The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1881 - Rick Rubin

00:00:13.000 Rick Rubin, ladies and gentlemen.

00:00:14.000 It's a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance.

00:00:17.000 Same.

00:00:17.000 Happy to be here.

00:00:18.000 I'm happy to have you here, man.

00:00:19.000 I'm excited to talk to you.

00:00:20.000 Beautiful place.

00:00:21.000 Thank you.

00:00:22.000 And if you see shooting stars across the ceiling, you're not tripping.

00:00:25.000 Every, like, 40 seconds or something.

00:00:27.000 Star shoots across the ceiling.

00:00:29.000 So what's happening, man?

00:00:30.000 Just hanging.

00:00:31.000 You wrote a book.

00:00:32.000 I wrote a book.

00:00:33.000 I'm excited to read it, man.

00:00:34.000 Yeah, I'm excited for you to see it.

00:00:35.000 You've had a wild life, brother.

00:00:38.000 It continues to surprise me on a regular basis.

00:00:42.000 Does it?

00:00:43.000 Every time.

00:00:43.000 It's like one thing after another.

00:00:46.000 So much of it's unintentional.

00:00:47.000 I would say all of it's unintentional.

00:00:50.000 How so?

00:00:54.000 From the beginning, I never thought any of the things that I'm doing were possible or realistic.

00:01:01.000 And I just did things out of the love of them, thinking I would have real jobs.

00:01:08.000 That my passion would be my hobby, and I'd have a job to support my hobby.

00:01:17.000 Yeah.

00:01:18.000 And it just magically turned out different than that without me knowing it was possible.

00:01:23.000 That's the best kind of story.

00:01:25.000 I love those stories. 0.99

00:01:26.000 Because when someone just follows their passion and it just leads them to being one of the baddest motherfuckers in music. 0.96

00:01:34.000 How did you get started? 0.98

00:01:35.000 I just started making...

00:01:36.000 I went to...

00:01:38.000 I was in a punk rock band first, and I recorded a couple of punk rock things with my band and liked the feeling of being in the studio.

00:01:47.000 It was fun.

00:01:48.000 And hip-hop was just getting started at this time.

00:01:52.000 And I would go to...

00:01:54.000 There was a club called Negril on 2nd Avenue in Manhattan downtown.

00:01:58.000 It was a reggae club most nights, but one night a week it was hip-hop.

00:02:02.000 And this was when hip-hop was...

00:02:04.000 It didn't really exist other than in the Bronx, Brooklyn.

00:02:12.000 And it was this tiny little scene of people playing music in parks, really.

00:02:17.000 It was not a...

00:02:19.000 It's hard to explain how small it was, how much of a sub-genre it was in these days.

00:02:25.000 So the fact that you could see it downtown was a big deal because it didn't really exist anywhere.

00:02:31.000 You didn't hear this music in clubs.

00:02:32.000 And there were very few at this time 12-inch singles would come out.

00:02:38.000 And there would be, I don't know, I don't know if there were more than 30 or 40 rap songs in the world at this point in time.

00:02:50.000 But there were these clubs where stuff would happen.

00:02:52.000 And at this club that I went to called Negril, what you would normally only be able to see at a club in Harlem, like there was a club called Broadway International and there was a club called the Disco Fever, was brought downtown and people downtown could see it.

00:03:10.000 So I started going every Tuesday night.

00:03:12.000 That's when I was going to NYU. And I just loved the music.

00:03:17.000 And then...

00:03:19.000 I would buy every 12-inch single that would come out when it would come out, and none of them sounded like what it sounded like at the club.

00:03:28.000 It wasn't related at all.

00:03:30.000 How so?

00:03:37.000 Live, it was much more of a raw...

00:03:40.000 It was like DJs and breakbeats, and it was harder...

00:03:47.000 Whereas the record sounded more like an R&B record, but with somebody rapping on it.

00:03:52.000 But it wasn't what we know as rap today.

00:03:58.000 That's not what those records sounded like.

00:04:02.000 They were live bands.

00:04:03.000 They were made by people who made other kinds of music.

00:04:06.000 So they made them the same way they made other kinds of music when hip-hop was really different.

00:04:11.000 So I started making hip-hop records really with the idea of I just wanted, as a fan, to hear what it sounded like in a club.

00:04:21.000 So it was almost like a documentarian style.

00:04:26.000 And I would just start documenting what I heard and making things that sounded more like the energy of a club, which was, again, different than these slick records.

00:04:33.000 And part of it was because I didn't know what I was doing.

00:04:35.000 I didn't have any training or skill, but that allowed...

00:04:40.000 That was what...

00:04:42.000 What allowed it to be new was it wasn't doing it the regular way.

00:04:46.000 It was doing it the way of hip hop, which didn't yet exist.

00:04:51.000 And so how did you get in with the artists and start producing stuff?

00:04:55.000 I started meeting them.

00:04:57.000 My favorite group at the time was called Treacherous Three.

00:05:00.000 And they were on a label called Sugar Hill.

00:05:06.000 They had put out three 12-inch singles that I loved.

00:05:10.000 Those were the best 12-inch...

00:05:11.000 They still sounded like R&B records, but they were the best of the rap records you could get at this time.

00:05:16.000 Those first three came out on Enjoy records.

00:05:19.000 They had a red label.

00:05:22.000 And then they signed to Sugar Hill.

00:05:23.000 And when they signed to Sugar Hill, they put out an album, and it didn't sound—it wasn't good like the ones on Enjoy.

00:05:30.000 And then one night, Treacherous Three were playing at that club, Negril, and I met them after the show.

00:05:37.000 Kumo D was the lead rapper, you'd say.

00:05:40.000 And I went to Kumo D and just said—and again, I don't know anything about the music business.

00:05:45.000 I don't know anything about what anyone does.

00:05:48.000 I don't know that there's such a job as a producer.

00:05:50.000 I don't know any of this.

00:05:52.000 I just said, you know, I'm your biggest fan, and your new album doesn't sound like what's good about you guys, and let's work together to try to make something that's as good as you guys are.

00:06:08.000 And he said, well, we're signing Sugar Hill, we can't really do that, but...

00:06:13.000 You should talk to Special K, another member of the group.

00:06:15.000 He's got a brother, T LaRock, who's a really good rapper, and you could do it with him.

00:06:21.000 I was like, okay.

00:06:23.000 And that was the first record I made was T LaRock. 0.86

00:06:26.000 Wow.

00:06:26.000 And so did they recognize once they heard that sound that, yeah, this is more like what we're doing in the clubs?

00:06:33.000 It ended up getting very popular.

00:06:35.000 It took a long time.

00:06:36.000 Probably took 10 months to really...

00:06:41.000 Have impact in the New York scene.

00:06:44.000 And it did.

00:06:44.000 It was a really popular song.

00:06:47.000 What was the difference in the way you were doing the sound versus the way the sound was?

00:06:52.000 We could listen to it.

00:06:54.000 If you listen to it, you'll hear the difference.

00:06:56.000 I can describe it, but if you listen to it, you'll really understand.

00:06:59.000 OK. Tell Jamie what to pull up.

00:07:00.000 OK. So a typical rap record at that time would have been Curtis Blow The Breaks.

00:07:08.000 So if you listen to that, you'll hear what rap sounded like.

00:07:13.000 And then after that, we'll listen to T La Rock It's Yours and you'll hear the difference.

00:07:18.000 OK. Jamie will find it.

00:07:20.000 So this to you.

00:07:22.000 And how old were you at the time?

00:07:24.000 Just starting first or second year of school, whatever age that is.

00:07:30.000 1920?

00:07:31.000 Something like that.

00:07:31.000 Wow.

00:07:32.000 Clap your hands, everybody, if you've got what it takes.

00:07:35.000 Because I'm Curtis Blow, and I want you to know that these are the birds.

00:07:49.000 Brakes in a bus, brakes on a car, brakes to make you a superstar.

00:07:53.000 Brakes to win and brakes to lose.

00:07:55.000 Please hear brakes throughout your shoes.

00:07:57.000 And these are the brakes.

00:07:59.000 Break it up, break it up, break it up!

00:08:01.000 You hear guitar, you hear bass, you hear drums, and it's a band playing, and it sounds like it's at a party, and then there's rapping on top of that.

00:08:10.000 And now play It's Yours.

00:08:41.000 And there's scratches.

00:08:47.000 Now you haven't really heard that on records yet because it was what would happen live.

00:08:53.000 The DJs were the musicians, but to people who made other kinds of music, the DJs were only playing back a band, so they assumed the record's supposed to be a band playing.

00:09:09.000 And my assumption was that's not what it was.

00:09:11.000 It was the DJ playing a drum machine and playing parts of records that that's what was exciting.

00:09:18.000 That was the music of hip hop.

00:09:20.000 The rapping on top could be the same, but the music of it was different.

00:09:25.000 Who was the first person that started scratching?

00:09:32.000 I don't know that much about it, but I believe it was DJ Kool Herc is considered the inventor, but I'm not sure if that's true.

00:09:40.000 I'm not the best person to ask.

00:09:42.000 What a wild idea.

00:09:44.000 And revolutionary.

00:09:46.000 It changed the way people thought about music, particularly hip-hop music.

00:09:51.000 It became part of it.

00:09:53.000 It comes out of the idea of the break, starting with the break.

00:09:57.000 The break is, you have a song that has all different parts in it, a traditional song, but there's one little part in it that has a cool drum beat.

00:10:07.000 Or a cool little percussion part.

00:10:09.000 And what a DJ would do in those days was they would play just that little snippet of the song, might be four seconds, and they would have two turntables, and they'd play four seconds here, and then four seconds here, and then four seconds here, and four seconds here,

00:10:24.000 to create a longer piece out of this four-second loop.

00:10:29.000 But there was no such thing as a sampler then, so it only happened through live playing it.

00:10:38.000 And then when did people figure out sampling?

00:10:41.000 A lot of times sampling was maligned, right, in the early days.

00:10:45.000 People didn't sort of understand.

00:10:46.000 They were like, oh, you're taking other people's music.

00:10:50.000 But it was not just that.

00:10:52.000 It was a creation of new music with samples.

00:10:58.000 It's a long conversation.

00:11:00.000 The first part of sampling is...

00:11:04.000 The way it was used in hip hop in the early days, I was saying we would use a snippet of a record and then sometimes we would even create a tape loop.

00:11:15.000 So you would take a little piece of music on tape and then have it come back around and you'd edit it and splice it.

00:11:23.000 And there's at least one song on the first Beastie Boys album that uses that technique.

00:11:29.000 But it was about extending these pieces of music to create something new.

00:11:35.000 And hip-hop from the beginning was always a form of montage.

00:11:39.000 It was finding things and making something new out of it.

00:11:43.000 It wasn't finding things to make it sound like it sounded.

00:11:47.000 It was finding something and changing it into something new.

00:11:51.000 That's what was exciting about it.

00:11:53.000 And this montage process is the basis of hip-hop.

00:11:57.000 And up until the time of It's Yours, we didn't really hear it on the records because people still were making records using traditional methods, non-hip-hop methods.

00:12:09.000 Did you get a sense, like, while this was all happening, of how that was—this is like a completely new music genre.

00:12:17.000 This is a whole new music scene.

00:12:20.000 Like, it must have been very exciting.

00:12:22.000 It was—being part of it was very exciting, and loving it was exciting, and there was a disconnect between that and the outside world.

00:12:35.000 Because the outside world didn't recognize it, didn't even recognize it as music, much less something that was good, you know, like that could be good.

00:12:48.000 It was viewed as this other thing, not music.

00:12:52.000 Other thing?

00:12:53.000 Yeah, that's how it was described.

00:12:55.000 I can remember being in, um, once Def Jam happened and we started having a lot of success putting out music, and I'm still probably at NYU, um...

00:13:08.000 Labels would come around and want to be involved in one way or another, and one label asks, like, what do you attribute the success of this to?

00:13:16.000 After all, it's not music.

00:13:17.000 Now, these are people in the music business who are wooing us, wanting to work with us, and they're telling us they don't hear it as music.

00:13:26.000 That doesn't even make sense today, right?

00:13:28.000 No, no, no.

00:13:29.000 The world has changed.

00:13:31.000 The world has changed.

00:13:32.000 Wow.

00:13:33.000 But it was a completely alien underground form of music.

00:13:36.000 And because people were rapping instead of singing, that was one piece that wasn't understandable.

00:13:44.000 And then because the music was like...

00:13:47.000 It's yours, where it's a drum machine, there's no melody, there's no...

00:13:52.000 It was too foreign at that point in time for people to understand it as songs.

00:14:00.000 Wow.

00:14:01.000 It's hard to...

00:14:02.000 It's shocking. 0.98

00:14:03.000 It's ridiculous. 0.93

00:14:04.000 And in some ways, like, there's a song I produced with Run DMC and Aerosmith, Walk This Way. 0.63

00:14:13.000 And the whole purpose of doing that...

00:14:16.000 Was to demonstrate, this is music.

00:14:19.000 This is music and this is, not only is it music, it's familiar music.

00:14:25.000 You're just not, you're not seeing it.

00:14:28.000 Like you're somehow removed from what's happening.

00:14:33.000 But it's easy to see if you, so again, if you create a demonstration.

00:14:37.000 So that's what Walk This Way was, was I looked for a song that was familiar.

00:14:44.000 And that the way it was written in the original version, the Aerosmith version, the phrasing of it was essentially a rap record.

00:14:51.000 The verses are...

00:14:53.000 It's not melodic.

00:14:57.000 It's all about the phrasing.

00:14:58.000 That's how rap works.

00:15:00.000 And the beat, you know, the intro, was already a known breakbeat in the hip-hop world.

00:15:10.000 They had never heard...

00:15:11.000 In hip-hop club, no one had heard of Aerosmith.

00:15:14.000 No one had heard of Walk This Way, but they knew the Toys in the Attic break, which was just that beat, not the song.

00:15:24.000 Wow.

00:15:25.000 Yeah.

00:15:26.000 Let's listen to that.

00:15:26.000 Can we play the intro to Aerosmith's Walk This Way?

00:15:30.000 I remember when you did that.

00:15:33.000 I remember that being a very polarizing song.

00:15:36.000 Absolutely.

00:15:37.000 Because people didn't know what to think.

00:15:39.000 It's like some people thought you were ruining Walk This Way by adding Run DMC. And some people were like, why do you have Run DMC with rock and roll?

00:15:48.000 It doesn't make any sense.

00:15:49.000 Mm-hmm.

00:15:55.000 Just that long.

00:15:56.000 That piece is the Toys in the Attic break.

00:16:00.000 Because it says Toys in the Attic on the record.

00:16:03.000 Just that.

00:16:05.000 So that was...

00:16:07.000 So if you went to a hip-hop club, you might hear that.

00:16:10.000 Wow.

00:16:11.000 But I grew up on Aerosmith, and I grew up on ACDC, and I grew up on Ted Nugent.

00:16:15.000 I grew up on rock and roll music.

00:16:17.000 And when I saw this disconnect...

00:16:24.000 This was the way to bridge the gap, just to explain what was happening.

00:16:29.000 Wow.

00:16:30.000 How was it received in the music business when you did that?

00:16:36.000 I guess the first thing was radio.

00:16:38.000 I remember, I guess it was WBCN in Boston.

00:16:42.000 Played it once.

00:16:43.000 Mark Parenteau?

00:16:44.000 I can't remember if it was Mark Parenteau.

00:16:46.000 Who else was there?

00:16:47.000 Charles Laquadera?

00:16:48.000 No, tell me another name.

00:16:50.000 God, that's hard to remember.

00:16:51.000 Like DJs.

00:16:52.000 The Morning Mattress was Charles Laquadera and Afternoons was Mark Parenteau.

00:16:57.000 Yeah, I don't know that it was either of them, but it might have been.

00:17:00.000 Again, I don't remember.

00:17:01.000 I just remember that BCN played the song, and it was a big deal also because it was a rock station playing a hip-hop record. 0.78

00:17:09.000 And I remember that there was this outrage from the audience, you know, take that garbage off.

00:17:17.000 And then within a few days, it was the most requested song on the station.

00:17:22.000 Wow!

00:17:23.000 Yeah, so it was like it definitely divided the audience.

00:17:25.000 Yeah.

00:17:26.000 But the best things do.

00:17:28.000 That's what's really exciting.

00:17:29.000 When you hear something new and you don't have a reference for it, your first reaction might be to push it away.

00:17:36.000 I remember the first time I heard the Ramones when I was in probably junior high school.

00:17:41.000 And I heard the Ramones and that was the first really punk rock fast music I ever heard.

00:17:46.000 I don't think there was any before the Ramones.

00:17:49.000 So if you're used to hearing normal tempo rock and roll and then you hear the Ramones, I just laughed.

00:17:56.000 It just seemed like a joke. 0.70

00:17:57.000 You know, it just seemed ridiculous.

00:17:59.000 And then eventually it became my favorite thing.

00:18:04.000 How did Aerosmith react?

00:18:06.000 Did you come to Aerosmith and try to bring it to them?

00:18:08.000 Did the label come to them?

00:18:09.000 I just had the idea of doing the song and recording the song with Run DMC, and then the label said, why don't we reach out to Aerosmith and ask if they would participate?

00:18:18.000 I was like, that sounds crazy to me, but if they'll do it, obviously I'd love it.

00:18:24.000 You know, I loved that band growing up.

00:18:25.000 They were one of my favorite bands growing up.

00:18:27.000 So that seemed like a dream.

00:18:29.000 And then they came and we did it.

00:18:32.000 Wow.

00:18:34.000 That was a groundbreaking moment in music.

00:18:38.000 It really was.

00:18:40.000 If you really stop and think about all the ripples that came out of that particular song, that song introduced so many people to hip-hop, and I'm sure so many hip-hop fans to rock and roll and Run-DMC. Absolutely.

00:18:53.000 You know, combining with Aerosmith is like the perfect combination.

00:18:56.000 Two iconic bands.

00:18:59.000 But also at that point in time, Aerosmith had fallen on hard times.

00:19:03.000 I remember I saw Aerosmith play at Nassau Coliseum, sold out, incredible show.

00:19:10.000 And then six months later, Aerosmith were playing at a club on Long Island called Speaks, which was like a...

00:19:16.000 It was like where the cover bands would play.

00:19:19.000 Six months?

00:19:20.000 Six months.

00:19:20.000 What happened?

00:19:21.000 I don't know.

00:19:22.000 I don't really know.

00:19:23.000 I think maybe Joe Perry left the band, which was part of it.

00:19:28.000 But I don't know how you can go from that popular to in this new condition that quickly.

00:19:37.000 But it happened.

00:19:39.000 That's wild.

00:19:41.000 Yeah.

00:19:41.000 I wasn't aware that that had happened.

00:19:44.000 That doesn't even make sense that something like that can happen in six months.

00:19:47.000 Nassau Coliseum, which is like- Sold out.

00:19:50.000 20,000, 18,000 something.

00:19:52.000 Jesus Christ, to a club. 0.90

00:19:54.000 Yeah, maybe a 600-person club, like a big club, but still a club.

00:19:58.000 A big fall.

00:20:00.000 A big fall.

00:20:01.000 Wow.

00:20:02.000 Yeah.

00:20:03.000 In six months.

00:20:04.000 Yeah, really quick.

00:20:05.000 So was it a scandal when Joe Perry left?

00:20:07.000 Is that what it was?

00:20:08.000 Was it like everyone was upset?

00:20:09.000 I don't know.

00:20:10.000 I really don't know.

00:20:13.000 So they did that, and then did that song bring them back?

00:20:16.000 That song brought them back.

00:20:18.000 Wow. 1.00

00:20:19.000 Holy shit. 0.99

00:20:20.000 They had actually put out an album called Done With Mirrors, which was like their comeback album before Walk This Way, and that was not well received. 0.99

00:20:31.000 And then Walk This Way came out, and then it both broke Run DMC in a mainstream way and re-broke Aerosmith as a mainstream group.

00:20:41.000 Wow.

00:20:42.000 So then what happens with you after that?

00:20:44.000 That song obviously is this giant smash and things just start happening then?

00:20:50.000 Things start happening right from the beginning.

00:20:52.000 Honestly, the whole thing was miraculous because I'm working in this form of music that people don't think is music, nobody likes and nobody cares about other than the 200 people at the Negril Club that I would go to.

00:21:08.000 And then...

00:21:10.000 Bit by bit.

00:21:11.000 The first album I produced was LL Cool J. He was 16 at the time.

00:21:16.000 And the way I met LL was because of the It's Yours record, the Teela Rock record that we listened to, it had Def Jam Recordings' name and the address, Five University Place, which was my dorm room at NYU. And we started getting demo tapes to the dorm room.

00:21:39.000 And Adam Horowitz from the Beastie Boys was listening to all of the demo tapes, and he found the LL tapes.

00:21:46.000 Like, you should listen to this one.

00:21:47.000 And we listened to it, and it made us really laugh, and we liked it.

00:21:51.000 And so much of it has to do with humor.

00:21:53.000 Like, when it's good, it makes you laugh, even if it's not funny.

00:22:00.000 You know, like the...

00:22:04.000 The surprise nature of things.

00:22:06.000 When you hear the unexpected, you laugh.

00:22:12.000 And it feels good.

00:22:14.000 It's a good feeling.

00:22:15.000 And I remember we laughed a lot at LL's...

00:22:18.000 As a matter of fact, on LL's demo tape, the first thing he said before he started his demo rap was he said, Let me clear my throat.

00:22:28.000 And then he started rapping.

00:22:30.000 But he only said that because he turned on the recorder before he started rapping.

00:22:34.000 But it wasn't supposed to be part of it.

00:22:36.000 And we just thought it was the funniest thing.

00:22:38.000 Let me clear my throat.

00:22:39.000 And then on the Beastie Boys record, we have a song.

00:22:42.000 We're in the middle of the song.

00:22:43.000 We stop the song.

00:22:45.000 And AdRoc says, let me clear my throat.

00:22:47.000 And it's really based on hearing it, just this funny thing that didn't really make sense.

00:22:55.000 Complete inside joke.

00:22:57.000 And so we were making these things that were completely insider, personal, no expectation, right?

00:23:08.000 You know, there was no expectation that anybody would like any of the things we were making outside of our small group of friends.

00:23:15.000 And what you were doing, too, was that's a completely unique way of making music.

00:23:20.000 That really didn't exist before.

00:23:23.000 Like having, like, not just having samples, but having things like that.

00:23:28.000 Pausing in the middle of a song, let me clear my throat.

00:23:31.000 It was definitely odd.

00:23:33.000 It was very free.

00:23:35.000 Yeah, free is the great word.

00:23:36.000 That's the great word.

00:23:37.000 Very free.

00:23:38.000 It was experimental.

00:23:40.000 And it was intended to be fun and exciting and hard and all the things that we liked in music, but again...

00:23:52.000 With no potential upside, no expectation that it was for anyone else.

00:23:58.000 Well, speaking of experimental, Paul's Boutique is one of my favorite albums ever.

00:24:02.000 It's incredible. 0.98

00:24:02.000 It's fucking great. 0.98

00:24:04.000 And that was such a radical shift. 0.99

00:24:08.000 From the first album.

00:24:09.000 Absolutely.

00:24:10.000 I didn't produce Paul's Boutique.

00:24:12.000 That's what's different about it.

00:24:14.000 Radically different.

00:24:15.000 And miraculously beautiful.

00:24:17.000 Beautiful album.

00:24:18.000 Yeah, just completely different kind of music.

00:24:20.000 But it speaks to the sort of freedom of that time.

00:24:24.000 Absolutely.

00:24:25.000 People would take these wild chances like that.

00:24:27.000 I remember I was with Chuck D at the Mondrian Hotel in Los Angeles.

00:24:33.000 And we got an advance of Paul's Boutique, and we listened to it together, and our minds were blown.

00:24:39.000 We're just like, this is the future.

00:24:40.000 It was so good, and we loved it.

00:24:43.000 And then it came out, and it ended up not being, at the time, it was not wildly successful.

00:24:49.000 Yeah, that was strange to me at the time, because I don't understand why people aren't loving this.

00:24:55.000 This is so interesting.

00:24:56.000 So good.

00:24:57.000 So good.

00:24:59.000 But it's just like, I think then, is that what happens?

00:25:03.000 It's like now there's like a form that people accept for hip-hop.

00:25:07.000 There's like a form that people accept for a certain band at that time.

00:25:11.000 And then Paul's Boutique comes along and it's like, well now we're going to try something even wilder.

00:25:16.000 It's always been the case that people come to expect, or the audience comes to expect a certain thing, and if you veer outside of those lines, it's often not well received.

00:25:28.000 An example also, even Public Enemy, when we put out the first Public Enemy record, None of the—at this point in time, there were already stations playing rap music, like Master Mix shows on WBLS and KTU would be like Saturday night.

00:25:46.000 They'd be playing rap music.

00:25:48.000 But they wouldn't play Public Enemy.

00:25:50.000 They would play the instrumental versions.

00:25:52.000 They wouldn't play Chuck's vocals, because he didn't sound like the other MCs at that time.

00:25:58.000 And he even has a line on the second Public Enemy album about, some say no to the album, the show, Bum Rush the Sounds, I made a year ago.

00:26:08.000 It's like, last time you played the music, this time you'll play the lyrics.

00:26:13.000 Mmm. 0.95

00:26:14.000 I don't know why anybody would listen to Chuck D and not think it was fucking awesome. 0.97

00:26:19.000 It's incredible. 0.81

00:26:20.000 Isn't that crazy that someone would think that his lyrics or his voice is not good?

00:26:26.000 It's insane.

00:26:27.000 It's insane.

00:26:28.000 I mean, it's iconic.

00:26:30.000 But it was just new.

00:26:32.000 It was new.

00:26:33.000 And what he was talking about was new.

00:26:34.000 So...

00:26:36.000 It just wasn't what was in the culture at the time.

00:26:40.000 But often the best things.

00:26:42.000 I remember at the time that LL came out, another record came out called Roxanne Roxanne by a group called UTFO. And UTFO was a much bigger hit than LL's song.

00:26:57.000 But over time, the consistency of LL's artistry Bypassed UTFO. But sometimes, like, the thing that catches on isn't the...

00:27:10.000 It's a short-term thing, you know?

00:27:14.000 It's a short-term taste.

00:27:17.000 Yeah.

00:27:19.000 One of the things that I found interesting about hip-hop was I can really remember this clearly because the first time I listened to N.W.A., I was on a treadmill.

00:27:30.000 Or a stair climber machine.

00:27:32.000 And I was in Boston. 0.99

00:27:33.000 And I was like, this is fucking crazy. 0.98

00:27:38.000 It's incredible. 0.98

00:27:38.000 Like, these guys are... 0.98

00:27:40.000 It was so wild and so violent and so hard. 0.99

00:27:45.000 I remember thinking, like, holy shit, this is popular? 0.97

00:27:50.000 I remember thinking, this kind of music is going to have, like, ramifications on society. 0.98

00:27:55.000 You know, because it was so powerful.

00:27:57.000 And, like, shocking.

00:28:00.000 Like, I'd never heard that kind of violence and that extreme lyrics and just their depictions of real life in South Central L.A. And, I mean, it really ignited this completely new branch of hip-hop in a lot of ways.

00:28:19.000 Absolutely.

00:28:20.000 It was...

00:28:21.000 I had...

00:28:26.000 Pretty much left hip-hop at that point in time.

00:28:31.000 Once hip-hop...

00:28:33.000 So when we started doing the stuff we were doing, hip-hop didn't really exist.

00:28:37.000 And then all of a sudden it got popular.

00:28:39.000 And once it got popular, it felt like the community changed.

00:28:44.000 And it wasn't people getting into it out of love for hip-hop or wanting to continue pushing the boundaries of what was creatively possible.

00:28:55.000 It just started all sounding like records we had already made.

00:28:58.000 And it just wasn't interesting.

00:29:00.000 It felt like derivative.

00:29:01.000 Everything was derivative at this point.

00:29:03.000 So I started producing other, produced Slayer and Danzig, different kinds of music that felt more challenging to me in that moment, that just spoke to me more.

00:29:13.000 And then I heard NWA. Actually, it was Eazy-E. NWA hadn't recorded yet.

00:29:18.000 There was the Eazy-E album, which is the first album from Dre in the sound of what became NWA. Yeah.

00:29:27.000 And it blew my mind.

00:29:29.000 And I went to California to meet with them, and I actually visited in the studio when they were recording Straight Outta Compton album.

00:29:34.000 Wow.

00:29:35.000 Yeah, incredible.

00:29:36.000 Wow.

00:29:37.000 That's fascinating, too, that this new thing emerges, and then people just imitate the pattern of success, like whatever the successful pattern of that music.

00:29:46.000 Yeah.

00:29:47.000 It wasn't out of...

00:29:49.000 Artistry.

00:29:50.000 It was out of, oh, this works.

00:29:52.000 Let's do what works.

00:29:53.000 Yeah.

00:29:53.000 And for someone like you, like, you seem to go on feel a lot.

00:30:00.000 Or just, like, what resonates with you?

00:30:02.000 That's it.

00:30:03.000 Everything I do is just personal taste.

00:30:05.000 And it's what the book's about, is, like, really for people to trust, artists to trust in themselves, make something that speaks to themselves.

00:30:15.000 And hopefully someone else will like it, but you can't second-guess your own taste for what someone else is going to like.

00:30:20.000 It won't be good.

00:30:21.000 We're not smart enough to know what someone else is going to like.

00:30:25.000 You know, to make something, well, I don't really like it, but I think this group of people like it.

00:30:29.000 It's a bad way to play the game of music or art.

00:30:34.000 You have to do what's personal to you, take it as far as you could go, really push the boundaries, and...

00:30:49.000 People will resonate with it if they're supposed to resonate with it, but you can't get there the other way.

00:30:55.000 The other way is a dead-end path.

00:30:57.000 When artists are not successful yet though, it's very difficult for them to find who they are because they're always just trying to figure out what's the path to success.

00:31:08.000 Where success seems to be the carrot at the end of the stick.

00:31:11.000 It's like there's always this something, you know, these guys have all this money, these guys have all these cars and these big houses, how do I get that?

00:31:18.000 How do I get success?

00:31:19.000 How do I fill up an arena?

00:31:21.000 How do I become successful?

00:31:22.000 And so there's this temptation towards imitation.

00:31:26.000 Yeah, it's a dangerous path.

00:31:28.000 And if you're getting into this business for that outcome, if that's the reason you're doing it, chances are it's not going to work out.

00:31:37.000 Most of the time.

00:31:38.000 Yeah, that's not what makes it great is the personal.

00:31:43.000 Yeah.

00:31:44.000 With all of its imperfections, with all of its quirkiness, that's what makes it great.

00:31:50.000 How you see the world that's different from how everyone else sees the world, That's why you're an artist.

00:31:57.000 That's your purpose in sharing your work with the world.

00:32:02.000 And that seems to be the case with everything, with literature.

00:32:05.000 It's definitely the case with stand-up comedy.

00:32:08.000 Everything.

00:32:08.000 We experience that in stand-up comedy where there's these kind of derivative voices where they're kind of like finding what they think other people want to hear and they start saying it because they've heard other people say similar things that are now successful.

00:32:23.000 And even if they have some sort of a short-term success doing that, it's not revolutionary.

00:32:32.000 It doesn't change the world.

00:32:34.000 It doesn't last.

00:32:36.000 It can be a momentary thing.

00:32:40.000 But it's never the thing.

00:32:42.000 It's the people who you first see and you might not like that you come to like.

00:32:48.000 Because you don't understand them at first.

00:32:50.000 Those are the ones that changed the world.

00:32:51.000 Those are the ones that you dedicate your fandom to for life.

00:32:56.000 Yeah, I remember when Cypress Hill came out.

00:32:58.000 At first, I was like, man, I don't know about this.

00:33:01.000 You know, that nasally voice that Be Real had.

00:33:05.000 I was like, I don't know about this.

00:33:07.000 And then within like six months, they were like my favorite.

00:33:10.000 It's so good.

00:33:11.000 So good.

00:33:12.000 His voice is so good.

00:33:13.000 And it was also like one of the first cannabis-infused kinds of music.

00:33:19.000 You know, they were so not just cannabis-inspired, but they would sing about it.

00:33:24.000 They would rap about it.

00:33:26.000 And also Snoop as well would lean into that.

00:33:30.000 And then The Chronic, of course.

00:33:32.000 Literally the cover of the album.

00:33:34.000 There was something about or there is something about someone like that that is completely unique.

00:33:42.000 I think what you said, you said perfectly.

00:33:45.000 That's what changes things and that's what lasts.

00:33:47.000 Whereas something that's derivative or someone's just trying to do things that they think other people are going to buy that's going to be successful.

00:33:57.000 You might start out that way and hopefully you can deviate and find your own voice, but if you don't, you can't keep imitating.

00:34:04.000 Yeah, and who cares?

00:34:08.000 It's a waste of your life.

00:34:10.000 If your goal is to make money, Go work on Wall Street.

00:34:16.000 Do something else where you get...

00:34:18.000 There are ways to make money.

00:34:21.000 I think it's more of that.

00:34:21.000 But if you're going to do it in art, it's different.

00:34:23.000 I think it's attention.

00:34:24.000 I think they want the money, yes, but they also want to be stars.

00:34:28.000 I think that's the thing.

00:34:29.000 That's the real carrot.

00:34:31.000 It's like the money is...

00:34:32.000 That's big.

00:34:33.000 You see the other side, too.

00:34:34.000 There are so many artists who are...

00:34:38.000 Shy, private people.

00:34:40.000 And it's difficult for them to deal with any kind of success or fame.

00:34:48.000 It's a weird world.

00:34:49.000 And even the ones who think they want that when it actually happens...

00:34:54.000 It's a shocking...

00:34:56.000 It's not what it's cracked up to be.

00:34:58.000 Obviously, there are great perks.

00:35:00.000 It's nice to be successful.

00:35:04.000 And there are things that happen when you're successful that you're not expecting, and things become a lot more complicated in your life.

00:35:13.000 It can shrink your life to the point of, you know, I know some rock stars over the years who literally never left their house or did anything.

00:35:24.000 Tom Petty would be a great example.

00:35:25.000 The only thing Tom Petty did was record music, tour, watch television, read books.

00:35:31.000 He wouldn't go out to dinner.

00:35:33.000 He wouldn't go anywhere because if he went out, someone would be, oh, it's Tom Petty.

00:35:39.000 And it just made him uncomfortable.

00:35:40.000 It was too weird.

00:35:44.000 And for the people who really buy into it, who like that, that can do a whole other trip.

00:35:51.000 You know, like in wrestling, they say, living the gimmick.

00:35:54.000 Yeah.

00:35:56.000 Yeah, that happens with comics, too.

00:35:57.000 You lean into your audience.

00:35:59.000 You lean into what you think that they want to hear, and then you become them.

00:36:03.000 How do you stay true to your voice as a comedian?

00:36:14.000 Through success, through the ups and downs of doing it, how do you stay true to what you're doing?

00:36:20.000 One thing I do is I don't read anything that anybody says about me.

00:36:23.000 Great.

00:36:23.000 That helps.

00:36:25.000 And two is I spend a lot of time alone.

00:36:28.000 I spend a lot of time alone.

00:36:30.000 I do almost all my working out alone, all the sauna time and cold plunge and writing.

00:36:36.000 I spend a lot of time just thinking.

00:36:38.000 And not thinking about what people think about me.

00:36:42.000 Just thinking about what I like, what's interesting.

00:36:46.000 I think one of the things that really tempers me or keeps me sane is the workouts because they're so brutal and they're so hard that everything else is easy.

00:36:56.000 And I think that's something that's missing from a lot of people's lives where you deal with the anxiety of fame and celebrity and just the attention and all the demands on you.

00:37:06.000 And it's kind of overwhelming.

00:37:07.000 And if all you're doing all day is like dreading those experiences, like if you're Tom Petty and you're hiding in your house, you're dreading going to dinner or dreading going out.

00:37:17.000 Then those moments do become too big to deal with.

00:37:20.000 And then you just want to get away as quickly as possible and go back to your house.

00:37:23.000 You know, I mean, you see it in people that become famous.

00:37:27.000 You know, as I've become friends with more and more famous people, you see the...

00:37:31.000 And they're always, like, asking questions of other people that are also famous.

00:37:36.000 Like, how do you deal with it?

00:37:37.000 Like, what is your solution?

00:37:39.000 And I think my solution is the best one for me.

00:37:43.000 I think psychedelic drugs help a lot.

00:37:49.000 It's just these big resets. 0.99

00:37:51.000 These big resets where you're like, okay, this is all bullshit. 0.90

00:37:54.000 Like all this little weird game you're involved in with life and society and culture. 0.99

00:37:59.000 It's fun and it's great and it's meaningful and it's fun for other people, but it's kind of bullshit. 0.97

00:38:04.000 Because the real thing is so much weirder and so much greater. 0.97

00:38:08.000 And it's everything is connected in some very bizarre and unseen way.

00:38:13.000 And that humbling experience of the psychedelic connection is also a nice way to just check you.

00:38:24.000 Just put it back into perspective.

00:38:27.000 But for day-to-day, you can't really just trip balls day-to-day.

00:38:31.000 It would just be too weird.

00:38:33.000 So day-to-day for me, it's the workouts.

00:38:36.000 It's doing things you don't want to do and doing them rigorously.

00:38:43.000 And then when you get over it, there's also these physical changes that happen.

00:38:47.000 The endorphin releases and the alleviation of anxiety, which I think is critical to being able to manage those states of fame.

00:38:59.000 But you also got to have perspective and realize like, hey man, this is just what comes with it.

00:39:05.000 But the most important thing is like, hey, you're getting to do what you want to do, which for me as a kid, you know, starting out doing stand-up when I was 21, it was like this impossible idea.

00:39:18.000 The impossible idea was just being a professional.

00:39:21.000 Like, God, wouldn't it be great to not have a job?

00:39:23.000 Just to be able to get money from stand-up?

00:39:25.000 It seems impossible.

00:39:27.000 How did it start for you, stand-up?

00:39:29.000 How did you know that that was your path there?

00:39:32.000 Just open mic night.

00:39:33.000 You know, my good friend Steve Graham, who was an ophthalmologist at the time and a flight surgeon, incredible guy that I'm still good friends with to this day, he's the one who talked me into it.

00:39:43.000 He's the guy I did martial arts with.

00:39:44.000 And he was like, you really should be a comedian.

00:39:48.000 Because you were funny in real life?

00:39:51.000 We would all have to spar, and everybody would be really nervous, and I would make everybody laugh. 0.99

00:39:56.000 I'd do an impression of one of our friends, and I'd just be talking shit. 0.98

00:40:01.000 Or we would be going to a tournament, which was really scary. 0.97

00:40:04.000 So we'd all be on a bus together somewhere.

00:40:06.000 And, you know, it was like all these guys going to go fight.

00:40:10.000 And I would be the one that made everybody laugh.

00:40:13.000 It was like gallows humor.

00:40:15.000 And I would love it.

00:40:17.000 I loved all the attention of getting everybody to laugh.

00:40:19.000 So I would be the funny one.

00:40:21.000 And it was healing because you made everybody feel better and it served a purpose.

00:40:25.000 It did.

00:40:26.000 It was a giant relief bout.

00:40:28.000 I was just releasing all the gas in the room and everybody would laugh.

00:40:32.000 And it was like a break from the tension.

00:40:36.000 And at the time I was like 16, 17 years old.

00:40:40.000 And then when I was 19, Steve was like, you really should be a comedian.

00:40:45.000 I was like, come on, man.

00:40:47.000 You think I'm funny because you like me. 1.00

00:40:48.000 I go, other people are going to think I'm an asshole. 0.99

00:40:50.000 And plus, this is like Boston, conservative, late 80s, early, you know, like the late 80s people were fucking pretty conservative about like what they thought was funny. 0.99

00:41:00.000 And until Kinison came along.

00:41:04.000 And then Kinison came along in 86. And that was right at the time when I started to consider it because I was, it's a funny story, I probably told this on the podcast before, but I was working at the Boston Athletic Club, which was a fitness club in South Boston.

00:41:19.000 And I was like a trainer.

00:41:20.000 I was teaching people how to lift weights.

00:41:22.000 And there was this girl, I think she was a volleyball player. 0.99

00:41:25.000 She was like big, like she was like 5'11", like really athletic, big personality. 0.59

00:41:31.000 She was hilarious. 0.53

00:41:33.000 She was really funny.

00:41:34.000 And she worked the front desk.

00:41:35.000 And she knew that I loved comedy.

00:41:37.000 And she said to me, you gotta see this comedian.

00:41:39.000 I saw him last night on HBO. And she takes me outside to the parking lot to tell me, like, because the bits were so outrageous.

00:41:46.000 She didn't want to do them in the lobby.

00:41:47.000 She takes me out in the parking lot. 0.99

00:41:49.000 She's like, and this fucking guy is doing this bit. 1.00

00:41:52.000 About homosexual necrophiliacs who are paying money to spend all this time with the freshest male corpses. 1.00

00:42:02.000 And so he's like lying down. 0.98

00:42:04.000 She lies down on the street, on the asphalt in the parking lot.

00:42:09.000 And she's like, I'm lying there thinking, okay, I'm dead now.

00:42:13.000 I'm going to be with Jesus.

00:42:14.000 Like, oh!

00:42:15.000 Hey! 0.99

00:42:16.000 What is this? 1.00

00:42:17.000 It feels like some guy's got his dick in my ass! 1.00

00:42:20.000 You mean life keeps fucking in the ass even after you're dead? 1.00

00:42:23.000 It never ends! 1.00

00:42:25.000 It never ends!

00:42:26.000 Ow! 1.00

00:42:27.000 She is making me howl with laughter in a parking lot! 1.00

00:42:32.000 It's just me and her.

00:42:33.000 She's just reciting Sam Kinison.

00:42:36.000 And I remember thinking, what?

00:42:38.000 That is crazy!

00:42:39.000 And I was laughing so...

00:42:40.000 And I had to find Sam Kinison.

00:42:41.000 And so I got a cassette.

00:42:44.000 I think it was like a VHS cassette.

00:42:46.000 And I think it was at like Blockbuster or one of them type of video stores.

00:42:50.000 And I brought it back to my apartment. 0.97

00:42:52.000 And I remember watching it thinking, holy shit. 0.99

00:42:56.000 This is comedy? 0.99

00:42:59.000 Because I thought comedy was Jerry Seinfeld, comedy was Richard Pryor.

00:43:03.000 I wasn't those guys.

00:43:05.000 And I would watch Evening the Improv or The Tonight Show and these guys would have the blazers on with the rolled up sleeves and like, I gotta dress like that.

00:43:12.000 But it wasn't me.

00:43:14.000 I saw Kenneth and I was like, that's comedy?

00:43:17.000 And that's when I started to listen to Steve.

00:43:18.000 I was like, maybe I could be a comedian. 0.99

00:43:20.000 Because if that wild shit could be comedy? 0.99

00:43:23.000 Because I was just too wild. 0.99

00:43:24.000 I mean, I never could keep a real job.

00:43:28.000 I was super undisciplined with everything other than martial arts.

00:43:32.000 And all I was doing was I traveled around the country trying to kick people unconscious.

00:43:36.000 That's what I was doing.

00:43:38.000 I mean, that's what my life was.

00:43:39.000 So to me, my life was so extreme and so filled with violence and so wild that this stayed sort of sedate existence of like, did you ever notice?

00:43:52.000 There was none of that in me.

00:43:53.000 So Kinison was the first thing that I saw.

00:43:55.000 I was like, wow.

00:43:56.000 Maybe I could do comedy.

00:43:58.000 That's amazing.

00:43:59.000 And so much humor comes out of the extreme pain, discomfort.

00:44:06.000 You were in the right place for it to work.

00:44:10.000 And the fact that that was your life would make you a different kind of comedian than those other comedians, which is a great thing.

00:44:18.000 Yeah.

00:44:19.000 Well, and that girl. 0.99

00:44:21.000 God, I wish I stayed in touch with her.

00:44:22.000 I don't even remember her name.

00:44:23.000 She was awesome, though.

00:44:25.000 She was just fun. 0.73

00:44:25.000 She was just a funny girl. 0.73

00:44:27.000 And the fact that she laid down on the parking lot, she's like, Sam did too.

00:44:33.000 Sam did it that way too.

00:44:35.000 She reenacted his bit on this parking lot.

00:44:38.000 But the fact that she did it, she was so crazy she acted it out.

00:44:41.000 She was basically my age.

00:44:42.000 So we were both like 19 at the time.

00:44:44.000 And it was just...

00:44:45.000 I couldn't believe it.

00:44:46.000 I remember when I first saw Sam and it blew my mind and I loved him.

00:44:49.000 I was really a Rodney guy.

00:44:50.000 I loved Rodney Dangerfield.

00:44:52.000 Loved Steve Martin.

00:44:54.000 Loved Monty Python.

00:44:58.000 All things comedy.

00:44:59.000 I went through a phase...

00:45:00.000 After being a little kid of listening to music like British Invasion, Beatles, Monkeys, that kind of music when I was a little kid, then I'd stop listening to music and only listen to comedy for years until junior high school when I started listening to hard rock.

00:45:17.000 Wow.

00:45:18.000 But I remember seeing Sam and being blown away, and I was already doing music at this time and had a label, and I went to find him, and then I found out he already had a record out, and I was so bummed.

00:45:29.000 He didn't have a record out, but he was signed to Warner Brothers, and I was bummed.

00:45:33.000 And then I saw Dice, and Dice blew me away.

00:45:40.000 And...

00:45:42.000 I saw him, first I saw him on the Rodney, HBO, you know, Young Comedians, whatever it was called.

00:45:49.000 I don't know what it was called.

00:45:51.000 And it was just, I don't know, he did 10 minutes or something, and it was insane.

00:45:57.000 It was a perfect dice set.

00:46:00.000 And it was another one of those, like when I first saw Sam, it's like, he's not, it's a very different character than Sam, but it's as hard and as extreme.

00:46:10.000 Yeah.

00:46:11.000 And I just loved it.

00:46:12.000 And then came to LA and I saw that he was playing at, what's the name of the club, the comedy club next to Greenblatt's?

00:46:21.000 Laugh Factory.

00:46:22.000 He was playing at the Laugh Factory.

00:46:24.000 I watched him at the Laugh Factory.

00:46:25.000 It was incredible.

00:46:26.000 After he got off the stage, he walked to Greenblatt's.

00:46:28.000 I followed him to Greenblatt's and we spoke as he was ordering it.

00:46:32.000 Greenblats and started making records together.

00:46:35.000 Wow.

00:46:36.000 You guys did The Day the Laughter Died, which is one of my all-time favorite.

00:46:40.000 Look at that.

00:46:40.000 Yeah.

00:46:41.000 The Day the Laughter Died, Cassette 1, which is one of my all-time favorite comedy CDs, specials, whatever it is, recordings, because it was so crazy that he did that.

00:46:50.000 It's crazy.

00:46:51.000 He's in the peak of his stardom, for people who don't know the story.

00:46:54.000 I mean, this guy's selling out Nassau Coliseum, and nobody had ever done that as a comic.

00:46:58.000 He sold out Madison Square Garden two nights in a row the week we recorded the day the laughter died.

00:47:05.000 Just to give a context of what was happening.

00:47:08.000 So for people who don't know, when you see Dice perform in HBO and you see his specials, it's polished material.

00:47:18.000 It's sharp punchlines.

00:47:20.000 He's killing it. 1.00

00:47:21.000 He's like, oh, what's in the bowl, bitch? 1.00

00:47:25.000 It's powerful shit. 1.00

00:47:27.000 So then he goes to Dangerfields with basically no material. 0.99

00:47:32.000 Yeah. 0.98

00:47:33.000 And just fucks around. 1.00

00:47:35.000 And just fucks around for two hours. 1.00

00:47:38.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:47:39.000 It was incredible.

00:47:40.000 What started it was I would go...

00:47:43.000 He would go to the comedy store most nights.

00:47:46.000 And I would meet him at the comedy store most nights.

00:47:49.000 And most nights he would be great and the audience would love him.

00:47:53.000 But certain nights...

00:47:55.000 Wrong audience.

00:47:58.000 Mood he was in.

00:47:59.000 And he could bomb.

00:48:01.000 Even when he was already dice. 0.75

00:48:02.000 And he would bomb.

00:48:04.000 And for me and Hot Tub Johnny, I don't know if you ever met Hot Tub Johnny.

00:48:07.000 Me, Hot Tub Johnny would sit in the back.

00:48:11.000 And for us, the funniest shows were when he bombed.

00:48:14.000 Because his reaction to bombing was so funny.

00:48:19.000 Whether it was...

00:48:23.000 Pushing harder.

00:48:24.000 Like he's already doing aggressive material.

00:48:28.000 And then when he's not getting the response, he goes harder and people like it less.

00:48:35.000 And it's so funny.

00:48:38.000 It's because he just seems like a guy having a nervous breakdown.

00:48:41.000 You know, it's like it's so crazy.

00:48:44.000 It doesn't feel like comedy at all.

00:48:46.000 It seems like this other thing.

00:48:47.000 A guy losing his mind and turning red and sweating and screaming and nobody likes it.

00:48:56.000 And we just died.

00:48:58.000 And then in honor of doing The Garden, I remember saying, Andrew, how about instead of recording The Garden...

00:49:07.000 Let's try to do a set at Dangerfields and let's find out what night would be the least, like the most suburban, like not anyone who likes comedy, people who are just going to a club because they're traveling through New York.

00:49:25.000 The people who will most likely not like it.

00:49:30.000 And let's record that.

00:49:31.000 And he's like, great, let's do it.

00:49:33.000 I'm in.

00:49:34.000 So it was great.

00:49:35.000 But the ego, like most people's ego would not allow them to have something like that as a recording and then just release it.

00:49:45.000 It was incredible.

00:49:46.000 We thought it was the funniest thing in the world.

00:49:49.000 One of my favorite parts of that cassette or that recording is when some guy in the audience goes, you're about as funny as a glass of milk.

00:49:59.000 Has anybody ever sampled that?

00:50:01.000 If you listen to the recording, you'll hear me and Hot Tub Johnny in the back laughing.

00:50:05.000 The only people you hear laughing on that record and The Day the Left Who Died Part 2 is us.

00:50:10.000 And we're going crazy.

00:50:12.000 It sounds like he's hitting punchlines that are just almost like he's speaking another language.

00:50:19.000 Yeah.

00:50:20.000 No reaction. 0.99

00:50:21.000 But he's hitting them hard like they would kill. 0.96

00:50:24.000 Yes, and you hear nothing. 0.71

00:50:26.000 Ow, we're back!

00:50:27.000 Get it?

00:50:31.000 For comedians, there's a guy named Mike Donovan, who's like a comedy legend in Boston.

00:50:35.000 And at the time, the day the laughter died, I was just a beginning comic.

00:50:40.000 And he pulls me aside.

00:50:43.000 He goes, you've got to listen to this.

00:50:44.000 You've got to listen to this. 0.99

00:50:45.000 It's fucking incredible. 0.99

00:50:47.000 He goes, it's fucking incredible. 1.00

00:50:48.000 He just bombs. 0.99

00:50:50.000 He just goes up in front of this audience.

00:50:52.000 They have no idea he's going to be there. 1.00

00:50:53.000 And he fucking bombs. 0.99

00:50:54.000 And I was like, why is that good? 1.00

00:50:56.000 He's like, fuck it, you listen. 1.00

00:50:58.000 So, you know, Donovan, who had been probably doing comedy at the time, 15, 20 years, he knew, like, the formula, and anybody could kill. 1.00

00:51:08.000 You get your right set, hot night, hot audience, you can kill. 0.98

00:51:12.000 But this guy fucking doing that, and Donovan is like, you barely breathe, because he's laughing so hard. 1.00

00:51:19.000 Because he's talking about Dice doing an impression of Nixon eating ass. 1.00

00:51:26.000 He's talking about eating a woman's ass. 1.00

00:51:29.000 I was like Nixon in that ass. 1.00

00:51:33.000 And it's fucking so ridiculous. 1.00

00:51:36.000 So stupid. 1.00

00:51:36.000 And Donovan is crying, laughing. 1.00

00:51:38.000 Tell me about it.

00:51:39.000 I was like, wow, I gotta go get it.

00:51:40.000 And I remember listening to it, and I guess at the time I was like 21 or 22. I was so confused.

00:51:45.000 I was like, what the fuck? 1.00

00:51:46.000 What the fuck is he doing? 1.00

00:51:46.000 Yeah, it's so weird. 1.00

00:51:47.000 He's Dice.

00:51:48.000 I know.

00:51:49.000 Like the first one, that first cassette, Dice, incredible.

00:51:52.000 I listened to it.

00:51:53.000 I was 19 years old.

00:51:54.000 I was in my car, parked in front of my house with this girl I was dating at the time.

00:51:58.000 And we were sitting in the car just howling, laughing at this cassette.

00:52:03.000 And then he puts out that.

00:52:07.000 Yeah.

00:52:07.000 And he just like, no one knew what to do.

00:52:10.000 Yeah.

00:52:11.000 What was his reaction to the reaction of that?

00:52:15.000 I've never talked to Dice about that.

00:52:17.000 He loved it.

00:52:19.000 He understood performance art.

00:52:22.000 He liked things that were different.

00:52:25.000 He liked doing not the regular thing.

00:52:29.000 And we had already done, I think at that time we had maybe done either three, probably three full regular comedy albums by this point in time.

00:52:38.000 So it was...

00:52:41.000 Nice to shake it up a little bit.

00:52:43.000 Boy, did that shake it up.

00:52:45.000 And how did that affect his career?

00:52:48.000 No effect.

00:52:49.000 Not positive or negative.

00:52:50.000 No effect.

00:52:51.000 That's crazy!

00:52:52.000 How is that possible?

00:52:54.000 I mean, comedians liked it.

00:52:56.000 But it was, you know, it was meta.

00:52:57.000 You know, it was an inside joke.

00:53:01.000 But it was a two CD release.

00:53:03.000 That was part of the beauty of it.

00:53:05.000 I remember we even put a sticker on it.

00:53:08.000 Something like to the effect of...

00:53:11.000 Two hours of new material, no jokes.

00:53:15.000 Because it's what it was.

00:53:17.000 It's like really no jokes.

00:53:19.000 How was it reviewed?

00:53:23.000 The same as people hated him.

00:53:26.000 Reviewers hated him always.

00:53:27.000 There was a story in...

00:53:29.000 He played for the garden shows.

00:53:31.000 There was a review in the Village Voice that was like...

00:53:35.000 The Village Voice was a big format newspaper.

00:53:37.000 And it was two entire pages...

00:53:41.000 Of a review comparing it to a Nazi rally, a Hitler rally, that it wasn't funny at all, that it was just, this is the worst of society.

00:53:52.000 Wow.

00:53:53.000 Just didn't get it at all.

00:53:54.000 They didn't get it at all.

00:53:57.000 Well, there was a time where he was ostracized by mainstream media in a way where it was like they were...

00:54:06.000 I mean, he was...

00:54:08.000 Kinison got it a little bit.

00:54:10.000 He definitely got it, but not like Dice.

00:54:12.000 Dice got the full broad...

00:54:14.000 Remember he was banned from MTV? And they were trying to say that...

00:54:18.000 I remember Kurt Loder talking about it.

00:54:21.000 This unfunny comedian, Dice.

00:54:24.000 But everybody was laughing.

00:54:25.000 What do you mean unfunny?

00:54:27.000 When you say unfunny, you mean your own personal taste?

00:54:29.000 Do you apply that to all music?

00:54:32.000 Do you say that about other bands? 0.99

00:54:33.000 Is this shitty band? 1.00

00:54:34.000 Do you say NWA sucks because they're violent? 1.00

00:54:38.000 Another part of it is that they would always, to vilify Dice, they would always quote his jokes. 0.97

00:54:48.000 But if you don't see that character telling that joke, it just sounds horrible.

00:54:53.000 I have a whole bit about that.

00:54:54.000 I'll tell you about it off the air.

00:54:56.000 But that's a real thing.

00:54:58.000 It's like they would vilify him and portray him As if he was hateful when all he was doing was trying to make people laugh and succeeding tremendously in doing that.

00:55:09.000 And obviously mocking himself, too.

00:55:12.000 I mean, it was a character.

00:55:14.000 It was the clearest. 0.98

00:55:14.000 It was ridiculous. 0.98

00:55:15.000 His name is Andrew Silverstein, okay?

00:55:17.000 And Andrew, when he would go, and I love Andrew to death, being friends with him Was one of the most surreal things at the Comedy Store.

00:55:26.000 Because I was such a fan when I was a kid.

00:55:28.000 I never got to meet Kinison.

00:55:29.000 And I only got to meet Hicks very briefly.

00:55:31.000 I mean, I literally said hi to him.

00:55:33.000 That's it.

00:55:34.000 When I was an open-miker in Boston.

00:55:37.000 But I got to be friends with Dice.

00:55:39.000 And I was mostly just doing the store at the time.

00:55:42.000 And Dice pulled me aside.

00:55:44.000 And he said, hey, you should do the road. 0.98

00:55:46.000 He goes, you're fucking funny. 1.00

00:55:48.000 You don't need these cocksuckers. 1.00

00:55:49.000 He goes, these people telling you what to do and fucking, you gotta dance for them, do the show. 1.00

00:55:53.000 He goes, you can make a lot of money on the road. 1.00

00:55:55.000 You should be doing the fucking road. 0.99

00:55:57.000 And I was like, I should do the road. 1.00

00:55:58.000 Dice told me to do the road.

00:55:59.000 I'm gonna do the road.

00:56:00.000 And I started doing the road.

00:56:02.000 That's when I started, like, I called my manager up and I said, let's start doing clubs in all these different cities.

00:56:07.000 So when I wasn't doing news radio, when I wasn't on television, I would go off on the weekends and I would go, you know, do fucking wherever, Houston, Phoenix.

00:56:15.000 And I started doing the road because of Dice's direction.

00:56:18.000 Amazing.

00:56:18.000 And how different was it?

00:56:22.000 Doing comedy for people not at the Comedy Store.

00:56:25.000 It was amazing.

00:56:26.000 First of all, it made me a real comedian.

00:56:29.000 Well, the store made me a real comedian, but the road made me a real headliner, because I was doing an hour in these towns, and I was doing two shows Friday, two shows Saturday, and I was getting the feel of different vibes,

00:56:45.000 and that's really when I fell in love with Texas.

00:56:47.000 It was 97 when I started coming to Texas, 98. And they were just so rowdy and fun and free.

00:56:57.000 And there was a different, there was a rebellious friendliness to them.

00:57:02.000 And I was like, God, I love these people.

00:57:05.000 And the first album I recorded in 99 on Warner Brothers was the I'm Gonna Be Dead Someday.

00:57:12.000 And I did that in Houston.

00:57:14.000 And I did it.

00:57:16.000 Really like the touring and all that was because it dies like that.

00:57:19.000 That's what really ignited me Ignited my my inspiration to go do that and it is There's too many guys that were just staying in town and everybody at that time In the 90s and it was kind of starting to die off But there was this thing where everybody wanted a sitcom that was the Holy Grail the Holy Grail mean the real Holy Grail was the tonight show if you would be the hope that was out of my reach I was you know in my fucking 20s it was not gonna happen and But the holy grail was getting a sitcom.

00:57:50.000 Because you could be Tim Allen.

00:57:52.000 You could be Jerry Seinfeld.

00:57:53.000 You could be Roseanne Barr.

00:57:54.000 You could be Brett Butler. 1.00

00:57:56.000 And if you got a sitcom, man, you were the fucking king. 1.00

00:57:59.000 And, you know, they would make a sitcom around you. 0.99

00:58:02.000 So I had had a development deal.

00:58:04.000 At one point in time, and then I got on this show that was a crappy show on Fox.

00:58:09.000 And so I was on that path.

00:58:11.000 And then I got on news radio, which was great.

00:58:13.000 And then the path after that was obviously get your own sitcom. 1.00

00:58:16.000 But Dice was like, fuck that. 0.96

00:58:19.000 Like, you should, you know, and this is that Dice had his own show, Bless This House. 0.99

00:58:23.000 Remember that?

00:58:23.000 Yeah.

00:58:24.000 And, you know, he was like, that's not the way.

00:58:27.000 The way is the road.

00:58:28.000 The way is comedy. 1.00

00:58:29.000 You're a fucking comedian. 1.00

00:58:30.000 He also made a movie, if you remember, Ford Fairway. 1.00

00:58:32.000 Yes!

00:58:33.000 And I remember thinking, this doesn't feel right.

00:58:36.000 Like, from the beginning, it didn't feel right.

00:58:38.000 It felt like, what's so great about you is not in this movie.

00:58:42.000 Right.

00:58:43.000 Right.

00:58:44.000 It was like homogenized milk.

00:58:46.000 They pasteurized it and homogenized it and took all the enzymes out of it.

00:58:50.000 And it's like, I guess this is not the same thing.

00:58:54.000 And the way that people reacted to dice in the mainstream, the hatred from the mainstream...

00:59:02.000 Really caused him to crack.

00:59:04.000 You know, do you remember he appeared on, I can't remember what late night show it was, where he cried.

00:59:08.000 Yeah, I think it was Arsenio Hall.

00:59:10.000 Maybe.

00:59:11.000 And he really changed his act after that, but not because it's what he thought was funny.

00:59:16.000 He became a comedian because he wanted to be loved.

00:59:19.000 Yes.

00:59:19.000 And even though he would go out in front of 20,000 people screaming, adoring fans, people would write terrible things about him.

00:59:26.000 And it didn't compute.

00:59:27.000 And somehow he just felt like...

00:59:30.000 You know, they don't see me.

00:59:31.000 They don't get me.

00:59:32.000 And it really hurt him.

00:59:34.000 It really hurt him.

00:59:36.000 Well, it was bizarre to us.

00:59:38.000 Comics.

00:59:39.000 Because we got him.

00:59:40.000 And we loved it.

00:59:41.000 And so we were like, why does he get so much hate?

00:59:44.000 Like, it was so confusing.

00:59:46.000 And the internet didn't exist back then in that sort of form.

00:59:50.000 So it's like he couldn't find, like, fan...

00:59:54.000 Like, today we'd have no problem.

00:59:55.000 Like, you know, sure, like, MSNBC hates him.

00:59:58.000 But all the YouTube people would love him, or a lot of them would.

01:00:03.000 He would find his voice.

01:00:05.000 He'd find his audience.

01:00:06.000 And I don't think that Arsenio Hall moment would happen today.

01:00:09.000 He'd probably push back against it.

01:00:10.000 But back then, the only reviews you heard of him were negative.

01:00:16.000 It was all negative.

01:00:17.000 And you had to be a quiet Dice fan.

01:00:21.000 You had to almost not tell people you were a Dice fan.

01:00:24.000 I equate it to how it was to be a Kiss fan at one point in time.

01:00:29.000 Hip-hop music was the same.

01:00:31.000 Hip-hop was like villainous music.

01:00:33.000 Hip-hop was like the original...

01:00:35.000 In the mid-80s, hip-hop was the...

01:00:40.000 First populist uprising in New York City.

01:00:42.000 It was like taking music out of the conservatory and bringing it back to the street.

01:00:47.000 And the powers that be did not like that and wanted to cancel it and tried to cancel it.

01:00:53.000 That's when the whole PMRC thing happened and they were trying to ban rap music.

01:00:58.000 Yeah, it was Al Gore's wife.

01:01:00.000 Remember Tipper Gore?

01:01:02.000 Al Gore's wife, Tipper Gore, at the time, was the one who was leading this fight against these lyrics. 0.99

01:01:07.000 Because to a lot of these house moms and shit, they would hear those lyrics coming out of their son's bedroom, and they're like, what the fuck is this? 0.99

01:01:17.000 What is going on? 1.00

01:01:18.000 But also, they wanted to negate Prince.

01:01:21.000 They wanted to cancel Madonna.

01:01:23.000 They wanted to cancel a lot of stuff.

01:01:26.000 It's been going on for a long time, this pushing back against art that you don't understand, that you're too old to understand.

01:01:36.000 It's just the non-accepting of other people's interests or what other people enjoy.

01:01:46.000 There's a lot of stuff that people really love that I don't get.

01:01:51.000 I don't have the Grateful Dead gene.

01:01:53.000 I have friends who love the dead.

01:01:56.000 I hear it and I'm like, maybe if I did acid, maybe that's what they say.

01:02:01.000 But I don't know. 0.99

01:02:03.000 But then I'd hear the Allman Brothers and be like, fuck yeah. 0.99

01:02:07.000 It was like, for whatever it is, it's like whatever your personality is, your life experiences, The place you grew up, that shit resonated with me. 0.99

01:02:16.000 Or finding the right way in. 0.98

01:02:18.000 The Grateful Dead didn't speak to me for a long time until they did, and I found the way in.

01:02:23.000 Maybe I'll share something with you that might find a way in, because it's always nice to find something else to like.

01:02:31.000 There was stuff that I liked that was like...

01:02:34.000 Very different than that, like, I was a giant Cool G rap fan. 0.90

01:02:38.000 I remember listening to Cool G rap when I first moved to New York, and I was like, God damn, this guy's good.

01:02:44.000 He, to me, is one of my all-time favorite hip-hop artists, and to me, like, the most underappreciated.

01:02:52.000 I mean, you go back to listen to, like, Cockblockin', that is a... 0.98

01:02:56.000 Fucking great song. 0.96

01:02:57.000 He has so many, the Ill Street Blues, so many great hip-hop songs that I remember listening to them at the time going, why isn't this bigger? 0.99

01:03:07.000 Like, why don't more people know about this?

01:03:10.000 Why isn't this, like, you know, to this day, you know, people will go back and they'll talk about, like, Nas, who's fucking incredible, but Cool G Rap slips by. 0.99

01:03:20.000 Like, how the fuck... 1.00

01:03:22.000 Go listen to that shit. 1.00

01:03:24.000 Cool G Rap was incredible. 1.00

01:03:26.000 Incredible.

01:03:26.000 You never know.

01:03:27.000 Sometimes it's not based on how good it is.

01:03:30.000 The stars line up at certain times for certain things to happen, and they happen.

01:03:36.000 And sometimes you can make something great, and it doesn't connect for whatever reason.

01:03:40.000 I found this out from making a lot of stuff.

01:03:42.000 Sometimes you make two things that you think are the two best things you've ever made, and one of them connects with the world, and one of them doesn't.

01:03:48.000 And it might not have anything to do with...

01:03:51.000 What's in the art?

01:03:53.000 It might have to do with, oh, it came out the same day as this other thing came out and that got in the way.

01:03:58.000 Or there was a bigger story at the time or there was some other Who knows?

01:04:04.000 Or it's not in the cards for that person to have that success.

01:04:11.000 It's like there's so much to it that we don't understand.

01:04:15.000 All we can do is make something good and put it out and hope for the best.

01:04:19.000 And that's all there is.

01:04:20.000 We never know why things, why does something work?

01:04:24.000 Even if you make a piece of art, you might, and it works, you may not know why.

01:04:31.000 Mmm, yeah.

01:04:33.000 It's mysterious.

01:04:34.000 It is mysterious.

01:04:35.000 It's mysterious.

01:04:36.000 I'm going to use the restroom.

01:04:36.000 Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

01:04:37.000 Go ahead.

01:04:38.000 We'll be right back.

01:04:39.000 I'm so glad you liked the day the laughter died. 0.98

01:04:41.000 Oh my god, I fucking love it. 0.97

01:04:44.000 It's so funny. 0.98

01:04:45.000 It is.

01:04:45.000 It's so crazy.

01:04:47.000 Yeah.

01:04:48.000 Well, it's just so bold.

01:04:50.000 Yeah.

01:04:51.000 And knowing Dice, as long as I've known him and seen so many late night sets, like some of my favorite sets of Dice, Dice would go up in the OR and he would have a challenge he would do where he wouldn't talk.

01:05:08.000 For as long as possible.

01:05:10.000 And so he would go in front of the mic and everybody would be happy to see him and he'd go...

01:05:14.000 He would just stand there.

01:05:19.000 Just stand there like about to talk and not talk and go like minutes.

01:05:24.000 Minutes.

01:05:25.000 Without a word. 1.00

01:05:27.000 And the comedians were fucking dying. 0.99

01:05:29.000 And there was like 40 people in the audience and they were so confused. 0.99

01:05:31.000 Just confused.

01:05:32.000 Yeah.

01:05:33.000 And my favorite Dice was insulting Dice, where Dice would find some, look at you!

01:05:39.000 He'd find some guy in the audience and just tear him apart. 0.99

01:05:43.000 Just insult the shit out of him. 1.00

01:05:44.000 And the guy would be like, what the fuck, man? 1.00

01:05:47.000 And we would be crying, crying, laughing. 1.00

01:05:51.000 And Dice would just fuck around. 1.00

01:05:55.000 He had no problem with bombing. 1.00

01:05:59.000 He was fully confident while no jokes and no laughs.

01:06:04.000 Fully confident.

01:06:05.000 He often didn't prepare material.

01:06:10.000 I'm friends with Chris Rock, and the difference in their...

01:06:14.000 Work ethic is radical.

01:06:17.000 Radical.

01:06:18.000 Chris is always writing and Chris is meticulous and it's always game on.

01:06:28.000 Yes.

01:06:28.000 And when he's on stage it really shows.

01:06:32.000 Well Chris though, Chris will take a lot of chances on stage too.

01:06:36.000 And Chris also has this very unusual approach where he will like Purposely try to find the beats and and you know and leave dead air because he's finding these beats and Like stand on stage the comics don't be like what else what else?

01:06:55.000 And I'll have it like where he's you know, he's just like Thinking and like the audience is like I'm worried.

01:07:01.000 I'm ready to see bring the pain.

01:07:03.000 I'm ready to see you crushing Yeah, like why are you not crushing?

01:07:07.000 And he, you know, he would even say sometimes, he would follow people and be like, relax, relax, not gonna be that good.

01:07:15.000 Relax. 0.99

01:07:15.000 Because he was working on new shit. 0.99

01:07:17.000 And when he worked on new shit, he was working. 1.00

01:07:20.000 He was working. 0.93

01:07:21.000 This audience, I know you're here to see comedy and you're happy that Chris Rock just showed up, but Chris Rock was not announced, so it wasn't like this was a big production and he was going to do his very best material.

01:07:34.000 He was there to try to put pieces together.

01:07:37.000 And he would have a team of comics in the back.

01:07:40.000 Guys that he'd hired.

01:07:41.000 Great comics.

01:07:42.000 Guys like Richard Jenney, Nick DiPaolo.

01:07:45.000 And these guys would listen to his material and then they would all talk about it afterwards.

01:07:51.000 And they would find whatever the embers were.

01:07:55.000 And they're like, okay, we could fucking fan this and add some Tinder and this could be a bit.

01:07:59.000 And try to find the beats. 0.96

01:08:01.000 And that's what he did.

01:08:02.000 And that's why he created so many great specials.

01:08:05.000 Because he had that work ethic.

01:08:07.000 Because he had that.

01:08:07.000 He was an artist.

01:08:10.000 But he was also, like, he was a craftsman.

01:08:16.000 You know, he was crafting it.

01:08:17.000 Absolutely.

01:08:18.000 I just saw him play at the O2 Arena a couple of weeks ago, and it was...

01:08:24.000 The funniest I've ever seen him, which is unbelievable.

01:08:26.000 He's on fire right now.

01:08:28.000 Will Smith slapping him, I think, woke up...

01:08:33.000 I mean, I haven't talked to him about this. 1.00

01:08:35.000 My impression was that I think now he understands that those people, those Hollywood people, are fucking crazy. 0.98

01:08:43.000 They're all in this weird, bizarre cult of actors And Oscars and parties and applause and in this this very bizarre Disconnected world, 0.97

01:08:59.000 you know of these are our heroes and these are the most important people in the world and these people that win these awards and make these films they're the most appreciated most respected and Him getting slapped And then him trying to go back to comedy and seeing Will Smith just meltdown in front of him.

01:09:26.000 And generally...

01:09:29.000 That moment was probably the end of how anybody will ever think of Will Smith again as this movie star guy who's like this happy guy with his family who's like putting together all these incredible films and goes on to win the Academy Award that night goes on stage and they applaud him after he just assaulted one of the greatest comedians that's ever lived over the most innocuous roast joke The most innocuous.

01:10:00.000 You know, I loved you in G.I. Jane.

01:10:02.000 Like, what?

01:10:02.000 That's it?

01:10:03.000 It's so mild. 1.00

01:10:06.000 And I think him seeing that just fired up that fuck you furnace. 1.00

01:10:12.000 It's unbelievable. 0.99

01:10:13.000 All I know is it's the funniest I've ever seen him.

01:10:16.000 And I've seen him funny.

01:10:17.000 You know, like, it's...

01:10:18.000 He's angry now, though.

01:10:20.000 He's on fire.

01:10:21.000 Yeah.

01:10:21.000 And it's great.

01:10:22.000 Him and Chappelle were playing together.

01:10:24.000 Yeah.

01:10:24.000 And both were...

01:10:25.000 Couldn't have been more different and both incredible.

01:10:28.000 I've never been to the O2. I was there to the O2 for UFC once, but I'm there in two weeks.

01:10:35.000 It was surprisingly good for comedy.

01:10:37.000 I was on my way there thinking, prepared to be disappointed, because I don't usually like comedy in a big venue like that.

01:10:43.000 I like it better in a club.

01:10:45.000 But somehow, it felt intimate, and it completely worked for comedy.

01:10:51.000 Yeah, Dave loves it.

01:10:53.000 He was excited that I was going there.

01:10:55.000 We were talking about it, and he was saying, like, it's a great room.

01:10:57.000 It's a great room for comedy.

01:10:59.000 But Dave's got that arena timing.

01:11:00.000 You know, he does a lot of arenas now.

01:11:02.000 You know, he's...

01:11:03.000 He knows...

01:11:04.000 He can take... 0.97

01:11:05.000 Like, we just did Columbus together a couple weeks ago, and he can take a fucking giant room and thousands of people and make it feel like you're just hanging with them in a living room somewhere or in a small club. 0.93

01:11:17.000 He can transform it.

01:11:21.000 But it's just like the different ways of approaching comedy, it's got a parallel with music, right?

01:11:29.000 I mean, there's got to be some artists that, you know, they just want to riff.

01:11:33.000 They want to figure it out on the fly.

01:11:35.000 They want to do it all, you know, almost off the top of their head.

01:11:38.000 And then there's other artists where every single word has gone over and meticulously analyzed and pieced together.

01:11:47.000 Yeah, there's no right or wrong way.

01:11:50.000 You just have to find your way, whatever works for you.

01:11:53.000 Yeah, I've worked with artists who do it completely different ways.

01:11:58.000 You'll see Eminem, he's always writing in a book, always writing all the time.

01:12:06.000 And he's always got notebooks writing.

01:12:09.000 And I asked him, are these all rhymes to use?

01:12:12.000 He's like, no, no, no.

01:12:14.000 99% of what I write I'll never use.

01:12:16.000 Just to stay engaged in the process of writing and finding new ways to write so that when I need it, it just comes.

01:12:28.000 And then Jay-Z doesn't write anything down.

01:12:34.000 Yeah.

01:12:34.000 And he just listens to the beat and hums, hums, and then goes on the mic, you know, 20 minutes later and just says a whole complicated verse.

01:12:44.000 Complicated verse.

01:12:45.000 I don't know how he can remember it, much less have just written it and just be able to do it, like, free.

01:12:56.000 Does he practice on his own?

01:12:59.000 Does he...

01:13:01.000 Create these raps on his own, alone?

01:13:06.000 Or does he only do it when he's talking to people?

01:13:09.000 Does he only do it on stage?

01:13:11.000 No, no, no.

01:13:11.000 This is for a record.

01:13:13.000 When we were recording 99 Problems, I played the beat for him.

01:13:17.000 He likes the beat, and then he says, okay, just keep playing it.

01:13:21.000 And then he sits in the back of the control room on the couch, and you just hear him humming, like...

01:13:27.000 As they say, 15 or 20 minutes, and then he jumps out and he's like, okay, I got it.

01:13:37.000 And then he goes in, no paper, no writing, nothing.

01:13:42.000 And delivers the whole thing and then says, let's try it again.

01:13:45.000 And then he does it again.

01:13:46.000 And the words will be the same, but the phrasing will be different.

01:13:50.000 So it's more like an improvisational solo.

01:13:54.000 You know, if you have a melody, you could play the same melody with putting emphasis on different parts of it.

01:14:02.000 So he does it.

01:14:03.000 It's not the same.

01:14:04.000 The words are the same or close to the same.

01:14:08.000 But the feeling of it and the rhythm of it changes when he does it again.

01:14:12.000 And he does it a few times and he's like, okay, I think that one's good.

01:14:16.000 But did you ever ask him these things that he's saying, has he said them before?

01:14:22.000 He's not.

01:14:22.000 I know he hasn't because it's happening live in the room in this moment.

01:14:27.000 But it's not like he's not, even though it's live in the moment, it's not like things that he's thought of before?

01:14:32.000 No.

01:14:33.000 Just all off the top?

01:14:34.000 Yes.

01:14:35.000 Wow.

01:14:36.000 That's incredible.

01:14:36.000 It's insane.

01:14:37.000 Never said anything like it.

01:14:39.000 That's incredible.

01:14:40.000 Yeah, he's famous for that.

01:14:42.000 He's famous for having it all in his head.

01:14:46.000 But instantaneously, or, you know, relatively instantaneously.

01:14:50.000 Does anybody else do it like that?

01:14:51.000 Like, Nas doesn't do it.

01:14:52.000 Nas writes.

01:14:53.000 I've never seen anyone else do that.

01:14:56.000 Wow.

01:14:57.000 It's not uncommon for singers or rappers to hear something and immediately start, like, automatic writing, where they'll just start saying nonsense words.

01:15:07.000 Yeah.

01:15:08.000 The first thing that comes to mind over the beat where you can feel a shape of what it can be.

01:15:15.000 Yeah.

01:15:16.000 And, like, we just made two new albums with the Chili Peppers.

01:15:20.000 The second one just came...

01:15:22.000 Just coming out now, I think, but the first one came out like six months ago, but two double albums.

01:15:27.000 And the way Anthony works is he'll hear the music and he'll sing along, but he'll sing along with an idea of a melody, but he doesn't yet have words, and just sing nonsense words, and just sing along, making up nonsense words.

01:15:42.000 Automatically, real-time, and then listens back and says, oh, okay, this phrase in this spot sounds good, and this phrase in this spot sounds good.

01:15:50.000 What else goes with that?

01:15:51.000 And then it's like a puzzle where you fill in the rest.

01:15:54.000 It's like you don't necessarily have an idea of what the song's going to be about, or you might not even know what the song's about until you finish.

01:16:00.000 You might not even know after the song's finished what it's about.

01:16:03.000 You might not know for years what it's about because it's like a dream.

01:16:07.000 It comes from the subconscious.

01:16:09.000 Yeah.

01:16:12.000 It's a great way to work.

01:16:13.000 It's a great way to write, to just like participate with what's going on in a free way and then listen back to what you did and look for clues.

01:16:25.000 Look for where is the connective tissue here?

01:16:28.000 Are there any things here that sound like they belong there?

01:16:32.000 Dan Auerbach from the Black Keys, he does that.

01:16:36.000 He says he gets really high, and he just makes up words.

01:16:40.000 He'll make up words to the music, and just try to find how it works.

01:16:47.000 He's just trying to figure it out as he's doing it.

01:16:51.000 There's parallels to comedy, I think, because in comedy, you can write things, and I do.

01:16:58.000 I write a lot of things, but sometimes...

01:17:01.000 When you're on stage, there's a path that just opens up and you know that this is the way to do it.

01:17:08.000 It's different than the way you wrote it.

01:17:09.000 Because the audience is there and you feel it.

01:17:12.000 Because you only feel it when you're performing.

01:17:14.000 But with comedy, the thing that's so different is the only way we ever know it's any good.

01:17:19.000 The only way we really can create.

01:17:21.000 You can't create in a...

01:17:22.000 I mean, maybe someone can.

01:17:23.000 I heard Cosby used to do that.

01:17:25.000 Cosby used to just write it all out and then he would go on stage or have it out and then not even need to rehearse it, not need to work it out in front of clubs.

01:17:35.000 He would just do it in front of giant audiences and it would be done.

01:17:39.000 But most people...

01:17:41.000 They're creating with the audience.

01:17:44.000 And until you have an audience, you don't have any idea how the bit really comes together.

01:17:49.000 There might be a setup that you thought was just a setup, and it gets the biggest laugh of the bit.

01:17:54.000 And you're like, what?

01:17:56.000 Well, I didn't expect that.

01:17:57.000 Does it change from night to night as well?

01:17:59.000 100%.

01:18:00.000 Changes from night to night.

01:18:01.000 Changes depending upon your opening act.

01:18:03.000 Changes depending upon the mood of the club.

01:18:06.000 Tuesdays are different than Wednesdays.

01:18:08.000 Everything's different, you know?

01:18:10.000 It's one of the reasons why it's important to do...

01:18:12.000 I always call it cross-training.

01:18:14.000 I'm like, you can't just do arenas.

01:18:17.000 You got to do little clubs.

01:18:18.000 You got to do theaters.

01:18:19.000 You got to do everything.

01:18:21.000 You got to do clubs where they don't expect you to go up.

01:18:24.000 You got to do clubs where they know you're going to work on new material. 0.99

01:18:26.000 You got to do clubs where this is a fucking recording. 0.99

01:18:29.000 This is a big one. 0.99

01:18:30.000 You know, ready, polished, set, go.

01:18:33.000 It's all different, and it all comes alive while you're performing, which I guess parallels with music, but the benefit of music is you can create it in the studio. 0.80

01:18:45.000 You could put it together in the studio, and you can make fucking incredible music almost in a vacuum.

01:18:51.000 Because you don't need the audience. 0.99

01:18:53.000 It's you.

01:18:55.000 It's you and the people you're working with, and you put it together.

01:18:59.000 But we need people.

01:19:02.000 They're an integral part of the process.

01:19:05.000 The audience has to be there.

01:19:06.000 How does it work for television?

01:19:09.000 If you're doing comedy for television and there's no audience, how does that work?

01:19:14.000 In what way?

01:19:15.000 What form?

01:19:17.000 Comedy for television.

01:19:19.000 It's a sitcom or whatever it is where there's a joke and there's no response coming back.

01:19:27.000 Or in a movie, there's no response coming back.

01:19:31.000 Well, you have table reads.

01:19:32.000 And in the table read, you find the beats.

01:19:36.000 Oftentimes, it's very fake, which is really weird.

01:19:41.000 Because one of the things that happens when you're on a sitcom is the producers and the writers will laugh really loud at their jokes.

01:19:48.000 I see.

01:19:49.000 And kind of fake sometimes.

01:19:51.000 They've heard the joke a hundred times before.

01:19:53.000 And so you walk into the room like, why didn't you tell me that yesterday?

01:19:58.000 And everyone's like...

01:20:02.000 It's off-putting for a comic. 0.99

01:20:04.000 And you'll be like, hey, you guys are fucking killing me with this fake laugh. 0.95

01:20:07.000 What they're trying to do is provide you with a feel of how the audience is going to laugh. 0.96

01:20:13.000 But they're also juicing up their own writing.

01:20:16.000 But also, how do you know how the audience is going to react?

01:20:18.000 You don't.

01:20:18.000 You don't know.

01:20:19.000 So you do a first...

01:20:21.000 We had the benefit of working with Dave Foley, who's brilliant.

01:20:25.000 And Dave Foley was one of the kids in the hall.

01:20:28.000 And Dave Foley was essentially like an uncredited producer on news radio.

01:20:34.000 So when we would do run-throughs and takes, Dave had this incredible sense of how a scene should go.

01:20:41.000 And so when we would do run-throughs, we would go over the script and Dave would go, well, this is...

01:20:47.000 How about...

01:20:48.000 How about instead of this?

01:20:50.000 Why don't you come in this?

01:20:51.000 Why don't we just cut this part out?

01:20:53.000 And you come in here and you're just angry because of something that's incorrect.

01:20:57.000 You're angry because of that.

01:20:59.000 And then Matthew comes over and says that.

01:21:01.000 And Lisa comes over and says that.

01:21:02.000 And then we end it with this. 0.99

01:21:04.000 And then he would just like rewrite the whole fucking scene. 0.99

01:21:07.000 And so the brilliant... 0.97

01:21:11.000 One of the more brilliant things about the producers and Paul Sims, the writer of that show, the head writer of that show, is that he would let you do that.

01:21:19.000 He would let you come up with a totally alternative punchline.

01:21:22.000 And then he would sit there and laugh and go, yeah, yeah, keep that, keep that.

01:21:24.000 Okay, let's do that.

01:21:25.000 That's the new scene. 0.99

01:21:26.000 And he would let you fuck around with it. 0.99

01:21:29.000 So it gave all the performers all this freedom. 0.97

01:21:32.000 It also allowed the thing to come alive like while performing it the same way you would kind of do stand-up like you would figure out the beats while you were actually doing it and then you really didn't know until the audience was there and Then when the audience said this job lines that I didn't think were good and I would say I don't know do we have a better line for this and they were like just try it just try it I'm like okay I was like didn't believe it and I'd say the line and to get a huge laugh and I'd be like what the fuck I Like,

01:22:00.000 I didn't even think that was funny. 0.98

01:22:02.000 You kind of don't know.

01:22:04.000 And sometimes you know.

01:22:05.000 Sometimes the line's so good.

01:22:06.000 It's always done with an audience there?

01:22:08.000 Yes.

01:22:09.000 Yeah, well, that kind of multicam, you know, you're always doing it with an audience.

01:22:13.000 I've never done a single cam show like that.

01:22:17.000 You know, a show like The Office?

01:22:19.000 Right.

01:22:19.000 That's hard.

01:22:20.000 Curb.

01:22:20.000 Right.

01:22:21.000 Curb has got to be the hardest.

01:22:22.000 Because Larry, the way he does it.

01:22:23.000 It's not even a script, right?

01:22:24.000 No script.

01:22:25.000 Yeah, you're just like, you and I are in an argument about who stole cigarettes or whatever, and then you just run with it.

01:22:32.000 Yeah, so the casting's really important.

01:22:34.000 Very important.

01:22:35.000 And the vibe of the set is very important.

01:22:40.000 It's got to be this thing where everybody's working towards the same goal.

01:22:46.000 But when you watch Curb...

01:22:48.000 One of the brilliant things about Curb is because he doesn't have that script, people are talking the way they talk in real life.

01:22:55.000 They kind of talk over each other and they pause when the other person is talking and then they chime in and it seems like a real conversation versus like Big Bang Theory.

01:23:08.000 Or one of those shows that's more formulaic, like Set Up, Punch Lines, where you train monkeys and you're teaching them how to get a piece of candy.

01:23:18.000 Like, da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da.

01:23:22.000 Ha-ha-ha.

01:23:23.000 You know, Larry, the way he does it is so different.

01:23:28.000 And it's one of the best sitcoms of all time.

01:23:30.000 And if you watch Curb, particularly the early seasons of Curb, I remember thinking, oh, this is why Seinfeld was so good.

01:23:37.000 This is why that show was so good. 0.99

01:23:39.000 Larry David's a goddamn genius. 0.99

01:23:40.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:23:41.000 So funny.

01:23:42.000 Yeah, and that's his process.

01:23:43.000 And Seinfeld is incredible, too.

01:23:44.000 Incredible.

01:23:45.000 Both shows, incredible.

01:23:46.000 Well, Seinfeld is one of the absolute best observational comedians that's ever existed.

01:23:52.000 And the best at the flow and the sound and part of what he was doing...

01:24:00.000 Was the way he was doing it.

01:24:01.000 Like he had a flow and that flow was infectious and it was contagious and you would like fall in love with the way he talked about things.

01:24:13.000 And he was so casual and confident in the way he was describing things.

01:24:18.000 And he would improvise too.

01:24:22.000 I stole something from Jerry in that he would do his whole set and then afterwards he would take questions from the crowd.

01:24:30.000 And he would just riff.

01:24:32.000 And I was like, God, why don't I do that?

01:24:34.000 What a great way to come up with comedy.

01:24:35.000 You already did an hour of comedy, and then go up and take questions.

01:24:38.000 And I was, I think I was 20 years old.

01:24:41.000 I saw him at The Paradise, which was a comedy club, was next to Stitches.

01:24:46.000 It was a rock club in Boston.

01:24:48.000 And he was a little too big for Stitches, so he would do The Paradise, which is still at the time relatively small.

01:24:53.000 I want to say it was like 400 or 500 seats.

01:24:55.000 And he did his whole set and then, you know, killed.

01:24:59.000 And then afterwards, just took questions and would riff.

01:25:04.000 And it was genius.

01:25:05.000 And this was after the Seinfeld show already happened or no?

01:25:09.000 When did Seinfeld start?

01:25:11.000 I don't know.

01:25:12.000 I think it was before Seinfeld.

01:25:14.000 What year was Seinfeld?

01:25:15.000 1991, somewhere in there.

01:25:18.000 Let's find out exactly so I can tell you.

01:25:20.000 Because I'm curious.

01:25:20.000 If it's 1991, then it was before.

01:25:23.000 Then this was before Seinfeld.

01:25:25.000 This was when he was just a popular comedian.

01:25:27.000 First episode, 89. So that was probably two years before that.

01:25:33.000 I'm saying this was probably 87. Wow.

01:25:36.000 Wow.

01:25:36.000 Yeah.

01:25:37.000 I could see it more for someone who has a popular TV show than for someone who's a comedian to do that.

01:25:46.000 It's very interesting.

01:25:48.000 I think it's how he worked out material. 0.99

01:25:49.000 I think that's how he would fuck around. 0.99

01:25:52.000 And taking suggestions from the audience, I was like, that is such a great idea. 1.00

01:25:56.000 Because he already killed.

01:25:58.000 The show was over.

01:25:58.000 They already knew they loved him.

01:26:00.000 It was an amazing show.

01:26:01.000 You already got your money's worth. 1.00

01:26:02.000 So now he would just go fuck around for... 1.00

01:26:05.000 15 minutes. 1.00

01:26:06.000 And do you do it like an encore?

01:26:07.000 Like he would leave the stage and come back?

01:26:09.000 I don't remember if he left the stage.

01:26:10.000 I'm trying to remember.

01:26:11.000 Because it was a small stage.

01:26:12.000 It wasn't a big place.

01:26:13.000 He might have just stepped aside, grabbed a glass of water, and then come back.

01:26:18.000 Or he might have actually gone through the curtain and back.

01:26:21.000 I don't remember.

01:26:22.000 Must have been really exciting for the audience just to feel like, okay, now the show's over, but we still get to hang out with Jerry.

01:26:27.000 It's even more personal.

01:26:29.000 Yeah.

01:26:29.000 And for me, it was only like...

01:26:32.000 I'd only seen a handful of live performances at the time.

01:26:35.000 So for me, I'd seen like an open mic night once, which was bizarre because that was inspirational.

01:26:41.000 Rich Jenny had a great observation.

01:26:45.000 He said, one of the great things about terrible comedy is it gives other people the confidence to do comedy.

01:26:51.000 Because you would go to see an open mic night and the people were so awful.

01:26:55.000 You'd be like, oh, the expectations are not that high.

01:26:58.000 Like, I thought I had to be like Richard Pryor.

01:27:02.000 It's so daunting.

01:27:04.000 The obstacle was so far away.

01:27:07.000 It was so out of reach.

01:27:08.000 But then you would see people that were amateurs that were clunky and terribly like, okay, at least I won't be as bad as that guy.

01:27:15.000 And it gives you the confidence to give it a try. 0.98

01:27:19.000 Just fucking see what happens. 0.96

01:27:22.000 And the feeling of going on stage for the very first time, I'll never forget, was so alien, so bizarre, just to hear my voice and a microphone. 0.98

01:27:31.000 How many people were there?

01:27:33.000 Well, a bunch of my friends were there, so that was like 10% of the crowd, four or five of my friends, maybe 50 people.

01:27:41.000 But there was a guy named George McDonald, and he would have this thing called Comedy Hell.

01:27:46.000 And Comedy Hell was open mic night.

01:27:49.000 And he was a professional, so he would joke around about how this is Comedy Hell, and you're going to watch people bomb, it's going to be terrible.

01:27:56.000 But then you'll see professionals that night and they'll go up.

01:28:00.000 So the first night I ever went to see comedy, I got to see people that were awful.

01:28:06.000 And then I got to see like a couple of like real world class comics would go on stage and kill for 10-15 minutes.

01:28:13.000 I was like, wow!

01:28:14.000 Just the contrast and the difference.

01:28:16.000 So you get to see the levels of it.

01:28:18.000 It's like getting to see someone who's taking their first jujitsu class versus a world champion black belt.

01:28:23.000 And you're like, what a journey that is.

01:28:27.000 And to see...

01:28:29.000 The way I describe it to people, I say stand-up comedy is like...

01:28:34.000 You're making a mountain one layer of paint at a time.

01:28:38.000 That's what it's like when you're starting.

01:28:39.000 It's like you go there and if you see Seinfeld, they're like, oh my god, that's a mountain.

01:28:44.000 It's already there.

01:28:45.000 I mean, you realize this is one layer of paint at a time.

01:28:48.000 One, you know, 13 sets a night hopping around, catch a rising star and fucking the cellar and going to all these clubs in New York and then puts it together and then takes it to Boston or takes it to Cleveland or takes it to all these places.

01:29:04.000 Yeah. 0.93

01:29:06.000 That's wild.

01:29:06.000 Yeah, so I stole that move of going on stage afterwards and taking suggestions from the crowd.

01:29:12.000 Great idea.

01:29:13.000 Well, it was genius. 0.99

01:29:15.000 And it's just a smart thing to do, to do this whole set and then fuck around. 1.00

01:29:21.000 Yeah. 0.99

01:29:22.000 Did you ever read Born Standing Up?

01:29:25.000 Steve Martin?

01:29:26.000 Yes.

01:29:26.000 Such a great book.

01:29:27.000 It's a great book.

01:29:28.000 It's interesting him talking about setting a deadline.

01:29:33.000 If I'm not successful in 10 years, whatever it is, like a long time, then I'm going to quit.

01:29:38.000 And he gets to the 10 years and he's not successful and he just keeps going because there's nothing else he wants to do.

01:29:45.000 Well, there's nothing like it.

01:29:48.000 There's nothing like killing. 0.61

01:29:49.000 There's nothing like performing.

01:29:52.000 My friends and I, we talk often about people who quit comedy.

01:29:56.000 How do you quit?

01:29:58.000 A lot of us almost quit during the pandemic or resigned ourselves to the possibility that it's never coming back.

01:30:05.000 You're sitting there in your house every day, and you're like, I guess I could get used to this. 0.81

01:30:09.000 You know, at least I don't have the anxiety of having to perform, and you know, I could just fucking find some other way to make a living.

01:30:15.000 At the time, I was making money doing podcasting, so I was like, okay, maybe I'm not doing comedy anymore.

01:30:20.000 And a lot of us wanted to do it.

01:30:22.000 And Ron White, he's the best example, because he was like, Well, I think I'm going to retire. 0.98

01:30:28.000 I'm going to take my boat and fucking play golf every day. 0.98

01:30:33.000 I made a shitload of money. 1.00

01:30:35.000 I don't give a fuck. 0.99

01:30:36.000 I'll sell my jet. 1.00

01:30:37.000 He was just resigned to not doing comedy.

01:30:40.000 And then Tony Hinchcliffe had a show...

01:30:42.000 At the Vulcan Gas Company here in Austin.

01:30:45.000 And he was like, just do a guest set.

01:30:46.000 Just come on and do a guest set.

01:30:48.000 And Ron was like, man, I don't know. 0.98

01:30:50.000 I think I'm fucking done. 0.92

01:30:51.000 And then the next day, after Ron had said that, Tony was like, so have you thought about it? 0.95

01:30:57.000 Are you going to do a set tonight? 0.96

01:30:57.000 He goes, fuck yeah, I'm doing a set. 0.96

01:30:59.000 I'm doing 15 minutes. 0.99

01:31:00.000 And so he had gone over his recordings.

01:31:03.000 He had an iPad. 0.99

01:31:04.000 And his girlfriend said that he was listening to recordings and writing shit down. 0.99

01:31:07.000 I was like, oh, this would be interesting. 0.99

01:31:09.000 And so we're hanging out.

01:31:12.000 And we're in the back of the club and Ron White goes on stage.

01:31:16.000 And the first, sold out show.

01:31:18.000 First thing that happens, because people are so excited to go out.

01:31:20.000 And this is in mid-COVID. These are wild, reckless fucks in the middle of a pandemic. 0.99

01:31:25.000 Not a mask in the place. 0.99

01:31:27.000 Everyone's drinking.

01:31:28.000 And laughter is like the worst way to not spread a respiratory disease.

01:31:32.000 You know, they're ha!

01:31:33.000 You know, they're ha! 0.99

01:31:35.000 They're exhaling into giant bursts of fucking particles and spittle and, you know. 1.00

01:31:41.000 Ron White goes on stage and fucking murders. 1.00

01:31:45.000 Murders! 1.00

01:31:46.000 I mean, like he had never missed a beat.

01:31:50.000 And the audience, first of all, just goes insane.

01:31:54.000 Because he's from Texas.

01:31:55.000 So they see him and they're like, that's our guy.

01:32:00.000 He comes off stage, and I'm going on after him, and he grabs me by the shoulders. 0.98

01:32:04.000 And he goes, whatever the fuck we have to do, we're gonna keep doing this. 0.98

01:32:11.000 He was so fired up. 0.99

01:32:14.000 I mean, he just grabbed my shoulders. 0.99

01:32:17.000 Whatever the fuck we have to do, Joe Rogan, we're doing this. 0.99

01:32:21.000 I was like, we're doing this, Ron. 0.99

01:32:22.000 And you put up with having to travel and having to sleep in strange places and all the drudgery of going on the road for that little hit of the excitement to being on stage.

01:32:37.000 It's not just the hit.

01:32:39.000 It's the knowledge that the knowing that you're giving these people an experience.

01:32:45.000 They're having a moment.

01:32:46.000 They're having a great moment.

01:32:48.000 You're When you're entertaining a group of people like that, you're taking them on this wild journey of laughter and ideas and they leave like you just hit them with a drug. 1.00

01:33:00.000 You just fucking BOOM! You just drop this drug on them and they walk out of there feeling better. 0.99

01:33:07.000 Beautiful.

01:33:08.000 And it's for everyone.

01:33:09.000 It's like you feel better, they feel better.

01:33:11.000 Everyone heals in the process.

01:33:13.000 A hundred percent.

01:33:14.000 Amazing.

01:33:15.000 You know, and it's your responsibility to do that work so that that can happen again.

01:33:19.000 And you got to be on point and you got to go over your notes and you got to be prepared and you got to do a lot of sets so that you're polished and smooth and Confident.

01:33:28.000 You got all the beats in your head and then you also have to be loose and relaxed so that it can flow and then you can adjust to some chaos if something happens in the crowd and it's the best.

01:33:40.000 In the studio recording, it's similar in that there's a lot of time where nothing good is happening, you know, and it's out of our control where Everybody's playing and they're doing their best,

01:33:56.000 but it doesn't matter for whatever reason.

01:34:00.000 When you're listening to it, it's just not great.

01:34:04.000 And it's just really a game of patience, of waiting or trying different things.

01:34:09.000 Like, how about if we do it like this?

01:34:10.000 How about if we do it like this?

01:34:11.000 Let's try it with the lights off.

01:34:13.000 Let's try it with crazy things, whatever it is.

01:34:16.000 Turn the lights off, see what happens.

01:34:17.000 How important is the ambiance and the setup of the studio?

01:34:23.000 It's really important.

01:34:26.000 One of the things that's most important is the feeling of...

01:34:33.000 I'll use the word like a protected space where you feel like you could be very vulnerable and it's okay.

01:34:41.000 A place where you could be naked and it's okay.

01:34:45.000 So the safety of the environment.

01:34:49.000 If you feel like you're going to try something and someone's going to tell you that was no good, that wouldn't feel like you want to do that again.

01:34:59.000 So part of it is like the headspace of less people around, no audience.

01:35:08.000 Literally, it's set up similar to this, where it'll be the producer and the artist, one engineer, and nobody else.

01:35:19.000 And if it's a band, it's just this group of people.

01:35:23.000 The least amount of people, not friends hanging out, not anybody watching.

01:35:29.000 So there's a sense of we're there to work.

01:35:32.000 We're there to really do something.

01:35:35.000 But we're also there to play, and it's free.

01:35:38.000 And there's no expectation that it has to be good.

01:35:42.000 And we try to have as far of a...

01:35:49.000 No feeling of deadlines or we have to do this by this or this is going to be the first single.

01:35:56.000 Never any talk like that.

01:35:58.000 It's more let's have fun, make music, let's see what happens, and then down the road we'll look back on it and see if there's anything good there.

01:36:06.000 Then in terms of the physical location, You want to create a space where it feels like a place you want to hang out and it's a good feeling and sometimes we'll do something like on the first album I produced with the Chili Peppers we recorded it in a house instead of recording it in a recording studio because they had made four albums prior to that in a recording studio and they had told me None of those experiences were good.

01:36:34.000 Not necessarily because of the studio, but it was just an interesting point.

01:36:37.000 They had four studio experiences.

01:36:39.000 They didn't like any of them.

01:36:40.000 What can we do to do something different than that?

01:36:44.000 So we rented this big mansion and we recorded Blood Sugar Sex Magic in this house.

01:36:49.000 And it was a very different experience for them.

01:36:52.000 So instead of it feeling like the fifth album after four bad experiences, this is the first time we're doing it in a house.

01:36:59.000 And it was like an adventure.

01:37:01.000 Just now, a few months ago, I was in Costa Rica recording a new album with The Strokes, and we rented this house up on the top of a mountain Wow.

01:37:42.000 But if you've done a bunch in a big professional studio, what else can we do that'll spark the feeling of we're doing something new and different?

01:37:51.000 Hmm.

01:37:54.000 Yeah.

01:37:55.000 I can imagine what it's like for them to just... 0.99

01:37:58.000 Blood Sugar Sex Magic was so fucking good. 0.98

01:38:01.000 And it had so much power to it. 0.99

01:38:04.000 There was like, you know, Give It Away is such a great fucking song. 0.99

01:38:07.000 I love that song. 1.00

01:38:07.000 God damn, that's a good song. 1.00

01:38:09.000 I love that song. 0.99

01:38:09.000 But it's just, there's so much... 0.99

01:38:11.000 It's so alive.

01:38:13.000 Yeah.

01:38:14.000 I wonder how much of that had to do with that.

01:38:18.000 Impossible to know, but it certainly didn't hurt.

01:38:20.000 Right.

01:38:20.000 And, you know, we did it that way, and you like it, so...

01:38:24.000 Again, we don't know that that's what it was.

01:38:27.000 The songs were good.

01:38:28.000 It was the right time in their career.

01:38:30.000 John and Chad were both in the band, and they were really locked in and playing well together.

01:38:37.000 And that lineup of the Chili Peppers is the band now.

01:38:41.000 It was a great moment for them.

01:38:45.000 Yeah.

01:38:47.000 That was in the house.

01:38:48.000 This is in the house.

01:38:49.000 Wow.

01:38:51.000 It was so cool.

01:38:54.000 That's pretty dope.

01:39:00.000 I want to ask the crewman a question.

01:39:02.000 What sounds better, this?

01:39:11.000 Or this?

01:39:21.000 He doesn't try to plug us into a certain formula.

01:39:24.000 He doesn't have a way that he works and tries to make us like that.

01:39:27.000 He's just trying to bring the most out of us for what we are.

01:39:31.000 He manages to keep his emotional distance from the music and have his objectivity.

01:39:38.000 Which is, you know, what he has to do.

01:39:41.000 Especially because we're so completely caught up in a, we run on pure emotion.

01:39:44.000 That's what we're all about.

01:39:46.000 And we're making an amazing, amazing, groundbreaking, revolutionary, beautiful, artistically heightened, incredible record.

01:39:55.000 If Baron von Munchausen had ejaculated the four of us, being the Red Hot Chili Peppers, onto a chess board, I would have to say that Rick Rubin would be the perfect chess player for that particular board.

01:40:10.000 That's so funny.

01:40:12.000 What a great quote.

01:40:13.000 What a great way to end that.

01:40:15.000 Amazing.

01:40:16.000 Your job is such a unique job.

01:40:21.000 It's like you're part muse, you're part director.

01:40:25.000 It's like a coach.

01:40:26.000 It's not unlike a coach.

01:40:27.000 It's helping to get the best performance, talk about if the material's good enough, how it could be better, create an environment where it's exciting to do what we're going to do, and make any suggestions, not just as it relates to The task at hand,

01:40:45.000 but anything you can do in your life that would benefit the task at hand.

01:40:50.000 And when you decide to work with an artist, how do you make that determination?

01:40:57.000 Do you meet with them?

01:40:59.000 Do you hang out with them?

01:41:00.000 Do you have dinner?

01:41:01.000 Do you hang out at their house?

01:41:03.000 How do you know if you're going to vibe with them?

01:41:04.000 We usually get together and talk, and it comes more from the...

01:41:09.000 The energy in the conversation can feel it.

01:41:12.000 And if we share a way in, like the Chili Peppers had asked me to produce them before that, and I went to a rehearsal and the energy wasn't right.

01:41:25.000 Like I could feel, I didn't know what it was.

01:41:30.000 But the energy in the room didn't feel good to me.

01:41:33.000 And it turns out at that time, they were really heavily into drugs, like serious drugs.

01:41:39.000 And you could see this, like, these are not people who trust each other.

01:41:43.000 You know, that was a feeling in the room, was like, just the way they were looking at each other, it wasn't like...

01:41:49.000 We're doing this together.

01:41:51.000 It was more like apprehensive of each other.

01:41:54.000 Oh, wow.

01:41:54.000 And I just remember the feeling in the room was like, I don't want to be around that.

01:41:57.000 I didn't understand it.

01:41:58.000 I didn't know what it was.

01:41:59.000 What drugs?

01:42:01.000 It's probably heroin and cocaine. 0.99

01:42:03.000 And so they were probably burnt out and fucked up and their mind was frazzled and... 0.97

01:42:08.000 Whatever it was, you could feel... 0.96

01:42:09.000 All I know is, you know, I've never been a drug person.

01:42:13.000 I came into this room and it was like being in a different...

01:42:16.000 The energy was different in the room and it didn't feel like I want to be in this energy.

01:42:22.000 But then I met them right before we made that and they were like transformed.

01:42:27.000 It's like, great, let's do it.

01:42:28.000 So they got out of it.

01:42:30.000 Yeah.

01:42:31.000 And sometimes it'll be material, like The Strokes had asked me to produce them several times in the past, and they would send me demos, and I listened to the demos, and I just couldn't see a way in.

01:42:41.000 Like, I didn't have any thoughts.

01:42:43.000 I didn't know...

01:42:44.000 I didn't think I had what they needed.

01:42:48.000 But then they sent me this for the last album, which was the first album I produced with them.

01:42:55.000 It's called...

01:42:56.000 I can't remember what it's called.

01:43:00.000 Um...

01:43:03.000 They sent me these demos that were probably the worst demos they ever sent in terms of, you know, like a 20 seconds into an iPhone would be at one song. 0.98

01:43:12.000 Like completely bullshit demos. 0.96

01:43:16.000 But I could hear in those, this is going to be good. 0.99

01:43:21.000 Like I can see these little seeds coming.

01:43:25.000 Or exciting.

01:43:26.000 And I'm curious to know what is...

01:43:29.000 I like this little 20 seconds.

01:43:31.000 What's the three-minute version of that like?

01:43:33.000 And I'm down to go on that journey with them to discover it.

01:43:37.000 Then there's a band called the Avett Brothers I worked with, and I remember I met them.

01:43:40.000 And I just loved them as people.

01:43:44.000 They were the most beautiful, soulful people I ever met.

01:43:48.000 I've never hung around people who were so...

01:43:53.000 Nice.

01:43:54.000 And I just loved it.

01:43:56.000 And actually, Judd Apatow made a documentary about them called May at Last.

01:44:01.000 And he called me after and he's like, that was the best experience of my life.

01:44:04.000 He's like, we don't know any people like this.

01:44:07.000 We hang out with crazy comedians.

01:44:11.000 These are like actual nice people.

01:44:13.000 It's weird.

01:44:16.000 And so just that alone...

01:44:18.000 Yeah, just like I want to be around this.

01:44:20.000 Whatever this is, I want to be around these guys.

01:44:23.000 And any chance I get to hang out with them, life's better if you're hanging out with the Avett brothers.

01:44:28.000 Really?

01:44:29.000 Absolutely.

01:44:30.000 Beautiful people.

01:44:32.000 That's awesome.

01:44:33.000 You must get inundated by requests for people that want to work with you.

01:44:41.000 Yes and no.

01:44:43.000 But I mean how do you – I mean it's – I would imagine there's a lot to filter out.

01:44:49.000 I'm kind of outside of – I've always been sort of outside of the industry.

01:44:54.000 So I'm not in the normal channel of where things get plugged into.

01:45:00.000 I'm not on any of those lists because I just kind of am outside.

01:45:03.000 I don't know why that is.

01:45:04.000 But it's always been that way.

01:45:06.000 But how do you get comfortable with what...

01:45:10.000 Do you just accept who you are?

01:45:13.000 Do you just go on instinct in that regard too?

01:45:15.000 Always.

01:45:16.000 Always.

01:45:16.000 Everything is on instinct.

01:45:19.000 Wow.

01:45:20.000 There's a valuable lesson in that.

01:45:24.000 I mean, imagine like a lot of the things that you're saying would translate to so many different endeavors.

01:45:31.000 Not even just art.

01:45:35.000 Because I think it all is art.

01:45:37.000 I think when people create anything, it is art.

01:45:40.000 You're creating in different formats and different structures, but the best stuff seems to come out of that...

01:45:49.000 It's a unique aspect of your own perspective, your own thoughts, your own whatever creativity is.

01:45:58.000 Yes.

01:45:58.000 Being true to yourself.

01:46:00.000 And it's what the book's about.

01:46:01.000 The book's not about music.

01:46:03.000 And it's not about painting.

01:46:04.000 It's about...

01:46:06.000 If you want to live in a creative way, which will benefit everything in your life, be a better person in your family, be a better...

01:46:15.000 If you're starting a new business, do a better job of starting a new business.

01:46:23.000 It's all the same.

01:46:25.000 I don't really know anything about music.

01:46:28.000 It's more a way of looking at the world.

01:46:33.000 And wanting it to be the best it could possibly be and doing whatever it takes to be the best it could possibly be and being true to knowing that no one else knows.

01:46:43.000 I'm not saying I know, but that everyone's idea is as valuable as mine.

01:46:50.000 We're all creators.

01:46:53.000 We all have the chance.

01:46:55.000 If we can be true to ourselves and show it, At least that's been my experience, you know, because I never went into anything thinking anything was going to be successful at any point in time.

01:47:08.000 It's always been, I make this thing because I like it.

01:47:11.000 I'm excited to show it to my friend, you know, a friend or two friends.

01:47:14.000 Can't wait till they laugh at this.

01:47:16.000 That's it.

01:47:17.000 That's the audience.

01:47:19.000 And when you set out to write this book, what was the start process?

01:47:25.000 What made you initiate it?

01:47:28.000 I'll tell you the way it happened.

01:47:29.000 I got a call from Robert Hilburn, who is the music critic of the LA Times.

01:47:35.000 This is probably eight or nine years ago.

01:47:39.000 And he was writing the definitive book about Johnny Cash.

01:47:42.000 Wow.

01:47:43.000 And I got to work with Johnny Cash for the last ten years of his life, so the last few chapters of that book was gonna be about my time with Johnny Cash, so he asked to spend a few days with me.

01:47:53.000 So we hung out, and he asked me a lot of questions, and we listened back to some of the recordings, and I tend not to listen back to things I've worked on in the past because I'm always working on something new.

01:48:04.000 And I've listened to it a million times when we were making it.

01:48:06.000 There's no reason to listen back.

01:48:08.000 So it was interesting to go back and listen with him to answer questions.

01:48:13.000 And I listened back and I learned through those conversations, I learned about my relationship with Johnny that I didn't know that I knew.

01:48:24.000 Do you know what I'm saying?

01:48:25.000 It's like through the questioning...

01:48:29.000 I had a better understanding of that relationship, and it was interesting to me, and I liked it.

01:48:35.000 And then I thought, okay, if this is what book creation could be like, where I could learn something, and if I learn it, I could share it, and what can I possibly share that would be helpful?

01:48:52.000 And I thought, well, I only get to work with a handful of artists every year.

01:48:58.000 Wouldn't it be great if the things that happen in the studio or this way of looking at the world could be available to other people?

01:49:06.000 That was the idea.

01:49:07.000 How do we...

01:49:09.000 And I didn't know what it was.

01:49:10.000 I still don't really know what's in the book.

01:49:15.000 The information is fleeting.

01:49:18.000 So if you ask me, you give me a hypothetical question, or if I think back to something that happened in the past and a good outcome happened, I would try to reverse engineer why those decisions were made.

01:49:32.000 In the moment, they weren't made for any thoughtful reason.

01:49:36.000 They were made out of reactions or trying something.

01:49:42.000 But they're rarely based on a principle.

01:49:47.000 So the book was trying to reverse engineer all things that have worked out To see if there were principles underlying that could be applied to other things.

01:49:58.000 And that's what the book is.

01:50:00.000 It's all useful tools that have led to good things.

01:50:04.000 That said, nothing in the book, the book's not about me and there's no example of anything I've made in that book.

01:50:11.000 It's the principles by which the things got made.

01:50:17.000 And a way of looking at the world and a way of being in the world, which is the subtitle of the book is A Way of Being.

01:50:24.000 I started, when I started, I thought it was going to be about how to do things.

01:50:30.000 And I realized it's how you live in the world.

01:50:34.000 It's how you see things all the time, 24 hours a day.

01:50:39.000 How you experience the world is what makes you the artist that you are or the creative person that you are.

01:50:46.000 And that's what the book shares, that information.

01:50:49.000 Why the bullseye?

01:50:52.000 It's funny you say it's a bullseye.

01:50:54.000 That is a bullseye.

01:50:55.000 To you, it's a bullseye.

01:50:57.000 Or a reticle.

01:50:58.000 It's like a dot on a bullseye.

01:51:01.000 It's the alchemical symbol of the sun.

01:51:05.000 That's one thing that it is.

01:51:08.000 But it's open to interpretation.

01:51:12.000 Like many things.

01:51:13.000 Yeah.

01:51:14.000 Like everything.

01:51:14.000 Yeah.

01:51:15.000 Like everything.

01:51:17.000 It's an invitation to think about why is that there.

01:51:21.000 And if you look at the back of the book...

01:51:22.000 So what's that?

01:51:25.000 If the front is a target, what's the back?

01:51:29.000 The lens.

01:51:30.000 And the target's a dot.

01:51:33.000 I mean, that's how I would look at it.

01:51:35.000 But that's you based on your experience.

01:51:37.000 And that's also what the book's about.

01:51:39.000 It's like everything we do...

01:51:45.000 Right.

01:51:49.000 Right.

01:51:52.000 Right.

01:52:10.000 It allows us to make better stuff because we start looking for connections in the world.

01:52:17.000 You'll notice something on your drive that doesn't make sense or someone will recommend something to you that sounds like that's not for you.

01:52:24.000 In the past, when someone would recommend something to me, it sounded like it wasn't for me.

01:52:28.000 It's like, oh, okay.

01:52:29.000 Now, if more than one person recommends something to me, That sounds bad.

01:52:34.000 I always check it out because like the universe wants me to know about this.

01:52:39.000 The way it tells me is a couple of people came up and said, why don't you check this out?

01:52:44.000 That's if we listen to what's going on around us, you can overhear a conversation in a coffee shop.

01:52:53.000 And it is the setup for an idea that you're talking about, the right way to say a particular joke that you're working on.

01:53:01.000 You hear a phrase.

01:53:02.000 It's not a phrase you commonly use.

01:53:04.000 You hear someone else say it.

01:53:08.000 My experience is when you are open and looking for these clues in the world, they're happening all the time, and they're happening often right when you need them.

01:53:21.000 There's a story, there's a song, System of Down song called...

01:53:27.000 I think it's song Chop Suey, I think.

01:53:30.000 And it has this big, do you know that song?

01:53:33.000 It has this big bridge section in it where Serge, the lyric writer, the singer, lyric writer, didn't have words for this one part of the song.

01:53:45.000 And we're sitting in the library in my old house.

01:53:48.000 And he said, you know, I don't have words for this.

01:53:52.000 And we were finishing.

01:53:53.000 It's like, okay, any ideas?

01:53:55.000 He's like, he didn't have any ideas.

01:53:57.000 And I said, okay, pick a book off the wall.

01:54:00.000 I picked a book randomly off the wall.

01:54:02.000 I said, open it to any page.

01:54:03.000 Tell me the first phrase you see.

01:54:05.000 He opened it.

01:54:06.000 First phrase he sees.

01:54:08.000 That's what's in the song, and it's a high point in the song.

01:54:13.000 It's incredible.

01:54:14.000 It's like magic.

01:54:16.000 What was it?

01:54:22.000 It's the part farther unto your hands you have it.

01:54:25.000 Why have you forsaken me?

01:54:26.000 I think it's right here.

01:54:28.000 It's wild.

01:54:29.000 Play it from a little before, so you see the context.

01:54:32.000 It doesn't really make sense in what's going on.

01:54:35.000 It's rad. 0.99

01:54:57.000 I cry when angels deserve to die Self-righteous suicide I cry When angels deserve to die In 0.99

01:55:48.000 your thoughts forsaken me In your heart forsaken me I'll trust in my self-righteous suicide I cry when angels deserve to die It's 0.99

01:56:29.000 radical. 0.90

01:56:30.000 I get chills.

01:56:33.000 Yeah.

01:56:35.000 So cool.

01:56:36.000 It is so cool.

01:56:41.000 So when you start writing and you decide that you're going to do this, are you writing longhand?

01:56:48.000 Are you sitting in front of a computer?

01:56:49.000 Are you dictating?

01:56:50.000 All interviews.

01:56:52.000 All through questioning an interview, recording, loads of conversations, and it's just random, just looking for information.

01:57:04.000 And it got to the point where it had like a thousand pages of information.

01:57:10.000 And then the task was getting from that format into the book, and it took four years to get the content, and then it took three years to get the form.

01:57:22.000 So it's been a long process.

01:57:24.000 Wow.

01:57:25.000 And so you had this idea to do it, and then as it's coming together, did it become what you initially thought it was going to be, or did it become its own thing?

01:57:35.000 It became its own thing.

01:57:37.000 The only thing that I wanted it to do was to be helpful to someone who wants to make stuff.

01:57:42.000 That's the purpose of the book.

01:57:44.000 So that was the only aspiration was, I know that it's done if someone reads this and it makes them want to make something.

01:57:56.000 And there was a version of it a few years ago that was really beautiful prose, but it didn't give me that feeling.

01:58:02.000 It didn't feel like a call to arms.

01:58:04.000 Whereas this book, I feel like I read this and I want to make something right now.

01:58:10.000 So the first version, what did you do with it?

01:58:13.000 It still exists.

01:58:14.000 So you just decided, let's try again in a different form.

01:58:17.000 But it has more to do with the form because the information was similar.

01:58:21.000 It just didn't find its best...

01:58:27.000 One of the breakthrough ideas was in the old version, there weren't sections.

01:58:36.000 It was just like one long thing.

01:58:38.000 It wasn't chapters or anything.

01:58:40.000 And I read that and every time a new subject came up, I gave it a name.

01:58:47.000 And originally it was 68 areas of thought.

01:58:50.000 And those were things that came up that I thought, okay, even if it didn't do a deep dive into each of these areas of thought, this is something related to creativity that's interesting.

01:59:02.000 So I had this list based on an earlier version of the book.

01:59:07.000 This list of topics, and then I did another round of interviews referring to what the reference was in the old version, and then another set just using the words.

01:59:21.000 I'll give you an example, because one of the areas of thought is collaboration, and you would think collaboration is about working with other people.

01:59:31.000 That's not what that section of the book's about.

01:59:34.000 So if I were to do it just based on the word, I would probably go to collaborating with other people, but when I knew the context, it would be different, because what collaborating is about is we're always collaborating at all times with the universe.

01:59:49.000 That's how it works.

01:59:51.000 Like, we're taking in information, we're vibing on it.

01:59:56.000 I'm looking at this skull, and I'm looking at the teeth, and then if I were to It's not really my thought about this.

02:00:10.000 I can say, oh, it's cold.

02:00:13.000 It's this piece.

02:00:15.000 I'm collaborating with this piece to understand something or to have a point of view into something.

02:00:22.000 So the collaboration section is about how we're always collaborating with everything we've ever learned in our lives.

02:00:28.000 You were collaborating with bow hunting by seeing a target.

02:00:32.000 That's a collaboration with something you've learned.

02:00:35.000 If you never bow hunted or never shot anything, I don't think that would seem like a target to you.

02:00:41.000 No.

02:00:42.000 If you were an eye doctor, I guarantee you wouldn't think of it as a target.

02:00:47.000 Right.

02:00:47.000 So we're always like, how we're in the world impacts how we see everything.

02:00:56.000 Then there's another section in the book called cooperation, and that's about working with other people.

02:01:02.000 And that section's about having worked with a lot of bands, I see that There's often this friction where, and I'm sure you've seen it in a writing room for comedy, where people are trying to get their idea in.

02:01:19.000 Yeah.

02:01:20.000 That's not a collaboration.

02:01:22.000 No.

02:01:34.000 Right.

02:01:47.000 And so it's just things that you can, habits you can, things to watch out for and habits you can develop that'll make you better at working with other people in that section, for example.

02:01:59.000 So when you got the first version, which you said was great prose, but there was something missing, whatever that was, how did you make that determination and why did you decide to try again?

02:02:13.000 I just, I read it and I felt how it made me feel.

02:02:17.000 I read it and thought about how it made me feel.

02:02:20.000 And I felt like there were a lot of words, nice sounding words, but it didn't feel essential.

02:02:31.000 Essential.

02:02:32.000 I want every sentence of the book to have to be there.

02:02:37.000 I want it to be...

02:02:40.000 The most concise and the most specific, and it's explaining, sometimes it's explaining what I'll describe as technical things.

02:02:50.000 It's almost like I see things as like a machine, like the world's a machine and the way the gears work together.

02:02:58.000 So I could look at a description and say, that sounds like the machine, or I could read the descriptions like, well, that's not how that machine works at all.

02:03:08.000 Do you know what I'm saying?

02:03:09.000 I don't know if I'm explaining it clearly.

02:03:11.000 No, you are because you're explaining it the way you feel.

02:03:15.000 You're using words that are sort of making a facsimile of feelings.

02:03:22.000 You know, whenever someone's saying something and they're trying to describe a feeling, you're like on a dance together.

02:03:30.000 Like, where's this going?

02:03:32.000 You know, I feel what you're saying.

02:03:35.000 I understand what you're saying.

02:03:37.000 But it's a bold move to take something that was, you know, you're done.

02:03:43.000 And you're like, nope.

02:03:45.000 It's not it.

02:03:46.000 It's not done.

02:03:47.000 It's never done until you think it's great.

02:03:53.000 I had an experience happen a few months ago where we were living in a new house we bought in a little town in Texas.

02:04:08.000 And we were asleep, and we'd just moved in.

02:04:10.000 We'd bought the house maybe a year before, and we had some work done on it, and we were excited to stay in it.

02:04:16.000 And we stayed in it, and it was the end of the first week of staying there.

02:04:20.000 And in the middle of the night, my wife—I'm sleeping.

02:04:25.000 My wife is sleeping.

02:04:26.000 We're all sleeping.

02:04:27.000 My son sleeps in bed with us.

02:04:28.000 He's five years old.

02:04:32.000 My wife wakes up, grabs Ra, my son's name is Ra, and screams fire and runs out of the room.

02:04:42.000 We're on second floor.

02:04:44.000 And I'm thinking, she's got this.

02:04:50.000 All good.

02:04:51.000 I'm going back to sleep.

02:04:53.000 And I went back to sleep.

02:04:55.000 And that was my first mistake.

02:04:59.000 Then...

02:05:00.000 You went back to sleep after she screamed fire?

02:05:02.000 Yes.

02:05:03.000 Because I assumed, ah, it's a little fire in the kitchen, she's going to put it out.

02:05:09.000 What a bizarre assumption.

02:05:10.000 Yeah.

02:05:11.000 That's me.

02:05:13.000 That was my assumption.

02:05:15.000 She takes care of everything.

02:05:16.000 I know she's going to handle it.

02:05:18.000 Nothing that would upset my sleep.

02:05:20.000 I know she's got this.

02:05:22.000 She's very capable.

02:05:24.000 So I go back to sleep.

02:05:26.000 And then I hear her screaming for help from outside.

02:05:29.000 That wakes me up.

02:05:32.000 And I go to the window in the next room to tell her to stop screaming. 0.88

02:05:37.000 Is she crazy? 0.82

02:05:38.000 What are you doing? 0.94

02:05:39.000 So I go to the window.

02:05:40.000 I open the window.

02:05:41.000 It's like, stop screaming.

02:05:42.000 What's going on?

02:05:43.000 And she's like, fire, fire.

02:05:45.000 And I said, where?

02:05:46.000 She's like, the house.

02:05:47.000 I said, where?

02:05:48.000 The whole house.

02:05:50.000 Jump.

02:05:51.000 Now I'm like 15 feet up and it's a brick, a brick floor.

02:05:55.000 And I still don't really understand the severity, although I do hear her excitement.

02:06:02.000 So I think, okay, I'm going to find a way out.

02:06:05.000 I'm not going to jump.

02:06:06.000 I'm going to find a way out.

02:06:07.000 Another very bad, another bad call on my part.

02:06:12.000 Go back into the house and open the door to where I think the stairs are.

02:06:19.000 Met with a ton of black smoke.

02:06:21.000 Go down on my hands and knees and start scampering towards the stairs.

02:06:25.000 Hit a wall.

02:06:27.000 Start scampering around the wall. 0.54

02:06:29.000 I'm just moving around, running into walls.

02:06:32.000 And I'm not able to...

02:06:35.000 Like, I'm getting to the point quickly, very quickly.

02:06:38.000 This happens very fast.

02:06:44.000 Getting lightheaded.

02:06:46.000 Can't breathe.

02:06:48.000 Have no idea where I am in the house.

02:06:50.000 Can't get back to the window I was at.

02:06:52.000 Can't find the stairs.

02:06:53.000 And everywhere I crawl to find the stairs, I'm hitting a wall.

02:06:57.000 And I'm starting to, like, lose consciousness.

02:07:02.000 I don't know if I was losing consciousness, but I was definitely fading.

02:07:05.000 And I had the thought, okay, I know Moody Allen and Ra are outside. 0.96

02:07:09.000 They're safe.

02:07:09.000 Family's safe.

02:07:11.000 And I'm so happy the book's done.

02:07:14.000 Jesus Christ.

02:07:16.000 Because the book is going to live on with whatever information I have.

02:07:20.000 It's in the book.

02:07:21.000 So I'm okay.

02:07:22.000 I can...

02:07:23.000 It's going to be all right.

02:07:25.000 Wow.

02:07:26.000 And then I'm still scampering because crashing into wall, crashing into wall.

02:07:30.000 And then I end up on the whole opposite side of the house.

02:07:33.000 Not what I was going for at all.

02:07:36.000 And I open a window, push out the screen, and by now, because Muriel's been screaming for help the whole time, some neighbors came, and they're outside, and they're like, jump!

02:07:47.000 Jump! 0.97

02:07:47.000 It's gonna hurt, but you'll live! 0.97

02:07:50.000 And now I'm so happy to be out the window and being able to breathe after not being able to breathe.

02:07:56.000 It's like, no, I'm fine.

02:07:57.000 And they're like, you're not fine.

02:07:59.000 And it's like, no, no, I'm fine.

02:08:00.000 I can breathe.

02:08:01.000 And they're like, get out, get out.

02:08:04.000 And they tell me to climb onto a tree and I climb out.

02:08:09.000 I breathe a little bit first.

02:08:10.000 But in my mind, I'm fine because if you go from not being able to breathe to breathe, the world's a good place.

02:08:16.000 So I climb out.

02:08:20.000 I hang on to the tree.

02:08:22.000 And at this point, they find like a six-foot ladder.

02:08:27.000 I'm 15 feet up.

02:08:28.000 They bring the ladder around.

02:08:29.000 They prop it up against the tree.

02:08:31.000 And then these two neighbor guys climb up the ladder and they grab my legs.

02:08:36.000 And they like guide my legs down to the top of the ladder.

02:08:41.000 And I make it out.

02:08:43.000 And my pulse ox was 82 when I got out of the building.

02:08:48.000 What's normal?

02:08:50.000 It's 99, 98. Pulse ox?

02:08:53.000 You know pulse ox, don't you?

02:08:54.000 Yeah.

02:08:55.000 It's like you want to be as close to 100 as possible.

02:09:01.000 But I felt fine.

02:09:02.000 I felt like I'm okay.

02:09:04.000 And then I'm walking and they're like, okay, we can't walk next to the house because the house is really burning.

02:09:08.000 And they walked me out into the street, and then I said, okay, I have to sit down.

02:09:11.000 And I just sat down in the middle of the street.

02:09:13.000 It's in the middle of the night.

02:09:14.000 It felt like 4 o'clock in the morning.

02:09:15.000 And I sat there, and in three minutes, I watched this 100-year-old two-story house completely burn to the ground, flames higher than the trees.

02:09:26.000 It was insane.

02:09:28.000 It was insane.

02:09:32.000 Wow.

02:09:33.000 Wow.

02:09:34.000 The going back to sleep is so crazy.

02:09:38.000 Yeah.

02:09:40.000 That's 100% the opposite of what I think my instincts would be.

02:09:44.000 Yeah.

02:09:47.000 Wow.

02:09:48.000 So did she smell smoke?

02:09:49.000 Did she see fire?

02:09:51.000 She heard crackles and thought someone was in the house.

02:09:54.000 So she heard what sounded like someone walking in the house.

02:10:01.000 So she went down to check and she saw the fire and then came up to get rot and scream at me to get out and I went back to sleep.

02:10:09.000 Jesus Christ.

02:10:15.000 Wow.

02:10:16.000 So you were three minutes away from dying?

02:10:18.000 I would say...

02:10:20.000 a minute.

02:10:22.000 Jesus.

02:10:24.000 That's such a horrible way to die, too.

02:10:29.000 Wow.

02:10:33.000 The crazy thing is that you were happy the book was done.

02:10:48.000 Maybe five days before this, four days before this.

02:10:53.000 And we're talking about art and music and what you'd expect a conversation with me to be about, the only things I know about or care about, talking about.

02:11:05.000 And long interview.

02:11:07.000 And in the middle of the interview, he asked me, are you afraid of dying?

02:11:12.000 And it was completely different than the whole rest of the conversation.

02:11:17.000 And it was the weirdest question.

02:11:20.000 And I answered the question, and then I went home and saw my wife, and I said, it was a really interesting interview, but he asked me if I'm afraid of death.

02:11:30.000 It didn't make any sense.

02:11:32.000 Non sequitur in the course of this interview.

02:11:35.000 And then, four days later, this happens.

02:11:39.000 And then the next day, there's a clip.

02:11:42.000 The first clip I see from the Lex interview is him asking me that question and me answering about death.

02:11:50.000 After this thing just happened.

02:11:51.000 It was unbelievable.

02:11:53.000 What was your answer?

02:11:54.000 Can't remember.

02:11:55.000 You can find the clip.

02:11:59.000 You want to find the clip?

02:12:00.000 Okay, we can play it.

02:12:01.000 I think it's actually interesting.

02:12:02.000 Yeah, let's play it.

02:12:03.000 But that's like saying, I don't know the information in the book.

02:12:06.000 Right, right, right.

02:12:07.000 When you're in the moment, you answer the question, but it's not like a rehearsed answer.

02:12:10.000 I don't know.

02:12:12.000 Well, more than anybody I think I've ever met, you're on instinct in that way.

02:12:18.000 It's almost like you consciously try to stay in the moment.

02:12:23.000 Absolutely.

02:12:25.000 Absolutely.

02:12:26.000 Absolutely.

02:12:27.000 I don't think that knowing anything helps.

02:12:32.000 I don't think there's anything to know.

02:12:35.000 I think we're here and we're in this and we pay attention and it's almost like we're animals and getting in tune with our animal selves.

02:12:53.000 It's very animal, what we're talking about.

02:12:55.000 Yeah.

02:12:56.000 No, it is.

02:12:58.000 Is that why you're into, like, physical things like cold and sauna?

02:13:04.000 Are you into those?

02:13:06.000 To just feel the animal part of you?

02:13:10.000 To feel the body?

02:13:12.000 I was sedentary my whole life.

02:13:15.000 I was in...

02:13:16.000 I basically laid on a couch listening to music my whole life.

02:13:20.000 That was my job and what I did not for my job.

02:13:24.000 It's what I like to do, and that's all I did.

02:13:26.000 And I was vegan for 22 years and got very big.

02:13:30.000 I weighed 320 pounds, 318 at my max, with no exercise.

02:13:36.000 So it's only just not good.

02:13:40.000 Huge.

02:13:41.000 And I went out to lunch with Mo Austin, who just recently passed away, who was He was Frank Sinatra's attorney, and then he ran Warner Brothers and Reprise.

02:13:50.000 You might have met him through Warner Brothers.

02:13:52.000 If you were on Warner Brothers, Mo Austin was the chairman of Warner Brothers Records.

02:13:56.000 Beautiful guy.

02:13:57.000 He signed the Sex Pistols.

02:13:58.000 He signed Jimi Hendrix.

02:13:59.000 He signed Black Sabbath.

02:14:01.000 Amazing guy.

02:14:01.000 And he was one of my mentors in the music business.

02:14:05.000 And we went out to lunch one day, and he said, you know, Rick, I know you watch what you eat, and you...

02:14:10.000 You take care of yourself, but you're really getting big, and I'm worried about you, and I want you to—I'm going to get the name of a nutritionist, and I want you to go to my guy and do whatever he says.

02:14:19.000 And I said, okay, I'll do whatever you say, knowing it's not going to work, because I've been overweight my whole life, and nothing ever worked.

02:14:25.000 But you didn't look overweight in that Red Hot Chili Peppers thing.

02:14:28.000 That was a weird moment in time.

02:14:30.000 It was like a weird moment.

02:14:31.000 I had just moved to California.

02:14:34.000 I worked out with a trainer that Dice connected me with for the first time and was in—I still was not in good shape, but I was in better shape than at any point prior to that, and that was before I became a vegan.

02:14:49.000 The vegan thing really took me down a dark path.

02:14:54.000 How so?

02:14:54.000 Well, I was eating chicken and vegetables, and I was healthier then.

02:15:01.000 And then a friend of mine gave me a book called Diet for a New America, and he said, if you read this book, you're not going to want to eat chicken anymore.

02:15:07.000 And I said, well, I already gave up everything else.

02:15:10.000 I'd given up red meat.

02:15:12.000 I'd given up...

02:15:15.000 Soda.

02:15:16.000 I used to drink a 64-ounce Pepsi with every meal.

02:15:22.000 I grew up eating Jack in the Box and McDonald's every day.

02:15:26.000 I grew up on fast food.

02:15:27.000 My mom was a terrible cook. 1.00

02:15:30.000 So I didn't have a good relationship with food.

02:15:34.000 And then I started giving things up when I was in college, and I'm not even sure why.

02:15:38.000 I don't know why.

02:15:39.000 I don't know why I decided to give up Pepsi-Cola and start drinking a pitcher of iced coffee instead, which is what switched.

02:15:48.000 But I didn't know why I did that.

02:15:49.000 I just did that.

02:15:50.000 And then I stopped that caffeine and just drank water.

02:15:54.000 And then...

02:15:56.000 Gave up red meat, gave up basically everything other than chicken and vegetables, and then I started getting in better shape when I was eating chicken and vegetables.

02:16:04.000 Then I met Dice's trainer, started training, got into better shape, and then I read this vegan book, became a vegan, and then it all went the other way for 22 years until I got very big.

02:16:16.000 And what about veganism got you that big?

02:16:19.000 It's a carb-only diet.

02:16:21.000 It's just carbs.

02:16:23.000 But were you eating vegetables or were you eating pizza?

02:16:27.000 Vegetables, pizza, whatever they serve in the vegetarian restaurant.

02:16:31.000 They would serve like a...

02:16:33.000 It'd be like a tofu steak with a gluten brown sauce.

02:16:43.000 Super unhealthy stuff, but I didn't know.

02:16:46.000 I thought I was eating healthy.

02:16:48.000 It was just bad information.

02:16:51.000 And so what shifted?

02:16:53.000 What did you do to shift it?

02:16:55.000 I read a book.

02:16:56.000 So now I'm big and I'm unhealthy.

02:17:00.000 And I read a book by a guy named Stu Middleman who ran 1,000 miles in 11 days.

02:17:06.000 And I remember thinking, how can it be?

02:17:11.000 How can we both be human beings?

02:17:13.000 And if I walk to the end of the block, I'm exhausted and out of breath.

02:17:18.000 And there's a human on the planet who can run 1,000 miles in 11 days.

02:17:23.000 I don't have good information.

02:17:25.000 I'm doing something wrong.

02:17:27.000 Because it's not like I was lazy.

02:17:29.000 I was diligent.

02:17:30.000 I just had bad information.

02:17:31.000 It's hard being a vegan.

02:17:33.000 It was hard being a vegan.

02:17:34.000 Harder to be a vegan then when nobody was a vegan.

02:17:39.000 You know, there weren't vegetarian restaurants all over the place.

02:17:41.000 There was one.

02:17:42.000 There was real food daily.

02:17:43.000 It was the only place you could eat.

02:17:48.000 So I read the Stu Middleman book and he talks about meeting this performance expert, Phil Maffetone, who changed the way he trained and that's why he could run a thousand miles in 11 days.

02:18:02.000 So it's like, okay, Phil Maffetone is the answer.

02:18:05.000 I email Phil Maffetone.

02:18:07.000 I want to become your patient.

02:18:09.000 And he said he just retired, gave up his medical practice and isn't doing that anymore.

02:18:15.000 And he gave up doing medicine to pursue his dream of being a songwriter.

02:18:23.000 And I said, well, I work in music.

02:18:25.000 Maybe you can mentor me with my health and fitness, and I'll help you with your songs.

02:18:32.000 We became friends, and he started treating me.

02:18:36.000 He very much wanted me to eat animal protein, which I wouldn't do because I was a vegan.

02:18:40.000 He got me to eat fish and eggs as a...

02:18:48.000 We're good to go.

02:19:04.000 And he was with me all the time.

02:19:06.000 He trained me.

02:19:07.000 He got me to do heart rate-based cardio, doing stairs, but still super low level.

02:19:15.000 I was still big, but still getting my...

02:19:20.000 My system turned back on, you know, getting my vitality back.

02:19:25.000 And I got much healthier working with Phil and I didn't lose any weight.

02:19:29.000 I might have lost five pounds over two years.

02:19:31.000 And he's living with me and he said, I watch everything you eat.

02:19:35.000 I watch how you train.

02:19:36.000 He said...

02:19:39.000 999 people out of 1,000 who are doing what you're doing, all their weight would fall off.

02:19:43.000 For some reason, yours is not coming off.

02:19:45.000 Couldn't figure it out.

02:19:47.000 And then I was thinking, well, my mom was obese. 1.00

02:19:49.000 It's just a genetic thing.

02:19:50.000 I've always been overweight.

02:19:53.000 It's just what it is.

02:19:54.000 And then the thing happened with Mo, where I was really big.

02:19:57.000 Now I'm healthier.

02:19:59.000 But still big.

02:20:01.000 Go out to lunch with Mo.

02:20:02.000 He sends me to his nutritionist.

02:20:04.000 I go to see the guy.

02:20:05.000 And he puts me on seven protein shakes a day.

02:20:11.000 Like egg, white protein. 0.85

02:20:15.000 Seven a day.

02:20:17.000 And then fish, soup, salad for dinner.

02:20:20.000 Like super low calorie, high protein, no carb diet.

02:20:26.000 And in 14 months, I lost 130 pounds.

02:20:30.000 Whoa! 0.71

02:20:31.000 And it was like a miracle because nothing, over the course of my life, nothing had worked.

02:20:36.000 I guess in some ways when I was doing chicken and vegetables, it worked.

02:20:40.000 Why didn't you go back to chicken and vegetables if that worked?

02:20:43.000 Because I believe the, I believe veganism was good.

02:20:47.000 It's like I was brainwashed.

02:20:49.000 So did you believe it was good for the planet?

02:20:51.000 Both.

02:20:52.000 The healthiest diet in the world.

02:20:53.000 How was that possible that you could look at your own body, though, and the effects that it was having on it?

02:20:59.000 It didn't make sense.

02:21:00.000 And you were just, there's something wrong with me.

02:21:03.000 Something's wrong with me.

02:21:04.000 It's not wrong with the diet itself.

02:21:05.000 Yeah, it's not the diet, it's me.

02:21:06.000 So what is it like when you go on this very low-carb, high-protein diet and lose all that weight?

02:21:13.000 It was...

02:21:15.000 It changed my life more than anything else that has ever changed my life.

02:21:19.000 And it taught me something.

02:21:22.000 I've always lived in my head.

02:21:24.000 I never lived in my body.

02:21:25.000 I always lived in my head.

02:21:26.000 And now I started feeling like I had a body to go with my head.

02:21:32.000 And it was an interesting feeling having never had that before.

02:21:36.000 And I met...

02:21:40.000 Laird Hamilton on the beach.

02:21:43.000 I think I was working with Kid Rock at the time, and Kid Rock introduced me to Laird and Don Wildman and this group of Malibu athlete guys.

02:21:52.000 And Chris Chelios, the first person I ever went into a sauna with was Chris Chelios, who was really a fanatic.

02:21:58.000 Sauna guy for 30 years.

02:22:00.000 And he played in the NHL longer than anybody.

02:22:04.000 And he blamed Sauna on his ability.

02:22:08.000 You know, he gave credit Sauna for his ability to play for as long as he was able to play.

02:22:13.000 So, started doing Sauna with him.

02:22:16.000 And then Laird invited me to start training at the gym.

02:22:19.000 Which was like...

02:22:21.000 Seemed crazy.

02:22:25.000 But I liked him and was so...

02:22:28.000 Inspired by him, and he was so different from the musicians I hang around.

02:22:32.000 I never hung around athletes before.

02:22:36.000 So, meeting people who are good at anything Is interesting.

02:22:45.000 And to meet someone who's so good, world class at something so foreign to what the people that I know who are world class at stuff, it's like a different universe.

02:22:56.000 So I wanted to go to hang out with Laird, really just to hang out with him and see how he thought about the world because he's such an interesting character.

02:23:05.000 And I started going.

02:23:05.000 I remember when I went the first day, he said, okay, let's do some push-ups.

02:23:10.000 And he asked me, and I couldn't do one push-up.

02:23:13.000 And I said, I can't do it.

02:23:13.000 I can't do it.

02:23:14.000 He's like, no, don't say you can't do it.

02:23:16.000 Say you haven't done it yet.

02:23:18.000 And he would break up a movement.

02:23:21.000 For every exercise, if I couldn't do it the full way to start, he would have me do a piece of the exercise.

02:23:28.000 And then another piece, and then another piece, and then put the first two pieces together, and then put the second two pieces together, and finally put all three together until I could do things.

02:23:38.000 And with his help, I went from not being able to do one push-up to working up to 100 consecutive push-ups, which was...

02:23:46.000 I couldn't believe it.

02:23:47.000 So what I learned through this process of both listening to the nutritionist and listening to Laird in the gym...

02:23:56.000 I gave over control of myself.

02:24:01.000 Up till that point, I always thought I knew what was best for myself.

02:24:05.000 And what I thought was best for myself was being a vegan.

02:24:11.000 But when I gave myself up to, in this case, other people, I lost weight, I got fit, My life changed and then started doing the ice and sauna was another part of it.

02:24:26.000 And the ice, I was terrified to go in the ice at first and then worked up to, you know, sometimes we'll do 30 minutes in the ice before even getting in the sauna.

02:24:37.000 Like insane.

02:24:38.000 30 minutes?

02:24:39.000 Absolutely.

02:24:40.000 How cold is the ice?

02:24:42.000 39 degrees.

02:24:44.000 30 minutes?

02:24:45.000 Yeah.

02:24:46.000 Wow.

02:24:47.000 If you do it every day, Like, that was during the lockdown.

02:24:52.000 We're in Hawaii.

02:24:54.000 And we were doing sauna and ice every day.

02:24:57.000 Are you doing it 30 minutes consecutively?

02:24:59.000 In that case, it was 30 minutes consecutively.

02:25:01.000 So just in there, up to your neck, 30 minutes.

02:25:04.000 In there, up to your neck.

02:25:05.000 I keep my hands out.

02:25:06.000 I sit like this.

02:25:08.000 I blow into my hands and focus on the heat, the sensation of the heat in my fingers.

02:25:15.000 You weren't worried about hypothermia?

02:25:17.000 You weren't worried about anything?

02:25:18.000 No.

02:25:21.000 Because you'd built yourself up to that.

02:25:22.000 Yeah.

02:25:23.000 I couldn't have done it.

02:25:24.000 I wasn't forcing myself past what I could do.

02:25:27.000 If I got too much, I'd get out.

02:25:29.000 What's the benefit of being in there for that long, though?

02:25:31.000 It was just like a game.

02:25:32.000 It's like during lockdown, something to do.

02:25:34.000 Like, let's see how long we can go.

02:25:36.000 It's like you get to five.

02:25:37.000 Let's say we typically did five minutes between rounds.

02:25:39.000 So you do five minutes, and it's like, I feel like I could stay longer.

02:25:43.000 Let's stay longer.

02:25:44.000 Let's see.

02:25:44.000 I was doing it with my other friend Jack.

02:25:46.000 We would both do it together, and we're looking at each other in the sauna.

02:25:49.000 I could stay.

02:25:50.000 You want to stay?

02:25:50.000 Stay.

02:25:51.000 And, like, maybe we got up to 10 minutes once.

02:25:54.000 Then we got up to 15 minutes once, and it was just like seeing what you could do.

02:25:58.000 So are you going from sauna to the cold back and forth?

02:26:02.000 Back and forth four times, but we started...

02:26:04.000 In the old days, we would do sauna first and then cold and back and forth.

02:26:09.000 And then we started doing cold first.

02:26:13.000 It was like a challenge.

02:26:15.000 It's harder to get into the ice not coming out of the sauna.

02:26:18.000 One of the tricks that I would use to get into the ice was...

02:26:24.000 Staying in the sauna too long and psyching myself up.

02:26:27.000 I just want to cool off.

02:26:28.000 I just want to cool off.

02:26:30.000 Talking myself into jumping into the ice was like the best gift.

02:26:36.000 Right.

02:26:37.000 So then it's like, okay, so now I could do it that way.

02:26:40.000 And then once I got comfortable with it, it's like, okay, can I just jump into an ice tub and just stay there?

02:26:45.000 And it was just fun to try these things.

02:26:49.000 It was just experimenting.

02:26:50.000 And what did that do for your body?

02:26:53.000 It was great.

02:26:54.000 First of all, I would say the number one thing that it did was put me in a great mood.

02:26:59.000 I would say that I can be moody at times, and nothing has made me feel better in my life than the combination of the sauna and the ice back and forth.

02:27:10.000 By the fourth round, you do not have a care in the world.

02:27:13.000 And whatever difficulties you have in life to deal with are not as bad as getting in the ice, whatever they are.

02:27:20.000 Yeah.

02:27:21.000 It's like you described earlier with your workout.

02:27:23.000 Same thing.

02:27:23.000 So if you're doing something really hard, then the things that seem hard in life don't seem so hard.

02:27:30.000 Yeah.

02:27:32.000 Someone said this once, that the worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you.

02:27:37.000 Doesn't matter what it is.

02:27:38.000 It could be you got a scratch in your car.

02:27:40.000 I can't believe this.

02:27:42.000 That's why spoiled children, like spoiled children cry about things that's just nonsensical.

02:27:47.000 Yeah.

02:27:47.000 Like, why...

02:27:48.000 What the fuck is wrong with you? 0.99

02:27:49.000 Why are you getting so upset about this? 0.99

02:27:50.000 Because they've never had anything bad happen to them.

02:27:53.000 So their ability to be...

02:27:56.000 Resilient.

02:27:56.000 Yeah, resilient.

02:27:57.000 I had that issue as well because I grew up in a way where I was never challenged and I was not resilient.

02:28:08.000 And then I've gotten better at it since I went through depression and that was also part of getting to the resilience through depression.

02:28:17.000 And so what is your diet like now?

02:28:20.000 Pretty close to carnivore.

02:28:22.000 We just came, we were in Italy for four months, so the rules are different in Italy.

02:28:27.000 Yeah, I go off the rails in Italy.

02:28:29.000 Yeah.

02:28:29.000 And I definitely gained weight, and I don't feel great about it, but I'm excited now when I leave here, I'm going right back to, I'll probably do shakes now for, to get back to where I want to be, and then I'll go more carnivore.

02:28:43.000 And so the shakes are just a calorie deficit thing?

02:28:47.000 Yeah.

02:28:48.000 And there's something about, again, according to the nutritionist who I saw, having the protein all through the day.

02:28:55.000 Because when we do carnivore, we usually intermittent fast and just eat twice a day or maybe even twice a day close together.

02:29:05.000 Yeah.

02:29:06.000 And eat just meat.

02:29:08.000 Often, I'll be the least strict in that I might have a romaine salad with mine, which is not carnivore, but I will have a romaine.

02:29:19.000 And it's just romaine and olive oil and salt and steak and butter and salt.

02:29:26.000 Um...

02:29:30.000 So I'll probably do the shakes just to cut weight.

02:29:34.000 And what's in these shakes again?

02:29:35.000 It's egg white protein?

02:29:37.000 Yeah, J-Rob egg white protein.

02:29:39.000 And what do you mix it with?

02:29:40.000 Water.

02:29:41.000 And it tastes great.

02:29:43.000 It's good.

02:29:43.000 And sometimes I'll mix in coffee if there's too many of them and it starts tasting boring.

02:29:49.000 Or I don't like the vanillas as much as the chocolate, but if I mix a little bit of vanilla into the chocolate, it's like a new flavor.

02:29:55.000 Find ways to keep it interesting.

02:29:59.000 And do you have goals in terms of like body fat or weight or are you just trying to feel good?

02:30:05.000 Just trying to feel good.

02:30:07.000 I would say that when I... I'm just trying to feel good.

02:30:18.000 It's like, you know, if I weigh myself and if the numbers are going up...

02:30:25.000 I'm aware of it.

02:30:26.000 If the numbers are going down, I'm aware of it.

02:30:28.000 And it's better when they're going down than when they're going up.

02:30:33.000 But I've never really been a goal-oriented person.

02:30:39.000 It has never been...

02:30:40.000 I don't set a goal and work towards it.

02:30:43.000 I like working on something and when it feels good to me, then I know that it's good.

02:30:50.000 It's like the goal seems like a false...

02:30:56.000 It's like a fiction, you know?

02:30:58.000 I think the goal is just to get people to work.

02:31:01.000 And then along the way, you find what you're really trying to do.

02:31:06.000 Yeah.

02:31:06.000 But the getting people to work thing is oftentimes the most difficult.

02:31:11.000 I was going to ask you that about music.

02:31:13.000 Like, how difficult is it and how important is it to have people that are disciplined, that show up and do the work?

02:31:20.000 Because a lot of artists are very impulsive.

02:31:23.000 And oftentimes, one of the things that comes with impulsiveness is this unwillingness to sit and be uncomfortable.

02:31:29.000 Yeah.

02:31:30.000 The best ones will work through that.

02:31:33.000 Yeah.

02:31:33.000 That's part of...

02:31:34.000 It's like there are a lot of talented people who never make it because they don't have the work ethic to make it.

02:31:41.000 It's not just talent.

02:31:43.000 Like, talent's a piece.

02:31:44.000 Yeah.

02:31:44.000 And you could argue, for some people, the work ethic Trump's the talent, you know?

02:31:53.000 Chris Rock's a great example.

02:31:54.000 Like when I first met Chris, he was my comedian friend who wasn't very funny.

02:32:00.000 And I know him when he wasn't funny.

02:32:02.000 He was my music friend because he's got great musical taste and we would just hang out and talk about music.

02:32:06.000 And then I saw him get funny and it was remarkable because he went from okay to all of a sudden incredible.

02:32:17.000 Couldn't believe it.

02:32:20.000 Just hard work.

02:32:21.000 Just hard work.

02:32:22.000 All hard work.

02:32:23.000 Hard work and determination and some understanding of what you're trying to do.

02:32:27.000 Yeah.

02:32:29.000 Wow.

02:32:33.000 This is such a valuable conversation for people.

02:32:37.000 It's valuable for me and I already do it, you know?

02:32:40.000 Wow.

02:32:41.000 It's like you need to hear these things from different people, different journeys, you know, and try to understand We're all the same in some way.

02:32:52.000 At some core essence of our being, we're all the same in many ways.

02:32:57.000 We all want to be loved.

02:32:58.000 We all want to be happy.

02:32:59.000 We all want to be appreciated.

02:33:00.000 We all want to be surrounded by people who love us and who we love.

02:33:04.000 And then it's expressing through creativity and art and creation and this thing.

02:33:12.000 But very few people figure out how to do it the way you're describing it.

02:33:15.000 And I think it's really magical, what you're saying.

02:33:17.000 Because it's such a pure pursuit.

02:33:22.000 The purity of it is what's most inspiring about it.

02:33:27.000 You're really just trying to do it.

02:33:30.000 Whatever it is, you really shouldn't even have a word.

02:33:35.000 It's a thing you're trying to get to.

02:33:39.000 Yeah, words are insufficient for what we're thinking about.

02:33:45.000 Yeah.

02:33:47.000 And that's probably the hard part about putting that down, right?

02:33:52.000 Yeah.

02:33:52.000 In a form where people can digest.

02:33:56.000 Really difficult to do, and that's why it took so long.

02:34:00.000 And as I say, it's elusive.

02:34:03.000 I can read through the book and read something and like, wow.

02:34:09.000 I didn't know that.

02:34:11.000 It's mean now.

02:34:12.000 I'll still have these epiphanies reading the book because it's heavy stuff and it's not understandable.

02:34:21.000 We really are talking about magic.

02:34:23.000 We're talking about Like, the universe conspiring on our behalf if we let it.

02:34:31.000 And to be in this flow of catching these waves that anyone can catch if you're trying to catch it, you're open to it, you see it coming, you...

02:34:47.000 You take off on every chance you get, and sometimes the ride happens, and it's remarkable.

02:34:54.000 It's remarkable how it happens.

02:34:56.000 And it doesn't come from...

02:34:57.000 It's not preconceived.

02:35:00.000 It's not an idea.

02:35:02.000 It's through the doing.

02:35:07.000 These things that want to be, that the universe wants to happen now, comes through us.

02:35:14.000 And if we don't do it, maybe someone else will do it.

02:35:16.000 Have you ever had that experience where you have an idea for something and you don't do it and then six months later you see that someone else has done it?

02:35:23.000 It's not because they took your idea.

02:35:25.000 It's that it's time for that.

02:35:28.000 And you can act on it or not.

02:35:31.000 And the best artists are the ones who have the best antenna for this material that's available.

02:35:38.000 It's coming through.

02:35:40.000 The best comedians see the best jokes.

02:35:43.000 They see them coming.

02:35:45.000 We all live in the same world.

02:35:47.000 The way you see it, you have the best joke because you see it best.

02:35:54.000 And one of the reasons I believe that you can see it best is because you don't believe what the structure around you assumes to be the case.

02:36:09.000 I mentioned before, I grew up watching pro wrestling and I still...

02:36:13.000 I watch 11 hours of pro wrestling every week, something like that.

02:36:18.000 There's a lot of wrestling on TV. And I love pro wrestling.

02:36:24.000 It's the only sport I watch.

02:36:26.000 Really?

02:36:27.000 100%.

02:36:28.000 Pro wrestling.

02:36:28.000 Wow.

02:36:30.000 And I feel like pro wrestling's where it's at because you don't know...

02:36:38.000 Where the line is.

02:36:40.000 We know that the people involved are working together to put on a good show.

02:36:44.000 I like that.

02:36:46.000 They're not guys trying to hurt each other.

02:36:47.000 They're trying to put on a good show.

02:36:49.000 I'm with that.

02:36:49.000 I like that better than watching guys trying to hurt each other.

02:36:52.000 So I like that they're putting on a show for the audience.

02:36:58.000 But...

02:37:03.000 We're good to go.

02:37:15.000 I feel like the reality of wrestling is closer to what the world is really like than we think.

02:37:23.000 We think, oh, that's fake and the world is real.

02:37:26.000 I think that's closer to how it really is.

02:37:30.000 Everything is like wrestling.

02:37:37.000 I would have never anticipated that.

02:37:39.000 I would have never anticipated you have a love for pro wrestling.

02:37:42.000 It's the best.

02:37:44.000 It's the best.

02:37:45.000 I gotta get you together with Tony Hinchcliffe.

02:37:48.000 It's the best.

02:37:49.000 Does he love it?

02:37:50.000 Oh my god.

02:37:50.000 You know who Tony is?

02:37:51.000 Brilliant comedian.

02:37:52.000 Brilliant.

02:37:53.000 He's the host of the best live television show, the best live comedy podcast in the world.

02:38:00.000 It's called Kill Tony.

02:38:01.000 And it's a show where he takes...

02:38:04.000 Stand-up comedians, he has professionals that come and sit on this panel, and then amateurs will go up and do one minute.

02:38:10.000 And there's this incredible band behind him.

02:38:12.000 The band is like, some of the members are the guys that work with Gary Clark Jr., and just these incredible musicians. 0.96

02:38:19.000 And they play along with it, and then these people go up and they do one minute, and then Tony asks them questions and riffs with them, and he fucking loves pro wrestling. 0.92

02:38:29.000 He loves it. 0.87

02:38:30.000 Yeah.

02:38:31.000 So hearing you talk about this is going to give him a boner.

02:38:35.000 It's the best.

02:38:36.000 It's the best.

02:38:38.000 It's so wild.

02:38:40.000 So surprising.

02:38:41.000 It makes you feel good.

02:38:44.000 I don't get it.

02:38:46.000 Really?

02:38:46.000 I don't get it.

02:38:47.000 It's the most relaxing thing.

02:38:49.000 It's the only thing that relaxes me.

02:38:51.000 That's so wild.

02:38:52.000 I'll watch it before I go to sleep, and I sleep good.

02:38:55.000 If I watch wrestling before I go to sleep, the world's a good place.

02:39:03.000 I am so engrossed in the world of martial arts competition.

02:39:08.000 To me, it's nonsense.

02:39:11.000 It's just like, you know, I get that people like it.

02:39:15.000 I don't understand it.

02:39:16.000 To me, it's just like, yeah, yeah.

02:39:18.000 But they know what's going on.

02:39:19.000 This is fake.

02:39:20.000 And it just...

02:39:22.000 Yeah, it's different than that.

02:39:24.000 Fake and real is not what it is.

02:39:26.000 It's something else.

02:39:27.000 Well also, what you're saying, like people trying to hurt each other, that's not what it is either.

02:39:33.000 My description of mixed martial arts is high-level problem solving with dire physical consequences.

02:39:41.000 There's this thing that they're doing where they're trying to achieve excellence in this insanely difficult endeavor.

02:39:48.000 And through doing that, you create some of the most exceptional people I've ever met.

02:39:52.000 Because they're the people that can rise and figure out their own bullshit through all this chaos and through these moments and there's so many variables in there like fatigue, mental and physical fatigue, 0.71

02:40:08.000 because so much of fatigue is mental. 0.97

02:40:11.000 You know, when you're inspired, you can do more work.

02:40:14.000 And how do you decide when to turn up the gas, when to hit the gas and when to coast, when to attack, when to defend, when to move, when to lure your opponent into a false sense,

02:40:29.000 when to set traps?

02:40:31.000 And to me, I'm just so engrossed in that world.

02:40:34.000 It's like physical chess, would you say?

02:40:37.000 Yeah, it's more so, because chess pieces are limited in their movement.

02:40:41.000 I see.

02:40:42.000 Whereas with mixed martial arts, there's so much creativity that's happening while it's going on.

02:40:49.000 And again, these people that are the best at it are some of the most interesting and exceptional people that I've ever met.

02:40:56.000 And some of the nicest people.

02:40:58.000 I bet.

02:40:58.000 Which is really weird.

02:41:00.000 Because you assume the people that beat people up are just brutes. 0.62

02:41:04.000 It has to be some level of respect to be good at something like that, I would imagine.

02:41:08.000 The great ones.

02:41:09.000 Yeah.

02:41:10.000 The great ones have a level of respect and the discipline is unparalleled.

02:41:13.000 I only watched it at the beginning when the first Gracie.

02:41:18.000 Hoist.

02:41:19.000 I saw Hoist.

02:41:21.000 Yeah.

02:41:21.000 And that was fascinating to me because I didn't understand it at all, what was happening, but it always seemed like He was losing, and then the other guy would give up eventually.

02:41:31.000 And it was like, I don't even understand what's happening.

02:41:33.000 It's so wild.

02:41:34.000 Well, that was one of the challenging things about my job when I first came aboard with the UFC is to explain that aspect of it to the casual, to the person that's at home.

02:41:44.000 Like when someone's, like if Hoist was, I never, I commentated some of Hoist's fights, but later in his career.

02:41:55.000 The challenge is to explain the jiu-jitsu.

02:41:58.000 Because everybody kind of understands all that guy who just punched that guy, that guy that just kicked that guy.

02:42:02.000 That makes sense to people.

02:42:04.000 That's an impact.

02:42:04.000 He got hurt.

02:42:05.000 But when you watch a complicated technique like an omoplata.

02:42:11.000 Omoplata is a rare move that rarely gets pulled off in the UFC. Ben Saunders and maybe one or two other people have ever pulled it off.

02:42:20.000 It's a shoulder lock.

02:42:21.000 It's fairly common in gi jujitsu because of the friction involved in wearing the kimono, but in MMA where it's slippery and there's punches and all this, and it's a technique where...

02:42:34.000 You isolate a person's shoulder.

02:42:36.000 You throw your leg over the shoulder and the shin goes across their face.

02:42:41.000 You rotate behind them.

02:42:43.000 Your leg is wrapped around their shoulder.

02:42:45.000 Their arm is pointing.

02:42:48.000 Their hand is almost like scratching their back.

02:42:51.000 And through the leverage of your legs and your upper body controlling their body, you put extreme torque and pressure on their shoulder until they're forced to tap.

02:43:04.000 To explain that to people while that's going on, explain how this person's setting this up and what they have to do next, and to try to explain it in a way that's going to make sense to people that have never felt it, they don't know what's happening,

02:43:19.000 and just to convey my excitement of this very difficult maneuver being pulled off.

02:43:25.000 Would that be as dangerous as, let's say, a figure four leg lock?

02:43:28.000 A bunch of wrestlers got mad at me because Tony and I were watching pro wrestling. 0.88

02:43:34.000 I was trying to explain how dumb a figure four leg lock was.

02:43:37.000 Because I was like, he's literally giving up an inside heel hook.

02:43:40.000 Because an inside heel hook is one of the most devastating submission techniques because once someone gets it, the time you have to tap is so small before your knee gets ripped apart.

02:43:51.000 And so a figure four leg lock...

02:43:53.000 You will never see in a jiu-jitsu competition.

02:43:56.000 Because as someone...

02:43:58.000 It doesn't work.

02:43:59.000 So as someone's setting up that figure four, you're literally giving up an inside heel hook.

02:44:03.000 It's pretty funny.

02:44:04.000 Yeah.

02:44:05.000 It's kind of funny in that regard.

02:44:07.000 That, you know, you're doing this thing, but this thing in the real world is like the worst thing you do.

02:44:13.000 But in pro wrestling, it's like, oh, he's got the figure four leg locked!

02:44:19.000 It's great.

02:44:20.000 And the crowd's going wild.

02:44:21.000 Going wild.

02:44:22.000 I remember Ric Flair telling a story, because Ric Flair's famous for doing the figure of four.

02:44:27.000 That's his finishing hold.

02:44:29.000 And he didn't invent it.

02:44:31.000 Someone did it before him.

02:44:33.000 And he remembers the first time it was put on him, he was so afraid because he believed it was as deadly as the announcer said.

02:44:45.000 It's so funny.

02:44:46.000 Yeah.

02:44:47.000 There's some techniques that really do work, like the Boston Crab.

02:44:51.000 Yeah.

02:44:51.000 That's a real move.

02:44:52.000 And guys have done that in MMA, and it's crazy when someone pulls it off.

02:44:56.000 It's only been pulled off a handful of times, and it's usually a mismatch.

02:45:00.000 It's usually someone decides to pull it off.

02:45:02.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:45:02.000 Because they're like, I'm beating this guy so bad, dude, I'm going to put a fucking Boston Crab on him. 0.99

02:45:07.000 That's so funny. 0.99

02:45:08.000 But it works.

02:45:08.000 Boston Crab works.

02:45:09.000 Yeah, here a guy's got it.

02:45:11.000 Cool.

02:45:11.000 Yeah, he tapped a guy with a Boston Crab.

02:45:13.000 Yeah.

02:45:13.000 Look at that.

02:45:14.000 Ha ha ha!

02:45:16.000 I mean, you have to understand, that guy on top must be so much better than that guy.

02:45:19.000 To get him into that position, I mean, that guy's got to be hilarious.

02:45:23.000 That's a funny move.

02:45:25.000 That guy on the bottom has got to be so bummed out, too.

02:45:28.000 So he just gets on top of him.

02:45:30.000 He's like, oh, here it is.

02:45:31.000 He's setting it up.

02:45:32.000 He knows what he's doing.

02:45:33.000 Because, look, he turns to him, punches him in the face, and then the guy flattens out.

02:45:37.000 The right move is to turn and face him belly to back.

02:45:42.000 Because belly to back, you get the rear naked choke. 1.00

02:45:44.000 This guy must be hilarious. 0.99

02:45:46.000 Because setting up this is like, he's being silly. 0.93

02:45:49.000 Look at it, he's got his tongue out and everything. 0.96

02:45:51.000 That's great. 0.99

02:45:51.000 That fucking never happens. 0.99

02:45:53.000 Maybe he's a Shawn Michaels fan, because I think that was Shawn Michaels. 0.99

02:45:59.000 Wrestlers now don't call that a Boston Crab anymore, because it's... 1.00

02:46:04.000 What do they call it?

02:46:05.000 That would be...

02:46:05.000 The Walls of Jericho.

02:46:07.000 A sharpshooter, maybe?

02:46:08.000 The Walls of Jericho?

02:46:09.000 Yeah.

02:46:09.000 That's it?

02:46:10.000 That's what another video's calling it, yeah.

02:46:11.000 This fighter pulls off Walls of Jericho with a sim clip.

02:46:14.000 But it's called different things depending on who...

02:46:16.000 Walls of Jericho is Chris Jericho's version of that.

02:46:18.000 Right.

02:46:19.000 Right. 1.00

02:46:20.000 That shit works. 1.00

02:46:21.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:46:22.000 You would never get a guy in that.

02:46:24.000 I mean, unless you're that much better than the guy.

02:46:26.000 You could say that.

02:46:27.000 That guy was already done.

02:46:28.000 Because when that guy goes belly down and he's reaching for his legs, that guy stayed belly down.

02:46:35.000 He's done.

02:46:36.000 A guy who is good would go to one hip.

02:46:39.000 You would immediately go to your side and you would hip escape and you would put a hand on the hip and you would try to get to a defensive position which would either be half guard.

02:46:47.000 That's how wrestlers get out of it. 0.76

02:46:50.000 They turn to the side.

02:46:51.000 Yeah, they turn to the side and then put their head under and they can get out.

02:46:55.000 Yeah, well, it's real wrestling, like real actual catch wrestling.

02:47:01.000 Yeah.

02:47:17.000 Would go on the road and they would go to carnivals.

02:47:22.000 And they would compete with any man who wanted to get in the ring with them. 0.99

02:47:26.000 And they would have these submission matches.

02:47:29.000 And you could either pin a guy, you could win by pin, or you could win by tap.

02:47:33.000 Or a guy would tap out from a submission.

02:47:35.000 And there's a lot of techniques that came from catch wrestling.

02:47:39.000 That are applicable today, including there's some catch specialists that compete and win against very high-level guys in submission matches and against jiu-jitsu guys, including the Gracies. 0.75

02:47:50.000 One of the best examples is Josh Barnett.

02:47:52.000 Josh Barnett is the youngest guy to ever win the UFC Heavyweight Championship.

02:47:57.000 Elite, top of the food chain, professional mixed martial arts fighter, who's also a catch wrestler and a huge fan of pro wrestling and has competed in pro wrestling in Japan, done it in America, does commentary on pro wrestling, is just a huge pro wrestling proponent and connoisseur.

02:48:18.000 And Josh would use catch wrestling techniques on elite jiu-jitsu fighters and tap them.

02:48:25.000 And it's a big deal.

02:48:26.000 There's a guy named Timothy Thatcher in pro wrestling who's...

02:48:32.000 I think comes from the catch world and he's pretty treacherous.

02:48:36.000 Oh, yeah.

02:48:37.000 Well, it's a very violent form of submission wrestling because wrestlers compete very differently than submission fighters.

02:48:44.000 Wrestlers kind of go all out and sprint because matches, although you have to have incredible endurance to compete in an amateur wrestling match, there's a time limit.

02:48:53.000 And these time limits are fairly short in comparison to, say, like Gordon Ryan, who's the greatest jiu-jitsu athlete of all time, who's only 27 today.

02:49:04.000 Wow.

02:49:05.000 And he is one of the most disciplined people I think I've ever met in my life and one of the most driven and intelligent.

02:49:12.000 Trains 365 days a year.

02:49:16.000 Wow.

02:49:16.000 Doesn't matter if he's sick, doesn't matter if he's tired, he'll just train less hard.

02:49:20.000 Trains every single day. 1.00

02:49:24.000 Holidays, birthdays, fuck you, you're at the gym. 1.00

02:49:28.000 And he has... 1.00

02:49:31.000 These no-time-limit submission matches against the best jiu-jitsu fighters in the world.

02:49:37.000 And people are terrified to compete against him in this because it's a matter of time before he gets you.

02:49:42.000 And so he has this slow, steady approach where he's slowly ramping up the heat and slowly putting his foot on the gas until the guys start to break and then he gets them.

02:49:55.000 And he was competing recently against this guy, Felipe Pena.

02:49:59.000 And Felipe is also elite, world champion, top of the food chain.

02:50:05.000 And Gordon got him to quit at 45 minutes.

02:50:08.000 Because he was so on his way to getting defeated.

02:50:12.000 But his pace was a pace that was set up for time limit jiu-jitsu matches.

02:50:17.000 Where it's a lot of explosivity, a lot of quick movement, a lot of technique.

02:50:22.000 But it's also you're recognizing that you can only do this for so long.

02:50:25.000 Yeah, he's a sprint expert.

02:50:26.000 Exactly.

02:50:27.000 I have to use the restroom again.

02:50:28.000 Alright.

02:50:29.000 I think I'm gonna use the restroom too.

02:50:31.000 Then we'll come back and wrap this up.

02:50:32.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:50:33.000 I'm gonna watch the catch wrestling guy you met.

02:50:35.000 Yeah, Josh Barnett?

02:50:36.000 Yeah.

02:50:37.000 There's a ton of stuff about him on the internet and great mixed martial arts fights and a lot of submission grappling matches and all kinds of stuff.

02:50:48.000 Cool.

02:50:49.000 I would have never imagined you for a pro wrestling fan.

02:50:51.000 That's the most shocking thing about this conversation, I think.

02:50:55.000 It's the most fun.

02:50:58.000 Have you ever been?

02:51:00.000 To a pro wrestling match?

02:51:02.000 Yes.

02:51:03.000 What did I go see?

02:51:05.000 I definitely saw one when I was younger.

02:51:08.000 And I think that was it.

02:51:12.000 Tony's always trying to get me to come to see Wrestlemania.

02:51:15.000 He's like, if you go to Wrestlemania, you'll get it.

02:51:17.000 You'll get it.

02:51:18.000 You'll understand.

02:51:18.000 It's actually better on TV than in person, honestly.

02:51:21.000 Really?

02:51:21.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:51:22.000 Why is that?

02:51:22.000 Because the commentators are a big part of it.

02:51:25.000 And the commentators are super funny.

02:51:28.000 Wildly funny.

02:51:29.000 Everything's a crazy exaggeration.

02:51:31.000 Like I can remember one call from a WrestleMania from childhood where one of the Japanese wrestlers would throw some, you know, had a little bit of salt in his palm and throw it in the guy's eyes.

02:51:45.000 And Gorilla Monsoon was the commentator at that point.

02:51:48.000 And he said, he just threw about five pounds of salt in the man's eyes.

02:51:53.000 You know, everything is just insane.

02:51:57.000 But that's the show.

02:51:58.000 It's like the show isn't... 0.64

02:52:00.000 It works on this other level where everything is ridiculous and insane, and you're not going to see a fight.

02:52:11.000 Do you know what I'm saying?

02:52:12.000 If you reframe it for, I'm not going to see a fight, I'm going to have fun seeing this crazy show.

02:52:18.000 It's like the circus.

02:52:19.000 Right.

02:52:20.000 And it really is.

02:52:23.000 And it's edgy.

02:52:24.000 Like, they'll do crazies. 0.95

02:52:26.000 You know, women getting hit with chairs. 1.00

02:52:28.000 It's insane.

02:52:29.000 It's completely wrong.

02:52:32.000 But that's the...

02:52:34.000 What's so cool about it is that they cross lines in the name of telling the story...

02:52:45.000 Where it's like a bad guy could do something really bad.

02:52:49.000 Because you're supposed to hate them and boo them, so they do something really vile.

02:52:53.000 And it's funny because it's so crazy, and it's funny because it's so wrong.

02:52:58.000 It's like with Dice.

02:52:59.000 A lot of the jokes were, what was funny about it was, it's wrong.

02:53:04.000 Do you know what I'm saying?

02:53:05.000 Knowing that it's wrong is where the humor is.

02:53:09.000 Is that the only thing you consume on television?

02:53:13.000 Mainly.

02:53:14.000 I'd say I watch some documentaries.

02:53:17.000 But mainly wrestling.

02:53:22.000 That's amazing.

02:53:22.000 It just takes so much time.

02:53:24.000 There's so much.

02:53:25.000 And it's not like watching a fight.

02:53:29.000 It's all this, like a soap opera.

02:53:31.000 There are all these storylines that keep going.

02:53:33.000 If you miss a week...

02:53:35.000 You're not in the story.

02:53:38.000 Oh, right.

02:53:39.000 Yeah, it's like the matches are the least of the story.

02:53:47.000 Sometimes they'll resolve themselves in the ring, but the storytelling rarely happens in the ring.

02:53:52.000 It's part of it, but it's not the big part of it.

02:53:55.000 Have you ever talked to Billy Corgan about this?

02:53:57.000 Yeah, of course.

02:53:58.000 When I had him on, I thought that was surprising.

02:54:00.000 I knew that he owned some pro wrestling organization.

02:54:04.000 He was one of the owners.

02:54:05.000 Yeah.

02:54:05.000 He owns the NWA now.

02:54:07.000 I actually started a pro wrestling company called Smoky Mountain Wrestling in the 90s at a time when...

02:54:18.000 Wrestling wasn't serving me, you know, as a fan, wrestling changed and it became a different show.

02:54:28.000 In what way?

02:54:34.000 The real wrestling is really edgy and crazy and like it's outlaw.

02:54:39.000 And something happened when Hulk Hogan got popular.

02:54:44.000 WWE, maybe even WWF back then, changed to be more like aimed at little kids.

02:54:51.000 And when it became aimed at little kids, they were more like everybody was dressed like a superhero and it was goofier.

02:54:59.000 Whereas the other wrestling was more like Badass barroom brawlers.

02:55:06.000 So it was different.

02:55:07.000 One was like a Western, one was like a kids' show.

02:55:10.000 So when wrestling turned into a kids' show, and WWE was the biggest, the other league used to be called the NWA, and it became WCW, and WCW followed suit, and they started chasing kids also.

02:55:24.000 So for all of the real wrestling fans like me, nobody was doing wrestling anymore.

02:55:29.000 Everybody was doing shows for kids.

02:55:32.000 So, just again, as a fan, I want wrestling, so I funded a league to start in the South that was more like real wrestling.

02:55:42.000 And then the Attitude Era happened in WWE, and they turned back into being hard wrestling.

02:55:48.000 The Attitude Era.

02:55:49.000 Yeah.

02:55:49.000 That was like Stone Cold Steve Austin and Triple H, where it got more like it's not for kids anymore.

02:55:58.000 It got serious.

02:56:05.000 I want to watch pro wrestling with you.

02:56:07.000 We'll do it.

02:56:08.000 I want to sit down with you while you're watching pro wrestling.

02:56:11.000 We'll do it.

02:56:11.000 We'll watch some highlights.

02:56:13.000 Okay.

02:56:14.000 You're going to love it.

02:56:15.000 Because you have a good sense of humor.

02:56:16.000 If you have a good sense of humor, it's the most fun.

02:56:20.000 It's the most fun.

02:56:21.000 Just can't think of it as a fight.

02:56:22.000 You can't compare it to anything else.

02:56:24.000 It's its own thing.

02:56:25.000 Maybe that's my problem.

02:56:26.000 Yeah.

02:56:26.000 Maybe my problem is wanting it to be real.

02:56:30.000 Yeah.

02:56:30.000 It wouldn't be better if it was real.

02:56:32.000 That's the thing.

02:56:32.000 It wouldn't be better.

02:56:34.000 This thing is better as it is.

02:56:36.000 There's good versions of it and not.

02:56:38.000 But when it's good, it's the best.

02:56:43.000 So when you started your own organization, how did you go about doing that?

02:56:47.000 How did you get talent?

02:56:48.000 How did you find the right people?

02:56:51.000 There was a...

02:56:51.000 So in wrestling, there were wrestlers and there were managers.

02:56:54.000 There are less managers today than there were, but there's still...

02:56:57.000 Paul Heyman manages Roman Reigns, the head of the table who's current champion.

02:57:02.000 Longest reigning champion in decades, I believe.

02:57:07.000 And...

02:57:10.000 The best managers were always really entertaining, kind of like comedians.

02:57:14.000 And the best ones of all time were Bobby Heenan, Jim Cornette, and Paul Heyman.

02:57:22.000 And when NWA turned into WCW and started going soft, Jim Cornette left wrestling, and he's one of the great minds of pro wrestling.

02:57:34.000 And I met him, and through him, I talked about, we talked about together.

02:57:39.000 It was really his dream, but we had the same dream.

02:57:41.000 We both wanted real wrestling at a time when wrestling was going through this, turning into a kid's show.

02:57:50.000 So he managed it, and it was based in Louisville, Kentucky, which is where he lived.

02:57:55.000 And so you would go to the events?

02:57:57.000 Rarely.

02:57:57.000 I went one time.

02:57:58.000 So you just set it up?

02:57:59.000 Set it up, funded, and he'd run stuff by me and I would share my creative opinion, but ultimately it was his show.

02:58:05.000 And you were just doing it because you wanted that kind of thing to exist?

02:58:10.000 I wanted...

02:58:11.000 I felt like...

02:58:13.000 I'm the audience.

02:58:15.000 Nobody is serving my needs.

02:58:17.000 Same reason I started making hip-hop records.

02:58:19.000 Same thing.

02:58:19.000 It's always been.

02:58:20.000 Everything I make, I make it because if someone else would make it, I wouldn't have to make it and it'd be fine.

02:58:24.000 I just want to like stuff.

02:58:26.000 So if I can see a way to make something crazy and interesting that probably no one else is going to make, then that's a thing for me to make.

02:58:36.000 Is there anything else like that in your life that's unusual that you're involved in creatively?

02:58:44.000 I don't know.

02:58:44.000 I don't know how to answer because to me it's not odd.

02:58:48.000 So, I don't know.

02:58:51.000 It's just whatever you like.

02:58:53.000 Whatever you like.

02:58:53.000 Yeah, there's no right or wrong.

02:58:55.000 It's like we all like what we like.

02:58:57.000 Listen, that's a beautiful way to live life. 0.99

02:59:00.000 I mean, it sounds like you've got a fucking formula. 0.97

02:59:03.000 And not just that, something that's... 0.98

02:59:05.000 I think it's going to resonate with a lot of people.

02:59:09.000 I really do.

02:59:10.000 It's really...

02:59:10.000 If you think about it this way, if someone were to give you two plates of food and say, taste both, and you taste both, and say, okay, which one do you like better?

02:59:20.000 That's not a hard question to answer usually.

02:59:23.000 That's all it is.

02:59:24.000 It's as simple as that.

02:59:26.000 As like, try to get it down to two choices and say, A or B, which one is better?

02:59:32.000 And then continuing setting up A and Bs.

02:59:36.000 Keep...

02:59:36.000 And you know it.

02:59:38.000 You taste it.

02:59:39.000 There's no other...

02:59:40.000 You just have to block out any other, oh, what so-and-so's going to say or what this one does or what that other person did or what they're playing on the radio.

02:59:49.000 None of those things matter.

02:59:50.000 All that matters is when I hear this, do I want to lean forward?

02:59:54.000 Do I get excited?

02:59:55.000 Or do I feel like I want to change channel or I want to put on something else?

02:59:59.000 If I want to turn it off...

03:00:01.000 It's not for me.

03:00:02.000 If I'm excited and want to hear more, great.

03:00:06.000 And that's all...

03:00:07.000 Everything comes down to that.

03:00:12.000 That is one of the most insidious things about social media, is that it gives people so many of those what does everyone else think about what I'm doing thing.

03:00:22.000 It doesn't matter.

03:00:24.000 It really doesn't matter.

03:00:26.000 It can't...

03:00:26.000 If you're aiming towards greatness...

03:00:31.000 You don't get there by what other people think.

03:00:35.000 It doesn't work that way.

03:00:37.000 It doesn't.

03:00:39.000 It really doesn't.

03:00:41.000 And so many people are intoxicated by other people's opinions.

03:00:49.000 I mean, that said, when someone likes something, it's nice.

03:00:52.000 I'm not saying you don't care what they think.

03:00:56.000 It's nice, but you can't make decisions based on what anyone else thinks.

03:01:01.000 Right.

03:01:03.000 Again, if I make something and if I have a choice for people to like it or not, I would hope they like it.

03:01:10.000 But I'm not changing one note with the idea of They might not like this, so I'm gonna change the note.

03:01:19.000 Never, ever, ever.

03:01:21.000 Not one note.

03:01:23.000 Not one word.

03:01:25.000 I think that's the best way to end this.

03:01:28.000 My pleasure.

03:01:29.000 Thank you very much, brother.

03:01:30.000 Thanks for having me, man.

03:01:31.000 It was fun.

03:01:32.000 The book is called The Creative Act, A Way of Being, Rick Rubin.

03:01:37.000 It's available now.

03:01:38.000 Did you do the audio version of it?

03:01:39.000 Not yet, but I'm hoping to.

03:01:41.000 I know there will be an audio version.

03:01:43.000 If I can do it justice, it will be me.

03:01:45.000 If I can't do it justice...

03:01:47.000 Oh, it has to be you.

03:01:48.000 I'm going to try.

03:01:48.000 It's got to be you.

03:01:49.000 You can do it justice.

03:01:50.000 You can do it.

03:01:52.000 It's like acting.

03:01:53.000 It's not just reading.

03:01:55.000 Reading out loud is a very particular thing.

03:01:57.000 It is.

03:01:57.000 But it's got to be in your voice.

03:01:58.000 I'm going to do everything I can to make it happen.

03:02:01.000 I have all my faith.

03:02:02.000 Thank you.

03:02:03.000 Thank you.

03:02:04.000 Bye, everybody.

03:02:04.000 Bye.

The Joe Rogan Experience - October 12, 2022

Joe Rogan Experience #1881 - Rick Rubin

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Transcript