Billy Corgan And The Songs That Inspired Him

[0] Hey, recently I had a really nice conversation with Billy Corgan.

[1] Always been a fan.

[2] I admire his work.

[3] And I did this as part of my words and music series that aired on SXM's Team Coco Radio Channel 106.

[4] We talked about music that inspired Billy.

[5] And because it was on the radio, we were able to even play the songs.

[6] It was cool.

[7] I enjoyed the conversation so much.

[8] I thought, let's share it with my podcast listeners.

[9] Now, unfortunately, as you can imagine, we're not able to play the songs in the podcast itself.

[10] So I would encourage listeners to either do the following.

[11] If you're a serious XM subscriber, open up the SXM app and search Conan, and you'll be able to find the conversation with the songs.

[12] Or if you're not a serious XM subscriber, we'll provide a list of the songs in the episode notes so you can listen along to the songs with the music streaming service of your choice.

[13] Anyway, you'll figure it out, but we had a lot of fun.

[14] So I think you'll enjoy this conversation.

[15] Fall is here, hear the yell, back to school, ring the bell, brand new shoes, walking loose, climb the fence, books and pens, I can tell that we are going to be friends.

[16] I can tell that we are going to be friends.

[17] I want to start with, this is a nice memory I have, Billy.

[18] And I think about this sometimes, because I think we both hit the scene around the same time.

[19] And when I mean hit the scene, I don't think anyone said that in 30 years, maybe 40, so I apologize.

[20] But 1993 was when I started doing my late night show.

[21] I think that's when Smashing Pumpkins sort of show up on the, is that correct, 93?

[22] To the general world.

[23] Yes, to the general public is what I meant.

[24] That's when people are like, oh, you're here.

[25] You're here now.

[26] Yes.

[27] I was around before 93.

[28] Me too.

[29] We were slaving clubs somewhere, I'm sure.

[30] You know, I had this crazy year or two at the start of my show.

[31] It was very rocky, and we were doing a lot of weird stuff, and coverage was people were not happy with what I was doing.

[32] And then I was invited to go to the premiere of Howard Stern's private parts.

[33] So I went, because that was one of those things where you go.

[34] It's a, you know, you've been asked to go to this huge media event and you go.

[35] And I went, but remembered thinking, I don't know.

[36] Do I belong here?

[37] Should I be here?

[38] And there's this, everybody in the world is there and we're all packed into this crazy situation.

[39] And I think the next thing I know, Marilyn Manson is like in my face, maybe doing a bit, maybe not, trying to get me to drink out of like a chalice of something that looked evil.

[40] It was all very weird.

[41] I remember who he was with?

[42] I don't.

[43] Jenna Jamison.

[44] Oh, that's right.

[45] Oh, right.

[46] Okay.

[47] Well, your memory is better than mine.

[48] I think I was more focused on what's in that challenge.

[49] than who's he with.

[50] But I was feeling really uncomfortable in kind of almost a high school way.

[51] Like, I don't belong here.

[52] I wish I wasn't here right now.

[53] Sounds like you're recounting the lyrics for creep by Radiohead.

[54] Yes, I am.

[55] I mean, I remember thinking I wish I had a different body.

[56] I wish I had a different soul.

[57] No, but then you, who I didn't really know well, said, came over and just said, like, to Maryland, Manson like back off dude and then you were like Conan how are you you were so nice to me well I was a fan so that helps well that was but what I recall is everyone else was being so performative and self -conscious trying to outdo each other in some spectacular way that would get attention and you just cut over and then a very Midwestern nice way said hi to me and established a bond and I every now and then that pops into my head as you sort of coming out of the fog as a nice, decent person and being nice to me and so I just thank you for that because I owe you one for that.

[58] I have a similar story from Jimmy Fallon where I didn't realize it but the show that we played on with 98 Cameron Diaz was the host that was Jimmy's first ever S &L and he said he was super nervous and he said it was the pumpkin's calming him down backstage and loosening him up and making him feel comfortable that allowed his debut to be a success.

[59] I had no idea.

[60] We were just being ourselves, you know.

[61] Right, but it's like, I'm now realizing that you're like a life coach.

[62] I've been accused.

[63] You were, you know, what if you're in the background of every key performer's moment in their life, just calming them down just before they go on?

[64] Honestly, I wouldn't mind it.

[65] Yeah.

[66] I'm just, I'm very, I don't know if there's a moral, a moral, a moral tale or a morality tale in there, but I certainly, part of issue coming from that DIY punk community, you know, it's like don't get too high in yourself.

[67] But the other thing is when you start interfacing with what at that point was mainstream MTV, whatever, BS culture, you know, I mean, I have memories of like shaking Sumner Redstone's hand and some, you know, like, why am I shaking Summiter Redstone's hand, you know?

[68] Right.

[69] You had, didn't you have his poster on your wall as a kid?

[70] I had all the great industrialists in the world.

[71] All I remember was some Mandarin -like character who looked like that.

[72] He was on some life extension technology, you know, like something out of, I don't know, Dune.

[73] Yeah, yeah.

[74] You know what I mean?

[75] With like the hot 21 -year -old.

[76] And then like assistants hovering around and whispering and, you know, you kind of get pushed forward.

[77] Shake his hand.

[78] Like, okay.

[79] No, and it's he, you know, and they tell you and it's like, you know, but can you swear on your podcast?

[80] Yeah, sure.

[81] We encourage it.

[82] And I'm like, I don't give a shit.

[83] Like, you know what I mean?

[84] Like, it's a nice person.

[85] It's very Midwest, like you said.

[86] And it's like, I don't know.

[87] So, yeah, that's a very, I guess there's, I've been looking forward to talking to you, not just because I'm a big fan of your work and I really love to talk about music that I do feel that your trajectory, which I find amazingly cool, I also, and now it sounds like I'm complimenting myself, which I don't, I did not intend.

[88] I relate to a lot of what you've done.

[89] I understand it.

[90] It makes sense to me. And the way that you have, you know, I'm thinking about the arc of this success that you've had, but how you've taken control of it, how you have shaped your career with a lot of thought, I find to be really impressive.

[91] Thank you.

[92] You know, there is, I guess, one exception to what I'm about to say, but you're the only person who's ever let me sit on the couch and talk of all the shows I've been on, and I've been on them all.

[93] No one ever sat me on the couch and talked.

[94] And invariably, someone in your world, you'll be watching some late show.

[95] Yeah.

[96] And you're watching some vacuous actor tell some very unfunny story and everybody's laughing like they're all high in oxygen.

[97] Right.

[98] And somebody turns to me and kind of slaps me and goes, why don't they ever let you talk?

[99] You're much more interesting.

[100] I said, oh, they don't want me talking.

[101] Well, it's funny.

[102] You know what I mean?

[103] They don't want me on that couch.

[104] There's a reason I'm not on that couch.

[105] But you're the only person never let me on the couch.

[106] So thank you for that.

[107] I remember I didn't ask you just charged over.

[108] we sat and we had security.

[109] I remember I was wearing leather gloves and you were like, why are you wearing leather gloves?

[110] And I gave you some stupid answer to it.

[111] Well, I was, you know.

[112] It's like you took the bait, right?

[113] Yes.

[114] I wore the leather gloves on purpose.

[115] And you're like, why are you wearing leather gloves?

[116] And it's like, funny you should ask.

[117] Right.

[118] And then we were off and running.

[119] Well, let's start, you know, first of all, I want to start in the present because you have this new album, Atum, and I was listening to it today.

[120] And it's, what I love is, is you orchestrate your music.

[121] I don't know, I'm not...

[122] We call it that, too, actually.

[123] Yeah, you orchestrate it really, really beautifully, and you can tell that there's a lot of almost like classical thought that goes into it.

[124] No training, by the way.

[125] No training?

[126] None, zero.

[127] So it's like a...

[128] How is that possible?

[129] I don't know.

[130] The great story I like to tell is when I was very young, it was tested as being gifted in music, you know?

[131] And they called my father and he was a musician and said, your son's probably a musical savant.

[132] a seven years old or something.

[133] And so a week later, they gave me a piece of paper, told me to circle the instrument that I wanted to play and that I needed instruction and I went home.

[134] And my father saw the cost and ripped up the paper and threw it in the garbage.

[135] And that was the end of my musical life up to that point.

[136] Oh, wow.

[137] So somebody recognized early on that I had some kind of...

[138] Do you remember what instrument you circled?

[139] Saxophone.

[140] Maybe your dad did you a favor.

[141] I had a...

[142] I had a...

[143] Oh, no, it gets...

[144] You'd be touring with Chadee right now.

[145] No, it gets better.

[146] It gets better.

[147] I had a step family, German and Polish, and the Polish uncle, Uncle Henry, when he found it that I wanted to play guitar when I was 14, he literally pulled me aside and said, there's no future in the guitar.

[148] What you want to play is the accordion.

[149] You'll always have a job.

[150] And you know, when you're having that conversation, like, is this real?

[151] Is he really trying to convince me to play the accordion?

[152] And he was dead serious.

[153] I think I can top that with an even more absurd story, which is I get the late night.

[154] show in uh april of 93 so it's it's almost it's exactly exactly 30 years since i was they haven't told you yet they've tried they've winged me a few times but i get this job it's announced that the replacement for david letterman is going to be this guy Conan o 'brien everybody's saying who is this guy what's happening and i got a call from my uncle who lives in worcester mass who i love by the way he's a great guy uh ned and my uncle ned calls me and he says what is this what do you doing.

[155] I'm reading in the paper and he said, the law.

[156] He should study the law.

[157] He was talking to me about getting into law and trying to convince me that law was better than hosting one of only three late night shows in America.

[158] And he meant it.

[159] He meant it.

[160] Back when people actually watch late nights.

[161] Yeah, exactly.

[162] I know.

[163] So it was, but he was saying, I never forget, he said, you can, as a lawyer, you can be a performer in front of the judge, but you're also writing your own scripts when you prepare a case, but I'm like, no, I am not going to now call NBC and say, this isn't happening.

[164] I'm going to.

[165] Imagine that conversation.

[166] Going to law school.

[167] They would have said, fine, we'll get some other idiot.

[168] Who ran the network back then?

[169] It was a guy named Bob Wright.

[170] And I think he actually took a call from my uncle.

[171] That's true also.

[172] Is it?

[173] My uncle also called Bob Wright and said, what do you do?

[174] And here's the connection.

[175] Bob Wright had gone to Holy Cross College in Worcester, and so had my uncle.

[176] Oh my goodness.

[177] So he got.

[178] through and they said Conan's uncle's on the line and wants to talk to you.

[179] And so Bob Bride picked it up and he was like, what are we doing here?

[180] I mean, you went to the cross.

[181] I went to the cross.

[182] Is this the right thing for him?

[183] I think the law would be better.

[184] And he, for years afterwards, with Howl telling that story.

[185] That's amazing.

[186] Yeah, but he was right.

[187] I should have done it.

[188] It's one.

[189] It's so, it's almost sounds invented, but it's, that's why it's so good.

[190] No, no, that is a very true story.

[191] But here's what's amazing to me. This is a, uh, Autum has 33, songs yes on it and another career suicide i was told no i mean i was not i'm not joking it's so you're i mean you're so prolific and it's but it's interesting because a lot of artists right now are focusing on these really small projects and singles and things like that and you are willfully saying this is what i'm doing and you're welcome to join me or not but this is what i have decided to do.

[192] Yeah, without being political, which is hard to do these days, I think the culture is sick and counterintuitive to the human experience.

[193] And so I've just made a decision.

[194] I'm going to do whatever I think is right for what I do, which is make music.

[195] And if people have a problem with it, then don't listen.

[196] I don't know.

[197] It's really weird to me when you sit in boardrooms and people try to talk a musician into not making music.

[198] Yeah.

[199] I mean, those are real conversations I have.

[200] And I'm like, I don't understand.

[201] Like, it's like saying, hey, you're really good at juggling.

[202] Don't juggle so much.

[203] Yeah.

[204] Just a little.

[205] But why?

[206] Like, I can't, you know, I can't wrap my head around it emotionally or intellectually.

[207] It reminds me of when the government is paying people to destroy crops in order to stabilize the price.

[208] Yeah.

[209] That's, that's some of the, they get into kind of scarcity arguments.

[210] Right.

[211] Like, less is more.

[212] And it's like, no, how about I'm going to be dead soon?

[213] And I'd rather leave my kids more songs than less.

[214] let's start there.

[215] That's my math.

[216] Right.

[217] I don't care about your math anymore.

[218] In fact, your math is usually wrong.

[219] Well, one of the things that fascinates me is when you, as we said in 93, when Smashing Pumpkins arrives and you're killing it and you, and you, I've heard you talk about these years.

[220] There's all this success and yet what you're feeling around you is negativity.

[221] Oh, it's horrible.

[222] And I, you know, and I heard you, I heard you talking to Howard about it.

[223] You were talking about all the negativity you were getting when you guys were the band.

[224] And I kept thinking, was this real negativity you were hearing?

[225] Or was this, was some of it real and some of it coming from your experience growing up?

[226] A bit of both.

[227] Yeah.

[228] So let's take the part that's real.

[229] And it's something that I didn't understand then, but I think most people would understand now.

[230] Because it's something that's off talked about in our way.

[231] world.

[232] We use culture like a football now.

[233] So I was in the very early version of what is now the modern version of the cultural football.

[234] So somebody has no problem kicking you in the head to make a point to win their side.

[235] Without naming the band, there are people to this day that are still trying to assassinate me behind the scenes because they're loyal to another band.

[236] And somehow my success represents something against that band.

[237] So they're still trying to kind of kill me off behind the scenes.

[238] There's a lot of that stuff that goes on.

[239] I had even people writing articles when the band that was successful, somebody had been a publicist for the band, and another person that had worked with the band behind the scenes, wrote an article in England saying that I was secretly from a rich family and I was pretending to be poor and abused.

[240] Totally fabricated story.

[241] Like, well, we would now call a hit piece or something.

[242] Right.

[243] And I'm sitting there in my house and, you know, by Wrigley Field, you know, in Chicago, reading about the person that doesn't exist.

[244] and not understanding why are these people who I know personally I've been to the house and had dinner at their table why are they trying to assassinate me in public?

[245] You know what it is?

[246] It's strange.

[247] It's the either or that I never understand which is, you know, I mean, it goes back to the early days of like, Beatles or Stones.

[248] Jack Parr or Johnny Carson?

[249] Yeah.

[250] Remember that argument?

[251] Yes, yes.

[252] Jack Parr was the host the Tonight Show before Johnny and I'm dating myself, but no, no, who better to date?

[253] And I, but I would say like, before, you know, there was a, Jack Parr was more erudite and, you know, wittier, and Carson's more of a clown.

[254] And, you know, what are you talking about?

[255] It's just, it's, you can enjoy them both.

[256] They're both great in their own way.

[257] And it's so that's this strange thing of, if you like the Rolling Stones, you don't have to hate the Beatles.

[258] If you love the Beatles, you don't have to hate the Rolling Stones.

[259] But to me, it's that either or, which is when you talk about the cultural football.

[260] Yeah.

[261] I think that's what we get into a lot now is you're not even a person.

[262] Smashing Pumpkins represents, yeah, Smashing Pumpkins represents this avatar.

[263] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[264] This other band represents that other avatar, and the other avatar has to kill the first avatar.

[265] That's what I'm saying.

[266] So that, that is real, and it persists in its own form today.

[267] The imagined part was just seeing stuff that's, you know, I think it's like something out of an old Hollywood musical.

[268] I imagined what success would look like.

[269] And when I got there, whatever that Disneyland ride was, like I actually arrived.

[270] Like, there's me and you standing there at the private parts premiere.

[271] I got a massive album.

[272] You got a big TV show.

[273] And we're both standing there going, what world are we in, right?

[274] Right, right.

[275] There's a sort of level of dispossession.

[276] So if you're not secure in yourself or you don't know kind of what the point is, it's easy to get lost in it because you're not going to get a lot of confirmation.

[277] The culture's not designed for that.

[278] And the systems of you being in the network system, me being in the major label system, those are rapacious systems that assume that you're not going to last.

[279] Right.

[280] And they really reward sociopaths who literally kill their own mother to get ratings or sell records in my case.

[281] And they expect you to do that.

[282] And if you don't want to do that, they know somebody's standing behind you that will literally more than happy.

[283] Yes.

[284] More than happy to do it.

[285] And I don't want to put thoughts in your head, but I'm assuming you're aware of that.

[286] Oh, of course.

[287] You know that there's somebody standing out of the other side of the wall waiting.

[288] Here's what's nice is that, and this is where I'm going with all this, is that what I have found in my career is that, you know, I just turned 60, like a week ago.

[289] And I'm happier than I was in my 20s and 30s because I feel like I've gotten to a contented place where I know what I want to make, I know what I like to do, and I know how I like to do it.

[290] And I like to make it on a, like this, for example, it's a smaller scale, but I really enjoy it, and it's meaningful to me. And the same thing with some of the other projects I'm doing.

[291] And it's not that I didn't like the other part.

[292] It's just that now it feels like I'm directly speaking to people that are interested in what I like to do, and there's a little bit of a, I have a community.

[293] And it feels a lot more organic.

[294] And I feel that you, with the music you're making now, and then with your podcast where you're talking about that, it's this same idea of it's like a Keebler -Elf tree where you're making the cookies.

[295] I realize I'm saying that they, I don't really believe they make those cookies in a tree.

[296] But the cartoon is very convincing.

[297] It's worth noting that for most of human history, that was the condition of people in the arts.

[298] whether you were a traveling barred or you were the guy that they'd hire to come tell jokes at the wedding or whatever.

[299] That was most of human life.

[300] The 20th century brought on the mechanization.

[301] And of course, you know, it rewards people like us to say, hey, you can climb up this magical escalator and make a lot of money and reach all these people.

[302] So it's very tempting.

[303] And really, there aren't many comparable games at that time.

[304] Now you look at like, I saw Clip of Rogan talking the other day and he was talking about CNN going after him for Ivermectin.

[305] And he was laughing and he was like, CNN truly believes they have the higher ground.

[306] And my show's 10 times bigger than anybody on CNN's.

[307] It's like, no one's told CNN, by the way, Joe Rogan is way more influential now than you are.

[308] They're still in the old systemic thought.

[309] So the other thing I like to point out is in kind of a just way, we've seen the erosion of what I call the gatekeeper class.

[310] In my world, it would have been the record critic, you know, whether it was Lester Bangs or whoever at Rolling Stone would decide make or break it or whoever was the Broadway critic at New York Times.

[311] We all saw the movie where anyone goes to whatever the restaurant after the thing in hopes.

[312] And they're waiting for the review to come out.

[313] And it's literally the difference of 500 people keeping their job or not if one guy decides that what you've done has some value.

[314] I think that's gone.

[315] Oh, I experienced it.

[316] Back in the early days, one or two big critics said, nope, this isn't it.

[317] Can you host some Oscars too?

[318] Do I remember that?

[319] Didn't you host some Oscars or some Grammys?

[320] Who?

[321] Me?

[322] I did Emmys.

[323] I hosted the Emmys.

[324] I remember that.

[325] So I imagine you get to, you read that review too, right?

[326] Yeah, but I mean, this was even at the very beginning when I was just starting out, it was, you, there were gatekeepers who told you whether this show was worth your time or not, and it had a lot of power.

[327] And as we know now, there's no such thing.

[328] There's a lot of opinions, but there's not one opinion that can shut you down.

[329] I just love they all killed themselves.

[330] They put themselves out of business.

[331] Because with ClickB, world they couldn't help themselves right they just had to get snarkier and dumber to keep up right you know and uh and you saw its influence even on the old guard the new york times and stuff like they just couldn't help themselves like they ended up going into that um obviously even politically particularly on the political side so i i just love that they've just blown themselves up but this is really funny because at the end of the day they're still commenting on stuff people getting stuff done yep and you can argue about the effectiveness of that person getting that stuff done but if you're somebody who's getting stuff done, you're still getting stuff done.

[332] It's really easy to sit there in the stands of the football game and say, well, I could have made that pass that Tom Brady missed.

[333] Right.

[334] You know, I was there in the Super Bowl when he missed the pass.

[335] I was literally sitting there when he missed the pass at the end of the game that cost him the Super Bowl in Indianapolis, you know, and somebody probably sitting next to me was like, I could have made that pass.

[336] You know, you couldn't have.

[337] That's why it's Tom Brady, right?

[338] Right.

[339] So I still have people come up to me in airports and tell me how to make my records.

[340] You know, it's funny to me. I've thought about this.

[341] I've thought about how I'm very lucky that the Internet, that didn't exist when I was launching back in 93 because I don't think, you know, I had enough trouble as it was, but I think I would have gone quite mad if I, if I was.

[342] I mean, in terms of feedback?

[343] In terms of feedback.

[344] I mean, there would have been a good part of it, which is I would have heard from people who I later met, younger people who are, you know.

[345] I think you had done quite well.

[346] Well, I would have.

[347] I guess.

[348] It's not about youth, but I'm saying, let's say the way you were being then.

[349] Sorry, I'm being a bit of fan boy.

[350] but if you could take 94 you and pluck you into this world, I think you would fit quite well into this world.

[351] Okay.

[352] Well, I think I would have...

[353] You're memeable is what I'm trying to say.

[354] Thank you.

[355] Thank you.

[356] That's all I wanted, and we can wrap it up now.

[357] How do you think you would have handled the Internet when Smashing Pumpkins is first making it big?

[358] Would you have been...

[359] First of all, do you read stuff online?

[360] No, I do not.

[361] No. I learned that lesson.

[362] um my first mistake with the internet was like was like great there's this new feedback loop right i'm going to empower the fan in quotation so we can have this different type of relationship and they all turned on me yeah because they don't want you to come off the mountain right they want you up on that mountain and they want you to play whatever character they think you're playing moses or something um bald angry guy or something so um i learned really fast like no you do not they do you know it's like when people pull you aside when you make some money and say you know don't get too friendly with the help it's the same thing i i i used to take fans out to breakfast and stuff i was famous for like like when people would line up at 6 a m for a show and i would get up for a morning walk i would go down and find 50 people on i'd take them all up for breakfast because i heard about andy coffman doing stuff like you know i mean i thought oh this is really fun like this is a new and by the way they'll post about it you know it'll be really fun and invariably you would look at and there'd be somebody complaining that, you know, when they were eating their pancakes, you didn't answer their question or something.

[363] I'm serious.

[364] So I, I, it's funny you mention that because I had a friend, I have a friend who went to see a famous Andy Kaufman show and afterwards Andy Kaufman invited everybody out.

[365] And there were buses outside and so he got on the bus.

[366] And then he said it just kept going all night and the crowd kept getting smaller and smaller because Andy would say, now meet me at the hair and now meet me here and now meet me here.

[367] there and he said at the end it was there on coney island i think he said it was and like two other people and my friend rodman and and the sun was coming up and i love that i love that but obviously that's something that you can only do for so long and i'd learn to not read comments and my partner's a lot younger than i am she's 26 younger than i am so then when we started being together and it became very public that we were together once we were having a child she's from that generation that would of course go read comments because that's the world she grew up in you read what people say and she was coming back saying people think I'm a boy or saying I'm ugly people are saying all sorts of crazy stuff about me you know and you tried she was reading this stuff oh yeah yeah I had to hear about it she was going on my fan sites reading I'm just going to interject to say she came with you and she's sitting in the room outside and she is stunningly beautiful oh thank you she's a beautiful so I don't this is again proof that people on the internet are insane yeah that is one of the more attractive women i've seen in a while you're like i don't like her she's not pretty enough that's crazy that's madness yeah yeah i remember um when kurt and courtney were together i went to visit courtney at some hotel and she was obsessed because she'd seen some fan comment on the internet and the fan comment said but she isn't even pretty like that sort of explained everything you know she was so she was obsessed with this idea of like but she isn't pretty like that's that was the defining characteristic about why did he marry her she isn't pretty you know so um what's the whole thing of you know i could think the late night audience size was about 350 people in that studio audience at rockfowler center 349 could be deliriously happy and i could immediately find the one person oh you and i had the same disease who wasn't laughing and i think it's quite common which is what is that person's You know, I learned a long time ago, you just, first of all, you don't know, like, they may, and I've had a couple of occasions where someone who didn't, was not that demonstrative in a concert or at a show or something that I was doing, and then I see them afterwards and they're like very straight face and they just say, I just want to tell you I'm a huge fan and they start listing all these different things.

[368] They're not demonstrative that way.

[369] Or they may really despise me. Who knows?

[370] You don't know.

[371] You can't make any assumptions.

[372] I've had the same thing.

[373] It's a waste of time.

[374] I see everything, oddly so, and I've had it where people will come back.

[375] Somebody I know in it, they'll be with a partner, and I'll say to the guy, you didn't seem to have a good time.

[376] And the guy's like, what are you talking about?

[377] I like have every album you've ever made.

[378] You're like, I'm your biggest fan.

[379] Yeah.

[380] And I love this.

[381] And you're, it's like, don't judge a book by the cover, right?

[382] It's like, you can't get into that crowd psychology stuff.

[383] Well, that's, I went to, my daughter asked me to take her to Coachella last summer, and so I did.

[384] Oh, there's a mistake.

[385] Actually, it was, it was, it was really fascinating.

[386] But we were watching...

[387] Were you wearing an Indian headdress?

[388] I was wearing cowboy chaps and nothing else.

[389] It was just, it's madness.

[390] It's madness, but I really enjoyed it.

[391] And I got exposed to a lot of music and a lot of flesh that I would never have seen before.

[392] But what was amazing is I remembered someone watched me watching a band that I really liked.

[393] And then afterwards came up to me and said, oh, I just saw you not enjoying that band.

[394] And I just, that's how I, I'm not someone that jumps.

[395] surround when I'm watching music.

[396] I can watch someone who I think is absolutely hilarious and I'm just watching them saying, thinking, wow, this person's really good.

[397] I don't necessarily react the way other people would want me to react.

[398] So I remember being bummed out that that was what they took away from me was you just stared at that band without enjoying.

[399] Do you know that theory that audiences are better in the dark because they're more likely to be demonstrative?

[400] Do you know that theory?

[401] I didn't know that.

[402] Yeah.

[403] Some people, because we use a lot of backlight, very rock and roll.

[404] So the audience is usually pretty well lit, and people will pull me aside and say, you know, the audience would be more into the show if you didn't have light on them, because they can, they can, they can, they can be themselves in the dark or something.

[405] It's so strange, but I remember, uh, when I inherited the late night show, they told me that Dave Letterman liked to keep the studio really cold.

[406] Oh yeah, 46 degrees, by the way.

[407] Yeah, really cold.

[408] And, um, he said he thought it was because the laughs were better.

[409] And then I started to think, I think it's because if you clap, you're creating bodily heat like getting people into hypothermia but it you know it was always an honor to play Dave's show yeah of course yeah then immediately afterwards we were grown and think here we go we're going to go to the Siberian winter and try to play a rock song yeah well we would uh the person who wasn't like that and Jim you'll remember this was Aretha Franklin Aretha Franklin showed up to play our show she was not having that shit about a cold studio and we were trying to you know people were trying to explain to Aretha Franklin that, well, it actually does help because between the lights and the cameras and everything is going to get too hot in there, no, you fuckers are going to put that.

[410] And, you know, no one says boo to Aretha Franklin.

[411] It is hard to sing.

[412] Yeah.

[413] I made the mistake one time I was like, because I'd done Letterman enough where I was like, I'd always walk from the dressing room and then you walk in the cold.

[414] And it's like, it's like going to cold outside and try to sing, right?

[415] Right.

[416] So I had this idea.

[417] I'm going to stand in the wings for about 10 minutes, adjust to the cold, and then I'm going to sing.

[418] And then it was worse.

[419] So it never worked for me, but what are you going to do?

[420] I mean, what are you going to pull a letterman aside?

[421] Hey, Dave, you know him.

[422] Yes, that's exactly what you should have done.

[423] You're not Aretha Franklin.

[424] I am the Aretha Franklin of my genre, is what you should have said.

[425] You know, we asked you, well, I have one or two geek questions because I'm a hack guitarist.

[426] What was the guitar you saw as a kid that blew your mind?

[427] Was there?

[428] Well, my father played a flying V. Okay.

[429] He had a 1960 or something flying V. Yeah.

[430] And purple, very cool, with like an 1890s Indian head silver dollar, which people used to put in the back of flying Vista because the headstocks.

[431] It's a counterweight.

[432] Yeah, because the headstocks are so heavy, the guitar always wants to rotate forward.

[433] Yes, yeah.

[434] And so my dad, high on whatever he was on, you know, with a very 70s mustache, that was the guitar, you know.

[435] Were you allowed to touch that?

[436] No, I was not.

[437] Okay.

[438] I was not.

[439] He forbid me to touch the instrument.

[440] Wow.

[441] And so I was only allowed to look.

[442] I have to say that the couple of times I've strapped on a flying V, I found it a very uncomfortable experience.

[443] It is very uncomfortable.

[444] And so then what did you, did you move on to a Les Paul?

[445] My father got me a Korean -made Les Paul copy as it's known in the business.

[446] So it looks like a Les Paul, but it's some badly made one.

[447] I had that.

[448] I painted it black.

[449] I sold it to a drug dealer.

[450] And then I had a Fender Mustang that my father gave me. I played that for a while, but it had very weak pickups, couldn't get the grunge sound.

[451] And then Jimmy Chamberlain showed up one day with a 1974 yellow strat.

[452] Yellow, definitely not my color, but Richie Blackmore did play that guitar, so that was okay.

[453] And Jimmy said, I'll sell it you for $270.

[454] which even at the kind of an odd number right yeah yeah uh i later found out because that's how much you needed for rent yeah it had to be for something specific like and then and then fast forward 20 years i'm walking down the street in chicago and a guy pulls me aside says do you still have that yellow guitar and i said no that's the one that got stolen i don't know if you heard that story somebody found it 27 years later and came back to me but at that they want to resell it to you no no this guy pulled me aside uh -huh and said do you still have that that guitar right um and i said no And he goes, but you got it from Jimmy Chamberlain, right?

[455] Yeah, yeah.

[456] He said, how much did he charge you for it?

[457] Oh.

[458] And I go $270 .70.

[459] He goes, yeah, he stole that guitar from me. Oh, Jesus.

[460] Okay.

[461] He wasn't mad because he loved Jimmy.

[462] It was some weird story, like kid's story, where Jimmy had stolen the guitar and sold it to me for rent money.

[463] And that was the guitar that I played on the band's first records.

[464] And that guitar got stolen, some sort of weird, carmic thing, came back 27 years later.

[465] It's going to reappear in your life.

[466] life at some point.

[467] Oh, you did get it.

[468] A gentleman out of Nashville, somebody contacted him, and he, bless his heart, got the guitar back.

[469] He obviously played somebody, didn't ask me for any money, just gave me the guitar back.

[470] Oh, that's great.

[471] After 27 years.

[472] I like that.

[473] That's cool.

[474] Had it been altered much?

[475] No, surprisingly not.

[476] I remember very well that the first electric guitar I got was, I think I paid $600 for it, and it was 1985.

[477] That was an incredible amount of money.

[478] That's a lot of money still.

[479] It's a lot, yeah.

[480] What was your guitar?

[481] Well, that's it.

[482] It was a 63 Gretsch, I'm sorry, 64 Gretsch Tennessean.

[483] Oh, nice.

[484] And so actually for the money, it turned out to be an amazing investment.

[485] It's worth a lot now.

[486] Do you still have it?

[487] I have it hanging up on the wall behind me and I had it at Saturday Night Live when George Harrison stopped by to say hi to all of us after a night of partying with loan.

[488] and it was in my office, and it's the exact same year and model that George played on the tour.

[489] And for a second, I thought about running down and getting that guitar and showing it to him.

[490] And then I thought, don't be that guy.

[491] So that's one of those judgment calls.

[492] I think I made the right call.

[493] Yeah.

[494] I think at that moment, that was the right call.

[495] Because to a geek like me, it was like, oh, this is perfect.

[496] I'll show George the same make and model guitar.

[497] And he would have seen a kid with some acne who was undernourished and a big pile of hair on his head shoving a guitar at him when, you know, he could probably open a closet at home and 700 gratches will fall out.

[498] Want to hear a quick funny story?

[499] No, I don't have time for that.

[500] Okay, let's move on.

[501] Yes, please.

[502] So Jack Bates plays in the pumpkins.

[503] He plays bass.

[504] His father is Peter Hook of Joy Division and New Order fame.

[505] And they were touring and they had rented a Vox and the amp blew up and it was from a rental company.

[506] So they knew not to just take the amp back to the rental company.

[507] They took it somewhere to be repaired before they returned it to the rental company.

[508] And he went when the guy took the chassis off, they found scratched into the mainframe, George Harrison.

[509] Oh, for God's sake.

[510] It was one of George's amps that had been stolen in 68 that he played on like revolver and people thought it was lost forever.

[511] And so then it was returned back to the rental company who then.

[512] sold it for, you know, some ungodly sum.

[513] But it's a cool story.

[514] I had, I was in, uh, Nashville and there was a famous guitar, uh, shop that I was touring.

[515] Gruen's guitars.

[516] Gruins, yeah.

[517] I remember it.

[518] I've spent a few dollars in Grunz.

[519] Well, they tried to get me to spend a few dollars.

[520] Uh, at one point they showed me, because I'm a Buddy Holly fanatic.

[521] And they showed me an amp that belonged to Buddy, and they were showing it to me. And then they took it off and they showed me where Buddy had put his, you know, written.

[522] And then, um, did you buy it?

[523] well i was fascinated by it and they let me plug it in and i got to play that'll be the day on a stratocaster through that amp and so i was just pure joy was coming out of my pores and then they told me um how much it was what they wanted for it and i realized i could get this i mean buddy owned it but other than that it's a fair to midland old sure you know and uh amp and I could get that or I could put one of my kids through college and so I think I made the wise decision I bought I bought it at auction so in 1982 I went to see Judas Priest play and it was at a racetrack which eventually burned down and when I was in there it felt like a fire trap it was one of those things where you're looking around and go if something goes wrong here I'm gonna die yeah but it's Judas Priest yeah and so what a way to go not bad yeah Judas Priest in 82 not a not a not a bad way to go.

[524] So I bought the pedal board that KK.

[525] Downing was using that day, and the amp that he was playing, those came out for auction.

[526] So I bought those.

[527] That's cool.

[528] So it's like a cool, like, you know, it's like, if you told me at 14 or something, by the way, one day you're going to own that amp and that pedal word from that guy who you adore.

[529] Yeah.

[530] Not a bad gig, right?

[531] No, it's like in a weird way you're closing some mystical loop.

[532] Yes.

[533] That's how I feel.

[534] That's, that's why I, I would be happy if you had bought the, because there's something that happens when you do stuff like that.

[535] It makes no sense at all, but it sort of confirms some other thing.

[536] Yeah.

[537] So I'm telling you that you're weak.

[538] Yeah.

[539] My only real regret in that regard was I was at an auction once, but we were shooting something at a rock and roll auction.

[540] Elvis Aaron Presley's library card from Hume's high school came up on the block.

[541] And I was busy trying to position the cameras and wasn't listening.

[542] And they were like, going once, going twice, and they didn't get the amount they wanted.

[543] So they took it off the auction, and I don't know where it is now.

[544] But I would have paid a lot of money to have had that in my wallet for the rest of my life and missed it.

[545] And so if it's whoever owns it, let me know, because you name the amount and I'll pay it.

[546] Less than Buddy Holly's Am.

[547] No, no, no. It's all different now.

[548] My kids don't need to learn how to read.

[549] You know, we asked you before you came if there were three sons.

[550] songs that were meaningful, affected you in a certain way, come to mind, and you were kind enough to come up with three tunes.

[551] And so let me just mention the first one, and then we can just talk about what this song means to you, and then we can play the song.

[552] That's the beauty of Sirius XM.

[553] The first one you told us was, Wish You Were Here, Obviously Pink Floyd, what was it about that song that grabbed you?

[554] My grandmother, who I was very close to on my mother's side, was dying of cancer, 57 years old, and I would have been 17.

[555] So this was my first experience in life where somebody I was close to was dying.

[556] And my mother and her mother, the one that was dying, were not close.

[557] So I was kind of caught in that too.

[558] And as you do, you try to find something that you can hold on to.

[559] and for some reason that song became the song of that thing.

[560] It sort of moored me into something.

[561] And the lyric doesn't really have anything to do with it, which is kind of interesting, but something about the emotional tenor of the song really connected me. And what's amazing is I've had the experience now countless times, and I'm always kind of in awe of it, when people pull me aside and tell me this song of yours when my kid was born, when my grandmother died, that was the song that got me through.

[562] I go back to that moment, and that's why it's always so humbling because I understand, like, I don't know I say a song saves your life, but it saves something.

[563] It keeps you there.

[564] Yeah.

[565] Well, this song, it's interesting you mentioned because I, everybody knows this song so well.

[566] It's such an iconic song.

[567] I've always noticed, and I don't, I'm not sophisticated when it comes to music or mixing, but it's so powerful the way it starts with that simple riff.

[568] And then the way it's layered, the way, I guess if you're listening to it in stereo, you hear, there's the original riff and then these, these complimentary wrists that are coming in on the acoustic.

[569] guitar, I think, and the way they're coming in in different channels.

[570] And then suddenly the whole thing comes together.

[571] And it's very rich.

[572] Well, it kind of starts with the radio effect.

[573] Yep, yep.

[574] They want to sound like somebody's listening on the radio.

[575] Yeah.

[576] If you want a little bit more background.

[577] So when Pink Floyd was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I was asked to give the speech.

[578] So I'm in my hotel room at the Four Seasons and there's a knock at the door and it's David Gilmore with no shoes on holding, you know, his guitar coming to teach me how to play the song.

[579] Oh, my God.

[580] So I got to sit with him and tell him, I can't believe we're going to play this song because the song means so much to me. And I had nothing to do with it.

[581] They just decided to play the song.

[582] But they were at odds with Roger.

[583] So Roger wasn't there, the other three guys were.

[584] And then years later, this would have been about four or five years ago.

[585] Roger had done this thing where he was working with wounded veterans.

[586] There was even a guy who was playing drums, triple amputee, you know, Iraq vets and stuff.

[587] He put together this kind of band of vets.

[588] playing Floyd songs.

[589] And so I got to play on stage with Roger and sing wish you were here with Roger and these vets for a sold -out crowd in DC.

[590] So you want to talk about like full circle like pinch me. Are you kidding me?

[591] Like, and why this song?

[592] You know, I mean, I get it, but it's on some level, like when a song means that much too and then you're standing with the people that wrote the song and played the song, it's wild.

[593] Well, that's when you go back.

[594] That's when you, I always time travel in moments that are anything like that.

[595] You know, For me, it's, wait, I was the kid in Brookline, Massachusetts, sitting on the heating grate, watching a black and white TV and...

[596] Jack Park.

[597] Yeah, you know, or Andy Griffith.

[598] I was trying to date you.

[599] Yeah, exactly.

[600] No, he would have been gone by them.

[601] But watching like Andy Griffith or, you know, watching any of these iconic performers or Carol Burnett and then how is it that I'm with them now and they even know my name?

[602] That's the time travel part that I find amazing.

[603] And for you, it's going back to, you know, Illinois.

[604] you're just like, wait a minute, how can this be?

[605] I was that kid that wasn't even allowed to touch my dad's guitar, and now individually members of Pink Floyd are teaching me how to play this song.

[606] Yeah, to put a bow on it, you know, when you're in music and you talk to journalists all the time, they focus on a lot of stuff that doesn't have anything to do with music.

[607] Yeah.

[608] Or wiry musician.

[609] It's all about the accoutrement.

[610] Like my favorite question, tell us a funny tour story.

[611] Mm -hmm.

[612] You know, it's like, tell us about the time he snorted Coke off the stripper's class, you know?

[613] Right.

[614] And what they don't really understand is when you're a kid, in my case, and in Jimmy's case, you're an abusive home.

[615] You know, you have literally no future.

[616] Latchkey kids.

[617] And you've suddenly something that Rush is doing or Floyd is doing, get you to animate and practice four hours a day.

[618] And there's, I mean, it's not like there's somebody waiting at the end of that rainbow.

[619] Hey, kid practice.

[620] And someday he'll be on Conan's show.

[621] There's none of that.

[622] Right.

[623] Something in you animates.

[624] Like, this is, what I got to do.

[625] So when you're standing there with the people that got you out of the freaking basement, it's not just like, oh, wow, this is cool.

[626] I'm hanging with Floyd.

[627] You're like, holy fuck, this is so crazy.

[628] Because it's, it literally is the embodiment of the dream.

[629] Yes.

[630] Well, it's a religious experience.

[631] Yes.

[632] Absolutely.

[633] It's an absolutely pure spiritual experience where, oh, the universe, something, there is magic in the universe.

[634] Yeah.

[635] And then invariably, you got to sit in a guy with an office who tells you it has nothing to do with magic.

[636] Yeah.

[637] Here's the piece of paper.

[638] I once had a guy.

[639] It was like a business meeting.

[640] Excuse me. And the guy pulls out a piece of paper.

[641] And he goes, well, we've researched you.

[642] And your band is the 1 ,055th most search band on the internet.

[643] Right?

[644] Yeah, yeah.

[645] Now, he's using it as a negotiating tactic to obviously get my price down.

[646] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[647] Okay, but if you really think about it, like even hit, pause and we're laughing because it's funny right okay but wait there's eight billion people on the planet seven billion people you've made music you're still in the point oh oh oh one percent out and this guy's still hitting you over the head with the you know fist to the skull down you go down you go so it doesn't feel like it gets you the way it used to but that's what i'm saying is is is you got to know who you are in there yeah yep that goes back to the kid in the basement that, you know, when kids were out front, I have enduring memories.

[648] My brother loved this skateboard when it wasn't popular in the 80s or whatever.

[649] And I remember on a summer's day standing in my bedroom playing scales, you know, trying to be Inveh Malmstein and watching kids play on the driveway and laugh and fall and here comes the cute girl and I'm in the bedroom.

[650] You know what I mean?

[651] Why?

[652] Because anybody with the right mind is out there with the cute girl skateboarding.

[653] Right.

[654] Not in your bedroom trying to bring you.

[655] Malmsteen.

[656] So that's what gets you through those moments.

[657] It's like, no, motherfucker, you don't understand.

[658] This ain't about that.

[659] I get that it's about that.

[660] And I get, we're here to sort of do this dance.

[661] I used to tear with this guy called it the dick dance.

[662] We're here to do the dick dance about the money.

[663] But that's not why I'm here.

[664] I'm a musician.

[665] I mean, and trust me, it makes no sense at all to be a musician.

[666] None.

[667] In the tech world, they call the dick dance, negging.

[668] Yeah.

[669] It's when you just say, you know, we're not really, your stuff isn't that good.

[670] And And really not that.

[671] And then you think, well, why am I even in the meeting?

[672] Why am I here?

[673] I'll just go.

[674] But that's the older, the older you get, you get better at seeing, why would I even, I'm happy to just walk away and actually enjoy my family.

[675] I was in one of those meetings once and the guy was trying to alpha me that way.

[676] And I just looked at him.

[677] I said, look, motherfucker, you can't get rid of me. That's why you're talking to me. You can't get rid of me. You can't replace me. It has nothing to do with my crooked teeth.

[678] I write good songs.

[679] Yeah.

[680] If you could get rid of me, you would.

[681] you get rid of me a heartbeat and he said that's true I like that he said that's true yeah God bless right because I'd rather I'd rather I'd rather and be honest yeah you know what it is what it is but let's let's give wish you were here yeah let's listen to it Eduardo do your magic my question is when you first heard that song it has this very powerful hold on you you go on to have all this knowledge and mastery of recording so you know you know how the chair is made does that change the way you hear the song yes absolutely and what are you hearing you're hearing choices they made in the studio economy Floyd is amazing with economy um patience they have patience in a way that sort of belies their age you know i mean when they're making that they're all like in they're probably late 20s.

[682] When you say patience in what specific way?

[683] They're not in a hurry to get to anything.

[684] Like Floyd works in their own time scale.

[685] It's very unique.

[686] The way David has a way of playing guitar lines that you can literally sing along to.

[687] It's very rare for a guitar player to solo, but not in a wanky way.

[688] And the little way they kind of cheat things in there.

[689] There's like the Richards playing like a little synthesizer brass.

[690] even the end, the wind at the end is, it's made with a synthesizer.

[691] That's not real wind, I think.

[692] That's a synthesizer sound.

[693] So they're working with artificial versus organic tones, stuff like that.

[694] It can be a blessing and a curse to know how a sausage is made.

[695] Yeah, I was thinking is, you know, I spent most of my life thinking about comedy and thinking about what's the funny way for something to happen.

[696] And so sometimes I'll be watching some.

[697] I like to lose myself in something.

[698] I don't want to be thinking that way.

[699] and sometimes I'll see, oh, they're doing that thing now.

[700] And can you illustrate what, like, give me a comedy, that thing?

[701] Well, okay.

[702] I mean, I can't think of a specific example.

[703] But I like to learn.

[704] So just give me an illustration of like what a, like, there are.

[705] Like in the pumpkins, we call it a gag.

[706] Yeah.

[707] In the, in the world of comedy, I mean, there are all kinds of things that are just the way things are done.

[708] One is the callback.

[709] You introduce something.

[710] and then you bring it back in later on, and sometimes it's done really artfully, and sometimes the callback is used in kind of a cheap way to kind of, let's goose another laugh here.

[711] So remember that scuba diver that peered in the window earlier in the sketch, you're going to see him later on.

[712] And sometimes it's earned, and sometimes it's not earned.

[713] Sometimes it's the exact right thing to do, and sometimes people are just doing it to do it.

[714] And so sometimes when you see an unearned callback, or you, something like that, I just go, yeah, you didn't need that.

[715] And then my wife is saying, why are you speaking over, you know, I'm just, we're trying to enjoy this episode of who's the boss.

[716] Why can't?

[717] But in the band, we call it the power of discernment, right?

[718] So only somebody in the game knows where the line is.

[719] Right.

[720] In wrestling, we call it cheap heat.

[721] Cheap heat is, I can't believe I'm in Indianapolis.

[722] This is the biggest shit hole I've ever been in, you know, boo, that's T. Not very artful, right?

[723] Anything that gets them booing, it makes me happy.

[724] Yeah, but if you believe in the art of something, you don't want cheap heat.

[725] You don't want cheap laughs.

[726] Exactly.

[727] You want the real laugh.

[728] Right, right.

[729] Well, it's, I guess it's a bit of a snobbery to it.

[730] No, no, but I don't mind it.

[731] Oh, it's true because I remember having, we did something at rehearsal and it did really well.

[732] I remember Robert Smigel, our original headwriter, co -creator on the late -night show.

[733] He was saying, let's lose that.

[734] And some of us were saying, but it did really well at rehearsal.

[735] Like it got a big laugh.

[736] And he went, yeah, we don't want laughs like that.

[737] And I thought, damn, okay.

[738] That's true.

[739] I admire that.

[740] Shit, I do love a laugh.

[741] But you're right.

[742] There are laughs you, you know.

[743] If the bottom line, it's not unlike what you were talking about before, where someone's telling you, let's look at the numbers.

[744] We all know that when we've done something, when we've done good work, we know it.

[745] You just know it.

[746] And so if you did anything to add artificial sweeteners or doping, it makes you feel shitty about the whole thing.

[747] Set lists are the same.

[748] Yeah.

[749] Like we have enough successful music that we can put together a set list that we know people will approve and like and probably buy t -shirts.

[750] As we used to say back in Chicago, no shit Sherlock, you know, but the art is giving them something that they didn't know that they wanted and having them leave and say that was a richer experience than I thought coming in if they just play the songs that I know.

[751] There's this big event, you know this event, Jim.

[752] There's an event for the Museum of Natural History that they raise a lot of money and all the big wigs on the Upper East Side and West Side of Manhattan go there.

[753] I had, you know, they asked people to perform at it, and I think I did it at least once.

[754] Then they would get music.

[755] And I was there once just, I didn't have to perform so I could just watch.

[756] And it was Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were performing.

[757] It came time for them to do their music.

[758] And, you know, just imagine the richest room you can think of.

[759] And people are in tuxedos, and everyone's going to have their picture taken, and it's going to be in the most elite magazines that who showed up at this thing.

[760] And billionaires are there who have their name, you know, carved into the wall.

[761] And Tom Petty got up there with the Heartbreakers, and they didn't do one hit.

[762] Everything was a deep cut.

[763] And I was so happy.

[764] And I could tell that Tom Petty didn't give a shit.

[765] He was like, I'm going to play you the deepest of the deep cuts, and I'm going to do the stuff that I want to do.

[766] You're not going to get won't back down.

[767] You're not going to get, you know, free fallen.

[768] You're not going to get, you know, any of those.

[769] American girl, you're not going to get one of those fucking songs.

[770] I don't know.

[771] It made me really happy to watch him do that.

[772] Yeah.

[773] I mean, I can only kind of on my head.

[774] I've been in those situations and I've done that version of that thing in those situations and got a lot of heat for it.

[775] Yeah, yeah.

[776] And I've done the other thing where you're doing what everybody wants you to do and you're just thinking, I'm just such a sellout, like get me off this island.

[777] Yeah.

[778] Well, the next song is Metallica.

[779] Yes.

[780] And you You had, you made it an interesting choice.

[781] Yes.

[782] Because I believe this song, Fade to Black, was their first, was it power ballad?

[783] Is that fair to say?

[784] Actually, I saw an interview with Lars talking recently about how it was controversial because Metallica used acoustic guitars and it wasn't very metal of them.

[785] Yeah.

[786] Yeah, Lars was just here talking on the podcast and...

[787] I love Lars.

[788] Oh, my God.

[789] It was such a good time.

[790] Every time he says Metallica?

[791] Yes, yes, yes.

[792] And he says Metallica a lot.

[793] Yeah.

[794] Because it's a big part of his life.

[795] Yeah, God bless.

[796] But I'm saying, every time he says Metallica, I kind of chuckle.

[797] Yeah.

[798] Because only he says Metallica, like he says Metallica.

[799] Yes.

[800] So it's with pride of ownership and the way he says Metallica.

[801] Which is for him the correct pronunciation.

[802] Well, yeah.

[803] Not Metallica.

[804] In this song, you know, I think this is their second, is this their second album?

[805] Yes.

[806] And Ride the Lightning.

[807] Yeah.

[808] Ride the Lightning, 1984.

[809] and this is them taking a big chance because it's an acoustic song, or it starts out as an acoustic song.

[810] But then it goes to the fiddly bit.

[811] Yeah, which is a technical term.

[812] In the industry, the fiddly bit.

[813] Where there's fiddles.

[814] Do you want me to muse on this?

[815] Sure, yeah, go for it.

[816] So I'd gotten kicked out of my house.

[817] My dad, I think he wasn't in jail at that point, he was in some form of jail, like work release, where you got to be in the jail at night, but you could be out during the day.

[818] And he wasn't living with us anymore.

[819] And then I got kicked out by my stepmother, so I ended up living with this drug dealer.

[820] And I have this enduring memory where I latched onto the song because it seemed to sum up what I was going through, you know, this kind of existential crisis in my life.

[821] And I'd seen Metallica Live, and I'd seen the power of what they were creating.

[822] But I latched onto this song, and, you know, this was back in the day of the boombox.

[823] And so I remember sitting at the guy's kitchen table, you know, where he used to, you know, fiddle the seeds out of the weed that he'd sell to cute young teen girls.

[824] And that's a story for another day.

[825] And I was playing the song over and over and over again.

[826] Like I must have played it 14 times in a row.

[827] And he came down and he was like, you got to leave.

[828] Like he threw me out from listening to the song so many times.

[829] Like I basically went from a drug dealer threw you out.

[830] Yeah, I was, I was thrown out of my house, and then because of this song, I was thrown out of the drug there's house where I was living.

[831] But, yeah, it's interesting because sometimes a band creates a song that's like, like you were talking about George Harrison before.

[832] Here Comes the Sun is when I love the Beatles, but it seems to, even here comes the Sun seems almost like timeless beyond the Beatles.

[833] And to me, this is one of those songs from Metallica that like somehow it lives beyond the band.

[834] Right.

[835] It's like a movie onto itself.

[836] Yeah, I mean, what a song.

[837] James is such a talent songwriter, and I don't know, I don't know what else to say other than it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's, it seemed to sum up what I was going through at the time.

[838] Let's, uh, let's listen to it and see what it, what it brings up.

[839] Fade to Black.

[840] I never understand when I watch Metallica how they can, there's so much syncopation there that has to be so precise.

[841] And I don't understand how they can do that without a conductor.

[842] Do you know what I mean?

[843] It's, it's, it's really incredible.

[844] incredible to me. Yeah, it's a feel thing when you play that type of music.

[845] I love that lyric in there.

[846] I think he sings, I was me, but now he's gone.

[847] I mean, if that's not a 17 -year -old, I'm not saying he was 17 when he wrote it, but I'm saying that's when you're going through that.

[848] Yeah.

[849] Yeah.

[850] I mean, I still get the, I still get the feels on that.

[851] This is great.

[852] Does that take you back when you hear that?

[853] Can you go back, do you go time travel back to that point?

[854] I have a weird thing, and I've never heard it explained scientifically, but I have like a, I'm going to stumble with the way to put it.

[855] I have a holographic memory when it comes to music, so when I can put myself back in the time and place emotionally when I heard the song, and I have almost like total recall, which is how I produce records.

[856] So I'll be in the studio and I'll think, like, I want the feel of fade to black.

[857] Not that I want to make that song, but I want that feeling.

[858] I'm able to recall the emotional feeling.

[859] Resonance of it, yeah.

[860] What I was getting from that, and I'm able to recreate it in my own music.

[861] so it's a weird gift if you can even call it that and it might be a curse sometimes no no actually i think it's really quite remarkable and i have no explanation i've never seen it explained and what's crazy is jimmy chamberl has something very similar which is why i think that we've always worked so well together as he has the similar ability to do that but on the drums it's a weird it's a weird thing but yeah i can i i i literally could go on for 15 minutes on what i was thinking when i heard that song at 17 at the table before the drug dealer came down like musically feeling not like i was having a bad day we did this same thing with neil young where we played neil was sitting right where you're sitting and we played some music he sent in some music that i don't think he had listened to or thought about for a really long time and it was stuff that he was listening to in canada in the 50s del shannon by chance it wasn't it wasn't don't shannon uh do you remember it was um there were like really it was very folky some of it uh yeah Ian and sylvia yeah yeah yeah and tyson yeah yeah for strong wins but um yeah it was um yeah That's a great version.

[862] I know he covered that at one point.

[863] And it was fascinating, too, because it's very similar to watching Neil listen to those songs, and he would do what you're doing, which is close his eyes and really go there.

[864] And then he came out of it after one song, and it was like you.

[865] I said, where were you right then?

[866] And he went, I remember there was a, he described a jukebox and him standing there, and it was, whatever it was, a nickel that you could put in to play the song.

[867] and he had a whole pocket full of them.

[868] And he was standing there, and he would just feed them in and play it over and over and over again.

[869] That was his only access to the song.

[870] And one of his other memories was underneath the covers, he could get this one radio station that would play.

[871] I remember he, I think there was some rockabilly song.

[872] Yeah, by guy named Ronnie Self.

[873] It was like Boppelina.

[874] Oh, my God.

[875] That's a killer song.

[876] And I had never heard it before, and I'm a rockabilly fanatic, and I'd never heard Boppelina.

[877] I didn't know about Ronnie Self, who had kind of a very strange career outside the lines and never really quite made it and uh things didn't end happily for him but just but him just time traveling back to he's not neil young the neil young we know yeah he's a kid and he's in some part of canada where no one's ever going to be a rock star that's not going to happen and he's got the covers up and it's late at night and he's supposed to be asleep he's got his transistor radio and he's hearing that song and so to me it's very mystical and powerful to be able to sit with people while they listen to these songs yeah maybe there's some universal language that people with musical ability speak are here yeah i mean i like i said i find it fascinating that journalists never talk about that right which is why i like talking about it because it's like it's 90 % of my experience is what we're talking about here right and not all the other stuff not throwing a tv out the window of the hotel room no i mean that stuff's fun but it doesn't it doesn't pay the bills yeah and what if someone's in the pool um the last song is joy division and i have to admit i didn't i didn't know much about joy division and we got to get you on the on the joy division tip yeah and i i didn't know and then you brought up this song and of course i know a lot now more about joy division now and and what a really tragic story uh it was very much much so yeah uh just their lead singer guitarist i believe also the songwriter or co -writer they wrote they wrote together he wrote the lyrics yeah and just how he suffered from epilepsy and depression and it just what a i think 24 years old yeah yeah and i believe and i think it's true is it was like on the eve of their u .s tour they were just about to come to the u .s and i think he was under a lot of pressure and he was legitimately worried that he would have, because his seizures were getting worse and worse, that he was going to have a seizure on stage in front of people.

[878] And so clearly someone who, I mean, just terrible load to carry between that disease and depression and everything, but made this fantastic music.

[879] And clearly this level tear us apart speaks to you.

[880] I started making the argument back in the 90s that Joy Division was probably the second.

[881] second most important band behind the Beatles in the 20th century.

[882] And when I made the argument back then, people kind of would make a face like, kind of sort of, and now people, I think, have kind of come around to it.

[883] And what is it that specifically was it was the originality?

[884] It was the pureness of it?

[885] Well, a lot of people now would call it like post -punk or something.

[886] But what it really is is DIY musicians creating great music without the conventional structures of music.

[887] If you think about, like you were talking about rockability, Okay, well, most rockabilly is based on one, four, five, you know, 12 bar blues, stuff like that.

[888] Buddy Howley is probably predominantly one, four, five, but he's a master at it.

[889] So imagine that all starts in the 50s, obviously coming out of jump blues in the 40s, T -Bone Walker and stuff like that, and pound Basie.

[890] And then by the time you get to the, you know, the late 70s, you know, rock and roll is kind of pretty much run out of steam.

[891] Zeppelin's at the end, the Who are not at the end, but, you know, you could say their greatest work.

[892] is behind them.

[893] Here comes punk and you have all these people suddenly decide it doesn't matter how well you play.

[894] As long as you want to get up on stage and you got some moxie, the crowd will sort of accept you.

[895] So out of that comes talking heads and the cure and psychedelic furs and Depeche Mode.

[896] But Joy Division to me was the greatest of them all.

[897] They capture a particular form of nihilism that's really hard to get in a way that doesn't feel mockish or childish.

[898] There's an adultness to it.

[899] I know that's not really a word, but there's a sobriety and seriousness to it.

[900] And because they were from Manchester, Manchester is like the Chicago of England, very working class.

[901] And it's worth pointing out that, you know, not the same, but the same area.

[902] That's where Sabbath came from.

[903] It's a certain kind of doom, but it's not the doom of hopelessness.

[904] it's the doom of like, oh my God, like, is this the life I'm meant to live?

[905] Living in the shadow of the nuke plant or the coal plant or the, you know, and everybody around them is on drugs or drink and there's no future, no hope, all that stuff.

[906] So punk really was this kind of cry against like, fuck it all.

[907] And somehow out of that comes this really beautiful language that's held up really, really well.

[908] And Love will tear us apart to me is this perfect pop song from people who are not trying to write perfect pop songs.

[909] It's such a strange thing.

[910] I have some Henry Darger.

[911] I know if you know that artist.

[912] He's a folk artist.

[913] He was an itinerant sort of janitor, an orphan, grew up in an orphanage.

[914] Basically, for 50 years, painted these beautiful paintings that no one ever saw, and they only found him right before he died, and now they're worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

[915] But it's the idea that there's a certain, if you give, if you take somebody who doesn't know how to make art and they just make art like a child would, that there's a different type of beauty that emerges out of the innocence and the purity without having to go to art school.

[916] Right.

[917] So I think Joy Division is the great embodiment of like they're the anti -Beatles.

[918] The Beatles is about craft and consciousness and worrying about, you know, the world that's in front of them and trying to figure out how to interface with Joy Division goes completely the opposite way and creates music of, you could argue, of equal importance um that's still 50 years later is you know still inspiring people so how many albums did they do they just have one or two i think three albums level terrace part i think was kind of towards the end of that yeah particular arc um before ian killed himself and then the only thing i would add to this is that and uh joy division then morphed into new order and of course everybody knows new order they became a more successful pop band um using synthesizers and stuff like that and really created a completely different musical language.

[919] But when they reformed in 2001, they called me and said, we're going on this tour.

[920] Do you want to come play guitar with us on the tour?

[921] So when we would play, so I did six shows with them, but they were going out as New Order, but for the first time since I think, I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure, for the first time since Ian had died in 2001, they decided to play Joy Division on stage with Bernard singing.

[922] So imagine I'm in rehearsal with them in Liverpool or wherever we were.

[923] And when you play the New Order song, songs, they're playing with the backing tracks, synthesizers, all that.

[924] But when they would play the Joy Division, there were no backing tracks.

[925] Now I'm on stage with Joy Division.

[926] Now, the best way I can explain it is I've been on stage with Cheap Trick.

[927] I played at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with three quarters of Pink Floyd.

[928] When you stand on stage with the band and you're in the middle of that, it is intense.

[929] Yeah.

[930] Because now you're in the three -dimensional space of their world.

[931] You're in the record with them.

[932] And every time I'm getting goosebumps telling you about this every time in rehearsal and on stage every time we played level terrace apart i would get goose flesh my whole body would go into complete like i cannot believe i'm not talking about a fan experience like oh my god i'm playing with joy division i'm like i am in the i'm in this song and i'm experiencing inwardly what i experienced as a listener and it's 10 times more intense in the thing yeah than outward so i mean yeah this is the real deal this one to me all right what's let her rip love will tear us apart joy division when you played on that song what were you what was your were you playing rhythm were you playing do you remember what you were doing they let me do whatever i wanted to do and um it was kind of funny because they're they're from that world of everybody should just do what they feel but i was getting in the kind of sacrosanct territory where they'd created this beautiful thing and at times i would get these side long looks like you're going in the spaces you shouldn't go.

[933] So it was a little bit of a negotiation.

[934] Sure.

[935] But invariably I settled on the idea of like, I get it because I've been in that situation as a band leader.

[936] Like, this is the way it goes, but there's a, like, what's sacred about it isn't whether or not I play the right note in the right spot.

[937] This is like where it's coming from in your heart.

[938] And so invariably, I think they just kind of let it go and then it got better.

[939] In essence, they let me do my thing.

[940] They worried about what they were doing, and then it started to click.

[941] And then it just kind of, it was what it was.

[942] There's something about, again, I don't have the words for it, and I might, it's maybe nothing, but when I listen to this song, it almost sounds that the vocals are mixed.

[943] They're almost, I mean, I'm not used to it, but usually the vocals on when you're listening to a song are so present.

[944] And here, they're unusually submerged almost they're just under the surface a little bit which which is kind of makes it more haunting you know yeah it strikes me because when you listen to it um it's not a perfect recording it's not perfectly mixed you can't hear every lyric and yet it's one of the most famous songs of the 20th century and it reminds me of what I said when I was inducting pink Floyd in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, nobody was looking over my shoulder because I could say whatever I wanted.

[945] And one of the lines I said in there was, you know, it strikes me that the band you're inducting tonight is one of the greatest selling bands of all time and created one of the best selling albums of all time, Dark Side the Moon, which is essentially a conceptual record that I think only really produced the one hit, which was Money, which is a song in 5 -4, not necessarily a waltzing matilda you know not necessarily a pop right uh you can't really dance to it um and i and i look and it was meant to be a a funny line but like with a with a little bit of a shiv behind it and i said um and by the way they made that album at the height of disco and i said i know everybody and i know that there are many people in this room that are totally responsible for disco and i haven't forgotten you and i won't forget your name and there was this weird like one of those like you mother fucker laughs yeah yeah like how dare you say that yeah but that's the point is uh we're talking about in in our own way and it's always hard to find the language we're talking about magic comedy is magic music is magic what makes people laugh there's a lot of talk these days because of you know woke politics about you can't say this and you can't say that i mean art is supposed to get into the uncomfortable space yes it is yeah just the fact like you were talking about Ian's vocals being mixed low, did that make you listen differently?

[946] Did it make you pay a different attention?

[947] It really got my attention when I was listening to the song.

[948] And of course, I've heard the song many times, but I was really noticing accidents.

[949] It's the same thing in comedy and music and probably in a lot of things.

[950] Accidents are where the goal is.

[951] And I don't know if it's an accident, but you said maybe they didn't mix it correctly, but it certainly makes the song, it's much more haunting that whether it's a as you say an engineering error or someone no i think i honestly i'd sorry to interrupt you but i think those are all intentional choices okay yeah you know i just uh it's it's to me that was arresting like it really got my attention that i because the you know it was like i i think i can hear him but he's really back there we're on the we're on the precipice of i kind of taking over a bunch of things right and and i'm already out there ringing the clarion bell that once kids get their hands on AI as a songwriting tool, it's over for the organic process of songwriting.

[952] Because if you're 15, you have to spend 10 ,000 hours listening to The Beatles, enjoy division to learn how to write a song versus you can punch a button.

[953] It's going to give you seven options, and then you could pick the best option off of that.

[954] And then you can refine that, and then press another button, it'll tell you a better version of what you think is a good version and all that.

[955] It's over.

[956] Are we willing, and I'm just saying this in one of those kind of, you know, it's like, I feel like Jason Robards would star in the movie I'm about to, right you know he's not around anymore so you may have to do it i gladly play jason robards in the movie but what i'm trying to say is you know the guy gives the warning yep yep hey by the way do you really want to live in the world where you're willing to give up level terrace apart the imperfectly made perfect song yep are you willing to give that up for all this other perfect shit which it really isn't that great and unfortunately we know in human nature that yes they Well, this way, can you see where people are going to have AI start writing their jokes?

[957] Oh, sure.

[958] Right?

[959] Hey, AI, give me 50 jokes on grandma in the kitchen.

[960] Yeah.

[961] You know what I mean?

[962] Well, it's something that they're, it's got everybody's attention.

[963] I mean, everybody in the, as we record this, there's a writer's strike going on, and this is one of the issues people are afraid of is what's coming up ahead.

[964] And can these, what happens when these big companies realize, we don't really.

[965] I think that decision's already been made.

[966] Yeah.

[967] I'm not trying to be that guy, but I'll be that guy today.

[968] I think that decision has already been made.

[969] I mean, it's easy to say it like this, like Chicago style.

[970] It's over, bro, you know what I mean?

[971] But it's over.

[972] Like, the ship's already sailed.

[973] That's why when you see people arguing about $20 minimum wage, yeah, well, McDonald's just open the first fully automated McDonald's.

[974] It's over.

[975] Like, all that stuff's over.

[976] We're going to have to adjust to a new economy on every scalable level.

[977] I mean, there are already people talking about worshipping AI as a god.

[978] There are people talking about like it's a religious thing.

[979] Like, there's a Jason Robards movie, right?

[980] Right.

[981] So I'm at least glad I lived in the other world before I go to this other one.

[982] So at least I'll have the memory and I could tell my children what it was like to listen to Joy Division.

[983] They're not going to be listening to you.

[984] AI will have taken over that too.

[985] You will not be parenting these children.

[986] Maybe that's a good thing.

[987] I'll tell a quick story.

[988] So I made the mistake.

[989] It's a fine game, so nothing against Nintendo, but I made the mistake of buying a Nintendo Switch.

[990] I have a 7 -year -old son and a 4 -year -old daughter.

[991] So, of course, all they want to do all day is play Nintendo.

[992] They said Nintendo so many times, I said you can't say the word Nintendo anymore.

[993] But you can refer to it as nah -na.

[994] So they come up and they go, Dad, can we play?

[995] Nah, nah.

[996] because they know if they say Nintendo it'll diminish their chances of playing Nana.

[997] So where was I going with the story?

[998] You reprogram them.

[999] Oh, there we go.

[1000] So maybe I just go, now when they come to head, can we play Nana?

[1001] I go, let's go to the AI.

[1002] You know what I mean?

[1003] I'm sorry.

[1004] I love you, but, you know, the Conan, the Conan chat GP.

[1005] Yes.

[1006] You'll have your own, you'll have your own AI.

[1007] Oh, I'll go to Conan AI.

[1008] They'll have, you know, figured out.

[1009] I mean, because when I dismiss their, when I dismiss their hopes and dreams, it'll least come with a wry comment.

[1010] Yes, yes.

[1011] They can, I'm sure, whether it's serious or whoever, they've already, there's a room where they've figured out my vocal tone, just the right irritating amount.

[1012] Somebody just released, I haven't listened to it, but somebody released an AI version of Kurt Cobain singing a pump.

[1013] song.

[1014] I haven't listened to it yet, but I think it's today, the song today.

[1015] Do you want to listen to it or do you, is it one of those things you'll take about?

[1016] I have no interest in it because it's sort of like.

[1017] It's not Kurt.

[1018] Well, it's also a parlor trick, right?

[1019] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1020] I don't want parlor tricks.

[1021] I mean, cheap heat, right?

[1022] Right.

[1023] Like if I came to see you and you just gave me a bunch of lame jokes, that's not why I'm coming to see you.

[1024] Well, that's what you're going to get.

[1025] Okay, well, God bless.

[1026] I don't work that hard anymore.

[1027] I've never.

[1028] I don't know Dice, you know what I mean?

[1029] And I've seen Dice perform live a couple times.

[1030] I never laughed so hard in my life.

[1031] I felt like he was in my brain saying stuff that I, he has a way of saying stuff that's not even funny.

[1032] Yes, he does.

[1033] But he says it in a way that's so insidious.

[1034] It's like planning mind virus bombs in my head.

[1035] And I mean, I could, or I saw Bob Zimudas Tony Clifton.

[1036] Yes, yeah.

[1037] I laugh so hard, I got mad at him.

[1038] Yeah.

[1039] And I know him a little bit personally.

[1040] I wanted to strangle him.

[1041] Right.

[1042] Because I was like, stop making me laugh at this other kind of creepy level that you can only you can do.

[1043] Yes.

[1044] I know exactly what you're talking about.

[1045] Dice has a thing where there's a famous recording of him bombing in a club.

[1046] I think he calls it the night the laughter dad.

[1047] That is so funny.

[1048] And I've listened to it too.

[1049] It's so funny because he's doing his thing and there's, he's not getting anything back.

[1050] And I like that better than hearing someone killed.

[1051] But you know, he did that on purpose.

[1052] Yes, yes.

[1053] Because Rick Rubin, who produced that, said, you know, he did the very Rick Rubin thing with the beard and the Buddha, Buddha Rick.

[1054] And we were taught, because I knew he knew Dice and he was obviously there when Dice was headlining a readers and all that stuff.

[1055] And he did the, you got to, the only really got to listen to is the night comedy died or whatever it's called.

[1056] That shit is funny.

[1057] And it's so inappropriate.

[1058] It's, I mean, you want to talk about, I mean, it's, there's about 8 ,000 things in there to get canceled.

[1059] There's a famous Dice story that I love that Mike, Mike Sweeney, one of my.

[1060] great writers tells, but it was dice in a club before he had, you know, become a big star.

[1061] And he did, borrowed someone part of someone else's act because he didn't have the rest of his act that night.

[1062] And he was still putting it all together and he borrowed someone else's act.

[1063] And the person confronted him afterwards and said, like, hey, man, you took some of my stuff.

[1064] And he went, uh, he said, hey, I'm trying to make it.

[1065] I don't have time to fuck around.

[1066] Like, that's an excuse.

[1067] And in a way, I kind of, you're like, oh, okay, it's so audacious.

[1068] I don't have time to fuck around.

[1069] We got to call this because we have talked and talked, and I have to let you back to your life, you know?

[1070] Yes.

[1071] I don't have a life.

[1072] I'm just here.

[1073] I exist here in like a broth, like a brain floating in a tank.

[1074] They won't let me go.

[1075] But I was really looking forward to this.

[1076] And you met all my expectations, exceeded them.

[1077] you're just a great person to talk to you didn't cry though i'm incapable of that i did you ever cry on air i don't think so not that i remember i don't i'm irish we hide all that yeah i'm you know i'm predominantly irish so yeah we that's all been we share that that's all been it was beaten out of us in the 1800s yeah exactly that that's that that ship sailed a long time ago um this was this was great and i loved having and i swear to god i at this point in my life where the thing I prize the most is that I get to, you and I have cross paths in the past, but to get to sit with you and really have a conversation is magical and meaningful to me. So thank you for doing this.

[1078] Yeah, most of our conversations were in loud clubs.

[1079] Yeah, with really desperate goal -digging people.

[1080] So we never really got to get to the deep stuff until today.

[1081] This was really special.

[1082] And I just want to reiterate that you have so much going on.

[1083] Autumn, which is a rock opera in three parts, is your latest, what's the latest volume?

[1084] You're continuing the journey.

[1085] I think so, yeah.

[1086] Yeah, with, you know, melancholy and infinite sadness and machina, you know, like, this is carrying, you're carrying on in that story.

[1087] And you have a tour.

[1088] The world is a vampire tour starts July 28th.

[1089] And you're going to incorporate some We will have wrestling on the road.

[1090] That's fantastic.

[1091] Most of the dates, yeah.

[1092] I own the oldest wrestling promotion of the World, the NWA, so.

[1093] That is fantastic.

[1094] That's its own, we should do a wrestling podcast.

[1095] Yeah, that could be a separate thing.

[1096] That could be part two.

[1097] Some other time, but I got some good stories for you there.

[1098] I'll show you a clip one day of me. I was taping weird comedy down in Mexico City, and I taped a whole segment where I was a luchador.

[1099] And I had the whole thing.

[1100] The mask, and I, they were teaching.

[1101] teaching me how to do it and i i had the time of my life i absolutely loved it's an interesting world i'll throw on a mask and come on and uh and wrestle while you play well there was red bastine i think it was known as the red baron maybe so i could do that he's passed away now you could be the red baron too yeah people will say i'll be masked no one will know it's me but they'll say not at all something's very wrong with that man's body um and uh and also the podcast so we finished that now.

[1102] So there's 33 episodes of.

[1103] But you can still hear them.

[1104] Yeah, yeah.

[1105] 33 with...

[1106] We're no longer in contemporary time.

[1107] But who is?

[1108] Did I get too deep there?

[1109] I don't know.

[1110] I feel like you pose some sort of deeper question that I can't answer.

[1111] That's a good way to end.

[1112] We'll just leave it on a hanging, a hanging, a partisical or whatever it's called.

[1113] Billy, thank you so much for doing this.

[1114] I appreciate it.

[1115] Conan O 'Brien needs a friend with Conan O 'Brien, Sonam of Sessian, and Matt Gorley.

[1116] Produced by me, Matt Gourley.

[1117] Executive produced by Adam Sacks, Nick Liao, and Jeff Ross at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson and Cody Fisher at Earwolf.

[1118] Theme song by The White Stripes.

[1119] Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino.

[1120] Take it away, Jimmy.

[1121] Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair, and our associate talent producer is Jennifer Samples.

[1122] Engineering by Eduardo Perez, additional production support by Mars Melnick.

[1123] Talent booking by Paula Davis, Gina Batista, and Britt Kahn.

[1124] You can rate and review this show on.

[1125] Apple Podcasts and you might find your review read on a future episode.

[1126] Got a question for Conan?

[1127] Call the Team Coco hotline at 323 -451 -2821 and leave a message.

[1128] It too could be featured on a future episode.

[1129] And if you haven't already, please subscribe to Conan O 'Brien needs a friend on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded.