Transcript
00:00:00 There are no right answers for anything involved in art.
00:00:03 We’re all trying experiments to find a way.
00:00:06 And even for the things that I work on,
00:00:08 I don’t have a set way that I do anything.
00:00:11 I come to every project blank.
00:00:13 Maybe you’re just a meat vehicle
00:00:16 and you’re channeling ideas from somewhere else.
00:00:18 I believe we know close to nothing,
00:00:22 close to nothing, about anything.
00:00:25 If we embrace that not knowing,
00:00:27 we’ll have a healthier experience going through life.
00:00:34 The following is a conversation with Rick Rubin,
00:00:36 one of the greatest music producers of all time,
00:00:40 known for bringing the best out of anyone he works with,
00:00:43 no matter the genre of music or even the medium of art,
00:00:47 or just the medium of creating
00:00:48 something beautiful in this world.
00:00:50 And the list of musicians he produced includes many,
00:00:54 many, many of the greats over the past 40 years,
00:00:57 including the Beastie Boys, Eminem, Metallica,
00:01:01 LL Cool J, Kanye West, Slayer, Tom Petty,
00:01:04 Johnny Cash, Dixie Chicks, Aerosmith, Adele,
00:01:08 Danzig, Red Hot Chili Peppers,
00:01:10 System of a Down, Jay Z, Black Sabbath.
00:01:13 I can keep going for a very long time here.
00:01:16 Most importantly, Rick is just an amazing human being.
00:01:20 We became fast friends, which is surreal to say,
00:01:23 and is just an incredible honor.
00:01:26 I felt truly heard as a person
00:01:28 when I spent the day with him
00:01:30 eating some delicious Texas barbecue,
00:01:32 talking about life, about music, about art, about beauty.
00:01:37 This was a conversation and experience I will never forget.
00:01:42 This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
00:01:44 To support it, please check out our sponsors
00:01:46 in the description.
00:01:47 And now, dear friends, here’s Rick Rubin.
00:01:51 Are you nervous?
00:01:53 I’m not shaky, but I would say I feel uneasy.
00:01:57 And I feel like the sooner we start talking,
00:01:59 the more relaxed we’ll get.
00:02:01 Yeah.
00:02:02 Well, maybe we should sit in this moment
00:02:03 and enjoy the nervousness of it.
00:02:07 Let me start with Nietzsche.
00:02:09 He said, without music, life would be a mistake.
00:02:12 What do you think he means by that?
00:02:14 Let’s talk some philosophy.
00:02:15 Let’s try to analyze Friedrich Nietzsche from a century ago.
00:02:22 It seems like music has the ability
00:02:26 to bring us so much depth in our soul
00:02:31 that’s hard to access any other way.
00:02:34 And without it, there would be a loss
00:02:37 beyond the pleasure of it.
00:02:41 Feels like it’s a window into something else.
00:02:45 Something that no other medium
00:02:47 can express quite the same way.
00:02:51 I would say not as automatically.
00:02:53 Something about music can do it automatically.
00:02:56 Maybe poetry or maybe certain abstract forms
00:03:02 can get us there.
00:03:04 But there’s something about music
00:03:06 that really can get us there quickly.
00:03:09 But it’s also the time, the place, the history.
00:03:11 There’s something about, like a lot of my family’s
00:03:15 still in Philly, there’s something about driving
00:03:18 through Jersey and listening to Bruce Springsteen.
00:03:23 And then you just, I’ll get emotional.
00:03:27 Like listening to I’m On Fire.
00:03:29 That like, one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen songs,
00:03:33 there’s a haunting kind of strumming to it.
00:03:38 It’s not a strumming, it’s actually picked.
00:03:41 It has a country feel to it,
00:03:43 almost like a Johnny Cash feel actually.
00:03:45 And it, I don’t know, makes me feel,
00:03:47 so for people who don’t know, I’m On Fire.
00:03:50 That song is, I guess, a love song to a woman
00:03:56 that you can’t have because she’s married
00:04:02 or she’s with somebody else,
00:04:03 which I guess is quite a lot of love songs.
00:04:06 But there’s something about the haunting nature
00:04:08 of the guitar and then it has to be driving through Jersey.
00:04:12 And I feel like everyone has fallen in love
00:04:16 with a Jersey girl at one point in their life.
00:04:18 I don’t know if that’s true for her,
00:04:21 but I feel like that.
00:04:22 I haven’t either, but I just feel like that.
00:04:25 There’s something about Bruce Springsteen is like,
00:04:27 yeah, I’ve been there.
00:04:31 And that just takes you to a place of emotion
00:04:33 that you just, that captures love,
00:04:37 that captures longing, that captures the heartbreak
00:04:40 of just the way time flows in life
00:04:42 and the fact that it’s finite
00:04:43 and just all of that in a single simple song.
00:04:47 What else can capture that?
00:04:49 Yeah, I don’t know.
00:04:50 But it’s true that there’s a connection
00:04:53 both between time and place and music.
00:04:55 And I, certain music growing up on the East Coast
00:05:02 didn’t really resonate with me
00:05:03 until I spent time on the West Coast.
00:05:05 Eagles being an example.
00:05:06 When I lived in New York,
00:05:08 the Eagles didn’t really speak to me.
00:05:09 ZZ Top didn’t really speak to me.
00:05:12 And then when I started spending time in California
00:05:14 and driving through Laurel Canyon,
00:05:16 all of a sudden the music of the Eagles felt
00:05:20 appropriate somehow.
00:05:21 And I started listening to it more.
00:05:23 Got it.
00:05:24 So not until you went out West
00:05:26 can you understand the sounds of the West.
00:05:29 So it’s really like New York has a sound.
00:05:32 What other places have a sound in the United States?
00:05:34 I think every place does.
00:05:36 And that said, sometimes we can get an experience
00:05:40 through music of a place.
00:05:42 Like we can resonate with the music and not understand why.
00:05:46 And then maybe when we go to the place
00:05:47 where it was created,
00:05:49 it’s almost like we have a knowingness of that place.
00:05:52 It’s not a strange place anymore.
00:05:54 Yeah, Stevie Ray Vaughan with blues and Texas blues.
00:05:58 You can just listen to Texas Flood and just,
00:06:01 again, this is like a woman you’re missing,
00:06:03 a broken heart and somehow that connects to the place.
00:06:07 The Eagles, what song with the Eagles connects with you?
00:06:11 Are we talking about like Take It Easy
00:06:15 or are we talking more like Hotel California?
00:06:18 I’m thinking Take It Easy, but both are great.
00:06:22 Yeah, there’s certain songs
00:06:23 when I started learning guitar when I was young
00:06:27 that’s like, I would like to be the kind of person
00:06:29 that not only knows how to play this song,
00:06:31 but understands the song and like have that song
00:06:36 be something I played 20 years ago.
00:06:40 And I’ve lived with that song for a while.
00:06:42 Like Hotel California is an example.
00:06:45 Obviously there’s the solo,
00:06:47 but there’s also the soulfulness of the lyrics,
00:06:50 which I still don’t understand.
00:06:51 And it could be about anything.
00:06:52 And as you get older,
00:06:53 I feel like the meaning of the song could be anything.
00:06:56 Yeah, I think that’s true.
00:06:57 I think that’s the beauty of them.
00:06:59 I think when the person wrote them,
00:07:00 they may have had one interpretation,
00:07:04 but it’s not contingent on us getting that interpretation
00:07:08 to like it or resonate with it or feel it.
00:07:12 In some ways, the best art is open enough
00:07:18 where the artist gets to have their experience
00:07:21 when they make it
00:07:22 and then the audience gets to have their experience
00:07:24 when they listen and they don’t have to be the same.
00:07:26 And then it connects thousands
00:07:28 or millions of people together.
00:07:30 There’s a togetherness of music when you share that music,
00:07:34 when you’re listening to stuff together, like in a car.
00:07:36 First of all, the car is a sacred place.
00:07:39 So I work in part on autonomous vehicles.
00:07:43 And you start to think, well,
00:07:44 what are the things you lose
00:07:46 when the car stops being the central part of American life?
00:07:53 The car ownership.
00:07:54 It just feels like the car, when you’re alone,
00:07:57 it’s like a therapist thing, session,
00:08:01 because you get angry at other humans
00:08:04 and then you get to like sit in your own anger and emotion.
00:08:09 You get to listen to the song on a long road trip
00:08:12 and remember, like run through your memories, the heartbreak.
00:08:18 I don’t know, the one that got away,
00:08:20 but also like the beautiful moments, all of it.
00:08:23 Yeah, and all of that in the car.
00:08:27 Yeah, driving also serves another purpose.
00:08:30 And it’s one of the things that we can do
00:08:34 that we have to pay attention enough not to crash,
00:08:41 but typically can essentially run on autopilot enough
00:08:45 where we could be thinking about something else
00:08:47 or concentrating on something else.
00:08:50 And the difference between concentrating on something
00:08:53 or trying to solve a problem
00:08:55 when you’re solely trying to solve a problem
00:08:57 versus when you have some little task
00:08:59 that’s keeping you occupied,
00:09:01 I find if I have something slight to take care of,
00:09:09 it frees a more creative side of my mind
00:09:12 to better solve problems.
00:09:15 You know, I’m kind of jealous of people
00:09:17 that found that in painting, for example.
00:09:19 They’ll be drawing or painting and listening to,
00:09:22 so that’s the small task you do.
00:09:25 You’re coloring in the lines.
00:09:27 It’s like this gentle, peaceful, slow process
00:09:31 that requires just a small fraction of your mind
00:09:33 and then you can listen.
00:09:34 Some people listen to podcasts that way.
00:09:36 Some people listen to music that way.
00:09:39 Yeah.
00:09:40 How do you do it?
00:09:40 How do you free your mind?
00:09:42 Yeah, running is one of them.
00:09:51 There’s a process.
00:09:54 So most freeing of the mind for me
00:09:57 has to go through a process of a bit of pain for a bit.
00:10:01 So doing something difficult,
00:10:04 so it’s like an airplane taking off or something.
00:10:06 So that’s like, for example, running.
00:10:09 The first few miles would just be,
00:10:10 just first of all, the physical aspect,
00:10:14 which is like, ah, you’re so fat.
00:10:16 You’re out of shape.
00:10:17 You’re, this is the getting old, this, that.
00:10:20 Okay, that slowly dissipates.
00:10:21 And then the demons come in who are like,
00:10:25 you should be getting this and that and this done.
00:10:30 You haven’t gotten it done.
00:10:31 You’re like breaking promises,
00:10:33 all those kinds of voices coming in.
00:10:35 And after that, maybe mile four,
00:10:39 it’s like, fuck it.
00:10:40 You just run, run with the wind at a very slow pace,
00:10:44 but with the wind, and then you could think.
00:10:47 So it’s the footsteps, the physical activity.
00:10:50 Then you could deeply think about stuff, ideas,
00:10:54 sort of design, whether it’s program design stuff
00:10:56 or like high level life decisions, all those kinds of things.
00:11:00 I would say running.
00:11:02 I used to build bridges from toothpicks.
00:11:05 I used to be a thing.
00:11:07 It’s an engineering.
00:11:08 I guess some people like glue together airplanes
00:11:11 and stuff like that.
00:11:13 But the bridges, it’s such deeply honest work
00:11:17 because at the end of it,
00:11:18 you’re gonna have to test that bridge
00:11:21 and you’re gonna see how good your work was.
00:11:24 The little details, but also the big picture.
00:11:26 Do you use glue or no?
00:11:28 Yeah, use glue.
00:11:30 So it’s not pure physics.
00:11:32 It’s materials engineering too.
00:11:36 Because the way you want to do it is
00:11:40 you actually split the wood as thin as possible
00:11:42 and then glue it back together
00:11:43 because the glue is really strong,
00:11:46 except for the arches and things like that.
00:11:49 So you’re building arch bridges,
00:11:50 which is a whole nother skill
00:11:52 because you have to bend the wood.
00:11:54 And it’s so cool
00:11:55 because the thing can hold thousands of times its weight.
00:11:58 And then you get to watch it explode at a certain point
00:12:03 from the pressure and when you do a really good job,
00:12:07 it doesn’t explode in a kind of some weak point
00:12:11 that you didn’t anticipate just kind of starts cracking.
00:12:14 Everything cracks, everything explodes.
00:12:17 It’s just pieces fly everywhere.
00:12:20 And it’s literally hundreds of hours of work
00:12:23 just explode in front of you.
00:12:26 And that’s a metaphor for life maybe.
00:12:29 And it’s all for nothing,
00:12:30 except for the journey that you took to get there.
00:12:34 And no one understands.
00:12:37 Speaking of which, back to Nietzsche,
00:12:40 these questions are ridiculous.
00:12:42 So you’re gonna have to try to figure out
00:12:46 what the heck I’m trying to do here.
00:12:48 So Nietzsche also said,
00:12:51 a line I love, which is,
00:12:53 and those who were seen dancing
00:12:54 were thought to be insane
00:12:56 by those who could not hear the music.
00:12:58 Do you, Rick Rubin, ever feel crazy?
00:13:02 Or maybe you’re the one who’s sane
00:13:05 and everybody else is crazy.
00:13:07 You know that the dancing, the joy of the music,
00:13:11 of just feeling the music
00:13:13 and everybody else just doesn’t understand.
00:13:15 And this doesn’t have to be literally about music.
00:13:17 This is about art, about creation.
00:13:21 I would say I feel different
00:13:24 and it’s hard to say
00:13:28 it’s like which side of the equation is crazy, you know?
00:13:33 Did you ever find a group of people
00:13:37 that you get, they get you?
00:13:39 Yes.
00:13:39 Is that what producing is essentially?
00:13:42 Is you try to find the moments
00:13:43 when you just get each other?
00:13:45 No.
00:13:46 I would say there are definitely certain artists
00:13:56 with certain temperaments.
00:13:58 When you’re around them,
00:13:59 it feels like you can finish each other’s sentences.
00:14:02 You know, just see the world the same way.
00:14:04 Comedians as well.
00:14:07 And that’s not essential for the two of you together
00:14:13 creating something special.
00:14:14 No, no.
00:14:16 So it could be attention too?
00:14:18 It could be anything.
00:14:18 It could be any, there’s no rules.
00:14:21 It’d be like, think of it like a coach.
00:14:24 A coach could bring what they have to bring
00:14:29 to any talented individual
00:14:31 and help them find their way.
00:14:36 And sometimes the right coach for the right athlete
00:14:40 really works and other times there’s a mismatch.
00:14:44 Have you seen the movie Whiplash?
00:14:46 I did.
00:14:47 I saw it when it came out
00:14:48 so I don’t really remember it well, but I did see it.
00:14:49 So there’s a coach type of figure.
00:14:51 Yes.
00:14:52 Who is pushing a drummer to create,
00:14:56 to grow as a musician, but also to create something special.
00:15:00 I don’t know if it’s even special music skill wise,
00:15:02 it’s a special moment.
00:15:04 I don’t know what he’s trying to create.
00:15:06 From one perspective, it’s just an abusive,
00:15:08 a person who selfishly gets off on being abusive
00:15:11 to those he’s with.
00:15:12 But from another perspective, the way I saw that movie,
00:15:15 is it’s just the two right humans finding each other
00:15:20 at the right moment in life
00:15:21 and risking destroying each other in the process,
00:15:24 but maybe something beautiful will come of it.
00:15:29 Do you think that’s a toxic relationship?
00:15:32 Or is there, does some of that movie resonate with you
00:15:37 as that sometimes is required to create art?
00:15:41 That kind of suffering.
00:15:43 Yeah, it doesn’t.
00:15:44 Well, there’s suffering involved,
00:15:46 but not that kind of suffering.
00:15:49 Not for me.
00:15:50 There are some people who that’s their process
00:15:53 and that’s whatever works.
00:15:55 There’s no right answers for anything involved in art.
00:15:59 We’re all trying experiments to find a way.
00:16:02 And even for the things that I work on,
00:16:04 I don’t have a set way that I do anything.
00:16:07 I come to every project blank
00:16:10 and see,
00:16:15 I really listen to what the artist plays and says
00:16:18 and through what they explain they wanna do,
00:16:26 help find the best way to get there.
00:16:30 Was it implicit in the movie
00:16:32 that the mean teacher liked being a mean teacher?
00:16:37 You said the way you described it was
00:16:41 that he got off on treating people this way.
00:16:43 Do we know that to be the case?
00:16:44 I don’t remember that in the movie.
00:16:45 No, but we sometimes project that onto people,
00:16:47 people who are really rough on students.
00:16:52 You start to think, well, maybe,
00:16:58 maybe that is fundamentally who they are
00:17:01 and if it’s fundamentally who they are,
00:17:03 that there must be some pleasure in it
00:17:05 or it’s an addiction of some sort.
00:17:07 But it could be also a deliberate choice
00:17:12 made by the teacher.
00:17:14 It also could be a lineage.
00:17:15 Like in the Zen tradition,
00:17:18 there are sort of the mean Roshi’s
00:17:23 who if you do something wrong, take a physical action.
00:17:27 And it’s just in the lineage,
00:17:30 it’s considered that’s how you teach.
00:17:34 I didn’t come from that lineage.
00:17:37 So I’m much more of a,
00:17:39 I feel like it’s more of a collaboration
00:17:43 between people working together to make the best thing.
00:17:46 It’s not a boss slave relationship at all.
00:17:51 It’s much more of a let’s find our way.
00:17:55 And we agree at the beginning of the process
00:17:57 that if either of us or any of us
00:18:02 don’t like what’s happening, we say it.
00:18:04 And the goal is to keep working
00:18:05 till we get to a point where we’re all really happy with it.
00:18:09 It’s like if we make something
00:18:11 that an artist likes and I don’t like,
00:18:13 or that I like and they don’t like,
00:18:14 we haven’t gone far enough.
00:18:17 In terms of lineage,
00:18:19 the ones that seek destruction
00:18:21 and the ones that seek happiness
00:18:22 all come from the same lineage.
00:18:23 We all came from fish.
00:18:24 So somewhere in you, deep down there,
00:18:28 there’s the other stuff too.
00:18:30 It’s just that you haven’t been yet, by the way,
00:18:33 because you said every new project,
00:18:35 including maybe starting today,
00:18:39 is an opportunity to channel, to plug into something
00:18:43 that was always there
00:18:43 and you haven’t gotten a chance to plug into.
00:18:46 You mentioned listening.
00:18:47 How do you listen to a person?
00:18:49 How do you hear a person?
00:18:51 When you first come in, like we just met,
00:18:55 what’s the analysis happening?
00:18:57 But I mean, with me is one thing.
00:18:59 I’m an artist of sorts.
00:19:00 I program and I’m just, I’m human, I guess.
00:19:06 I guess we’re all creating art.
00:19:08 How do you see, like, how do I bring out?
00:19:10 So for people who don’t know,
00:19:14 I mean, obviously everyone knows
00:19:16 that you’ve produced some of the greatest records ever,
00:19:19 but the way I see that is you just brought out the best
00:19:24 in a lot of interesting artists.
00:19:27 And so in order to bring out the best in them,
00:19:31 you have to understand them.
00:19:33 You have to hear the music of their soul,
00:19:38 hopefully not being too romantic here,
00:19:39 but just like, is there something you can say
00:19:45 of how difficult that is, if there’s a process,
00:19:48 if there’s tricks, if it’s luck?
00:19:52 I think it starts with this, again, coming in blank,
00:19:56 like not having any preconceived ideas,
00:19:59 being open and really listening,
00:20:01 listening and not thinking about what you’re gonna say next
00:20:05 or what your opinion is or any, you know,
00:20:08 not basically being a recorder
00:20:12 and just hearing what comes in.
00:20:14 And then once you hear what comes in,
00:20:16 processing that information
00:20:19 and trying our best to do that
00:20:22 without any of the beliefs that we might have
00:20:25 to impact what that is.
00:20:28 If I ask you a question, I don’t wanna hear what,
00:20:32 I don’t wanna listen to you
00:20:34 and have any reaction happening when you’re speaking.
00:20:38 I wanna be as neutral as possible.
00:20:41 For me, my goal is not to form an opinion,
00:20:46 it’s to understand.
00:20:48 So if anything, I would draw you out further
00:20:52 and just ask questions to really understand.
00:20:56 And if you say, or if you say something
00:20:58 that somehow triggers me in a way that that’s, you know,
00:21:05 I wonder how he came to that.
00:21:08 I wouldn’t challenge you, I would ask,
00:21:11 like, how did you find that?
00:21:12 You know, how did you get to that place?
00:21:14 From a place of curiosity, you would try to figure out.
00:21:17 Yeah, I wanna understand who the person is.
00:21:20 And through questioning, we can usually get there.
00:21:22 Or through just spending time together,
00:21:26 you find out who the person is.
00:21:29 What about finding out and figuring out
00:21:31 how to then take the next steps
00:21:33 of bringing out the best in them?
00:21:37 Like, is it just trial and error?
00:21:40 Like, let’s try this.
00:21:41 It’s definitely trial and error.
00:21:42 It’s always trial and error.
00:21:45 Are you afraid of making a mistake?
00:21:46 Like, let’s add this instrument,
00:21:48 let’s remove this instrument.
00:21:50 Let’s add this line, let’s remove this line.
00:21:52 Let’s try.
00:21:53 And let’s be open.
00:21:55 So one of the, we don’t really have rules,
00:21:59 but one of the agreements in the studio is
00:22:03 any idea that anyone has will always demonstrate it,
00:22:07 will always try it.
00:22:09 Because I can describe to you an idea
00:22:12 and you can think, that’s a terrible idea,
00:22:14 let’s not do that.
00:22:16 And then I can play you the idea
00:22:18 and then you can say, oh, that’s really good.
00:22:19 And it’s completely different because we,
00:22:22 when we hear, when we’re told something,
00:22:25 we have to imagine what that is
00:22:28 and the way you see something and imagine it
00:22:30 and the way I see something and imagine it
00:22:32 are completely different.
00:22:33 So you say a thing and now there’s two humans
00:22:36 that play that thing in their mind differently,
00:22:39 in their imagination, and then there’s a cool creative step
00:22:43 and when you actually do it,
00:22:44 to see how it differs in the imagination,
00:22:46 and then the difference or the commonality
00:22:49 will be like an exciting little discovery together.
00:22:52 Well, so many groups of people
00:22:55 making things together in a room,
00:22:57 one person will suggest something
00:22:59 and someone else in the room say,
00:23:00 ah, that doesn’t sound like a good idea,
00:23:01 let’s not do that, and then they move on.
00:23:05 The testing of every idea is really important
00:23:07 and that’s how you get to see,
00:23:09 oh, that’s not at all what I thought it was gonna be.
00:23:11 Happens to me all the time, I know,
00:23:13 because someone will suggest, why don’t we do it like this?
00:23:16 And I’ll think, that sounds bad,
00:23:19 and then I’ll think, okay, let’s try it,
00:23:21 and then we hear it, and then eight times out of 10,
00:23:24 it’s nothing like I imagined and great.
00:23:28 And then you try not to have an ego
00:23:29 about the fact that you thought
00:23:31 it was not a good idea in your head.
00:23:33 There can’t be any ego in this.
00:23:36 It doesn’t, if everyone’s there
00:23:41 with the purpose of making the best thing we can,
00:23:47 there’s nothing else.
00:23:49 There are no, there can’t be any boundaries to that.
00:23:53 So there’s a moment I saw with,
00:23:56 I know you don’t love talking
00:23:58 about previous things you’ve done,
00:24:00 but it’s cool to dive in there every once in a while.
00:24:02 I’m fine to talk about anything.
00:24:04 To sample it, anything?
00:24:06 We’ll see.
00:24:07 I have this pain I gotta talk now.
00:24:09 I’ll think of something ridiculous
00:24:12 that would make you change your mind.
00:24:16 You mentioned, I saw a video of you with Jay Z
00:24:19 at Workaround 99 Problems where you suggested acapella,
00:24:23 opening the song with acapella,
00:24:25 just no instruments, just voice.
00:24:28 That to me, I mean, that’s one of the characteristics
00:24:33 of the things, of the ways you’ve brought out
00:24:36 the best in artists is doing less.
00:24:38 Sort of the tending towards simplicity in some kind of way.
00:24:43 So that choice of acapella is really interesting
00:24:45 because I could see a lot of people think
00:24:47 that that’s a bad idea,
00:24:50 but it turned out to be a really powerful idea.
00:24:52 Can you maybe talk about the simplicity,
00:24:55 how to find simplicity, why you find simplicity is beautiful.
00:24:58 It does appear to be beautiful.
00:25:00 What is that?
00:25:01 Yeah, I don’t know where it comes from.
00:25:04 It has been with me from the beginning of my work,
00:25:07 the very first album I ever produced,
00:25:10 the credit I took was reduced by me
00:25:12 instead of produced by me for that reason.
00:25:16 I like the idea of getting to the essential
00:25:19 and I have a better idea now that I’ve done it for a while,
00:25:24 but at the time it was purely an instinctual thing.
00:25:28 And part of it is a sonic, there’s a sonic benefit,
00:25:33 which is the less elements you have, you can hear each
00:25:39 of the ones that are there and they can sound better.
00:25:42 And the less there are, the more space they could have
00:25:47 around them and the more you can hear their personality.
00:25:49 If you were to record 10 people playing the same guitar part
00:25:55 and you listened to it, it would sound like guitar.
00:25:58 And if you record one person playing a guitar part,
00:26:02 it sounds like a person playing the guitar.
00:26:05 It’s different than just guitar.
00:26:08 And often in the studio, the idea of building upon things
00:26:14 and adding layers to thicken, to make it sound bigger,
00:26:18 sometimes the more things you add, the smaller it gets.
00:26:24 So a lot of it is counterintuitive
00:26:27 until you just in practice see what works.
00:26:30 Try it, to try removing stuff until it’s just right.
00:26:33 It’s the Einstein thing, make it as simple as possible,
00:26:39 but not simpler.
00:26:40 That’s such a, like finding a stopping place,
00:26:44 just keep chopping away and chopping away.
00:26:47 Yeah, there’s something we also like to do
00:26:49 called the ruthless edit, which is,
00:26:51 let’s say you’re at a point where it can work for anything,
00:26:55 but I’ll give you the example with an album.
00:26:57 We’ve recorded 25 songs.
00:27:02 We think the album is gonna have 10.
00:27:05 Instead of picking our favorite 10,
00:27:08 we limit it to what are the five or six
00:27:11 that we can’t live without.
00:27:14 So going past even the goal to get to the real heart of it
00:27:20 and then see, okay, we have these five or six
00:27:22 that we can’t live without.
00:27:24 Now, what would we add to that
00:27:28 that makes it better and not worse?
00:27:34 It’s just, it puts you in a different frame
00:27:38 when you start with building instead of removing.
00:27:42 And you might find that there’s nothing you need to add.
00:27:45 Sometimes, sometimes something happens
00:27:48 when you get to the real essence.
00:27:51 Then when you start adding things back,
00:27:52 it becomes clear that it was just supposed to be
00:27:56 this tight little thing.
00:28:00 Can I ask you like a therapy session question?
00:28:02 So you mentioned somewhere that one way
00:28:05 to kind of think about music to get into music
00:28:09 is to look at the top like 100 albums of all time
00:28:12 and just go down the list and like,
00:28:14 just take it all in like one piece of artwork.
00:28:17 So I was doing that for a while.
00:28:20 It’s a cool experiment,
00:28:21 because unfortunately I have to admit
00:28:23 I’ve gotten lazy and stopped taking in albums as albums.
00:28:29 And I looked at one interesting top 100 list,
00:28:32 top 500 actually, which is put together by Rolling Stone.
00:28:36 And they put, this is the therapy session part,
00:28:39 and this has to do with simplicity too.
00:28:41 They put Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On at number one.
00:28:44 Spoiler alert.
00:28:46 So I’d like to maybe get your opinion on that choice.
00:28:50 The reason that Marvin Gaye is really interesting,
00:28:54 it’d actually be cool to play What’s Going On in a second,
00:28:57 but when you just listen to his like acapella,
00:29:02 just listen to his voice, it is really good.
00:29:06 Like people, it makes me wonder if it’s possible
00:29:09 to pull off like most of his songs with no instruments.
00:29:13 Like in many parts, there’s so much soul
00:29:17 in just Mercy, Mercy, Me, What’s Going On.
00:29:21 There’s so many songs that you could just be like,
00:29:23 I wonder if you could just like, just go raw,
00:29:28 or maybe in parts, or maybe do what you do with Jay Z,
00:29:30 just open up with nothing.
00:29:31 Anyway, there’s something so powerful
00:29:33 to a great soulful voice.
00:29:36 Do you mind if I play it real quick?
00:29:37 No, please.
00:29:38 What’s going on?
00:29:39 This is probably one of my favorite songs.
00:29:41 I mean, it’s up there.
00:29:43 Hey, what’s happening?
00:29:44 What’s up, brother?
00:29:45 What’s up?
00:29:46 Hey, how you doing?
00:29:46 Hey man.
00:29:49 Wow.
00:29:54 Hey man.
00:29:58 Mother, mother,
00:30:00 That voice.
00:30:02 There’s too many of you to cry.
00:30:08 Brother, brother, brother.
00:30:11 There’s far too many of you to die.
00:30:14 there’s some just very subtle backing vocals
00:30:29 this one hurts
00:30:33 father father we don’t need to escalate
00:30:35 i wonder who the father he’s talking about is
00:30:46 oh that’s interesting i mean i have so for people who don’t know his his own father ended up
00:30:53 uh killing marvin gay yeah i mean that one is really pain i mean for a lot of people your
00:30:59 relationship with your father your mother i mean there’s different dynamics but there’s
00:31:03 it’s almost like part of life is resolving some kind of complex puzzle you have
00:31:08 or the people you love the people close to you or the people who are not there all those kinds
00:31:12 of things that’s so much pain in that we don’t need to escalate father father i never thought
00:31:18 if it’s i always thought it’s his father directly yeah i don’t get that it could be but i don’t i
00:31:24 feel like it’s a more um masculine spirituality like a father figure or just broadly some kind
00:31:36 of spirituality could be like god father god mother god you know like could be i don’t know
00:31:43 but there’s there’s so much it’s like both hope and melancholy you seeing war is not the answer
00:31:51 it’s like you you don’t tell your father war is not your your blood father war is not the answer
00:31:56 it’s strange conversation it’s a bigger conversation they’re not personal don’t you
00:32:01 think it feels like war if one is personal what’s the difference between is the war is personal too
00:32:10 it’s only leaders think about war in a geopolitical sense yeah when people that fight wars you lose
00:32:17 your brothers you lose i mean you death is just right there so it might feel just like that but
00:32:22 yeah there is a dance between like the personal and like talking to the entirety of the society
00:32:28 it’s like john lennon imagine like also a song where is that is that a hopeful is that cynical
00:32:39 is it like melancholy like heartbroken like you you hope you wish things would be a certain way
00:32:46 and they’re not yeah i don’t know i don’t know john lennon is giving up on the world in imagine
00:32:52 yeah i don’t know you know it’s a it’s an interesting question there’s another uh
00:32:56 john lennon lyric um in let me think of what it is take me a second
00:33:08 and different songs keep coming into my head the one that i’m looking and you keep pressing next
00:33:13 um across the universe um nothing’s going to change my world and when i hear that
00:33:29 i hear it as hopeless but i don’t think i don’t believe that that’s
00:33:36 well it may be how he meant it but i don’t think that’s how it’s normally taken
00:33:40 and it’s also the taker is important i’m generally optimistic and hopeful so i i always like look for
00:33:46 the hope and the actually the harshest love uh heartbreak songs are always somehow hopeful to me
00:33:52 that’s a love song uh to me like a song about losing love is is a song about the great capacity
00:34:02 for love in the human heart that’s what i hear so to me losing love is exciting because it’s
00:34:07 like that means you really cared that means you felt something you feel something you can sit in
00:34:12 that pain and that pain is a reminder what it means to be human when you’re that um what is it uh
00:34:20 we’re just listening uh the only man who could have reached me was the son of a preacher man
00:34:25 so see um it’s like that early love or something or partially sexual or whatever that’s not as
00:34:30 interesting to me it’s fun it’s great but it’s not as interesting to me as it is to me
00:34:36 it’s fun it’s great but it’s that heartbreak that’s the reminder that it can go deep
00:34:41 although that’s a damn good song have you ever heard the uh detroit mix of the marvin gay album
00:34:48 no call it up how by far better mind blowing i just heard it recently blew my mind
00:34:57 oh wow reverb distant
00:35:04 interesting
00:35:06 there’s
00:35:08 there’s far too many of you
00:35:16 it feels like it’s all around the room more
00:35:18 to bring some loving here today
00:35:36 more voices more voices
00:35:38 he’s layering his own vocals
00:35:52 just like there’s multiple people singing
00:36:08 don’t punish me with brutality talk to me so you can see oh what’s going on that’s beautiful yeah
00:36:22 seems to have more energy if you if you listen to the whole album even even though you just said
00:36:27 you don’t listen albums anymore the detroit mix of the whole album changes the album a lot
00:36:33 i mean that that felt uh so that’s the opposite of a cappella i would say yes because it’s saying
00:36:39 it’s it’s um there’s layers there’s um and that maybe i don’t know if you remember but
00:36:47 if memory serves me uh correct here he produces this own album here marvin gay was the producer
00:36:53 on this i believe i believe so and this one sounds more like it’s a get together and the
00:36:59 whole album sounds more like a get together where it’s a group of people in a room playing music
00:37:04 together whereas the album version sounds more like an out like a recording this sounds less
00:37:11 like a recording and a little more like a party now you had a series of conversations with paul
00:37:16 mccartney which is amazing that people should should watch but is is there this is continuing
00:37:22 our therapy session is there a case to be made that uh what’s going on is number one album above
00:37:29 the beatles uh white album or abbey road above pet sounds can you still manage case there’s
00:37:36 there’s always a case i mean there’s always a case every there’s no uh in reality in art there is no
00:37:43 um there’s no metric that makes sense so um you could put numbers on things but it’s like
00:37:50 is this apple better than this peach like it’s not really a fair comparison but if you just had
00:37:58 to keep one to represent the human species that’s the way i think to the aliens so i think it’s a
00:38:04 very personal decision i don’t i think you can make you can make your choice to represent the
00:38:09 human species and i’ll make mine you know well i would pick the beatles over the beach boys so
00:38:14 that’s my if i became dictator of the world i was talking to the aliens but i do think that
00:38:19 aliens but i don’t know the full historical context to the impact of the music i don’t
00:38:24 know if that’s something to consider like this kind of thought experiment of imagine what it was
00:38:30 like back then to create to go into the studio to do such interesting work in the studio
00:38:39 as opposed to like listening to just as a pop song almost from because i’ve never been able
00:38:45 to understand uh beach boys god only knows the song god only knows god only knows but all of
00:38:54 it the album the pet sounds just in my room was uh in my room that’s all um is that what’s your
00:39:03 favorite on the album that sounds album that sounds um the opening track do you mind if i
00:39:09 play it please it’s it’s it’s too fun that’s part of their trip though the you uh you open
00:39:21 the heart with the fun it’s possible original mono and stereo mix versions i don’t know what’s
00:39:32 the opening song wouldn’t it be nice yeah that’s the song
00:40:14 we could say good night and stay together wouldn’t that be nice wouldn’t it be nice
00:40:18 wake up together but we’re not there’s heartbreak in this one too
00:40:24 still to me like george harris like um uh is that the way that album while my guitar gently weeps
00:40:30 i mean that um with the beatles it’s so hard to depending on the day i’ll i’ll say a very different
00:40:38 song that’s my favorite song but i often return to while my guitar gently weeps is my favorite song
00:40:43 spectacular spectacular anything george harrison honestly something something in the way she moves
00:40:51 the bet i what would you classify that there’s like several beatle songs categories of beatles
00:40:55 categories of beatles songs so that’s like the melancholy love songs or ballads or something like
00:41:01 that um yesterday let it be what’s do you have favorites so from your like how have you changed
00:41:10 as a man as a human being as a musician and music producer ever having done that lengthy interaction
00:41:17 with with mccartney hmm anytime you’re around someone who’s such a hero and you spend time
00:41:27 with them and they’re a human being it helps put perspective on everything you know that they’re
00:41:33 just human that well obviously i mean every everyone’s just human and um but i remember
00:41:39 the first time i got to see paul mccartney play live it was in a stadium of 70 000 people
00:41:44 and he started playing and i started crying and i couldn’t believe i was in even with 70 000 people
00:41:51 i couldn’t believe i that this man walks the earth and that i’m in the same place as him
00:41:57 and he’s the person who wrote that and played that and now he’s here playing it for us
00:42:03 it’s mind blowing that’s the voice that’s the it’s overwhelming is it inspiring or is it um
00:42:15 like because sometimes when you have and i’ve gotten a chance to me i mean i love people in
00:42:21 general like every every person is fascinating to me but yeah when you’ve been a fan for a long time
00:42:26 and you meet a person uh sort of uh i’ll just remove present company is you um it’s like oh
00:42:35 they’re just human so there’s both it’s both inspiring that just a simple human can achieve
00:42:42 such beautiful things but it’s also like almost wishing there were gods moving in around us it’s
00:42:50 it’s somehow peaceful this is it’s more uh comforting to know that there’s you know uh
00:42:58 there’s bigger fish i’m just a small fish and then there’s bigger fish and it will take care
00:43:04 of the ocean for us i think we’re all capable of being big fish i don’t think that there are
00:43:10 special people i don’t think it it’s like that i i would make a case so the variety
00:43:17 of artists that you worked with and brought the best out of it does seem the year out of this
00:43:24 world so do you think you would know like if you’re the same kind of species maybe you’re
00:43:35 just a meat vehicle and you’re channeling ideas from somewhere else i feel like i’m channeling
00:43:41 ideas from somewhere else 100 but i think have you asked questions about where from i believe
00:43:46 we i believe we all are though you know i believe we are um we’re vehicles for information that when
00:43:57 it’s ready to come through it comes through and the people who have good antennas pick up the
00:44:01 signal but um if i’m sure you’ve had an experience in your life where you’ve had an idea for something
00:44:08 and you’ve not acted on it and eventually someone else does it and it’s not because they’re doing
00:44:13 and it’s not because they’re doing it because you had the idea and they stole your idea it’s because
00:44:17 the time has come for that idea and if you don’t do it someone else is going to it’s
00:44:22 being broadcast by whatever the source whatever the source is uh yeah i tend to
00:44:30 i tend to see humans as not quite special in that way yeah it’s it’s different kinds of antennas
00:44:35 walking around listening to ideas and ideas that are i like the the notion of uh richard dawkins of memes
00:44:43 or it’s kind of the ideas of the organisms and they’re just using our brains to multiply to
00:44:49 to select to compete to to evolve and humans we really want to hold on to the
00:44:55 specialness of our body of our mind but it’s it’s really the ideas so for a group when was born
00:45:00 two centuries ago you wouldn’t be a music producer you’d be or i mean maybe but you have an antenna
00:45:10 and if no signal is coming in uh or you’d be hearing a potentially a different signal
00:45:17 is there um i think we all have our own antenna for whatever it is that we you know maybe not
00:45:24 everyone has tuned into their antenna to see what it is that their strength and bringing through is
00:45:31 i’m lucky in that it found me because i didn’t know that it was a i didn’t even know this was a job
00:45:36 i sometimes wonder i mean a lot of young people a lot of people wonder like what’s the purpose
00:45:44 and the the specs of my antenna what am i put on this earth to do like if um you know i i
00:45:56 can live a thousand lives there’s so many trajectories and imagine the greatest possible
00:46:02 trajectory that reveals the the most beautiful thing i can possibly create in this world live
00:46:09 the most beautiful way uh what is that i feel like that’s a good exercise to think about
00:46:17 um because it’s also liberating to think that you can do anything i mean that
00:46:24 um more and more i suppose that’s kind of life it’s like society is pushing conformity on you
00:46:30 you know i thought i i had my own flavor of conformity i thought i’m supposed to be following
00:46:36 and then early on i would say like in the late 20s you realize wait a minute you don’t have to
00:46:42 tell you don’t have to do what teachers tell you to do what parents tell you to do what
00:46:47 society tells you do you can like um i would never wear a suit if i listened to like my colleagues
00:46:55 and community who think a suit is like the symbol of uh what is it a symbol of conformity actually
00:47:04 which is hilarious but uh it’s actually a kind of rebellion and everything else like of that nature
00:47:09 doing doing these silly podcasts like um i have a question i have to ask sure because you brought
00:47:17 up the suit yeah uh do you wear the suit is this your daily uniform outside of podcasting so uh for
00:47:26 the longest time it was some kind of suit and then recently i mean coinciding with going to texas
00:47:33 there’s a i’m such a loner i’m an introvert and there’s a bit of a hiding from the world when i
00:47:42 wear other stuff i really want to um to not make fame recognition
00:47:53 money all those things a motivation at all and the world kind of wants you to make those motivations
00:48:01 not not the world but i would say maybe the western world and maybe america maybe a capitalist system
00:48:06 does but that’s a choice to buy into that or not right it takes a brave person a person of character
00:48:16 to not buy in and i’m i’m like a like a baby deer trying to find his legs you don’t have to
00:48:23 buy in because i love people and i think i’m kind of an idiot and so when other people
00:48:28 say do this and do that it uh there’s a there is a pressure there it’s actually very difficult to
00:48:36 not listen necessarily to the advice of others and yet keep yourself fragile and open to the world
00:48:44 it’s easy to be like i’m always right you know just kind of sticking a ground but if you want
00:48:50 to be like vulnerable if you want to connect with people and just wear your heart on your sleeve
00:48:55 then you’re going to listen to them i mean that’s the double edged sword of it and uh but then again
00:49:01 that pain like if you don’t let it destroy you can grow grow from that has fame affected you at all
00:49:08 did you unplug from the system at some point same i’ve always been sort of removed i don’t
00:49:14 feel like i’m part of any system do you feel famous um i’m aware that when i go out people
00:49:22 will you know say nice things to me which is great but that’s about it that’s about as far as
00:49:29 but it doesn’t affect your art about your creativity or your thoughts like when you’re
00:49:34 sitting alone and thinking about the world it can’t it’s a destructive force the the thing
00:49:43 the reason that you’re who you are and the reason that you’re finding the success you’re finding
00:49:49 is because you’ve been true to yourself to get to that stage so to start changing that
00:49:55 to conform to either conform to someone else’s idea what you should be doing
00:50:01 it just seems like uh it doesn’t make sense do you have a sense of who you are because i don’t
00:50:06 necessarily have a i don’t know i i know that i really like making good things and i know that i’m
00:50:13 um crazy about it in that um it’s like an obsession and i want things to be as good as
00:50:22 they could be whatever it is and if i’m if i finish a music project and i have a window of
00:50:28 time where i’m not working on music i might be moving the furniture around in the house you know
00:50:33 i’m always looking for a prod a creative outlet to find a way to make something better or there
00:50:41 was a period of time where i was in a weird corporate situation that was uh
00:50:49 that didn’t allow me to flourish and i turned i focused the creativity and on myself and i
00:50:57 lost a bunch of weight and changed my life and so that was the kind of art like the you’ve gone
00:51:01 through a whole process of losing weight getting in shape getting healthy that was a kind of creative
00:51:06 act it certainly was it wasn’t an intentional creative act but i had a lot of energy and i just
00:51:13 a series of events happened i read a book at the time that was my heaviest i weighed about 318
00:51:20 pounds yeah and i’d never been i’d been sedentary my whole life basically laying on a couch working
00:51:25 on music so i’ve never been physically active in my life and i read a book about a guy named stew
00:51:32 middleman a runner who ran a thousand miles in 11 days and i thought wow i you know get out of
00:51:38 breath walking to the corner and another human being can run a thousand miles in 11 days i feel
00:51:45 like i have bad information you know i’m doing clearly i’m doing something wrong and um and i
00:51:50 reached out to a person that stew mentioned in the book phil maffatone who’s a legend i i really
00:51:56 appreciate him as well he’s math 180 method too he’s such an interesting i think he focuses on
00:52:03 heart rate uh training and he was the first person to talk about um essentially a
00:52:12 low carbs paleo yeah keto diet 40 40 years ago for a person who’s going to be healthy who can
00:52:22 exercise and actually perform at an early level he’s the first person when i um you know talked
00:52:29 about heart rate training him and other endurance athletes he influenced he gave me permission to
00:52:35 like run slower yeah it’s the first time i realized oh i can run long distances if i just
00:52:41 run slower and then take that seriously and i actually fell in love with running very much so
00:52:48 because for me everyone’s different but for me the love of running happens in the longer distances
00:52:54 yeah did you read born to run great book amazing book there is something special about running
00:53:01 and everybody has their own their own journey with it and even ultra marathon running those
00:53:06 kinds of things it’s a it is like many journeys one that can pull you in like you won’t be the
00:53:16 same person after and i i try to be deliberate about making deliberate about making choices
00:53:23 after which you’ll not be the same person and so i’m nervous about like the ultra marathon running
00:53:29 world i have to talk to you about johnny cash i mean when people ask me what my
00:53:39 favorite musical thing is of all time i’m
00:53:51 you know it’s a very difficult question to answer of course but i’m pretty quick
00:53:55 if i’m not allowed to pick anything by tom ways i’m pretty quick to say hurt by johnny cash
00:54:03 the performance the whatever you call it whatever the heck that is because that’s
00:54:08 not just a song covered by an artist that’s a human being at the end of their life
00:54:18 that the rawness of that the i mean just the there’s also a music video which for a lot of
00:54:26 people adds a lot to it uh for me just the music alone is i mean the guitar every choice on that
00:54:36 see the the few things i’ve heard about it it seemed like almost accidental i mean like little
00:54:41 subtle choices here and there can you maybe comment on that um to to the degree i i think
00:54:50 you had a huge role in sort of bringing johnny cash back from from a different part of his life
00:54:56 it’s like bringing something out that wasn’t there before and it was it was it was incredible
00:55:01 it was a celebration of a really special musician and a totally new kind of celebration now hurt is
00:55:08 just one of the songs that’s that’s a that’s an amazing celebration of johnny cash but hurt is
00:55:13 like at the at the at the peak of that so what was that like putting that song together okay maybe
00:55:21 maybe uh it might be nice to listen to it because i freaking love that song and as a guitarist
00:55:27 i just the simplicity of it uh it seems like every choice contributes to the greatness of the song
00:55:48 simple it’s crisp but it’s dark too
00:55:51 i hurt myself today it’s one of the greatest opening lines of any song
00:56:01 to see if i still feel yeah i’m talking about the lyrics i don’t even mean the performance the words
00:56:15 but those words out of Trent Reznor are not the same they have a different meaning
00:56:20 coming out of johnny cash’s mouth
00:56:23 try to kill it all away but i remember everything
00:56:31 what have i become what have i become my sweetest friend
00:56:42 written probably for a young man i think he was 20 when he wrote it
00:57:01 the way the guitarist played the choice of instrument the layers there
00:57:22 the uh the freedom to give him to use the voice that’s um fading it’s not fading it’s changing
00:57:34 maybe he’s losing some aspects of his voice and it’s it’s almost like shaking a little bit
00:57:42 and it’s a little bit out of tune in parts
00:57:45 uh how much of that was deliberate how much was like how do you give johnny castor freedom to
00:57:54 to do that how do you find that together is there any insights you can give i think it’s a it’s a
00:58:01 case almost of like the right pairing the right role with the right actor you could say the the
00:58:10 song lyrics that the reason we chose the song was because the lyrics purely about the lyrics
00:58:17 and at that point in time both johnny and i would send each other songs of possible
00:58:21 ideas to record and um that was one that i sent him and he didn’t respond to initially i sent i
00:58:29 would send him see at that time we would burn cds and i would send him like cd of 20 songs or 25
00:58:34 songs and then and he would send them to me he burned a cd for johnny cash and you sent him
00:58:38 uh of different songs of like songs to consider recording yeah um and we would send these back
00:58:44 and forth and then that i had hurt on one of the ones that i sent him and he didn’t respond and
00:58:51 usually if he didn’t respond we didn’t go back to it you know and that one i remember i sent it
00:58:58 again and i put it first on the next on the next cd and um and when when we spoke about when he
00:59:05 listened to cd again he didn’t respond i said check out that first song and i really feel like that one
00:59:10 could be good what did you see in that song it’s the lyrics it’s the lyrics because i feel like
00:59:15 nobody there’s very few people in the world that would see these lyrics in johnny cash’s mouth and
00:59:25 think this is a good idea including for president yeah i know that trant was trant had trepidations
00:59:32 in the evening um but if you listen to the words if you forget the music and if you get what if
00:59:38 you forget what nine ish nail sounds like and you just read it like a poem and then you imagine
00:59:45 a 70 year old man reading these lyrics it’ll be it’ll be profound it’s profound so that was the
00:59:55 based on lyrics that started the journey and then at this point in time johnny was not in great
01:00:00 health and uh sometimes i would go to nashville and record with him at his house sometimes he
01:00:08 would come to california but he was coming to california less regularly and because there was
01:00:14 there were so many songs we wanted to try he would start sometimes recording just a straight
01:00:21 acoustic version like you’d have someone play guitar he would sing and they would send those
01:00:27 to me and we would discuss like is this one to build on um and that was when we said i don’t
01:00:33 want to record this one until we’re together i feel like we should do this one together
01:00:37 so on the next trip to california we recorded it at my at my old house
01:00:45 and
01:00:51 i mean all the songs we recorded felt special so i can’t say this one felt special
01:00:55 but lyrically it just it’s more the the lyrics have such a profound
01:01:05 sense of regret what have i become yeah and to hear when you’re 20 years old talking about regret
01:01:13 yeah it’s heartbreaking but it’s heartbreaking in a different way because you have your whole
01:01:17 life to figure it out when you’re looking back over your life at the end of your life with regret
01:01:23 it’s brutal yeah it’s brutal so that was the initial spark of doing it and then we when we
01:01:30 recorded it i believe it was um two guitar players if i remember correctly maybe even three um smoky
01:01:41 hormel matt sweeney and mike campbell i believe and ben montench was playing the piano in my living
01:01:50 room as we were doing it and we cut the basic track and with johnny singing and then johnny
01:01:59 probably sang over that basic track a few more times and then we comped his vocal and then
01:02:08 built up the drama and you didn’t get to the part but at the end of the song it gets very loud the
01:02:13 music gets very loud it’s subtle because it’s not anything that takes your ear and the vocal is so
01:02:20 powerful that you don’t really think about what’s going on but it’s building the whole time it’s
01:02:23 building and it even gets distorted at the end it gets really uh like over overpowering and that’s
01:02:33 part of the emotion of it you know it’s uh i hear almost anger and frustration
01:03:11 and it just rings out the clean vocal i mean it’s so simple so incredible and it’s interesting to
01:03:18 have a young man’s lyrics in in an old johnny cash voice and heart and mind i had um are you
01:03:29 a fan of tom waits of course uh tom waits when he was younger had his this is a song called martha
01:03:36 but there’s a bunch of songs he’s written when he was young it’s like how does a young man
01:03:41 have that like melancholy wisdom the song martha is about uh an older man calling a woman he used
01:03:51 to love that she’s now married and he’s married and they’re having that conversation they haven’t
01:03:56 spoken for 30 years and they realize that there’s still love there and it could have been a different
01:04:02 life a different world where they could have been together and here’s like a 23 year old tom waits
01:04:07 writing so beautifully about something that’s very uh i’ve had a lot of people like tell me how
01:04:15 real that uh as an older person looking back at that love that you had and realizing it wasn’t
01:04:22 it was really it’s still there inklings of that love are still there i think there’s a um
01:04:31 when a young person writes a sad song
01:04:38 they almost seem more willing to go to a more hopeless place
01:04:43 because they have they have a so much time ahead and older artists tend to want to look at the
01:04:50 bright side of things which which also i think comes from the wisdom of aging it’s it’s a more
01:04:55 realistic position so it’s not uncommon for younger people to write i think even in the
01:05:02 beatles you’ll see like they’re very heavy lyrics um middle to late era beatles which is still you
01:05:11 know they’re in their 20s you know early 20s i guess wow that’s hard to think about so much
01:05:17 accomplished unbelievable and they they went through the full journey from fun to darkness
01:05:25 in the span of a few years uh you mentioned lyrics um so you’ve obviously produced
01:05:33 albums with incredible lyrics i think you’ve mentioned the interesting characteristics of
01:05:38 hip hop of rap is that you’re writing poetry to rhythm versus writing poetry to melody so
01:05:48 that’s like one way to think about it and i’m a fan i mean tom waits let it go i’m a fan of
01:05:53 poetry period is there something um about highlighting the poetry of it the power of
01:06:02 words as you did with with heart if uh like if i have to play it again it’s one uh a tom waits song
01:06:11 that’s like less than a minute long that i always go back to it’s one i really love and
01:06:17 has just a few lines it’s called i want you and all it is is him saying i want you
01:06:35 i want you this is a 22 year old Tom Waits
01:06:47 all i want is you
01:06:56 give you stars above
01:06:57 the sun on the brightest day
01:07:05 giving you all my love
01:07:09 if only you would see that i want you you you
01:07:15 you all i want is you you you and then he hums for 20 more seconds beautiful so so
01:07:29 simple man that young man like low and but for people who don’t know tom waits you should
01:07:34 definitely listen to him and his voice sounds very different now and it’s interesting to see
01:07:39 the evolution of a human voice the the artist over time because that’s a young like boy like voice
01:07:48 hopeful less clever less witty more simple that simplicity is there and he’s not i mean that
01:07:55 takes guts to be so simple i would say lyrically and uh musically is there um sort of laying that
01:08:05 out on the table is there ways to that you like to highlight the voice the lyrics or there’s no one
01:08:15 rule so do you what is the thing that makes music special is it the rhythm the melody the
01:08:23 uh or is ultimately the lyrics are always there or the idea you just asked me five different
01:08:29 questions i don’t care i’ll just get that it’s not about you you don’t want the answers i’ll listen
01:08:42 uh i look forward to your comments the internet okay uh you have the greatest producer of all
01:08:49 time in front of you and you can’t shut the hell up that’s right friends uh is but you do value
01:08:56 lyrics is there a way to celebrate lyrics i value lyrics if the lyrics are important i’m not a lyric
01:09:02 person i’m very much uh whatever the thing that makes the thing good is the thing that i’m drawn
01:09:09 to for me um for a long time lyrics meant very little i would say from me really yes yes from
01:09:19 the earliest days for your right to party beastie boys yeah it was it was fun i thought they were
01:09:24 good lyrics but it wasn’t what was important i mean it was in a in a almost a novelty way
01:09:31 not in a serious way early in my career i was much more focused on the rhythm first the rhythm
01:09:41 and i would if the lyrics weren’t good enough i would be aware of it but it wasn’t the driving
01:09:47 force for me and eventually over time then melody became an important piece which it
01:09:52 wasn’t in the beginning and then uh lyrics became more important over time but it’s always been a
01:10:01 always changing what what draws me in and one of the things i found as it relates to lyrics that
01:10:08 that can give a lyric a different power has to do with rhythm where if there’s no drum
01:10:18 um the lyrics tend to mean more
01:10:24 so earlier what you were saying about if it was just acapella
01:10:28 you felt you felt marvin gay in a different way hearing the acapella
01:10:32 can you comment on i mean in terms of one of the greatest albums ever why does it sound so raw
01:10:51 her voice she’s just a great singer but this is that you’re not doing anything else you’re doing
01:10:56 the uh there’s there’s there’s strumming and then there’s just a single beat
01:11:05 and then it builds
01:11:14 starting in my heart
01:11:25 this gets simpler but it feels like it’s a giant orchestra
01:11:29 we almost had it all the scars of your love they leave me breathless i can’t help feeling
01:11:38 there’s backing vocals
01:11:50 the anger i love it
01:11:54 i just there’s something about uh such a powerful voice and the instruments not getting in the way
01:12:08 i mean the same with the with hurt and johnny cash it is there um why does it sound so
01:12:17 like raw it’s the same as hurt there’s a it feels like you’re in the room with them it feels like
01:12:23 they’re not even singing they’re like uh they’re literally freshly mad and angry i think those are
01:12:30 the things that make great singers sound like great singers it’s not it’s not anything that
01:12:35 that’s happening in the studio i mean we’re i would say the only thing that us in the studio
01:12:41 can do is kind of get out of the way and not not ruin it you know it’s like that’s that’s
01:12:49 what comes through of these these people i should also before i forget there is a lot of song choices
01:12:58 on that cd i would love to see the full options on the cd that you sent to johnny cash that i love
01:13:03 so solitary man is one of my favorite choices made there uh is it is that a neil damon song
01:13:11 it’s funny you talk about them as songs because i tend to i tend to listen more to albums than
01:13:16 songs so if you really you’re that’s what you’re doing your head you’re pulling up the album
01:13:21 essentially no i’m like i’m going to that song but i don’t know i’ve never listened to that song
01:13:27 but i know that when that when that song comes up in the sequence of the album
01:13:31 um it has a really powerful effect in me let’s see what it does if you just started
01:13:46 if you could read my so interesting wow
01:13:59 i could tell just like an old time movie about a ghost from a wishing well in a castle dark
01:14:13 or a fortress strong with chains around my feet you know that ghost is me
01:14:23 and i will never be set free as long as there’s a ghost that you can see
01:14:39 that’s beautiful such a beautiful choice beautiful melody such a beautiful melody
01:14:44 and haunting words sung so simply i i have to um i mean so uh i was born in the soviet union
01:14:56 when when you when you’re growing up uh there’s a few bands that kind of i mean they’re probably
01:15:06 forbidden still but they seep in and you get like uh bootlegged and and they somehow take over the
01:15:14 culture of the young of the young folk such as myself so uh on the metal side it was metallica
01:15:21 and iron maiden and uh on the i don’t know what you call them but beastie boys i remember hearing
01:15:31 uh fight for your right and it was just like for some reason that stuck as it did for a lot of
01:15:37 people in russia it’s like wow america is when you get to say fuck you to the man the rebellion the
01:15:44 freedom um i probably heard it uh a few years after it was released because it kind of it
01:15:51 dissipates to the culture you get the bootlegged i mean it’s hard to get your hands on but i just
01:15:56 remember me i i wanted to kind of bring that up because it was such a personally important song
01:16:02 to me and yet probably you didn’t even think of that you probably thought of it as its role in
01:16:08 the culture here in the united states like in terms of musically but i was you know 20 21 years old
01:16:15 and we just well you were that kid too right we’re just making fun songs for our friends there was
01:16:20 no there was no uh expectation that’s just a fun song yeah no one thought we never imagined anybody
01:16:26 would like any of it one of the greatest albums ever yeah i have to it’s i love this so much i
01:16:37 just remember this is america i didn’t even know i didn’t even understand the lyrics to be honest
01:16:51 and the lyrics are ridiculous
01:17:28 so hearing that and hearing metallica master puppets i was like i knew i’m gonna have to end
01:17:34 up in america one day i mean maybe now that i’m more mature or maybe a little bit more mature i
01:17:42 realized like that was kind of the longing for freedom it felt like at least at the time if this
01:17:49 is allowed that anything is allowed yeah and i think that uh the rebellion of it the uh is i
01:18:00 guess it’s also fun i just i just loved it is there if you look back to that because you’re
01:18:05 you’re uh uh i mean you were that person not just the producer it feels like yes and no like it was
01:18:13 even to us then it was still like satirical you know it wasn’t oh absolutely but isn’t like music
01:18:19 in part like you’re dancing in the line is part satirical part serious in in the sense like you’re
01:18:26 losing yourself in the satire like when you have anytime you go over the top isn’t that part of the
01:18:34 or is this is it explicitly satirical you make it fun i mean girls there’s a lot of
01:18:39 ridiculous songs in that album i don’t know i just think it’s it was definitely to make each
01:18:44 other laugh like we were trying to make each other laugh we weren’t trying to make a point we’re
01:18:49 trying to make each other laugh but that person how’s that person different than the person today
01:18:57 in you the the person that produced that i wouldn’t say so different it’s like it really is
01:19:01 that that um i like things that make me laugh you know i like ridiculous things it’s the same person
01:19:08 still i think so that is a strange just how many incredible i mean i wouldn’t i don’t think i would
01:19:14 make that today but i understand why we made it when we did it’s uh in the vocabulary of of um
01:19:22 ridiculous that would make sense to do you know for the right artist today could make something
01:19:28 ridiculous and gives you that feeling i mean there’s just a sense when you make so many
01:19:35 many different albums then you look back at that creation and it can feel like a different person
01:19:43 created that but you’re making it seem like if you travel back in time or maybe do a memory replay
01:19:50 you’ll be able to hang out with the with a teenage and the 20s recruitment i think yeah i i don’t
01:19:58 i don’t think i was so different honestly that’s hilarious it’s funny i ran into someone um recently
01:20:08 in costa rica who i hadn’t seen in a long time and who i knew from the new york days when
01:20:15 those days and um and we spent a couple of hours talking and she said you’re exactly
01:20:21 the same person that you were then so i have a short you know a recent confirmation that that’s
01:20:29 the case that’s beautiful was it tim ferris asked you about like who’s the most successful person
01:20:34 you know that’s the definition of success i would say it’s exactly the same person you haven’t lost
01:20:40 yourself and or rather you found yourself early on i would say there there are aspects of me that
01:20:46 have changed for sure um but i but i can’t say that it’s that it’s necessarily better it’s
01:20:54 different um at that i would say at that time i was more confident than i am now and i’m very
01:21:04 confident now but then i had an unrealistic um confidence and i think now it’s a little more
01:21:11 um based in reality at that point in time i had never been depressed and then once you go through
01:21:18 a depression you well some people i know in my case and when i went through depression afterwards
01:21:25 i was a different person than i was before and i and i feel more um grounded now than i did then
01:21:33 and i probably relate to the artists who so many of the artists i work with suffer so many artists
01:21:40 suffer because that’s part of what makes an artist great is their level of sensitivity
01:21:47 that this the same thing that makes uh an artist uncomfortable other people don’t feel at all
01:21:53 people don’t feel at all the time you were depressed what was the darkest moments of your
01:22:02 life what took you there how did you get out it was triggered by a person making a comment about
01:22:10 something to do with work that didn’t matter you know it was like uh to anyone else they would
01:22:17 hear that and it would just be like okay we’ll deal with it next week whatever but for some
01:22:21 reason i took it in a way that um i felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me even beyond
01:22:28 the rational part of it of understanding you know even after the problem that came up was solved
01:22:36 it somehow undermined something in me and made me feel very vulnerable in a way that i hadn’t felt
01:22:42 before and it spiraled how did you get out i did a lot of different kinds of therapy i did um
01:22:52 starting with alternative therapies i was seeing i would say between seven and eight
01:23:00 doctors and or therapists a week um acupuncture uh talk therapy um herbs or any any possible
01:23:16 modality tried everything for a long time and um and and nothing seemed to have an impact and then
01:23:26 finally um i’m wary of taking any western medicine i’m not a drug taker and or drinker
01:23:39 partier in any way and um i found a a psychopharmacologist who was a psychic
01:23:50 but because she was a psychic i was okay to see her because she’s like i’ll i’ll do i’ll listen
01:23:55 to a psychic yeah but i’m not going to listen to a psychopharmacologist but the fact that she had
01:24:00 the the psychic uh that made her fit into my world view and um and she recommended antidepressant which
01:24:10 went terribly wrong in the first night that i took it and then i that set me on a journey
01:24:15 of looking for the right antidepressant which was a long and painful process heck of a journey
01:24:21 every one that i took made me sick everyone and then finally i don’t know five months later six
01:24:27 months later i found the magic one that worked for me and it um it shifted me out of the depression
01:24:36 i took it for my camera was six months or a year and then weaned off and was okay and then i had
01:24:43 another event some years later i think i took it again for a short period of time and got out of it
01:24:50 and i’ve not needed it since were you able to kind of introspect the triggers that led to the events
01:24:58 is there something or is it random events of life i think it’s more that um
01:25:05 because of the way that i grew up i never had to deal with much controversy
01:25:12 ah and um when i when i was challenged i didn’t have any ability to deal with it
01:25:21 it’s like um you know jonathan hight talks about it’s like that so you’ve actually also mentioned
01:25:27 like business sometimes gives you stress so these this was business related stuff yeah
01:25:33 it was a business related thing it just made me feel bad it’s one of the sadder things about art
01:25:39 and music is that it’s often interleaved with business folk i suppose that’s the way of the
01:25:47 world if you have a capitalist system but it makes that business folks rubbing up against artists
01:25:55 um can sometimes destroy a fragile mind and soul like uh to me like one of the best representations
01:26:06 of an artist honestly johnny i have the designer from apple and he’s just so fragile with his
01:26:12 ideas and you talked about like when he has ideas he really wouldn’t show it to steve jobs or anybody
01:26:17 except for a small design team because he was so nervous that it would it would break let’s give
01:26:22 it a chance let it give it a chance to grow and it seems like the outside world uh business people
01:26:30 pr people people kind of um have not lost themselves in the passion of creating but instead
01:26:37 of kind of representing or like making deals all that kind of stuff they they can kind of trample
01:26:43 on those little ideas and it’s it’s sad to see yeah it’s really it’s really heartbreaking to
01:26:49 see because you know how much trampling there’s going on it’s one of the main jobs my jobs as a
01:26:55 record producer is to um keep the keep the voices away from the artist from all the people who are
01:27:04 really on their side but don’t know you know like the uh whether it be people um anyone on the
01:27:11 business side who doesn’t make things they’re excited to do their part you know they’re excited
01:27:17 if when you deliver the thing the the art that you make to me then we can start the project yeah um
01:27:25 but there’s nothing to sell if the art doesn’t happen in the right way and it has to be protected
01:27:31 and it can’t happen on the same kind of a timetable that um that business can it’s just a
01:27:39 different thing it doesn’t art doesn’t come in a quarterly way and that doesn’t apply just to music
01:27:45 or it applies to art it applies to all creative pursuits like this is generally the case like at
01:27:51 mit it’s just there’s the administration and then there is the professors and students and the
01:28:00 professors students are the creative folk yeah they create stuff they dream they have wild ideas
01:28:06 that go on tangents and so on they they uh they have hopes and they they go with those and they
01:28:11 get like on these weird passionate pursuits and then the administration can often just trample on
01:28:16 that um and they they set up bars on all kinds of in all kinds of ways that you think you’re not
01:28:25 actually hurting um but you really are and you know i won’t mention why but because this happens
01:28:34 to everybody and i have a large amount of leverage at mit now but even i get a little bit of pressure
01:28:39 in such stupid ways to like don’t like be careful be careful like we really want your career to
01:28:48 succeed be careful and that little pressure to an artist you know do you want to go acapella
01:28:55 do you want to go do you want to do a country record like be careful like you’re already a
01:29:00 superstar be careful yeah and then in that way you kind of push people like flock of fish into
01:29:06 one fish tank where they’re all the same and it’s it’s sad to see and it’s obviously in the modern
01:29:13 world there’s nice mechanism to protect to let artists flourish a little bit more because they
01:29:18 get to put themselves to the world and get a little bit more confidence maybe different funding
01:29:23 mechanisms all that kind of stuff but tremendous problem that the the voices that don’t understand
01:29:29 interfering with the process is huge the other side of it is in success there can be a lack of
01:29:35 there can be a lack of reality where all of the people around the successful person just tell
01:29:41 them everything they do is great and then they they don’t have anything to bump up against anymore
01:29:47 have a realistic uh sense of what’s what how things work or how how it how the how things measure you
01:29:57 know um so both sides are really important both both avoiding the voices getting in the way
01:30:06 and having a trusted group of you know a sangha a group of people who can say you know i don’t
01:30:15 know if that’s as good and you can still you know say i don’t care what you think that’s fine
01:30:20 but it helps to hear it you know it helps to have if someone who you respect tells you something
01:30:29 isn’t good enough it’s helpful when you know it comes from a place of love when it comes from a
01:30:34 place of wisdom 100 percent and not from a place of fear not from a place of oh this doesn’t sound
01:30:40 like it’s going to do as well as your last thing that’s yeah that’s not the point the point is on
01:30:46 this uh quest for greatness are you living up to your ability by the way is there something
01:30:55 interesting to say about your world view because you mentioned psychic and instead of the ways
01:31:02 we can be healthy the ways we can grow and how much maybe medicine or science or has
01:31:11 um has the answers is there is there some interesting way to describe that world view
01:31:17 i would just say i’m open mind i believe anything’s possible
01:31:22 and if i was going to trust in any practical information it would be something thousands
01:31:28 of years old there’s wisdom in that history yeah well it’s it’s more tested it’s not always right
01:31:37 but it’s at least it’s been somewhat tested so science is also tested the thing i’m a little
01:31:44 bit skeptical of sometimes is just the hubris that often comes with the modern with the latest
01:31:49 the newest the this this feeling like you figured it all out everything that’s been done in the past
01:31:55 has no wisdom and uh we basically solved every problem uh you know there’s nothing else to be
01:32:01 solved this i mean that’s the defining characteristic of any age is like we’ve
01:32:05 solved all the problems there are we have the final answers and our parents are all stupid
01:32:11 that kind of energy yeah and that you have to be extremely extremely careful with that when it
01:32:15 talks about when you think about something as complex as the human body or the human mind
01:32:19 you have to be very very very we know close to nothing yeah exactly close to nothing that’s about
01:32:27 anything about anything about anything that place of humility is a good place to start to figure
01:32:33 to figure it all out and in the end we’ll still know almost nothing yeah i don’t think we need to
01:32:38 know it’s like we need to see what works and we need to see what works for us it’s interesting to
01:32:44 know i i know on the art side knowing how it works isn’t what makes it work you know isn’t the magic
01:32:52 of it isn’t how it works the magic is the magic and the magic happens in a way that’s intuitive
01:33:00 and accidental at times or uh incidental where you’re trying many things all of a sudden something
01:33:06 works and um and you don’t know why and it’s okay not to know why it doesn’t matter it doesn’t
01:33:13 really matter why as long as it does the thing that you want it to do whatever that is yeah
01:33:19 that’s so weird when you know the components you don’t you still yeah the magic what’s the magic
01:33:25 where’s the magic like we know the components for stuff i care about artificial intelligence we know
01:33:29 the components of a powerful computing machinery where does consciousness come from what is that
01:33:39 uh where does the uh brilliant moments of insight come from what’s that when uh even in simple games
01:33:47 of chess or in simple where do those breakthrough ideas of taking the big risk that doesn’t make any
01:33:54 sense and then all of a sudden it becomes something beautiful yeah we don’t need to understand why it
01:33:58 just happens it just happens and often the things that end up breaking through don’t break through
01:34:05 in the way we thought or turn out to be a third iteration of something that we thought was an
01:34:10 entirely different thing or we don’t know you know it’s and i i think it’s if we embrace that not
01:34:17 knowing we’ll have a healthier experience going through life you made a lot it’s not just music
01:34:25 everything rearranging the chairs the furniture as well you’ve done like i said the documentary
01:34:30 i guess you would say with paul mccartney and um you’ve done a podcast yourself uh broken
01:34:38 record podcast and just you’ve done conversation too so what have you learned from that process
01:34:45 about the art of conversation and also maybe what advice would you give to this uh to me about how
01:34:54 what to do with conversation like what is interesting to you about conversation one of the
01:34:59 things that i i like is to not feel like it’s there is any stakes or that it’s actually almost
01:35:09 that it’s not happening like the fact that when i came in you were setting up cameras made it less
01:35:16 good from for me i knew that that would impact the conversation in a negative way the best version
01:35:21 of it would be if we didn’t see the cameras and if we were and we didn’t see any technology
01:35:27 and we didn’t see any technology and we were just sitting at this table having a conversation
01:35:31 maybe even if we were miked beforehand would be okay if it was necessary but then we were just
01:35:38 sitting here having a conversation no people in the room nothing and feeling like we’re just
01:35:41 having a conversation i feel like it would get closer to um closer to the relaxed feeling same
01:35:53 thing we do in the studios like you know you’ve heard of red light fever you know when uh artists
01:35:58 get nervous when like they play a song great and then the tape starts rolling and they can’t play
01:36:02 it and it’s we’re all we’re all to some degree like that when you were with paul mccartney i mean
01:36:08 you’re did were you cognizant of cameras we had the room black everybody who was working there
01:36:16 was dressed in black everything was invisible that we were lit in a way where even though
01:36:22 there were probably 20 people between 12 and 20 people working in the room within three minutes
01:36:31 of starting the conversation paul and i were alone in the room so it that was the the feeling
01:36:36 on occasion you’d hear a noise and it would be weird people we also had nobody was allowed to
01:36:41 wear shoes because it had to we were trying to create this intimate space and and i know from
01:36:48 in the recording studio when we’re recording if even one person is there that’s just watching
01:36:56 and not working you know like does like there’s usually i’m usually there and an engineer is there
01:37:01 technically making it happen if anyone else is in the room it’s different because then it goes from
01:37:08 this moment where the person’s doing a performance to the sense or where the person is
01:37:13 is feeling something internally and we’re capturing it to the the other version is
01:37:23 they’re performing for someone it’s so interesting so like to push back in the alternatives here so
01:37:29 one about the third person not to make people self conscious but i find that i’m so torn on that
01:37:37 because sometimes when that person uh like um so evan is in the room here he’s been in the
01:37:42 room before he’s a huge fan of yours by the way uh so he’ll he’ll nod yeah he’ll get excited he’s
01:37:51 like and you can see that nodding and for some reason for me he’s like yeah yeah you get it like
01:37:58 yeah you get excited together i mean that’s that third person can be like a really special so
01:38:04 having an audience uh when it’s a friend or somebody that has that love in them it depends
01:38:10 on the performer right yeah some people really thrive in front of an audience and you’re saying
01:38:17 you like that simple intimacy well i like the reality of it not being i want it to be as far
01:38:23 from a performance as possible got it and if if someone i’ll tell you a story a story that just
01:38:30 happened and it was viewed as kind of a it seemed uncool in the moment to the person that it happened
01:38:36 to it wasn’t at all um we were recording the new chili peppers album which is coming out i think
01:38:43 any day now like uh i don’t know what today’s date is but within the next it maybe by the
01:38:48 time this airs it will be out and um the band was playing in the studio and it was ripping
01:38:56 because they play they’re incredible and um one of the members walked through the control room
01:39:04 after a particularly great performance and um the engineer said wow that solo is really great
01:39:13 and the person who heard this said please don’t say that and walked away it’s like it it was
01:39:21 not it it just changed yeah this feeling of we’re in this place where we’re doing this thing and
01:39:28 there’s there is no outside world yeah you know we’re doing this for us we’re going as deep as
01:39:33 we can for us and as soon as there’s an acknowledgement to someone else in a way
01:39:39 it breaks the concentration of being inside of it that’s so well told and but it’s something
01:39:48 about saying wow that’s always great is is uh shows the it reminds you that there’s an outside
01:39:54 world but i feel like there’s a way to enter the inside world as an audience so you just have to
01:40:01 do that so it matters what you say it matters how you look it matters uh so there’s like these
01:40:10 generic compliments not generic but they they sound in the way an outside world would interact
01:40:17 as opposed to in that creative thing where you’re dancing around the fire together or something
01:40:22 it was actually i can tell you there’s another interesting one that happened to me and i didn’t
01:40:26 know this until i saw the film of it which was a strange one um we were recording with the avid
01:40:32 brothers and um the song was called no hard feelings and it was this recording of no hard
01:40:40 feelings
01:41:02 when my body won’t hold me anymore
01:41:05 it finally lets me free well i’ll be ready
01:41:17 when my feet won’t walk another such a great voice so beautiful
01:41:23 kissed goodbye will my hands be steady when i lay down my fears my hopes and my doubts
01:41:36 the rings on my fingers and the keys to my house with no hard feelings
01:41:47 when the sun hangs low in the west and the light in my chest won’t be kept
01:42:02 hell today any longer
01:42:04 when the jealousy fades away so bright so hopeful so lighthearted
01:42:17 and it’s just hallelujah and love involved love in the words
01:42:25 love in the songs they sing in the church and no hard feelings
01:42:39 Lord knows they have it done
01:42:45 much good for anyone kept me afraid and cold
01:42:57 with so much to have and more
01:43:03 when my body won’t hold me anymore it finally lets me free
01:43:21 is he sound as good as good, yeah? yes, every bit
01:43:37 of snow from the heavens will i join with the ocean blue or run into the savior true
01:43:55 and shake hands laughing and walk through the night straight to the light
01:44:05 holding the love i’ve known in my life and no hard feelings
01:44:17 Lord knows they have it done much good for anyone kept me afraid and cold
01:44:37 with so much to have and more
01:44:43 under the burning sky i’m finally learning why
01:44:57 it matters for me and you to say it and mean it too
01:45:09 life is loneliness
01:45:17 it’s loneliness
01:45:21 good as it’s been to me
01:45:27 i have no enemies
01:45:33 i have no enemies
01:45:39 i have no enemies
01:45:45 i have no enemies
01:45:51 i have no enemies
01:46:07 i have no enemies
01:46:25 i have no enemies
01:46:41 i have no enemies
01:46:57 i have no enemies
01:47:15 i have no enemies
01:47:35 i have no enemies
01:47:45 i have no enemies
01:48:05 i have no enemies
01:48:15 i have no enemies
01:48:35 i have no enemies
01:48:45 i have no enemies
01:48:55 i have no enemies
01:49:05 i have no enemies
01:49:25 i have no enemies
01:49:35 i have no enemies
01:49:55 i have no enemies
01:50:05 i have no enemies
01:50:15 i have no enemies
01:50:25 i have no enemies
01:50:49 i have no enemies
01:50:59 i have no enemies
01:51:09 i have no enemies
01:51:19 i have no enemies
01:51:43 i have no enemies
01:51:53 i have no enemies
01:52:17 i have no enemies
01:52:37 i have no enemies
01:52:57 i have no enemies
01:53:17 i have no enemies
01:53:37 i have no enemies
01:53:57 i have no enemies
01:54:17 i have no enemies
01:54:37 i have no enemies
01:54:57 i have no enemies
01:55:17 i have no enemies
01:55:37 i have no enemies
01:55:57 i have no enemies
01:56:17 i have no enemies
01:56:37 i have no enemies
01:56:57 i have no enemies
01:57:17 i have no enemies
01:57:37 i have no enemies
01:57:57 i have no enemies
01:58:17 i have no enemies
01:58:37 i have no enemies
01:58:57 i have no enemies
01:59:17 i have no enemies
01:59:37 i have no enemies
01:59:57 i have no enemies
02:00:17 i have no enemies
02:00:37 i have no enemies
02:00:57 i have no enemies
02:01:17 i have no enemies
02:01:37 i have no enemies
02:01:57 i have no enemies
02:02:17 i have no enemies
02:02:37 i have no enemies
02:02:57 i have no enemies
02:03:17 i have no enemies
02:03:37 i have no enemies
02:03:57 i have no enemies
02:04:15 you