. As I was walking, I started thinking about someone like Michael, who I've walked with a million times. He gets stopped by every single person. Wants a picture, wants to tell him a story about how he met his father, wants all great stuff. But you completely lose your own path in life.

You're now on someone else's path. I'm sure it happens to you many times. And it's weird. That's a weird thing to cope with. Yeah. It's really, I don't know if you've experienced this that time, but it's really sad and frustrating also because the person who you told you had to leave to go to this meeting may or may not have even believed you, right? Correct. Oh, no, I realized, no, you know, I like to think of myself as a Johnny Appleseed of joy. And so anyway, my question to Michael when I got there was, I said, before you ask me a question, I got to ask you a question.

I said, I just, the last 30 minutes of my walk, I got stopped by this girl. And for the last 30 minutes of my walk, I got stopped by this girl. And for the last 30 minutes of my walk, all I thought about was how horrible it is that I couldn't give her what she needed. It was so simple. And was she angry? Was she not angry? Would she ever contact me? And Michael, what goes through your, said, I'm the guy who's put up his arm for 30 years to keep people from you. What goes through your brain when there's a guy in a wheelchair? And we walk by him and you know he wants to stop you for a second?

It's important to him. And we're just walking by him. And you've been doing this your whole life. What does that affect? And he said, you know, it's horrible, but you get numb to it. He said, I hate to admit it. I hate that it happens to me. But you realize that

you only have 24 hours in a day to get through life. And you have to make some choices. And it's horrible because it takes an age of who I'd like to think I am. So those kind of things build up. You know, that's just one little part fame, where if you're a conscious, good person, all of a sudden you start hating yourself for what you have to do all the time. And I don't know if this is maybe completely unrelated, but I heard from a mutual friend that someone came to your house recently, wanted to share a record, but that you didn't have any type of music system and haven't had a music system for 20 plus years. Is that true? And if so, why is that? Rick Rubin came. I have no idea why, except that I almost feel cheated if I don't hear the ocean.

The rhythm of this ocean, like I'm hearing it now, is just so beautiful. And so the rhythm of life, and I feel so blessed to be on it and hear it, that I almost, it almost felt like an intrusion so many times. So Rick Rubin came, and I think I mentioned it before, we had a nice lunch, we talked, and then he wanted to play me something. I said, I listen to my car. I don't really have stuff to listen to here, So he outfitted my house with Sonos, which I must say I am really happy I have because I use

it a lot. And I do realize that music was sort of missing in my life. And it really has tightened my life here. What type of music do you currently listen to the most? I would say 90% of the time I listen to Teddy Pendergrass radio on Pandora. No kidding. I'll have to do that. I listen to Pandora on my Sonos every day while I'm writing. So I'll see how Teddy treats me. It really makes me feel good. I love Teddy. It just makes me feel good. It makes me smile every time his voice comes on. Plus, I love his music. I'm going to ask just a couple of short questions. The answers don't need to be short, but these are some of the questions that I love asking

everybody that I have on the show. You can certainly punt if one doesn't provoke anything in you. What book or books, besides your own, have you gifted most to other people? Joseph Campbell, many, many years ago. A couple of the Dalai Lama books. Most recently, Norman Lear's book. Is it a biography of Norman Lear? It's a biography. It is just the most brilliant thing I've read. Keith Richards' book,

I gave away a bunch of those because I thought it was, his voice was so pure. Yeah, I've heard tremendous things about that as well. I haven't read it yet myself. I've said it to a lot of artists, friends of mine, saying if you're ever going to write a book,

you want your voice to sound, to be as clear as his voice was, it was him. And Questlove's cookbook. Questlove, that's right. What is it called? Innovative Cooking. Innovative Cooking.

He is the nicest guy. He was just here for a week. Oh, is that right? Yeah, we had a really nice time. He was another one who reached out, saw the documentary, and said, I really would love to speak to you for a while. He threw a little dinner party for me in LA.

And then he came out here for a week, which was really nice. He's an extremely nice guy. I met him years ago. And believe it or not, at one point at least, and he's spoken about this, lost, I think it was 50 to 70 pounds following the slow carb diet in my second book. I think he mentioned that to me, actually. Oh, no kidding. Yeah. He told me he did the slow carb diet. Yeah. He's such a sweetheart of a guy. He's a real artist. I don't meet that many pure artists anymore because I'm not living in that world.

But everything he touches, I went to see, he was doing a DJ thing. I had never been to a DJ show and he did one here and it was brilliant. But the cookbook is brilliant. It's completely different than anything you've ever read. Great cover too. Yeah, great cover. If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere, what would it say? Help. You know, if I had it today, if I had a gigantic billboard, I would,

would be completely different to probably any other time in life. And I don't want to talk politics, but I think everyone has an obligation to try and highlight how filthy this has all become and how disastrous and how long. So I think, although I normally would say I would use it for something completely different, like climate change, or right now I'm just really scared to see the direction of our country. A country

that I love that's given everybody such great opportunity. Do you have a quote or any quotes that you live your life by or think of often? Yeah, not really. I think in my professional capacity, get the money. I definitely have to force myself to think of that.

But not really. I'm very lucky. I'm really thankful. I live a very simple life at its core. So no, I don't really, there's no real, every second of my life is just, I'm really blessed. I'm lucky. Who are, I'm just arbitrarily pulling out a number here, but three people or sources that you've

learned a lot from or followed closely in the last year or so. Let's come back to that one. We'll come back to that one. What is the best or most worthwhile investment you've made? And by investment, it could be money, time, energy. For instance, there's a woman named Amelia Boone. She's one of the world's top endurance athletes who is on this podcast. And for her, it was paying her first $450, which was a financial stretch at the time to enter a competition called World's Toughest Mudder, which she ended up winning. And it created this whole path for her in life that she never would have anticipated. Does any particular investment of money, time, or energy?

My investment of money, time, and energy was for the four children I raised. To see the effect it can have on a human's life. And that I could be helpful on it. Just amazing. And all of your children are adopted? Yeah, I never quite, you know, I never adopted them. It was, they were a family from Newark, three sisters and a brother. And in the days when their mother died,

it was a huge safety net for children without parents. The government provided huge benefits. And although we didn't partake of any of the benefits, I never really, I'm not an accumulator. So I could have been broke at any time. I lived by making money, but I wasn't an accumulator. And I didn't want the responsibility on my head of, once I adopted them, they lost the entire safety net.

Oh, I see. Just the change in legal status. Change in legal status, change everything. The consequences to me were that they couldn't be a tax deduction. I see. Now, by accumulator, does that mean that you historically or even still currently don't save? I save, but I'm not a billionaire i'm not a i i don't i'm not a billionaire right well most most people aren't i mean you know i i'm at a point now in my life where i can maintain my lifestyle um i feel confident for the rest of my life i can maintain my lifestyle probably more than my lifestyle but in 1970 19 whatever year was it i thought 1992

i think we got together uh when i was 26 years ago whatever that is um i didn't know if i i didn't know that i would be able to keep my lifestyle it was only dependent on being successful right and i just didn't want that on my head. It was easier for me to pay the taxes on the money. And that was really the only dividing line. What advice would you give to, I have at least three friends who have brand new infants right now or are going to have their first kids in the next several months, what advice would you give to them as first-time parents? Spend time with them. Provide them with all the tools they need, as little TV as possible.

And lots of love, just love and compassion. And if they see the miracle in that kid every time they look at it, they will never get annoyed at them crying or screaming or pissing on the floor. It'll all become a miracle and beautiful. And that's what it should be. I remembered, yeah, I mean, it seems like something that might be easy for people to gloss over with the spending of time. But it's something that was emphasized to me also by Seth Godin, who's an author among other things. And he said, in effect, I'm paraphrasing here, but he said to me that your kids are getting homeschooled from 3 p.m. to say 10 p.m. no matter what. And it's up

to you to choose whether it's by watching TV, they're getting homeschooled or by interacting with them. He has conversations with them over dinner a lot of the time. That's one of his rituals because it offers sort of a very informal, semi-distracted environment in which they can tell him the truth without having a serious feel to it, if that makes any sense. No, no, no. I think the thing to remember is that they only have one path. So if you make a path for them that's compassionate and reasonable and makes sense, that's the only path they know. If you give them a path of neglecting them and letting TVs teach them everything, they're going to live in an alienated world. So I promised I would, so I'm going to come back to, but we can skip this one if need be,

the people or sources you've learned from, learned a lot from. And you know what? You mentioned mentors earlier. This could be way back in the day. It doesn't have to be recent. I think some of the most significant people in my life, for sure, Roger Verger, who was a great French chef, considered maybe the godfather of all the chefs. And for people who want to look him up, how do you spell his last name? B-E-R-G-E. Mm-hmm.

Through his kitchen came people like Daniel Boulud, David Boulet, Alan Ducasse, Hubert Keller. Some of the great chefs of our time came through his kitchen. And what he taught me is you can be successful and happy, and you do it through service. And that's a hard concept sometimes to get in your brain. But when I got to spend time with him i could see in some ways how selfish it was because he became so happy making someone else happy and then i had the unbelievable luck and honor of meeting his holiness the dalai lama and cooking for him

on a number of occasions and the same thing it's service makes him so joyful he giggles every second and he lives his life of service for me those were probably my two greatest mentors and then someone like michael douglas has uh always been an amazing inspiration to me. He has the work he does quietly for the UN, for Israel, for anybody who needs him and things that he feels are important. He's been on a anti-nuclear kick for as long as I know, probably 35 years before anybody was talking about it. He's been an ambassador for the UN. He never says no to helping people. And he has a fun, lives his life, creative. He's productive. Doesn't take security with him. Lives his life.

And is of service. I'm doing a benefit in New York in September for Chef Roger with the CIA and 12 great chefs. And Michael's coming and talking

just because I asked him to. And there was a time when I was trying to make the chefs famous. I wanted guilt by association to the chefs. So I asked him if he would host dinners with all the famous people in L.A. who would come if he invited them

with my chefs, with Mr. Berger. And we had these dinners where Michael would present Berger and in we had these dinners where Michael would, you know, present Berger in the room would be Stallone, Nicholson, Danny DeVito, Anthony Quinn,

you know, and guilt by association work. As you could tell, they are celebrity chefs now. So I think he's been a big inspiration. I've been very lucky to have a lot of people. And yeah, I mean,

you've passed that on also. I mean, if you just look at the culinary world as one example, I mean, you, and for people who want to check it out, I mean, you gave a great, I think it was a commencement speech at the CIA, which I should probably explain for people is not the Central Intelligence Agency. It's the Culinary Institute of America. And you mentioned that before the celebrity chef phenomenon in a way sort of paved the highway, I think, as you put it, the people at the top of their game, I mean, these are the A-rods or the Derek Jeters of their sport, so to speak, in the world of chefs were making like a hundred grand a year. And now you can come out of culinary school and some people will get entry level or I should say first jobs that are a hundred thousand dollars. So it's really opened up a world of opportunity for those people as well. And a world of caution, as I said in the CIA speech, if their only focus is making meals that people pay $100 a piece for, they're in for a big

crash, them and the culinary arts. They have to start feeding. I said in, you know, I told the kids, you're going to graduate, you're going to get a job for a hundred and a quarter, you're going to be in a restaurant that is $400 meals, and you're going to walk outside the restaurant, look to the left and look to the right, and there's going to be in a restaurant that's 400 meals and you're going to walk outside the restaurant look to the left and look to the right and there's going to be homeless hungry people

and if you think your only job is feeding those diners you are in for a really rough life yeah definitely and i want to give credit to somebody you mentioned earlier uh in fact uh roy choi so he and a friend of mine named Steve Jang, who's involved, and also Daniel Patterson, who has quite a few restaurants, one of which Alta SF I'm involved with in San Francisco. Great guys. And they have started, I believe there are at least two locations now, a low-cost healthy food local, L-O-K-O-L.

And I went to their first location opening in Los Angeles. And so he's doing really good work, I think, in trying to give it back. He's the real deal, right? He is. There's a fellow from England, Jamie Oliver, who really, in my opinion, was the first really conscious chef out of this celebrity chef movement. I think they're all, I don't mean to say that any of the other ones aren't conscious. He was a fellow who understood that it was important for him to use his fame to not only do a hundred dollar meals. And Roy Choi has picked up the gauntlet here. I got very lucky to know him well,

and he is the real deal, boy. He really gets it. I mean, he wants to make money. He wants to send his kids to college. He wants to do all the things that we all want to do for our families. I'm sure he wants to be famous like everybody else, but he completely understands that we all have to travel together.

This is not a one-person journey. Yeah, definitely. He did a hell of a job training Jon Favreau for Chef as well. Yeah, I was on that shoot a lot. It was a really fun shoot. I went to it a lot. So just a couple of last questions. And hearing the sound of the waves is making me want to get outside and go for a long walk.

Oh, yeah. I can definitely hear it. It's making me want to chase daylight to go for a hike with my dog. It's beautiful, isn't it? There is that rhythm that exists all over the planet, whether it's the breeze coming through the trees or the sound of the waves or the snow, the ice melting or those sounds that just, you sort of know you're home. It's meditative, very meditative. So one question I have to ask is for all the people out there who may one day end up cooking for the Dalai Lama,

should you have yak milk tea on the menu? Maybe you could provide some, if you have any experience. Yes, I do. So I was really fortunate. He was coming to Hawaii and they accepted my offer to cook for him. And again, I'm not a practicing Buddhist, and I didn't know a lot about His Holiness. And I did some research, and I assumed he was vegetarian. I couldn't get anybody. Tibetan people are so beautiful and so gentle. When you ask them, what should I make for His Holiness, they would never. It's so aggressive for them to tell you what to make. All they would say is, oh, he would love anything you make.

They're completely of service. So I couldn't really find out. But in the research, it said that the only real staple in Tibet is yak. Yak is a cross, I think, between like a goat and a cow. And they live high in the mountains. There's no vegetables really there. So everything's made from yak. Yak is a cross, I think, between a goat and a cow. And they live high in the mountains. There's no vegetables really there. So everything's made from yak. It's yak stew, yak milk,

yak butter, yak cheese. And the most popular thing is yak tea. So I have a friend who does tours of Tibet, a wonderful guy named Kenny Ballard. And I asked him if he could get me some yak butter to make yak tea so that i could have yak tea for his holiness for his first breakfast thinking i was

oh my god how cool is this i'm so cool and i get the yak butter and it's the smelliest thing you've ever smelled was in a jar i still smelled up my my whole house. It was so smelly. But I had it. And I get there. The only requirement for cooking for him. They asked me no questions. They didn't ask me if I could cook. All they said was, you can't have expectations.

If you have an expectation that you're going to meet his holiness, then you shouldn't cook for him. So we got, I went to my crew, we got all those expectations out of our brain. You have to assume you're not going to meet him. We're going to cook the meal. Someone's going to deliver it to him. You're doing this for service, not for a photo op. And the first morning they asked me to bring him his meal. Now I'm completely shocked because I assume I'm not even meeting him and it's five o'clock in the morning and one of the things on the tray is the acti so i put it they have you cover your mouth to feed his holiness i cover my mouth and i go up the steps into his room and i walk in and he's uh in his robe with top down so his chest was buried he's brushing his teeth looking in the mirror and gets a big smile looks oh hello big smile hello your holiness i'm so nervous i can hardly i can

hardly speak i tend to get nervous in front of uh power figures particularly at that point in my life now i've sort of adjusted but that was almost overwhelming i just didn't want to faint and he takes a whiff or two and he goes oh yak tea and i said i got so proud it's like oh my god chef you pulled this off it's so amazing it was worth all the effort all the smell you are the coolest guy in the world. And I hear him say, I've been telling myself this, his second line is, oh, that's why I leave to bed. It smells so bad.

That was the end of the act scene. It was a great leveler. Oh, man. Well, we could go on for days and I don't want to keep you for days, but I want people to hear your stories and to learn from you. What is the title of the book? Where can people find it? What would you suggest people do who want to learn more?

It's called The Backstage Pass. I have to look up the title. And I can, I can certainly link to it also in the show notes. So for people who just want the convenience, it's, it's a, here's the name.

They call me super mench, a backstage pass to the amazing worlds of film, food, and rock and roll. Super. And it's, it's going to be ordered through Amazon or through any of those services. It's published by Anthony Bourdain through Echo.

I'm really proud to have Anthony as the publisher. And I hope everybody enjoys it. And for those people listening, I will, of course, link to everything in the show notes at 4hourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. And Shep, any last words, any requests of the audience for them to take with them and consider or act on anything else that you'd like to say before we wrap up? This is so out of my wheelhouse, but the only thing i really have to say is please go vote we need everybody to vote their conscience and think about their children and about what kind of world they want to live in then make a choice but but this isn't a critical time we need to vote absolutely here here well shep i hope we do get to meet in person sometime.

Thank you so much, Shep. This has been a blast. On your show, I listen to it. It's amazing. Thank you. Well, I think you're doing important work and we didn't even have a chance to skim the surface, really, of a lot of what you're doing right now. But I will add... Now I will do another show. We'll do another show. Maybe I can have one of those papayas. And thank you so much for the time. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you. Mahalo, as we say in Hawaii. Have a great day. Definitely. And to everyone listening, as always, thank you so much for joining us.

And until next time, pay attention, experiment often, be nice and pay attention to the miracles. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is five bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read

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