Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson (sometimes) - BONUS: Rick Rubin

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

Woody Harrelson is going solo for our first bonus episode as he’s joined by famed music producer and friend Rick Rubin! They recently connected in Italy, where Woody asked Rick about his journey of becoming an artist and the major chapters of his career, including his work with LL Cool J, Beastie Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Johnny Cash.For extra credit, check out Rick interviewing Woody on his own podcast, Tetragrammaton.

All through my life, I've always felt like I don't belong here. I don't belong anywhere. Welcome back to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Woody Harrelson and Ted Danson. Sometimes. You heard me right. For this special bonus episode, Woody is going solo. He recently had the opportunity to speak with his good friend, music producer, Rick Rubin in Italy. I couldn't make it,

but it sounds like they had an amazing time eating pizza and talking about Rick's incredible life and career. Rick is a creative genius, and you'll hear them go really deep on his life and his approach to his art, including his work with LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers,

even Johnny Cash. Here's Woody and his good friend, Rick Rubin. This is my first time to interview someone alone. I'm just honored that you're taking the time to do it. Here we are south of Florence near Siena in Italy in one of the most beautiful, most amazing Shangri-La places I've ever been. So I just was wanting to, you're such a fascinating guy to me. I've known you for many, many years, as long as anyone I think I've known in LA.

I met you in LA. And you've also introduced me to a number of my closest friends to this day. I wasn't really aware of that, but that's good to hear. Well, I first started hanging with Owen through you. You know, when I first met you was in Austin, Texas, and you were there. I came to see World Party, you know, Carl Wallinger. Yeah. And you just happened to be there. It was like one of the first South by Southwest, maybe. Was it that? Yeah, it was an early South by Southwest. Yeah, I've only been one time. That was the only time I was there, but it was early.

I wanted to talk to you because I don't know that much about your childhood. I know you grew up in Long Island, right? And tell me what that was like as a kid in this very, very small town in Long Island. Yeah, it's a little beach town. It's an island off of the southern part of Long Island. So there were three little islands. There was Long Beach, which is the town that I came from, and then Jones Beach, which was more like a place where people would come to go to the beach.

I don't think people lived in Jones Beach. I don't think there are any houses. And then the next little island was Fire Island. In Fire Island, you had to take a boat to get to. Both Jones Beach and Long Beach had bridges you could get to. And in the scene in The Godfather where there's the murder at the toll booth, that toll booth was the toll booth to get to Long Beach. Oh, really?

Yeah. Oh, where Sonny gets, oh, that is, yeah. That was like where I grew up. We went through that toll booth every day. Oh, my God. So when you saw The Godfather, that must have been wild. Very familiar. Yeah, yeah.

It was a beautiful little beach town. It was six blocks between the ocean to the bay. So you just walk six blocks and you're at the bay. You walk six blocks the opposite way and you're at the ocean. And then it was just a long strip of land and it had a boardwalk. And I would bike on the boardwalk, which was really beautiful. It was a really beautiful little beach town. Like, I guess people would have gone there in the 1940s and 50s, leaving Manhattan for like a weekend retreat. It was that kind of a place, like a weekend retreat kind of place.

But it's very different now? I've been back since my parents passed away, but I don't know how different it is. I don't know how different it can be, the nature of what it was. Right, there's limited space. Were you an only child? I was an only child. And so tell me about your parents. I know your dad was a shoe salesman.

My dad was a shoe salesman. His dad owned a shoe store, and then when his dad passed, he took over the shoe store. And then at some point in time, when Martin Luther King was killed, there were riots and his store got burned. All the stores got burned in that neighborhood in Brooklyn. And then he became a buyer for small discount stores, like a businessman. I would say a regular working class businessman. How was your relationship with your folks? It was good. My dad was kind of a workaholic, so I didn't see him that much. But when I did see him, it was always good. Neither of my parents drank.

So what you saw was what you got all the time. They were consistent in who they were. They smoked a lot. And I remember waking up in the morning and the house was filled with smoke and I hated that. So I never smoked because of in reaction to their smoking. Right. I got really turned off of the smell of smoke. However, this might change soon.

You never know. I told you the story. I smelled somebody smoking a cigar on a beach, and it smelled really good. And it's the first time smoke ever smelled good to me. It sparked a question mark in my mind of what that could be like. But I mean, it's interesting to me because from the time I first met you, or certainly when I first met you, I think I might have asked you if you had any herb. Because you just seem like the most likely guy by appearance that you're going to have herb

or you're going to be a party animal, but you've never had a drink. You've never had a smoke. You've never done any drugs whatsoever. And this probably helps account for the purity of your vision, your artistic vision. I can remember between my junior and senior year of high school, I did a summer program at Harvard where I studied logic and design. And I wore a motorcycle jacket and I wore sunglasses. Now I was a punk rocker. But everyone at the school came to me to buy drugs. I was like, I don't sell drugs. I don't have drugs.

But everyone assumed I was the drug dealer. Did that kind of amuse you or did it bother you? It's just funny. I suppose it gives you insight into when you see somebody and you make up a story in your head about who they are. Right. That it's all, we all just make up stuff. We have no idea about anyone. Right.

So I think some of those things in real life, you know, I remember one time I was sitting in an office building in the hallway of an office building waiting for an appointment with a therapist. And I was just sitting in the hallway because I was going through a really bad depression and I had nowhere to go. And I was waiting for the doctor's appointment. So I was just sitting in the hallway and I remember security came and escorted me out of the building because of the way I look. And I remember saying, it's like, no, no, I'm supposed to be here. And they say, and they said, we know you don't mean any harm. And they just walked me out of the building. That is so funny. But now, when was that?

Probably around the time that I met you. You know, in the time when I was living in the Hollywood Hills, sometime in that time. And what were you depressed about? When I turned 33, I went through this crazy depression. It was the first time I ever dealt with it. Was it like, hey, Jesus did so much by this age, why? It wasn't anything I understood.

But it is the year they got Jesus. I went on a trip, my very first trip to Hawaii with my then girlfriend. We were staying at this resort in Maui. And I had a phone call with someone who told me something insignificant, but what I heard and what was said were two different things. In a sense, it was like a challenging phone call because I was an only child and because my parents raised me with this sort of wild amount of love and very little questioning. And then I started making music and got successful really fast. Even before I knew that it was a job, it became successful.

So rarely was I questioned. I just, people liked the things I made and was kind of given carte blanche. And then at 33, I got this first call where somebody was questioning me. And on the call, it was fine. I didn't think about it. But then that night, I couldn't sleep. And then I started feeling like I couldn't breathe

and basically had a panic attack. I didn't know what a panic attack was, but it felt like I was dying. I was in that state for about two years, very, very depressed. even when the situation got resolved it's somehow like it was like a balloon that got punctured because up until then i felt no doubt yeah just zero like everything confidence to a fault because there was nothing that ever and when i say confidence to a fault not like i was nothing that ever impinged that.

And when I say confidence to a fault, not like I was right. I never felt like I was right. I never wanted to be right. But that I knew what I wanted to do and I'm going to do what I want to do. That's all. Like I'm confident in my path. But that spiraled you into a two-year depression. Yeah.

Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And only because I had never been challenged in any way, I was basically coddled. I wasn't prepared for any pushback. I had no, I'd never developed any skill set to be able to deal with it. Right, right, right, right. Because I didn't need to. Okay, let me wind back because I was really interested to hear about your Aunt Carol. Yeah, my Aunt Carol was the coolest.

That worked with Estee Lauder in Manhattan. Yeah, she was the coolest. She ran the creative services department for Estee Lauder, which was an unusual thing for a woman to do at that time, to have like kind of a big corporate job. But still, it was in in an artistic you know everyone who worked there worked at a an artist's drawing table and um i loved going there to to like an art department in a big corporate place when you're a kid was just the coolest thing in the world i bet coolest and she was an intellectual and she brought you like plays at Broadway. Yeah, she brought me to Broadway plays.

She brought me to museums, classical music. She would give me jobs to do. It was like a big closet with all of the equipment and all of the cuttings from all of the ads that they did. And she would have me put stuff in books and arrange it. And just fun to like have jobs and feel like I was part of this thing that they did. And she would have me put stuff in books and arrange it. And just fun to like have jobs and feel like I was part of this thing that was going on. And seeing all alike, I guess in those days,

they were called mechanicals or the artwork that ended up becoming the packaging for products. And I don't know, as a kid, all of these things, packaging and logos and the materials used were really interesting to me. I loved them. And do you, that's all part of the creative act. No, I would just really fly on the wall and got to play with the equipment on my own because the equipment was there. So I got to play with the tools of the craft. And did you ever think you might become an artist?

No, I didn't. I just liked it, but I never thought of it. I never thought of any of those things as work because I didn't think of them as real work. Like even though my Aunt Carol had a professional job in that area, I still never thought of it as anything that anybody did. It's odd because I was seeing people do it, but I'd never made that connection. It seemed very foreign. Yeah. You know, kids who I went to school with would all grow up to be surfers because it was a surf community. Some people would do surfing. Some people would become policemen or firemen.

Some people would become doctors. Some people would become lawyers. Those were pretty much, or bus driver. Like, those were kind of the regular jobs that people had. But anything outside of that was never even considered. And what was that like for you in high school and junior high school? Because you're such a unique person. It seems to me like you could never just fly under the radar.

I always felt like I didn't fit in. And all through my life, I always felt like I didn't fit in. All through my life, I've always felt like I don't belong here. I don't belong anywhere. I didn't belong in school. I didn't belong in any of the classes I was in. I didn't belong in... I remember the first time I went to London. This is when probably the first year of college. In those days, you had to fill out a form if you were traveling internationally to enlist your next of kin. And I wrote none. And I meant none. I was honest, even though I had two healthy parents, loving parents who I loved and they loved me. But the honest answer to the question was none. That's interesting, that feeling like an outsider.

But you started meditating when you were 14. And what was the circumstances? My neck hurt when I was in sixth grade. And I went to see the doctor who delivered me, Dr. Pizzicano, who was kind of a hip doctor. He looked like a beatnik. He had a goatee and listened to jazz music, and he said, the reason your neck hurts is because of stress, and you need to learn to meditate. So in the 70s, and my parents could have said, that's crazy, we'll go to another doctor. But they said, okay. So then I went to a woman's house who taught transcendental meditation

and I remember the block that it was on and it was across from where I went to maybe third grade, this little house and I walked in and there was no furniture in the house. It was an empty house. And she walked me into this room, I guess you'd call it a front room, and closed the door. And in that room, there were two chairs, two wooden chairs, like dining room chairs. One was painted red and one was wood. And I just remember I'd never been in a room with nothing in it before with just what was needed and I remember in that moment thinking I really like this like this is a good experience it was

unusual but it wasn't unusual negative it was unusual positive It's really nice not having all of the stuff that you see in every house you go into. It felt good. And then we sat and we meditated. And she taught me and I went back several times, whatever the schedule was to learn. And then I started doing it every morning. I would sit on the floor leaning on my bed. Sometimes I would light incense in the room and I kept up that practice until I went to college.

And then when I started college, I stopped because I had roommates and I don't know. I just felt- It'd be like sleeping with your teddy bear. Maybe. It'd be awkward to be- Maybe. Noticed doing it.

I'm not sure why. So I stopped. And then when I moved to California, which was just a couple of years after graduating, I decided to start again. And eventually I felt ready. And immediately in the first five minutes, I felt like, oh, oh, I know this.

Like, I know this and I know this is a big part of my life. And even though I haven't been doing it for six years, I am who I am because of this. Had I not stopped, I would have never known that. So you started really early in this. You became a punk rocker when there weren't very many punk rockers, right? It was during the first wave of American hardcore punk. So the bands that I saw, the bands that were playing at the time were the Bad Brains,

the Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat, Black Flag. And was it the Ramones, though, that got you psyched? The Ramones were the king of everything. But I'd seen the Ramones even before. Because the Ramones were really the first punk rock band. The Ramones were before the Sex Pistols and The Clash. And I went to see the Ramones all the time. But then the wave that I felt more part of, the people that were my age, were the people in that next wave of punk rock, where the Ramones happened, then Sex,

Racism, and the Clash happened, and then this American hardcore scene happened. Like the Dead Kennedys and the Black Flag and such. But tell me about that first concert. Was the first concert you went to, were Ramones, your first punk? First punk concert I saw was the Cramps at Irving Plaza. And what was that like? Coolest show I've ever seen in my life.

Unbelievable. Were you seeing people bumping into, like, I always think, it was slam dancing, but it was, yes yes but it wasn't about that it was really just about the the energy of the music and the personality of the of the people the energy that came off the stage was really palpable and i loved it and before that i listened mostly to i would say hard rock music like aererosmith and Ted Nugent and ACDC.

Really? Yeah, and then it shifted into, because punk felt even more, had even more energy than the hard rock that I listened to. A little more in your face. Yeah. And then, so that must have worked kind of in two directions where people were like, oh, what's this punk rocker kid? And also, you end up developing friendships because other people were punk rockers. So in other words, you started to feel like you belonged in a sense, or did you? A little bit.

I still felt like an outsider, but I felt like here are other outsiders. I still didn't feel like I was in the group. I didn't feel like I was part of that group. But I related in that none of us belonged. I had that feeling of us belonged. Oh, right, right. I had that feeling of connection. Okay. Some of the things in life are worth bragging about. Like when you finally cut ties with big wireless and switch to consumer cellular.

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compared to T-Mobile and Verizon's lowest-cost single-line post-paid unlimited talk, text, and ten gigabyte data plans with unlimited talk and text compared to T-Mobile and Verizon's lowest cost single line postpaid unlimited talk, text, and data plans. January 2024. What year was it you started Def Jam? You were senior in high school? No, Def Jam started once I was in college. Oh, you were in college. Yeah. Right.

That's what I had thought. And then I read another thing saying you started it your senior year. I said, okay, great. So you were in college, but what year were you in college when that started? I think I was in college 81 to 85, if I remember correctly. I know you shifted into hip hop. Yeah. You started loving hip hop.

I felt they were really close. I felt like punk rock and hip hop were both the current music of the street. They were both high energy, charged, aggressive music. Neither of them involved going to Juilliard or being a virtuoso. They were music made by people in the street, both, and the same age. And the same, the kids would be in the same classroom, the classroom I would be in. Right. So it felt more like our music because it was the music of the time, even though stylistically they were different,

they were really coming from the same place. What was the path toward doing It's Yours? Because It's Yours was like your first big thing. You had the band yourself that you were in. I had a punk rock band called Hose, H-O-S-E. Hose, right. And we made a seven-inch single and a 12-inch EP, and it was noisy punk rock. That's how I would describe it.

That's an interesting description. Noisy punk rock. It wasn't fast. It was more noisy than fast. Most punk wasn't fast. It was more noisy than fast. Most punk rock was fast. This was more noisy. You played bass? I played guitar.

You played guitar? Yeah. I mean, when I say I played guitar, rudimentary guitar. And it was a noisy band, so I could make noise on the guitar. How'd you feel about it, though, getting up on stage? It was fun. I just don't see you getting up on stage. It wasn't, it didn't feel like it was me.

It felt like it was a performance. Right. So tell me how you got to It's Yours. Yeah. Started going to a nightclub called Negril, which was a reggae club that once a week had hip hop music. At this time, you could not hear hip hop music. Couldn't hear it on the radio. There were very, very few records, no albums. Maybe 12-inch singles for DJs might come out once a month, maybe.

That's how much hip hop music there was. And most of the parties where you'd hear hip hop were in places where I wouldn't even know what was happening, which would be like in the projects at a party in the park at the projects, not promoted or announced. If you lived in the projects and you heard the sound system, you'd come out. That was the degree. So I had no connection to it then until Negril started doing these nights. And I would go to Negril every Tuesday night and just listen to the music and loved the energy of the club. And because these hip hop records would come out every month or so, I would buy the new one that would come out every month and I would listen to it and I would come out every month or so. I would buy the new one that would come out every month, and I would listen to it, and I would be disappointed every single time

because none of them sounded like what I heard in the club. The energy in the club was so alive and so kinetic and raw and punk rock in its way. I loved it. Yeah. And because I was not an experienced record maker, I didn't technically know what I was doing. That really worked to my advantage because here's this new form of music that the people who were professionals who tried to make records of that music made them using

professional methods of the past that were designed for other kinds of music and all of those watered down what it was and made it less what was new and exciting about it so the only reason i started making the records was really out of wanting to have them myself. It was like a, like a documentarian documenting something so that I would have the thing to listen to that sounded like the reason I was going to the club. But how did it come about? You met Jay. So I went to Negril and spoke to one of the DJs.

My favorite of the DJ's names was Jazzy Jay. Jazzy Jay. And I met jazzy jay and we became friends and i remember he had a car with a big sound system in it which in those days nobody had that was a new thing he had me bring my long island car to the bronx and he helped me install a sound system, what would be considered later a booming system. Right. So I had a crazy booming car system before there was really,

that maybe some people in the Bronx had, but nobody else had. Right. You had to be insane. It was, you know, we bought, you'd buy real components for PA systems and install them into the car.

Like there was no market for this equipment yet. No one was making what became powerful car systems. Didn't exist. So it was sort of like made with bits and pieces of things you could get. I can really picture you with that. It was so much fun.

That's so cool. It was so interesting. So, but with It's Yours, you heard him play that in the club and you were like... No, no, no. No, there was no song. I just liked him as a DJ. Uh-huh. And I said to him,

let's make a record. And I said, there's another piece because there was a rapper named Special K. Right. So Special K was... My favorite rap group

was called The Treacherous Three. Special K was a member of the rap group. From the very beginning, the way it happened was Treacherous Three were my favorite group. They had made a couple of the rap group. From the very beginning, the way it happened was, Treacherous 3 were my favorite group. They had made a couple of records that I really liked on the Enjoy label. And then they got signed to Sugar Hill Records, and then they made new records, and they weren't as good as the ones on Enjoy. Now, I'm a super fan. And I meet Pumo D,

who's the lead rapper in the Treacherous 3. I meet him. I summoned him to a meeting at the dorm room. And he comes from Long Island. He lives on Long Island. He's going to college in Long Island, but he comes to the dorm room. But to me, he's a superstar. He's Kool Moe D of The Treacherous Three, my favorite rap group.

But he comes. Yeah, yeah. And he comes and I say, I love these records you made. And I named the ones that were on Enjoy. And this new record, it doesn't do what the early ones did. Let's make one together. And he said, I can't do that.

He's like, we're signing Sugar Hill. I had no idea what he was talking about. I didn't know there was any, I didn't know anything about the music business, about contracts, about anything. I just thought, like in a punk rock band, if you want to make music with someone, you ask them if you want to make music together, and you make music. So I said, do you want to make a, let's make a record together. And he said, I can't, I'm signed to Sugar Hill. I can only make music with them. And he said, but talk to Special K, who's another guy in the Treacherous Three. Special K has a brother who's really good, Tila Rock.

So I met Special K. He connected me with Tila Rock. And then Tila Rock wrote the rhymes for It's Yours. I programmed the beat. I probably programmed the beat before I met him, just because I programmed a lot of beats. That was one of the things was one of the ways that the earliest forms of rap were rooted in drum machine beats. There was no sampling yet. There were no samplers. There was no such thing. So there was drum machines and there was DJing,

but that's all there was. Other than that, it'd be regular instruments. But if it was regular instruments, then it just sounded like an R&B record. It wasn't a hip-hop record. Really. Those were the rap records that came before sounded like R&B records or club records with somebody rapping on them.

But if you went to... But when you first heard like, I don't mean to brag, I don't mean to boast... That't mean to that was a that was a band that was played by a band and if instead of rapping if somebody was singing it would sound like any other song you'd hear in the night ah would you would you add an instinctive thing of how can we make this sound well Well, I experienced it at the club. It wasn't how can we do it. It's like at the club, you didn't see a band playing.

You saw a DJ cutting breakbeats. So playing little snippets of records in a really angular, aggressive way. Not musical. It was not musical. It was very rhythmic and not musical. And I loved it. So that was sort of the marching order. It's like, there's this very rhythmic, non-musical music. And I want to make that. It's being made already, but that's why i'm a you know a producer it's like i see this thing happening now how do we document that so other people can hear it

that's kind of what the producer does is formulate this thing that may already be out in the world but you can't get it so you put together it's yours with those lyrics and Jazzy J. T-La Rock did the lyrics over the beat that I'd programmed. And then Jazzy J came and scratched on the record, which was an essential piece of the music of hip hop was the scratching. And if you listen to the Sugar Hill Gang record that you mentioned, there's no scratching on that. It's a band playing and guys rapping.

Right. But that's because it was made by people who knew how to make records. Right, right, right. In the old way. Yeah. And now in this new world, it's about the drum machine,

the scratching, and it's supposed to sound glitchy or raw, not polished. Something of the imperfection is what makes it great. Absolutely. Absolutely. It was real. You could feel it was real. And this already kind of started your style, which is you have kind of this pared down, like, what would you call it? Like, you know, like... I'd say minimal or essential.

The essential. Yeah. Like, so you're the opposite of Phil Spector, who's a wall of sound type of producer. You like the... The least amount of information to get the point across. Right. So do you like the Beatles records where they take out all the... The least amount of information to get the point across.

Right. So do you like the Beatles records where they take out all the... Beatles are my favorite. Right. But I'm saying when they take out all this George Martin added stuff, do you like that pared down version? No. I like the Beatles.

The Beatles are perfect. The Beatles are the Bible. Yeah. That's it. The Beatles are perfection. Right. perfect the beetles are the bible yeah that's it the beetles are perfection right but they are pared down in the sense of like you can hear every instrument like everything is it's not like these huge freaking uh anyway yeah i agree with you about their being they would be absolute apex it never i don't know how anyone could ever approach it.

I think it's just, that's the measuring stick and then forevermore, that'll be the case. Yeah, forever. Yeah. Tell me about when you met Russell Simmons.

Mm-mm. I said, maybe it's yours. And it came out and it got, over time, it ended up becoming successful. When I say successful, a successful rap record means the three places in New York that would

ever play a rap record might play it. And some DJs would buy the 12-inch. So in those days, if you sold 5,000 12-inches, that would have been a successful rap record so it's a tiny pool now there were some things that had broken out like the sugar hill gang like even run dmc had broken out by that time right and they they became like the first superstars run dmc were the first superstars of rap right but. But it still started very small. And that was just happening then. It was like that was right in that moment of where rap first started breaking through in any way.

And there was a party. There was a TV show called Graffiti Rock. And the Treacherous Three, who were my favorite group, group and run dmc who were my new favorite group were on this tv show and they had a party in a loft in the in the 20s in new york in the 20 streets i can't remember what street maybe 21st street right and i went to this party because it was a rap related thing and i was excited to just in any way to be part of it. So I went to this party. You're like 19, 20. Something like that. And I met this guy, Russell, who I didn't know who he was. I didn't know him

at that time. And he met me and someone introduced us and said, you know, Rick made it's yours. And he looked at me and he's like, you made it? It's like, can't be, can't be. He said, it's yours is the blackest record I've ever heard in my life. And this time there are no white people involved in hip hop at all. Right, right. So his mind was blown. And then I came to learn he was Run's brother

and he represented Run DMC and he represented most of the artists in hip hop. He was a very big fish in this tiny little pond of hip hop. And then I started going to his office to just be, it was like hip hop central, his office. Started going there and hanging out. Because It's Yours was successful and it was on the Def Jam,

I had the Def Jam logo already and the address on the record was 5 University Place, which was my dorm room at NYU. And the phone number was the phone number of my room in the dorm. I started getting demo tapes being sent to the dorm because people liked It's Yours. So it was people perceived it as actually a record company. And Adam Horowitz from the Beastie Boys was living with me in the room that summer. And he would go through all the demo tapes and listen to them. And he heard a tape that said, Ladies Love Cool J. And he played it for me. And we loved it. But he was the one who picked it out of the pile. And it's like, you got to hear this and we listened to it and then i

called ll and asked him to come meet and he came and he was 16 at the time and he came to the dorm room yeah and then we made our first record which was called i need a beat i programmed the drums and i looked at his lyric book and the way he wrote lyrics were, he didn't write them like songs. He wrote them like monologues, like just pages and pages of words that rhyme all on topic that just kept going. And because I grew up on the Beatles, I grew up with song structure.

I grew up with verses and choruses or A and B part. And if you listen to a lot of the hip-hop records before death jam they're more like um toasting records where it's not so much of a hook there's more of a a rap story that might go on for six minutes do you know what i'm saying it's just a different format yeah and i would say one of the things that really was different about the Def Jam records, in addition to the raw production, the raw incompetent production, really, was putting the songs into song structure.

Because growing up on the Beatles, that's how I understood that songs worked. That's what was normal to me in a song. So for I Need a Beat, I would look at all of his words and say, okay, maybe this part could be the first verse, and maybe this chunk could be the second verse, and this chunk could be the third verse. And then in between, you can say, I Need a Beat. Oh, you had the concept of I Need a Beat, or he had that? He probably had the concept. I wouldn't have come up with the concept. Right, but just that line, I need a beat. I might have come up with the way it worked as a song, but he wrote all the words. Yeah. So you did that and that really

blew the lid off. That got really popular. So when that came out, he was only 16 or 17? Yeah, with the first single. The first single we put out, we were still an independent label. He was 16. And that was I Need a Beat. I Need a Beat. And then Radio.

That was his first album, and that came out probably... You did that shortly after? Yeah, probably straight through probably every you know every once in a while we'd get together and do another song and then eventually got to the point where we had enough for an album so maybe a year later i'm guessing but how'd you know how to put that out how to get people to listen to it well i didn't know how to get people to listen to it i still don't that that's i don't know that, but I found out how the manufacturing process worked. There was a record store called Nine Nine Records on McDougal Street. They sold mostly

European dance music, like import records. And it was a tiny little store, smaller than the room that we're in, the whole store. The guy who ran it's name was Ed Bauman. In addition to the store, Nine Nine Records, he had a label called Nine Nine Records. And he put out some like a group called the Bush Tetras, a group called ESG, cool downtown New York music, not rap music, but like music you'd hear in a cool, like a dance interior or the cooler dance club, the Mud Club, the cooler nightclubs, you'd hear the records that Ed would make, Nine Nine Records. And I used to hang out in the store because I would always, even before making any records growing up, I would just hang out in record stores. I would hang out in either magic stores because I like magic stores, bookstores because

I like bookstores, or record stores. And I would just spend hours and hours in record stores, listening to what they were playing, talking to the people who worked there. So usually the people who work in record stores in those days were heads. You know, they were like Quentin Tarantino in the video shop. Right. You know, they were people who... The true experts, in a way. Yeah, the real experts.

Yeah. You know, there were people who... The true experts, in a way. Yeah, the real experts. The real fanatics got to the point where they worked in the store, and that's all they did all day. So what, did you just take your record into these stores that you'd already been... No, no, no. So once I met Ed at Nine Nine Records, I said, I want to make a record, can you walk me through the process? Because he had already done it. And then he said, okay. He said, there's a studio in Long Island City and you can record there. And then you can have the labels made at this place in Brooklyn.

And then you can have the jackets printed. There's a place you could do them here, but there's a better quality that you can get from Canada and you could get those there. And once it's recorded, you can master it. And I use this guy named Herb Powers. He could master it. And he just walked me through all the steps to be able to make something. And I did that first with my punk rock band. And I said, you know, if I make 500 copies or 200, whatever the number was, 200 copies

or 500 copies, can I give them to you to distribute whatever the number was, 200 copies or 500 copies. Can I give them to you to distribute in the same way that you do the Nine Nine records? And he's like, sure. So that was how I first started. And then when I made It's Yours, I thought that would be the same pattern. It was the same pattern of making the record but then when it was time to press the record and put it out Jazzy J called me

and he said I just met this guy named Arthur Baker who has this label called Streetwise I think if you come up and play him It's Yours you might be able to put it out through Streetwise and they kind of know how to do that like they

know how to put out rap records which i had never done so i went to meet arthur at streetwise he had a recording studio called shakedown sound i met him at shakedown we became friends still friends to this day and um he's like i'll buy this from you and put it out and he did and they did and then that's the one that ended it's yours ended up becoming popular and then in the wake of that i i meet russell i make the first ll record i play the first ll record for russell and he's like this is a hit and I said well what what would be the smart thing to do with it and he said um well we could give it to Profile and Profile is the label that Run DMC was on and I said I'm with you every day and all you do every day is complain about how Profile

doesn't do anything and they steal from you it's like it's a it's the you're telling me it's the worst experience in your life why would we do that and he's like well you're telling me it's the worst experience in your life. Why would we do that? And he's like, well, you want to put it out and they'll do that. And I said, why don't we just do it ourselves? And he's like, no, I'm going to start my own thing with a major at some point. And I don't really want to do it. I said, well, how about if I'll make the records, I'll do all the work and you could be my partner. He okay let's do that and and the reason i suggested that was i'm a kid in the dorm room he's someone who's in some ways the heart of the rap music business so if we're partners it's already it makes it serious yeah The music was the same. The process was the same.

But if he's connected to it, it's real. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It just seemed right. But then you took like, I need a beat, and then you filtered that the same way you did It's Yours. No, I need a beat. We did that same. No, that was the first truly independent release where I did everything myself. But how did you release it?

Okay, so the making of the records part was the same as everything I learned from Nine-Nine. Yeah. And then I met a guy who worked at Profile in their distribution. And illegally, not illegally, but he wasn't allowed to do it because he was a contracted employee. He gave us advice, like he mentored us and we paid him some money to mentor us. Right.

And he said, okay, these are all the people who you could, like there's a place called MS who distributes in one part of the country and there's CRD. There were like... He hipped you to the various distributors. Yeah, there were like, I can't remember whether it was seven or nine then, but there were these different independent distributors around the country who were doing it since, you know, since the Phil Spector records. That's what they did was independent music.

So we kind of set up a little network of these independent distributors, pressed the records, they ordered them, and they handled each of the territories. And you stayed with that program for a while. For seven 12 inches, which was about a year, 18 months, something like that. And during that, those kind of got popular. And then CBS records, Columbia records, which was part of CBS at that time, came to us and wanted to do a label deal with us. Right. So, and that's when I'm still in college at this time. And that's sort of when you could say it became professional because the major label.

Right. Although it was professional before. But I think I remember you saying they gave you like $600,000 or something inconceivable. Something inconceivable. So tell me about that. Yeah. They signed us for a lot of money to be in business with us. It ended up being a great deal for them because they made a fortune and we made very

little, but that's the carrot in these relationships is they give you money up front, but you don't realize that what you're giving away in exchange for that money. But we didn't know. It was fine. Got to do what we wanted to do and have this success. So then the first album we put out was LL Cool J's first album, and that came out through Def Jam Columbia, first one. Right. And that just went huge. Very successful. Number one.

I don't know if it was number one. Was that the first number one? I don't remember. It may have been. Very successful. Number one. I don't know if it was number one. Was that the first number one? I don't remember. It may have been. Hip-hop. But I know at some point you did Walk This Way and that really brought with Thrundy and that

really brought hip-hop into the mainstream. It did. Yeah. I can't say I did it with the idea of it being successful in mind but i did it with the idea of explaining something which was we we were having success making this music i have already said at the time it was largely unmusical but very rhythmic and in our success i started meeting people in the real record business, you know, the people in the big companies, and they all, they saw our success

and wanted to meet with us. So I started meeting all these people at these big companies who wanted to do anything we wanted to do. And I remember one of them saying, this is someone who's basically wooing me to come work with him. What do you attribute the success to considering it's not music? This is someone who likes us. That's how much of a disconnect there was. People didn't hear it as music. Knowing this, knowing that to the uninitiated, they hear it not as music. We had recorded the whole Rundium C album

without Walk This Way. And I felt like we need one more thing. We need one more thing. And that thought was in my mind that people don't see this as music. And I wanted to figure out how can we explain, how can we make a song

that would explain to people what this is? And And I wanted to figure out how can we explain, how can we make a song that would explain to people what this is? And I thought, okay, if I could find a song from the past, that's already familiar. And if we perform it as a rap song, but even in performing it as a rap song, you can hear it's exactly the same as the original, then people would understand it's music. Not only is it music, it's just like the music they've been listening to. That was the idea. And I started looking for songs to do that with. And the best song I could think of was Walk This Way. It all has to do with the vocal phrasing. Backstroke, Lever, O's, Hidede, and... I can't remember the words.

But it's not a melodic verse. It's a rap phrasing verse. But it's an Aerosmith song that people know. There was a hit. Yeah, yeah. So if Run DMC does it and deliver it like a rap song, it still, Walk This Way, it still sounds like the Aerosmith song. And that connected the dots for people who before thought it wasn't music. song it still walked this way it still sounds like the Aerosmith song and that

connected the dots for people who before thought it wasn't music right ended up becoming very successful but I saw it more as a way to communicate an idea well it sure did that okay I'm sorry I want to I just have a couple things I want to ask you because fucking hour goes by quick. It's all good. And I know we got the pizza downstairs. Okay, I have to ask you about the Beastie Boys. So you already knew.

You had been roommates with the... There was a guy named Dave Skilkin who was singer of a band a punk rock band called the young and the useless and adam harvitz a guitar player was in the beastie boys but he was also in young and the useless and i was friends with dave skilkin and dave and dave introduced me to adam and then through adam i ended up meeting the other guys in the Beastie Boys. And I was a DJ. And I DJed at NYU at the dorm functions. And loved rap music and was an aspiring rap DJ.

And they made a song called Cookie Puss before I met them, which was like a prank rap song. And they wanted to perform it more like a rap song than like a rock song, because in their show, they played like a punk rock band. They played instruments. And they asked if I would DJ to play Cookie Puss with them. So that's how I first started working with them. Oh, you came in to do the DJ part of that. But you were like, man, these guys, they got something. I felt like we all came to rap music from punk rock.

It seemed like we'd been listening to punk rock for a long time, but now hip hop was kind of dominating our lives. And I remember just saying, feels like maybe really be a rap band, like just be a rap band instead of continuing on with what was happening before.

It just felt like it was the right thing to do at the time based on how we actually lived. And also maybe based on like the way people responded, the Cookie Puss or whatever. I mean, Cookie Puss was by far their most successful record at that time. Right.

So people were really digging it. And was it you who said, why don't we just make this rap? Just do rap. I suggested, why don't we just let's do rap? But it wasn't because people like it. It was something that was like, it was truer to who we were in that moment. Right. Do you know what I'm saying?

It's like, yes, we saw the Dead Kennedys a bunch of times over the last probably five years, and we loved them. But now, getting to see Run DMC was a much bigger deal. And it felt like a new wave. Yeah. And to continue doing the old wave, we could have, they could have. It felt like we weren't being true to what was really our experience.

I just want to jump to, you know, because they're good buddies of mine, the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Yeah. Okay. Long before I worked with them, they asked me to produce an album. And I was still living in New York. And I came to California to meet with them. And Adam Harvest from the Beastie Boys came with me and we went to a rehearsal

at this, a place on Sunset Boulevard that was owned by EMI. They were on EMI at the time. And it was this little dirty rehearsal room. And I went in with Adam and they played music for us for a while. And I couldn't wait to get out of there. I didn't really understand what was happening, but it felt like this is not good energy. Felt like this is dark energy. And I didn't understand it, but it felt like, you know how when band members look at each other, there's a sense of camaraderie or trust? That wasn't in the room. It was something else.

It was more like a wariness between them. That was strange. I didn't know what to make of it. So I ended up not working with them at that time. And then I came later to find out, because I'd never been around drugs, they had serious drug problems. That's what was going on. But I hadn't been around anyone who was having serious drug problems.

And the lack of trust was based on the kind of things that happen when you do a lot of drugs, you can lose trust. You can do things to warrant losing trust. And that was apparent in the room. i didn't know it this was uh just the instinct was something's happening here that doesn't feel good and then they made that album they made another album and then i got to meet them again i just moved to californ California and I stayed friends

with Flea the whole time because Flea was one who originally invited me down and I stayed friends with Flea and I met them again two albums later and it was it was a whole different thing and that was when they've gotten sober and again I't know why, but you could see this sense of brotherhood, let's make something great. Like all the things that the energetics of something good coming was there. So then we made, the first album we made together

was called Blood Sugar Sex Magic. And we recorded it in this old mansion on Laurel Canyon that people think is the Houdini Mansion. It's not, but it's diagonally opposite the Houdini Mansion. And I had the idea to record it because they had made four albums. I think they made four albums before, possibly five, or maybe four in an EP.

I can't remember. But they had made albums before. And when I asked them about the recording experiences, none of them were like great. And they were all made in traditional recording studios in traditional ways. And I thought, okay, I want this to feel like the first of something new. And instead of going to a corporate recording studio, let's rent a big house, live in the house, record in the house. And it won't be like any experience they had before. It'll feel more like a first than a fifth. That was the idea. And they loved the idea.

And we found this house in Laurel Canyon, rented it, set up there, and it was super fun. Really great experience. Loved working with them. Yeah. Which you've now done, what, six, seven, eight? Something like that. We've made a lot of albums together. Did you have a feeling that Give It Away now is going to be a big hit?

Could you tell? I can't say hit. I don't know what a hit sounds like, so it's hard for me to say hit. I knew that I loved it, and I remember going to Warner Brothers when they were deciding what to put out and saying, I think this is the song that people will really react to. But again, using the word hit has all these implications that usually a hit sounds like something that's familiar something that sounds really foreign and different and weird

that's not a hit right do you know what i'm saying right and give it away sounded different than everything else not different from the chili peppers but different than anything you heard on the radio yeah certainly hindsight's hindsight's 20-20 in this. Yeah. Like, it sounds like a big hit now because it was. But I love the song. And also, they made an incredible video. But the song was great.

And I remember going to Warner Brothers and playing it for them. And I was also, I had a relationship with Warner Brothers at the time. And the band left EMI and were going to sign with Epic Records. And then Epic started getting cold feet because EMI still had some rights, and it was like a complicated deal. But this was a very sought-after group at the time because they were a successful band. So all the labels were trying to sign them. This is after the album came out. No, this is before.

Yeah. Blood Sugar Sex Magic would have been the first album for Epic, but then Epic, even though the band agreed to sign with them and everybody was cool with it, it was taking a long time legally because of EMI's, the fact that the band was leaving

emi got complicated and epic got cold feet about the deal and i told mo austin who ran wonder brothers just so you know chili peppers the thing with epics kind of going south you may want to give him a call and he called them and worked it out immediately. The band loved Mo the most, but for some reason, I don't know why they decided to sign with Epic. You'd have to ask Lee. But it all ended up working out, and they signed with Mo,

and it ended up being, I think it sold, I don't know, six, seven million, a lot of records. That just broke them through to the stratosphere. We had the best party at the end of that album. We had a huge party at that house. Thousands of people came.

It was incredible. Incredible party. I feel like I remember driving in the car with Owen and David Blaine to the party. And I don't think I saw them once we got there because it was just like a free for all. But thousands of people. It was so cool. Best party I've ever been to. God damn.

How did I not get over that party? I don't know. I don't know where you were. Maybe I wasn't that party. I'm guessing you were. I remember seeing them guys a few times before I got to know them. So I wanted to ask you about Johnny Cash. Yeah.

Did you like working with him? The coolest man in the world. Really? Yeah, super cool. At the time that I met him, he was playing at a dinner theater in Orange County. Probably 200 people sitting and eating while he played maybe not that many maybe 150 and i went to see him and the show was good but he had there was some sense of going through the motions and he had been dropped from his label

he'd been dropped he was the biggest artist on Columbia Records and then he ends up getting dropped from Columbia, the label that he was the... He sold more records for Columbia than all of their other artists combined. Really? Yeah. And then they ended up dropping him.

Because? Because he wasn't as successful anymore. Oh, because when he stopped selling. Yeah. And then he was signed to another label and then that ended up not working out. And in his mind, he was pretty much done. Like he was still going through the motions

of going on tour because that's what he did his whole life and it's all he knew to do. I would say he wasn't in a great place. He was fine. It was okay. But it wasn't like creatively stimulating.

We met and I said I'd like to make records with him and he asked why. And I said, I feel like we could make some really cool records. What makes you think that? And I said, I don't know. I just want to hear you play and sing me songs you like.

There was no pretension of trying to figure out what was going to work. Right. There was none of that. It was just like, let's listen to music and make some music we like. And you felt kind of strongly, let's do some of the old classic. The reason I thought of Johnny Cash was I'd worked almost exclusively with new artists, like first-time artists up until that time. And I had a lot of success. And I was wondering, I wonder if these same techniques,

I don't know what the techniques are, but whatever's happening here that's working, would it happen with a grown-up artist? Don't know. And I thought of who could we cast? Who's the grown-up artist? And the first person I thought of was Johnny Cash. Well, that turned out great for him amazing just amazing life changing for me for sure yeah life changing

i mean you really became real buddies with the man in black absolutely i love them still love them um and i gotta mention the you know to me 99 problems that is one just phenomenal song did you feel when you were making that oh this is something special or you couldn't tell i couldn't tell i mean i can never tell i know i like it like i think it's good i remember jay when we finished the song he's like do you know what this is i said no and he's like i'll show you what it is meaning i'm gonna show you in the out in the world what this is right he knew right away i had no idea wow and then i can never until i think it's good i don't want to put it out. Once it's good, whatever happens after that's out of my control. I can never guess how anyone's going to react.

I think if I like it, maybe someone will like it. I think my best chance of someone liking it is if I like it. But still, that's it. There's no, I don't predict what anyone's going to like. Yeah. You had a good rapport with him, JC? Yeah. We're great, good friends still.

Yeah. He's a fascinating guy. And now I just want to ask you about Neil Young. Yeah. You've also got this anomaly that I think no one else could claim of having had five houses burned to the ground. That is true. I don't want to say there's some karmic thing, because I don't know that you need to burn off karma,

but what's the odds of that? I have no idea. I'll tell you, it does not feel good. No. It's not a good feeling. And, you know, you told me about that time in Marfa where you were actually in the house. Yeah. Lucky to survive it.

Lucky to be here now. Yeah, it's scary. But that fire and the fact that I wasn't able to travel allowed me to make an album with Neil Young that I wouldn't have been able to make because I was booked to do something else in Europe. But I couldn't come to Europe because of the smoke inhalation. And recovering from the smoke inhalation, I couldn't travel. So I was staying home. I'd lost my voice. I couldn't talk and I get a call from Neil saying

that he has the the Shangri-La the studio that I that I work at booked and he's going to make a new album and if I happen to be around he would love me to produce it and I said I couldn't say it but I sent a message to his people saying yes I, I would like to do that. And then a few weeks later, we ended up recording. And when you first met him, you couldn't talk, right? Yeah, our first meeting, I still could barely talk. But he understood that I had smoke damage and couldn't talk. So it was cool. He did all the talking.

But that was a dream come true, right? Neil's one of my top three artists of all time. Always wanted to work with him. Worked with him one time before, but nothing that ever came out. We went into the studio together, I don't know, 25 years before. He called me. I remember he called me. Do you know that Neil only likes to record on and around the full moon

do you know that about him no so he records two or three days leading up to the full moon and then one or two days after but the focus is on the full moon all of his albums are recorded on the full moon all All of them. Yeah. So I get a message on my machine when I was living in town, the house that you first came to in the Hollywood Hills. Hey, Rick, this is Neil. Thinking about recording in August. And I think there's going to be a full moon in August. So we could record in August.

Why don't you pick the studio and set it up and I'll come down and we'll do that. So we booked the studio, it's all set up and then the following week, Neil cut off a piece of his finger when he was cutting a sandwich in half and couldn't play guitar.

Ah. So then I imagine we're canceling the session and then comes the week before the session and he calls like, well, I can't play guitar, can't use my hand, but I have an idea. I'm going to play my harmonica through my guitar amp

and let's see what happens. So, okay. So we did a session back then that ended up, just recorded a couple of songs, but they ended up not coming out. I'm sure they'll come out someday on one of his, you know, retrospective box sets.

There's songs that I think came out in one form or another. But when I saw him when we were making the last album, he told me he listened back and they were great. Oh. It was a weird situation because he couldn't play guitar and yeah that's what he does you both were incapacitated uh first time him second time me so so then you when in the making of that album you were telling me how he had his uh you know his crazy horse yeah crazy horse his original band and band. And then you recorded for the first week and you were like a disaster, right? And then go back in the second week, re-record. And then the drummer was so bad. It wasn't that we're going to get it next week. It was, there's a good chance these people can never play these songs, no matter what. Like, that's how far off it was. And then we went the second week to play the songs. And Ralph said, I think we got it last week. And Neil convinced him to try it again. And we tried it again, and it was not good.

And then Ralph said, I'm telling you, we got it last week. I'm telling you. And then we ended up listening back and just kind of, it's like we were listening through Ralph's ears. Ralph told us how to listen to it. He's like, well, take that out.

Take that part out. Okay, just listen to this part listen what's happening here and ralph was right and the thing that we thought was would never be an album or the the performances that made me think the band could never ever play them ended up being the majority of the album. It's amazing. And super cool sounding album and a great experience. And even for Neil, he was like, that's never happened to me before either.

He's never, he's never seen something go from seemingly so far off to really good when nothing changed. Right. You just pared it down. A little bit.

Yeah, just a little bit of cleanup work. Yeah, yeah. Fucking great. Now, I just want to ask you about your book. It's called The Creative Act, A Way of Being. Yes. You started it in thinking, I want to help open people's minds to how the creative act works and that we're all creative. Yeah, but I didn't know what that was. It started with the idea of, I've worked with a lot of artists over the time that I've been doing this. For a record producer, I've worked with a lot of artists over the time that I've been doing this. For a record producer, I've

worked with a lot of artists. But as far as artists in the world go, I've worked with a tiny fraction of artists in the world. Tiny, tiny fraction. And I thought, is there some way to share what happens in the studio? And when I say what happens in the studio is the approach and the approach has nothing to do with music it's not about music it's it's a way of being it's a way of being in the world a way of paying attention and it took seven or eight years to try to understand why the things that happen in the studio that work that happen through intuition and without knowing how they work, to try to decipher and decode, are there principles at play that are universal and helpful for someone else? And that was the mission of figuring out what the information in the book is. There are no examples from my experience in the studio,

but many of the ideas in the book come from real world things that happened in the studio where something worked, and then I try to understand why did it work, and then sharing the principle at play. It was something from the beginning that I felt strongly about, about not referencing my work in the book. Because if I told you a story about something that worked creatively, and let's say it's about Tom Petty, and then Tom Petty did this, as the reader, you don't feel like, you don't come away with like, oh, that's a good idea to do that. You

come away with the idea of oh tom petty's genius do you know what i'm saying it's like you you don't put yourself in tom petty's role when something good happens because he's tom petty right so by never mentioning the artists the reader is the artist in all of the stories in the book. All of the ideas are to put yourself in those situations. It's not to know what Jay-Z did or what Kanye West did. It's to know, how would I do? How could I do this? How could I look at this problem? And by leaving the famous people's names out, the sensational aspect was removed on purpose so that you're not thinking about those people. You're just thinking about the concepts. And how do these concepts relate to me?

And you talk about a punch. Yeah. This avalanche of thoughts. Yeah. Preponderance of thought. It's a Buddhist. It's a Buddhist phrase. Yeah.

Yeah. And that bad is what's interfering with your ability to. Some artists, so much of the creative problems that we have are self-inflicted problems. You told me a story about getting two different jobs where you were auditioning and the stakes were very high. And in both cases, you didn't care about them because you already were doing something else.

So it wasn't important to you. And those two things ended up changing your life. Right. Had they been important to you and had you been focused on them, you might not have done as well. Definitely. Because red light fever. You get when the pressure's on, it's scary.

But if you don't care, you're just yourself. It's one of many examples of the things. It can either think, I'm no good. Nothing I make is good. Nothing I make is any good. That's a real self-defeating. And the other one is, I'm great. Everything I make is great. Really self-defeating because then you don't question your work. You know, you just settle. But you don't seem to have self-doubt. I don't have self-doubt because I know I'm willing to go forever until we get to something good. I have self-doubt something good will happen now. That's out of my control.

I don't know how long it'll take, but I know I'm willing to go for the ride, I have the patience to wait until it's good and try a million bad ideas and never get frustrated when a bad idea doesn't work because it's just part of the process. In fact, every time you have a bad idea and it doesn't work, you're one step closer to finding the answer because you know you've ruled out something. You've ruled out one avenue. That doesn't work. What can we learn from that not working? In that example, we were trying to make it small. The idea was let's make it small. Small is going to be cool. Let's make it small. We make it small. It's no good. Okay, we learned making it small doesn't work. Let's try making it big. Maybe big works. Maybe yes, maybe no. We don't know. Maybe making it small doesn't work. Let's try making it big. Maybe big works. Maybe yes, maybe

no. We don't know. Maybe making it fly. Maybe burying it. What can we do to breathe life into this thing that right now is not good enough? I mean, there's so many things I wanted to get into, but you know what? I love your thing of savoring each bite. Since we're going to lunch and we're going to have that pizza, that's something I'm terrible at. Because I grew up with brothers, and we always got first, but we didn't always get second. So we try to just shove it down our gullets and get to the next.

So anyway, let's go and... Save for each bite. Save for each bite. Come down. Cool, man. Hey, thank you so much, man. My pleasure. That was great. Anytime.

I could do this for another five hours. I swear to God, I'm so fascinated with you and your life and your creativity. And I consider you a creative genius. I know you would never say that about yourself, but I feel privileged to be your buddy. Thank you, sir. The privilege is mine. I love you.

Love you, too. That's great. And we'll do it again. Oh, good. Anytime. Eat your heart out, Teddy. Ah, thanks for that, Woody. What an amazing conversation. Be sure to check out Rick's book, The Creative Act, A Way of Being. If you like this bonus episode, keep on the lookout because we might be releasing these every now and then. Thanks to Woody for doing this one without me.

And thanks to Team Coco. Remember to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and subscribe on your favorite podcast app. We'll see you next time where everybody knows your name. You've been listening to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson sometimes.

The show is produced by me, Nick Liao. Executive producers are Adam Sachs, Colin Anderson, Jeff Ross, and myself. Sarah Federovich is our Supervising Producer. Our Senior Producer is Matt Apodaca. Engineering and Mixing by Joanna Samuel with support from Eduardo Perez. Research by Alyssa Grahl. Talent Booking by Paula Davis and Gina Batista.

Our Theme Music is by Woody Harrelson, Anthony Gann, Mary Steenburgen, and John Osborne. Special thanks to Willie Mavray. We'll have more for you next time, where everybody knows your name. Freedom Calls.