The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #2330 - Bono

00:00:01.000 Joe Rogan Podcast.

00:00:03.000 Check it out.

00:00:03.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:06.000 Train by day.

00:00:07.000 Joe Rogan Podcast by night.

00:00:08.000 All day. 0.99

00:00:13.000 I fucking loved the film. 0.99

00:00:14.000 It was really great. 0.99

00:00:15.000 I watched it last night, yeah.

00:00:15.000 You saw it?

00:00:17.000 It was cool too because I always feel special when I got to enter in the password because I know that nobody else has seen it yet.

00:00:22.000 You know, I got to enter in the email and the password and I watched it and I screen mirrored it on the TV.

00:00:27.000 It was great, man.

00:00:29.000 And it was so, like, almost like a fever dream.

00:00:32.000 It was wild.

00:00:33.000 Like, the way you set it up, all black and white.

00:00:35.000 Yeah, you get past the first three minutes.

00:00:37.000 Yeah.

00:00:38.000 Even my own mates are like, oh, don't do that. 1.00

00:00:42.000 It's like, what?

00:00:42.000 Wow!

00:00:43.000 And it is like a fever dream, that opening.

00:00:46.000 But that really happened to me.

00:00:47.000 It was great, man.

00:00:48.000 It's great.

00:00:49.000 And it's also like I love the way you did it.

00:00:50.000 Like you played the beginning of some songs and you talked about the origin of the songs.

00:00:55.000 The thing that I have a hard time believing, though, is that you weren't a good singer when you were young.

00:00:59.000 Well, you know, punk rock, you're a bit of a shouter.

00:01:03.000 You know, that's really what you do.

00:01:04.000 You just get up there and shout.

00:01:06.000 I'm shouting at God.

00:01:07.000 I'm shouting at everyone.

00:01:09.000 I'm shouting at the band.

00:01:11.000 That scene when we're doing I Will Follow, that's really true.

00:01:15.000 So I'm there and we're improvising this song that becomes I Will Follow if you walk away, walk away, walk away.

00:01:23.000 I'm just like this.

00:01:24.000 We're trying to just do something original.

00:01:28.000 And we're really ripping off, the irony is we're really ripping off Public Image Limit.

00:01:33.000 Johnny Rotten became John Lydon again for this band called Public Image Limited back in the late 70s.

00:01:41.000 And I'm singing about, you know, it's a suicide note, really.

00:01:45.000 And I'm singing about this, and they're saying, like, what's it about?

00:01:48.000 And I said, I think it's this guy who's going to follow somebody into the grave.

00:01:53.000 You know, they're going to, I think it's about, it's a child following their mother, missing them so much that he'll follow them into the grave.

00:02:03.000 Whoa.

00:02:03.000 And then we realize that our rehearsal room, the Little Yellow House.

00:02:10.000 It's beside the cemetery where my mother is buried and I've never visited her once or talked about her once.

00:02:19.000 And we've been rehearsing there for months. 0.99

00:02:22.000 And it's funny, you know, you can deny somebody in conversation, you can deny somebody to yourself, but in the songs, all that shit comes out. 0.99

00:02:31.000 Wow. 1.00

00:02:32.000 Wow.

00:02:33.000 But thank you for watching it.

00:02:34.000 I loved it.

00:02:35.000 Thank you.

00:02:36.000 It was such an interesting...

00:02:40.000 I've never seen anybody do that like that.

00:02:45.000 It's like a documentation of your career, but in this very unique way with talking about things and explaining these moments, and then the music plays, and it's all black and white.

00:02:57.000 It was really cool.

00:02:58.000 Yeah, there's a sort of black and white lens at a kind of clarity.

00:03:05.000 I did this series of shows.

00:03:08.000 In the Beacon Theatre in New York.

00:03:12.000 And it was going so well, we thought we should record it.

00:03:17.000 I will tell you, the night before we opened our show in New York, my Mrs. Ali said, I don't think you should do this.

00:03:25.000 Just please, please do not do this to yourself.

00:03:29.000 In front of, you know, a New York crowd.

00:03:32.000 Cancel it now.

00:03:33.000 Do what most people do on a book tour.

00:03:35.000 Get somebody to interview them.

00:03:37.000 And just, they'll come anyway.

00:03:38.000 Everyone will be happy.

00:03:40.000 And I don't know.

00:03:41.000 I just went for once.

00:03:43.000 I didn't take her sage advice.

00:03:45.000 And I did it.

00:03:47.000 And the difference was, with an audience, it was funny.

00:03:52.000 And she was like, oh, that's the bit I didn't get in the rehearsals. 0.92

00:03:56.000 So what was she thinking?

00:03:56.000 It's funny.

00:03:58.000 It was self-indulgent?

00:03:59.000 So I thought it was dull, self-indulgent, here you are.

00:04:02.000 I mean, all these things are a version of...

00:04:06.000 No.

00:04:08.000 I was calling it a memoir.

00:04:10.000 Me book, what I wrote myself.

00:04:13.000 It's the memoir.

00:04:13.000 And look, there's something narcissistic.

00:04:16.000 But it's your material.

00:04:18.000 That's what you get.

00:04:20.000 It's not just your body, your psychology is the canvas.

00:04:24.000 And, you know, I grew up, John Lennon, you know, the Beatles were everything for me.

00:04:30.000 And, you know, John Lennon made a sort of performance art out of his wedding to Yoko and he did a bed-in for peace and he was ready to look ridiculous for peace. 0.89

00:04:40.000 And, you know, I do ridiculous quite well, I'm told. 0.65

00:04:44.000 So that was my definition, you know, of... 0.73

00:04:49.000 Yeah.

00:04:50.000 Was to just go out there.

00:04:52.000 But the thing that being in U2, which has given me everything, took away, if it took away anything, was, you know, people don't come along to our shows for a belly laugh.

00:05:06.000 You know what I mean?

00:05:07.000 So as a comedian, you understand that.

00:05:07.000 Right, right.

00:05:10.000 You know, it's like I...

00:05:16.000 I came out of nowhere.

00:05:17.000 I haven't put it in a song yet, I don't think.

00:05:19.000 But, you know, I think it's laughter is the evidence of freedom.

00:05:24.000 And I don't trust people talking about freedom now.

00:05:27.000 I want people to be free.

00:05:28.000 If you talk, be it then.

00:05:31.000 Be it.

00:05:31.000 Yeah.

00:05:32.000 And so I wanted to be that on stage.

00:05:37.000 I wanted to be loose.

00:05:39.000 I wanted to be...

00:05:49.000 But it turns out it's everyone's family.

00:05:52.000 It's a little opera.

00:05:53.000 And it is a bit of a soap opera.

00:05:54.000 But it's also a real opera.

00:05:58.000 These are big feelings, you know.

00:06:00.000 you're going after your dad.

00:06:01.000 Like you're like a young, what are you know, elk is a romantic word for it, you're just taking them on.

00:06:08.000 And this poor man is just...

00:06:13.000 He's trying to bring up two kids.

00:06:15.000 I'm just an obnoxious kind of thing who somehow psychologically blames him for the death of my mother.

00:06:26.000 Because as Jim Sheridan says to me, it doesn't have to be actually true to be psychologically true.

00:06:32.000 And that kids feel...

00:06:40.000 And I went after my dad, and by playing him every night in the Beacon Theatre and around the world, I actually learned to love him.

00:06:54.000 I learned to like him, actually.

00:06:56.000 I always loved him, but I learned to like him.

00:06:58.000 He made me laugh more.

00:07:00.000 So I got humour.

00:07:02.000 Humour was the gift.

00:07:04.000 From that show.

00:07:05.000 And the humor was evident with the audience there.

00:07:08.000 Yeah.

00:07:09.000 But not evident when my missus came, which is why she wanted to pull the plug. 0.99

00:07:14.000 Well, rehearsals are hard.

00:07:16.000 It's also hard when someone is too close to you.

00:07:19.000 They're there with you every day.

00:07:22.000 This is true with comedy as well.

00:07:25.000 If someone sees your act too many times, like if someone's traveling with you, like if my wife went to see my shows all the time, There's parts of it she'd be like, oh, don't do that.

00:07:36.000 Oh, don't do this.

00:07:37.000 You get too close to it.

00:07:39.000 She's too close to you. 0.98

00:07:40.000 But to see it with fresh eyes, to see it in front of that audience, the joy that they have when the music starts playing, when some of the songs that they love, it's amazing.

00:07:51.000 You can feel it in the show.

00:07:54.000 It's like the pure joy.

00:07:57.000 The people that came to see it were hardcore fans.

00:08:00.000 Well, what happened was Andrew Dominick, Australian director, and he did some of the shots without any audience.

00:08:10.000 Just he cleared them out on a day off.

00:08:12.000 And then some of them came in which were hardcore fans, as you say.

00:08:16.000 And that was, in a way, that was the most terrifying.

00:08:22.000 Because I, as a performer, I was a performer.

00:08:27.000 I'm drawn to spontaneous acts.

00:08:32.000 That's what, when we started out as a band, I was attracted to performers who I thought might leave the stage and follow me home, mug me, or, you know, tell my friends Wild people.

00:08:50.000 Well, just, yeah.

00:08:51.000 I mean, and I'm still a track.

00:08:53.000 Iggy Pop, when I was growing up, was the, you know, Patti Smith.

00:08:57.000 Patti Smith used to enter the stage elbowing her way through the crowd myself and Larry Mullen drummer and you two we left stage one night when we were And we felt a liberation.

00:09:18.000 Breaking the fourth wall has been everything for our bands.

00:09:23.000 trying to smash it by surfing it, you know, by jumping into the crowd.

00:09:31.000 I had the...

00:09:46.000 The non-violent white flag.

00:09:48.000 The same flag that I'm still on about, the flag of surrender, right, in that show.

00:09:52.000 But back then I'm 23 or whatever and I'm going into the crowd and I see people who are, you know...

00:10:02.000 The next thing, I'm throwing a punch.

00:10:06.000 Somebody in our own audience.

00:10:09.000 That's how much non-violence meant to me.

00:10:12.000 You know, but I'm attracted to feral performers, I suppose, is a word for it.

00:10:18.000 It's just, you're in it and you're not fully in control of it.

00:10:24.000 Right.

00:10:27.000 Mark Rylands is a great one.

00:10:29.000 Daniel Day-Lewis walked off stage one night, saw a ghost of his father, a rumor, had it when he was playing Hamlet.

00:10:36.000 But, yeah, so having the crowd in who knew what was going to happen, that unnerves me a bit because how do I surprise them?

00:10:46.000 Turns out by making...

00:10:52.000 If you're a stand-up for a minute, a minute.

00:10:56.000 I was a sit-down comedian.

00:10:58.000 Well, what you're doing, and I think what you're saying that you're attracted to is something that's not contrived.

00:11:04.000 Something that's pure.

00:11:05.000 It could be messy.

00:11:07.000 It could be, you know, Patti Smith elbowing people or you running through the crowds.

00:11:12.000 It's real.

00:11:13.000 And there's so much in this world that's not real.

00:11:17.000 There's so much that's manufactured.

00:11:20.000 There's so much that's produced.

00:11:22.000 Run through a focus group, and there's so much that doesn't resonate.

00:11:26.000 Like, you don't feel it as a piece of art.

00:11:29.000 You don't feel it as like a real person pouring out their emotions and their soul.

00:11:33.000 But great music, you feel.

00:11:36.000 It gets into you.

00:11:37.000 It gets into your cells, you know?

00:11:40.000 No one can figure out how it works or why it works or why this does and this doesn't. 0.98

00:11:47.000 Why does Johnny Cash have such a fucking cool voice? 0.95

00:11:50.000 What is it? 0.99

00:11:51.000 What is it?

00:11:52.000 But there's something about real.

00:11:55.000 It's like a vitamin.

00:11:57.000 It's like going out in the sun when it's been raining.

00:12:00.000 You soak it in.

00:12:02.000 Yeah, it is.

00:12:05.000 I mean, there's pretentious ways of describing it.

00:12:08.000 People say we first sang to each other before we spoke.

00:12:13.000 You know, it's like bird song.

00:12:15.000 I don't know who said that.

00:12:16.000 It's probably on drugs.

00:12:18.000 But it could have been a scientist.

00:12:20.000 And anthropology might suggest we certainly, the goat song, you go back to Greek tragedy, you had a drum and a voice.

00:12:30.000 So it's very primal.

00:12:32.000 Yeah.

00:12:34.000 And it is the language of the spirit.

00:12:41.000 Somehow there is worship involved, whether it's God, nature, money.

00:12:48.000 An extraordinary woman has just walked across the street.

00:12:52.000 But it seems to be that music is where we are creatures of awe.

00:13:02.000 Yes.

00:13:02.000 And wonder.

00:13:04.000 And, you know, you mentioned Johnny Cash.

00:13:09.000 I had the blessing in my life of getting to know him.

00:13:16.000 And as a believer, I don't know if you know, I'm a believer, I'm just not a very good one.

00:13:22.000 But he, there was not a pious bone in his body.

00:13:26.000 And I learned that...

00:13:32.000 He got nervous around people who were too self-righteous.

00:13:36.000 And he had this huge spirit in him, you know, prayerful spirit.

00:13:41.000 Myself and Adam Clayton were driving through America, I think around the time of the Joshua Tree.

00:13:48.000 And I'd met Johnny a couple of years ago.

00:13:52.000 I found out where he lived.

00:13:54.000 He had a zoo in Nashville.

00:13:57.000 He had a house in Nashville.

00:13:59.000 And we go in to meet June, his missus and Johnny.

00:14:06.000 And he shows us this table filled with plates of everything.

00:14:12.000 I'm like, wow, we're coming, just the two of us.

00:14:15.000 He said, no, honey, that's my cookbook.

00:14:17.000 I'm just doing a photo shoot for my cookbook.

00:14:19.000 We're in here, you know, we're having a, And we sat there, myself and Adam, and...

00:14:33.000 And Adams wasn't a praying type at that time, but he was like, wow, it's Johnny Cash.

00:14:40.000 So, you know, we all held hands and whatever.

00:14:44.000 And Johnny Cash made this beautiful, poetic blessing.

00:14:48.000 And I just thought, like, wow.

00:14:51.000 Of course he's touched.

00:14:52.000 And then he just turned to Adam and just goes, sure missed the drugs, though.

00:14:58.000 And Adam just fell in love with him, you know?

00:15:02.000 Because he couldn't be pious.

00:15:03.000 Right.

00:15:04.000 He just, he had to be himself.

00:15:07.000 Yeah.

00:15:07.000 Years later, if it's years later, and we Oh, wow, there you go.

00:15:17.000 There it is.

00:15:18.000 That's Adam there, yeah.

00:15:19.000 Yeah.

00:15:20.000 He looks like he might have had a few tequilas.

00:15:22.000 And I don't know.

00:15:24.000 But, oh, wow.

00:15:26.000 And I'm giving it the arty, poetic face.

00:15:28.000 I am a poet, like you are.

00:15:31.000 And I called.

00:15:35.000 I heard he was in trouble.

00:15:42.000 He was very ill.

00:15:44.000 Years later than this.

00:15:46.000 And I called.

00:15:49.000 I called up and June answered the phone. 1.00

00:15:54.000 Excuse the poor Texans, all you Texans out there, but she was like, or Nashville in her case, she was like, oh, Bano, wow, thank you for calling.

00:16:05.000 It's so good to hear from you.

00:16:07.000 How's Dublin?

00:16:08.000 How's Ali?

00:16:10.000 How's the Burlington?

00:16:11.000 This is a hotel, right?

00:16:13.000 And I was like, great, and we're talking.

00:16:16.000 You know, phrases with June.

00:16:19.000 She said, what's going on with this?

00:16:21.000 And I said, look, eventually I said, look, June, I'm just calling because I heard John wasn't well.

00:16:28.000 And I just wanted him to know that we're thinking about him.

00:16:33.000 She said, oh, honey, we're in bed.

00:16:35.000 He's right beside me.

00:16:37.000 And he hands me the phone.

00:16:40.000 Or she hands him the phone.

00:16:41.000 He goes, sorry about that.

00:16:45.000 I'm fine.

00:16:47.000 And bless her.

00:16:50.000 Actually, June passed away first.

00:16:53.000 And Johnny called Rick Rubin, and those American recordings were...

00:17:06.000 Because if you don't, I will die.

00:17:09.000 Wow.

00:17:09.000 And if you hear those American recordings, amazing version of Nine Inch Nails.

00:17:17.000 Hurt?

00:17:17.000 Hurt.

00:17:18.000 He did a version of One.

00:17:19.000 Also, Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus.

00:17:22.000 I mean, it's just, what a voice.

00:17:25.000 Are you a fan of Johnny Cash?

00:17:28.000 Huge.

00:17:28.000 I used to have a dog named Johnny Cash.

00:17:31.000 Does the dog bite?

00:17:33.000 No, not anymore.

00:17:35.000 He's dead.

00:17:35.000 He didn't bite when he was alive.

00:17:37.000 He was a nice dog.

00:17:38.000 It's just I had a habit of naming my dogs after famous singers.

00:17:43.000 Wow, we have a dog called Lemmy.

00:17:46.000 Oh, wow.

00:17:46.000 Named after Lemmy from Motherhead.

00:17:48.000 Oh, that's awesome.

00:17:49.000 Yeah, it's a girl, though.

00:17:50.000 I think she resents it.

00:17:52.000 Yeah, I had a dog named Frank Sinatra, and Marshall is named after Eminem.

00:17:58.000 Oh, man.

00:17:58.000 Well, they're two incredible people.

00:18:01.000 Don't get me started on Frank Sinatra, As long as we want to go.

00:18:08.000 Well, no, because...

00:18:10.000 Well, just Frank Sinatra.

00:18:12.000 it's just two questions.

00:18:14.000 One of them should be Frank Sinatra because I just...

00:18:19.000 I learned so much from him and I got to know him.

00:18:21.000 And as bizarre as that sounds, he's such a name-dropper, Frank.

00:18:27.000 No, but I did.

00:18:30.000 And probably if you're interested in singing, I could tell you one miracle that I learned from Frank Sinatra, which is a version of My Way.

00:18:44.000 And the original version, you know, it's a boast.

00:18:48.000 And years later he sang it, and I have a copy of it.

00:18:54.000 And Pavarotti stars in the film, as you know, I play him for a moment.

00:19:00.000 But it's a version of my way with, I mean, Pavarotti's the greatest singer on earth, but shouldn't sing in English.

00:19:08.000 Friends, I know it now!

00:19:10.000 You don't want that.

00:19:12.000 And so I have a version of it without the greatest singer in the history of the world, Pavarotti, on it.

00:19:18.000 It's just Frank singing 20 years after.

00:19:23.000 He'd sung my way as a boast.

00:19:25.000 Same key, same text, same arrangement, and now it's an apology.

00:19:33.000 Wow!

00:19:34.000 And that's a thing about singing, and Johnny Cash had that.

00:19:40.000 And, you know, I wish, I aspire to the place where my voice, to try and answer your first question, when I become a singer that can do that.

00:19:57.000 His voice when he was younger was very high-pitched and beautiful and had so much flexibility to it and so much tone.

00:20:05.000 And then probably all the cigarettes in Jack Daniels over the years sort of hardened his voice.

00:20:11.000 Skinny kid.

00:20:12.000 He used to swim underwater to get his lung expanded so he could get those bigger...

00:20:22.000 Really?

00:20:22.000 Yeah.

00:20:23.000 And we have his mugshot out there.

00:20:24.000 He got arrested.

00:20:25.000 He was like 125 pounds.

00:20:27.000 Yeah, he got arrested for...

00:20:33.000 Seduction?

00:20:33.000 I think it was seduction.

00:20:35.000 I think he seduced a married woman.

00:20:38.000 Oh, my Lord.

00:20:39.000 Yeah, there he is.

00:20:40.000 Oh, look at that.

00:20:41.000 Well, he said, I'm the only...

00:20:43.000 He said, you're the only...

00:20:46.000 He said, I certainly didn't say dude.

00:20:56.000 You're the only cat with an earring that I'm never going to like.

00:21:00.000 And I did.

00:21:03.000 If we're going to talk about singers, you have to talk about Sinatra.

00:21:06.000 I had extraordinary times with him.

00:21:08.000 He used to send me gifts every year.

00:21:12.000 Gold and Sapphire Cartier watch he sent me.

00:21:16.000 Oh, wow.

00:21:16.000 With Francis Albert.

00:21:21.000 Just every year he would send stuff.

00:21:23.000 Because we did a duet together on his first duet album, I've Got You Under My Skin.

00:21:30.000 Although we had a management received...

00:21:36.000 I hope this is not...

00:21:37.000 I'm not being...

00:21:48.000 It was a fax back then from Nippon EMI saying, we hear that Bono has done a duet with a Mr. Frank Sonalta called I've Got You Under My Chicken.

00:22:01.000 And that's just the great surrealist anthem of all time.

00:22:08.000 But yeah, for me, that was an unusual relationship.

00:22:13.000 and I if I ask myself why I would go after these great singers that perhaps people of my own generation had moved on from but I hadn't there was a part of me that wanted the blessing of an

00:22:38.000 I didn't really, by now, the bit of age, I realized I didn't have the sense to go after the same with women, but I was looking for my father in them, you know, whether it was Willie Nelson, you know, whether, you know, Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, Pavarov, all these people.

00:22:59.000 I mean, I...

00:22:59.000 I would...

00:23:01.000 I kind of...

00:23:05.000 And the band would be like, yeah.

00:23:08.000 And I'm going, yeah.

00:23:11.000 And there's so much for me to learn from these people, so much for all of us to learn.

00:23:16.000 These are extraordinary for a reason.

00:23:19.000 Sinatra had, you know, an incredible sense of humor and great timing.

00:23:26.000 What I learned from him was he...

00:23:35.000 So he would learn it as an actor would learn a part.

00:23:41.000 Then he would, on the piano, he'd kind of roughly, with his pianist, he'd figure out where to be in the bar and all of that.

00:23:50.000 And then when he went into the orchestra to meet them, you know, Nelson Riddle or whatever, you actually hear him.

00:24:00.000 You hear Frank Sinatra hearing the song in its full arrangement for the first time as he's singing it.

00:24:07.000 And that's fresh paint.

00:24:09.000 It's like any painter will tell you.

00:24:13.000 It's like Francis Bacon.

00:24:15.000 It's just that first stroke or first touch football.

00:24:17.000 The great players where the ball lands at their feet.

00:24:21.000 They don't stop it and pass it.

00:24:23.000 they pass it as they stop it it's really a very high level of artistry and he had that, I learnt that from him, I learnt lots of other things, I also tried to drink with him on a few occasions, which did not work out well, a

00:24:56.000 Be embraced by them and hang around them.

00:24:59.000 You know, a lot of people feel imposter syndrome, like they feel just it's bizarre to be around these legendary human beings.

00:25:08.000 Like, they're right there.

00:25:09.000 Like, I still kind of get weirded out by it.

00:25:12.000 Even when I met you today, I'm like, oh, that's Bono.

00:25:14.000 Like, it's still weird.

00:25:15.000 You know, it's still weird to meet people that are, like, hugely famous.

00:25:20.000 And when you were a young man, when U2 was just blowing up, was it strange to accept the fact, like, this is where we are.

00:25:28.000 We belong here.

00:25:29.000 Well, you got it right the first time.

00:25:33.000 There is a part of you that doesn't think you belong here.

00:25:36.000 Right.

00:25:37.000 And then when you're younger, you're not admitting that to yourself.

00:25:42.000 And I have a few annoying, more than a few annoying aspects, depending on who you're talking to.

00:25:53.000 But if I have an annoying gene, part of it is when I'm at my most vulnerable, I give it the most swagger.

00:26:06.000 So we were playing the Super Bowl.

00:26:08.000 We walked on just after 9-11.

00:26:13.000 big emotional moment and we're And I've got my ears in because the only way I'm in touch with was what's going on.

00:26:29.000 And we're walking through the crowd.

00:26:30.000 We've got the crowd on the pitch.

00:26:32.000 I think one of the first times that was ever done.

00:26:37.000 And somebody goes, yay!

00:26:38.000 And I can feel my ear come out.

00:26:41.000 And that will mean I'm all fair.

00:26:45.000 And if you look at the film, as I've had to, of us walking up to get on stage, I am giving it so much gin. 0.99

00:26:55.000 You just go, who is that obnoxious Irish fucking... 1.00

00:27:04.000 Here it is right here. 1.00

00:27:05.000 Oh, there it is.

00:27:06.000 I think I'm singing there, so if you just go back a little bit, you'll get the real out.

00:27:14.000 No, just before there.

00:27:15.000 But look, not a care in the world.

00:27:20.000 And that's...

00:27:25.000 Swagger is another word for it.

00:27:27.000 It's a shield.

00:27:28.000 It's a shield.

00:27:29.000 Yeah.

00:27:30.000 And as I get older, I...

00:27:45.000 And now, in that moment, you wake up.

00:27:48.000 It's a bit like the dream where you're naked in front of the old school and it's really cold.

00:27:57.000 And then you realize, yeah, your life, as you are realizing yourself now, Oh, how did this happen to me?

00:28:07.000 And how did I get to meet these extraordinary people?

00:28:12.000 And so that's why I wrote the book, Surrender.

00:28:15.000 That's why I did it.

00:28:16.000 Because it was just starting to realize.

00:28:19.000 When I was younger, I was like, yeah, you know.

00:28:22.000 Bob Dylan once asked us, I was 24, and he says, he was recording there, I was going to interview him.

00:28:31.000 And he said, do you want to go on stage or whatever and do a song?

00:28:35.000 And I said, well, he said, leopard skin, pillbox, that's an amazing song.

00:28:39.000 I said, oh, the lyrics are loud too.

00:28:42.000 And I'd been learning to improvise as a singer.

00:28:45.000 And I went out on stage and he said, you know, blowing in the wind.

00:28:52.000 I said, I probably got that one down.

00:28:55.000 But I didn't and I just walked out on stage and I People, oh, wow, one of ours is up there with Bob Dylan.

00:29:08.000 Wow, oh, it's Bob.

00:29:08.000 Wow, okay.

00:29:09.000 And he's going to sing, oh, my God, he can't sing.

00:29:13.000 Oh, he's changed the melody.

00:29:14.000 Oh, he's changed the words.

00:29:16.000 And he could just see, I mean, go down in flames.

00:29:20.000 And afterwards, I see Bob, and I say, look, I'm sorry about that.

00:29:26.000 It's just the way we've been working at the moment, just kind of improvising stuff.

00:29:30.000 And he was like, it's okay, you know, everything.

00:29:32.000 I make him up all the time.

00:29:34.000 And he was generous about it.

00:29:37.000 Nothing's fixed in time.

00:29:38.000 Something like that.

00:29:39.000 That's a great Bob Dylan impression.

00:29:40.000 Yeah.

00:29:41.000 One of my favorite moments in the film was when your bandmates were concerned that Pavarotti was going to show up with a camera crew.

00:29:48.000 And he showed up with a camera crew.

00:29:50.000 He did.

00:29:51.000 He did.

00:29:53.000 It was just funny.

00:29:54.000 It was a really well-timed moment.

00:29:57.000 And when you said it on stage, it was so well-timed.

00:30:00.000 Because it's like, here you're honoring this man who's this incredible, fantastic singer.

00:30:04.000 But your bandmates, they've got a good instinct.

00:30:08.000 This is going to be a big press-hop as well.

00:30:10.000 This is part of the reason why he wants to do this.

00:30:12.000 And then that's not going to be fun because it's going to be weird.

00:30:15.000 and then boom.

00:30:16.000 Yeah, one of the great...

00:30:24.000 It's interesting that there was a generosity there, which he wanted opera.

00:30:34.000 Because opera was kind of the punk of its time.

00:30:36.000 Classical musicians looked down on opera.

00:30:39.000 These are stories from the street.

00:30:42.000 They're too accessible.

00:30:44.000 Really?

00:30:44.000 Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:30:46.000 Oh, that's crazy.

00:30:46.000 I would have never imagined that.

00:30:47.000 Opera was much rougher.

00:30:48.000 And he instinctively knew.

00:30:53.000 And he was constantly trying to make relationships that would cross the divide and make sort of opera popular.

00:31:02.000 And so, to the point where, yeah, he did, he used to call our house and say, you know, at first it was with me, but then when he would haunt our housekeeper, Teresa, and say, like, is God at home?

00:31:18.000 We'll tell God he is late on the song or, you know, he'd do this kind of carry on.

00:31:23.000 And I, again, these figures in my life, I knew that I was in...

00:31:36.000 I knew this.

00:31:38.000 But the band, they didn't have the relationship with opera.

00:31:43.000 Well, actually, Edge's dad was into opera.

00:31:46.000 But my dad, I was using Luciano Pavarotti to get to my dad.

00:31:53.000 That was the real thing.

00:31:56.000 So, as you see in the film, I play my father just by turning my head.

00:32:02.000 And I become him.

00:32:03.000 And I was trying to impress him.

00:32:06.000 I'd be in Finnegan's pub where we'd be sitting, not speaking to each other.

00:32:10.000 And I'd try something and I'd go, what do you think about Luciano Pavarotti calling the house?

00:32:19.000 And he'd go, did he get a wrong number?

00:32:22.000 You know, all that.

00:32:26.000 And so, yeah, there was an emotional through line because our house was an opera.

00:32:34.000 Unfortunately, my dad was going on in him.

00:32:37.000 His life was operatic.

00:32:40.000 But it's also funny.

00:32:42.000 Yeah.

00:32:43.000 And it's also this you are both celebrating the brilliance of this incredible singer and also.

00:32:57.000 Yeah, and Princess Diana.

00:32:58.000 The best lines.

00:33:03.000 Because Edge is mother and father from Wales.

00:33:09.000 So we're with Pavarotti in Modena, I think it was, And he says to me, look, does your dad want to go?

00:33:36.000 And I, of course, know the reason.

00:33:39.000 I know the answer, and the reason for the answer.

00:33:42.000 But he says, well, just ask him.

00:33:45.000 So I ask him.

00:33:46.000 I just go, Da, listen, we wouldn't want to go meet Lady Di, you know, the princess.

00:33:52.000 What?

00:33:53.000 What?

00:33:55.000 Why would I want to meet a member of the British royal family?

00:34:00.000 That's like asking me, do I want to meet the winner of the lotto?

00:34:05.000 And I'm like, okay, got it, got it, got it.

00:34:07.000 And then later, she comes into our dressing room and melts him.

00:34:15.000 Just by reaching her hand at how do you do?

00:34:20.000 And he's like, oh, very well, thank you.

00:34:25.000 And as I say, 800 years of oppression.

00:34:29.000 Gone.

00:34:30.000 In a second.

00:34:31.000 And if you wonder about the reasoning for having a royal family, and a lot of Irish people do, there I...

00:34:43.000 The weight of it?

00:34:44.000 The weight of it overcame him?

00:34:45.000 Yeah.

00:34:46.000 It's a very bizarre relationship, though.

00:34:49.000 I'm one-quarter Irish, and I know the relationship between Ireland and the United Kingdom and England.

00:34:57.000 It's complicated.

00:34:58.000 Were you...

00:35:08.000 Is that true?

00:35:09.000 Yes.

00:35:10.000 Yeah.

00:35:11.000 So you don't like bullies?

00:35:12.000 No.

00:35:13.000 No.

00:35:14.000 No, I don't like that at all.

00:35:16.000 It's the weakest inclination of the human spirit, you know, to pick on the weak.

00:35:23.000 It's terrible.

00:35:24.000 It's a terrible instinct that humans have probably from the time where you had to ostracize weak people because you lived in a tribe of people barely surviving and you couldn't tolerate any weak links in the chain.

00:35:37.000 I mean, that's essentially probably where it came from.

00:35:39.000 It probably came out of a survival instinct.

00:35:41.000 A Darwinian thing.

00:35:42.000 Yes.

00:35:42.000 Where everyone was barbarians and you had to force people to be the hardest version possible because otherwise the genes wouldn't survive.

00:35:49.000 Yeah.

00:35:49.000 The survival of the fittest, it's...

00:35:55.000 Yeah.

00:35:56.000 I mean, this is one of the things that attracts me to Christianity, is the idea of the first will be last, the last will be first. 0.98

00:36:03.000 It's so radical.

00:36:05.000 And it's literally the opposite of the survival of the Philistines. 0.97

00:36:08.000 Right.

00:36:09.000 But America, why I love America is it has, I mean, the British Empire bullied it.

00:36:18.000 And it stood up.

00:36:20.000 We were coming here, I was asking, Someone in the car about the Declaration of Independence and how many Irish signatures there were.

00:36:29.000 It wasn't that many.

00:36:30.000 I can't remember what they were.

00:36:31.000 But they were all committing treason.

00:36:35.000 They were putting their lives, they were pledging their lives, their fortune, and their sacred honor.

00:36:42.000 So America, the very essence of America, is this idea of sticking it to the bully.

00:36:51.000 And I know America can be a bully.

00:36:53.000 We have our moments and all of that.

00:36:56.000 But it's the essence of who you are.

00:36:58.000 And it happened again with the geezer with the tash. 0.85

00:37:06.000 That's a great way of calling Hitler. 1.00

00:37:08.000 You know, you weren't having it.

00:37:11.000 Right.

00:37:12.000 And I, you know, as an activist, which we can talk about later, You know, I remember going to, it's only a few hours from here, but I was in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Warren Buffett came to one of our, it's called Heart of America Tour.

00:37:36.000 We were raising awareness on this pandemic, this AIDS pandemic that was killed, just, you know.

00:37:44.000 30 million people at this point.

00:37:46.000 And why might America be interested?

00:37:48.000 And I'm very Irish and given a lot of that.

00:37:51.000 And afterwards, I asked the sage of Omaha for any advice.

00:37:57.000 And he gives me two pieces of advice.

00:38:01.000 Well, the one was, don't ask people to do something simple because they won't trust you.

00:38:06.000 He said, ask them to do something complicated.

00:38:09.000 What do you mean by that?

00:38:12.000 He said, what are you asking people to do here?

00:38:14.000 And I said, well, I'm asking them to, we're asking them, the one campaign, we're asking them to send a note to their local congressperson.

00:38:26.000 He said, no, no, no, don't do that.

00:38:29.000 Too simple.

00:38:30.000 Make them do something more difficult and they'll trust you.

00:38:33.000 Maybe ten postcards.

00:38:34.000 It's harder to do.

00:38:36.000 I was like, okay.

00:38:38.000 And anything else?

00:38:40.000 And he said something which really changed my life and changed my conversation with this country of yours.

00:38:48.000 He said, don't appeal to our conscience of America.

00:38:54.000 Don't do that.

00:38:56.000 Appeal to the greatness of America and you'll get the job done.

00:39:01.000 Americans want to be great.

00:39:03.000 That is true.

00:39:04.000 I think it is true.

00:39:06.000 Because in Ireland we work with guilt.

00:39:08.000 You know, you can guilt people.

00:39:11.000 You can work them just, you know.

00:39:11.000 It's a lot of countries.

00:39:13.000 But Americans, it's not. 0.90

00:39:14.000 Give them the chance to be the cavalry.

00:39:18.000 And they'll, I mean, Omaha Beach, the heroism of Omaha Beach, the lives poured out, you know, and to save Europe from tyranny.

00:39:18.000 Yeah.

00:39:30.000 And that's who America is.

00:39:32.000 And, you know, I gave it the Joshua Tree because I, you know, it's not just as an Irishman but probably more because I, as an Irishman, fell under the spell of America.

00:39:51.000 Even as kids, you know, coming here, We'd just play the coasts, you know, the cooler UK bands or European bands.

00:40:03.000 I wanted to be all over America.

00:40:06.000 I mean, we played, we opened for a wet t-shirt competition in Dallas.

00:40:13.000 What year was this?

00:40:16.000 81. I was the first one in high school.

00:40:20.000 Wow.

00:40:21.000 We, in Austin, I don't know if anyone can remember, but it was called the Club Foot.

00:40:30.000 It's a bad pun, but there was no AC.

00:40:34.000 I remember it was a tin roof, and for Irish people, we were just being boiled.

00:40:39.000 But I have really, really great memories of just bussing it through this sort of mythical landscape.

00:40:50.000 There's nowhere, nowhere in this country, I would want to fly over.

00:40:56.000 But I do now.

00:40:58.000 You know, he got the plane, he got the this.

00:41:01.000 But I just remember thinking, this is, there's so many Americas.

00:41:07.000 Yes.

00:41:08.000 But the mythology of America, I was reading, you know, Sam Shepard.

00:41:13.000 I was reading, you know, On the Road.

00:41:15.000 I was reading, you know, all these great writers and just opening up my imagination.

00:41:21.000 That's where the Joshua Tree came from.

00:41:24.000 And, yeah, it's a mythology that then, can you imagine, I get to discover that in my case, it's not just a mythology.

00:41:42.000 I was part of something that was extraordinary.

00:41:48.000 So former governor of this, Texas.

00:41:54.000 George W. Bush, conservative, starts to lead the world in the fight against the AIDS pandemic, the greatest health crisis in 600 years since the bubonic plague.

00:42:11.000 And I'm like, people say, that's impossible.

00:42:14.000 It's just not going to happen.

00:42:16.000 And he does.

00:42:17.000 And it becomes a bipartisan thing, and 26 million lives are saved.

00:42:23.000 So it's strange, the way you see things.

00:42:26.000 I had this, it wasn't a naive sense of America, but it was a sense that everything could be possible here.

00:42:39.000 Somehow the landscape of America was a little more magical than everywhere else.

00:42:47.000 And it wasn't just a country America, it was an idea.

00:42:51.000 Yes.

00:42:52.000 Yeah.

00:42:53.000 At its greatest, that is what America is.

00:42:55.000 At its greatest, it's an idea.

00:42:57.000 And it's an idea that was, like I said, was founded with the concepts behind the Declaration of Independence.

00:43:04.000 And those men who wrote that, the men who signed the Bill of Rights, they were so young.

00:43:10.000 They were so young.

00:43:11.000 Some of them were 18 years old at the time, which is so crazy.

00:43:14.000 Jefferson was 32 or 33 when he wrote that.

00:43:17.000 He's an old codger.

00:43:18.000 And then, by the way, years later, He's in France.

00:43:23.000 I think he's in the back.

00:43:24.000 And he loved wine.

00:43:27.000 I found this out because I saw a signature in a book.

00:43:31.000 I was on some tour.

00:43:34.000 I like to drink red wine.

00:43:36.000 I've never been to Bordeaux in my life.

00:43:38.000 But I went with some people who knew their way around wine.

00:43:41.000 And they asked me to sign a book in this particular.

00:43:47.000 Vineyard, posh kind of vineyard.

00:43:49.000 But this was across the road from the big name sort of thing.

00:43:52.000 And I asked, I said, can I see the first book?

00:43:57.000 There's Thomas Jefferson's name in the first one.

00:44:00.000 I thought, wow, this guy's dreaming up America on some very fancy red plonk.

00:44:08.000 But not Plunk, actually.

00:44:09.000 Some really...

00:44:16.000 In America.

00:44:16.000 Sure.

00:44:17.000 And I know there was slavery still and that he had slaves.

00:44:22.000 And I understand.

00:44:24.000 But I'm encouraged that America perhaps doesn't exist yet.

00:44:33.000 That it's still being written.

00:44:35.000 If you think about it as a song, you think about it as a piece of music, it's not finished.

00:44:40.000 It's still being written.

00:44:42.000 They started at those signatures.

00:44:45.000 You, and if you let people like me stay, you know, you're writing it.

00:44:54.000 I'm not writing it.

00:44:55.000 I'm the annoying fan who follows America into the bathroom. 1.00

00:45:00.000 And with the liner notes, which are the declaration, going, "Didn't you say this here?" And, "Get out! 1.00

00:45:05.000 Who followed me into the bathroom?" But I like the idea that this is far from finished, this composition.

00:45:20.000 And for some people, the America that is available to you and me doesn't exist yet, but it will, and it can.

00:45:31.000 We hope that every election cycle, like this will be the one that finally makes us what we truly believe we are.

00:45:39.000 But the country is just so co-opted by this.

00:45:43.000 First of all, you have this genuine issue with the fact that it's essentially a popularity contest to see who gets to be running the government.

00:45:52.000 You have a popularity contest that's fueled entirely by special interests.

00:45:57.000 And the military industrial complex and pharmaceutical drug companies.

00:46:00.000 And it's just, it's all the opposite of an authentic song.

00:46:07.000 Right. 0.99

00:46:07.000 The thing about an authentic song where it makes your fucking goosebumps stand up. 0.99

00:46:12.000 You're like, God damn. 1.00

00:46:14.000 You're saying it's an AI composition. 0.99

00:46:16.000 Can I tell you a story?

00:46:19.000 A long time ago, probably 25 years ago, I was on Mushrooms with a friend of mine.

00:46:24.000 And we were laying on the side of this hill, overlooking this canyon, and we played "In God's Country." Oh, wow.

00:46:34.000 And it was just the peak of the mushrooms and the songs, the melody, the way that song hit, it just gave me this insane appreciation for things.

00:46:50.000 Like at that, it was like this very unique...

00:47:21.000 it breaks them through the membrane into this new place.

00:47:24.000 Like this moment, it broke through this membrane and brought me to this.

00:47:27.000 I think about it all the time.

00:47:28.000 I think about that particular experience all the time.

00:47:32.000 The line in that, when I'm singing it, is a line that doesn't just apply to America, but applies to us personally.

00:47:45.000 Wherever you are, is, you know, we need new dreams tonight.

00:47:49.000 And we can't be living on secondhand dreams.

00:47:54.000 And that's, I think, the renewal, I think, is what we're all looking for.

00:48:03.000 and yeah it's it's something to be protected and and I not protected that sounds like it's it's like I think you're right though it It feels like America's fallen out of love with the rest of the world.

00:48:28.000 I don't think the world wants to fall out of love with America.

00:48:31.000 It just feels like...

00:48:34.000 And, you know, I've had 25 years, and I'm just a tiny cog in, I suppose, you know, people look at...

00:48:57.000 But social movements always change things.

00:49:00.000 And what happened back then with that Heart of America tour was mind-blowing because I learned a few things that I wasn't expecting.

00:49:12.000 Like, I had grown up With a couple of, more than a few bumps with evangelicals.

00:49:22.000 You know, it's like, whoop!

00:49:25.000 Because, you know, you can't approach the subject of God without metaphor, right?

00:49:30.000 So literalism is by its nature anti-metaphor.

00:49:36.000 And Jesus, all we know is that he spoke in parables because it's...

00:49:41.000 How do you explain these?

00:49:43.000 It's poetry.

00:49:44.000 It's music.

00:49:45.000 And I found it really difficult to be around evangelicals because they were so, you know, just literal about everything.

00:49:55.000 And then on that same tour where I met Warren Buffett, I ended up at a college called Wheaton College, which is like a big, in Chicago, it's a big evangelical thing.

00:50:05.000 And they were like, they were really helpful.

00:50:09.000 And there was like, I realized that these were kind of, and this is not to be at all dismissive of some incredible people, but it was like, I felt there was sort of narrow-minded, sort of, what would I say, just sort of narrow, the vision, if I could just open the aperture of their vision, just a little bit wider, that they could be.

00:50:39.000 The most incredible force for good because they just worked harder.

00:50:44.000 They didn't tell lies.

00:50:46.000 They were just great people.

00:50:48.000 And I think they led part of this movement that ended up saving 26 million lives, you know, and it's called PEPFAR that George Bush started and Obama continued.

00:51:01.000 Then I'd go to Catholics. 1.00

00:51:03.000 I'd end up in Notre Dame.

00:51:05.000 I've had a few bruises with the Catholics over the years too. 1.00

00:51:08.000 And I'm meeting these people and they're like, no, no, we believe in the value of human life.

00:51:16.000 If we can do this, how much does this cost?

00:51:20.000 And I'm like, well, you know, all of foreign aid is probably just less than 1% of government spending.

00:51:30.000 But the part that keeps people alive is half of that.

00:51:34.000 So it's like half a percent.

00:51:36.000 Now, it's not my money.

00:51:38.000 It's up to you if you want to do that.

00:51:41.000 But they did.

00:51:43.000 And lots of people came together.

00:51:45.000 It was priests and punks.

00:51:47.000 It was the wildest collection of people.

00:51:51.000 And just recently, like in the last three months, And this is not about politics because I've worked with conservatives, I've worked with liberals.

00:52:00.000 I don't care, you know, I don't have those.

00:52:03.000 I'm Irish, I don't have a chance to vote.

00:52:05.000 But all of that was torn down without a heads up, without any notice, because people thought foreign aid was like 10% of the budget or 20% and it was doing things that it shouldn't have been doing.

00:52:23.000 And I'm sure there was some waste.

00:52:25.000 But I can tell you as a person who saw what the United States was doing around the world and saw this...

00:52:42.000 And I remember being in the Oval Office with President Bush and these antiretroviral drugs.

00:52:48.000 I said, paint them red, white, and blue, Mr. President.

00:52:51.000 These are the best advertisements for America they'll ever be.

00:52:55.000 Looking at me thinking I'm taking the piss, but I'm not.

00:52:58.000 And he wasn't, as it turns out.

00:53:01.000 And he spoke about the least of these, which is a wild concept.

00:53:08.000 I don't know if you know this, but it's like the...

00:53:10.000 It's in Matthew, I think it is.

00:53:13.000 It's the only time that It's not like what's going on in your pants.

00:53:22.000 It's not like what's going on over here or over there.

00:53:25.000 The first time Jesus Christ speaks in kind of force of judgment is the way we treat the poor, the poorest of the poor.

00:53:36.000 And he says, well, in the way that you're treating these, the least of them, the sick, the blind, the people. 0.99

00:53:48.000 Who are suffering from malnutrition.

00:53:50.000 That's how you treat me.

00:53:51.000 I am them.

00:53:53.000 And so now when we cut to the people like you went to Boston University and you taught at Boston University.

00:54:03.000 I taught martial arts there, yeah.

00:54:04.000 So just recent report it's not proven but the surveillance enough suggests 300,000 people have already died from just this Cut off, this hard cut of USAID.

00:54:20.000 So there's food rotting in boats, in warehouses. 0.99

00:54:27.000 This will fuck you off. 1.00

00:54:30.000 You will not be happy. 1.00

00:54:32.000 No American will. 0.92

00:54:34.000 But there is, I think it's 50,000 tons of food that are stored in Djibouti, South Africa, Dubai, and wait for it.

00:54:46.000 Houston, Texas.

00:54:47.000 And that is rotting, rather than going to Gaza, rather than going to Sudan, because the people who know the codes for the warehouse are fired.

00:55:00.000 They're gone.

00:55:01.000 And so this, I don't know, I just...

00:55:07.000 What is that?

00:55:10.000 That's not America, is it? 0.66

00:55:11.000 Well, they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. 0.93

00:55:13.000 This is the problem.

00:55:15.000 The problem is, for sure, there have been a lot of organizations that do tremendous good all throughout the world.

00:55:23.000 Also, for sure, it was a money laundering operation.

00:55:27.000 For sure, there was no oversight.

00:55:29.000 for sure billions of dollars are missing, in fact trillions, that are unaccounted for, that were sent off into various The way Elon Musk described it, he said if any of this was done by a public company, the company would be delisted and the executives would be in prison.

00:55:50.000 But in the United States, this is standard when Biden left office and And there's no oversight, no receipts.

00:56:13.000 The whole thing is, there's a lot of fraud, a lot of money laundering.

00:56:18.000 But also, we help the world.

00:56:22.000 And when you're talking about Making wells for people in the Congo to get fresh water when you're talking about food and medicine to places that don't have access.

00:56:31.000 Like, no way that should have been cut out.

00:56:34.000 And that should have been clear before they make these radical cuts.

00:56:38.000 Like, there's got to be a way to keep aid and not have fraud.

00:56:43.000 And you can't say we're going to kill everything so that there's no fraud.

00:56:47.000 But then you're killing all the good and you're doing it without letting anybody know it's going to happen.

00:56:52.000 So it's not like they had three years to prepare.

00:56:55.000 Let's build a new infrastructure.

00:56:56.000 Let's make sure that everything's set up.

00:56:58.000 They want to change and they want to change quickly.

00:57:00.000 And due to the nature of American politics, they have about two years before the midterms, right?

00:57:05.000 So everything has to get done as quickly as possible.

00:57:07.000 You have to show a growth in GDP.

00:57:09.000 You have to show that the economy is booming again under these ideas, make America first, tariffs for the world, bring back American manufacturing, and this mad rush to do it all as quickly as possible while cutting out as much waste as possible.

00:57:22.000 But the ironic thing is, even though Elon Musk has proposed all these things and the Doge Committee has proposed all these things, they've made no cuts in terms of the budget.

00:57:33.000 It's such a tiny part.

00:57:35.000 I mean if it's big government or whatever People want to shrink.

00:57:43.000 I get the instinct.

00:57:46.000 But this, the life-saving part, it's like the little finger of the giant.

00:57:53.000 Right, exactly.

00:57:54.000 And I've met all these people.

00:57:57.000 And I'm sure there's part of it, you know, there's, I think about...

00:58:08.000 You might say that's political and we shouldn't be involved in that.

00:58:11.000 And there's reforms, I imagine, that might have been necessary.

00:58:15.000 But have the reforms.

00:58:17.000 But to destroy.

00:58:23.000 To vandalize.

00:58:24.000 I mean, it felt like, with glee, these life support systems were being pulled out of the walls.

00:58:30.000 And I was reading today, you know, it's like, I think it's in Christianity Today, and they're just talking, I think it's called Christian Relief, one of these organizations.

00:58:41.000 And they're dealing with malnourished kids.

00:58:43.000 And they are having the conversation now about, we don't have the funds, we have to choose which child to pull off the IVs.

00:58:51.000 And it just seems to me like a kind of...

00:59:11.000 you know, the squandering of human life, particularly children.

00:59:15.000 And suffering.

00:59:16.000 Yeah, it actually rejoices in it.

00:59:18.000 And I just...

00:59:30.000 Like, I had conversations with Marco Rubio.

00:59:34.000 He's convinced people aren't dying yet.

00:59:38.000 I don't know who's telling him, or not telling him, rather.

00:59:41.000 But his instincts are correct. 0.84

00:59:43.000 You know, he wants to die.

00:59:45.000 He used to wear a one campaign.

00:59:50.000 Americans, no matter what political color, they just, you see them just, the size, they just grow in stature when they know they're being useful.

01:00:03.000 I had a truck driver on that same tour.

01:00:06.000 He had tattoos all over his head and whatever, and he was just saying, can I drive?

01:00:09.000 I heard 50% of all truck drivers in Africa are going to die.

01:00:13.000 Is that right, because of this disease, AIDS?

01:00:16.000 He said, Can I give you my number?

01:00:16.000 I said, yeah.

01:00:19.000 I will drive.

01:00:21.000 That's America.

01:00:23.000 And yeah, the bureaucracy, the pen pushers, I get it.

01:00:31.000 I get people's frustration for it.

01:00:33.000 But I just want to remind Americans of the size of their country.

01:00:42.000 And I'm not talking about the geography.

01:00:44.000 What's the impact?

01:00:50.000 You know, it's just an extraordinary thing.

01:00:54.000 It's an idea, I think, big enough to fit the whole world.

01:00:58.000 And when it becomes a continent, you know, when it becomes an island rather than a continent, I think it's a subcontinent.

01:01:08.000 I should have gone to geography lessons more.

01:01:12.000 But, you know, you know what I'm talking about.

01:01:14.000 When it shrinks.

01:01:16.000 America seems to stop being America.

01:01:19.000 And I know you don't want to get into wars, and you shouldn't.

01:01:24.000 But that don't concern you.

01:01:28.000 But there's this word freedom, land of the free.

01:01:33.000 Yeah.

01:01:35.000 That's, and the brave, this is who we look to you for.

01:01:42.000 And we look to you for these qualities.

01:01:46.000 And I believe they're everywhere, and I don't believe any one party has a hole on them.

01:01:54.000 No.

01:01:56.000 On these qualities.

01:01:57.000 It's a funny one for me.

01:02:00.000 One of the reasons I came on the show, I wanted to, on the show, was I wanted to interview you.

01:02:09.000 I wanted to...

01:02:19.000 You know, this is a compliment to you, but my book, you know, I wrote this book, Surrender.

01:02:31.000 And sort of, if there's a point to it at the very end, it's just, I'm...

01:02:40.000 And you just get this thing of, and you've probably picked it up by now, shut up and listen.

01:02:47.000 And I need to listen more.

01:02:50.000 You are an amazing listener.

01:02:54.000 And I don't know who it was.

01:02:57.000 It was someone who said, listening doesn't grant the other side legitimacy, but it grants them legitimacy.

01:03:10.000 And you sit in this room and you listen to everybody.

01:03:13.000 And that makes you very valuable to the country.

01:03:19.000 And I wanted to just get your take on it.

01:03:22.000 What would your advice be to me and people like me who are not part of the big industrial complex?

01:03:33.000 We just...

01:03:44.000 What was your advice to me?

01:03:46.000 I would give you zero advice.

01:03:47.000 I don't know if I'm qualified to give advice.

01:03:50.000 But I would say that America goes through these great periods of overcorrection.

01:03:54.000 It goes these great periods of like you saw it during COVID, during the lockdowns and the authoritarianism.

01:04:03.000 And we fell into a kind of state of tyranny where there was just massive oppression of free speech, including government sponsored oppression.

01:04:10.000 They were contacting different social media platforms and banning legitimate doctors and scholars because they had.

01:04:19.000 Different opinions about how things should be handled.

01:04:22.000 There was wide-scale censorship, a push for a changing of the First Amendment.

01:04:27.000 The First Amendment needs to be overhauled.

01:04:29.000 The First Amendment doesn't apply to hate speech or to disinformation.

01:04:34.000 There was all these new ways of talking about censorship in this country and condoning censorship.

01:04:41.000 And it's very dangerous because it's all about money.

01:04:43.000 It had nothing to do with protecting people.

01:04:45.000 That's what I worry about.

01:04:48.000 The argument about free speech is that it seems to be sponsored by a lot of people who you sense don't really respect it so much, but it is very economic for them to not have to live with the consequences of a story.

01:05:08.000 Is it the communication?

01:05:12.000 It was 1996, this was a long time ago, Communications Act, Decency Act.

01:05:19.000 That meant the internet did not have to apply by the same rules as the rest of the media.

01:05:25.000 Right.

01:05:26.000 So we could say anything we wanted.

01:05:28.000 And at first that felt like liberation, but I'm not so sure anymore.

01:05:33.000 And so, I mean, you can tell me more about this.

01:05:36.000 I'm...

01:05:37.000 I'm...

01:05:45.000 But I'm nervous that the people who are supporting free speech and using their bots and their own activists are people from countries who would not at all respect our, you're, mine. 0.74

01:06:08.000 Ability to express ourselves.

01:06:10.000 And that's what I worry about is I think the old interweb is being played like a...

01:06:22.000 Unquestionably.

01:06:23.000 Like an orchestra.

01:06:24.000 And the people behind the curtain would surprise us, I think, if we knew.

01:06:24.000 Yes.

01:06:30.000 I think it's programmed like an EDM concert.

01:06:30.000 I think it's worse than that.

01:06:33.000 I think it's not even an orchestra.

01:06:36.000 I worry, and this has been substantiated by data, that more than 50% of the interactions going on on the Internet and social media are not real.

01:06:47.000 There was a former FBI analyst that said it might be as much as 80%.

01:06:54.000 It's bots, as you said.

01:06:57.000 And this is a problem with the concept of free speech.

01:07:01.000 Completely wholly in favor of free speech, just like the ADL was back in the day when they let the Ku Klux Klan march. 0.59

01:07:10.000 The way to combat bad speech is with better speech.

01:07:15.000 The way to find out whose arguments are correct is to let them debate in the marketplace of free ideas and expose these people for what they are and have the people that are on the sidelines that are letting these great thinkers have these discussions say, okay, this guy makes sense.

01:07:30.000 This guy is clearly a grifter.

01:07:32.000 This guy has ulterior motives. 0.70

01:07:33.000 This guy has an ideology that's very toxic and he's trying to push this on the whole world for control, for power, for money, to benefit the special interest groups that he's a part of or whatever it is.

01:07:46.000 Free speech is you're also going to get a lot of ugliness because there's a lot of ugliness in the world.

01:07:52.000 You're going to get a lot of people that say horrible things.

01:07:54.000 And I think the only way we sort through all that is you have to let them.

01:07:58.000 And then you have to let people rise up that oppose those horrible ideas.

01:08:02.000 And those people become heroes.

01:08:04.000 Those become the Martin Luther King Juniors.

01:08:06.000 Humor helps.

01:08:09.000 One thing we know about the Ku Klux. 0.97

01:08:13.000 If you mention the silly costumes, they don't like that. 0.88

01:08:18.000 You know, it's like they want you to be afraid or you want to be nervous, but it's like, dude, look at the stage gear. 0.96

01:08:25.000 You're a ghost.

01:08:26.000 It's like, come on.

01:08:28.000 Do you know who Daryl Davis is?

01:08:29.000 No.

01:08:30.000 Daryl Davis is a musician who was a traveling blues musician.

01:08:36.000 And did some shows where afterwards he met some people that told him that they were in the Ku Klux Klan.

01:08:43.000 And he was like, are you kidding? 0.99

01:08:45.000 And the guy shows him his fucking Grand Wizard ID card or whatever the hell it is. 0.99

01:08:51.000 He becomes friends with this guy. 0.99

01:08:52.000 Here's my card.

01:08:53.000 Daryl's black. 0.97

01:08:54.000 Daryl's a black man. 1.00

01:08:55.000 And becomes friends with this guy.

01:08:58.000 Goes to his house.

01:08:59.000 Meets his family.

01:09:00.000 The guy throws the robe away.

01:09:03.000 Gives up his membership in the KKK, renounces his membership and gives Daryl the ropes as I want you to have this.

01:09:10.000 Daryl has done that personally.

01:09:12.000 The last time I talked to him was a few years back.

01:09:13.000 He'd done this personally to over 200 people just by being an amazing human being, by being a brilliant artist and hanging out with them, just being kind and as an example of just a great human.

01:09:28.000 And they were like, I guess I'm wrong.

01:09:30.000 I guess I'm wrong.

01:09:32.000 This idea that black people are inferior and the white man is a superior race, that can't be true because I love this guy.

01:09:37.000 And so they would just quit. 0.65

01:09:39.000 They'd quit.

01:09:39.000 Yeah.

01:09:40.000 It's not the smartest theory.

01:09:41.000 It's a terrible theory.

01:09:42.000 But if you're in a place with only terrible theories, and that's what you grow up, there's Daryl.

01:09:48.000 And they give him all his ropes.

01:09:52.000 You know, good man.

01:09:54.000 He's a great man.

01:09:55.000 And he's a kind, like very peaceful...

01:09:55.000 Good man.

01:10:05.000 Again, one of the reasons I'm here is I think there is a sense that people just want to be part of something.

01:10:21.000 When we were growing up, there were clubs you could be a part of.

01:10:30.000 There's people you could hang out with and you knew where that was going.

01:10:34.000 But if you wanted to belong and have a sense of purpose, you ended up there.

01:10:41.000 And so I think that it's okay for men to admit that in this moment, They are probably, you know, we're a little adrift.

01:11:02.000 I hear this from my daughters.

01:11:05.000 I hear this from my wife.

01:11:08.000 And it's like this feeling of being dislocated.

01:11:17.000 So you're attracted to these simple ideas.

01:11:22.000 You know, the concept of the gang or America, like it's a team sport between the Reds and the Blues.

01:11:30.000 America's the team.

01:11:31.000 That's all.

01:11:32.000 Yes.

01:11:33.000 And this thing, look, I'm vulnerable.

01:11:38.000 We are all, especially when you're growing up, teenagers, you know, you are very vulnerable to those points of view.

01:11:47.000 I, you know, early on we had sort of, And this is all versions of fundamentalism.

01:11:47.000 Yes.

01:12:02.000 It's all a very narrow view.

01:12:06.000 And what you see going on in Gaza is you see Palestinian people being held hostage by Hamas.

01:12:20.000 It's not just Israeli that are being held hostage by Hamas.

01:12:23.000 The Palestinian people and the fundamentalists in Israel, in the cabinet, these far-right fundamentalists.

01:12:33.000 Because at a time, you remember a few years back, everything was kind of wishy-washy and kind of the new age and whatever you have in yourself.

01:12:42.000 And now these strong, clear points of view have arrived.

01:12:48.000 It's the great overcorrection.

01:12:49.000 It's the great overcorrection.

01:12:51.000 Yeah, there's a real problem with ideology and there's a real problem with fundamentalism and there's a cowardice in it.

01:12:58.000 And there's a cowardice in I'm the only one that's correct.

01:13:01.000 There's a cowardice in not listening to any other ideas, not listening to any other positions.

01:13:06.000 And we're being played against each other in this country. 0.99

01:13:09.000 The thing about the bots and the social media stuff is it just accentuates this divide between the left and the right, which I think is mostly bullshit. 0.96

01:13:17.000 Most people are good people. 0.90

01:13:19.000 Most people just want...

01:13:28.000 Most people aren't trying to victimize people.

01:13:30.000 Most people aren't trying to destroy other people's lives and destroy society.

01:13:35.000 They just want to live their life, but they're being sucked into one side or the other, which is radically opposed to each other.

01:13:42.000 The great overcorrection.

01:13:44.000 Did you think that President Zelensky was being bullied in that meeting in the Oval Office?

01:13:51.000 Just think about it as a playground.

01:13:54.000 This is a guy, maybe his life depended, but certainly the life of many, many people he knew would depend on, and he had to listen to that.

01:14:03.000 Well, the whole thing is strange, right?

01:14:05.000 I mean, the argument in the White House of, like, you don't have the right hand of cards, and just the fact that this is all being done publicly is very strange, right?

01:14:16.000 There's cameras and photographers.

01:14:18.000 I don't like...

01:14:32.000 That's what I think I think that's the ones that resonate with me the most Yeah, this is I just think it's the best way to do it the way that resonates the most I think the kind of conversation that you're gonna have the world leader shouldn't be performative and it certainly shouldn't be with a bunch of People snapping photographs and pointing cameras and then pushing each other back and forth.

01:14:55.000 You know, you don't have the right hand of cards.

01:14:57.000 This is not cards.

01:14:58.000 You are playing cards.

01:15:00.000 It's a crazy way, and each calling each other disrespectful.

01:15:05.000 It's a crazy way to handle any world events.

01:15:07.000 It's just a terrible platform for it.

01:15:09.000 Yeah, just think of, again, I think of the Americans of Omaha Beach, the people who...

01:15:18.000 Yeah.

01:15:19.000 And I think of these people on the front line in Europe.

01:15:25.000 I mean, I haven't really spoken about Europe with you.

01:15:30.000 But, you know, if America's the melting pot, I would say Europe's the mosaic.

01:15:38.000 You know, it's all these different people.

01:15:42.000 Who speak with a different language but are trying for one voice in Europe, which can sound like cacophony.

01:15:50.000 They call it Eurobabble in Brussels.

01:15:53.000 But I'm really now realizing how romantic it was with the Enlightenment, with the Renaissance.

01:16:01.000 We've got a lot to offer.

01:16:04.000 And Europe is under threat.

01:16:09.000 And those bots, Every election now where this candidate is pro-Europe and pro-European unity, they are just getting a shitstorm of disinformation. 0.96

01:16:23.000 And I just think, wow, but I think Europe and America are just sexier than these people. 0.93

01:16:34.000 Is that a trite thing to say? 0.88

01:16:36.000 but it's like they're so kind of unsexy.

01:16:41.000 You know, that's, I mean, that's, sorry, I have true.

01:16:45.000 Unromantic.

01:16:47.000 That's right.

01:16:47.000 It's just these very dull, not funny people.

01:16:53.000 Right.

01:16:53.000 And are trying to take over the world.

01:16:56.000 They're not funny.

01:16:58.000 Lukashenko of Belarus, that dude is not funny.

01:17:01.000 We don't have to go further.

01:17:04.000 We don't have to go further.

01:17:05.000 Who do you think is the funniest world leader?

01:17:08.000 Oh, my God.

01:17:09.000 Yeah, that's a really good question.

01:17:11.000 It's got to be Trump.

01:17:12.000 He's the funniest.

01:17:13.000 Well, he has a thing that a lot of stand-up comedians have, which is he can say the thing in the room that no one else is going to say.

01:17:27.000 And that generally creates a laugh.

01:17:27.000 Right.

01:17:32.000 But I also think he mightn't be able to take a joke.

01:17:37.000 Well, he's not good at that.

01:17:39.000 He doesn't enjoy a joke coming his way.

01:17:41.000 No, he doesn't.

01:17:42.000 I mean, Zelensky's actually a comedian.

01:17:45.000 Right.

01:17:45.000 I met him before he became president.

01:17:48.000 He played piano with his penis on television. 0.99

01:17:50.000 It was quite a piano. 1.00

01:17:54.000 I mean, it's funny to go from playing piano with your penis to becoming the president of Ukraine. 0.99

01:18:01.000 Becoming the president of the United States, by all accounts. 0.98

01:18:09.000 He came to Ireland as a comedian.

01:18:11.000 He told me.

01:18:12.000 I didn't know.

01:18:13.000 And he played, like, small towns.

01:18:15.000 I think he played Dundalk or Drogheda, somewhere on the east coast of Ireland.

01:18:20.000 But comedians can read a room.

01:18:25.000 I mean, performers.

01:18:28.000 I think comedians are at the top of the food chain because you don't have a band. 0.99

01:18:34.000 You don't have a fucking tambourine. 0.63

01:18:37.000 You just have the reader of the room and the material has to be really funny. 0.99

01:18:44.000 I use this sometimes with our band.

01:18:47.000 A lot of our music is just experimental and innovative.

01:18:52.000 We improvise and then we try to turn it into songs.

01:18:55.000 But sometimes we'll write a pop song and we'll end up with a pop song.

01:18:59.000 And I'll say, well, the thing about a pop song is it is empirical.

01:19:04.000 It's like it either is or it isn't.

01:19:06.000 It's like a joke that doesn't have a punchline.

01:19:09.000 It's like a comedian does not walk out on stage and tell a joke.

01:19:14.000 And if people don't laugh, go, they just don't get it.

01:19:17.000 It just means the joke isn't funny.

01:19:20.000 So I, it's not a popular theory in our band, by the way, but I hold on to it very tight.

01:19:26.000 I just say, if you can't go out and play this song and it just connects, then it's not a pop song.

01:19:34.000 We only do a few pop songs every decade, probably, because a lot of what U2 does is a different kind of rock and roll.

01:19:43.000 But I do think there's something empirical about some songs are better than the others.

01:19:52.000 I witnessed one of the most ridiculous moments in my life, but it was kind of funny.

01:20:02.000 Oasis, you know, Oasis are amazing bands.

01:20:06.000 Just love them.

01:20:08.000 And so I witnessed this.

01:20:12.000 It couldn't be a more childish fight between two of my friends.

01:20:18.000 Liam Gallagher was a friend at that point.

01:20:21.000 I know Noel better now.

01:20:24.000 but, and Michael Hutchins, who was the singer of In Excess.

01:20:27.000 In Excess.

01:20:28.000 And they really were doing the...

01:20:32.000 Oh, no.

01:20:33.000 No, no, what about, no, no.

01:20:35.000 And I was thinking, I was laughing to myself.

01:20:39.000 And then I thought, oh, it's interesting.

01:20:44.000 Both of them have a point.

01:20:45.000 That song of theirs might be better than theirs.

01:20:48.000 And I started to think about it.

01:20:50.000 And comedians don't get a chance to be subjective.

01:20:59.000 It's not like Prince walks out and plays a whole new album and can go, they just don't get it.

01:21:06.000 It's like, you're either funny or you're not.

01:21:09.000 You're going down in flames.

01:21:11.000 Have you gone down in flames?

01:21:12.000 Oh, sure.

01:21:13.000 Yeah.

01:21:13.000 Oh, yeah.

01:21:14.000 What was your worst gig?

01:21:15.000 Oh, I've had so many.

01:21:18.000 Especially in the early days, you're trying to figure it out.

01:21:21.000 And, you know, the thing about material is material is essentially like, But it takes a long time.

01:21:37.000 It takes crafting.

01:21:38.000 You have to sit with it.

01:21:40.000 Some ideas come to you in full form, and some ideas, you have to believe in them.

01:21:45.000 You know there's something there, and you have to dig and, you know, trust the muse and find it.

01:21:51.000 And, you know, sometimes those bits would just fucking bomb.

01:21:54.000 And you have to just, like, go, God, should I abandon this? 0.97

01:21:57.000 Should I keep working on this?

01:21:58.000 Do you have a team of writers?

01:22:00.000 No.

01:22:01.000 Wow.

01:22:02.000 No, I just write everything myself.

01:22:03.000 You're kidding.

01:22:04.000 No, always.

01:22:05.000 Yeah, always have.

01:22:08.000 My view on stand-up, the kind of stand-up that I do, is supposed to be here's the world through my eyes.

01:22:12.000 This is how I'm seeing things. 0.76

01:22:14.000 From the most ridiculous, awestruck, and laughing at everything perspective. 0.94

01:22:20.000 And it has to be through my lens. 0.95

01:22:23.000 Well, that's amazing.

01:22:24.000 I mean, because I've seen, you know, on Saturday Night Live when we do it, or I've seen some of the talks, I see these geniuses.

01:22:31.000 You know, crunching jokes and coming out with material.

01:22:36.000 That's a different thing.

01:22:37.000 It's a different thing.

01:22:38.000 Yeah, like a Saturday Night Live monologue or a Tonight Show monologue or any of that kind of thing.

01:22:43.000 That's a different thing.

01:22:44.000 The real stand-up is clubs.

01:22:46.000 I went to the club, with Dave Chappelle to the club.

01:22:49.000 He brought me to...

01:22:51.000 Are you still friendly with him?

01:22:52.000 Oh, real good friends.

01:22:53.000 Yeah, I love him to death.

01:22:54.000 Yeah.

01:22:55.000 He's incredible.

01:22:57.000 That's jazz.

01:22:58.000 Yes.

01:22:58.000 He's a real artist.

01:22:59.000 He can go, well, you know, it's like, yeah, no, I think, why am I talking about this?

01:23:07.000 I'm talking about this.

01:23:08.000 Oh, yeah, because people can't take a joke.

01:23:10.000 Right.

01:23:11.000 And some people, I mean, we don't need belly laughs out of our leaders.

01:23:15.000 No.

01:23:16.000 We just need vision.

01:23:16.000 You need vision and kindness.

01:23:18.000 But to deal with the Ku Klux Klan?

01:23:22.000 Humor helps.

01:23:23.000 To deal with the fascists or whatever.

01:23:26.000 I mean, certainly Hitler in the late 30s was getting rid of the dadists and the surrealists because the language of fascism was to fight back.

01:23:39.000 But they like that language.

01:23:40.000 And, I mean, the language of resistance against...

01:23:47.000 But that suited them.

01:23:49.000 They did not like being laughed at.

01:23:51.000 Saphir did not like being laughed at.

01:23:53.000 Well, because if you can mock something, like you can have a position or an opinion on something and someone can disagree strongly.

01:24:00.000 But if they make everyone laugh at that position, now you're – Because it's actually an opinion that you might not have even agreed with has caused you to belly laugh.

01:24:12.000 Like, oh, God.

01:24:13.000 Like, that's how you really get it. 1.00

01:24:14.000 Because if you go on stage and just have a bunch of opinions and just lecture people, there's people in the audience that go, well, fuck you. 1.00

01:24:20.000 I feel differently. 0.99

01:24:21.000 But if you could go on stage with that opinion and make people laugh at something they know they shouldn't be laughing at, like, oh, my God.

01:24:29.000 And you're like, then you're introducing ideas into a person.

01:24:33.000 It's a spoonful of sugar.

01:24:34.000 that helps the medicine go down.

01:24:36.000 Yeah, no, you're certainly the...

01:24:45.000 I don't think I am the material, really.

01:24:49.000 But people, when they see me coming, they sit in their wallet.

01:24:53.000 You know what I mean?

01:24:53.000 They're like, whoop, here he comes, and he's going to have a sign up.

01:24:58.000 Whereas comedians, people are much more open.

01:25:00.000 People will...

01:25:05.000 I think that's a responsibility, but it's something to be valued.

01:25:12.000 It's just, I was saying to somebody recently, I'm not sure I trust people anymore who aren't a little bit funny.

01:25:22.000 Yeah.

01:25:23.000 I mean, funny and not the funny peculiar.

01:25:25.000 Right, right.

01:25:26.000 There's a place for that too.

01:25:27.000 Right.

01:25:28.000 But, you know.

01:25:28.000 People who make you laugh are open.

01:25:31.000 Yes.

01:25:31.000 And also the contradictions of the world and how bizarre things are.

01:25:35.000 It's just ripe with humor.

01:25:38.000 And if you don't ever pick up on it...

01:25:42.000 Like, you don't ever see the hypocrisy and the ludicrousness of just this existence, this temporary existence on a spinning orb hurling through the universe and concentrating on who gets to use what bathroom?

01:25:56.000 Like, is this like, you know what I mean?

01:25:57.000 It's like, we're weird.

01:25:59.000 We're very weird.

01:26:00.000 And if you don't see that, you're not paying all attention.

01:26:04.000 You're not all in.

01:26:05.000 You're certainly not balanced.

01:26:07.000 Those mushrooms were working very well for you.

01:26:10.000 Yeah, I'm telling you, man, in God's country.

01:26:12.000 That's the ticket.

01:26:14.000 That's beautiful.

01:26:17.000 Wow.

01:26:18.000 I'm so touched.

01:26:19.000 That album, you know, a lot of the songs on that were, you know, very vulnerable, you know, and I don't know if you know, Brian, you know, produced it.

01:26:34.000 He invented ambient music and worked with David Bowie, Talking Heads, you know, and recently Coldplay and other people.

01:26:45.000 But he had a profound influence on us.

01:26:49.000 Because we didn't go to art college.

01:26:52.000 All, like, the Beatles, the Stones, they all went to art college.

01:26:55.000 We went to Brian Eno.

01:26:56.000 And he had this incredible musician in partnership with him for the production of that album called Daniel Lanois.

01:27:03.000 One of the greatest musicians you'll ever meet in your life.

01:27:08.000 And some songs come really quickly.

01:27:13.000 But some are just like what you're saying.

01:27:16.000 They're like the foal.

01:27:19.000 The legs are going around.

01:27:21.000 And the one that was like that was where the streets have no name.

01:27:24.000 And so we were working on it for what felt like weeks.

01:27:31.000 Brian came in and he just said, I am not having us to spend one more minute on this song.

01:27:38.000 And he went to wipe it.

01:27:41.000 So he was literally going to wipe it.

01:27:43.000 And so there's no other copies.

01:27:47.000 And Pat McCarthy, who was our engineer, went on to produce R.E.M.

01:27:51.000 and Madonna, great dude. 1.00

01:27:53.000 He physically blocked Brian from it.

01:27:56.000 And...

01:27:57.000 But that song, for me...

01:28:07.000 Because it's, Brian was just saying to us, just go with your first sketch.

01:28:12.000 Remember talking about paint on canvas?

01:28:13.000 Yeah.

01:28:14.000 But I'm saying, but it's not that clever.

01:28:18.000 Don't let it be clever.

01:28:20.000 Just, that's what you said, that's what you meant.

01:28:23.000 And it's the strangest thing, Joe, because we go on stage.

01:28:31.000 And I sing that song.

01:28:33.000 We sing that song.

01:28:35.000 We play that song. 1.00

01:28:37.000 And it's like, what the fuck? 1.00

01:28:38.000 We're the streets of Nolene? 1.00

01:28:40.000 What's that about?

01:28:41.000 I started it in Africa when I was with my wife when I was a kid.

01:28:47.000 And you were 25?

01:28:50.000 Something like that.

01:28:51.000 Maybe 26. She was 24. And it was about the devastation that was happening in the Ethiopian famine.

01:28:58.000 And I just couldn't explain it to myself.

01:29:00.000 There was other inferences about the song.

01:29:04.000 But none of them matter as much as this question to your audience, which is, do you want to go there to this place, a place of imagination, a place of soul, a place of that other place?

01:29:22.000 Do you want to go there?

01:29:24.000 Do you want to go there together?

01:29:26.000 And everybody feels it.

01:29:30.000 Because we all want to be outside of ourselves at a certain time.

01:29:37.000 And we all want to have that experience, that meeting with some call it the universe, some call it God, some call it themselves, whatever.

01:29:47.000 But it's music now.

01:29:50.000 I think all art aspires.

01:29:54.000 To the condition of music.

01:29:57.000 But I was saying, we go to church in the dark.

01:30:01.000 You know, that's what rock and roll is.

01:30:03.000 And we're just looking for little shards of light.

01:30:07.000 We find it in an audience.

01:30:09.000 We find our transcendence together.

01:30:12.000 With the movie.

01:30:14.000 We also go to church in the dark.

01:30:16.000 In cinema.

01:30:18.000 You're in a dark space and you're And somebody said cinema is like being born.

01:30:32.000 Like you go into the womb. 0.98

01:30:35.000 It's like you're floating around.

01:30:38.000 As Jim Sheridan would say, he's my hero, psychological genius, Irish director, my left foot, the boxer, some great films.

01:30:46.000 He'd say, yeah, you're in the amniotic fluid.

01:30:50.000 You're inside the mudder.

01:30:52.000 And you're about to come out into the light.

01:30:56.000 That's cinema.

01:30:57.000 Great cinema is that journey towards the light.

01:31:01.000 And I love that.

01:31:03.000 I love that.

01:31:05.000 But it's the same for some people.

01:31:08.000 Their cathedral is a hike.

01:31:13.000 The natural world.

01:31:15.000 Yeah.

01:31:16.000 Have you ever heard of Richard Rohr?

01:31:18.000 No.

01:31:18.000 R-O-H-R.

01:31:20.000 He lives?

01:31:21.000 In Albuquerque, he has a thing called, it's called the center of action and contemplation.

01:31:33.000 And I really love it that it's that way around.

01:31:36.000 And he's a Franciscan friar, but very otherworldly thoughts about the natural world and finding I think you'd enjoy him.

01:31:58.000 He's worth a read.

01:32:01.000 Is it Irish? 0.66

01:32:04.000 Is it Catholic Irish?

01:32:06.000 Yeah.

01:32:06.000 Right.

01:32:07.000 Yeah.

01:32:08.000 Okay.

01:32:09.000 You might enjoy him.

01:32:10.000 I'm sure I would.

01:32:11.000 Yeah, he's a real beauty.

01:32:14.000 He's got a little hermitage.

01:32:19.000 And yeah, he's good.

01:32:22.000 He's great on the Enneagram as well.

01:32:24.000 Do you know the Enneagram?

01:32:25.000 No.

01:32:26.000 It's the sort of archetypal thing.

01:32:30.000 It goes back to Sufi.

01:32:32.000 I think early Sufi and then the Christian fathers.

01:32:36.000 What are they called?

01:32:37.000 the Desert Fathers in the fourth century but it's a way of recognizing archetypes and our own It's not archetypes.

01:32:51.000 But I think our daughter, Eve, is an actor.

01:32:56.000 And she said a lot of writers are interested in it.

01:33:00.000 And she said in some of the clever schools, they teach this, the Enneagram.

01:33:05.000 Anyway, Richard Rohr is an expert in it.

01:33:09.000 Oh And you got three centers Oh, it looks like a cult.

01:33:11.000 Of intelligence.

01:33:29.000 the leader or the boss.

01:33:31.000 What would you say you are?

01:33:32.000 Oh, Jesus.

01:33:33.000 I don't know how you could tell.

01:33:34.000 I wouldn't.

01:33:35.000 I think I just keep on keeping on.

01:33:37.000 I try not to pay attention to me as much as possible.

01:33:40.000 I think there's a thing that happens, what you're talking about on stage, where everyone achieves a higher state of consciousness through a song.

01:33:51.000 I think that's where it is really like a church.

01:33:55.000 That's where it is really like a religious experience.

01:33:57.000 When a great song and it takes you away from yourself.

01:34:17.000 You know, everyone's caught up in their own struggle and their self and how they exist in this world and all the problems of reality.

01:34:24.000 And then there's something about these moments of divine inspiration where they impact people in this very profound way.

01:34:32.000 And I think that's one of the reasons why people are so deeply drawn to music, and especially live performance.

01:34:37.000 Because music is wonderful.

01:34:38.000 Music by yourself is great.

01:34:39.000 I love listening to music in my car.

01:34:41.000 I love listening to music, period.

01:34:43.000 But music, when you're in a live setting, when everyone's experiencing it together, it's a religious experience.

01:34:49.000 There's something attuned to it.

01:34:51.000 There's a reason why they sing in church, right?

01:34:54.000 It achieves very similar results.

01:34:56.000 Yeah, I miss that.

01:34:57.000 you know, when we were kids, the tunes weren't that great in the church.

01:35:03.000 And I said to my I agree.

01:35:08.000 But, you know, I was like, I said to our kids, you know, and they were all, none of them were baptized Protestant or Catholic because my father was Catholic, my mother was Catholic.

01:35:20.000 I just said, you want to be Christian, you want to be Christian, but you decide.

01:35:24.000 I never got religion rammed down my throat.

01:35:26.000 I'm certainly not going to put it down yours.

01:35:29.000 So we'd go, and sometimes you just get a feeling in a place.

01:35:33.000 I said, just trust that feeling.

01:35:35.000 And they might say, well, tunes aren't that good.

01:35:38.000 And I'm like, it's okay.

01:35:40.000 But I remember when I was really young, walking in and hearing the Salvation Army band and people singing, and I remember getting the shivers, just thinking, these are...

01:36:01.000 And I miss that. 0.99

01:36:03.000 And I think people would return to religion if religion wasn't so fucked up. 0.99

01:36:13.000 And I think people, you know, the church has to serve the people. 0.99

01:36:22.000 And not the other way around.

01:36:25.000 And, you know, the church presently, I don't know how many churches you'd have here in Austin, Texas, but I'd probably say if there's 276 different kinds of churches, you know, it's just one church.

01:36:44.000 It's just in 276 bits and pieces.

01:36:49.000 It feels...

01:36:58.000 Science is the pursuit of truth.

01:37:01.000 And so these are pilgrims too.

01:37:05.000 Great scientists are trying to crack the code of the physical world.

01:37:10.000 The great theologians are trying to crack the code of the metaphysical world.

01:37:20.000 Nobody knows.

01:37:21.000 That's the thing about literalism, you know.

01:37:23.000 That beautiful thing in, you know, everyone has it at their wedding.

01:37:28.000 Love is patient.

01:37:28.000 Love is kind.

01:37:29.000 We can roll over you.

01:37:30.000 Love is this.

01:37:31.000 Love is that.

01:37:31.000 And then it goes faith, hope, and love.

01:37:34.000 But the greatest of these is love.

01:37:37.000 And I remember talking with somebody and I was saying, well, why is love more important than faith?

01:37:41.000 Why is love more important than hope?

01:37:44.000 And the clue is a few verses later.

01:37:48.000 Where it says, we see through the mirror darkly.

01:37:57.000 But one day we'll see face to face.

01:38:00.000 We know now in part.

01:38:02.000 But one day we will know fully.

01:38:06.000 As we ourselves are known.

01:38:11.000 You cannot be a fundamentalist and not...

01:38:30.000 We need love because we cannot be sure.

01:38:34.000 Our certainties, our certainties, that's the scary thing.

01:38:39.000 And, you know, I trust a feeling as a musician.

01:38:42.000 I trust it when I'm going to sing or to improvise.

01:38:46.000 They're not certainties.

01:38:47.000 They're instincts.

01:38:49.000 And I love that you feel that music is still a communal place.

01:38:58.000 Our festivals are amazing.

01:39:00.000 And people are deprived presently of a place where they feel comfortable.

01:39:09.000 I'm comfortable in the back of a cathedral.

01:39:12.000 I'm comfortable at some I'm just looking for the spirit wherever I find it, in a conversation.

01:39:27.000 I can feel it when it's happening.

01:39:30.000 When we're having an honest conversation, you feel it.

01:39:33.000 It's a thing.

01:39:34.000 And I can put down my salesman and just have a conversation.

01:39:39.000 Because it's the three on that Enneagram.

01:39:41.000 It's probably my number, because it's so excruciating.

01:39:46.000 But it's the salesman.

01:39:49.000 I sell ideas as well as songs, and I sometimes just have to just shut up and listen.

01:39:58.000 Yeah, I think we're all those things, just to varying degrees.

01:40:03.000 And I think the spirit of the thing is what you're talking about.

01:40:06.000 This intangible moment where everybody realizes they're in it, whether it's in a church where they're singing.

01:40:12.000 One of my favorite moments with you was on the Jimmy Fallon show, singing Ordinary Love.

01:40:20.000 Oh, wow.

01:40:21.000 I loved it.

01:40:22.000 We played it on the podcast.

01:40:23.000 When it happened, the next day when it got out on YouTube, I brought it in here and I go, you've got to listen to this.

01:40:30.000 This is just such an amazing rendition of a song because it's just you sitting on these chairs and Jimmy Fallon is next to you on the table.

01:40:40.000 Like, this is it here.

01:40:42.000 What a beauty.

01:40:43.000 We played this.

01:40:45.000 I want to listen to it.

01:40:46.000 Let's put the headphones on. 0.97

01:40:48.000 I fucking love this version. 0.98

01:40:50.000 The sea wants to kiss the golden shore. 1.00

01:41:03.000 The sunlight wants your skin.

01:41:06.000 All the beauty that's been lost before wants to find us again.

01:41:16.000 I can't find you anymore.

01:41:19.000 It's what I'm fighting for.

01:41:23.000 The sea throws rocks together, but time leaves us polished off.

01:41:32.000 We can't fall any further in.

01:41:37.000 We can't see you, Lord, in every love.

01:41:41.000 We cannot reach any higher.

01:41:45.000 We can't deal with ordinary love.

01:41:50.000 Birds fly high in the summer sky and rest on the breeze.

01:42:04.000 The same wind will take care of you and I. We'll build a house in the trees.

01:42:12.000 Your heart is on my sleeve.

01:42:17.000 Did you put it there with a magic mug?

01:42:21.000 For years I would believe that the world wouldn't wash us away.

01:42:30.000 We can't fall any further in.

01:42:34.000 We can't feel ordinary love.

01:42:38.000 We cannot reach any higher.

01:42:42.000 If we can't deal with ordinary love.

01:42:46.000 We can't fall any further in.

01:42:50.000 We can't feel ordinary love.

01:42:54.000 We cannot reach any higher.

01:42:57.000 If we can't deal with ordinary love.

01:43:03.000 Roots.

01:43:05.000 Oh, yeah.

01:43:07.000 Yeah.

01:43:09.000 Oh, come on. 0.87

01:43:10.000 We can't fall any further in.

01:43:14.000 We can't feel ordinary love.

01:43:18.000 We cannot reach any higher.

01:43:21.000 We can't deal with ordinary love.

01:43:26.000 We can't fall any further in.

01:43:29.000 We can't feel ordinary love.

01:43:34.000 We cannot reach any higher.

01:43:38.000 We can't deal with quest love.

01:43:42.000 Quest love.

01:43:46.000 You too, everybody.

01:43:51.000 That is...

01:43:55.000 That is, without a doubt, hands down, my favorite performance ever.

01:43:59.000 Ever on a talk show.

01:44:01.000 ever.

01:44:02.000 Whoa.

01:44:03.000 'Cause it was so You're sitting on the couch, and you're singing it, and you're just so on it.

01:44:10.000 You're so on it that everyone just gets captivated by it, and then the music builds, and then you bring in roots. 0.97

01:44:17.000 Fucking phenomenal. 0.98

01:44:19.000 That is what we're talking about. 0.99

01:44:20.000 That's like this moment that elevates people.

01:44:23.000 It takes people out of their life and just this joy of expression all happening simultaneously with everybody in the crowd.

01:44:30.000 And then when you stand up and you start dancing and roots are playing, it just washes over everybody.

01:44:37.000 It's hard that you should bring it up because I'm sitting at a table with a couple of journalists.

01:44:46.000 A friend of mine, this economist called David McWilliams.

01:44:51.000 You'd love him, by the way.

01:44:52.000 He's the guy who says the poor think in minutes, the rich think in years.

01:45:00.000 One of his quotes.

01:45:01.000 Anyway, sitting with a bunch of people.

01:45:04.000 And they're from London.

01:45:09.000 And this guy's going, yeah.

01:45:11.000 He says, McWilliams here.

01:45:12.000 He's all about you, too.

01:45:14.000 He's all about you, yeah. 1.00

01:45:16.000 He hasn't got any of your fucking records. 1.00

01:45:18.000 I have your records. 1.00

01:45:20.000 I've got all your records. 0.99

01:45:21.000 I've fucking gone off you, right? 1.00

01:45:23.000 Gone right off you. 1.00

01:45:24.000 That fucking song, Ordinary Love Nights. 1.00

01:45:28.000 He's got whatever, a glass in his hand. 1.00

01:45:30.000 And he's getting the Dutch and the British courage and the Irish courage.

01:45:35.000 And he's going, that song about Mandela and all that. 0.99

01:45:39.000 So I listened to it, it's like fucking... 0.99

01:45:43.000 And then I was watching Jimmy Fallon, you played the same song. 0.99

01:45:51.000 And he said, I was in tears.

01:45:54.000 He said, it's just something happened.

01:45:59.000 Yeah.

01:46:00.000 So I look at it and I'm going dodgy haircut on the singer.

01:46:07.000 But I am also...

01:46:12.000 There is something going on.

01:46:14.000 That is the thing.

01:46:15.000 And you two, you know, were making an album at the moment, and it has to be framed around that.

01:46:23.000 Not that song, not that even style of songwriting, but that thing, the thing, the moment.

01:46:29.000 The spirit.

01:46:30.000 Whatever that is.

01:46:31.000 Yeah.

01:46:32.000 And the conversation you're having with your audience, with somebody, A deep listener.

01:46:41.000 By the way, that same woman who said about listening, she said, deep listening is an act of surrender.

01:46:51.000 And so it's coming full circle for me.

01:46:57.000 If you're in that audience, there's an act of surrender, for sure.

01:47:00.000 And if you're an actor, if you're singing it, you have to.

01:47:03.000 And everyone recognizes that.

01:47:05.000 That's why it resonates.

01:47:08.000 I just think if we're a rock and roll band with four people in your band, there's nobody who sounds like Adam Clayton.

01:47:16.000 You know what I mean?

01:47:16.000 There's nobody who sounds like Edge.

01:47:19.000 There's nobody who sounds like Larry Mullen.

01:47:21.000 And there's nobody who wants to sound like me.

01:47:22.000 No, no.

01:47:23.000 I can sing.

01:47:24.000 I can sing.

01:47:26.000 And I'm becoming the singer I am.

01:47:31.000 And that's the reason I'm still in a band, because we all have to answer that question, don't we?

01:47:37.000 Why would we still be in a band?

01:47:39.000 We've got to feel that it's our best album that's going to come.

01:47:43.000 If it is, it's going to be because we frame it around that moment in the room when that happens.

01:47:53.000 I promise you, I can't deliver that, promise you, for every song on the album, I'll come back if you have me and I'll play you some of the songs.

01:48:06.000 But for the live rock and roll pieces, it has to have that.

01:48:10.000 I recognize that.

01:48:12.000 You can come back anytime you want, by the way.

01:48:15.000 Oh, thank you.

01:48:16.000 Anytime.

01:48:17.000 But yeah, that's what everybody wants out of entertainment, out of celebration.

01:48:23.000 That's what everybody wants, these moments.

01:48:25.000 And that was a real moment, man.

01:48:27.000 That was a real moment that resonated through the television.

01:48:29.000 I couldn't imagine what it would have been like to be in that room.

01:48:31.000 And I was thinking that, like, God, I wish I was there.

01:48:34.000 Because, you know, you see Will Smith.

01:48:36.000 And Will Smith's in the corner, and you see him just taken over by the music, like, nodding his head, like, oh my God, just in that moment.

01:48:44.000 It was so pure.

01:48:45.000 Strange resonance.

01:48:46.000 I don't know if it was mentioned, but he played Nelson Mandela.

01:48:52.000 No, he played Muhammad Ali.

01:48:53.000 He played Muhammad Ali.

01:48:54.000 Right, right, right.

01:48:54.000 I got that wrong.

01:48:55.000 That just would be funny.

01:48:56.000 That would be funny.

01:48:57.000 Yeah, but it was...

01:49:03.000 That's what everybody's looking for out of art, out of religion, out of just love and community.

01:49:09.000 We're looking for these moments that elevate us above everything else.

01:49:13.000 And there's a moment when a, That was so powerful.

01:49:28.000 Everything through the television is like 60% of what it is in person, at the most.

01:49:33.000 You know, we used to avoid TV because it was actually Bruce Springsteen's advice years and years ago.

01:49:43.000 he said be careful be on TV because people can turn you down you know they can go off Right, right, right.

01:49:51.000 He's kind of right about that.

01:49:53.000 It can take away the mystery.

01:49:56.000 But that studio that he's in, Jimmy, that's a historic place.

01:50:05.000 Beatles or whatever.

01:50:07.000 Think of all the artists that have been in.

01:50:10.000 So there's something going on there.

01:50:12.000 Oh, yeah.

01:50:14.000 And he's a very beautiful spirit.

01:50:18.000 He just really is.

01:50:20.000 I don't know him, but he seems like a real sweetheart.

01:50:21.000 I've been out late night with him.

01:50:24.000 I've been in all kinds of situations.

01:50:29.000 And he's just really a see-through heart.

01:50:36.000 Transparent person.

01:50:37.000 You see what he's thinking.

01:50:41.000 Now, how he does that.

01:50:44.000 Night after night, I will never know.

01:50:47.000 I'm terrified going on those shows.

01:50:51.000 This is easy for me because I'm talking, I don't do full stops and commas.

01:50:58.000 I don't have to.

01:50:59.000 You're not asking me to.

01:51:01.000 I'm just having a conversation.

01:51:03.000 But to be sharp and be on it, I don't know if I'm going to be sharp or on it.

01:51:08.000 And part of being in U2 is I have to be true to my mood.

01:51:13.000 And then I have to allow the song to take me somewhere else.

01:51:19.000 And, yeah, it's a funny thing, you know.

01:51:26.000 Yeah, there's performing.

01:51:28.000 There's not much psychology written about being a, Probably there is for comedians or actors.

01:51:39.000 No, there's barely for comedians.

01:51:40.000 I think the problem is that only the people that can truly do it understand it.

01:51:45.000 Right.

01:51:46.000 That's the problem.

01:51:48.000 What you're talking about, confinement for the talk show format, that's also what makes that moment so much greater.

01:51:58.000 It's the pop song.

01:51:59.000 Yes.

01:52:02.000 It doesn't belong there.

01:52:06.000 That format is for hollow platitudes and selling a new television show and getting in and out before the seven-minute commercial break.

01:52:17.000 It's the worst way to have a conversation where you're going to get the most out of people.

01:52:21.000 Because when you have time constraints on conversations, you immediately feel under the gun.

01:52:27.000 So you're kind of like tense and you're pressured and you don't know when.

01:52:31.000 And then the audience is staring at you and then there's bright lights.

01:52:34.000 Everything is wrong.

01:52:35.000 Everything is opposed to the way normal, comfortable human conversation and connection works.

01:52:44.000 It works with silence around you and just people talking or in a pub or wherever you're at, you know, in a living room with friends at a party.

01:52:52.000 Like, that's the real human connection where it's open-ended and you're just talking.

01:52:57.000 As soon as you, like, lock it down, and then, you know, you have to lock it down for commercials, and you have to button this up, and there's a new person coming in in five minutes, so they've got to shuffle you out the door and hold up your album and tell everybody to buy it, and then you leave, and like, was that good?

01:53:11.000 I guess it was good.

01:53:12.000 It's like, you know what I mean?

01:53:13.000 I never liked doing them.

01:53:15.000 I always felt confined, and I would never do stand-up on them.

01:53:18.000 I was always asked to do stand-up on them.

01:53:20.000 Like, that's not where stand-up belongs.

01:53:23.000 But if someone can pull it off, like there's been great comedians that pulled off incredible Tonight Show sets, like Richard Jenny and George Carlin.

01:53:31.000 Yeah, who's your favorite?

01:53:31.000 I mean, apart from me, I'm not going to ask you about your mates, but people that you...

01:53:40.000 Who were the ones that formed you?

01:53:42.000 Well, when I was a child, I was probably, I guess I was 15 or 16. My parents took me to see Live in the Sunset Strip in a theater.

01:53:51.000 And it was Richard Pryor.

01:53:52.000 He performed.

01:53:53.000 and he did a concert special in the theater, and I think it's his greatest performance.

01:53:57.000 And when I was in the theater, I was laughing so hard, and I remember very clearly looking around at all these people, and they were falling out of their chairs laughing.

01:54:09.000 People were just falling back, slapping each other, going, "Oh, my God! 1.00

01:54:13.000 Oh, my God!" Like, they couldn't breathe.

01:54:15.000 And I remember thinking, "This guy is doing this just talking." And I remember all the funny movies that I'd seen, like "Stripes," and all the great comedies, "Animal House," funny comedies.

01:54:26.000 Nothing compared to this.

01:54:27.000 And this guy's just talking.

01:54:29.000 It was an incredibly profound moment for me.

01:54:32.000 I remember I got obsessed with Richard Pryor.

01:54:34.000 I started buying Richard Pryor cassettes.

01:54:37.000 Wow.

01:54:37.000 I would buy, like, whatever I could.

01:54:39.000 You know, you could find them.

01:54:40.000 I found a bunch that were, like, weird printings of him at Red Fox's Comedy Club.

01:54:46.000 I actually found them in a truck stop once.

01:54:48.000 They were selling these cassettes.

01:54:49.000 I was like, what is this?

01:54:50.000 And then I bought them, and there were incredible performances.

01:54:54.000 There was like 15 people in the crowd, and he's just ranting and going on these like unhinged rations.

01:55:02.000 And I just couldn't believe that someone could do that.

01:55:06.000 That he could just, by talking, this theater filled with people were just falling down laughing.

01:55:12.000 They're just blown away.

01:55:14.000 So that was probably my first thought about stand-up comedy.

01:55:17.000 My first real thought.

01:55:19.000 What a crazy power to have.

01:55:22.000 What an unbelievable thing to be able to do with just your words.

01:55:27.000 Yeah, I saw Robin Williams do that a few times I was in a room with him.

01:55:32.000 And he just could not turn it off.

01:55:35.000 And it was wild.

01:55:37.000 He was certainly not in control of it.

01:55:40.000 Right.

01:55:41.000 There's a genius comedian called Tommy Tiernan.

01:55:45.000 I don't know if you've seen him.

01:55:47.000 Sure, I've heard him.

01:55:47.000 Again, when he goes out.

01:55:49.000 And he doesn't go out often because I think it scares the shite out of him what he's going to say next. 0.89

01:55:54.000 Yeah. 0.69

01:55:54.000 And so that is the thing of having the material and then being able to block That, I think, must be part of this, is it? 0.69

01:56:07.000 Yeah.

01:56:08.000 I mean, I don't know.

01:56:10.000 Yeah, that's part of it.

01:56:12.000 These ideas, they come to you and you just have to decide whether to embrace them or not.

01:56:16.000 And you get yourself into such trouble because you say the thing that you thought of.

01:56:22.000 But the art is, in fact, being able to say the thing you've thought of.

01:56:26.000 It's a strange one.

01:56:28.000 I didn't truly realize that.

01:56:29.000 And I never had any aspirations of comedy whatsoever when I was young.

01:56:33.000 When I loved Richard Pryor, I just loved it as a fan.

01:56:36.000 Just like I loved rock and roll, I didn't want to be a singer.

01:56:39.000 I just loved it.

01:56:41.000 And then I saw Kinnison.

01:56:43.000 And I think that was the first moment where I went, oh, this is comedy too?

01:56:49.000 Wow.

01:56:50.000 Okay, what is comedy?

01:56:51.000 You know, because everybody else had been like telling jokes or with prior, it was like these stories of life that was so like revealing and so vulnerable, but also hilarious.

01:57:04.000 Deeply fun, just like so accurate in the caricatures of people.

01:57:10.000 And then there was Kinison.

01:57:11.000 I was like, okay, this is comedy too?

01:57:13.000 And the first thing I ever saw of him, I was actually introduced to him by a girl that I worked with.

01:57:18.000 A girl that I worked with at a gym.

01:57:20.000 I worked at the Boston Athletic Club.

01:57:22.000 I was a trainer.

01:57:23.000 I was teaching people how to lift weights.

01:57:24.000 And there was a lady who was a volleyball player who I was friends with that worked there. 1.00

01:57:27.000 She worked the front desk.

01:57:28.000 And she was like, I saw HBO last night.

01:57:31.000 This comedian was so funny.

01:57:32.000 And in the parking lot of this gym that we worked out, she did Sam Kinison's bit of homosexual, Necrophiliacs paying a bunch of money to be with the freshest male corpses. 1.00

01:57:44.000 Have you ever seen the bit?

01:57:46.000 I have not.

01:57:46.000 So the bit is the guy, he goes, imagine this, you're at the end of your life, you know, you're lying now, you're like, well, I guess I'm dead now, I'm going to be alone with Jesus, and that's going to be great, I'm going to be in heaven, and hey!

01:57:57.000 He starts rocking backwards, what is this? 1.00

01:58:01.000 It feels like someone's got a dick in my ass! 1.00

01:58:03.000 You mean life keeps fucking the ass even after you're dead? 1.00

01:58:06.000 It never ends! 1.00

01:58:08.000 It never ends!

01:58:10.000 Doing this impression.

01:58:12.000 She's lying on the parking lot, on her stomach, going back and forth.

01:58:17.000 And I'm dying laughing.

01:58:18.000 I was like, I gotta see this.

01:58:20.000 So my first introduction to Kinison was this friend of mine, her doing it on the concrete.

01:58:27.000 That was good.

01:58:28.000 It was amazing.

01:58:29.000 No, no.

01:58:29.000 You're doing her doing him.

01:58:32.000 Oh, yeah.

01:58:32.000 She did a great job.

01:58:33.000 She had me howling.

01:58:35.000 Who was?

01:58:36.000 Well, he was a huge one.

01:58:39.000 Eddie Murphy, for sure.

01:58:41.000 That was a huge one.

01:58:42.000 But then again, that was also like...

01:58:45.000 I still didn't think I was going to do stand-up until I saw Kinison.

01:58:48.000 When I first saw Kinison, that was when I was like...

01:58:53.000 Because I had friends telling me to do it.

01:58:55.000 But it was friends that I did martial arts with.

01:58:58.000 from the time I was 15 until I was like 21, 22 all I did was travel around the country competing and I was with this such a wild combination, if you don't mind me saying.

01:59:10.000 It's just like...

01:59:16.000 It's very unfunny.

01:59:17.000 You know, you were fighting for your life.

01:59:21.000 It's very scary.

01:59:22.000 So when it's terrifying like that and everyone's nervous, that's when gallows humor comes in.

01:59:27.000 And I was the guy who – I always needed attention when I was young.

01:59:31.000 So I was getting my attention from being really good at fighting.

01:59:35.000 But then I was also getting my attention around also the people that were really good at fighting at being funny. 1.00

01:59:40.000 So when we were all like – A bunch of fucking crazy people. 0.99

01:59:45.000 Their hobby was to travel around the country trying to kick people unconscious. 0.99

01:59:50.000 So this is the group that I'm hanging out with.

01:59:53.000 And most of them were older than me.

01:59:55.000 I was the youngest because I was in high school at the time.

01:59:58.000 Most of these were grown men.

01:59:59.000 And I was competing against grown men while I was in high school.

02:00:02.000 Which is another crazy thing.

02:00:03.000 My instructor was hardcore.

02:00:06.000 and he threw me to the grown men when I was 16. It was terrifying, but because it was so terrifying, And so my way of releasing steam, I'd make fun of different guys that we trained with, having sex, like how he probably does it, and this and that. 0.76

02:00:24.000 I was just always trying to crack people up.

02:00:27.000 And I had one friend that I'm still really good friends with to this day, my friend Steve Graham, who talked me into doing stand-up.

02:00:34.000 I never thought, I'm like, you think I'm funny because you like me. 0.92

02:00:38.000 I go, but you're crazy too. 1.00

02:00:39.000 Like, you're a fucking psychopath as well. 1.00

02:00:41.000 Like, you think I'm funny because you're doing the same thing that I'm doing. 1.00

02:00:44.000 Like, we're nutty people. 0.75

02:00:46.000 We're not normal. 1.00

02:00:46.000 Other people are going to think I'm an asshole. 1.00

02:00:48.000 When you walked out, though, tell me, was he there when you walked out on stage? 0.99

02:00:55.000 The first time?

02:00:56.000 Oh, yeah, he was there the first night.

02:00:57.000 Yeah.

02:00:58.000 So can you just paint me the picture?

02:01:00.000 I was at a comedy club.

02:01:01.000 I was terrible.

02:01:02.000 I went to open mic night.

02:01:03.000 I did like five minutes.

02:01:04.000 It was horrible.

02:01:06.000 But I got a couple of laughs.

02:01:07.000 I got a couple of chuckles.

02:01:08.000 And I was like, I got off stage.

02:01:11.000 I was like, I think I could do this.

02:01:12.000 The weirdest thing was like, I had probably, at that time, I was 21 years old, I had probably fought at least 100 times.

02:01:20.000 And I was way more terrified of doing comedy.

02:01:23.000 Way more scared.

02:01:24.000 I imagine.

02:01:25.000 Way more scared.

02:01:26.000 Like, fighting was scary, but I was like, I know it just has to start.

02:01:30.000 Once it starts, I know what to do.

02:01:31.000 Like, the real fear of comedy or of fighting was before the fight.

02:01:35.000 It was all the demons.

02:01:37.000 Yeah.

02:01:37.000 All the thing, why am I doing this?

02:01:39.000 Why are you doing this to yourself?

02:01:40.000 That's what you're really fighting in the end.

02:01:41.000 That's what you're fighting.

02:01:42.000 You're fighting the fear.

02:01:43.000 But I knew once it started, I wouldn't be scared at all.

02:01:46.000 Because you don't feel fear when you're fighting because you're so in the moment.

02:01:51.000 You're in the moment.

02:01:52.000 You're zen.

02:01:53.000 You almost don't exist.

02:01:55.000 You have to, to operate at the highest level, to have instantaneous reactions, and to be able to manage your pace and all these different things.

02:02:03.000 You can't think about yourself or how you look or how you feel or whether your girlfriend's mad at you or whether you're going to fail out of high school.

02:02:09.000 You have to be locked into what you're doing.

02:02:13.000 I was afraid of fighting.

02:02:14.000 I was afraid of everything before fighting.

02:02:16.000 I was afraid of feelings.

02:02:18.000 But that's where the comedy came from.

02:02:20.000 The comedy came from alleviating that.

02:02:23.000 Right, so there is a symbiosis there.

02:02:27.000 There's a thing in it.

02:02:29.000 It's a task.

02:02:30.000 A very complicated task.

02:02:32.000 The way I describe fighting is it's high-level problem-solving with dire physical consequences.

02:02:38.000 That's what it really is.

02:02:39.000 You could call it fighting.

02:02:41.000 You could think it's brutish and aggressive.

02:02:42.000 Just say that again. 0.87

02:02:43.000 It might be the title of our new album.

02:02:44.000 high-level problem-solving with dire physical consequences.

02:02:48.000 So as far as, like...

02:02:53.000 Yes.

02:02:53.000 We got ourselves an album.

02:02:54.000 Yes.

02:02:56.000 it's the most consequential of all sports.

02:03:01.000 They take away everything you are as a man.

02:03:04.000 When someone destroys you in a competition, you are not a man anymore.

02:03:09.000 You are significantly decreased in your value.

02:03:13.000 Everything about you, you feel terrible.

02:03:16.000 You are as good the day you walked in there confident and you...

02:03:24.000 Where you felt like you could take on the world, you have the same skills. 1.00

02:03:28.000 You're as good as you felt when you could take on the world, and now you feel like utter dog shit. 0.99

02:03:33.000 And yet we know that failing is how we succeed. 1.00

02:03:39.000 You know, the Samuel Beckett lines, fail, fail again, fail better.

02:03:44.000 I may have failed to get the quote right, but that's it.

02:03:47.000 Fail, failure and fail better.

02:03:49.000 That pain is fuel.

02:03:50.000 The pain of failure is the most potent fuel, the most potent inspiration known to man.

02:03:56.000 And the more terrifying the failure, whether it's failure in stand-up comedy or it's failure in...

02:04:04.000 If you think about it, I'm just thinking this through this second.

02:04:08.000 Both your chosen passions.

02:04:13.000 Entail the risk of humiliation.

02:04:16.000 Yeah, you have to have that.

02:04:18.000 That's the only way you get better.

02:04:20.000 That's tricky.

02:04:22.000 Super tricky.

02:04:23.000 I grew up my best mate since I was three years old.

02:04:27.000 He gave me my name, Bono.

02:04:30.000 He gave us all names.

02:04:32.000 And his family names.

02:04:35.000 Genius, really.

02:04:38.000 painter became his painter as far as there was tough stuff going on on our street, in their house.

02:04:45.000 And he grew up, well, the father used to, He used to humiliate the kids by putting a bowl on their hair and cutting their hair.

02:05:02.000 So he'd walk around with these purring by us.

02:05:04.000 So everyone would be around and be like, ah!

02:05:11.000 They were all, they could all look after themselves.

02:05:16.000 Like the Boy Named Sue.

02:05:17.000 It is the Johnny Cash song, Boy Named Sue.

02:05:22.000 And so Googie, my mate, so I grew up sparring with him.

02:05:26.000 This is literally how we grew up.

02:05:28.000 And his, so we watch all the boxing matches, all the obvious ones.

02:05:34.000 And he just really went into, his obsession became mixed martial arts.

02:05:39.000 So he wants his kids.

02:05:41.000 You know, they're going down to the gym.

02:05:43.000 And then my godson, okay, his name is Noah.

02:05:47.000 And he comes, this is not a joke.

02:05:50.000 This is not a joke.

02:05:51.000 So Googie, my mate, since I'm three years old, comes up and he goes, oh.

02:05:57.000 He says, Noah, he wants to give up fighting, you know, cage fighting.

02:06:03.000 And I said, oh, that's okay.

02:06:06.000 He said, what does he want to do?

02:06:09.000 He wants to be a doctor.

02:06:11.000 And I'm like, Googie, this is a really, your kid wants to be a doctor.

02:06:17.000 And you're disappointed, but he could be such a great fighter.

02:06:20.000 And I said, Googie, he wants to be a doctor.

02:06:23.000 By the way, he became a doctor.

02:06:26.000 This story, that's how it ended.

02:06:27.000 But I said, and he put it, but he's, I said, why did he give up?

02:06:34.000 He said, well, he's down the gym.

02:06:35.000 He said, I can't even beat the best guy in the gym.

02:06:38.000 If I can't beat the best guy in the gym, there's no point in me having a big career.

02:06:44.000 He said, the best guy in the gym was Conor McGregor.

02:06:47.000 And he was a few years older.

02:06:50.000 And then two of his other kids are fighters.

02:06:54.000 Now!

02:06:55.000 So I've grown up around it because of my mates.

02:07:00.000 And his kids.

02:07:02.000 But that thing of combat, being comfortable in combat, is a thing you need to be careful of because you can end up there.

02:07:17.000 And sometimes I do...

02:07:27.000 It's different.

02:07:29.000 But people like me, fight or flight, is a problem.

02:07:33.000 Because sometimes fight is on.

02:07:36.000 And there is no fight.

02:07:39.000 Right.

02:07:39.000 So that's part of the shut up and listen instructions I'm receiving, which is I'm kind of born with my fists up.

02:07:50.000 And from every way, just growing up and being around what I was around.

02:07:56.000 And experiencing what I experienced.

02:07:58.000 I have that.

02:07:59.000 And even in the band, I'm a bit like that.

02:08:03.000 And so I've got to be careful because it's not always somebody coming around the corner who wants to take you out.

02:08:14.000 And they might actually just want to take you out.

02:08:17.000 Right, right, right.

02:08:18.000 And it's not becoming of, to be kind So I'm learning to put my fist down.

02:08:32.000 I'm learning to spend those times in the morning thanking God that I'm alive because I had a heart surgery, as we talked about earlier, and just waking up is great.

02:08:43.000 Just like, wow, I've just woken up.

02:08:44.000 What a thrill.

02:08:46.000 And I'm trying to get to that place with, not with the world, But with myself, I've not made peace with the world.

02:08:57.000 I certainly have not.

02:08:58.000 But I am making more peace with myself, which is sometimes a bit harder.

02:09:04.000 And the family, and listening to them more.

02:09:09.000 And yeah, that's it.

02:09:13.000 this combat thing is interesting.

02:09:16.000 Were you in the neighborhood, I asked you earlier, but were there people were there Sure.

02:09:26.000 Like, as being, like, on you.

02:09:29.000 Compatite?

02:09:30.000 On you.

02:09:31.000 On you.

02:09:31.000 Oh, on me?

02:09:32.000 Not from the time I started training.

02:09:34.000 Once I started training, I got very good very quick, and I became kind of known for it.

02:09:38.000 Because I was doing it in a crazy way.

02:09:43.000 It wasn't as simple as, like, oh, he takes karate.

02:09:46.000 It's like, no, he, on the weekends, he's traveling around the country and fighting in tournaments.

02:09:52.000 I was winning them.

02:09:55.000 I found a thing very early on that I could excel at that was scary.

02:10:01.000 And I realized through that thing, you can get good at anything.

02:10:05.000 You just have to put your attention and focus to it.

02:10:08.000 When do you put your attention and focus to something the most?

02:10:12.000 Well, when your literal health relies on success.

02:10:14.000 It was so scary that you couldn't half-ass it.

02:10:19.000 I have a problem with things that involve too much personality and charisma where they could mask truth.

02:10:27.000 And I think this is the problem with evangelical preachers.

02:10:31.000 This is the problem with politicians.

02:10:33.000 And rock stars.

02:10:34.000 And it could be anybody.

02:10:36.000 But it's like there's this siren call that will lead you to the rocks. 1.00

02:10:41.000 And it's believing your own bullshit. 1.00

02:10:43.000 And fighting was... 1.00

02:10:50.000 It didn't matter.

02:10:51.000 Yeah, nothing mattered.

02:10:51.000 It's empirical.

02:10:53.000 It didn't matter how many people liked you. 1.00

02:10:54.000 If you get kicked in the head, you get fucked up. 0.99

02:10:57.000 And on the flip side of it, I used to love when I would go to someone else's hometown. 1.00

02:11:03.000 And they had all these people beating, like, cheering for them. 1.00

02:11:07.000 All these people, like, you know, you're gonna fuck them up. 0.99

02:11:09.000 All these people cheering in the corner. 0.99

02:11:10.000 I loved that.

02:11:11.000 It was my favorite thing.

02:11:12.000 My favorite thing.

02:11:14.000 I was like, they can't help you.

02:11:15.000 Do you have...

02:11:18.000 Me now?

02:11:19.000 No, I'm just, when you're fighting, I mean, obviously what we do in music is we try to turn rage into something beautiful, and that's what rock and roll is, the sound of, you know, I think it was Neil Young who said it was something like The Sound of Revenge.

02:11:37.000 Whatever, it's rage, for sure.

02:11:39.000 There's rage.

02:11:40.000 That's what separates certain bands.

02:11:42.000 You want to know what the difference between a pop band and a rock and roll band?

02:11:45.000 It's rage.

02:11:45.000 Rage.

02:11:46.000 Rage against the machine.

02:11:47.000 And you bet. 1.00

02:11:49.000 Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me. 1.00

02:11:51.000 Yeah, we had that. 1.00

02:11:53.000 And that was coming through me.

02:11:56.000 And I had to...

02:12:02.000 Or maybe you didn't have it.

02:12:03.000 I mean, I'm told by some people that it's...

02:12:11.000 They thought it made them weak.

02:12:14.000 Well, it gets in the way of clear thinking.

02:12:17.000 And, you know, I had this guy named Yuri Prohaska on the podcast recently.

02:12:21.000 He's a brilliant fighter who's in the UFC, who was the light heavyweight champion at one point in time.

02:12:26.000 And it's still one of the top light heavyweights in the world.

02:12:28.000 And we were talking about anger and rage, and it leads you down a bad path of decision-making when you're fighting.

02:12:34.000 It interferes with the flow.

02:12:36.000 It interferes with the way.

02:12:38.000 And like I was saying before, when you're competing, you know, and I've never competed at that level.

02:12:43.000 When you're competing at a world championship level, anything that fucks with your mind, anything where you're doubting yourself or talking to yourself, all that is resources.

02:12:52.000 That is being allocated towards something that's completely useless as opposed to being, like, completely in the moment and in the zone.

02:13:01.000 If you get taken out of it for a moment, if they feel for a moment that you're thinking, like, you're looking for a way out, you're looking to quit, you're gone.

02:13:07.000 You're done.

02:13:08.000 Like, when your friend was saying that his son didn't want to be a fighter anymore, this is my advice always.

02:13:14.000 Whenever someone says, I'm thinking about stopping fighting, I go, quit.

02:13:17.000 Quit right now.

02:13:18.000 Because somewhere out there, there's someone who's not thinking about stopping at all. 1.00

02:13:22.000 They're going to fuck you up. 1.00

02:13:23.000 They're going to come for you. 1.00

02:13:25.000 It's going to be terrifying.

02:13:27.000 You're locked in a ring with Mike Tyson and you've been thinking about getting a regular job? 1.00

02:13:30.000 Like, yeah, you're fucked. 1.00

02:13:32.000 You're fucked. 1.00

02:13:33.000 Because there's all-in people, in my opinion. 1.00

02:13:36.000 I love fighting, but I think only all-in people should be fighting. 1.00

02:13:40.000 And the moment you're not all-in, get out.

02:13:43.000 You gotta get out.

02:13:44.000 Because the difference between an all-in person and a one-foot-out-the-door person is enormous.

02:13:51.000 It's enormous.

02:13:52.000 Even if skill level is similar, All they want to do is this one thing, and they're completely focused on it, just being the best in the world, this one thing.

02:14:05.000 They're going to find holes in you.

02:14:07.000 They're going to find your weaknesses.

02:14:09.000 They're going to push you in a way that maybe you didn't push yourself as far in the gym.

02:14:14.000 So come the second round, come the third round, you start breaking down.

02:14:17.000 And they're not breaking down at all.

02:14:18.000 They're breaking you down.

02:14:19.000 It's a terrifying place to be when you know you're not all in and the other person's all in.

02:14:24.000 So anybody, if that was my son, he's like, I'm thinking about quitting.

02:14:27.000 I'm like, good, quit.

02:14:28.000 That's what I'd say.

02:14:29.000 Quit.

02:14:29.000 Find something else you love.

02:14:30.000 Find what you love.

02:14:31.000 You don't have to do this.

02:14:32.000 But if you're going to do this, you've got to only do this. 1.00

02:14:36.000 This has to be your fucking life. 1.00

02:14:38.000 Right. 1.00

02:14:39.000 Your fucking life. 1.00

02:14:40.000 I mean, I don't want you to be a rock star and a fighter. 1.00

02:14:43.000 Shut the fuck up. 1.00

02:14:44.000 You can't be both. 1.00

02:14:45.000 It's not possible.

02:14:46.000 If you want to do that thing, that thing is your whole life.

02:14:49.000 There's a...

02:14:50.000 I don't have any tattoos, but if I did...

02:14:56.000 I know.

02:14:56.000 If I did, there's a quote.

02:15:03.000 It's from Nietzsche.

02:15:05.000 And I wouldn't normally quote from Nietzsche.

02:15:07.000 I'm not that interested in Nietzsche, but he's written some aphorisms that I like and whatever.

02:15:15.000 But in our summer place where we go to, there's a little trail called the Nietzsche Trail.

02:15:23.000 And he apparently came up with this line, which is, for anything truly great to take place, there requires, and this would be my tattoo, a long obedience in the same direction.

02:15:37.000 Ooh, that's good.

02:15:42.000 And I think of edge when I think of that.

02:15:45.000 I don't think of me.

02:15:46.000 I'm sort of...

02:15:49.000 I'm just...

02:15:51.000 I'm just...

02:15:58.000 But that long obedience in the same direction, that's what you're talking about.

02:16:04.000 Yes.

02:16:05.000 Does it apply to people, to tickling?

02:16:07.000 I always wondered, would it be great if you're the biggest fighter ever and just a little tickle.

02:16:14.000 It's like, maybe that's I think people would have already tried that.

02:16:21.000 Come on, man.

02:16:22.000 Totally unaffected.

02:16:23.000 You've got to do it.

02:16:24.000 You're so filled with adrenaline when you feel tackles.

02:16:27.000 You're sparked out.

02:16:29.000 There was a comedian called Ken Dodd.

02:16:32.000 I remember from Liverpool.

02:16:33.000 He had a feather.

02:16:37.000 He used to just tickle people.

02:16:41.000 I'll get the tattoo.

02:16:42.000 You get the feather.

02:16:45.000 The feather's awesome.

02:16:46.000 It is a funny thing.

02:16:49.000 That quote is so accurate.

02:16:51.000 It's one of the greatest quotes of all time.

02:16:53.000 I think it's a strong quote.

02:16:55.000 And it's a person who's pushing away higher, even the concept of higher consciousness for a lot of his life.

02:17:05.000 And yet, he's managing to bump into it.

02:17:09.000 Quote of his, I swear I had read, but when we were doing the book, we couldn't find it anywhere, so I might have made it up.

02:17:17.000 But he was, because that's the history of that in our family.

02:17:20.000 Jamie will find it.

02:17:22.000 Well, it's not.

02:17:23.000 It's a, Jamie, it's about friendship.

02:17:27.000 And I don't think it's Friedrich Nietzsche?

02:17:31.000 I don't think so, but the idea is that friendship is It's less dramatic than, you know, romantic love.

02:17:47.000 But it is, it's somehow the essence of great relationships is actually friendship.

02:17:57.000 I think that's Nietzsche.

02:17:59.000 But we couldn't find it, so I may have just made it up.

02:18:04.000 Will love be deeper?

02:18:05.000 Friendship is more wide?

02:18:06.000 From like Chronicles of Narnia.

02:18:09.000 I'll take that too.

02:18:10.000 Something like that.

02:18:11.000 Thank you, Jamie.

02:18:12.000 I'll take it.

02:18:13.000 My dad was funny.

02:18:15.000 He used to quote this playwright, Irish playwright, called Sing.

02:18:20.000 You say, because he was suspicious of nationalism.

02:18:24.000 Because in Ireland, you know, you would be. 0.89

02:18:26.000 Because the country was nearly at civil war and along sectarian lines.

02:18:33.000 He used to say, Ireland, what is Ireland but the land that keeps my feet from getting wet?

02:18:39.000 So that's a great quote of Sings.

02:18:42.000 So when we did the book, Surrender book, was on Gnopf.

02:18:46.000 So they went off, couldn't find it anywhere.

02:18:49.000 They couldn't find the quote anywhere because he made it up.

02:18:52.000 Wow.

02:18:52.000 And it's a great quote, and I think it's okay.

02:18:56.000 If you say something three times, it's yours, right?

02:18:58.000 Yeah.

02:19:01.000 You know, I'm in a band with my friends.

02:19:07.000 And that friendship is pulled and pushed and it's difficult and at some point one of us is usually trying to break up the band.

02:19:17.000 But it's a very deep bond.

02:19:20.000 Can I say something about that?

02:19:21.000 Yeah.

02:19:21.000 I thought it was really great about the film as well.

02:19:23.000 When you went into the fact that it's a true democracy in your band.

02:19:28.000 Yeah, it's annoying, isn't it?

02:19:30.000 But I would expect nothing less from you.

02:19:33.000 When you said that, and I wasn't aware of that, I was like, of course.

02:19:37.000 Of course that's how you would set it up.

02:19:40.000 Well, it's fine to be a democracy, but we share things also.

02:19:45.000 The economics.

02:19:47.000 Yes.

02:19:47.000 That's where you find it.

02:19:48.000 Exactly.

02:19:49.000 And we had a manager, Paul McGuinness, for most of our life, and it was one of these things.

02:19:55.000 He said, "Just don't ever be fighting about whose song it is." Because in the background, it's like, "I want my song on the album." Just share everything and make sure that you all feel like a stake in each other.

02:20:10.000 Yes.

02:20:10.000 And so the arguments in U2 are never about, oh, this is my idea, so you're really stepping on my toes.

02:20:21.000 We've developed, I would call it, a sort of band ego.

02:20:26.000 Bigger than individual egos.

02:20:29.000 And he goes, big as mine.

02:20:31.000 This is bigger.

02:20:32.000 This is even bigger.

02:20:33.000 And it's the quiet ones.

02:20:35.000 But, yeah, I think we've learned to just, the great, we don't argue about what's very good.

02:20:45.000 Sorry, we do argue about what's very good.

02:20:47.000 We don't argue about what's great.

02:20:51.000 So if we're talking about, is that good, that chorus, nah, that guitar, nah.

02:20:56.000 But it's all for a purpose.

02:20:57.000 We're all just talking about it.

02:20:59.000 But when it's great, people just back off.

02:21:03.000 We just know.

02:21:04.000 It's like greatness has its own, what's the word, has its own, brings with it a certain acquiescence to that thing.

02:21:15.000 And then you learn that very good is the enemy.

02:21:21.000 Of greatness.

02:21:22.000 It's not even next door neighbours. 0.98

02:21:24.000 Like we used to be with you two, we were really crap or great. 0.81

02:21:28.000 But then we got very good. 0.96

02:21:31.000 Very dangerous.

02:21:32.000 Being very good is not helpful because there's a chasm between what is very good and great.

02:21:41.000 Greatness, what you were talking about there back on Jimmy Fallon, that's a moment of greatness.

02:21:52.000 Which is different from saying we were great.

02:21:54.000 It was great.

02:21:56.000 And very good could be just sitting there playing the song.

02:22:00.000 It's a very fine song.

02:22:02.000 And these are very fine players.

02:22:05.000 But that could just be very good.

02:22:07.000 It didn't make that moment that resonated so deeply with me that I brought it up.

02:22:12.000 We played it multiple times on this podcast over the years.

02:22:15.000 I'm really happy you did.

02:22:16.000 And that's what the...

02:22:36.000 That's really what he was saying.

02:22:38.000 Yes, yes.

02:22:39.000 You hadn't captured the...

02:22:48.000 Jimmy Fallon's sitting there.

02:22:49.000 Will Smith is sitting there.

02:22:51.000 And you're just on these chairs.

02:22:54.000 And you're singing on the chair.

02:22:56.000 So you're moving on the chair.

02:22:57.000 And then eventually everything picks up and you're standing up and dancing.

02:23:00.000 And the whole crowd felt it.

02:23:02.000 It was like this build-up to it.

02:23:04.000 It all flowed together, but it just...

02:23:09.000 Really?

02:23:09.000 No, no.

02:23:09.000 I haven't seen it.

02:23:10.000 I probably saw it on the night or the next day.

02:23:12.000 Oh, wow.

02:23:13.000 So I haven't I sent that to all my friends.

02:23:19.000 As soon as it came out online, I was like, you've got to see this.

02:23:21.000 This is incredible.

02:23:22.000 Well, thank you for that.

02:23:25.000 But there might be something to do with the fact that the four members of that band feel equally involved in that song.

02:23:39.000 There might be.

02:23:40.000 And the democracy, which is such a pain in the hole.

02:23:47.000 Is actually one of the reasons that when U2 walks onto a stage, people tell me, even if they're not bands, you know, they just come along as guests, the hairs come up on the back of their neck.

02:24:01.000 And I explain, actually that happens to us too.

02:24:05.000 It's a strange thing when we walk out.

02:24:08.000 And it seems to me, that I haven't figured this out, that the You fall in love, it's romantic.

02:24:25.000 This is families now.

02:24:27.000 This doesn't have to be your partner in life, your wife, your husband, your families, kids, everything.

02:24:37.000 It's just the whole world just seems set against them.

02:24:46.000 Surviving.

02:24:47.000 It just pulls at us.

02:24:48.000 Like gravity itself, you're resisting.

02:24:52.000 And so when you manage to get through it, and you're standing there, the forest, and there's something going on that feels like you've resisted gravity or whatever the force is that pull you apart.

02:25:09.000 There's something about it, and some nights it's really not easy.

02:25:15.000 But, I mean, not the music, but the friendship.

02:25:22.000 But we're through it right now, and you'll feel it in these recordings.

02:25:28.000 And you'll feel us, in a way, rediscovering each other.

02:25:35.000 That's amazing.

02:25:35.000 We haven't been playing for you.

02:25:37.000 We just played in London acoustically.

02:25:40.000 At the Ivor Novellas, it was the first time in five years the four of us played together, because Larry had a back injury.

02:25:48.000 But yeah, there's something in the chemistry.

02:25:51.000 Well, there's also the fact that you guys continue to create, because one of the things that happens to great bands is they become a prisoner to their old songs.

02:25:58.000 Yeah, you've got to be a bit careful there.

02:26:01.000 Yeah, a lot of bands.

02:26:02.000 Ordinary Love, that's what's so beautiful because that's in the last...

02:26:10.000 Something along those lines.

02:26:12.000 Which is a mere minute if you've been around for...

02:26:16.000 We'll be around, I think the first time we met in Larry's kitchen is...

02:26:26.000 Wow!

02:26:27.000 In the kitchen.

02:26:28.000 Wow!

02:26:29.000 Drummer wants musicians, whatever.

02:26:31.000 We're literally...

02:26:37.000 We've got the chairs.

02:26:39.000 You know, because I'm on the road with, you know, 250 Mack trucks and a space station and whatever else with you too.

02:26:47.000 But here you could put everything into a station wagon.

02:26:50.000 It's like literally a table and chairs.

02:26:53.000 And the chairs are Edge, Adam and Larry.

02:26:57.000 And I've got to, you know, I use the kitchen table as operating theater.

02:27:03.000 so it starts with the heart surgery.

02:27:05.000 It's the...

02:27:14.000 And it's the kitchen table where all operas really begin in the kitchen, don't they?

02:27:23.000 It's like you're sitting there, and in our case, it'd be me, my father, my brother, mother's past, and it's just male.

02:27:34.000 Rage in its different shapes and forms.

02:27:37.000 So I get to be on the road with a table and chairs.

02:27:43.000 But then I get to bring out the chair.

02:27:46.000 There's Larry.

02:27:47.000 Yeah.

02:27:48.000 There's Edge.

02:27:49.000 There's Adam.

02:27:51.000 I introduced them as chairs.

02:27:52.000 And it was amazing for me to have that experience of... 1.00

02:28:03.000 If their memoirs come out, I'm fucked. 0.99

02:28:06.000 No, I really am. 1.00

02:28:08.000 But it's over.

02:28:11.000 And I'm done with the past.

02:28:15.000 I'm not sure the past is done with me, but I'm doing my very best to deal with the past in order to get to the present.

02:28:27.000 Make this the sound of the future.

02:28:30.000 So the songs on the next album, when you are, or whomever you're with, or your kids, or whatever, are out at the Joshua Tree, or wherever it is, park, or at the lake here in Austin, Texas, and you're listening to our new album.

02:28:54.000 That we will take you somewhere.

02:28:56.000 Because it has to be, these songs have to be, they have to be everything, or what's the point?

02:29:03.000 Right.

02:29:04.000 What is the creative process for you when you have a concept for a song, when you have an idea?

02:29:11.000 Like, how does it work?

02:29:13.000 Do ideas just come to you?

02:29:15.000 Do you sit until they come to you?

02:29:16.000 Do you sit in front of a pad and write them down?

02:29:20.000 That has never been an issue.

02:29:25.000 Like, Edge and myself are the sort of song starters.

02:29:29.000 And, I mean, he is, I think we were counting them up the last time, like 526.

02:29:38.000 He said, 526 songs I have here.

02:29:42.000 I said, Edge, they're not songs, they're ideas.

02:29:45.000 And he goes, this one's a song.

02:29:46.000 And I go, oh yeah, that might be.

02:29:48.000 And I will have and have.

02:29:52.000 Stuffed in my phone and paper and Air India sick bags and whatever else I've written in my life and the glimpses that you get.

02:30:03.000 And I don't write out of misery, which is great because I know some people have to be really miserable before they write.

02:30:09.000 I write out of joy a lot of the time.

02:30:12.000 Sometimes I'm writing my way out of a situation.

02:30:20.000 But most times, I'm riding my way into something.

02:30:26.000 And especially with this next album, I just think the world needs some wild guitar music, but it also does not need the blues.

02:30:40.000 We're in the blues right now.

02:30:43.000 Well, we're in danger.

02:30:45.000 We're in danger.

02:30:45.000 But you did say on one of your recent podcasts, you were saying, hold on a second, still more people got access to water and heat and air conditioning than in the history of the planet.

02:31:02.000 So we just don't want to lose that.

02:31:05.000 perspective.

02:31:06.000 And we don't want to, you know, this incredible thing.

02:31:24.000 Some of this is China.

02:31:25.000 Some of this is capitalism.

02:31:27.000 Some of this is that.

02:31:29.000 But I don't want to lose the sense of the next chapter could be our best.

02:31:40.000 And that's gonna need vision.

02:31:43.000 Yeah.

02:31:44.000 And I'm not talking about U2's new album.

02:31:45.000 But that is part of it because art changes the collective consciousness of a civilization.

02:31:51.000 And songs that really deeply resonate with young people that have a...

02:32:05.000 It shifts consciousness.

02:32:06.000 It shifts consciousness in a positive way and those young people may grow up to become people that aren't corrupt politicians, that aren't corrupt congressmen, that don't.

02:32:16.000 Give in to the lobbyists and the special interest groups, but really look out for their constituents and they get into it for the right reasons.

02:32:23.000 Because everybody's going to be co-opted if you don't.

02:32:27.000 Well, you're right.

02:32:29.000 Yeah, we better be good then.

02:32:31.000 And for me, the go-to group was the Beatles.

02:32:34.000 And I had this moment where Paul McCartney picked me up.

02:32:43.000 At John Lennon Airport, he was driving the car and brought me and kind of showed me the different neighbourhoods of the Beatles, which was an amazing experience.

02:32:54.000 And he'd stop and he'd say, oh, this is where this happened.

02:32:56.000 And he'd say, do you mind me telling you this?

02:32:59.000 And I'm like, are you kidding me?

02:33:01.000 And then he stopped at the traffic lights and he said, oh, yeah, that's where I had our first real kind of conversation, you know, with me and John.

02:33:12.000 I said, hold on a second.

02:33:13.000 I'm a bit of a Beatles student.

02:33:15.000 Didn't you have that when you were in the Quarrymen?

02:33:18.000 He says, no.

02:33:20.000 No, no, no.

02:33:20.000 It was a different level.

02:33:22.000 He bought a bar of chocolate and after the war, you know, chocolate was really hard to come by, you know.

02:33:28.000 It was kind of a real luxury.

02:33:30.000 And he bought the bar of chocolate and he didn't give me a square.

02:33:36.000 He broke it.

02:33:37.000 Cadbury's milk chocolate broke it in half.

02:33:40.000 And I said, oh.

02:33:42.000 So you're into sharing too?

02:33:44.000 He said, yeah.

02:33:45.000 And he says, I don't know why I'm telling you that.

02:33:50.000 And he drove on and I just thought, oh, I know why you're telling me that.

02:33:55.000 Greatest collaboration, not just in music, in the history of music, maybe the greatest collaboration in the history of culture started with Hath.

02:34:06.000 Wow!

02:34:07.000 They shared, they gave it.

02:34:09.000 My mate.

02:34:10.000 Googie, who I just spoke about, who knows all about you and knows all about your sport, he taught me everything he had.

02:34:21.000 And they came, you know, it was tough at times, as I told you, in their house.

02:34:26.000 He just gave me half of it.

02:34:28.000 Whatever he got, just half.

02:34:30.000 So when I were in U2 and our manager, McGinnis, says, you should share everything.

02:34:36.000 I was like, yeah, I've been sharing everything.

02:34:39.000 I've been sharing everything anyway.

02:34:41.000 And even now, Edge and myself, we're sitting in our house.

02:34:48.000 We share this place in the south of France.

02:34:51.000 We've been there for 30 years.

02:34:52.000 All our families have kind of grown up there.

02:34:54.000 The French are too into themselves to bother us, which is really the way we like it. 1.00

02:34:58.000 And we sit there and we think, the real owners are going to come.

02:35:05.000 You know what I mean?

02:35:06.000 Because we still...

02:35:11.000 And you know what?

02:35:13.000 I think that's probably right.

02:35:15.000 Because we don't really own this stuff.

02:35:18.000 You get it for a short period and then you hand it on.

02:35:23.000 I think something about the four and the way we share is in the sound of our music.

02:35:32.000 I think so too.

02:35:33.000 No, no, no.

02:35:33.000 I think you're dead right.

02:35:34.000 I think that when you...

02:35:40.000 but it's him playing the tambourine.

02:35:43.000 And, yeah, there's something...

02:35:52.000 But it resonates, right?

02:35:53.000 You can feel something.

02:35:54.000 Yeah, I believe it.

02:35:55.000 I think there's something to it.

02:35:56.000 You've made decisions that have sort of affirmed this...

02:36:06.000 It's not a hierarchy of who's the lead singer, who's this, who's that.

02:36:12.000 It's not who's the big star.

02:36:13.000 It's just we're all together to do this thing.

02:36:16.000 I'm in a band where every member of the band thinks they're the leader.

02:36:21.000 I think that's every band.

02:36:24.000 And I voted for this.

02:36:28.000 And it's sort of great.

02:36:30.000 I think it's worked out.

02:36:33.000 And you guys are still together.

02:36:35.000 Which is also a giant win.

02:36:38.000 You never know.

02:36:39.000 You could run down the road any minute.

02:36:41.000 But whilst we're running down the road, it's a thrill.

02:36:47.000 I think that's also what makes you great.

02:36:49.000 It's the same feeling that some of the real owners are going to come.

02:36:53.000 Like, you never really buy into it even though it's you.

02:36:57.000 And that's real.

02:36:59.000 I think we all should have that.

02:37:01.000 And I think if you lose that, you're in trouble.

02:37:03.000 I think we should all have that.

02:37:05.000 I think that's right.

02:37:07.000 I call this...

02:37:12.000 He used to say, don't, you know, look up to me.

02:37:15.000 Don't look down at me as a woman.

02:37:18.000 Look across to me.

02:37:19.000 That's where I am.

02:37:21.000 Okay?

02:37:22.000 And there was a lesson in that about horizontal relationships rather than versical ones.

02:37:33.000 I don't have a boss.

02:37:35.000 I don't want to be a boss.

02:37:37.000 Yes.

02:37:38.000 I mean, I have that relationship with the band that is equal.

02:37:43.000 I have it with my mates.

02:37:45.000 And it's just the way I know it to be the most efficient.

02:37:53.000 And, you know, the boss is the boss.

02:37:56.000 I mean, Bruce, it's an amazing thing, what he does.

02:38:00.000 And it's his vision.

02:38:03.000 And he's found a team around him to help him realize his vision.

02:38:07.000 It's like you going out on the boards.

02:38:11.000 You write your own material.

02:38:13.000 It's your point of view.

02:38:15.000 That's not, I'm part of, I think, isn't there two stories they say in the cinema?

02:38:20.000 There's the gang and the man against, Stranger Comes to Town I think it's one that's But usually there's a gang.

02:38:37.000 That's a different story.

02:38:38.000 That's a third story maybe.

02:38:40.000 I'm in the gang.

02:38:41.000 Yeah.

02:38:42.000 Comedians are in a gang too.

02:38:45.000 We're in a gang at a club.

02:38:46.000 We're in a gang together.

02:38:47.000 Like we're all convened together.

02:38:49.000 I mean a gang in terms of a collaborative gang, too.

02:38:53.000 We work together.

02:38:53.000 We work on ideas together.

02:38:55.000 We talk about bits together.

02:38:58.000 Especially at my place, at the Comedy Mothership, it's set up like that.

02:39:01.000 The whole club is set up entirely for comedians.

02:39:05.000 Completely different pay structure than any other club.

02:39:07.000 Pays way more than other clubs do.

02:39:09.000 The comedians get most of the money.

02:39:11.000 We get the money from liquor, essentially.

02:39:16.000 Liquor in a small percentage of the ticket sales.

02:39:18.000 But most of it goes to the comics.

02:39:20.000 And the vibe of the place is not that it's my place.

02:39:26.000 The vibe is that this is our place.

02:39:28.000 I paid the bill, but I shouldn't have had that much money in the first place. 0.95

02:39:32.000 It's ridiculous.

02:39:33.000 The whole thing is crazy, that you could do something like this. 0.92

02:39:36.000 And if you could do something like this, you're supposed to.

02:39:38.000 If you're the person that, for whatever reason, the universe has blessed you with a lot of zeros, throw it at something fun.

02:39:45.000 Let's do it.

02:39:47.000 And so there's that in comedy too.

02:39:48.000 Yeah, you can't...

02:39:55.000 No.

02:39:56.000 It's like, you know, just the more you...

02:40:03.000 You know, one of the things I do like about some of these churches is not the ones that put pressure on you, but, you know, people will give some cash every week to help with what's going on.

02:40:16.000 You know, in faraway places or whatever, and they tithe.

02:40:19.000 I think they call it tithing.

02:40:21.000 And it's just part of the blessing of America.

02:40:26.000 It's this...

02:40:28.000 Okay, so it's less than...

02:40:34.000 It's half of one percent of the government budget to keep all these people alive all over the world.

02:40:40.000 They love America because they love America.

02:40:43.000 They're not going to be a problem for America.

02:40:46.000 It takes them away from terrorism, takes them away from anti-Americanism.

02:40:50.000 It takes them, puts points in the direction of freedom.

02:40:53.000 That's a blessing.

02:40:55.000 So if you count your zeros and you say, that's mine, that's ours.

02:41:02.000 We're not sharing that with those people.

02:41:04.000 The definition of neighbor is, oh, it's just next door.

02:41:08.000 Be careful.

02:41:09.000 Because there is a bigger blessing out there.

02:41:15.000 There's just a bigger blessing.

02:41:17.000 There most certainly is.

02:41:18.000 And it sounds like you're in it. 1.00

02:41:20.000 And it is in the business where you'll see it because people have a – I have a big fucking mouth. 0.99

02:41:32.000 But it's not about what you're talking about. 0.99

02:41:35.000 It's what you're doing.

02:41:36.000 It's how you're living.

02:41:39.000 The U2 thing is not just about the songs.

02:41:43.000 It's the way.

02:41:45.000 Did you use the word way a minute ago?

02:41:47.000 You said it's the way when you're fighting.

02:41:50.000 Anything that takes you away.

02:41:52.000 What did you mean by that?

02:41:54.000 There's a great quote by Miyamoto Musashi.

02:41:58.000 This is the guy I actually have tattooed on my right arm.

02:42:01.000 Once you understand the way broadly, you can see it in all things.

02:42:05.000 Beautiful.

02:42:06.000 Yeah, and the concept is he was the greatest samurai that ever lived.

02:42:10.000 He killed 60 men in one-on-one.

02:42:13.000 Combat with swords.

02:42:14.000 He got to the point where he was killing people He was killing people so easily he decided to stop using swords and he would like fashion a Wooden sword out of an oar from a boat on the way over to go kill a guy.

02:42:27.000 Sounds like Googie.

02:42:28.000 He It was an extraordinary human being, but he wrote a book on strategy called the book of five rings Yeah, and go read no show the book of five rings.

02:42:37.000 It's this book is all about where's he from?

02:42:41.000 Japan.

02:42:41.000 All about how you—from the 1400s.

02:42:44.000 You had to be balanced in everything.

02:42:47.000 To be a great warrior, you had to be great at calligraphy.

02:42:51.000 You had to be great at poetry.

02:42:52.000 You had to be an artist.

02:42:54.000 You had to be able to meditate.

02:42:56.000 You had to be balanced.

02:42:57.000 You had to know the way. 0.99

02:42:59.000 And don't let any bullshit— This is the modern interpretation. 0.98

02:43:03.000 Don't let your ego, don't let other people's perceptions, don't let insecurities in, don't let any of these things in. 0.99

02:43:09.000 Stay on the way.

02:43:10.000 And the way is like this way of thought.

02:43:14.000 Everybody says, how you do anything is how you do everything.

02:43:19.000 This was his earliest version of it.

02:43:21.000 This is wonderful to hear.

02:43:22.000 Once you understand the way broadly, you will see it in all things.

02:43:25.000 it's that Nietzsche this path to greatness once you fit really Like, oh, this is this intense focus and dedication to something that could be applied to anything.

02:43:37.000 You could apply it to being a better father.

02:43:39.000 You could apply it to being someone who writes books.

02:43:43.000 You could apply it to music.

02:43:44.000 You could apply it to anything.

02:43:45.000 But that's what it is.

02:43:46.000 It's like finding what the thing is and throwing And to do that correctly, you can't have, you know, macho issues.

02:44:00.000 You can't have insecurity, things that you're compensating for.

02:44:04.000 You have to be pure.

02:44:06.000 You have to fight.

02:44:07.000 And it's a constant struggle.

02:44:09.000 Stunning.

02:44:10.000 There are stunning insights.

02:44:12.000 In my path, I suppose, or whatever you call it, my practice, I have this I am the way, the truth and the life.

02:44:23.000 This is what I learned from Jesus.

02:44:24.000 Become a bumper sticker.

02:44:26.000 Probably taking the meaning of it away.

02:44:30.000 But it's the same thing.

02:44:32.000 I've got to...

02:44:34.000 Because when I focus on this kind of...

02:44:40.000 This radical idea to serve...

02:44:52.000 All this stuff, unfortunately, this language has been ruined for you guys.

02:44:55.000 I'm so sorry.

02:44:56.000 Kind of, but no.

02:44:57.000 We can get past that.

02:44:59.000 It's powerful.

02:44:59.000 Yeah, it's real.

02:45:00.000 And this Jesus is a long way from the one that you meet on these kind of sales programs.

02:45:12.000 But it is humility.

02:45:15.000 And it is service, and it is discipline, and it is not my will, thy will.

02:45:25.000 It is indeed surrender.

02:45:27.000 And anyone, wherever they are in the world, Japan in the 1400s or the 15th century, wherever, anyone anywhere, scientists, you know, the pursuit of truth, it just gathers.

02:45:45.000 Yeah, there's something about, I'm trying to think of the word, this sort of gathering where we will all end up in the same place if we're really, and I'm not talking about life after death as if to enter a competition, but we're in the same, consilience, I think is the word.

02:46:10.000 I think it was, I don't know who wrote, I wrote a book called Consilience, but it's the idea that all disciplines, all art forms, everything comes together on a point, a kind of convergence.

02:46:23.000 But the word is consilience.

02:46:24.000 And if it isn't, I just made up a great word.

02:46:27.000 It's a great word.

02:46:29.000 There you go, Jamie.

02:46:31.000 Well, those moments that were...

02:46:34.000 That's the book.

02:46:35.000 Where great art hits that peak in your life.

02:46:37.000 Thank you.

02:46:38.000 That's really good.

02:46:39.000 Jamie's the best.

02:46:40.000 How did you not nod off?

02:46:42.000 How long have I been talking?

02:46:44.000 Almost three hours.

02:46:45.000 Because I don't know why you...

02:46:51.000 It'd be just the two of us at the fire.

02:46:53.000 Jamie's locked in.

02:46:55.000 Jamie's locked in.

02:46:55.000 They'd be like, see you later, dude.

02:46:57.000 That thing, though, is like what we all...

02:47:03.000 Like, Ordinary Love.

02:47:04.000 Like, when you guys were doing that, we know that that's not a first take.

02:47:07.000 You know, that's not like you just wrote the song and you guys are out there jamming.

02:47:10.000 No, that's a polished song.

02:47:13.000 And the fact that you're doing this and you Like, everything is off, right?

02:47:21.000 Like, you're not on the stage.

02:47:23.000 There's not a spotlight on you.

02:47:24.000 There's no mist.

02:47:25.000 There's no lights.

02:47:26.000 Like, all the theatrics are removed.

02:47:28.000 You're in a brightly lit studio, sitting down with a bunch of people beside you, which is like the most un-rock-and-roll thing of all time.

02:47:36.000 Right?

02:47:36.000 It's corporate, almost.

02:47:38.000 Like, no one does that.

02:47:39.000 Yeah, I got a corporate haircut, too. 0.99

02:47:40.000 But yet you fucking nailed it. 0.99

02:47:44.000 That moment, it took everybody to a better place. 0.99

02:47:49.000 That's what we're all hoping for.

02:47:52.000 In everything.

02:47:53.000 We're hoping for our leaders.

02:47:56.000 We're hoping for that one speech, that one JFK speech, where you just go, "Oh my God, yes." That's the prayer.

02:48:05.000 Clinton when he was young, he had some bangers.

02:48:07.000 Obama when he was young.

02:48:09.000 They had these speeches that made us feel better as human beings, better about the country.

02:48:14.000 That's the danger of the conflicted times that we're in, is that people don't feel good even about America.

02:48:21.000 There's people that think That the American flag is a symbol of injustice.

02:48:25.000 That's a crazy thought.

02:48:27.000 Like, America's U2.

02:48:28.000 It's not just U2, man.

02:48:30.000 But it's us.

02:48:32.000 It's all of us human beings, regardless of your political ideology.

02:48:37.000 And we've got to think of that first.

02:48:39.000 We're a community.

02:48:40.000 We're a neighborhood.

02:48:42.000 We should think of ourselves as a giant neighborhood.

02:48:45.000 And we don't.

02:48:47.000 We think of ourselves as opposing tribes that are in this battle to stay in control of whatever the direction of the country is. 0.98

02:48:57.000 Orchestrated by artificial intelligence bots that are constantly battling with people online and state actors and intelligence agencies and money and all this shit is together.

02:49:11.000 And it's all confusing everybody as to what is the purpose of being a human being that's alive with other human beings.

02:49:16.000 The purpose is community.

02:49:19.000 Communing.

02:49:20.000 We're supposed to be a United States.

02:49:23.000 We're supposed to be a community.

02:49:26.000 All the differences that we have, the political differences, they should be so fucking secondary that it should be a small part of the elections.

02:49:37.000 A small part of the election should be policy.

02:49:39.000 Because we should just all agree that we should figure out, you want to have a good use of AI?

02:49:44.000 Figure out what's the objective best use of resources to support the collective whole.

02:49:49.000 And how does that get accomplished?

02:49:51.000 How does that get accomplished without fraud and waste?

02:49:54.000 And what's the best way to navigate?

02:49:57.000 We're looking to clean up the lakes.

02:50:04.000 We're looking to stop pollution.

02:50:06.000 We're looking for clean energy sources.

02:50:08.000 We're looking for education.

02:50:09.000 We're looking for health care.

02:50:10.000 We're looking for housing.

02:50:12.000 We're looking to get people off the streets that have mental health issues and get them help.

02:50:16.000 And don't just give them fentanyl and give them money for needles. 1.00

02:50:19.000 That's stupid. 1.00

02:50:20.000 Don't let them camp on the street. 1.00

02:50:21.000 That's stupid. 1.00

02:50:21.000 Also stupid ignoring them. 1.00

02:50:24.000 That's stupid too. 1.00

02:50:25.000 Some real resources. 1.00

02:50:27.000 And once we do that, we could all do better.

02:50:31.000 The whole country can do better.

02:50:32.000 We'll be less at each other's throats.

02:50:34.000 There'll be less anxiety.

02:50:35.000 It can be accomplished.

02:50:36.000 But we have to address the primary factor in this country for crime and horrible behavior.

02:50:46.000 It's completely disenfranchised neighborhoods. 0.99

02:50:49.000 It's areas that have been fucked. 0.99

02:50:52.000 Since the 1940s. 0.99

02:50:53.000 And they're not doing anything to change them.

02:50:56.000 And no one's pouring any resources.

02:50:58.000 There's no plans to try to revitalize these communities and elevate these people out of, like, dire poverty and gang violence and drug use.

02:51:09.000 There's a way to do it.

02:51:10.000 It's not impossible.

02:51:11.000 But there's no resources put at it at all.

02:51:14.000 That should be another thing.

02:51:15.000 That shouldn't be a Republican thing or a Democrat thing.

02:51:18.000 Why should we spend money on that?

02:51:20.000 It shouldn't be.

02:51:21.000 It should be community.

02:51:23.000 The people who voted for Donald Trump, who I'm not a fan of, and I know you have respect for him, and I respect that.

02:51:32.000 But the people who voted for him, I have immense respect for them and their sense that they felt left out of the American dream, a lot of people.

02:51:46.000 And in so many ways, when...

02:51:58.000 But everyone in America, I think, you know, a lot of people, a lot of communities paid the price for that.

02:52:06.000 And I don't know what the pie was grown.

02:52:09.000 NAFTA, I think, was supposed to be a trillion dollars.

02:52:11.000 It ended up being the pie.

02:52:13.000 I think it was one and a half trillion.

02:52:15.000 So there was enough money to reinvest in communities, but it never happened.

02:52:21.000 And so people were pissed off.

02:52:26.000 And I think we should be with those people.

02:52:30.000 I'm not sure this is going to be the answer that they're looking for.

02:52:34.000 And if it's not...

02:52:39.000 I don't vote.

02:52:40.000 I'm Irish.

02:52:41.000 Just, you'll know.

02:52:43.000 I trust in the wisdom of crowds.

02:52:46.000 I really do.

02:52:46.000 I mean you too.

02:52:48.000 And, you know, Americans will know and they must...

02:52:57.000 they're trying out this new version of themselves and where We're trying to fix our own problems.

02:53:08.000 I would say they are bound up in each other.

02:53:10.000 And I would say there's a higher purpose for America than the one that's being offered presently.

02:53:15.000 But I don't want to get into the politics of it.

02:53:17.000 I think it's an overcorrection.

02:53:20.000 I really hope so.

02:53:23.000 Because we really, really, really need you.

02:53:29.000 We need America.

02:53:33.000 European project.

02:53:35.000 We have a land war on the outskirts of Europe.

02:53:40.000 It is the most astonishing thing.

02:53:44.000 And we don't know what's next.

02:53:47.000 Poland.

02:53:48.000 You know, the Polish people, if two million Ukrainians staying with them and never complain, these are the most remarkable people you'll ever meet.

02:53:56.000 There's all that money that was invested in by guess who?

02:54:01.000 George C. Marshall, an American general who became Secretary of State, who had the cleverness to say after the war, the Second World War, and I think it was like 4% of the GDP was invested in the rebuilding of Europe.

02:54:20.000 And the idea was we have to make Europe succeed, and that's how we will defeat communism.

02:54:30.000 And so when Ronald Reagan, you know, pronounced a death sentence on the Soviet Union, and the reason Mikhail Gorbachev threw his hands up and said, we've got to, this project is over, is because he knew that people could see it was dysfunctional.

02:54:52.000 He knew there was a better life across the wall, the other side of the Iron Curtain.

02:54:58.000 And sometimes it takes putting your money where your mouth is to show what freedom is.

02:55:04.000 America did that. 0.68

02:55:05.000 We owe America.

02:55:07.000 And we need you.

02:55:09.000 That's all I want to say.

02:55:11.000 We need you and together.

02:55:17.000 Wow!

02:55:18.000 There's 450 million people in Europe.

02:55:21.000 It's like, you know, You put all this together, this is formidable.

02:55:29.000 And these boring people who are listening to you, probably tuning in, what they think?

02:55:38.000 They said something about the goods country.

02:55:42.000 Like it and they hit the mushroom.

02:55:46.000 It's like, you wouldn't know.

02:55:49.000 You've never been lifted by music, sir.

02:55:51.000 You know, you know, you wouldn't know.

02:55:54.000 You send people to death. 0.97

02:55:55.000 Build some bolognum up the bum. 0.99

02:55:57.000 This is like, come on.

02:55:59.000 It's like, come in.

02:56:01.000 Your time's up.

02:56:03.000 And, you know, I know we want to rewrite history and all the rest of it, but you can't do that.

02:56:09.000 We are free people.

02:56:12.000 And it is great to be free.

02:56:15.000 And I...

02:56:16.000 I...

02:56:21.000 I want to be it.

02:56:22.000 And that's what we talked about earlier.

02:56:25.000 I think as human beings, there's a constant struggle.

02:56:29.000 I think there's a constant struggle to find the path.

02:56:32.000 And I think we go through a series of overcorrections and a series of going really far left and really far right.

02:56:40.000 Order, disorder, reorder.

02:56:42.000 That's Richard Rohr's thing.

02:56:44.000 It's part of the battle of good and evil.

02:56:47.000 Well, do you believe there's good and evil?

02:56:49.000 I do.

02:56:50.000 I do.

02:56:51.000 I believe it.

02:56:52.000 I think it's naive to think that if evil acts occur, there is no true evil.

02:56:56.000 I think it's naive.

02:56:58.000 And evil acts are undisputable.

02:56:59.000 And the concept of evil has always existed.

02:57:02.000 And we can become part of it.

02:57:04.000 You've seen it outside a pub.

02:57:06.000 When somebody's down, kid goes down, people are just kicking.

02:57:11.000 You've seen it at a football match.

02:57:13.000 In American football, you don't.

02:57:15.000 But in Europe, in football, in soccer, you see mad violence.

02:57:20.000 And it's like a spirit.

02:57:21.000 You can watch it in a crowd.

02:57:24.000 We've all been part of it.

02:57:29.000 It's not like we're separate from it.

02:57:31.000 It's an entanglement.

02:57:33.000 But rarely is evil so obvious.

02:57:37.000 There's a great book by Bulgakov called The Master and the Margarita.

02:57:44.000 Have you heard about this?

02:57:45.000 No.

02:57:46.000 The devil appears in the rooftops of Moscow and he goes, oh.

02:57:50.000 This is going to be fun.

02:57:51.000 Nobody believes I exist.

02:57:53.000 It's one of the great, the stone, Sympathy for the Devil, I think that's inspired by it.

02:57:58.000 But this, it's insidious sometimes.

02:58:03.000 Evil is harder to spot.

02:58:05.000 But I think we know, we kind of know it when we see it at full force. 0.98

02:58:12.000 We just can't be afraid of sounding foolish.

02:58:15.000 And when you say that, I think evil's a real thing. 0.96

02:58:19.000 You can't measure it.

02:58:22.000 You can't prove it exists.

02:58:24.000 But, you know, that's what I say.

02:58:27.000 But science, you know, science, we need science.

02:58:31.000 We don't need science to prove that evil exists.

02:58:34.000 We need religion to suggest that it exists and how we might deal with it. 0.80

02:58:42.000 And in ourselves, first, I would suggest, you were talking about fighting.

02:58:48.000 The biggest opponent, it would appear, is indeed yourself.

02:58:52.000 You're up against yourself.

02:58:53.000 I've got to that place, and I'm not a sportsman competent, but just in my own walk, I realize, wow, all these people I thought I was up against in my head.

02:59:08.000 It's yourself.

02:59:09.000 I love this thing of the way.

02:59:11.000 I'm going to remember that.

02:59:13.000 And I love the truth.

02:59:17.000 And I love being alive.

02:59:22.000 I love the life.

02:59:22.000 I'm going to hold on to that.

02:59:24.000 Please do.

02:59:26.000 And keep doing whatever you're doing, man.

02:59:27.000 I appreciate you very much.

02:59:28.000 Thank you.

02:59:29.000 Thank you for coming here.

02:59:30.000 It was a lot of fun.

02:59:31.000 Absolutely.

The Joe Rogan Experience - May 30, 2025

Joe Rogan Experience #2330 - Bono

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript