Once upon a time, you were doing every magazine interview back when there were a lot of magazines. You were on all the covers and showing up all over the press and all over social media. You've been much more reserved of late. Talking less and doing more, one might say. What's that all about? I see some of my favorite musicians getting mad on Twitter. And it's so embarrassing. I do. I've done it. I cringe. I cannot believe I said some of the stuff.
you know and then i go and look at like i won't name some of these people but they're older than me and they're like kind of rock star legends and they are continuing to do that and it just literally destroys this image And I don't want it to destroy that image that I have, you know? So, like in my head, I'm like, no, man. This guy, he's like, you're complaining about, I don't know, there's a long list, you know?
I mean, of course, these platforms are designed to be addictive. And for those of us who might struggle with impulse control, it's such a perfect drug to be able to just get on there.
react to everything that's happening it's definitely addicting it is and that's why i don't have it on my phone i feel like your quality of life goes down and you don't even realize it's going down like mentally like because you're constantly looking at instagram constantly puts the frog in boiling water right yeah you're constantly looking at facebook and just constantly looking at people upset at each other all the time
That's what I've noticed. I think taking it off your phone sounds like a nice happy medium. As opposed to becoming one of those people that's like, I'm not even on there. I don't even have it. Because that becomes a thing in and of itself too, right? There's no tone. You can't... you can't type tone so if you make a joke you know
Where's the tone? If a certain person's having a bad day, they're going to read it in the tone of how they feel instead of how I feel. And it becomes like a historical record in the context of the times changes. Yeah, it's like I tweet. Just went to the bathroom. That's how I feel. And someone reads it like, just went to the bathroom? Because they don't, you know what I mean? Yeah. I don't know.
And also, why would you tweet, just went to the bathroom? And I've done that. I've done that multiple fucking times. And it's, you know, and people posting pictures of their food. If you see my timeline from like 2007. I'm tweeting my coffee order. Do you cringe? Of course. Exactly. It's so cringy, bro. It's so cringy. If you look back on stuff, that's why everything is deleted. I do not want to cringe at myself anymore. I already got good girls, bad guys.
bad girls club and stuff like that to look at forever so are you cringing at that stuff now yes Yes. They're like TikTok sensations now. They've given it a whole new life. Do you see, like, the format? You see what's happening, though? Yeah. It's interesting to see how it persists, right? And what new ways. People are discovering music.
I mean, we're talking like classic rock bands and stuff like that. Listen to me advocating for TikTok, an app that I don't have and don't understand. Yeah. But, you know, I can appreciate that it's bringing things to it. Hey, man, I'm not complaining.
i'm not complaining because it just literally makes my streams go up like exponentially you know but uh you're allowed to cringe and stuff you know like when my hair was this big i looked like a cross between like macho man randy savage and uh van halen you know what i mean like motley crew but uh i'm sure motley crew and uh warrant and all those bands look back on photos and videos of them and kind of cringe a little bit i mean it's like yearbook photos it was a moment in time and it was
A great memory, too, as well. Yeah, I mean, in seeing throngs of the Warped Tour audience physically sitting down during Bad Girls Club. This is the heaviest song you have ever heard. No, but I mean, the part, right, wasn't that the song where you'd have everyone sit down and then everyone get up and occasionally there's always the one person that's like way in the back.
hey don't get me wrong i still perform those songs i'll still perform them because those songs bang live they're just they just bang forever you know like uh but i remember here's a good example uh alone the song called alone and it was when uh trap and rap or trap and metal it kind of didn't exist i don't know like trap metal not rap rock right right what i was doing felt like it didn't really exist in a sense of like
I don't know how you'd say that. There was dubstep stuff coming in and like crap stuff like you said. It was unique. A different style. Yeah. But the lyrics, I remember my label calling me and Brett, he goes, hey, man, you try to be nice. It's like you should change the lyrics in the verses to not so like be so knucklehead. And I was like, that's supposed to mean. And then if you go read the.
lyrics they're just oh my god dude they're just so they're they're corny for sure there's also hip-hop i mean hip-hop's a form that is built on bragging i fuck with drake and he he like you know he like brags a lot about stuff but i just feel like it's just looking back it's like yeah maybe i should have said something a little different it's funny what we're talking about this and being reflective
that, you know, and we'll get into all of this, but on the back of the success of Popular Monster, you know, you did The Drug in Me Is You, sort of a thank you to the fans, the reimagined version.
for the album going gold which is insane in this climate for anyone to have a gold record yeah and then for that record the first falling in reverse record to go gold like basically what felt like five minutes before your current song then goes cold so it's also it's almost like there's always this reaction
From the universe wherever you want to describe it where people go. Oh, he has a gold record But that's like an old record and then you have a new gold record. Yeah, right afterwards. Yeah, my friend Davey back and they like five years ago. He said man he goes you're the most you're the luckiest person but with the worst luck that's what he said you know i always thought about that i'm like
He's right. He's like, I got some bad luck, but I got really good luck at the same time. Yeah. Good fortune and bad luck. Yeah, I guess. Yeah. Some sort of mix. Yeah, I don't know. I just wrote about how I felt. I saw I watched the Joker movie with Joaquin Phoenix and the song was already in the works. The lyrics weren't. And I that movie made me feel some type of way, you know, and I just.
wrote the lyrics down that's how i felt when i went into the studio that people like wonder how my voice is so low that's how i actually literally felt you know i've been to the emergency room many times thinking i was gonna i was dying and it was there they're always like panic attack you know yeah but this uh this was years ago and uh it's better now
But I just remember being in the midst of that and be like, nah, you cannot tell me that what I'm feeling is a panic attack. I'm dying, you know. To have the success with Popular Monster.
and to do that sort of reward and gratitude to the fans with the reimagined version doing the reimagined did that kind of lead to the i'm not a vampire revamp there was no real planning it was just like kind of like uh an aha moment kind of thing and i was like how can i do this again and make it more modern and uh make it more like epic you know that that is definitely it's definitely that for sure i could say that with confidence for sure but popular monster here's the the weird thing about
a popular monster uh obviously it's about depression and anxiety and post-traumatic stress and rage and like all these things you know the weird thing is is in that mind frame going into the studio and the my voice is low because i i did not feel good that's i just didn't feel good and i just was trying to get the the the words out and i was like i need i just need to get the words out and then my engineer is like hold on this sounds crazy
you know and that's how it started but the weird thing is is how i felt then was really how i felt and then pop the monster exploded and ironically made me feel good right and it completely took me out of that it's just it's just Music is amazing. That's art at its best. Or even, like you said, sitting down watching the Joker in the theater and relating that to your own experience. You're not watching that going like, I'm this character, we're exactly the same. You're connecting it.
to yourself and processing something through that art you know i i felt like i was like yeah a lot of people probably feel like this but whatever you know and then i was like whoa Everybody feels like that. Why does everybody feel like this? Because that's what it feels like. It feels like everybody has listened to that song. By the way, shout out to all the YouTube reactors. It's positive. Everything they do is like super positive.
and it's not like you don't see youtube reactors being like this shit's fucking terrible you don't see that it's all if they don't have anything nice to say they don't say it and it's just there's a it's a whole like portal of like positivity yeah i never thought about it that way yeah it like combats all the negativity you know what i mean that's probably why i like it so much when you watch somebody naturally reacting to a song and they're you see their body kind of moving and they're like
it like makes you enjoy it more. My friend Greg turned me on to No Life Shack. He's great. And it was just, it literally, he sent it to me because he was just like, this kid is so fun. And he was doing metal videos at the time, and he sent me a couple metal videos that he had done, and then I subscribed to his channel, started watching it. And so then when you hit his channel...
You know, it's just like worlds colliding, you know. No Life Shack. What's up, No Life Shack? Shout out to Lit Mafia, all the other YouTube reactors, man. Yeah, love it. You know, you put it in, that's great context for it, man, because I hadn't thought about it. that way I didn't quite realize why I go down those rabbit holes and that's exactly because it's positive it's positive it's not like
Nobody wants to watch like a bunch of people being like, this is fucking garbage. You know, like it gets to a point to where, you know, like we got to, you got to stop, man. You got to, we need some positivity. Yeah. Yeah. And you learn about. It reminds me as a journalist of more sort of classical criticism where you start to learn more about the person.
who's reporting on all this different stuff and you kind of get to know their personality and their likes and dislikes yeah and then you can gauge how they're reacting to something versus how you might feel about it yeah yeah that's like how it should be yeah yeah nobody nobody should be anybody that enjoys watching somebody get bashed is not like somebody i want to hang out with you know i mean it's not there's already the news there's already like
A million angry people at Pepsi for an upside down cross or something. I don't know. Like the flavor of the wheat kind of thing. You know, we need positivity, you know. in that sense especially in music you know i feel like everybody's competing and there's not many friends anymore in music it's it feels like everybody's just out for themselves and it seems that way
The cinematic thing. I mean, you've always painted vivid pictures in your songs, like I think of you as a storyteller, relating these.
incidents from your life or these snapshots or the way that you're feeling in a certain time or whatever and I think that's what people relate to a lot and you know image has been part of it and you've always been interested in fashion and stuff like that but I'm really digging these last few years how you've really put an emphasis on the cinematic side and this like series of videos that go from cyberpunk to goth to you know all these different areas.
Visually, I just it's unacceptable to not give 110 percent and put money into something instead of like i would rather put money into a music video than into a car i'll tell you that right now i would give my i would trade my car for uh an amazing music video i think that that's the most important thing because that lasts the longest you know so it's got to be it's got to be like that for me without jumping 10 steps ahead
Through the process of conceptualizing these videos and coming up with these storylines and everything, is this giving you the itch to want to do more long-form visual storytelling? I think people have ADD right now. uh this show i feel like the shorter the the shorter you can go the better just for people to to uh so not so much a movie or a tv series yet but uh maybe music videos maybe uh oh you mean like an actual movie yeah
Maybe. It almost seems like you could string together some of what you already have. Yeah. There's a story there. Yeah. I don't want to say too much and then some other band steals my idea like they always do. Yeah. Maybe I shouldn't say it like that. It's happened. There's definitely been, you're one of those artists where you get to see those fun moments of a negative reaction that turns into a positive, that turns into imitation.
and then all of a sudden you're like wait a minute but that person was criticizing what ronnie was doing two years ago and i've done it i've dude i get so inspired and then it turns into me uh just uh i've been I imitated, you know, like I loved Guns N' Roses 80s hair metal and I ended up with a Joan Jett haircut. You know what I mean? So, I mean...
i'm not the first to do it and they weren't the first the new york dolls were the first or one of the first sure you can always go back and back even back and back and back so uh for me to even like get upset that somebody's imitating me. It's just me getting, I should be upset at myself because I've done it too. Someone said once, Coldplay is Radiohead meets U2. You know, it's like you can break down these mathematical equations, but...
There's something about the way things are combined that they haven't been combined in that way before. And then who you are as a person, as an artist. Personality comes out. Comes out. And I'm... aware that my voice is distinct and I'm very grateful for that so with this revamp I mean it's got to be it's got to be fun as an artist
I always think to get a second bite at the apple, you know, when directors go back and do like the director's cut of their film and you're able to kind of revisit what you were trying to say and spin it in a new way or maybe complete a thought that wasn't quite... finished the way you wanted what's the appeal for you um taking these old songs and stripping them down and just to show how much better i got i mean it's insane you know what i mean
it's i straight up i'm not even talking it obviously uh if you haven't heard it when you hear it you'll understand if you go back and listen the old one you hear the new one you'd be like yeah he's gotten a little better you know Just overall, the composition of it, it's like Phantom of the Opera. It's bigger.
broader it's more yeah thematic and sort of yeah it's just looking back uh to the how much uh control i had on my vocals then to now it's and it's just very uh pleasing for me like because i work so hard at it yeah so yeah and i know that's always been important to you and i think that's been a distinguishing thing yeah it's super important uh to be
good live and it's you know what the best thing ever is look right at the camera is when losing my life is a good example we have a live version and the comments when they're like this is fake and i'm like thank you so much man because this is real man that is my voice that is me dude that is crazy
And I see a lot of them. They're like, there's no fucking way this, you know, and it's just, you know, it just makes me so happy. That means I'm doing my job. You know what I mean? So. So walking into your house today, one of the first things I saw. was the end i think you might have posted this gotham city outside well i mean once i got inside but yes wayne manor from the outside was pretty great um
But the Freddie Mercury that you have up. Yeah. And that was one of the things that I was struck by with this revamp is like the sort of rock opera, like. big vocal and the dynamics and that's one thing that i personally as a fan appreciate about your voice yeah that picture my dad gave to me because uh um all the comments on the drug of me is reimagined are that i'm
Freddie Mercury. So, and it made him like very happy. So he sent that to me for my birthday. I took a picture of it posted on Instagram and so many people were mad because my dad, uh, appreciated that people, uh, said that. I reminded them of Freddie Mercury. How? I was like, you guys were mad at my dad. It was cool though. It's cool to even be compared on any platform to Freddie Mercury. He's literally.
iconic, man. That's the ambition that you have is to do things that are to that scale. Because when I think about Queen, I think it's not to say you're trying to be Freddie Mercury or anything. I'm just saying like, but that ambition and that idea of like...
we'll do a rock opera we'll do this we'll do that we'll do a song with david bowie well yeah it's natural it's a natural thing for me it's like uh well you're supposed to you're supposed to do another follow-up to popular monster man why didn't you do that it's like because it's not natural to me it's not natural okay do another rap song with with metal breakdown in it okay maybe next time right now i want to do this phantom of the opera and uh showcase my what my vocals can do
Christopher Nolan, his movies, they make me feel a certain way. That's probably why he's so successful because I'm not the only one. You know, just the way that the chords move when a certain scene is... cinematography is happening and it makes me feel a certain way that's what i that's what i go off of and i'm so glad that i never learned music theory because i feel like you lose that creative element in a sense you might be like amazing
like knowing the laws of music but for me too much music theory dampens your creativity and because I go off of all feeling I learned the piano off of feeling, guitar off of feeling, any type of drums, anything. Writing music was just feeling how I felt. So I don't ever want that to ever go away.
If I feel this way, then at least one or two other people when they hear are going to feel like that. I feel like the art that you've been making the last few years is much more proactive, is much more you're kind of in your own center and you're like, what do I want to do as opposed to...
what's coming at me that i that i want to respond to i used to just react so quickly and that's how you gain enemies is because you react before you you know too quickly you know and I felt like I had to be the best at everything and and compete at everything in a sense of like like music and selling tickets and this and that and a lot of other people do that but it ain't about that man it's about this it's how good your songs are that's what it's about
because your songs will stand up you could be the most attractive dude in the world with a moderate uh okay voice you're only going to be uh successful for so long if you don't have good songs man it's so important to have good songs that last longer than you live. Look at Queen. We just said Metallica, man. That's what I want to do. And I think that I've started doing that.
music that means something to people yeah in their own life that's way more important than how i'm dressed right you know what i mean and like it's just uh nowadays like you see a lot of people i mean not even nowadays like always it's been this way but a lot of people just kind of just phone it in like they they got a mediocre song but they look cool you know what i mean and uh i i would just rather focus on the songwriting
and it uh you know meaning something to a lot of people now so even with artists particularly in the rock world who have great songs who have a good stage show who have a lot of things going for them Longevity is so difficult and seems so one in a million. And even for artists that are able to reinvent or have a comeback or whatever, there's so many. By the way, speaking of longevity, shout out to Corey Taylor, Jacoby Shaddix, Breaking Benjamin, In This Moment, A Day to Remember.
these are the these bands are i feel like there's so many bands i could name right now but um if they're keeping it together man it's it's like yeah keeping it together and it's it's so important for these kind of bands because it inspires younger bands to continue to uh to have that longevity man yeah i always worried i was like i'm just gonna be washed up one day because you know that's what happens man you get washed up but
it's been so long and i'm like what the bro you guys this is my biggest wait yeah bigger than i was before what the hell man like it's And I guess this is what you call longevity? But in your case, you've had multiple moments in your career where people in the industry, in the press, certain segments of fandom have written you off. Michael, this is it. like yeah okay he he got up to here but that's it you know and whether and all the way back to getting kicked out of escape the fate
It was like, well, that guy's over. You know, they're moving on. They're going to a major label and whatever. He's going to jail. And then first Falling Universe album is a big thing. And it's like, okay, well, that was his like one. I'm out of jail. You know, it's like there's every step of the way, you know, it's like, that's it. And you keep the resilience and the reemergence each and every time. What is that? Like how? Songwriting.
Songwriting. Because looks fade. Songs are forever. Songwriting is so important. You've got to make songs that are good. Even if certain people don't like them. You know, that's what I learned too. They're like that song sucks. He's like, but why is it so big, man? It's just you don't like it. You know what I mean? You're not the only person on earth, you know?
I don't have any guilty pleasures. I like Adele. I like Marshall Mathers. I like Slim Shady. I like G-Unit, like in their prime G-Unit. I like Avril Lavigne's songwriting, Max Martin. You know, the melody top lines. I'm just going off every part of the spectrum, you know? And none of it's a guilty pleasure. Yeah, without having to overly explain. I mean, no, if I'm at a stoplight bumping Avril Lavigne. Hey, hey, you, you, I don't like a girlfriend.
somebody rolls up i'm gonna be like i'm gonna turn it down a little bit you know it's more time set out the window it's more time place and circumstance right you know pleasure though you know because i'm literally telling you i like it so your art has gotten into a place where other people are eating off of just talking about your art. I think that's cool. That says something about the impact that it's having.
People can make a whole video about it and it gets a million views. People always try to compare. This is what I always notice too. It's like, you're washed up. I see it all the time. I see it with everyone, too. They're like, for example, like Eminem. He's a good example. Marshall Mathers, Slim Shady, whatever. This motherfucker sells. This dude has like...
46 million monthly listeners and all over YouTube right now is people saying that nobody listens to him. It's like, bro, he's like the biggest selling rapper right now. He's like 48 years old. He's still like fucking.
you know what i mean and i'm like well if he's getting that i can't take anything personal anymore it's like even he's like he's like at the top of the world man and people are literally like he's a has-been and it's like but he's literally outselling everyone so it's just there's no there's no like um you know i'm not even i'm not up there so when i see it i don't take anything personally more when people are like you only have 85
million streams on popular monster and it came out a year ago dude you're you're a piece of shit that sucks you know you see that you're like what do you mean only 85 million you know what i mean that's a lot man it's insane people like i feel like people compare music so much that
like if you look in the comments section of like a music video like he looks like this person this sounds like this person this is this person it's just that's what humans do we like we try to figure things out yeah we want to count and measure everything and if you can't figure it out you either a you strongly dislike that person because you can't figure them out because you're scared you know you're scared of what you you can't figure out in a sense
um or b i don't have a b actually there's no plan b sorry and that's the thing about art is it's subjective you don't have to like it Right. You can love something, you can hate something. The idea of exerting so much energy into hating on something is just something I've never identified with. But, you know, those tend not to be people that are contributing.
If you're busy contributing and making things and creating things, you don't have time to be paid. People that love you, I feel like most of the people that love you, they don't feel the need to go on Twitter and tell you.
they just assume that you know that right so the reason why you see people talking is because they feel the need they think you don't know that they don't like you and that's when you see a video that has i hate you like and you see a music video with 50 million views x number of dislikes or whatever it's always like such a small percentage that's what i never understood this is what i never understood too man go on youtube right now google google sorry uh search uh
Wind in the trees, right? So wind in the trees, it's just the sound of wind blowing in the trees. You know, it helps you sleep at night, right? And you'll see... somebody watches that and then they fucking hit the dislike you hit the dislike button on win bro Fuck, man. That's so ridiculous. Don't you think that's ridiculous? You're disliking wind? You dislike, dude, I go, or I YouTubed, uh,
Cute, uh, cute babies, uh, you know, like, like a montage just to see. And it's just a bunch of, like, kids being funny or whatever. And there's like fucking 2,000 dislikes. Imagine somebody, somebody being like...
that kid's fucking ugly. Fuck this video. You know what I mean? It's like, what? Like, it blows my mind, man. And imagine that person is ignoring the rest of their life, too, because they're like, hold on a second. Yeah. It's like, cute dogs. It's a good one. Yeah, it's like, cute dogs, funny dogs. It's like...
i'm a cat person you know what i mean it's just it's wild i put things in perspective that way i'm like well if this is happening then this is what you know it makes a lot more sense that way People thought Ozzy Osbourne was washed up when he was fired from Black Sabbath. Oh. I mean, you know, it's over. He's gone. I never thought of it like that. Yeah. My bass player.
his name is Tyler uh he uh told me at the lap my last video shoot he goes he goes yeah man he goes think about this you went to prison for two and a half years now you're sitting in the director's chair while all these people are filming you for a reimagined version of a song that went gold that you wrote in prison prison yeah after getting kicked out of a very successful first band that you had so you not only got
one chance but you got two chances and one percent of the population only get one chance and i was like jesus like he made me like i was like damn dude it made me feel really good it made me uh his perspective really uh it was great to hear that you know yeah never heard it like that before yeah and never forget it i'll never forget it i'll give you that i'll give you the ozzy sabbath and i'll give you the sunny moore and from first to last
yeah look at that was enough of your generation you remember yeah him being out of the band and it was like the band was going on and doing their thing and whatever exploded he became like kurt cobain of the whole scene you know yeah and So, and I think those are very inspirational stories, your story. Yeah. For people, because everybody, we all have setbacks. We all lose that job or fall out with that person or break up with that significant other, whatever it is.
And I think people identify with that about you as an artist, is seeing your story, like that you continue to. Yeah, I'm kind of putting my weapons down, man. I don't want to fight anymore. I don't want to fight with people.
you know i'm over it you know i don't want i don't want to uh i mean i will if i have to i mean i will but i don't want to i don't want to i don't want to be that guy you know that you love to hate i guess in a sense of like i'd rather be your friend you know it's we could we could both share the stage you know what i mean we could share the spotlight man you know so
i guess that comes with age and comes with the the feeling of feeling like uh confident in yourself in in a real way not in like a false ego kind of way when you look at Right now, as we're sitting here, and it's been this way for a while, most downloaded songs, purchased, paid downloads, in rock. It's always... There's a couple ACDC songs. There's Sweet Child of Mine. There's Inner Sandman. There's Nothing Else Matters. There's Living on a Prayer. Like, it's the same songs.
A new song will come out from an artist and pop in there for a minute. Popular Monster has just been in there since it came out. And it just sits there with... you know it's next to crazy train um that's crazy what does that feel like for you so look at that 2021. You would think that that would do the opposite of humbling somebody. I think that's what's humbling me in a sense of like, wow, man. Maybe this came at the time when I needed it.
instead of 10 years ago when i would have acted like a fool you know now i'm just like i accept it whether it's like doing okay or it's doing amazing i accept it now my view my view isn't isn't too too bad either though so this is kind of helping you know yeah that might help too it's cool though man it's uh it's it's cool to think that i was just a kid in las vegas and uh you know
grew up poor, really poor, actually, legit poor, not like fake rapper poor, but actually parents paid for everything, you know, but actually straight up poor and then come up and be able to do do all the things i did thinking back to sitting in prison literally writing i'm not a vampire yeah a lot of the songs literally how every song came about drugging me is you i'm not a vampire good girls bad guys i good girls bad guys was supposed to sound like bon jovi i wanted it a bon jovi feel you know
shot to the heart like that kind of vibe but now it's on tiktok and it's fucking super cringy you know god dude but if you could if 2021 ronnie The house, the daughter, the girlfriend, the two gold records, the number one single, the cars. Yeah. All these things. To think about sitting in that cell, a convict in prison. Yep.
You know, what could you, if you now could go tell that guy something, what would you tell him? Don't throw a mic stand in the crowd in 2013 at Six Flags. Yeah. Yeah, you know, bet on this team for the Super Bowl and, you know, all that stuff. Make sure. I don't know. I probably wouldn't say anything because I'm very glad to be sitting right here right now for sure. And I don't think it would have worked that way. I think the negative has helped the positive, man.
It has, in a sense. It doesn't make certain things right. I'm not going to go throw another mic stand in the crowd for attention or something like that. But yeah, I wouldn't change anything, for sure. so i wouldn't say anything just let it take its course yeah it's just it led you here yeah it's wild it is crazy when you put it all out there like that that is insane to think about you know yeah
You got Corey Taylor wishing me happy birthday. I mean, bro, what? That's so fucking cool, man. Kidding me. He's so nice. I mean, and I wanted to say one thing about that. Jacoby Shaddix. This dude inspires me so much in a sense of like, he is such a good person. He's just so accepting of everything around him. He's inspired me. I saw him.
for the first time on stage uh and the way he treated the crowd i was like that's not the way i act i act like this persona and he's just kind of open and natural and and uh grateful and then i was like I need to be like that that's my natural like the way I naturally am any human that's how your friends know you you know like naturally and the second I did that I noticed people commenting and saying like
something's different man you know and it just so yeah i want to thank jacoby for inspiring he inspires me to be a better person him and cory man cory taylor didn't have to jump on my song i didn't pay cory taylor to he didn't get any money for that I literally hit him up and I asked him and he said yes and I was like what do you mean yes he's like yeah it's like okay cool you know so
Yeah, it's inspiring to see people, I guess, people that have longevity like those guys. They don't have anything to prove in a sense of like, they're just going to... There's a reason why they have longevity and that's not just because of the good music It's because the way they treat people Dave Grohl is a good example. I want to be like Dave Grohl With in a sense of how I treat people. He's just so nice to people, you know
And you just, Keanu Reeves, man, you just hear stories, you know, and I feel like people don't hear the stories of me doing all the nice things. I mean, you helped a lot of bands with this pandemic. Strock. Yeah. I don't like talking about it. Ran down.
I don't like talking about helping people because I feel like it comes off as cheap. You're like, look at me and look how good a person I am. You know, so that's why I don't post about that. That's why I'm bringing it up. You know, like feeding the homeless, dude. You know what I mean? Well, people should.
know i think i'm putting it out there that you know bands who literally didn't know how they were going to pay their rent because touring went away and stuff like that you were behind the scenes you know helping if i had two dollars I would give one of those dollars, if there were only $2 left, I'd give one of those dollars to somebody I care about that needs it for sure. Always been that way. It was like that with drugs, when I had drugs. That's how you know somebody's a good person.
if they're a drug addict and they have only just enough drugs for themselves and they know that their friend needs some drugs and they give their last drugs to their friend that's how you know somebody's a good person i was gonna say if you had drugs if you had drugs max green had drugs straight up then max green will tell you man he'd be like That motherfucker, he split his last drugs with me. No longer. We don't do that shit anymore.
yeah yeah some people will give you the shirt off their back he'll give you the last drugs straight that's how you know man yeah i love that you know one thing that we've seen as the culture adapts. There's a lot of live streaming, a lot of shows, a lot of rock bands, a lot of bands you're friends with. That's been happening and you have stayed out of it for a minute. And my knowing you as long as I have, I think it's because you were cooking something up that you needed to do it differently.
yeah always different always different man uh yeah this live stream is like something that nobody's ever done so uh it's uh it's scary because i hope it i hope it turns out good because nobody's done it before. Not in this way. I looked it up. Nobody's done it. That's what makes your book collaborative. Right. I'm not writing the book. I'm going to do the audio portion, though. Yeah, you are.
It's not gonna be me. Yeah. Wait, what's that? You doing it? In character. Yeah. There's trying to recreate the live experience that some bands have tried. There's... doing this intimate stuff there's i remember the guy from stain did one where it was literally him on his couch yeah there's all sorts of different ways you can do it and yeah the approach that you're taking
definitely have not seen and it is just yeah it's a movie it's like a cinematic approach and uh if we pull it off it will be like 30 music videos live music videos Given how reflective we've been today and talking about the past, the present, the future, when you're putting together a set list for that live stream, how do you determine...
every single song that's that everybody i know everybody's gonna sing along to and there's a lot so it was uh hard to put together but uh you guys have to wait to see you know It's going to be interesting for sure. Thanks for having me over. Thanks for sitting down and being grilled by my questions for the millions of time. Awesome. Well, thanks again, man. It's always a pleasure. Wait, is this how you do it? I think we social distance elbows. Right on. See you guys. Later.