Goldie

because it was. I couldn't wish for anything better. Hello, I'm Mini Driver. Welcome to The Many Questions Season two. I've always loved Christ's Questionnaire. It was originally an nineteenth century parlor game where players would ask each other thirty five questions aimed at revealing the other player's true nature. It's just the scientific method really. In asking different people the same set of questions, you can make observations about

which truths appeared to me universe. I love this discipline and it made me wonder, what if these questions were just the jumping off point, what greater depths would be revealed if I ask these questions as conversation starters with thought leaders and trailblazers across all these different disciplines. So I adapted prus questionnaire and I wrote my own seven questions that I personally think a pertinent to a person's story. They are when and where were you happiest? What is

the quality you like least about yourself? What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you? What question would you most like answered, What person, place, or experience has shaped you the most? What would be your last meal? And can you tell me something in your life that's grown out of a personal disaster? And I've gathered a group of really remarkable people, ones that I am honored and

humbled to have had the chance to engage with. You may not hear their answers to all seven of these questions. We've whittled it down to which questions felt closest to their experience or the most surprising, or created the most fertile ground to connect My guest today on many questions? Is the artist Goldie? To me? Goldie was the face and sound of drummer, bass and jungle in the UK in the early nineties. He captured this electric vibe and blasted it from the Midlands in England to London and

onto New York. He started out as a street artist and art is where he has returned to. Now, you're such a considered bloke. If you can tell me where and when were you happiest, If you're talking past tense, the happiest times, I always been making musical painting. It's not past tense. It's really now in the present. Really, I have a fascination with time. That the reason on every day I wake up and think I'm here and

I'm very, very lucky. And I walk up to the mountain our high copples like a ten came hard going up and down. And I do that like three or four times a week. I am in an end of smiles. Indeed, yes, you know for me being up in the jungle and into the lake and a lot of the times, I do a lot of a lot of it on my own. But just being in that environment and seeing life in death in front of you, right in front of you, is a really beautiful reminder of how how insignificant we are.

And I got there and scream and crying and laugh, and I find that being the happiest there's an urgency as well. There's always been that thing where I feel like, even though I came here to retire, I actually did the reverse and found myself in a whole of the way and finding what happiness really means. Because having all of the cars and ferraris and all of this stuff,

it just never made me happy. It really didn't. And I felt that I was very destructive, and I felt that all the things that you think are going to make you happy actually don't and helps the wealth. And it's weird that's changed. I know so little now and that makes me more at peace with myself. And we said that time doesn't exist. Do you mean that it really is just a human mental construct that we've created to sort of give life? Meaning what do you mean

by that? You know, when you study or you look at deja vous or the sense of being somewhere, it happens to me a lot places, and whether it's in the jungle or just the moment. I do think that we you know, this is mental construct, but I also feel that it's also preordained. I feel that whatever souls have passed through, this is the one that I remember, and this is the one that has accounts. And it doesn't mean I go to that and hug trees all day long. You know, I can eff and blind like

most when he stubs his toe. Oh, I mean I sometimes hug trees well swearing. So I mean I think I don't feel like they're mutually exclusive. I just think that the idea that there is an old time of a fascination with it is that it's all happening at the same moment. Everything is concurrent, Everything is concurrent. The most poignant thing for me is the power of manifestation. We're just this electric energy and we have this electorcy

that we can actually lie to light bulb. It's just the shifting energy thinking well, okay, then if I can create this positive energy, then there will be something because it's the energy is just moving into some of the place. Whether it's conscious or not, it's different. And there are lots of question do I want to be part of the big one, the singular? Well do you have a choice? Like do you have a choice? Individual? You don't? We want to be an individual. That's that's ego, that's just

the ego. Yeah, But I sometimes think maybe bits of my body think that they have autonomy my lungs are just like, yeah, I won't do anyone. I just cruising. I just got me alveol cooking. Everything's cool. I'm just bringing in the oxygen, you know what I mean. Like we attached all these mental ideas about belonging. Like Addison, my boyfriend, who is a mutual friend of well, he's

a mutual friend of Goldiar me. He's my love. He is always talking about tribes and how this sense of belonging is so fundamental to our human experience, that we find our tribes in tiny pocket in large pockets, and that it is the sort of atavistic past time that humans will always come back to. So we say we want to be individual, which maybe we do. We are born alone, we die alone, and yet in the in between we always want to be part of something. Well.

I think the tribalism is especially concurrent with the idea of culture, tribalism moving into the metropolis of New York and rising from the ashes. You know that culture is amazing.

We think of what on the shoulders of giants with New York and coming out of the depravity of New York, what you personally, all of my friends, the guys that I chased that the people that I chased that dream and went to New York and found the Bronx on fire, thinking this isn't the American dream and is this is different than what it said on the tin and what it was going to be. And it was important to my growing because again it was straight into a tribe

that where I could belong to crew. But I felt, you know, the whole idea of tribalism in New York with the crews, you know, actually did positive stuff when he kind of changed from the negative gangs into positive dances and painters and hip hop cult. She came along and it changed everything, and even even that became gentrified in lots of other ways, like everything does, but without going too far off piece. I think the idea of being happy in finding one's place, it really is about

letting go exactly. Can you tell me something that has grown out of a personal disaster. I would never have met my wife unless I severed my left femur water ski jump the TV show. It was the last session of the day. I've nailed the all day three jumps, last one showing off sock off, landing the water to wait soil. It's turned the leg snapped the femur, and it was like, this was the end of me. This is like your legs flowing in the water that way.

You think this is the end of it. And I was in hospital for like four months and the guy next to me had his leg amputated. They were going to cut it off. When you've gone through everything and you've got a divorce and you've gone through you know, the ego and the drugs and a rock and roll and you you have nothing. I kind of met when we my leg was broken. I was in pieces. I was never gonna walk again properly. I was done. I

was at the bottom of it all. And I think it was great meeting then, because I healed in a really good way. That's amazing. I went to Shanghai on a pair of crutches, you know, just before I started in this whole yoga thing. And wait, why did you go to Shanghai? I went to DJ and Shanghai a place called bon Bone, and it was a gig that was canceled and it got reslotted and I went there and I still had crutches, and I was limping into

this dinner at the New Heights in Hong Kong. I was sitting at dinner and my friend was on the phone and he said, he said, look, I'm not gonna make it for the dinner. And we've got like twenty people at this dinner table come to host me, And what do you mean you're not coming? And all of a sudden, I just saw this woman walking hang On, Dave hang On, and she was standing there and all of a sudden, it pops his head around the court. He was with her, and that was it. And we

never looked back. We even went to Beijing and I wrote on the wall and never forget it. In the back of a changing room after I've done a gig, I wrote Sakoko on the war in ga fee Laires, and that's going to be the name of our daughter. Yeah, we actually dated. I'd seen her in Shanghai and then went on this little tour stay in Japan. It was the stranger said, I've got to say this because it's really important. We were staying in Japan. I'd arranged when I first met her in Hong Kong to let's meet

up somewhere. Let's meet up in Japan. And we had this big suite and we sat and watched a wonderful film called Ashes to Snow by James Coburn, is a prolific photographer filmmaker. And we sat holding hands on this bed and we cried and never made out. And we spent a year writing lets before we even got together, a whole year, and those those letters turned into love Box One, Love Box to love Box Free, which we have in this house for my daughter when she grows up,

she will have all of these letters. There are hundreds of them. I mean, like I was in England and I was writing a letter a day. At one point it was insane. After all of the disasters I'd had. This wonderful love came is wonderful love letters. But I've constantly had a real support of my wife and friends to be able to have this time to write stuff and and really explore these different things, you know, unlike a lot of my friends that can read really well,

and I can't. But I can write, but I can't read that well. But I love the idea of legacy, and I love the idea of my different children understanding different things. And I write them letters sometimes so that when I do pass on that they can read them and they can understand it from the horse's mouth. Yeah, what are we going to really leave? That's important for

me is legacy is important? To legacy is important so that you know, the kids have paintings and they have books and writings, and they have my words and not the idea where you know, I saw the art world and lots of people that died penniless. And also some critics decize that they think they understand what the painting means and the part of the artist is long gone. But in the digital age and where we are now, everything is kind of recorded. We have the ability to

pick up a phone record our thoughts and feelings. You know, some people write books and do different things. There's not a day that goes by. I don't think of death in a good way of what you know, it's death coming and it's there. And what do I want to leave behind? A phone, some pictures and means my legacy is my phone with twenty four thousand photographs and nineteen thousand videos. What question would you most like answered? I saw that earlier on and I thought this is gonna

be very tricky. I think for me, the government that are in power, why are they determined to kill the arts if you could honestly answer it, because there seems to be an agenda with it. It doesn't make any sense to me at all. Everything the human race has ever experienced, we've come out of it through art music. So why do they in schools make it like art and music are some kind of dessert that you don't

need and that it's this extra curricular concept. Yeah, within the school frame, yeah, but it's more to do with funding and why won't you invest in your child? Well, you're not children before it's growing up. What was their playlists, what was their album collections were? What ardly they're like when they were young. It just seems like all of that generation of government, I just don't understand their agenda

with it. And that question i'd like to be answered, Why don't you fund the arts in the way that it should be got such a great I want to know that too. I feel fascinated with that because I find that it's really weird because there was a big debate about the m b E and it was this whole thing about you know, they gave me this Bluepeeter badge and said you're great, and we've got to explain to America an MBAT. When m B is a member of the British Empire, the Queen gives you this medal.

It's for services to music and arts. I always felt like, great, fantastic, My mom would have loved it, and it's great, thank you. It sits on the shelf upstairs. It's a thing, and it's great, thank you very much. But the thing what gets me is that they were closing clubs at the time.

Fabrica was got closed down, and there was this big debate about people giving us these accolades, but yet they take away the school that my son went to, and he could have got a school on the estate that he lived, and then he ended up doing twenty five years in prison along with a lot of other kids because they had no community, because the heart was sorn

out of it. And I'm thinking to myself that part of the reason for living in another place was it felt really odd that can't you see the wood for the trees, that we were not investing in the youth in the way that we should be doing. And that really saddens me a lot. It does. It saddens me a lot, and I like watching her grow. Cocle Sacoco is an amazing creature. And they have Chance who's twenty three. And I'm going to be a grandfather in February, which

I'm really looking forward to. I'm like granddad at last. I speak to my son a lot, who's his Majesty's hotel for another fifth deen years? He has fifteen more years to go. There was a twenty five year sentence that he received and he did that. He's doing the whole thing and it was the beginning of the downfall of the estate. And the estate in England is the projects is, you know, government funded housing, which rarely has a community that hasn't been created by the community itself.

It's like the governments don't really seem to support the building in places for people to hang out and be part of their own community within these huge housing environments. I thought I'd learned a lot from New York and the Bronx and being in Garrison Avenue and all those

boys in the Chad's Crew whim affiliated with. And I was there at eighteen and I saw it really young of how that place was, like wow, it was still leveled in areas and it was just like they hadn't even rebuilt the Bronx and seeing how the community aspect of fell apart there, but they got together theirselves to do a lot of stuff Logan. It was the same in Harlem. It was the same, you know, of people coming back together and building their communities themselves, not ever

relying on the government or in England the councils. And I think that's where we're going, that's where we're heading. Well, that's where England's heading in that respect because we have to look after our own and have that community aspect. Do you find that the things that you're teaching your children now are very much because of things that weren't

taught to you when you were younger? Very interesting? Yes, I found with a lot of early therapy that I was doing and especially like the work of gabbled Matti

and trauma is very amazing. It's to deal with trauma in my experience have been separated and growing and moving on and breakdowns and everything else, and seeing again in a third party, seeing like a pad lock upstairs from Cambodia with a key that set on the shelf, with beautiful pieces of sculpture and things that I never saw in a home when I was a kid, knowing that she's growing up in this space and she's seeing these things, and I'm seeing it through her eyes almost, and I'm

setting it up so I'm seeing you through her eyes. And I think that's what for me, what the Hoffman process was about. The Hoffman's a very beautiful process for me because it kind of me to get back to being that child and instead of suffocating my own in a child, understanding what that's like. You can't just say, well, it's different one week. We're growing up for her worlds

that's so well that she doesn't know any difference. So learning her all the right tools and giving her the right stuff and when she gets emotion and seeing her grow all of these wonderful things. And with some of my first kids, I never experienced that, and having conversations with my older kids about me not being there and

having an adult conversation. You know, my son did the Hoffman which was amazing, and he's a lovely boy, Danny, and seeing what he went through, and it's really beautiful to to kind of pay back in a lot of ways. To Halfman is a kind of is it a cognitive behavioral therapy situation? The Halfman process is it's like a quad of you know, it's the west and the east where west meats east, and it's to deal with going back into your timeline and looking at where the trauma

comes from. And my issues were abandonment and be misunderstood. I chose drama, bass music and graffiti. You know, you repeat these things that you gravitate towards. The work with Serena Gordon and those guys at the Hoffman has been amazing because you know, everyone goes to therapy and unpacks the box, but no one wants to know how the box are designed, how was the box manufacturer that fits

the stuff inside it? And I love that aspect of it because when you start to unpack it and you realize that we are like our mothers and fathers, whether we like it or not, and you start you know, we we've we fight to get away from that, but yet we're very much the same, and what changes is our characteristics of what we decide to put it into our lives. From an energetic point of view, so I found that was a really good process. I found it was a beautiful process. And I think it's the same

thing with the record label. You know, my labels twenty six years old, you were kind of like the mold town of DNB with this integral music. You know, I've got kids at the age of three making exceptional albums continuing to do so. And I love that because it's something that I've always served because you have to create this platform, and you know, these kids have following me, they do this stuff, and they're making some amazing, easy music.

And I find that probably the most rewarding of all because you knows a kid called Spencer, he was twenty two at the time and he just then his first remix for me and he was playing after Me and Egg in King's Cross and he came on after me after playing it out and I murdered it and he came on and he absolutely just destroyed the club in a good way. And seeing this kid taking the reins and these kids like who is this guy? And is

this protege? And there are a few of these protejays have come along with the music, and so many of the artists on the label are phenomenal, you know, Phase and all these are the kids. I could go on with a list of the artists that we have, but I found that the most rewarding over the years, because when you're not the guy you know, you kind of fall away. You do something else, and that's something else.

He's providing a platform for others. All right, So this might go back to your roots or it maybe where you're currently. But what would be your last meal? Oh? It says easy, that's easy. It's bacon ex Sani, Sani has a sandwich BAGINGI right, listen, it's truly, says banging Sany from Dunsley Farm in shrin in Hartfordshire, England. Wait back bacon or streaky bacon, dreaky man smoke streaky okay, crispy or still a bit floppy? Just about to turn

with the egg over? Easies you guys, say on some beautiful, beautiful sour doll with poppy seeds, says to me, trimming on the edge. And that's me with a couple of Yorks. Should see, I'm yours, say me. That's my meal, probably the most unhealthy meal I mean, but that's my thing. Lived in Thailand for twelve years. I was just remembering

arriving at to thirty in the morning. I was on my way to Cambodia, and I went walking down to the streets of Bangkok, and I was so hungry, and all they really seemed to be were lovely shiny black insects on skiers at the side of the road having just come off a fire. And I was like, very well, one in Bangkok delicious though. I mean, I don't eat pork myself, but I do understand a bacon and eggs,

ARENI that's a mood. That's a proper mood. And the other thing is that I find beautiful with six million eggs, you know, boil the water for six minutes, the waters boiling, and then put the eggs for six minutes. They're perfect, exactly. And some soldiers boil taken soldiers might actually be my last male. Really wow, look at that up one out that there and a cup of tea. What person, place, or experience has most altered your life? I think Mr the Hearst, my art teacher. I think that he changed

my life completely. He sat me in front of the window and said, draw this. You need to get past. I don't know if you know this. In the State, we had a thing called the no level, which is like a It's like a pre s a T. It's like an s A T that you take when you're sixteen, and then you take another load of exams when you're eighteen, called A levels. So you were studying for your O levels. I was studying for the level in art. And I

was great at sculpture in my hands. Anything you put in my hands, I could do it, and I could sculpture. I was That's the thing I loved. And he said, you can do all of that. It's great. You know you're natural fantastic, but you're not. You need to step back, you need to You've got to draw this side of you have to draw. And he got me to draw a newspaper and ash tray and you know, say glass,

paper and iron. And he got me through this exam and after hours, the children's armor was into the time said you could stay after school for a couple of hours each night and stay with the art teacher. And he changed my life. And weirdly enough, in him doing that, I did a documentary it's really rare on Red Bull. It was called The Alchemist, and I actually went to surprise him when his sev on his birthday, to thank

him for what he'd done for me. I kind of went into this little hall in Birmingham in the parish church and you know, with an entourage of people and managers and people who were there. And I was on tour somewhere and I sneaked in and walked in. It was arranged by his wife, and I sneaked in and sat right next to him, and he looked at me, and he didn't even reckon if you look back, and carried a looking while he was talking. And then he looks and he just burst into tears. And he was

a great moment. And I think those kind of moments kind of stay with me. It is because he he grew up in a children's home and he reached into that experience and saw more in you and asked more of you. Yeah. Well, at the time, I was getting beat and I was getting bullied at school as you start to walk on the canal on the way home, so I get beat up going on the main road. It was just crazy. I mean it was there was a period of five years where it was just like

it was hell for me. But the art class was everything, and that was it. And and that's why I think I always gravitated towards that, the sense of art, and especially when graffiti came. That was the answer. Not only was he ar and a new form of art, there was guys doing it together. There was tribalism and community and he was brilliant and you could paint trains and stuff and all his mad stuff and you know, break the law as well, and it was illegal and he

was illegal, you know. And it's it's crazy because I have a wonderful gallery in the heart of Bangkok and it's called the Aurum Gallery Latin for Gold, and I have all of my friends are from around the world, you know, from New York, from Japan, from Mexico, from l a and it's a brilliant contemporary gallery. And I think to myself again, it's one of those moments where

I'm going there on Monday. I was there two weeks ago, and I watched in on the Wednesday and the staff we're just opening up and there's no one in there and just walking around this space. And it's beautiful because my daughter can run around in there and she's looking at all his art and she's drawing away. She loves it.

She's just really into it. But just seeing people, that's the one thing you see that I think music has been compromised because you can download it and the quality sometimes he's a bit and you can reproduce it and everything else, and people want to buy staff. But you can't stop the idea of tribal idea of a human being standing in a room with a painting. It just can't be beaten. Whether it's the National Portrait Gallery or it's a contemporary gallery, just being in a space sweet

art is something beautiful. I find it's amazing that that's where your initial way out of what you described as being hell through art and all through your life, through the music and the graffiti and the crazy cruise in New York, all the way to Thailand and back to art. Spit mad. That isn't Yeah, it's nice. I mean it seems to subscribe to your idea of it all being foretold. I think in that way, but also think in turning allowing myself to be happy is something that I couldn't do.

That everything's allowed. And I spent so much time in chasing complexity because my life has always been very intense. It is unpacking that and being here in Thailand helps me to do that. So it helps you to simplify and to be able to just see that the imperfection is beautiful. An hour ago, I started like three sessions. I started at one till three in the morning that I got up, we did the school rue baby, and I got back went straight at it. So from nine

all the way through, I do like a full a shift. Today. I would not stop. I was just this just driven with this painting. Driven. And not only was I driven by the painting. I'm doing two at the same time, and I've done them both before in different ways. It's

this style that I'm doing. It's just this complicated layers and there were nine layers and I get to the eighth layer and I rushed the layer and I messed the layer up, and I'm like, I just got to keep reminding myself that I just need So now I've got to spend three or four hours in the morning because I just didn't let the black dry in time. And I've done it before and I'll do it again, but each time i'll do it, I'm just at that moment where I'm like, I'm driven by something. For me,

it's like music. I find that I'm driven by something far greater than myself. And I don't know what if it's just the spirit going mad, or I just get driven to do something and it's not almost like it's finished because I've done this before, but it's finding something else in the painting. And I tried something else and it kind of worked. But of course my sort of things that I do that make these mistakes, they teach

me something. So I'm just like, I won't do it with the second painting because it's it's it's the next in line. But again, it was one of those things that I it was it was all the way down and I was trying to complete it in a time frame when there is no time. So I kind of

shot myself in the foot. I think that's the thing with people that gravitate to music, and when you do this thing in the night and you kind of you blow up, But all of a sudden, you give the responsibility to all these people because you become this ego because when you when I was a kid, all the powers taken away from me. You know, you've got to go in that room. You've gotta go there and you have to do this, so you didn't have any empowerment.

So when you get the money in the cars and all that rock and roll, that sense of you know, you're giving it away. It's the ego giving it away, and it's really lying on a minute, when am I going to take charge of this year? You know, just terrific stories of this guy's just knocked out, this guy and that guy's just driving your mate, your mates car and he's done that, and everyone's pulling and pushing you,

and I just got sick of that. I got sick of all of the pulling and pushing, of almost tearing an artist apart. That's what the scary part of sobriety was the idea that people got away with lots of ship while Goali was drunk, called god, he was just crazy because they just got away with the money that people. And it's like it was insane in the nineties for me in that respect. And I just feel, you know, pretty unscathed. I feel like I've got some battle wounds

and some scarf. But the great thing is the healing process is amazing here. And I feel, you know, maybe fifties six scaring to fifty seventies a new thirty our second that ah, that's just brilliant. Oh my god, gold. It's so I could literally talk to you for hours and hearing where you are and how you have created

your life. It sounds so patronizing, going it's inspiring. It's sucking beautiful that life unfolds and that you allow for the evolution and you haven't judged the evolution and you've taken the hits and you watch your son is still taking a hit in one way, but you're still connected. I love the how in your life and what your life was. You are. I think that's a really beautiful thing. And I don't know what else we're here to do except being these lives that we've been evan you know,

and live it all. Thank you so much, Goldie. He runs about as deep and considered as anyone I've ever met in my life actually, and talking to him was an absolute joy. Goldie has a new single out with his band Subjective called Lost. Mini Questions is hosted and written by Me Mini Driver, supervising producer Aaron Kaufman, Producer Morgan Lavoy, Research assistant Marissa Brown. Original music Sorry Baby by Mini Driver, Additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Executive produced

by Me Mini Driver. Special thanks to Jim Nikolay, Will Pearson Addison, No Day Lisa Castella and a Nick Oppenheim at w kPr de La Pescador, Kate Driver and Jason Weinberg, and for constantly solicited tech support Henry Driver h.