WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 515 - Jack Antonoff

Episode Date: July 16, 2014

Jack Antonoff won two Grammys with the band Fun. His new project, Bleachers, already has a chart-topping hit. He's written blockbuster pop songs for Taylor Swift and Sara Bareilles. In light of this early success, Jack tells Marc how everything he's done in his career so far has been shaped by one indelible moment, a world-shattering event that informs every decision. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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At York University, we work together to create positive change for a better tomorrow. Join us at yorku.ca slash write the future. Lock the gates! all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fuck nicks what the fucksters what the fucking nuts what the fucking avians today uh the amazingly talented jack antonoff is Antonoff is on the show. And Jack, his bands were initially Steel Train, then the band Fun, which I would think it was last year, won the Song of the Year for We Are Young and also the Best New Artist.

The song Carry On was also a big hit. are pop songs this is not my world this is not my wheelhouse but i'm not unable to appreciate it uh particularly particularly fun i mean i get it man i mean it's no easy trick to write a song that makes millions of dollars or to get to get millions of people to like your song. It's a real gift. And this guy, Jack Antonoff, has that gift. He does perform at the end of the show. He does an acoustic version of one of the new songs off of the Bleachers' debut album. This is his post-fun project, which is more just Jack. And that Bleachers, that debut album,

Strange Desire, is available available now and they're going to be on tour this summer and fall you can go to bleachersmusic.com for more info and he does play and jack is appearing courtesy of rca records which is a division of sony music entertainment but i i will tell you this about it you know when talked to this guy, I didn't know a lot about him, but I generally will go, um, you know, I, I,

a friend mentioned that, uh, he liked my show and that I would love him. And that friend, uh, was Lena Dunham, who is, uh,

Jack's a significant other. And I'm like, all right, well, I'll check him out. Lena, I'll check him out. And I went and bought all the records and I listened to all the records. And I'm like, Oh my God well, I'll check him out. Lena, I'll check him out. And I went and bought all the records.

And I listened to all the records. And I'm like, oh, my God, this guy's got a gift. He's got a songwriting gift. He's got a very earnest approach to lyric writing. It feels real to me. And also the sound, the evolution of the sound of his work from Steel Train through Fun on into Bleachers. It's a phenomenal arc of, of, of style. Like how did he get from one place to the other? So I was sort of fascinated with him. And after we had a conversation, I really feel like, you know, this guy is one of

these rare people that has a true gift, an amazingly talented guy and very articulate, articulate. I'm looking out of a window. I'm looking out of a window. I'm looking out of a window in New York City. I don't know. You know, I miss New York all of a sudden. I lived here for years. I don't know if I could live here again. I don't know if I could afford it.

I don't know even if I could, even if I did have the means to do that. I don't know if I would do that because that's just the way I am. I'm afraid to spend money. Look at that. They're digging a hole. Oh, you can't see it. There's always, I'll tell you, man, New York City, no matter what time of day, day or night, there's always some guys with hard hats in a hole doing some maintenance, keeping the

pipes and veins arteries together underneath the ground god knows what's underneath this ground but it can't be in good shape there's always dudes in holes with tractors and tools i always find that fascinating that new york is just giant crumbling organic entity that requires constant maintenance and they seem to do it they seem to build things that it never stops all eras of architecture are are uh represented that's for sure but somehow it all makes sense because new york can absorb it like even if there's this big modern piece of shit right over there unattractive right next to it there's something probably from the the 20s but you know in some places if they build some modern piece of shit, it will just destroy the entire environment of the entire town.

But here, it's just sort of like, yeah, we got room. The other buildings are sort of like, yeah, let that guy hang out. It's all right. He's not showing us up. It's a little embarrassing. That's an impression of a building I just did. This guy thinks he's a hot shot that's all right i've been here a long time these hot shots come and go oh it's terrible

should be ashamed of himself the vanity of that uh vestibule fuck these new guys again an impression of a building i think that uh what i should do is perhaps go out into the street. That would be good. I should go out into the street. Why don't I go out into the street? Let's go out and let's go out. So let's walk around New York a little bit and see what happens.

Let me interface with the city and then dump my brain into this mic for you. Okay, I'm out in it. I'm on Bowery and 3rd. Let's go down 3rd Street. I used to live down here, but further down, and I don't, I always gravitate towards the Lower East Side. I don't know what it is. I have no interest in uptown at all. It's sort of like in Los Angeles as well. I live on the East Side. I don't have, you know, if I have to go to the West Side, it's like a tremendous chore,

and I have to pack a bag and probably a tent. I think genetically I'm supposed to be down here. I think if you're a Jew, am I really going to bring that into it? Is that possible that, you know, just my proximity to Orchard Street and Hester Street, that there's some part of my biology that is compelled to those blocks from when it was just people with pickle barrels and strange snacks on carts? I don't know. Maybe. I don't really know. But I'm walking down 3rd Street towards where I don't know. Maybe. I don't really know. But I'm walking down Third Street towards where I used to live. I don't know. It doesn't seem that much different. I think I get

creative ideas when I wander around the streets of Manhattan because the last time I was here, I became obsessed with the ground. At the bottom of lampposts or planters or around mailboxes on the ground in New York, there's always this very odd collection of garbage and trash and, you know, pieces. I mean, it's the middle of the summer. And the last time I was here, like, you know, like we're here. I'm right by some sort of sewer grate or like a drainage grate. There's a Hershey's wrapper and uh yeah some cigarette butts and a sticker but but the last time i was here i kept getting obsessed with the bases of lampposts thinking

like wow i should do a photo like here here's a hairnet and uh half an apple but i i became a sort of obsessed with the bases of lampposts is like well if you frame that properly and you had a good camera that'd be sort of an abstract art uh photograph so i was uh i pictured um an entire series of photographs of just uh you know well framed uh bits and pieces of weird garbage see see that's what i could have been doing why didn't i dedicate my life to that it's the middle of summer like look at right here like why is there a pair of gloves in this garbage here why why is that what's going on where'd they come from what's the story what's the backstory between behind the winter gloves in the middle of summer at the base of a lamp you know the hells angels headquarters i think it might be further down on

second or third street they actually have a building here in New York this is where their corporate headquarters are and I always liked walking by it, it always gave me a weird feeling but also the feeling of something something historic like something nostalgic from the 60's I had no idea they had a franchise here in New York of course they have a franchise there.

Well, a franchised organization. But you know, you don't see many storefronts. You know, Hells Angels storefronts. Holy shit, there it is. There it is. Yep. I guess it's still open.

It's a big sign out front. Hells Angels, New York City. The Hells angels on the door hell's angels new york so yeah it's uh there it is that's their clubhouse looks exactly the same they've got some cones out in front oh there's a chopper they've got some cones out in front a couple bikes parked out front yeah it's just uh you know just a clubhouse. It's where the fellas hang out. Wow. Why is that? I don't know why that moves me one way or the other.

I guess it's sort of ominous and kind of interesting. It's been there forever. I used to walk by it all the time. Because we're heading down to where I used to live. Oh, look. There's some more garbage organized in a unique way. Oh, I remember what the name of my exhibition would be called. It would be called

Look Down, Abstract Photos by Mark Maron, Random Assemblages of Artifacts Discarded on the Sidewalks of New York. That's it. That's the gallery card. And then you'd see the photograph. It'd be the gloves, maybe a rusty key

and uh some cigarette butts I used to spend my life just trying to find a fucking parking space on the ory side your car would get broken into for a nickel down here and they used to you just sort of knew in this neighborhood that you didn't park in front of this storefront where the doorway was where the dope doorway was and And one night I was like, fuck it, man. I can't find a space. I'm parking in front of the dope doorway. And I did that. And then I woke up in the morning and my tires were all flat. And there was a bunch of dudes standing around, including the little scary old man. And I'm like, what the fuck? And they're like, yeah, man, look what happened to your car.

I'm like, well, yeah, what happened to my car, knowing I was talking to the guys that did it? They're like, I don't know. Maybe you shouldn't have parked here. Great. I get it. All right. And, you know, it's weird when you have this relationship with, you know, criminals in your neighborhood. You want to try to keep the peace, and you want to try weird when you have this relationship with you know criminals in your neighborhood you you want to try to keep the peace and you want to try to have an understanding and

i'd somehow cross the line and i'm like all right he's like then one of them goes you get any tires bro you know i'm like where the hell do i get tires i'm like there's a place around the corner and i'm like all right so i go around the corner to an affiliated criminal operation of some kind to get temporary tires. And I come back and two of these dudes who flattened my tires were now in my car going through my glove compartment. Now, the real question about that scenario is like, why did I trust them to watch the car? I mean, I must have been out of my fucking mind. Yeah, I got the tires. I never parked there again. But it's an exciting time. It was an exciting time living down here.

We go around the corner and go see the street where I used to buy coke from Jimmy. Lived upstairs. The ongoing cocaine salon. So for me, what I used to do is I used to try to get there early. Like I used to try to get there before the night really started. I used to try to get my Coke,

you know, like at five or six in the afternoon on Friday or Thursday or Wednesday or whatever it was. So in my mind, so I could get it all done, you know, by the nighttime, get it past me, get beyond it, and hide it from my wife at the time. But there's this one time where there's a great Lower East Side memory.

I used to go get a bindle of Coke, and then I'd go down to 7A, or no, this bar down here, and just knock back a pint. There's nothing better than, oh, boy. I think I'm getting the drips. There's nothing better than doing those first few lines of Coke and then just having a cold pint of bass ale by yourself at a bar with your brain on fire. Ah, Jesus. I better go to a meeting.

Oh, here's another weird composition of garbage. What is that? What are those? Oh, they're like lychee nut shells. See, it's surprising if you look at everything with an aesthetic eye, you know, you can see the beauty in things. See, some people would just walk by this and see it as garbage, which I'm about to.

But for a moment there, it looked like art. Yeah, so, okay, so I'd go over there early. And one time I went over to Hammerhead's. You know, it was like a six-floor walk-up. And it was a lair. It was like a complete sort of like, you know, abstract art art insane man cave situation up there all kinds of art and action figures and weirdness and darkness but i went up there like 5 36 so i get there he let me in and i walk up the stairs i'm like come on man let's go what do you got and he's like uh

i don't know what i i don't i don't know the come yet. So, like, my guy's guy hadn't come yet. And so I'm like, all right, well, so we go into the back room where he used to, you know, where the couch was and all the stuff was and where he'd sort of have his little cocaine salon people coming by. He was a good coke dealer. He'd always put stuff out. He'd step on it. But it was nice to, you know, have a place to sit and talk and sweat. So I get there.

It's like 536. We go in the back. It's still light out, and he closes the blinds to sort of get set up for the night. And the buzzer rings, and a guy comes, a little guy, a little Latino guy with a ponytail, shows up and speaks to Hammerhead in Spanish. You know, obviously, this was something that happened regularly. And hands him this wad of tinfoil and then goes away. This short, old Latino, must have been in the 60s. The ponytail and the cap. Gives Hammerhead a wad of tinfoil

and then walks away. Jimmy brings it into the back and opens it up and there's this rock of cocaine. You know, like a... Bigger than a golf ball sized rock. So this is the main stuff. this is the stuff right off the brick from wherever that comes from so my coke dealer's guy had just delivered my guy his stuff

in pure form so jimmy and i are sitting there and i'm like wow that's it huh that's it that's the real stuff he's like yeah and i'm like well let's do some he's like all right so he cut me up a couple lines of this stuff right off of this rock right out of the guy's hands i do two lines of this stuff right off of this rock and i just felt electricity ripple up from the top of my sinus passages all the way down my spine and just like everything just like little tingly explosions all over my body and i felt like i could fly i felt i just oh okay and i look at j at Jimmy and I'm like, holy shit. Why don't you sell that stuff? And he looked at me and he said, because people would never leave me alone.

And then I watched him take this golf size rock of cocaine and drop it into a bag of stepped-on garbage from last night and just pound it all out into whatever he was going to sell. There's a sadness to it. There was a sadness to it. But I also understood it. And I'm glad that I had no real access to whatever the hell that Latino guy brought over. Because, boy, God knows where I'd be. God knows where I'd be right now.

Hey, Mark. Hi. Thanks for having me on the show. Thanks, man. What's going on? Nothing much. Selling beer. Selling beer here?

Yeah. I was just talking about this place. Yeah, 7B. I'm walking around, so I'm doing... Doing a little tour of the old neighborhood? Yeah. Yeah. Because I was just talking about going down there to get my blow and coming right

here to have the first beer after i got jacked at his house and how beautiful it was yeah it still is oh no don't tell me that don't tell me that i'm sure it hasn't changed at all why i don't need to go back there i'm just i'm coming up on 15 years sober i want to get out of here now see you later buddy I'm 15 years sober. I want to get out of here now. See you later, buddy. Don't worry, folks. That was a dramatization of a possibility. I have no desire to go down that street and walk into whatever the hell I was in 20 some odd years ago. Holy shit. 25 years ago almost.

I got to be honest with you. Tompkins Square Park, it's nicer. It's definitely nicer. It feels warm. It's nice. It's nice. I'm just going to go down and see if he's there. I'm back. I made it back to the hotel.

I did not go to my old drug dealer's house to see if he was home. That was done for effect. I did not even want to go over there. There was no part of me. All right. Maybe a little part of me. But I'm back in the room safely uh had a nice walk and uh this week's episode tonight of marin and ifc is called white truck it was based on a fairly dicey story i told

some of you here on the show probably a couple years ago about being in a particular situation, uh, that was not, uh, was not safe, nor was it, uh, pleasant. And, uh, that's all I'm going to give you. I will give you this. So, uh, my friend and, uh, uh, print fellow Prince of darkness, uh, Mr. Jerry stall, uh, wrote, uh, wrote tonight's episode. And you can definitely feel the Jerry Stahl vibe on tonight's episode of Marin. So watch that. Enjoy that. Thank you so much for watching the show.

Next week, the episode I directed, The Joke, is on. And it was very important to me that I directed that because it deals with a very dicey, challenging topic of joke theft, where that comes from.

Let's go now to my conversation with Jack Antonoff. It's winter and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats, but meatballs, mozzarella balls, So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs, mozzarella balls, and arancini balls? Yes, we deliver those. Moose? No. But moose head? Yes.

Because that's alcohol, and we deliver that too. Along with your favorite restaurant food, groceries, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Calgary is an opportunity-rich city home to innovators, dreamers, disruptors, and problem solvers.

The city's visionaries are turning heads around the globe across all sectors each and every day. They embody Calgary's DNA. A city that's innovative, inclusive, and creative. And they're helping put Calgary and our innovation ecosystem on the map as a place where people come to solve some of the world's greatest challenges. Calgary's on the right path forward. Take a closer look at CalgaryEconomicDevelopment.com. What are we saying about blues? It's sad that it's hard to listen to, because, what is it about it, though?

I don't know. I think it's so fun to, it's like, it's like, it's like jam band music, too. Right. Like, I could jam for hours. Right. But if I had to listen to it, it would be terrible. Well, yeah, I mean, but it's because it's predictable, but there's some things that, you know, there's some blues guys who are like, that's pretty good, but you're right. It's not for every mood. No but it's because it's predictable but there's some things that you know there's some blues guys who are like that's pretty good but you're right

it's not for every mood no it's not you have to be high for jam band music and you have to be in a specific like third phase of anger from a broken heart to enjoy blues right or you have to be like I'm just gonna fucking do it yeah or like blues needs like a setting like you'd have to be in like a specific car in a specific road

playing some blues for it to feel right yeah you have to direct your life yeah around the blues music it's you can't put it on any at any point but who but like then who are your guitar heroes i love i love jack white really i love jack white a lot of my guitar heroes aren't he's a blues man he's a blues man but he's a noise man it's interesting yeah i love tom waits as a guitar player who doesn't get referenced a lot. He doesn't get referenced a lot. What's that guy's name? Mark Rebo usually plays a lot for him.

You like Mark Rebo? I love Mark Rebo. I love the Afrobeat stuff he does. Uh-huh. It's almost like good Santana. Right. Because Santana had that, you know, there's that famous performance at Woodstock. And then to me, everything else after that sucked, but that was so cool.

Well, on one of the Steel Train albums, you basically do Santana. Basically. Which song is that? You know exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah, that was the album I did. I was into drugs at that point in my life. I'm very clean now, but on that album,

I worked with a producer who did American Beauty. We went to Northern California. Yeah, David Grism. Was that his name, Grisman? Yeah, so it was all kind of... Is it Grisman? It's Grisman. Yeah, well, that... So you're like, let's go all it was all Grisman it's Grisman yeah well that so

so you're like let's go all out yeah let's fucking do it and that was the last time I ever go to a destination studio because I think you lose yourself seriously yeah you gotta be you gotta be home listening to the what listening to the shit you did on the speakers that you listen to things normally but is that how you're gonna explain that first

uh steel train album definitely that you lost yourself? That you were impressionable? That Dave Griswold bullied you into playing hippie music? No, I bullied myself into doing an album that I couldn't stand behind years later. Really? It's a sweet record, but let's go back, though. You say your last name Antonoff?

Yeah. You're a Jewish kid from New Jersey. In every way. Yeah, I mean, my roots are in New Jersey, not Bergen County. You're from Bergen County? Yeah. What town? I was born in New Milford.

New Milford. And then I think my parents made more money, and then we moved to a town called Woodcliffe Lake. Woodcliffe Lake. My family's from Morris County, I think. I know it. You do? Yeah. Pompton Lakes.

I know it. You know Pompton? That's not far. Right, exactly. It's like 20 minutes. Do you know the milk barn? No. Oh, it's probably gone. It's an ice cream place, I think on the Hamburg Turnpike. I know it. You know Pompton? That's not far. Right, exactly. It's like 20 minutes. Do you know the Milk Barn? No. Oh, it's probably gone.

It's an ice cream place, I think on the Hamburg Turnpike. I know the area. Yeah. So yeah, my grandfather owned an appliance store and a hardware store, Pompton Lakes, New Jersey. My mother grew up there. I used to go to Pompton, Honda, and Suzuki to buy trailers for my 15 passenger vans when I would do tours.

You just buy a trailer for the tour? No, just over the past 15 years of being in a van, I've bought like six or seven different trailers. At Pompton? Yeah. So you know New Jersey? Very well. New Jersey's very lush in the summer.

It's humid. New Jersey's a wonderful place, specifically because of its proximity to the greatest city in the world. That's right. And that's why it's so special. Everyone from New Jersey always feels like they're looking in the window of the party.

Right, but you can leave the party, unlike people who are stuck at the party forever. Totally. So you can just go home and crawl into your bed with your posters and your headphones and be okay. I didn't realize how special it was until I got older and moved to New York City. How special the distance was? Yeah, because everyone I met that was from New York City had done all the drugs, had

all the sex, seen all the bands by the time they were 13. It was over. And it was over. Yeah. And I still, I'm 30 and to this day, I still think it's so cool that i live in new york city yeah it's amazing i i remember going to visit my grandmother because i grew up in new mexico so i'd go visit her in jersey and at that time when i was like 14 15 she would let me take the bus into port of authority by myself and just do a day in new york city just put a kid on the bus from new

mexico and knock yourself out go wander around times square and it was nasty then yeah when i think back on it when i mean when did you start going in alone started going in alone in the 96 ish how old were you like 15 16 yeah yeah and we go in the west village it wasn't nasty or dangerous but it was all transvestite hookers who would get in your face. Way West. Yeah. Yeah.

Christopher Street was real seen then. Yeah. And why'd you go there? I don't know. That just seemed like, that's where we're going to go in New York to see what's really happening. I grabbed, you know what? I was really into, a little bit later, but I saw Hedwig in the Jane Street Hotel basement

when that first happened. Right. And I think I just got excited by that culture and wanted to be around it. Sure. How many siblings you got? I had two. Now, one's dead. That's sad.

Yeah. What happened? My youngest sister, about 11 years ago, died of brain cancer. Oh, my God. Yeah, it's terrible. It's just the worst thing ever. I'm sorry. But now, so one, sorry to spill so much so early on.

It's just whenever, actually, we have this argument a lot in my family, because when you get that question, it's like, what do you say? Yeah. This is fair, because this is not a light moment as much as when someone's like, oh, like, how many? Right. So I usually just say, oh, I have a sister. Right.

Because it's just not worth it. Leave the other part out. But I figure we're going to talk for a minute. How long ago did she die? 11 years. That's a long time. It's a very long time. Was she young? She worth it. Leave the other part out. But I figure we're going to talk for a minute. How long ago did she die? 11 years. That's a long time. It's a very long time. Was she young?

She was 13. I was 18. Wow. That's a rough time. My entire life is based off of that moment. Music, everything. How so? Because it was the single most monumentally important thing that has ever happened to me and probably will ever happen to me.

Yeah. And so I've, you know, my whole life, it's just like a, you know, something froze there. And I think I'm constantly looking back on it and dealing with it just from a different lens. So I feel like I'm 30, I'm dealing with that at 30. Right. At 40, I'll be dealing with that. I don't think that goes away. I wouldn't want it to go away.

That feeling of loss. Yeah. Yeah. And it's also, I mean, at the point when most people are, I think, going to college and having this sort of freewheeling moment in life, I missed that. Right, because you were consumed with... Which I think was formative for me. And how long was she ill for? Her whole life, but not like...

She wouldn't have appeared sick. She just kind of went in and out of being sick oh god yeah and and and that was taken away from you and what what what kind of uh family did you grow up in um a good one yeah yeah they're my my parents and my other sister rachel were all i mean it's kind of hard to remember everything before that but we're extremely close still yeah like i talked to my every member of my family a number of times a day really i would not be able to go to sleep if i didn't have contact with each and every one of them saying like love you night really yeah and is that something that

happened after your sister passed away absolutely because there's a maybe a little bit of of worry and panic and appreciation yeah we don't want to lose any more. Totally. If we lose any, I don't know what I was, that wouldn't work for me. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's interesting. So there's this like almost compulsive need to connect

as often as possible. Very much. Still alive. Hi, mom. Yeah, and it's not, like sometimes it's like, sometimes it's like we're all in bad moods

but we're connecting. Right, right. Like that part's just inherent. It has to happen. Alive but not happy. There's nothing I love more than a still alive text. I mean, do you have people in your life where you're just wondering if they're dead

or is that more my thing? Just me. Okay. Whenever I go to sleep at night these days, I'm like, what, am I gonna, is it gonna be a tomorrow? So it's, I don't know. Is that a stressful thought for you or just a question? I don't know.

Like I turned 50 and I didn't think it bothered me. You look good. I appreciate that. But lately I lately i've been like you know having these weird physical symptoms and i'm nervous and i'm getting becoming hypo you know a little uh i used to be a hypochondriac and now it's sort of back and it's like it's driving me nuts i'm with you you are you have that terribly really it's um why it i uh i've battled with a lot of ocd and not in the annoying way where people are like, I'm so OCD. Like, you know, real issues where-

How did that manifest itself? The biggest way it manifests, well, it was always just little things, you know, like organizing and counting. But as I've gotten older, it's gotten worse. And the biggest way I was so terrified, I had a terrible acid trip, which is another very formative thing. So to stay sort of chronological, about three years after I lost my sister, I was in like a totally post-traumatic stress place. Right.

I was doing some drugs. I did acid and it totally freaked me out. I had like the quintessential bad trip. The first time you did it? Yeah. Yeah. And I became completely convinced if I did it again, I would lose my mind.

I'd become schizophrenic or whatever. And then I became completely convinced that I was going to get dosed because I was playing a lot of festivals. Like you were going to get sandbagged by some idiot. Ruined my life. And then lose became completely convinced that I was going to get dosed. Because I was playing a lot of festivals. So you were going to get sandbagged by some idiot. Ruined my life. And then lose your mind. And so then I became obsessed in this very obsessive way about not drinking anything that wasn't sealed.

I wouldn't drink water to rest. Out of fear of dosage. Out of fear of dosage, things I would touch. It just went into... And so that part of the brain, it just finds ways to manifest. Cut to three years ago I was making The second fun album

Yeah Some nights We worked with That's a big record Yeah that one did well We worked with a hip hop producer Who was working these crazy hours Very opposite of how I grew up

Yeah Long story short The process of making the album Was so hard on my body I developed a horrible pneumonia And I almost died Yeah I went to the ICU

And ended up in the hospital For five days and home on intravenous antibiotics for like three weeks. It was crazy. Wow. And since then, I'm so connected with this idea of, you know, have you ever been sick where you're just, where you're really knocked out? Yeah. It's really terrifying.

And now I'm working on it hard, but I'm in a very hypochondriacal. Hypochondriacal stage. Whatondriacal stage what in terms of being uh on top of your health what you eat insanely on top of my health i'm on a cocktail of different supplements that i think are actually interesting and are working like what immunoconoco cold effects selenium d i saw a specialist who just put me on all these different things that just boost your immune system really yeah because i take a few things i believe in it you do yeah why not that's all that matters if i had to take 12 pills every morning and they're not going to kill me and they there's a tiny chance they'll help i'll do it right until you get tired of it yeah until one day comes you're

like i just want to see if these are doing anything but you know a doctor said something to me which i'll say to you because i think it might make sense to you okay is um you're gonna feel this way till you're 120 what that you're gonna die it's a very optimistic doctor i appreciate that guys like you i don't think die god i hope you're right yeah i mean it's certainly my father just seems to be fighting the good fight all right so you're sort of a New Jersey kid, and before tragedy strikes, what are you doing? Because I listen to a lot of your music, a lot of it. Really? Yeah.

There's a lot out there. There is, but I knew you were coming in, and it was weird. It was one of these things where, okay, I'm going to do some research. You know, this guy, he had a hit record. He won a Grammy for a song. Which song was that? We Are Young. Yeah, big song. It was a big song. He won a Grammy for a song. Which song was that?

We Are Young. Yeah, big song. It was a big song. With the kids, though. I'm an old man. Yeah. So, like, a lot of stuff you may have done, I just didn't, it didn't come across my desk.

So, you know, then I talked to your girlfriend, and she tells me about you, and then I heard about you. So then I got to go get all the records, and I get all the records. Get all of them. Not the stuff from before you made records. Yeah. Maybe there's some bootlegs or you have that stuff.

I'll send them to you. You will? Do you have them? They exist. But I got the Steel Train records. And I got the Fun records. And I listened to the Bleachers, the two singles. So I'm up to speed.

Wow. Yeah. Is that enough? I wish everyone would do that. Is that more? Is there more? Well, I do a lot of work with other people, but that's not as... Some songwriting and some producing?

Yeah. But the thing that I came upon yesterday is, holy shit, this guy's sort of a genius. How did I not know about it? Thanks, Mark. Sure. Like, he seems to know what he's doing. He seems to be a little unclear about his identity early on and there was a big shift that was kind of confusing to me well maybe you've had that in your career where it's like have you had moments that you thought were

supposed to be worked out alone in your bedroom that got worked out in public artistically sure that's what a lot of that was right but but because your talent is fairly uh uh um focused and amazing you know what you were able to do developmentally like with the the first steel train record was create this beautiful uh strangely lyrical almost uh proto hippie album and then you know then the second steel train record's like what the fuck happened you know it's it's a lot different yeah and then i'm reading up on you it's like oh two dudes left that must have been it those guys were holding them back they were making them play have mandolin and pedal steel like i couldn't quite put it together but like where did it start for you i mean mean, were you always a bright kid?

No. No? Well, not in school. Wait, let me try to generalize your middle class Jewish upbringing. What did your father do? Business. General business. In like a broad way.

But he's an amazing ragtime guitar player. Really? Yeah, and he studied with Reverend Gary Davis. Really? Yeah, and he studied with Reverend Gary Davis. Really? Yeah, and he... So he was like a young Jewish man who says, I need to learn this black man's music. Yes. And I'm going to seek him out.

And he went to his house and would study with him weekly. Where? Where did he live at that time? Bergenfield, New Jersey. Reverend Davis? Reverend Gary Davis lived there too, I guess. He lived in New Jersey. Absolutely.

So your dad kind of got strangely obsessed with this old blues man, basically. My dad was obsessed with that music, Ragtime, like a very gritty southern version of Ragtime. Right. And he has these demos, which I should email you because they're incredible. You would never guess there was a Jewish guy going to Boston University from New Jersey. I went to Boston University. You did? How old is your dad?

59. Yeah, would have missed him. The Howard Stern era. Yeah, well, that was the one before me. Yeah. So he, okay, so he's a business guy obsessed with, he's like classic boomer, like there was a time there where that kind of music was, you know,

it was not unusual for someone to be obsessed with that music. No. Yeah, that made sense. Yeah. So he's an amazing guitar player? Unbelievable. Like, a specific style of fingerpicking

that is so, like, skilled. Uh-huh. You know, just where you have the thumb constantly going. Yeah. I don't know how to fingerpick at all.

It annoys me. It's very, like, here, I'll show you, like, one sec. It takes me, it's too much discipline. Like, this kind of stuff. Like, this is a song

he showed me. Like, that kind of, like, crazy. Yeah he showed me. Like that kind of like crazy. Yeah, yeah. Well, that stuff's very impressive. It's very impressive. And it's also very like Lindsey Buckingham, like that kind of crazy stuff. Oh, man, he can play, man. Yeah.

And to do it with soul is really... Do you ever think about that? What happened to Fleetwood Mac after Lindsey Buckingham? I mean, he turned it out. I mean, that was it. It was all Lindsey Buckingham. Yeah, he he turned it out. I mean, that was it. It was all Lindsey Buckingham. Yeah, he seems way more troubled than his physical appearance would suggest. Because he looks like Paul Reiser.

A little bit. And my dad. Yeah, and your dad looks like that as well? It's the Paul Reiser, Richard Gere, Lindsey Buckingham sort of. Yeah, Jew. Yeah. Except Lindsey Buckingham's not Jew. No.

I don't think so. There's no way. I don't think, not with that name, that's not his real name. Not with's not a Jew. No. I don't think so. There's no way. I don't think, not with that name, unless it's not his real name. Not with that kind of anger. No, well, I know. There are definitely many angry Jews. It's more of a self-hatred thing. Right, we do it inward.

Yeah. Are you a Jew? Yeah. Okay. We manufacture our- Is that an insane question? Kinda. It's kind of an insane question.

Your face is way more symmetrical, and your features are taking up way less real estate on your face i don't know i i mean i i'm certainly sort of vocal about it to a point of uh where it may annoy people but yeah i'm a jew i'm i come from new jersey jews not unlike you so you grew up with a guitar playing father yeah in a nice upper middle class household yes and were you a troubled kid no no you seem very well adjusted your generation bothered me um no everything was really fine everything was fine well my sister was always sick so that was not fine right but everything was i don't really

remember much right about that point in life like i was really into punk music when i was like 13 to 17 i had a punk band that's all i thought about you had a punk band yeah and i would just play in like fire halls every weekend a white a working punk band yeah we did well and really well i mean no but yeah what was the name of the punk band outline so it was outline that was your first band my first band was called the fizz when i was nine how do you have any fizz records no but we had a song called last Week's Lunch. What was that about? Which was a very, very specific thing that only grade schoolers could relate to about leaving lunch in a locker. It wasn't broad. So you had this sort of ability for a humorous slant on songwriting early on. It wasn't humorous at the time.

It was very real. Those were the issues that I was dealing with at the time. The issues of the day. Yeah. Were why's my locker smell? All right. So after Fizz, you took a few years off? No, it was one into another.

Oh, really? Yeah. You were in Fizz from nine to 13 or 14? Yeah. Then we started Outline. But Fizz was an organized band? Yeah. Who was in it?

Guys that I went to private Jewish school with. Yeah? And we just practiced every weekend. When did you start playing guitar? What age? I think like eight-ish. Okay. And seriously playing?

Pretty right away. It went like stamps, coins, Star Wars, guitar is all I remember from my life. And your father must have been thrilled? I think so. Did he give you one of his old guitars? Yeah, a Martin D35. You started with a Martin D35?

Here you go, kid. Here's the best guitar made. Yeah. Have one of these. Exactly, which he bought in Boston and couldn't afford. I think he went to the store

and it was a little more than he thought, so he didn't have money to get home. This is such a story that you'd only imagine happening in the 70s. Yeah.

So he played on the street until he had enough money to take the bus back. I wonder if he bought it at Wurlitzer Music. I don't know. Got to find out. So you get your Martin D35, the sweet-ass guitar, and a dad that can pick the fuck out of ragtime music. Yeah. Was he your first teacher?

No, I had this guy named Van who would come to the house. Van. Yeah. What was his story? What was his hair like? It was like a bouffant he was a frank sinatra impersonator it was his uh day job or i guess i guess teaching guitar was his day job it was his other job he was a frank sinatra person yeah and a guitar teacher what was the first song you learned um i think it was like i think it was an old Aerosmith hit. Oh, really?

Yeah, like, I think I learned like the riff from... Like Mama Kin or something? Oh, Sweet Emotion or something? Yeah, one of those. I wanted to learn Dream On, but it's too hard. Did you get it now?

Can you do it now? I could try, probably, I hope. You haven't tried since? No. You never went back? No, I don't like learning songs. Yeah, I don't either,

but I would just sing for closure. I feel like the last thing i tried to learn was the piano part to scenes from italian restaurant the billy joel song great song i have a lot of theories about billy joel being great that are really yeah i think are they controversial theories no because there's nothing controversial about billy joel which is probably why no one thinks he's great well i don't know if that's true i mean he's got a temper do you see the video there's a great YouTube video of him smashing his mic. No.

Oh, God. Just for fun. He looks like an angry man to me. Billy Joel freaking out. But the thing is, so you loved Billy Joel. Well, I love Billy Joel and I love Bruce Springsteen in very different ways, but I feel like my generation has an interesting take on those two artists. Which is what?

Springsteen's our savior. Really? Oh, yeah. Well, you look at like the 90s he was sort of uncool for a moment and this thing happened in the early 2000s where all of a sudden it was like the arcade fire and everyone was referencing springsteen huh and he kind of after the rising yeah i think it was around the time of the rising right and now he's just the most important artist living to i think a, a lot of people. To you?

One of them to me. Why? Because he, well, first of all, he's obviously a completely brilliant songwriter. But I think it's mostly in the light. I think he represents something that we don't get in modern music, which is this like, give a shit attitude. Integrity. Yeah, there's an integrity to it. There's an earnestness.

It's such a weird apathetic time. Look, okay, I grew up in the 90s, so I grew up in an amazing time of music. Like, who were your guys? I turned on pop radio, and it was like Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Right. It was a happening moment. But then also, there's the whole hip-hop world that I missed, but you didn't. Yeah, that was cool, too.

You walked down the street when I was growing up, anyone your age you were friends with, because you were a part of the same great culture. Rap rock happens a couple years later and destroys the universe. Yeah, who was that? Limp Bizkit and all that shit. Destroyed the universe. Literally just destroyed music. And then my experience, as I remember it,

was everyone just scurrying in all these different directions. And you had indie and you had indie hip-hop and you had mainstream music and you had pop. It was all so separate. And when I started touring, it was this generation of we have to be embarrassed to be in a band this is india music they didn't exist anymore i still hate it touring in a band everyone was still in bands but instead of like the the culture of the 90s of wanting to take over the world like eddie vetter right in a cool way it was like you had to pretend like you didn't give a shit right

and all these bands acted like oh we're so embarrassed to be here. And the songs reflected it, and everything was apologetic. So I think Springsteen represents this excitement about music. I'm doing a fist right now as I talk about it. Raising your fist in the air. We all wish. Baby, we were born to run. Yeah, we all wish we could get to that.

Yeah, and also he had a tremendous sense of theatrics and build in his songwriting. Totally, and then the soft, he's got everything. I'm fire it's one of my favorite songs of all time is it and it's one of the most simple songs of all time yeah well i mean i was never as a kid a bruce fanatic i wasn't either it was it was later it was when i was like later in my 20s and then you listen to like greetings from asbury park is like what is he van morrison now what's happening all right so you got bruce jersey own yeah and you got Billy Joel I think Billy Joel threw a series of fashion choices not even kidding pushed aside banter yeah I think he I think you know because you sift through some of like the clarinets and some of the bullshit yeah and he's one of the greatest American songwriters and performers of all time right but he just didn't like I saw him in Vegas recently

and he starts playing she's got a way about her beautiful song right and then he stops playing it this is exactly what's wrong with billy joel and he starts saying to the audience this is fucking banter okay he starts going you know sometimes when i'm playing a song i think about what i'm gonna have for dinner and we're all like what the fuck are you doing like people are like this one of the most beautiful songs ever then he launches back into the song and in between the lyrics, he's got a way about her. He starts narrating,

oh, maybe I love a cheeseburger. I don't know what it is. Maybe I love a rib's litter. And he's going back and forth in like this like psychotic. That's tragic. It was terrible. And it made me realize

like this is the problem. Like he's his own worst enemy. But the songs and the records like you put on The Stranger, it's incredible. All the way through. Amazing. I remember when I got that,

I must have been in seventh or eighth grade. Because I saw, I remember seeing him on Saturday Night Live do, you know, come's incredible. All the way through. Amazing. I remember when I got that, I must have been in seventh or eighth grade, because I remember seeing him on Saturday Night Live doing, you know, Come Out Virginia, Don't Let Me... It's like the Leather Jacket, Buffon, Cocaine Phase.

No, no, no, it was before. I don't remember him being that way, but I remember there were two guitar players playing acoustic guitar next to him, and he sat in between them, in my recollection of it, and I'm like, what is this guy?

I had no idea who he was, and I bought that record, and I played the shit out of it, and I'm like, what is this guy? I had no idea who he was and I bought that record and I played the shit out of it. And, you know, I could probably still sing all of those songs. But I think that your appreciation for songwriting,

you know, is something, I don't know if it's unique. I know people write their own music, but you really understand and appreciate the craft of popular music. It's part of your thing, right?

Yeah, I love popular music. Yeah. I always have. And you're unashamed of that now. I want to be unashamed of that. But're still a little ashamed of it i think i think as i think until popular music really kind of gets back to you know a lot of the popular music we have today today was the novelty stuff that was one percent in the 90s it's like macarena or whatever like salt and pepper like those bands were like this like tiny percentage of the radio in between the good stuff.

That was like this weird novelty thing. Yeah. And now it's kind of flipped. So, you know, in my head, I want to be the person to change that, but that's a hard thing to say out loud. Yeah. No, it's not.

It's a goal. Yeah. You know, I want it to be, I want to give a shit. Well, I mean. I don't want to be like stuck in my own little world and think that, that was a big thing when Fun got big is like how do how do how do you accept a place where people

are listening right and not do this a humble thing that's so humble that you're just kind of like shooting yourself in the foot and missing an opportunity to do something cool well i well i think that's a that's a it's a noble thing it's it's like to sort of work against cool and to work against... It's basically like a comic playing to the back of the room. Kind of. You know what I mean? Who do you want to impress? Your shitty friends who are bitter anyways?

I want to move on from that. And defeated in a way? And sort of justifying their defeat ideologically by acting like they don't give a shit? When they're really just angry and can't do better. It's hard to let go of that though because you start, like I'm sure in your work too, you start only impressing those people because those are the only people who are watching.

And you're also sort of a weird community as well. Like they're supporting you. They want you to be out of the box. They want you to be unique. They want you to represent what they want to represent, which is a cultural ideal within that culture. But then all you to represent what they want to represent, which is a cultural ideal within that culture. But then all of a sudden, if you want to go after the grail and do something like change

popular music by honoring its format, it's tricky. It's very tricky. You have to cut some of those people loose. But you know what? They'll be back around when they're 40. I hope. These are really 20 to 35 year old problems okay good because if you pull off what you want to do and you continue to evolve as an artist at some point

you're just not going to give a fuck about those people genuinely yeah you're going to be so happy with your own creativity that you're going to be like oh fuck them and you're not even going to think about it anymore and then they'll start coming around going like you know i didn't respect what you're doing a few years ago, but it's really good. Okay, cool. And you win. Waiting for it.

You win. And the guys that still hold on to whatever you're afraid of, they're going to be stuck in that shit. They're going to be 40 years old saying, they sold out. You got people in your life like that? I don't know. I don't talk to them much.

They're gone. They did go away. That's good. Because one thing I learned about, and it was fairly recently, and thinking about it in retrospect, is that people are going to project their own shit onto you. It's not a reflection of you. They've made you into something.

Totally. And you represent something to them. So if you don't honor what they want you to do, it's sort of their problem. So until you can realize that,'s like well i gotta do this other thing i'm sorry but i don't really know you i'm glad you like that one record you liked but you know you're projecting your expectations on me because of your problems yeah people get grossed out by ambition sometimes well you gotta hide it yeah you do yeah like i don't know that i never had it financially but i think i I innately have ambition to keep going.

But I think if you're ambitious and you're successful, that's a toxic mixture to some people that are just bitter. Yeah. Because then you're like, you don't even have a name anymore. You're fuck that guy. That's your name. Fuck that guy. Right. You're fucking dead on

that's all right so it seems to me that you you've got enough people in the world that you aren't fuck that guy too i hope well let's go back to the punk band so when you were in your punk band in junior high after fizz what were you doing original songs already songs we did it we did a couple gorilla biscuits and minoruits and Minor Threat covers, but it was mostly original. I was always really into original music. Back to what I was saying before, I hated learning songs.

It always made me feel inadequate because I could never get it right. I don't read music. I don't want to read music. I was always so excited about the shit you just figure out. Right. But having no idea what those punk songs are, were they as melodic?

Were they as orchestrated as some of your later music? Was it just three-chord garbage? Or were you consciously writing songs that had a pop element to them? No, it was very worked out. It was very pop in the way they were put together. So it wasn't angry punk. It was more, who was the first real punkers? There was a time where those minor chords started showing up.

I know Green Day sort of became that, but it was before that. In Jersey, it was Lifetime. Remember Lifetime? Mm-mm. They were like, at the time, people were calling it emo, which became a very bad word. But Lifetime was this post-hardcore, it was a melodic minor threat thing. Okay. When I was first growing up, that was a really cool word.

Right. That's when I first heard it. And Lifetime i was first growing up that was a really cool word right um that's when i first heard it and uh lifetime kid dynamite that was a philly band it's like it all came from hardcore and that's what that's what outline was like but what was cool about that time period was this the sound sucked so bad at all the shows right that i really learned how to play live right so you had to put on such a good live show that it didn't matter that there was like no pa and no, so it was all about, which is like a feeling I have this day when I walk on stage is like, I got to fucking blow this thing over the top. This has to be,

which is, which is very connected. It's like, it's a Springsteen slash growing up playing in Legion Hall's feeling of like, yeah, leave it all on the stage. Right. Cause you had to fight it out for real.

And you had to figure out how to, to, to make, you know, the sound or your tone or whatever you were trying to do because i know you also have a tremendous appreciation for production so i gotta assume that you know just being loud is not the issue it's how do you be loud and sort of contain in and keep your tone we always talk about this idea of big strokes the sound guy i work with always talks about that like how do you paint with big

strokes live how do you paint with big strokes live? How do you make these choices be massive? Like, if you take a guitar solo, how is everyone hearing that? If there's drums or smashing the toms, how is that, you know, like...

Gotta slow it down a little. Big strokes, yeah. I did learn that. You gotta make sure it gets to the back of the room before it echoes back at everybody and becomes a mess. That's what I've learned

playing in bigger venues. Right? The bigger, more brooding stuff that might seem slightly boring in the studio sometimes is more exciting life. Yeah, because it takes a while to get it back there. It does. It really does. And then it'll bounce back at you.

So it's almost like with comedy, it's a timing thing. In order for it to roll back all the way, you can't jump on it because it'll fucking eat itself. That's why I hate comedy in big venues. No, I don't either. I don't like it either. It's a disaster. It is a disaster because you can't work at it because it'll fucking eat itself. That's why I hate comedy in big venues. No, I don't either. I don't like it either. It's a disaster. It is a disaster because you can't work

at the pace you want to work at. Yeah. But you can't really accommodate songs that you can't slow it down. I've done that. Yeah, we'll slow stuff down live. Or you strip out production. To me, it's all in the drums.

You know, people have to be able to feel like there's just too much going on in the kick pattern or there's too much nuance. Sometimes you just, in a big venue, just pull it back. So, all right, so you're playing in this punk band, but you're writing pop songs. You're aware of your songwriting skills and you are doing orchestrations of things. You're not just blasting out for the sake of getting your rocks off. You're a songwriter and you're a musician and you take it seriously.

Yeah, I was very serious about it. So how do you get from there to uh to steal train what happens i went to public high school in new jersey and everyone um tortured me for being gay i'm not gay yeah because that was the generation of if you had blue hair you were gay right um i really didn't like it well you're you're you're sort of an adorable little man so you're gonna get a mark um and i never thought I was gay. I just, actually at that time in history,

the word gay had nothing to do with homosexuality. Right. This is recent history. You know, it was just like, you're just gay. You suck, you're gay.

And so I left that school and I went to this place called the Professional Children's School because my sister was going there in Manhattan, which was a school started for ballerinas. I just talked to somebody who went there. Yeah. It's not the one from Fame.

It's another one. It's the other one. Yeah. Yeah. You don't actually learn art. You can just leave if you want to do art. Okay. So I was starting to tour a little bit and I went from going to this place where everything

was gay as in not cool to a place where I was one of two straight kids in the entire school. Right. Where everything literally was gay. Right. Which was a wonderful experience. It was like fucking when they, whatever that story is, when they leave the desert and they're in the fucking good shit.

Right, right. You know what I'm talking about? The Jews? Yeah. And they go for the 40 days and it rains bread and then they get to the good place? Yeah, they get to the good place. It was like that moment.

Yeah. I'm not clear on that story. Me neither. Clearly neither one of us are that religious. So I found this wonderful place. And that was all arts? You had music people there, you had dance people there, you had actors there. Was there visual arts as well?

Yeah. There was a good friend of mine who was a painter, there was a chess player, there was an equestrian. Chess is an art? It's something that you need to leave school for if you're a professional at that age. Oh, okay. So it's a professional school. It's not necessarily an art school. It was more arts, but it was...

So it was really catering to kids who were kind of working or doing what they set out to do. And I wanted to tour. With? With Outline. The punk band. Yeah, so then we did our first tour,

which we borrowed my parents' minivan. I booked a tour from New Jersey to all the way down to Florida, over to Texas Texas and back. And you had juice? I mean, you had enough juice to pull people? No. Back then, this was pre-internet, really,

there was this thing called Book Your Own Fucking Life. Did you ever hear of this? No. It was a book that got passed around like punk scenes. Right. And it had the phone numbers of everyone you needed to know. Oh, interesting. So I sat there with Book Your Own Fucking Life,

and I called all these people. We made $300 in a whole three-week tour. But it was the best experience of my life, and I in love with touring were you opening for people or no we were playing like pizza shops we played an anarchist bookshop called the stone soup collective were you pulling crowds at all no it was just like whoever was there and that made you fall in love with it i loved it you're like this is the greatest thing ever because i fell in love with touring before i fell in love with playing shows on tour because of the unity of the discipline of it, of the sort of like moving from place to place.

It's the coolest thing ever. It's like, it's a road trip. And how many people are in this band? Who's in the band with you? There are five people in the band. And who are they? They're, one of them, one of the guys is still one of my best friends, and he played in Steel Train for 10 years.

Uh-huh. And then everyone else we've lost touch. Okay, so. Well, not lost touch. Eddie, the singer, we're still close. Yeah. But everyone else is kind of. Did they get out of the music business? Most of them. Uh-huh. All right, so you do this not Lost Touch, Eddie the singer, we're still close. Yeah. But everyone else is kind of. Did they get out of the music business?

Most of them. Uh-huh. All right, so you do this tour, and then what, you get back to New Jersey, and you're all juiced up. All juiced up. You know your life now. I met this guy, Scott, in high school. We started playing songs together, and that was, we started Steel Train.

So, okay, so, but still, how do you get from punk rock? See, this is the thing for me. How do you get from punk rock to really doing... I guess it was popular at the time, right? Fleet Foxes and some other... It was before that. It was before that. It was Beck C-Change came out when I started Steel Train.

Okay. So there was this reverence for the Flying Burrito Brothers, for Nick Drake. Well, the Beatles have always been my greatest inspiration. The Beatles. 100%. But I don't hear a lot of Beatles on that first steel train record. Am I missing it? No,

it's, there's not a lot there, but it's just always been that idea of kind of everyone playing in the room together, that kind of orchestration. Okay, fine. I never,

I never got too specific with the influence, but just more what they were about. But, but there was a specific influence. I mean, it was, it just because of that producer. I mean,

the songs you were writing were- It was drugs. But drugs- I was so into pot and mushrooms and stuff like that. But you must have been listening to that music because there is definitely a hippie music idea. Because of that, we started listening to like The Dead. So there's a lot of Dead there.

And folksy stuff. Okay. It was a very concentrated moment that wasn't me. But it was you. It really wasn't. I was in this weird post-traumatic stress haze. I was very like... But that music that you were listening to and doing those drugs must have been comforting.

I mean, the record is a fully realized, beautiful record. So whether it was you or not, you applied your talent to something that was making you feel better. I was in a disassociative place. I was outside of my body, and I think that was something that was making me feel good so i went with that but it wasn't like but did you feel connected to that community was was no it was the idea was like you know i can just you know open up and and lay back like was there a spiritual notion behind it no i just i just we just kind of got into it as a group it's interesting it was like a group thing and then very quickly we got out of it.

You sat down and you listened to what? American Beauty and Working Man's Dead. Yeah, and we called the producer, Stephen Barncron, who made American Beauty, and he asked him to work with us. That was a whim? Like maybe we could- Yeah, I remember where we were in Anaheim, and me and Evan, the bass player- You were on tour?

Yeah. With Steel Train at that time. Okay. We took this demo we made, and we brought it to a FedEx and sent it to Steven. Yeah. And he said... It was cold. Yeah.

And he was like, I'm not doing anything. And he was like, come up to Northern California. Let's do this thing. We'll get Grisman out here. Literally. That was basically the conversation. And we were like, cool. And you got that pedal steel guy?

Gene Parsons. Yeah. Yeah. That's insane. He played with the birds. Yeah, it was very cool. And it was the first time I felt vaguely successful because I was playing with people who were technically successful.

Right. But it was always, it was, God, if I knew back then at the time, like how early on in the, you know, the process that was going to be of touring and making records, I probably would have just like jumped off a bridge. But it's weird. So you feel the need to sort of, you know, contextualize that record because it seems so out of character for you it's important for me to understand where it came from well it's also everything is very tied in like there's a song in there called grace where the theme of the song is the movement of a funeral like like it's very all these things are

so closely connected to my experiences with your sister sister. Yeah, that like, it's very important for me to intellectualize it and understand where it was coming from and why at that time I felt the need to say the things and make it that way. Did you feel like you got any emotional closure? Not then. That was a terrible time. Really? Horrible.

So the record didn't help? No, the record was, I don't know, it was just a very bad time. How old were you? I was 19, 20. Oh, so this is like a year after it happened. Yeah, right then. Oh, my God. Yeah.

So that kind of just. I got my first record deal two months before she died. It was a very weird time in life. Everything was possible and everything was impossible. It was really strange. Oh, my God. Yeah. So, okay, so you do that record and what happens do you have a breakdown of some kind after i didn't have a breakdown until about a year later so the record does well no i mean it kept us on

the road my experience until until fun made some nights it was just always working the perfect way to put it is is our accommodations we started sleeping in the van at rest stops when i was in toward that line then we would ask people if we could stay at their house and then we would get one room to comfort in then we get two rooms to comfort in then we got two rooms at the hampton in then eventually two rooms at the sheridan and then like it was always moving very very slowly right so i was never even though the universe was giving me some information that it wasn't really working out it wasn't specifically not working out. Right.

So you were opening act in Steel? Yeah, opening act, or we would headline and play to 100 people here and 10 people there. Who were you opening for? We did, we went out with Rich Robinson once from the Black Crows. We went out with Grace Potter. Steel Train towards the end started doing really well. When we did tours, it was like Tegan and Sarah and started doing all the festivals,

but steel train changed so many times. I mean, that's a band that should have changed names three times. So when did you hit the wall? Um, about a year after that album came out, I just, I started freaking out and getting real panic attacks.

Yeah. Um, couldn't breathe. I'm sure you've had them. You seem like having one now. The type. So, uh, can't breathe. Can't breathe. Things just sure you've had them. Might be having one now. The type. Can't breathe?

Can't breathe. I mean, just physically, I thought I was dying, having a heart attack. Numb? Completely numb. Really? You get numb? I get numb hands, spinny, can't breathe, just break into like an immediate like- Sweat? Pouring sweat.

And the worst thing is the emotional thing where I just don't know what's going on. The fucking thing is, is that like, because you were not processing the grief no that's a fascinating thing about my life looking back on it and just about the human body is like it'll fucking come out of your body if you don't feel it in your mind somehow your body will release it it's the worst because and and and what happens is because i'm sort of in it right now i am not clear why because i've just been through a couple of difficult relationships you know but um but like you know you're you're you're doing your day you're you're functioning yeah but like all of a sudden you're just like you're like you can't escape it well yeah there's almost like something is pressing out of your face literally yeah

there's like energy coming off right and you're And you're like, what wants out of me? What wants out? And there's no triggers. It just happens. No, it's ridiculous. Yeah. And you become, were you raging out? I was terrified.

And then, as you know, when you go through this stuff, the first time it happens, then the fear grows into not just what it is, but when's it going to happen? And that's when it gets really bad. But the problem is, is if you don't believe that that it's stress in, in,

in like still, I'm still not, I'm not quite convinced yet. I still have to go to a couple of doctors. Okay. But, but is that the physical symptoms start to, you become focused on those.

So it almost feeds itself. Like you're not dealing with the emotional stuff underneath. You're dealing with, am I going to have a panic attack? Or why is my, do like, why am I with am I going to have a panic attack? Yeah. Or like, why is my, do I have MS? What's happening?

Exactly. I got obsessed with the senses going blind. I would go, have my vision checked all the time going deaf. I was obsessed with my heartbeat and feeling it.

Did you hear your heartbeat in your ears and shit? I've had that a lot. God damn it. And I started getting, I would get these like rings that would come and go. Yes.

The body is like. Chest pains? Terrible chest pains. I had so many, what's it called when they hook all the things would get these like rings that would come and go. Yes. The body is like. Chest pains. Terrible chest pains. I had so many, what's it called when they hook all the things up to you? Is it a cardiogram? Yeah, EKGs. Yeah, cardiogram I guess. It got to the point where a lot of my doctors would go in and they would just be like, you're

fine. I believe in medication. That's actually something that really helped me. I really, I believe. Which one? Well, if you're having a panic attack, you know, I think you should fucking take a Xanax. Yeah. Because I think you have to break the cycle.

So how, like, but when you went through that, the psychedelic period and the weed period, you know, the one thing that struck me was that, you know, the music sounded so great and you're so clearly talented and so clearly, you know, like the fact that you trying to find your voice musically or whatever the hell was going on was so well articulated it was very hopeful uh obviously but when uh how much drugs were you doing not not i mean we're smoking pot all the time we're smoking hash a lot but you weren't you weren't fucking bottoming out no i wasn't on like heroin or coke i was just or drinking no i drank a bunch i was just in a place i'm very sensitive to anything like that like if um i just very very sensitive like if i took a tylenol right now i'd have a feeling um so i i was just in a different

place all right so so what so what ultimately happens how do you level off i had the terrible experience of the acid okay that was referenced in that Bleacher song when they say, panicked at the acid test. Panicked at the acid test. And then that changed everything, but I still don't really drink. Yeah. Kind of all because of that experience, the idea of being outside of my body had all just shifted. I thought I died.

We were in a car, and we were going to Portland. We were on tour, and I was like, all of a sudden I was like, we died. Yeah. And I was obsessed with it, and I was like, we died. Yeah. We had a car and i was obsessed with it and i was like we died yeah we had a car accident this is like oh my god you walked into that and then i went home and i was fine yeah and then the next day i woke up and i felt like i was tripping again so you're still living with your parents yeah i moved on my parents like two years ago yeah fun had number one help in the country when i moved to my parents house sorry before i moved out of my parents house and they were fine before I moved out of my parents' house.

And they were fine with it because there's this panic at the core of your family life now. Yeah, thrilled to have me around. Yeah, yeah. We know where he is. I've been very compelled to do a lot of things in my life. I was so uncompelled to leave home. Yeah. I just could give a shit.

And I moved out because I got in a relationship and wanted to. Yeah. But I was there for a while. How old are you? 30? Yeah. So you're there until you're 28. And you didn't have to be there you could have left which is funny because before you're quote-unquote successful in a commercial way all the neighbors think oh he's in a van smoking pot

playing shows he's a loser right and then when i was in a band that people saw thought was a big band and whatnot they were like oh he's mentally ill so he's just you can't win with the neighbors but ultimately i think that not unlike the effect it had on your personal life and also your own creativity, it seems like the death of your sister, really, your family needed to be close. So there was that. It probably never seemed that unusual to be at home still. No, I think I would have been more stressed out leaving home

and wondering what was happening there. Yeah. So, now, what album do you finally pull it together? I mean, so, because Steel Train got big, you did, what, two Bonnaroos, you did a Live at Bonnaroo thing.

Yeah, we did a lot of cool, we never really hit our stride, but we did a lot of cool stuff. Like, we played on Letterman and Conan, and we did all the cool festivals. But that was after you came through the woods? Yeah.

What album did the acid thing happen? That was on that first album. So all this happened after the first album. And then 2007, we made an album called Trampoline, which I think was the first thing I've done that was interesting. It was completely a different sound. Right out of the gate, there's less acoustic noodling

there's there you're no longer laid-back drumming there's all of a sudden it's like queen you know there's like a lot there there's a bigness to it right away yeah like the production is like out front well it starts with a song the first song on that album was called i feel weird which was about having panic attacks uh-huh and it was very literal so it's all very autobiographical is all your songwriting autobiographical i mean i want to get better which is the the bleacher singles about all these stories i'm telling you it's just from the lens of now i don't know how to write about anything else and i kind of don't even want to i've never i feel like the only thing that makes me remotely interesting is just what i've been through and my take on it well that's how you and i are similar are similar. I like to write the way I speak.

But you also wrote, did you write a hit song for Taylor Swift? Was it a hit? Yeah, I've written a bunch of stuff. With other people, it's different, though, because then you're in the room, you're talking. I don't really write lyrics for other people. I work on the music and melodies and stuff. Oh, really?

Yeah, like when I worked with Taylor, I did a bunch of stuff. I did Brave with Sara Bareilles. How do you get gigs like that? How does that happen? Do they respect you? They like your music? Are you known by the label as like, this guy can make hits?

I mean, what world is that now? Now it's a little bit like people will call me because they're like, oh, this guy can make it happen. But at the beginning, when fun started getting big in a commercial way i always wanted to work with other artists but i never had the opportunity it then it was like oh you can do this if you want and i started the first thing i did was um a song with tegan and sarah on their album yeah um and then i ended up working with sarah and and taylor and just kind of gone off into working with a lot of different women so women like you i like working with women yeah i don't think i've never done into working with a lot of different women so women like you i like working with women yeah i don't think i've never done anything good with a man why um i don't know i just i i wish i

think from a song writing perspective like like i always write a song in falsetto and then i drop it a full step down like i hear things like the way women sing i hear things in women's voice women's voices right um i like women's voices better than men's voices. Right. I think they're more interesting. Yeah. There's a wider spectrum of sounds that come out of women. Uh-huh.

I just like it better. I like talk. I don't, men are disgusting. Yeah. For the most part, you know, especially men in music. I think women in music are more interesting. Like, I think men in music. What do you mean they're disgusting?

I think men are more often disgusting than women. Women are disgusting too. Disgusting in what way? They're just more interesting. Like, I think men in music... What do you mean they're disgusting? I think men are more often disgusting than women. Women are disgusting too. Disgusting in what way? They're just more often... Here's a better way to put it. I'm more likely to be in a situation where a man thinks I'm a certain way

that I'm not, and then the situation is uncomfortable that I am with a woman. So you feel judged by men? Like, if I'm... If I was... I've been in situations with men where they're like,

oh, I've, you know, I fucked this chick last night, and I'm just like, I've been in situations with men where they're like, oh, I, you know, I fucked this chick last night. And I'm just like, I'm not having this conversation. You know, like, not that I'm not interested. You know, I'll watch hours of porn on my own. But, like. I don't want to talk about it. But, yeah, like, do you want to talk about that?

Like, if I came in and started talking about it, we'd have, there'd be nothing to say. It's an awkward conversation. And I think that, you know, it's almost a, it's almost stereotypical, and I don't know that it happens as often as I think after a certain age, because it's a certain type of dude that does that. Yeah, but they're in music. Well, yeah, they're around. Like, dude, last night, did you see that one?

Yeah, they're even in there. Tagged. Yeah, they do interesting work. Yeah, like, close the deal. Yeah, yeah. And I just, that doesn't happen. There's a higher, there's a better chance that if I'm in the room working with a woman that we're going to get along.

And she's not going to say, like, this dude fucking gave it to me last night. Like, you wouldn't believe. Or like, I just piled through, you know, these four guys over the weekend. You're not going to have that conversation with Taylor Swift? No. Okay. I like women, and with Taylor Swift? No. Okay. I like women, and particularly gay women. Yeah.

Is she gay? No, but I work a lot with she and Sarah. Oh, okay. I was like, do we have a breaking story here? Did you just tip it? No. Well, that's nice. All right, so you ride it out with Steel Train for three records.

When you stop Steel Train, when you stopped the Steel Train, did you disappoint a good many people or was there that risk? I mean, what made you choose to end that? I didn't choose to end it. So Steel Train, so we did Trampoline. We did then our last record, which was self-titled. And then I started, so Fun started. Me, Nate, and Andrewrew started fun what was it what

was the idea there was it a concept band because i mean you were moving it seemed like you were moving towards fun with steel train i mean you know there was there was that largeness there there was a the hookiness to it the production was not as i don't even know how to describe it because i'm not a music guy grandiose i i big it's big but i don't even know if that does it i get it's almost theatrical yeah it's very theatrical yeah with fun yeah but you were sort of moving towards that totally and and what was the decision once you to do fun what was the vision nate andrew and i met on tour in 2004 back in the days of five bands on tour all together we all had our own bands and people started sort of dropping like flies getting other jobs starting families and we were always kind of always around

even steel train had some of our following members nate had a band called the format that band broke up he called andrew and i the day they broke up and said i want to start a band and i said great so the two of them flew out to my parents house in new jersey the next day and we all lived there for four months. Oh, boy. We wrote and recorded a lot of our first album there. So Steel Train and Fun were coexisting. I was in both bands for two years.

And then John Schiffman, who's now in the live band of Bleachers, he quit Steel Train because I think he wanted to become a paramedic. Because we were on tour, actually. But he's in Bleachers. Now he's in Bleachers. He's had a long journey. Steel Train was on tour. I was not there that day. The two days I left tour with Steel Train and like fly somewhere

horrible things have happened. One time they were in a van accident on top of a mountain and then this other day a truck had flipped over and there was like a guy dying on the side of the road and this guy John the drummer jumped out and helped this guy and in that moment realized he was like I want to become a fucking paramedic. So he quits the band and he says,

I'm going to become a paramedic and fun was starting to take off. And it just felt like this is the moment. Like I think, you know, this is kind of had its day. And I, I had sort of been fantasizing and even toying with the word bleachers in my head of doing something else.

Cause there's so much baggage that comes with a decade of music. Yeah. Just so much baggage. With the emotional baggage, with the guys expectations, with the music yeah you just can't really i just really started to fantasize about just doing something else um and so the band kind of dissolved fun ended up then fun had this crazy moment which no one

really expected was going to happen after on the second record yeah we put our second record right after steel train broke up so but so the the the incentive for fun was really, you were burnt out from touring, from the emotional strain of being in a band, from whatever it is that burns bands out after a decade. But musically, what hadn't you done that these did you, what was some of the talks about? Like, you know, I want to write bigger pop songs. With fun? Yeah. The conversations were just, I'd never really, I always wrote, Steel Train was just me writing.

Yeah. And then the band was a band, but I wrote everything. Fun was the first time I collaborated. So it was a totally new experience. You had three guys, me, Nate, and Andrew. We all, you know, Andrew wrote a musical. Nate wrote all the music in his band. I wrote the music in my band what was nate's band like called the format it was it was a lot like like baby fun kind of uh-huh like like a lot of sort of nelson

theatrical stuff going on so you get so you get a guy that actually wrote musicals yeah all of us were the alpha writers in our own situations and we kind of had this idea of like, you know, one plus one plus one equals a thousand. Right. Maybe. Because when I listened to, right when I put on, I think it was some nights, like right away I'm like, this is queen.

Yeah, we really went for that first song. Right? Yeah, we went full queen on that. I mean, just in very literal ways, like the way they stacked harmonies. But that's a very specific production. It didn't feel like a rip-off to me. It felt like some sort of homage

to a type of production that was very specific. Yeah, well, I mean, we love guitar solos. We love harmonies. We love string and horn arrangements. We love orchestral percussion, like these things. Queen's one of the only rock bands that really indulge in a lot

of that so that's why the similarities and also wrote pop yeah real pop songs yeah and kind of rocked at the same time right right and that's love all of it and that's where and so that's where you get your huge success yeah maybe but i mean that that song is the thing that sort of set in stone your ability to write a pop song your ability to stand out and also yeah i mean winning a grammy is not nothing it's not nothing it's a weird thing because it's like you always think of awards you're in your natural reactions you always want to be like oh fuck that right but it is cool it is well that's that's part of you playing to the back of the room it is i mean like yeah you can stalk all you want about like they don't mean anything

yeah but i got one yeah they may not mean anything but i like to look at the one i have i'm happy for my grandma yeah because that's like like winning grammys is something that like she'll always have that and she's still around yeah oh that's sweet yeah and she's pumped because she was i mean she had to live through the whole like what the fuck are you doing phase uh-huh so with the with the with 10 years yeah with 10 years of like it's getting better like you know how do you how'd your parents react to it in general they always were so on the inside that i think they were just drinking the kool-aid with me oh they were yeah they were just like part of the you sold them well no i don't know if that's true because most of the time parents are just worried about whether or not you're

going to earn a living for you they're concerned for you yeah and and i i think that at some point, given that your father was a musician, your talent must have been undeniable. I think they were always... I've got them to admit once. I did this one show very early on in The Netting Factory, and it's the only time that I've ever heard my parents really say something horrible where my dad has said to me since, he was like, that was the only time I ever thought to myself, maybe you shouldn't do this.

What happened? We were bad. We were very bad really bad but i also think losing my sister and all that just kind of like really turned the whole like got to make it like you know my parents come from parents of depression mentality you know like you make a living that's that is the goal of your fucking life that is it you know and then they're an interesting generation and then i think when when we lost our sister and all that it just i think everyone stopped giving a shit about everything kind of right you know because you realize how fragile

it all is yeah my dad would give you unfair yeah fair and it's also obviously it's the worst thing ever but learning very specifically how unimportant money is yeah and no matter how you know my dad had money and he paid for every possible my parents treatment' treatment that you could. Right. Didn't matter. Money can't buy it. So I just, I don't think they gave a shit and I didn't give a shit. My parents would give me $300 a week when I wasn't making money. Right. And that's what I would live on.

Right. Some premium was put on living life to its fullest. And I didn't care. I never, money and success were never connected to me. Yeah, and me neither. I just never gave a shit. I think that's one of the privileges of growing up in an environment like that. Yeah.

That, you know, when you have supportive parents, you know, one way or the other who have money, you know, you have to be taught the importance of money in that way. And if that's not part of it, the value system necessarily, you're sort of left to wander. And I think it's contemptible from other people's point of view. Totally. That you're entitled, you're spoiled, you're this, you're that. But it also provided us an amazing freedom to roll the dice. The thing is that when you do succeed and you come from that background, there's always going to be haters if you have any problems at all.

Yeah. You know? And, and, but you know, when you don't succeed, then you're just another idiot that squandered their fucking life. You know what I mean?

That just sabotaged their own opportunities. Like what the fuck is the matter with you? You had, you could have done whatever you wanted. Yeah. And now look at you, you know, but then if you do make it,

it's like, nah, you do it. You suck. Yeah. It was an easy ride for you. Wasn't it? People love to yell about that. But the fucked up thing is, it's like, nah, it was easy. Yeah, you suck. It was an easy ride for you, wasn't it? People loved to yell about that.

But the fucked up thing is, no matter what, you're going to get shots. Even if your shot is a gift of some kind. Even if you get a shot because you're connected or whatever the fuck it is. If you suck, you still suck. Right. You're not going to stay up there. Totally. That's what always fascinates me about people thinking like that

you know advantages are amazing but like a 15 year career or like there's not too many accidents you kind of have to still fucking you have to be good you have to show up for work and you have to deliver yeah you have to be great no one's going to carry you for

what a decade you know and I mean people know that you're with Lena I mean she deals with that shit all the time No one's going to carry you for, what, a decade. No. You know? And I mean, people know that you're with Lena. I mean, she deals with that shit all the time. I think it's so funny because it's like, I'd say the same thing in my head. Everyone's like, oh, all these people on the show have successful parents in arts. It's like every successful person in art, which is millions of people who have kids, aren't on TV shows. Yeah, I mean.

as millions of people who have kids aren't on tv shows yeah i mean it's like no if someone called me and was like if like you know if phil donahue called me and was like hey like my son wants to be in a band i'd be like go fuck yourself like it just it's irrelevant it is the quality of the work is the quality of the work and i think it's i just think that people love to um i've done it myself regardless of any opportunities i've had's i just think that people love to um i've done it myself regardless of any opportunities i've had sometimes i remember when the strokes came out and i just hated them yeah i love the strokes more than anything now right because i was so jealous when they came out because like i looked like them and i just wished that i was in the coolest thing in new york right well that's what it really comes down to i remember like being conversations like oh

that guy's fucking dad is like a modeling agency billionaire yeah yeah it's like well that's not the reason why julian is one of the greatest songwriters of my time well take see it takes a grown-up mind to realize that you have to get past your own you know jealousy yeah it's really that simple fuck we lean in i talk about that a lot because it's it's something that's inflicted on the young like no one on earth when judy dench wins an oscar is like oh that piece of shit she had it easy yeah or like you know when helen mirren like it's it's when you're young all these young people i feel it and i've i've done it myself you know when i was a certain age i would look at everyone my age

you know doing music and being successful and i would just talk about how much they suck you know i wouldn't go after i wouldn't have obnoxious feelings about nick cave right people my age. Right, exactly. And I think you see a lot of that. It's just jealousy. It's interesting, though. We live in a culture where people do want to see people crash and burn.

Well, yeah, it's weirdly predatory. Until they're oddly proven, and then all of a sudden you're untouchable. Right. But there's still people out there, but they kind of fall away. all of a sudden you're untouchable. Right. But there's still people out there, but they kind of fall away. And as you become more confident and more respected or successful, the people that are knocking at you, it's very easy to see where they're coming from.

Totally. But it is, Twitter makes it hard. I know. Because it's just said to your face. I know. I know. Immediately. I have problems with that.

I mean, get me on a bad day and I'll engage with somebody with six followers. I do it too. Someone this morning, I follow Walgreens on Twitter because I was at a gay pride parade once. I saw Walgreens float and I thought it was cool, so I followed them. Yeah. I've not been this angry in a long time. This morning I got a tweet that someone was like, Jack Antonoff follows Walgreens.

He's like, nice job with the corporate payout, you piece of crap, hashtag unfollow. And it made me irate. I wanted to find this person, strangle them to death, and then yell at their body that I'm not being paid by Walgreens. Yeah, can't a guy like Walgreens? Yeah.

That's what you get pissed off. I'm no sellout for Walgreens. Out of all the things you're going to sell out for, it's like, yeah, I'm on the dole from Walgreens. Ridiculous. All right. Okay.

So Fun has this great big record and you, what, immediately decided you need to do a solo project. What's that about? I don't know. It's funny. I wonder how, like, I always get afraid. My biggest fear with Bleacher is that it's going to look reactionary. Reactionary towards yourself?

Well, I hope people, this is the dialogue in my head, which maybe no one would ever say this. My fear is that people are going to be like, oh, this guy's apologizing for being in a big band by doing something else. But then I would hope they hear it and be like, oh, it's not him hunched over his guitar apologizing. It's just as grandiose as everything. I was wrong. That's what I would hope people would think right but that was a fear of mine i made the album because i wanted to make the album i felt compelled to do it and that's you never know when when you're going to want to work songwriting is absolutely bizarre and so you i force myself to sit down every day

and work but you know the the you i could work for three weeks on something and then be on a run and then sing an idea into my phone which makes everything the past three weeks irrelevant. Yeah. Right. And for some reason, I was never able to write on tour before. I don't know what happened the past two years when I was working on the Bleachers album. Truly unideal time to make work. Ideas started coming and I started recording.

For example, like I want to get better. I did the vocals in my hotel room in Malaysia. I did the guitars in a studio in Stockholm. I did the drums in New Zealand. it was just happening all over the place so you'd like get a flurry and be like get me to a studio or you brought the equipment with you i mostly did it my hotel room but i go to the studio too so the actual mix is is was recorded in these different locations yeah and then i bring it back to new york and work with john hill's one of the producers on the album and we'd sift through all the stuff I did and be like, this is garbage, this is interesting.

What are you recording on? Pro Tools. Just on your computer? Yeah. Wow. I have a pretty good setup at this point. That you can travel easily with? Yeah.

Huh. It's fascinating the way that you, you know, how seemingly easy it is to have access to amazing technology. I love it. Yeah. And I do, a lot of i do a sample bass so i'll start a song like i want to get better not to keep referencing that but only two songs are released so yeah like all those piano samples like that's all cut up and done on an mpc and that was my idea for the album like a lot of like this super you know like created in

in a box stuff tied with super organic stuff at the same time in a literal way. Right. Well, I mean, that's a, it's fascinating to me that like, because I know that like if I wanted to, like I record in GarageBand and I only know how to record voices

is that like if I just took an hour or two and learned how to use it, I could probably have a lot of fun with my equipment in here. Yeah. But I don't do it. I hate it too. I mean, I-

You have to learn the thing. Learning, like, if I got a TV, I would throw away the manual right away and spend seven years trying to turn it on. Yeah, yeah. And that's my experience. Like, I could, if I spent one day, I could probably make my life way easier. But someone, what, someone sit down and show you stuff? Is that the way you are?

It's like, dude, you just have to... Yeah, like, I'll be in sessions. I was, you know, I was with Max Martin the other day, actually. Yeah. And we were working on something, and I was kind of watching him i was like oh fuck like you just do that i can do that and then and then i save seven hours every day doing this new thing that's great about technology but then i have this i like i don't want to get too good at the computer stuff because i'm scared they'll fuck me up why in what way um i don't want to go too far away from just like what the song is.

Right. I get that. You want to keep it sort of organic. Yeah. I don't want to get obsessed with things that not everyone is paying attention to. Where are you? How do you feel that you finally were able to process the grief? Was it just time?

All time. All time. Time and, well, really just just time you just discover things over to quote another doctor i saw a doctor about a year ago in japan i was having a panic attack i thought i was dying so i i was like i have to see a doctor this doctor comes in my hotel room and he said something to me which has really changed my life about grief about my body about hypochondria about all of it he looked at me after he took all these tests, and I knew nothing was wrong, and he knew it,

and we were kind of sharing this horrible moment where he was understanding that this was all emotional. He looks at me and he goes, it takes decades upon decades for someone to understand their body. And it resonated with me so much. And I take that for the mind also, and for everything I've been through, it takes so long to understand it. And you just chip away at it slowly and slowly, mind also and for everything i've been through it takes so long to understand it and so and and you just chip away at it slowly and slowly and you you get closer and closer to not dealing with it but

just being okay right i'm just not feeling my goal for my life is to feel like i'm in my body right when i'm at my worst i'm outside of my body yeah and i feel like i live in this place of sort of wavering back and forth and I'm happy when I feel like I'm in my body and that doesn't mean I'm not crying it doesn't mean I'm not terribly depressed or anxious you know the idea of losing someone that's forever like if you

you know if someone you love went to camp and they stayed for a week and they called and said I'm staying for another week you'd miss them more the second week and then they called and said I'm staying for another week you'd miss them more the third week and that goes on forever. But that's human and that's worth something. But all the fear and the anxiety like that stuff

is what corrodes at you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I just started to think about moving on from that. And also just, you know, like Jews, did you ever reach into your spirituality at all? Did your family? No. It's interesting, right? I hate it. But oddly, you know, when Jews, did you ever reach into your spirituality at all? Did your family? No. It's interesting, right?

I hate it. But oddly, you know, when you think of Shiva or you think of the process of mourning, you know, within a community or... Shiva's a beautiful thing. Well, it is because there, like it seems to me that with grief, the emotions are so profound.

And if you're capable of stifling them, you know, you will out of fear of your own emotions and a fear of acknowledging the closure of it but i think that the the idea of shiva or the idea of of almost you know consciously experiencing grief is is a profound and and and and healthy process but but i i don't know how i would have dealt with it it's hard to learn to let yourself go there sometimes i get in these like two month stretches of not going anywhere emotionally I don't know how I would have dealt with it. It's hard to learn to let yourself go there. Sometimes I get in these two-month stretches of not going anywhere emotionally.

Then you remember it's good to go. Well, it's weird. It's not like for me, one of my bigger problems is that because I'm self-involved, and I think people that have the type of panic you're talking about are self-involved, and you've got a lot of voices in your head. Like if that tweet didn't happen, you would have second-guessed it at some point. It sounds to me like you're doing a lot of second lot of second guessing what you think people are thinking about you and how to counter that if it does happen how to put it into a perspective for yourself how to rationalize it if it you know that that's how your self-judgment plays out in your head so the actual idea of of

empathy and and being able to get out of yourself to experiencing someone else's pain or pathos or even joy or happiness, it's not instinctual with people who are ambitious and self-involved. It's not, and it feels good when you can do it. It does, because you're like, I'm human. I'm human. Do you do a lot of the music for girls?

I've done things here and there. But you're not? I do the fun stuff. Like when Marnie writes songs in the show, I write those songs. Oh, okay. And do you and Lena try to keep your shit separate as much as possible?

Not in private. Oh, no. No, but I mean like professionally, is there a... No, I mean she just directed the video for I Want to Get Better. Oh, okay. We do our best job at trying to not give a fuck about all the obnoxious things that people it's hard to be in a relationship where anytime you say anything about it or do anything

it becomes like a fucking headline yeah right but you know there's nothing more awesome than working with the people you love right and if media ever like dictated something that i wouldn't do that would make me happy that'd be really sad yeah yeah yeah yeah you know yeah but it's a weird you know i mean she's very famous and that's a it's a fucking weird thing yeah you know but you're handling yeah it's also ridiculous it's like you know we have our own life yeah none of you know we don't do anything to perpetuate any of that stuff and it's a weird stressful thing but we both have really exciting careers and and it'll just be what it is. It's interesting to see how the culture kind of out of need for controversy makes these kind of malignant assumptions about people's lives where you're just sort of like, we're just eating. And also, we live in a fascinating culture, which wasn't the case.

It used to be like Us Weekly stuff and this or that but the internet has changed everything to just the headline yeah you know it's like the headline just becomes like a meme yeah like someone there's just a headline that was just like lean and i broke up and that was just that's fine that was it and then the story was that like someone saw us having a fight on the street it was none of it was even true but like it just like but then that's that's it that's the headline or like when bleachers was first announced i remember the daily mail in uk just wrote jack heads off leaves fun which wasn't true and then you read the article in the article was like jack has a new band we wonder if this will be a problem with fun which it isn't but like

there's just throwing that question out there is not that but that's the headline right because there's such a hunger for content and such a competitive nature to what people... And so much content has to happen so quickly. Well, yeah, and also they want people to look at it. So, like, you know,

and they don't give a fuck who they hurt or why or whether it's right or wrong because what's going to happen? The cease and desist? Okay, we'll take it down. But it has a real impact. I mean, it's like...

Sure it does. People say stuff and then that becomes things that come up in every interview and then it becomes truth and it just becomes, you know, it's just it's very intense i uh i really hate a lot of uh people who write for stupid websites it's the worst so you want to play some songs yeah i'll play a song

hey i hear the voice of a preacher from the background calling my name and i follow just to find you i traced the faith to a broken down television and put on the weather man i've trained myself to give up on the past frozen time between arses and caskets lost control when i panicked at the acid test i want to get better while my friends were getting high chasing girls down parkway lines, I was losing my mind, cause the love, the love, the love, the love, the love that I gave, wasted on a nice face, in the blaze of fear, I put a helmet on a helmet, counting seconds through the night, and got carried away, that's why I'm standing on the overpass, screaming at myself, hey, I wanna get, didn't

know I was lonely, till I saw your face. I want to get better, better, better, better. I want to get. I didn't know I was broken till I wanted to change. I want to get better, better, better, better. I want to get up to my room where there's girls on the ceiling. Cut out the pictures and I'll chase that feeling of an 18 year old Who didn't know what loss was, now I'm a stranger

And I'll miss the days of a life still permanent More than the years before I got carried away That's why I'm staring at the interstate, screaming at myself Hey, I wanna get Didn't know I was lonely till I saw your face I wanna get better, better, better, better I wanna get Didn't know I was broken till I wanted to change

I wanna get better, better, better, better I wanna get better Cause I'm sleeping in the back of a taxi I'm screaming from my bedroom window Even if it's gonna kill me Woke up this morning early before my family From this dream where she was trying to show me How a life can move from the darkness

She says to get better And so I put a bullet where I should've put a helmet And I crashed my car cause I wanna get carried away That's why I'm standing on the overpass screaming at myself, hey I wanna get Didn't know I was lonely till I saw your face I wanna get better, better, better, better I wanna get I want to get better, better, better, better. I want to get, didn't know I was broke until I wanted to change.

I want to get better, better, better, better. I want to get better. Awesome. Cool. Thanks, man. Thank you, Mark. All right, that's our show from New York, from my hotel room, looking down on Bowery and 4th Street. I'm signing off.

I'm Mark Maron. Thank you for listening. No, go to WTFpod.com for all your WTFpod needs. Watch Maron on IFC. I'll be in Denver, Colorado tomorrow night. And right now,

what am I going to do? I got to go figure out a place to upload this stuff. That's what I got to do. I'm going to get more coffee. New York, New York. It's a wonderful town. I need one of those machines that change the pitch. Can I put one on here when I choose to sing one line of something?

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