In this episode, we sit down with former NWA President and current NWA owner Joe Davenport. We talk about how he got started in the business, how he bought the NWA, and how he became one of the most successful owners in the history of pro wrestling. We also talk about what it's like being a rock and roller derby fan growing up in the 80s and 90s, and what it was like growing up with a pro wrestling fan in the 90s and early 2000s. It's a wild ride of a conversation and we hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it. If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! Thanks for listening and Good Luck Out There! Timestamps: 3:00 - How to be a Rock and Roller Derby Fan? 4:30 - What does it take to become a Rock & Roller Dancer 5:00 - What it takes to own a Wrestling Brand 6:15 - How do you know when it's time to get into the business 7:30 - How much money is too much money? 8:20 - What do you get? 9:15 11:00- How does it feel like to be an owner of a wrestling brand 12:30- How to run a business? 14:00 What is it like being involved in pro wrestling? 15:40 - What are you want? 16: What is your favorite part of your life? 17:15- What are your biggest weakness? 18:20 19:40- How do I m looking for? 21:40 22:20- How can I keep the worlds separate from the other side of the business ? 23:40 + 22:10 25:10 - How I m going to keep the music industry? 26:00 + 27:00+ 27:20 + 28:00 & 29: What do I want to do with my music career? 35:30 + 35:00) 36:30+ - What s your favorite thing? 37:10 + 36:40+ 35:40 & 35:20+ +36:30 & 37:00 Good Luck? 39:00 Thank you for listening to this episode?
00:02:17.000That sounds like some double-cross wrestling type stuff.
00:02:19.000Yeah, so it'd be like if you did a contract with me, and then I sued you, and then the judge says, well, even though Joe had a California lawyer signed, it's illegal under California law, so therefore the contract's meaningless.
00:05:45.000You can go back and sort of romanticize it.
00:05:47.000And I think that's part of what we're trying to do.
00:05:50.000That's the cool thing about the NWO is we actually possess that history.
00:05:54.000And so our job is to sort of update it, you know, to bring that tough guy thing back into the modern world in a way that sort of doesn't insult the audience's intelligence.
00:06:04.000So the NWA, is that older than the WWE? Yeah, yeah.
00:06:10.000And the cool thing about the NWA's history was you had all these rival promoters, including the McMahons in the Northeast, that eventually sort of formed a kind of ad hoc association.
00:06:21.000to create a better business in essence get everybody on the same page and what they would do is they named one champ and the champ would rotate through the different territories come in and take on the whoever was the local guy they build up the local guy and then a guy like Ric Flair would come in and beat the local guy and it would always be like a bit of a scrum and then he'd come back for a second there would be a cage match and then Ric Flair would move on to the next territory and that's how those guys rotate around then everybody made more money Wow And then the government got involved at different points because there was collusion.
00:07:56.000They become the gimmick at some point and sometimes you're not sure who you're talking to.
00:07:59.000But at some point you also have to respect that that's so intrinsic to their world that maybe it's almost easier just to become the gimmick.
00:09:29.000That's got to be exhausting, like having all these expectations that aren't necessarily, that don't totally align with who you really are.
00:09:36.000It used to be, because I felt like, I don't know, as the keeper of my image or something, I felt this responsibility to sort of manage it, and at some point I just let it go.
00:11:07.000My favorite story, one of my favorite stories of my father was he was doing a drug deal and, or he was buying drugs, and so he stops somewhere and the guy got in the car.
00:11:20.000And then the guy pulled out a gun and stuck it in his ribs, you know, and did, like, give me all your money.
00:11:24.000And my dad looked at him and said, kill me.
00:11:27.000Basically, because he was unhappy, so he figured, no, fuck it.
00:12:47.000But then he was also on a lot of drugs.
00:12:48.000And so there was that, you know, there's that interweave of like...
00:12:52.000And weird stuff, like, you know, one day he calls me and he's like, my dad always played this cool 1964 Purple Flying V that was like his guitar, you know, and my dad to me was like a star and he still is in my mind.
00:13:06.000So he told me one day, you know, when I die, you know, I'm going to give you my guitar.
00:13:11.000And then fast forward four years later, he calls me up.
00:13:13.000He's like, yeah, I'm going to put this guitar on eBay.
00:14:35.000Man, I think your story's amazing, though.
00:14:38.000I mean, I know it probably sucked growing up like that, but damn, to be able to tell everybody your dad was this guitar-playing, gun-toting, drug-dealing psycho.
00:14:51.000Yeah, I think you'll appreciate this in the gangster tradition.
00:14:55.000So there was this thing that happened when I was probably about 10 or 12, where there was a local club, and my dad played there all the time.
00:15:03.000And I came back to the house one day, and the house was full of smoky equipment.
00:16:36.000I mean, with what's going on the South Side with all the gang violence.
00:16:40.000It's shocking to me as somebody who was born in Chicago, I still live in Chicago, that it's just like we've normalized this insane violence in this community.
00:16:50.000Well, people don't even realize, I think most people have no idea how much gun violence goes on in Chicago.
00:16:54.000I heard the other day, I could be wrong and I'm sure he can find, but I think somebody said the other day, there's been 3,700 shootings in Chicago already this year.
00:17:04.000And I think we're already over 600 gun fatalities.
00:17:16.000This generational tragedy that just keeps going and nothing seems to happen.
00:17:21.000Yeah, and it seems to have a lot of momentum behind it.
00:17:24.000Like the murders, they make people have revenge murders, and then it just piles on top of each other.
00:17:31.000And it doesn't seem like there's any stopping it in sight.
00:17:34.000Well, here's the thing, and this is the classic tale.
00:17:37.000Now, it was reported the other day that the carjackings in Chicago have gone up like 200%, and now those carjackings are filtering into the nice neighborhoods.
00:17:46.000So now you're gonna start seeing some action because now it's now it's blowing up past the sort of You know, I mean look at that the shot clock a person is shot every two minutes and 20 seconds a Person is murdered every 12 hours.
00:18:01.000Oh two hours and 20 minutes a person is murdered every 12 hours and 23 minutes.
00:18:07.000That's a lot Wow I Miss my home and I just you know I have a guy that I met when I was down there.
00:18:27.000And as soon as they did that, there became this power vacuum.
00:18:30.000Yeah, for years, I got a little inside information.
00:18:33.000For years, what I'd heard is that they had this sort of like, as long as you stay on this side of the street, we'll look the other way for this, but you've got to keep your people in line over here.
00:18:44.000And I know enough people in the PD that that was sort of the general understanding.
00:18:49.000I remember one time, because I knew somebody who worked in the gang task force, I was like, how come there's always whores on the bridge on Friday night?
00:18:57.000Don't you guys see the 50 whores on the bridge?
00:18:59.000And they said, no, that's where we tell all the whores to go, so we can protect them.
00:19:04.000We'd rather have them there so we can keep an eye on them, and we know it's going to happen anyway, so better we control it.
00:19:09.000So that was the way Chicago sort of operated, was like...
00:19:13.000We'll tolerate crime up to this level and twice a year we'll run everybody in just to kind of make it look good in the paper.
00:19:20.000And then apparently whatever they did that created this power vacuum.
00:19:31.000This solution that you were saying of like kind of like saying hey keep it over here or keep it under wraps and we'll arrest a certain amount of people.
00:20:10.000And just growing up in that neighborhood, having that be your normal as a child and then, you know, growing into adulthood around that and having just used to people getting shot, used to shooting people.
00:20:22.000I mean, if there's that many people getting shot and that many gunshots going off, everybody must be common.
00:20:27.000I mean, it must be common to everyone.
00:21:17.000There's something about Chicago that seems to me to have the momentum of the old days still deeply entrenched in it, whereas that doesn't seem the case in LA and a lot of other big cities.
00:21:30.000Yeah, it's just like kind of weird yuppie thing.
00:21:33.000I don't know what you want to call it.
00:21:34.000But it's like, South Park did that episode where it's like, it's all like once the Whole Foods moves in, like everyone's supposed to live a certain way.
00:21:57.000You know, it's this idea of sort of like you can drop this homogenous idea of what modern culture is like in any place and it will just sort of riff out.
00:22:23.000You know, I think, but again, saying your environment that you grew up in, this chaos, and then coming from Chicago and coming from, you know, the stories you're telling about your dad, that had to contribute to like the deepness and intensity of your music, right?
00:22:57.000Well, the great thing is then I traded one imprisonment, Suburbia, for rock and roll aesthetics and who gets to say who's integral and who's cool and not cool.
00:24:03.000It's like, I've had weird experiences with people, not with Nirvana people, but people who are in the Nirvana world.
00:24:13.000There's still this weird, like, because I'm from Pumpkin World.
00:24:17.000Sometimes I'll have weird stuff happen and I'll dig down and find out it was somebody who used to work in Nirvana world trying to cut my ankles 27 years later.
00:25:14.000Like, if you weren't there, you don't know what the fuck they said.
00:25:17.000So if you don't know what the fuck they said, and you're putting words in these actors' mouths and having them play it out, this should be illegal.
00:26:59.000So what is it like for you to have Rubin in the mix and...
00:27:04.000Yeah, well, Rick's a friend, so for me, it was like, I was sort of at a low point, and he kind of picked me up when I was down, so it was like, I didn't mind sort of trusting him with, like, the head part of it all.
00:27:14.000Kind of like, you deal with that part, and I'm just going to sort of be the performer and the weird guy in the corner.
00:27:22.000I felt like it allowed me to focus on the music and the performance and sort of just freed me to just, you know, let whatever, because sometimes you can psych yourself out.
00:27:33.000Like, you can have a really good song, you know it's a good song, and then you start second-guessing yourself, and then you start thinking, well, maybe this song's not good enough, and then that'll infiltrate into your performance, as opposed to being free, like, hey, I've just got a good song, and if that one doesn't work, I've got another good song.
00:27:49.000So letting Rick kind of do the picking and choosing, and that's a good take, and that's a good song, it was just like, okay, I'm just going to kind of just go down this road.
00:27:57.000It took me back to sort of a more innocent way of approaching the work, and I'm very grateful to him for that.
00:28:03.000Yeah, it's got to be quite a mindfuck to create something and then practice it and rehearse it over and over again and tweak it and mess with it and not know, really, almost not be able to be objective anymore.
00:28:16.000Yeah, well, the weird thing is, I hope people can appreciate how I mean it, is like...
00:29:02.000But when you're flying a thousand miles an hour and you're selling gazillions of records and making all this money and you're surrounded by a bunch of sycophants, they're not going to tell you, hey, man, you need the doctor to come in and kind of sort your head out.
00:30:50.000If you get on a winning streak, and you're creating things in a bubble, and then they work, Well, then you want to take all the credit for it.
00:30:58.000You forget all the thousand hours in the bedroom that you listen to Jimi Hendrix or, you know, Bauhaus or Merciful Fate or whatever, you know, like, that gave you all these ideas.
00:31:07.000You know, you don't want to give them credit.
00:31:08.000You want to be the author of your own success.
00:31:11.000And everyone starts patting you on the back and...
00:31:14.000Yeah, I'm sorry to interrupt, but you're very introspective in that regard.
00:31:26.000Yeah, I'm weird in that I've always been willing to talk about the process, which, again, is anti-gimmick, but also...
00:31:35.000I've always approached it more like a performance artist in that I'm after the bigger message of how work intersects with fame, intersects with personal feeling, intersects with personality and how people perceive things.
00:31:49.000I like all that weird Andy Kaufman uncomfortability.
00:32:22.000When you become a hugely successful musician and your life becomes touring, big arenas, doing radio shows, getting on the bus, getting on the plane, all this stuff, does it make it difficult to have the time or the actual experiences to continue to create?
00:33:04.000And at some point it becomes unrelatable.
00:33:06.000Well, I always said that about, like, I mean, there's a lot of bands, but some of the great Allman Brothers or Leonard Skinner, like, they had a bunch of songs about leaving.
00:33:18.000About getting away from women, you know?
00:34:58.000And so I try to use that as fuel to sort of pivot where I wanted to go musically, but I wrote this very introspective, dark record, which a lot of people really like now, but at the time it was like so antithetical to this big rock machine.
00:35:15.000Yeah, I was like castigated for being an idiot, and I went from golden child to idiot, you know, in one fell swoop.
00:35:42.000Frank Sinatra had two or three or four.
00:35:45.000I mean, there's something about when it all seems to make sense, like the public's fascination, the artist's place in time, the work that's being created.
00:35:53.000There's a sense of like familiarity, but also something is happening and everybody wants to take part in it.
00:35:59.000And so I have a much greater appreciation for that moment.
00:36:02.000The ego of the artist wants to convince yourself that you're always in that moment.
00:36:34.000I would argue if you are, there's something wrong.
00:36:37.000You haven't matured into a deeper relationship.
00:36:41.000So in the same thing, an artist needs to mature into a deeper relationship with their work, or their relationship with the public, or their relationship with themselves.
00:36:47.000And if you can do that, and you look at great examples, Johnny Cash, Neil Young, Tom Petty, when they get there, Everybody comes back, Bob Dylan, because they think, okay, now you're giving me some new information.
00:37:00.000This isn't just a riff on the thing that you gave me before.
00:37:04.000And I think the public has shown over time the willingness and the ability to follow artists if they're able to go to that place where they mine out something new that actually is like a cultural contribution and not just sort of more of what they already know.
00:37:18.000I think that's so important for you to talk about.
00:37:21.000Because for upcoming artists and in all sorts of genres, just people who are involved in creating, to hear someone as successful as yourself talk about the various struggles of the mind and of momentum and the different stages and various points of your career.
00:37:40.000Yeah, the music business plays this Jedi mind trick on you where the whole thing's set up to be rapacious and take advantage of your weakness.
00:39:12.000Well, they've moved to a different set of circumstances, and I'm not as conversant as I once was, but one thing they do with certain younger artists, but I think particularly more in the pop realm, is they do these 360 deals, where it's like, if you get a perfume deal, you own a piece of your whole world.
00:39:30.000And fame is such a great quotient in American life now that you can see where kids would trade, Fame and be willing to give away the profit part.
00:39:40.000Well, they'll take a risk at the long-term ownership.
00:39:46.000So if you actually survive the cut, let's call it phase one, you're successful, you're a name, and now you're in a place to either renegotiate or your deal is up or whatever.
00:39:56.000I once had a conversation with a very powerful music executive, and I was friends with the guy, so I was like, give me the insider psychology here.
00:40:05.000Now that I know the game that you run, what do you tell people like me when they get here?
00:40:11.000And he says, oh, it's just there's always a price.
00:40:15.000So they know that even if you get through the matrix of the whole thing and get out the other side, that there's just a dollar amount that will buy you back in.
00:40:23.000They're not worried that you'll go independent.
00:40:25.000And in fact, if you look at a lot of the machinations of the music business over the last 20 years, especially with the rise of the internet, it's to keep people in the system.
00:42:05.000When McGregor leapt out and did the fight with Mayweather, he creates this whole different set of dynamics because He can run his own game.
00:43:25.000That's the word they would use to market him, like he's an independent artist, but he's got a machine behind him, so I don't know if he's independent, you know.
00:43:31.000Yeah, I'm good friends with Sturgill Simpson, and Sturgill's tried to educate me as to how the record business keeps people in the fold with owning your merchandise and your likeness forever and all these different things.
00:45:09.000That makes me uncomfortable hearing how they weaseled that.
00:45:12.000How they negotiated cheap prices for the performers, then they got an equity position in the company, so as the company grows, because they don't have to pay much and they get all this music, they get money from that.
00:45:22.000That is sneaky, dark, fucking 3D chess shit.
00:46:29.000And I supported it, so I got nothing to say.
00:46:31.000But I mean, yeah, at some point, when you can't pay your stupid mortgage on your fifth property, you know, sad at Disneyland, you know what I mean?
00:46:52.000Your creation can just be boiled down to information.
00:46:54.000It's not that much different than forwarding an email.
00:46:57.000In terms of people's access to it, it's very easy to get.
00:47:00.000The reason I supported it in the beginning was I thought that the free association with music would create a more holistic, fans finding what they want, and that we would do well in that ecosystem.
00:47:17.000And I think now that it is sort of set up in the streaming service world, now that's starting to be the case because people are finding us because it's sort of organized and there's sort of institutional culture.
00:47:27.000But when it was free-wielding, I don't think we played the game well enough to take advantage of it.
00:47:32.000And, you know, a lot of trains just passed us by.
00:47:35.000Yeah, there was a lot of argument that people would find new music because of that in a way that they would have never found if the record companies and the radio stations had a lockdown on what got distributed.
00:47:45.000Somebody did a study, it's my one piece of empirical evidence, like the British Association of Something, when it first became a real issue, did a study about people's fidelity to artists Whether they got something for free or they paid for it.
00:48:04.000And they found the loyalty was literally nil if they got it for free.
00:48:09.000That the actual act of purchasing something created a relationship that then created a sort of a desire to want to prove that the relationship was profitable.
00:48:21.000In essence, I buy your comedy concert.
00:48:37.000Yeah, like you want to justify your purchase.
00:48:39.000It also makes sense like when I was coming up and we'd do comedy clubs and they would paper the room and, you know, have giveaway free tickets.
00:50:05.000So that's part of my argument now with music is the brand, and I'll use my brand, Smashing Pumpkins, or the NWA, is far more valuable than my sort of profit loss on paper.
00:51:01.000The G&R brand or the Harley-Davidson brand or the Joe Rogan brand, those are durable brands that are worth far more than you could sort of prove on paper.
00:51:09.000The G&R one's a fascinating one to me because Axel just went off the rails and into the woods for so long— Shooting his face up with a bunch of shit and looks like he was just gone looks like we lost him I mean to me as a kid Guns N' Roses like I mean they were like welcome to the jungles like one of my all-time favorite songs when I was like 18 or whatever old I was when it came out I mean it was amazing and then to see them just have this incredible success and then Axl goes crazy But
00:51:40.000I would argue and I don't mean this in a disparaging way I would argue that that The freedom in Axel and the path that they took is added to the brand.
00:51:53.000I think so too, because people are so thankful they're back.
00:53:14.000I knew that as a kid, and then I got a little lost in it, and I've come out the other side, and I realize that protecting what that brand is worth is so much more valuable than whether somebody liked one song or one album or something I said in 1992. It's so inconsequential.
00:53:29.000That's such a unique perspective when you look at Axl Rose from the point of view of being a fellow performer, too.
00:53:35.000One of the things I really enjoy about Axl Rose is I love comebacks.
00:53:38.000I love when someone fucks their life up and then just brings it right back around.
00:53:58.000It's very American, you know, we love the comeback.
00:54:01.000And there were some performances of Axel's when they were attempting to come back, or maybe he was touring on his own, I forget which one it was, where he was like off.
00:54:18.000Yeah, that's what I'm saying is, you could sit there and talk about what somebody did in some year past, but if they put it back together, they put it back together not because they're trying to satisfy something, they're putting it together because the forces within them are not easily controlled.
00:55:28.000A successful performer like yourself and you see one hit wonders.
00:55:32.000One hit wonders have always freaked me the fuck out.
00:55:34.000And I don't know why, because I'm not even a musician, but just the horror of being successful and hitting and then it all going away and then you're fucked.
00:55:54.000Opportunities or moments in in pop culture is when that kind of stuff happens Because with one song, you know, She's My Cherry Pie, you can just shoot to the top of the charts.
00:57:08.000Like, you know, I've been playing these acoustic shows and, you know, at some point people start shouting out songs and I just say to the audience, look, the great thing about turning 50 is I don't give a fuck what you want.
00:57:20.000And at the end of the day, right, that sells better to most of the audience.
00:57:24.000Because most of the audience, I would argue, appreciates me being independent, even if they don't always get what they want, than being a shill.
00:58:16.000It's like a weird thing like, yeah, we can't soundcheck until 530 because there's somebody in the anteroom making burial arrangements for their family.
00:58:53.000That's, you know, you got your agent sort of, you know, when you're playing, I'm playing acoustic, I play over two hours literally by myself, no help.
00:59:01.000So environment helps a lot with kind of creating the atmosphere to do that in.
00:59:06.000The more sterile the environment, the less it feels kind of special.
00:59:10.000And so I do find the environment certainly helps.
00:59:14.000Yeah, that's a small group of people to see you.
00:59:17.000Like, what is that like to go from these big venues to doing these intimate settings?
00:59:22.000I used to really find that I could play a different show, small versus big, and I found over the last 10 years, I blame the internet, that almost every audience is now the same.
00:59:33.000That the expectations of the audience from 250 to 5,000 or up is almost identical.
00:59:40.000That may also have something to do with just having a long career and then people kind of say, I want to see these songs or something.
00:59:44.000But I don't find as much willingness to take the journey as it used to be.
00:59:50.000Because we, you know, in the 90s, we would do shows in a club and we would play no hits and just play weird b-sides and people loved it because it was like, I'm seeing the band I wouldn't get to see at the Enormaldome.
01:01:00.000In order to play acoustic, I go super within.
01:01:04.000I found that even, because originally I was going to stand, and this I know seems kind of minor detail, but I decided to sit.
01:01:10.000And I actually found by sitting and being very still and just performing and doing my best job of performing the songs, the audience enjoyed the show better.
01:01:27.000Creating a level of intimacy and drawing the audience forward is probably the only sort of difference maker that I've found because there's literally no showbiz.
01:01:43.000I used to view performing as an art project thing, which is I want to sort of create a provocative situation and then I want to ride the wave of the provocative situation.
01:01:53.000And of course I grew up in a generational thing that the audience was sort of interested in that.
01:01:59.000Sort of the explosive nature of the mosh pit and you know this kind of weird sublimated violence that would kind of come out during the shows and we were part of the engine that would sort of bring out this emotional quality and then at some point you know Things change.
01:02:13.000Again, I don't know if it's a generational thing, but I found that the only way I could play older music with a good heart and an open mind was to get into the others appreciating it.
01:02:28.000Because if you ask me, it's not for me anymore.
01:02:34.000And I'm not trying to jump in your head, but as an artist, I want to be able to say, how do I feel tonight?
01:02:40.000And tonight I want to—I've written like 400 songs, so to me I would like to say, okay, of these 400 songs, I just feel like playing these 15 songs tonight.
01:02:46.000But I can't do that, because I do have to go out and do the Hickory Dickory Dock poem.
01:02:52.000It's sort of expected, and if I don't, I'm going to get lit up.
01:02:57.000So I had to kind of create this weird truce in my mind where it's like, what way can I do this material in a way that feels heartfelt and genuine?
01:03:05.000And I found by letting myself appreciate the audience's appreciation of that created like a joy that I didn't have before.
01:03:13.000It didn't feel like a defeat and a tapping out to the moment.
01:03:17.000It felt like, oh, okay, we can create this exchange.
01:03:59.000Pete was talking to me once about how people were getting mad at him for using, and I saw him quoted publicly, so I don't feel like I'm giving anything away.
01:04:07.000People were getting mad at him for using, like, won't get fooled again in a car commercial.
01:04:11.000And Pete's quote was something along the lines of, like, I don't care if you lost your virginity to Mary Lou in the backseat to my song.
01:04:20.000So it takes time to sort of appreciate that at some point if you've been lucky enough, and I am lucky enough to have created a few kind of cultural milestones for a generation or multiple generations, that they feel very possessive of those things.
01:04:35.000And so if you're not willing to possess them with them, it almost feels like to them you're rejecting their idea.
01:04:58.000And when you're surrounded by a bunch of sycophantic artists who are literally tripping all over themselves to give the audience what they want, to create this kind of idealized, isn't this amazing feeling?
01:06:03.000I know some of it is like cliche subject matter, and I don't care.
01:06:07.000There's a lot of great songs that have cliche subject matter.
01:06:11.000Yeah, see, to me, I don't think there's anything, and I'm not trying to, I don't know enough about their world, but I don't think there's anything wrong if that's who you want to be.
01:08:00.000He went through that whole process himself.
01:08:02.000Like, he abandoned the rhymes for a long time.
01:08:05.000Did he even kind of try to abandon the character a bit?
01:08:07.000I have a little bit of a memory of that.
01:08:08.000Yeah, he did a television show, like a regular sitcom, and he cried on some TV show, like Arsenio Hall or something like that, about people angry at him for being controversial.
01:09:22.000I mean, the amount of times I've been in a parking garage or a grocery store or whatever, and somebody who's very nice, very respectful will walk up to me, and that's what they know.
01:09:33.000And if you can be humble about it, I think, it's pretty amazing that literally I can get off any exit in America, and pretty much anywhere I go, somebody has some reference to what I've done.
01:10:01.000And it's also part and parcel to when you take a fringe movement, which, you know, alternative music, grunge, whatever it was, and it's thrown in the mainstream, those social codes and mores don't translate very well to mainstream code.
01:11:19.000My step-grandfather, who was a World War II vet, very closed down, classic Eisenhower Republican type of guy, smart, you know what I mean, had literally zero interest in me as a kid.
01:13:10.000My manager, who was, you know, we were with the Metallica guys at the time, he called me on like a Wednesday or something, and he said, I can't say for sure, but more than likely, based on the calls we're getting, you're going to be number one this week, meaning melancholy.
01:13:26.000And I literally said, is there a position higher?
01:13:39.000Like, when you reach a certain level, and you're selling out these giant arenas, and you're one of the biggest bands literally ever, you're, like, one of the top 100 biggest bands of all time.
01:15:07.000Because you're sort of, I don't want to say arrogance is not the right word, but it's like you have a sort of a, you know, you got a little bit of a thing in your walk and you think, you know, you got the world by the you know what and all good.
01:15:17.000You think you can power your way through anything because you have.
01:16:41.000Because the songwriters get, if you, quick lesson, the songwriter gets paid separate statutorily by the government than the actual copyright of the recording.
01:16:53.000So if I'm on Joe Rogan's label, you pay the band for the recording, which of course in that case would be split four ways, but you owe me a statutory rate as a songwriter for the sale, which I think these days is about 10 cents.
01:17:07.000So every record we sold where I was the sole songwriter, I was getting 10 cents that they weren't getting, or 8 cents or whatever it was at the time.
01:17:15.000So you can imagine over a gazillion records sold, it added up.
01:17:20.000So I start pulling away financially, But when you're a kid and you're 23 and somebody's having this conversation with you and you literally don't even have an apartment and somebody's trying to tell you how you're going to make a lot more money, it's like, what does that mean?
01:17:34.000Fast forward four years later and it's like, I'm making a lot more money.
01:17:39.000So that sort of sows, it organically sows discontent.
01:17:44.000You know, it's a, whether you call it jealousy or not.
01:17:46.000And then as I emerged as sort of the auteur and the big mouth in the band and maybe the person who was most willing to be controversial or whatever, we'd get in a room with journalists and they would just talk to me.
01:17:57.000And then we'd get out of the interviews and the band members would yell at me for them not being asked questions.
01:18:04.000So it's like this weird thing like it was my responsibility to push them more as stars or...
01:18:11.000Yeah, so it's not just about the music.
01:18:12.000It's about being appreciated and successful and famous.
01:18:15.000Now, in hindsight and in fairness to them, I didn't appreciate why it was important to them.
01:18:20.000Because in their minds, we're all equal.
01:20:02.000Yeah, I mean, and even talking about the band going back on a tour and the possibility of that, it's like, I approach it completely different.
01:20:18.000I'm not preaching for sympathy, and I can't speak for the modern music business, but the business we were in in the 90s, we were surrounded by people who were giving us wrong information.
01:20:30.000Now, were they giving us wrong information on purpose or because they weren't bright enough?
01:20:33.000I don't know, but we weren't getting the right information.
01:20:36.000Very few people actually try to sit us down and say, look, this is going to be a problem.
01:20:46.000And they probably don't have the time for psychological management anyway.
01:20:49.000They're probably in the middle of just trying to figure out how to make money off you.
01:20:52.000My understanding is they, and again, going back to the conversation I had with the executive, they just basically look and they say, you've got four years if you're lucky.
01:21:24.000What percentage of musicians or musical artists that get signed by a label and put something out ever wind up having an actually successful career?
01:21:52.000And sorry to interrupt again, but the other weird thing is, again, the system I was in was even if you were successful, it was set up to make you feel like you weren't successful.
01:22:09.000I once said to somebody who is a very famous name in the business, it's like you guys find a needle in the haystack and then you spend the next 20 years telling them they're not a needle in the haystack.
01:22:22.000What I'm trying to say, and I'm not saying it well, is you would think you would be surrounded by people who are telling you, you're talented, you're special, we want to help you because the more you succeed, we'll succeed and we'll all succeed together.
01:23:19.000I think it was actually probably before digital got really huge.
01:23:25.000A lot of people thought she had a ghostwriter, but it was really...
01:23:30.000Eye-opening to a lot of people that didn't know anything about the music business, like where the money actually goes and how much money has to be spent and how little you actually make, even though if you sell a shit ton of records.
01:23:53.000Well, for people who haven't read it, it's pretty eye-opening.
01:23:56.000I have nothing to do with the music business, so I've always been absolutely fascinated as a completely objective observer just looking at it.
01:24:03.000This whole thing seems so crazy because if you do not get signed and if you do not get promoted, at least until recently, you had no chance.
01:24:12.000They literally controlled the reins and the direction of your career, almost like an actor.
01:24:17.000You can't make it as an actor unless you get an audition and someone chooses to put you in a film.
01:24:22.000But like a great Greek mythology type myth thing, the music business has made two critical mistakes over the last 30 or so years that led to its current sort of reduced status.
01:24:34.000One was they let MTV run amok on free content and I think?
01:25:06.000Those two critical errors led to the music business reduced position.
01:25:12.000Music has been around forever, but the music business has been around, what, 100 or so years?
01:25:18.000Yeah, I think we're into 120 plus years of recordings.
01:25:22.000Yeah, it's just amazing what an iron fist they've managed to control the business with and to sort of wrangle the artists for the most part.
01:25:34.000Well, it's Wizard of Oz, you know, don't look behind the curtain.
01:25:39.000Have you ever thought about being on the other side?
01:25:42.000Yeah, I have, but I just don't have that much.
01:25:44.000I'm actually, that's why I'm more interested in wrestling.
01:26:01.000When I first came to LA in, whatever, 90, and had the meetings, and you'd be in that office and the people with the beards and everything, and they'd be like, so when we put the product out, and every time they would say product, I would sort of wince.
01:26:26.000And, um, and it's not to say they're not fans and they don't appreciate, you know, or they don't care, but at the end of the day, it's just some sort of weird business, you know, and like all institutional cultures that are sort of kind of corrupt at their core, it just sort of runs on its own inertia.
01:26:42.000When you see someone like Chance the Rapper break out of that system, do you think that that's a model that can be followed, or is he just like an outlier?
01:26:49.000No, it's certainly a model that can be followed, but it probably works because he's so talented.
01:29:02.000I don't know if you know the most recent speculation that I talked about the other day, but the most recent speculation is that John might have snorted cocaine that was cut with creatine that was contaminated with steroids.
01:29:15.000Because if you look at the timeline, I know, if you look at the timeline, and John loves some cocaine, but if you look at the timeline of when John tested negative and when John tested positive, it is preposterous to think that he thought that he could take it and not pass.
01:29:34.000The fight coincides with 10 days out from his birthday party, where he apparently got blitzkrieged.
01:29:41.000So it is entirely possible that, and this is just massive speculation, but we have done some research online and found that there have been cases of creatine that was contaminated by cheap creatine from China, contaminated with steroids.
01:29:57.000Specifically the type of steroid that he tested positive for.
01:30:00.000And creatine is often used to cut cocaine, apparently.
01:30:06.000So it is entirely possible that he did blow, and that blow had steroids in it through the contaminated creatine.
01:30:17.000The question is, did he lose because John Jones is a cheater?
01:30:21.000Or did he lose because Jon Jones is an amazing fighter?
01:30:25.000So the second one would be harder to deal with.
01:30:29.000Because if he lost because Jon Jones is an amazing fighter who did coke 10 days out before their title fight and kicked his ass, and now they give Daniel the title back...
01:30:50.000We value honesty so much, and there's very little other than some rudimentary observations they can make with FMRI, functional magnetic imaging, resonance imaging.
01:31:28.000I mean, when it comes to, like, cheating in combat sports, it has such an intense significance to it that it's not an option or it's not a factor in other sports.
01:31:40.000It's that you can cause damage to your opponent, like physical damage that could affect them for the rest of their life.
01:31:45.000Like, that was the case with Vitor Belfort when he fought Michael Bisping.
01:31:48.000He head-kicked Bisping and knocked him out, and Bisping suffered a really badly detached retina in his eye and went on to have...
01:31:57.000I think several surgeries and now has oil in his eye.
01:32:00.000If you look at his eye, there's permanent oil to protect his retina that he has to leave in there until he decides to quit fighting and then he'll have another surgery on it.
01:32:09.000And the question is, did Vitor land that because he's highly skilled or did he land it because he's highly skilled and taking testosterone?
01:32:21.000You increase your ability to cause damage and that changes the game.
01:32:36.000It doesn't have the same ramifications.
01:32:39.000Especially when you're talking about the angle of a punch and a tenth of a second being the difference between a glancing blow and a knockout.
01:32:55.000There's speed, there's the amount of energy that you have, and then there's psychological factors like confidence.
01:33:01.000There's no metric to figure out what...
01:33:05.000What kind of an effect being a juiced-up psychopath has?
01:33:09.000Like if you're someone who like Vitor Belfort who's already highly skilled and then you pump him full of steroids and he comes out there like motherfucker like he just like feels like he can't lose and then he has so much confidence and then all this skill on top of that I hate to pick on him,
01:33:25.000but he's my favorite example because the difference between him on testosterone and him off testosterone is so radical.
01:33:33.000There's been these photos side to side of the two of them together and you're just like, wow.
01:33:39.000One of them's a destroyer, the other one is a dad.
01:35:23.000I mean, to just be completely honest, he's always going to be in the shadow of the greatest light heavyweight champion of all time, and that's John.
01:35:30.000I mean, he's so uniquely talented and special, and just there's something about him all across the board, and part of his partying and all that shit is kind of connected to that, because he's fucking wild.
01:36:33.000So even though he's like a thin guy, he's very physically strong.
01:36:37.000It's a strange comparison to make, but back in the day, I used to hang out a lot with Dennis Rodman when he was playing for the Bulls, and he had freakish strength, kind of similar body, like very long, like you wouldn't look at him and think muscles, and Rodman could pick a 250-pound man up with one hand and lift him over a rope.
01:37:24.000Some guys just have that weird, whatever that is.
01:37:27.000It's a lot of times it's those long guys too.
01:37:29.000Something is about long limbs and leverage and it's like they have this if they have as long as they have a certain amount of muscle with that long those long limbs and long leverage.
01:42:50.000So after the morning shoot-around, drove to the airport to fly commercial, because now the billionaire's not flying him back again, and gets on a plane commercial and is giving me shit because I don't want to go back to Vegas with him.
01:44:24.000Do you still keep in touch with Dennis?
01:44:26.000No, Dennis is sort of, he kind of trotted out into the ether, and I, you know, it's hard to follow.
01:44:32.000Under my thing, it falls under what I call the celeb friendship.
01:44:36.000I've, at various times, had to have, I've tried to have friendships, legitimate friendships with very famous people, and the way they run their worlds is, I'm sure you've encountered, it's like, you've got to go through this guy to talk to this guy, and then the message doesn't get through, and I think, oh, fuck all that,
01:44:53.000If I can't just text you, I can't be friends with you.
01:44:56.000Yeah, it gets into the weird thing of, like, you tell Larry the guy, and then Larry never tells the guy, and then the guy's upset at Larry, but Larry's looking at you like, we had to go do this thing, and I just...
01:45:15.000When someone reaches a certain level of success, especially fame, they get people to sort of handle certain menial tasks and then that person sort of becomes their babysitter.
01:46:13.000Well, it's like what you were talking about, turning 50. You know, like, you're 50, don't give a fuck anymore.
01:46:19.000It's like, that's one of the good things about it.
01:46:20.000Well, technically I did give a fuck before 50, but now I get to declare it, yeah.
01:46:23.000But it's great that you're willing to be this guy and be yourself openly because one of the things about music in particular, but I guess a lot of other areas of show business too, is that people really protect that image.
01:46:39.000They protect that thing that they're projecting to their fans.
01:46:42.000They have this idea of what their fans want, and they hold that really sacred.
01:46:46.000But I think pulling the curtain back the way you do, I think it's very brave, but it's also very important.
01:46:54.000I've certainly had moments in my life where I wondered if I had to do all over again.
01:46:59.000Like sometimes I'll riff with a journalist that I know enough to sort of riff with.
01:47:04.000And I say, because sometimes they'll say like, do you feel you're underappreciated as an artist or you didn't feel you didn't get the due you deserve?
01:49:35.000Well, you're manipulating people's ability to freely exchange ideas.
01:49:38.000So as an artist who's been in the public sphere almost 30 years and I've seen people manipulate my image and turn me into a meme and all this stuff, I'm very sensitive to if somebody wants to deny me the right to either reply or get my message out.
01:50:02.000I think our democracy is better for it.
01:50:04.000And that includes people who say things that I don't approve of or like.
01:50:08.000I'd rather have them say it than not say it.
01:50:10.000I agree as well, and I think it's very important that if people do say those things that you don't approve of or like, that other people express why they don't approve of those things or like them.
01:50:20.000And the only way that happens is if you hear the initial thought.
01:50:23.000You have to hear the one thing that you don't like in order for someone to say something that resonates.
01:50:27.000You go, yes, that's why we disagree with that initial thought.
01:50:31.000If we generally agree that an idea is so abhorrent or so racist or so bigoted, then what are we afraid of because...
01:50:41.000The argument should be that the collective agrees that that is an inappropriate thing to do and express, and then socially we can sort of correct course, and it gives the other person on the other side the opportunity to course correct, too.
01:51:01.000Why can that idea not withstand the dirtiest, most scurrilous thing that can be thrown at it?
01:51:07.000Yeah, it's one of the more uncomfortable things about people on the left today is this newly embraced idea that you should be able to suppress ideas you don't agree with.