#1881 - Rick Rubin

The Joe Rogan Experience by Joe Rogan Park Gas by Night All Day Rick Rubin lays gentleman. It's a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance. Same. I'm happy to have you here, man. I'm excited to talk to you. It's a beautiful place. Thank you. And it's fine. You see shooting stars across the ceiling, you're not tripping. Every like 40 seconds or something. She's across the ceiling. So what's happening, man?

Just hanging. You wrote a book. I wrote a book. I'm excited to read it, man. Yeah, I'm excited for you to see it. You've had a wild life, brother. It's continues to surprise me on a regular basis. Does it? Every time. It's like one thing after another. So much of it's unintentional. I would say all of it's unintentional.

How so? From the beginning, I never thought any of the things that I'm doing were possible or realistic. And I just did things out of the love of them, thinking I would have real jobs. And you know, like the thing that my passion would be my hobby. And I'd have a job to support my hobby. Yeah. And it just magically turned out different than that without me knowing it was possible.

That's the best kind of story. I love those stories. Because when someone just falls or passion and it just leads them to being one of the best motherfuckers in music. How did you get started? I just started making. I went to was in a punk rock band first. And I recorded a couple of punk rock things with my band. And like the feeling of being in the studio was fun. And hip hop was just getting started at this time.

And I would go to there was a club called an grill on second Avenue Manhattan downtown was a reggae club most nights, but one night a week it was hip hop. And this was when hip hop was did didn't really exist other than in the Bronx, Brooklyn. And it was a tiny little scene of people playing music in parks really it was not a it's hard to explain how small it was how much of a subgenre it was in these days.

So the fact that you could see it downtown was a big deal because it didn't really exist anywhere that you didn't hear this music and clubs didn't hear and there were very few at this time 12 inch singles would come out. And there and there would be I don't know. I don't know if there were more than 30 or 40. Wrap songs in the world at this point in time. But there were these clubs where stuff would happen. And at this club that I went to called the grill.

What you would normally only be able to see at a club in Harlem like there was a club called Broadway International there was a club called the disco fever was brought downtown and people downtown could see it. So I started going every Tuesday night. This one I was going to NYU. And I just loved the music and then I would buy every 12 inch single that would come out when it would come out. And none of them sounded like what it sounded like at the club. It wasn't it wasn't related at all.

How so. The this the live it was much more of a raw. It was like DJs and break beats and it was harder. Whereas the record sounded more like an R&B record but with somebody wrapping on it. But it wasn't it wasn't. What we know as rap today that's not what those records sounded like. That they were live bands. They were made by people who made other kinds of music. So they made them the same way they made other kinds of music when hip hop was really different.

So I started making hip hop records really with the idea of. I just wanted as a fan to hear what it sounded like in a club. So it was more almost like a documentary in style. And I would just start documenting what I heard and making things that sounded more like the energy of a club which was again different than these slick records. And part of it was because I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have any training or skill but that allowed.

That was what allowed it to be new was it wasn't doing it the regular way it was doing it the way of hip hop which didn't yet exist. And so how did you get in with the artists and start producing stuff. I started meeting them the first my favorite group of times called treacherous three. And they were on a label called sugar hill.

They're best they put out three 12 and singles that I love those were the best 12 inch. They still sounded like R&B records but they were the best of the rap records you could get at this time. Those first three came out on enjoy records they had a red label. And then they signed to sugar hill and when they signed sugar hill they put out an album and it didn't sound it's like wasn't good like the ones on enjoy.

And then one night treacherous three were playing at that club in the grill and I met them after the show. And then one night I met them after the show and they were like I was in the grill and I was like I don't know anything about the music business I don't know anything about what anyone does I don't know that there's such a job as a producer I don't know any of this. Let's go let's work together to try to make something that's as good as you guys are.

And he said well we're signing sugar hill we can't really do that but you should talk to special K another member of the group he's got a brother T. LaRoc who's a really good rapper and you can do it with him. So I okay and that was the first record I made was T. LaRoc.

So I think that's what we're doing in the clubs it ended up getting very popular it took a long time probably took 10 months to really have impact in the New York scene and it and it did it was really popular song and what was the difference in the way you were doing the sound versus the way the sound was on we could we could listen to it like if you listen to it you'll hear the difference.

I'm not going to do that but if you listen to it you'll really understand okay tell Jamie what to pull up okay so a typical rap record at that time would have been a Curtis blow the brakes so if you listen to that you'll hear what rap sounded like and then after that we'll listen to T. LaRoc. It's yours and you'll hear the difference. Jamie will find it so so this to you and how old are you at the time just starting so first or second year of school whatever age that is like 1920. Like that.

Your hands everybody if you got what it takes because I'm currently not want to know that these are the boys. It's a band playing and it sounds like it's at a party and then there's wrapping on top of that and now play it's yours. This is just a drum machine. And there's something.

Now you haven't really heard that on records yet because it was what would happen live in the DJ the DJs were the musicians but to people who made other kinds of music the DJs were only playing back a band so they assumed the record supposed to be a band playing and my assumption was that's not what it was it was the DJ playing a drum machine and playing parts of records that that's what you're doing.

That's what was exciting that was the music of hip hop the wrapping on top could be the same but the music of it was different. Who was the first person that started scratching? I think I don't know that much about it but I believe it was a DJ cool herk is the considered the inventor but I'm not sure if that's true. I'm not the best person to ask. What a wild idea and revolutionary until I changed the way people thought about music and it's particularly like hip hop music it became part of it.

It comes out of the idea of the break starting with the break so the break is you have a song that has all different parts in it a traditional song but there's one little part in it that has a cool drum beat or a cool little percussion part.

What a DJ would do in those days was they would play just that little snippet of the song might be four seconds and they would have two turn tables and they play four seconds here and then four seconds here and four seconds here to create a longer piece out of this four second loop. But there was no such thing as a sampler then so it only happened through live playing it.

And then when did people figure out sampling and when there was a lot of time sampling was maligned right in the early days people didn't sort of understand they were like oh you're you're taking other people's music but it was not just that it was a creation of new music with samples.

It's a long conversation the first part of sampling is the way it was used in hip hop in the early days so I was saying we would do we would use a snippet of a record and then sometimes we would even create a tape loop so you would take a little piece of piece of music on tape and then have it come back around and you'd edit it and splice it and there's there's a there's at least one song the beastie what first BC boys out that uses.

That uses that technique but but it was about extending these pieces of music to create something new and hip hop from beginning was always a form of montage it was finding things and making something new out of it it wasn't finding things to make it sound like it sounded it was finding something and changing it into something new that's what was exciting about it and that this montage process is the basis of hip hop.

And up until the time of its yours we didn't really hear it on the records because people people still were making records using traditional methods non hip hop methods. Did you get a sense like while this was all happening of how that was this is like a completely new music genre this is a whole new music scene.

It must have been very exciting it was being part of it was very exciting and loving it was exciting and there was a disconnect between that and the outside world because the outside world didn't recognize it didn't even recognize it as music much less something.

That was good you know like that could be good it was viewed as this other thing not music other thing yeah that's how it was just I can remember being in once a deaf jam happened and we started having a lot of success putting out music I'm still probably at NYU.

And then some labels would come around and want to be involved in one way or another and and one label asks like what do you attribute the success of this to after all it's not music now these are people in the music business who are wooing us wanting to work with us and they're telling us they don't hear it as music.

That doesn't even make sense today right no no no now it's it's the world has changed the world has changed wow it was a completely alien underground form music and because people were wrapping instead of singing that was one piece that didn't. It wasn't understandable and then because the music was like it's yours where it's it's a drum machine there's no melody there's no it's it was too foreign at that point in time for people to understand it as.

Songs wow it's hard to it's shocking it's ridiculous and in in some ways like there's a song I produced with um. Run DMC and aerosmith walked this way yeah and the whole purpose of doing that was to demonstrate this is music this is music and this is not only is it music it's familiar music you're just not you're not seeing it like you're you're somehow removed from what's happening but it's easy to see if you.

So again if you create a demonstration so that's what walk this way was was I looked for a song that was familiar. And that the way it was written in the original version the aerosmith version the phrasing of it was essentially a rap record the verses are ba pa pa la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la it's not melodic it's all about the phrasing that's how rap works.

And the beat you know the intro was already a known break beat in the hip hop world they they had never heard in hip hop club knowing it heard of aerosmith no one had heard of walk this way but they knew the toys in the attic break which was just that beat not the song.

Wow yeah let's listen to that we play the intro the intro to aerosmiths walk this way I remember when you did that I remember that being a very polarizing song absolutely because people didn't know what to think it's like some people thought you were ruining walk this way by adding run DMC and some people like why do you have run DMC with rock and roll doesn't make me sense.

Just that long that that piece is the toys in the attic break because it says toys in the attic on the record just that so that would that was as so if you went to a hip hop club you might hear that wow but I grew up on aerosmith and I grew up on AC DC and I grew up on Ted Newgian you know I grew up on rock and roll music and

and when I saw this disconnect this was the way to like bridge the gap just to just explain what was happening wow how was it received in the music business when you did that. I guess the first thing was radio like it I remember I guess was WBC and in Boston played it once Mark parental can't remember who was Mark parental or who else was there. Charles Lockwood era no tell me another name. That's hard remember the morning mattress was Charles Lockwood era and afternoons is Mark parental.

Yeah I don't think I don't know that it was either of them but it might have been again I don't remember I just remember that BC and played the song and it was a big deal also because it was a rock station playing hip hop record. Yeah and I remember that there was this outrage from the audience you know take that garbage off and then within a few days it was the most requested song on the station. So it was like it definitely divided the audience.

Yeah. But the best things do that's that's what's really exciting when you when you hear something new and you don't have a reference for it. The first reaction might be to push it away you know I remember the first time I heard the remones when I was in probably junior high school and I heard the remones and that was the first really punk rock fast music I've ever heard there. Well I don't think there was any before the remones.

If you're used to hearing normal tempo rock and roll and then you hear the remones I just laughed just seemed like a joke you know it just seemed ridiculous and then eventually it became my favorite thing. How did Arosmith react did you come to Arosmith and try to bring it to them to the label column. I just had the idea of doing the song and recording the song with with Rendy MC and then the label said why don't we reach out to Arosmith and ask if they would participate.

That sounds crazy to me but if they'll do it obviously I'd love it you know I love that band growing up everyone in my favorite band is growing up so that seemed like a dream and then they came and we did it. Wow. That that was a groundbreaking moment in music it really was.

If you really stop and think about all the ripples that came out of that that particular song that that song introduced so many people to hip hop and I'm sure so many hip hop fans to rock and roll and Rendy MC you know combining with Arosmith is like the perfect combination to iconic bands.

But also at that point in time Arosmith had fallen on hard times I remember I saw Arosmith play at NASA Coliseum sold out incredible show and then six months later Arosmith were playing at a club on the island called Speaks which was like it was like where the cover bands would play six months six months. I don't know I don't really know I think maybe Joe Perry left the band which was part of it. But I don't know how you can go from that popular to to.

In this new condition that quickly but it happened. That's wild. I can't I wasn't aware that that it happened that doesn't even make sense is something like that can happen in six months NASA Coliseum which is like sold out twenty thousand twenty thousand something Jesus Christ to a club. Yeah maybe 600 person club like a big club but still a club a big fall a big fall. Wow. In six months.

So was it a scandal when Joe Perry left does that what it was was like everyone was upset I don't know I really don't know. So they did that and then did that song bring them back that's on the back wow. They had actually put out an album called done with mirrors which was like their comeback album before walk this way and that did not was not well received and then walk this way came out and then it both broke when DMC in a mainstream way and re broke air Smith as mainstream mainstream group.

Wow. So then what happens with you after that that song obviously is this giant smash and things just start happening then. Things start happening right from the beginning it's it honestly the whole thing was miraculous because I'm working in this form of music that people don't think is music nobody likes and nobody cares about other than the.

You know 200 people at the Negril club that that that I would go to and then bit by bit the first the first album I produced was L. L. Cool J he was 16 at the time and the way that the way I met L. L. L. L. was because of the it's yours record the T. La Rack record that we listen to the it had death jam recordings name and address five university plays which is my dorm room at NYU.

And the we started getting demo tapes to the dorm room and Adam Harvitz from the Beastie boys was listening to all of the demo tapes and he found the L. L. tapes like you should listen to this one.

And we listen to it and we made us really laugh and we liked it so much of it has to do with humor like when it's good it makes you laugh even if it's not funny you know like the the the the surprise nature of things when you when you hear the unexpected you laugh and it feels good it's a good feeling. And I remember we laughed a lot at L. L. as a matter of fact on L. L. is demo tape the first thing he said before he started his demo rap was he said let me clear my throat.

And then he started rapping but he only said that because he turned on the recorder before he started rapping but it wasn't supposed to be part of it and we just thought it was the funniest thing let me clear my throat and then on the Beastie boys record. We have a song we're in the middle of the song that we stopped the song and I'd rock says let me clear my throat and it's really based on hearing it just this funny thing that didn't really make sense.

Complete inside joke and so so we were making these things that were completely insider personal no expectation. You know there was no expectation that anybody would like any of the things we were making outside of our small group of friends and what you were doing to was that's a completely unique way of making music that that really didn't exist before. Like having like not just having samples but having things like that's pausing in the middle of a song let me keep only clear my throat.

It was it was definitely odd it was very free. It was very free. That's the great word. Very free. It was experimental and it was intended to be fun and exciting and hard and all the things that we liked in music but again with no potential upside you know no expectation. Yeah that it was for anyone else well speaking of experimental Paul's boutique is one of my favorite albums ever it's incredible it's fucking great and that was such a radical shift from the first album absolutely.

I mean I didn't produce Paul's boutique that's what different about it radically different and miraculously beautiful beautiful album.

Yeah just completely different kind of music but it speaks to the sort of freedom of that time absolutely people would take these wild chances like that I remember I was with Chuck D. At the Mondrian Hotel in Los Angeles and we had gotten advance of Paul's boutique and we listened to it together and our minds were blown just like this is the future it was so good.

And we loved it and then it came out and it ended up not being at the time it was not wildly successful. Yeah that's that was strange to me at the time because I don't understand why people are loving us this is so interesting so good so good.

But it's just like I think then is that what happens is like now there's like a form that people accept for hip hop there's like a form that people accept for a certain band at that time and then Paul's boutique comes along it's like well now we're going to try something even wilder.

It's always been the case that people come to expect or the audience comes to expect a certain thing and if you veer outside of those lines it's often not well received and an example also even public enemy when we put out the first public enemy record.

None of the at this point in time there were already stations playing rap music like a master mixed shows on WBLS and KTU would be like Saturday night they'd be playing rap music but they wouldn't play public enemy they would play the instrumental versions they wouldn't play Chuck's vocals because he didn't sound like the other MCs at that time. And he even has a line on the second public enemy album about some say no to the album the show bummer the sounds I made a year ago.

It's like the last time you played the music this time you play the lyrics. I don't know why anybody would listen to Chuck D and not think it was fucking awesome is incredible and that crazy that someone think that his his lyrics or his voice is not good to the same it's insane. I mean it's I just knew it was just it was new and what he was talking about was new so.

It just wasn't it wasn't what was in the culture at the time but often the best things I remember the time that LL came out another record came out called. Roxanne Roxanne by group called UTFO and UTFO was a much bigger hit than LL song. But over time the consistency of LL artistry bypassed UTFO but sometimes like the thing that catches on isn't the it's a short term thing you know it's a short term taste.

Yeah one of the things that I found interesting about hip hop was I can really remember this clearly because the first time I listened to NWA I was on a treadmill or a stair climb machine and I was in Boston and I was like this is fucking crazy. It's incredible like these guys are it's it was so wild and so violent and so hard yeah I was I remember thinking like holy shit this is popular I remember thinking this kind of music is going to have like ramifications on society.

You know because it was so powerful and it's like shocking like I'd never heard that kind of violence and that extreme lyrics and just their depictions of real life in South Central L.A. And I mean it really ignited this completely new branch of hip hop in a lot of ways.

Absolutely it was I had I had pretty much left hip hop at that point in time once once hip hop so when we started doing the stuff we were doing hip hop didn't really exist and then all of a sudden it got popular and once it got popular it felt like the community changed and it wasn't people getting into it

out of love for hip hop or wanting to continue pushing the boundaries of what was creatively possible it just started all sounding like records we had already made and it wasn't just wasn't interesting felt like derivative everything was derivative at this point so I started producing other produce layer and you know dancing different kinds of music that felt more challenging to me in that moment that just spoke to me more and then I heard NWA actually was easy E and W.A.

It wasn't recorded yet there was the easy E album which is the first album from Dre in the sound of what became NWA and it blew my mind and I went to California to meet with them and I actually visited in the studio when they were recording straight out of Compton album. Yeah incredible. Wow that's fascinating too that like this new thing emerges and then people just imitate the pattern of success like whatever the successful pattern of that music.

Yeah it wasn't it wasn't out of artistry it was out of oh this works let's do it. Yeah and for someone like you like you you seem to go on feel a lot or just like what resonates with you.

So everything I do is just personal taste and it's what the book is about is like really for people to trust artists to trust in themselves make something that speaks to themselves and hopefully someone else will like it but you can't second guess you're on taste for what someone else is going to like won't be good.

We're not smart enough to know what someone else is going to like you know to make something well I don't really like it but I think this group of people like it it's a it's a bad way to play the game of music or art. You have to do what's personal to you take it as far as you could go really push the boundaries and people will resonate with it. If they're supposed to resonate with it but you can't get there the other way you know the other way is a dead end path.

When artists are not successful yet though it's very difficult for them to find who they are because they're always just trying to figure out what's the path to success which success seems to be the way to care at the end of the stick it's like there's always this something you know these guys have all this money these guys have all these cars and these big houses how do I get that how do I

get successful how do I fill up an arena how do I become successful and so there's this temptation towards imitation yeah it's a dangerous path and if that's your if you're getting into this business for that for that outcome if that's the reason you're doing it chances are it's not going to work out I don't think that's not what makes it what makes it great is the personal yeah with all of its imperfections with all of its quirkiness that's what makes it great the you know how you see the world

that's different from how everyone else sees the world that's why you're an artist that's your purpose in sharing your work with the world.

And that seems to be the case with everything with literature it's definitely the case with stand-up comedy everything we experience that and stand-up comedy where there's these kind of derivative voices where they're kind of like finding what they think other people want to hear and they start saying it because they they've heard other people say similar things that are now successful and even if they and even if they have some sort of a short term success doing that

it's not revolutionary it doesn't change the world it doesn't last you know it's that it can be a momentary thing but it's never the thing the it's the people who you first see and you might not like that you come to like because you don't understand them at first those are the ones that changed the world is the ones that you you know you dedicate your fandom to for life.

Yeah I remember when Cypress Hill came out at first I was like man I don't know about this you know that white that nasally voice that be real had I was like I don't know about this and then within like six months they were like my favorite so good so good and it was also like one of the first cannabis infused kinds of music you know they were so not just cannabis inspired but they would they would sing about they would rap about it. Yeah and also I'm Snoop as well would yes.

Yeah well and then the chronic of course you know literally cover the album. Yeah there was something about there or there is something about someone like that that is completely unique that like I think what you said you said perfectly that that's what changes things and that's what lasts whereas these something is derivative or someone's just trying to do things that they think other people are going to buy that's going to be successful.

It just you might start out that way and hopefully you can deviate and find your own voice but if you don't you can't keep imitating.

Yeah and who cares you know what's the what's it's a waste of your life right you know get there other if your goal is to make money go work on Wall Street you do do something else where you get there's a lot of ways to make money I think it's going to do it in art it's different I think it's attention I think they want the money yes but they also want to be stars I think that's the

thing that's the real carrot you know it's like the money is that's big you see the other side too there's so many artists who were shy private people yeah and it's difficult for them to deal with any kind of success or or fame it's it's a weird world and even even even the ones who think they want that when it actually happens it's a shocking it's not what it's cracked up to be obviously there are great perks yeah you know

they're it's nice it's nice to be successful and there are things that happen when you're successful that you're not expecting and things become a lot more complicated in your life and you can it can shrink your life to the point of you know I know some

rock stars over the years who literally never left their house or did anything your Tom Petty be a great example the only thing Tom Petty did was record music tour watch television read books he never he wouldn't go out to dinner he wouldn't go anywhere because if he

went out someone would be oh it's Tom Petty and it just made him uncomfortable it was too it was too weird yeah and for the people who really buy into it who who like that that can do a whole other trip you know they like in wrestling they say living the gimmick yeah yeah that happens with comics too you lean into your audience you read lean into what you think that they want to here and then you become them how do you how do you stay true to your voice as a comedian through success through

through the ups and downs of doing it how do you stay true to what you're doing one thing I do is I don't read anything that anybody says about me great that helps and two is I spend a lot of time alone I spend a lot of time alone I do almost all my working out alone all the sauna time and cold plunge and you know writing I spend a lot of time just thinking and not thinking about what people think about me just thinking about what I

like what's interesting and I think one of the things that really temperates me or keeps me sane is the workouts because they're so brutal and they're so hard that everything else is easy yeah and I think that's something that's missing from a lot of people's lives where you deal with the anxiety of fame and celebrity and just the attention and all the demands on you and it's kind of overwhelming and if all you're doing all day is like dreading those experiences like if you're

Tom Petty and you're hiding in your house you're dreading going to dinner dreading going out then those moments do become too big to deal with and then you just want to get away as quickly as possible and go back to your house you know I mean you see it in people that become famous you know as I've become friends with more and more famous people you see the and they're always like asking questions of other people that are also famous like how do you deal with it like what is your

solution and I think my solutions the best one for me I don't think there's a I mean I think psychedelic drugs help a lot that's just these these big resets these big resets where you're like okay this is all bullshit like all this this little weird game you're involved in with life and society and culture it's fun and it's great it's meaningful and it's fun for other people but it's kind of bullshit because the real thing is so much

so much weirder and so much greater and it's everything is connected in some very bizarre and unseen way and that humbling experience of the the psychedelic connection is is also a nice way to just like just just check you just put it back into perspective

but for day to day you can't just trip balls day to day it's just be too weird so day to day for me it's it's the workouts like it's it's doing things you don't want to do and doing them rigorously and and then when you get over it there's also these physical changes that

happen the endorphin releases and the alleviation of anxiety which I think is critical to being able to manage those states of of fame but you also got to have perspective and realize like hey man like this this is just what comes with it and but the most important thing is like hey you're getting to do what you want to do which for me as a kid you know starting out doing stand up when I was 21 it was like this impossible idea the impossible idea was just being a professional like God

it'd be great to not have a job just to be able to get money from stand up seems impossible and how did how did start for you stand up how did you know that that was your path there just open mic night you know I my good friend Steve Graham who is an ophthalmologist at the time and a flight surgeon like incredible guy that I'm still good friends with this day he's the one to talk me into it he's a guy I did martial arts with and he was like you really should be a comedian

and I was funny in my life because we would all have to spa and everybody be really nervous and I would make everybody laugh I'd do an impression of one of our friends and I'd be talking shit or we would be going to a tournament which was really scary

so we'd all be on a bus together somewhere and you know it's like all these guys going to go fight and I would be the one that made everybody laugh it was like gallows humor and I would love it I loved all the attention of getting everybody to laugh

so I'd be the funny one and it was healing because you made everybody feel better and served a purpose it did it was a giant relief about I was just releasing all the gas in the room was like and everybody would laugh and it was like a break from the tension and you know at the time I was like 16 17 years old and then when I was 19 Steve was like you really should be a comedian and I was like come on man you think I'm funny because you like me I go other people are going to think I'm an asshole

and plus it was like Boston conservative late 80s early you know like the late 80s people were fucking pretty conservative about like what they thought was funny until Kinnison came along and then Kinnison came along in 86 and that was right at the time when I started to consider it

because I was a funny story I probably told the son podcast before but I was working at the Boston Athletic Club which was a fitness club in South Boston and I was like a trainer I was teaching people out of lift weights and there was this girl I think she was a volleyball player she's like big like she was like 511 like really athletic big personality she was hilarious she was really funny and she worked the front desk and she knew that I love comedy

and she said to me you gotta see this comedian I saw him last night at HBO and she takes me outside to the parking lot to tell me like because the bits were so outrageous she didn't want to do him in the lobby

she takes me out in the parking lot she's like in this fucking guy is doing this bit about heterosexual or homosexual necrophiliax who are paying money to spend all this time with these the freshest male corpses and she goes and so he's like lying down on the street on the asphalt in the parking lot and she's like so he's lying there thinking okay I'm dead now I'm gonna be with Jesus like oh hey what is this?

it feels like some guys got his dick in my ass you made life keeps fucking the ass even after you're dead it never ends it never ends oh she is making me how with laughter in a parking lot it's just me and her she's just reciting Sam kinesan and I remember thinking what that is crazy

and I was laughing so and I had to find Sam kinesan and so I got a cassette I think it was like a VHS cassette and I think it was at like blockbuster or one of them type of video stores and I brought it back to my apartment and I remember watching it thinking holy shit

this is comedy like that was the first I thought to comedy was Jerry Seinfeld comedy was Richard prior I wasn't I wasn't those guys and I would watch evening the improv or the tonight show and these guys would have the the blazers on with the rolled up sleeves

and like I got a dress like that but it wasn't me I saw kinesan I was like that's comedy and that's where I started to listen to Steve I was like maybe I could be a comedian because if that wild shit could be comedy because I was just too wild I mean I was I never could keep a real job

I was super undisciplined with everything other than martial arts and all I was doing was a travel around the country trying to kick people unconscious that's what I was doing I mean that's what my life was because so to me my life was so extreme and so like so filled with like violence and so wild they're like the state sort of like sedate existence of like right do you ever notice like there was none of that in me so kinesan was the first thing that I saw was like wow maybe I could do comedy

that's amazing and so much humor comes out of the extreme pain yes discomfort yeah it's you you were in the right place for it to work and the fact that that was your life would make you a different kind of comedian than those other comedians which is a great thing yeah well in that girl I got

I wish I stayed in touch with her I don't even remember her name she was awesome though she was just fun she was just a funny girl and the fact that she laid down on the park line she's like oh oh Sam did too that was but Sam did it that way too

she reenacted his bit on this park line but the fact that she did it and she was so crazy she acted it out she's a big basically my age so we're both like 19 at the time and it was just I couldn't believe it I remember when I first saw Sam and it blew my mind and I loved him

I was really a Rodney guy like I loved Rodney Dangerfield Steve Martin loved Monty Python all things comedy I went through a phase after being a little kid of listening to music like British invasion beetles monkeys that kind of music when I was a little kid then I stopped listening music and only

listen to comedy for years until junior high school when I started listening to Hard Rock but I remember seeing Sam and being blown away and I was already doing music at this time and had a label and I went to find him and then I found out he already had a record out and I was so bummed

we didn't have a record out but he was signing Warner Brothers and I was bummed and then and then I saw dice and dice blew me away and I saw him first I saw him on the Rodney HBO you know young comedians whatever it was called and it was just I don't know he did 10 minutes or something and it was insane it was it was a perfect dice set and it was another one of those like when I first saw Sam it's like he's not it's a very different character than Sam but it's as hard and as extreme

and I just loved it and then came to LA and I saw that he was playing at what's the name of the club the comedy club next to Greenblatz Laugh Factory He was playing at the Laugh Factory I watched him at the Laugh Factory it was incredible after he got off the stage he walked to Greenblatz

I thought of the Greenblatz and we spoke as he was ordering a Greenblatz and started making records together Wow you guys did the day the laughter died which is one of my all-time the day the laughter died because that one which is one of my all-time

favorite comedy CDs, specials, whatever it is recordings because it was so crazy that he did that It's crazy He's in the peak of his stardom for people who don't know the story I mean this guy selling out Nassau Colesium and nobody had ever done that as a comedy

He sold out Madison Square Garden two nights in a row the week we recorded the day the laughter died just to give a context of what was happening So for people who don't know when you see dice perform in HBO and you see his specials it's polished material it's sharp punch lines he's killing it

What's in the bow bitch it's powerful shit so then he goes to danger fields with basically no material and just fucks around and just fucks around for two hours Yeah It was incredible What started it was he would go to the comedy store most nights and I would meet him at the comedy store most nights

and most nights he would be great and the audience would love him and he and the audience in the middle of the night wrong audience mood he was in and he could even when he was already dice and he would bomb and for me and Hot Top Jani I don't know if you ever met Hot Top Jani

me Hot Top Jani would sit in the back and for us the funniest shows are when he bombed because his reaction to bombing was so funny like whether it was pushing like pushing harder, like he's already doing aggressive material. And then when he's not getting the response, he goes harder and people like it less. And it's so funny. Because he just seems like a guy having a nervous breakdown. It's like it's so crazy. It doesn't feel like comedy at all. It seems like this other thing.

A guy losing his mind and turning red, sweating and screaming, and nobody likes it. And we just died. And then in honor of doing the garden, I remember saying, it's like Andrew, how about instead of recording the garden, let's try to do a set at Dangerfields. And let's find out what night would be the least, like the most suburban, not anyone who likes comedy. People who are just going to a club because they're traveling through New York.

You know, like the people who will most likely not like it. And let's record that. And he's like, great, let's do it. I'm in. So it was great. But the ego, like most people's ego would not allow them to have something like that as a recording and then just release it for incredible. It was, we thought it was the funniest thing in the world. One of my favorite parts of that cassette or the recording is when some guy in the audience goes, you're about as funny as a glass of milk.

If you listen to the recording, you'll hear me and Tom Johnny in the back laughing. The only people you hear laughing on that record and the day left who died part two is us. And we're going crazy. It sounds like he's like hitting punchlines that are just almost like he's speaking another language. Yeah. Yeah, it's no reaction. But he's hitting him hard. Like it would kill. Yes. And he'd hear nothing. I will back. Get it?

It's for comedians, there's a guy named Mike Dunovan who's like a comedy legend in Boston. And at the time the day the laughter died, I was just beginning comic and he pulls me aside. He goes, you gotta listen to this. You've got to listen to this. It's fucking incredible. He goes, it's fucking incredible. He goes, he just bombs. He just goes up in front of this audience. They have no idea he's going to be there and he fucking bombs. And I was like, why is that? He's like, fuck, you listen.

So Dunovan, who had been probably doing comedy at the time, 15, 20 years, had, he knew the formula and anybody could kill. You get your right set, hot night, hot audience, you can kill. But this guy fucking doing that. And Dunovan is like, you barely, barely breathe because he's laughing so hard because he's talking about dice doing an impression of nixing, eating ass. He just, talking about eating a little ass about, I do, I was like nixing in that ass.

He's doing, and it's fucking so ridiculous. So stupid. And Dunovan is crying laughing and telling me about it. I was like, wow, I gotta go get it. And I remember listening to it at night, I guess at the time I was like 21 or 22. I was so confused. I was like, what the fuck is he doing? He's so weird. He's dice. Like the first one, the first cassette dice. Incredible. I listened to it. I was 19 years old. I was in my car, parked in front of my house with his girls dating at the time.

And we were sitting in the car and just howling laughing at this cassette. And then he puts out that. And he just like, no one knew what to do. Yeah. That was, what was his reaction to the reaction of that? I never talked to dice about that. He loved it. He understood performance art. You know, he liked things that were different. Yeah. He was doing not be regular thing.

Yeah. And we had already done, I think at that time we had maybe done either three, probably three full regular comedy albums by this point in time. So it was nice to shake it up a little bit. But what did that shake it up? And how did that affect his career? No, no, not positive or negative. No, no. That's crazy. How is that possible? I mean, comedians liked it, but it was, you know, it was meta. You know, it was an inside joke. But it was a 2 CD release. That was part of the beauty of it.

I remember we even put a sticker on it. Two hours, something like to the effect of two hours of new material, no jokes. Because it was what it was. It's like really no jokes. How is it reviewed? The same as people hated him, reviewers hated him always. There was a story in, he played for the Garden Shows, there was a review in the Village Voice that was like, the Village Voice was a big format newspaper.

And it was two entire pages of a review comparing it to a Nazi rally, a Hitler rally, that it wasn't funny at all, that it was just, this is the worst of society. Wow. It just didn't get it at all. They didn't get it at all. Well, there was a time where he was ostracized by mainstream media in a way where it was like they were, I mean, he was, Kenis and God had a little bit, he definitely got it, but not like Dice. Like, Dice got the full brunt of, remember he was banned from MTV?

And they were trying to say that, you know, I was like, I remember Kurt Loader talking about it. And it was unfunny, you know, comedian, Dice, but like, but everybody was laughing. Yeah. Like, what do you mean unfunny? When you say unfunny, you mean your own personal taste? Yeah. Like, do you apply that to all music? Do you say that about other bands? Is this shitty band? Do you say NWA sucks because they're violent? Like what?

It's another part of it is that they would always, to, to vilify Dice, they would always quote his jokes in writing. And if you don't see that character telling that joke, it just sounds horrible. I have a whole bit about that. Tell me about it. Please. Yeah. But that's a real thing. It's like, they would like vilify him and portray him as if he was hateful when all he was doing was trying to make people laugh and succeeding tremendously in doing that. And obviously mocking himself too.

I mean, it was a character. It was the clearest, his name is Andrew Silverstein. Okay, and Andrew, when he would go, and I love Andrew to death, being friends with him was one of the most surreal things at the comedy store because I was such a fan when I was a kid. I never got to meet Kinesen. And I only got to meet Hicks very briefly. I mean, I literally said hide him. That's it. Um, when I was an open-micron in Boston, but I got to be friends with Dice.

And I was mostly just doing the store at the time and Dice pulled me aside. And he said, hey, you should do the road. He goes, you're fucking funny. You don't need these cock suckers. He goes, these people telling you what to do and fucking, you got to dance from, do the show, you can make a lot of money on the road. You should be doing the fucking road. And I was like, I should do the road. Dice told me to do the road. I'm going to do the road. Great. And I started doing the road.

That's when I started, like, I call my manager up and I said, let's start doing clubs in all these different cities. So when I wasn't doing news radio, when I wasn't on television, I would go off on the weekends and I would go, you know, do fucking wherever, Houston, Phoenix. And I started doing the road because of Dice's direction and how different was it doing comedy for people not at the comedy store? It was amazing. First of all, it made me a real comedian.

Well, the store made me a real comedian, but the road made me a real headliner because I was doing an hour in these towns and I was doing two shows Friday, two shows Saturday and I was getting the feel of different vibes and that's really when I fell in love with Texas. It was 97 when I started coming to Texas, 98. And they were just so rowdy and fun and free and there was a different, there was a rebellious friendliness to them. And I was like, God, I love these people.

And the first album I recorded in 99 on Warner Brothers was the, I'm going to be dead someday and I did that in Houston. And I did it really like the touring and all that was because of Dice. Like that's what really ignited me, ignited my inspiration and go do that. And it is, there was too many guys that were just staying in town and everybody at that time in the 90s and it was kind of starting to die off. But there was this thing where everybody wanted to sit calm. That was the Holy Grail.

The Holy Grail, I mean, the real Holy Grail was the tonight show. If you would be the, that was out of my reach. It was, you know, in my fucking 20s. It was not going to happen. But the Holy Grail was getting a sitcom because you could be Tim Allen. You could be Jerry Seinfeld. You could be Roseanne Barr. You could be Brett Butler. And if you got a sitcom man, you were the fucking king. And you know, they would make a sitcom around you.

So I had had a development deal at one point in time and then I got on the show. There was this crappy show on Fox. And so I was on that path. And then I got on News Radio, which was great. And then the path after that was obviously get your own sitcom. But Dice was like, fuck that. Like you should, you know, and this is that Dice had his own show, Blessed This House, remember that? And you know, it was like, he was like, that's not the way, the way is the road. The way is comedy.

You're a fucking comedian. He also made a movie if you remember Ford Fairway. Yes. And I remember thinking this doesn't feel like from the beginning, it didn't feel right. Like what's so great about you is not in this movie. Right. Right. It was like homogenized milk. Yeah. You know, they had pasteurized it and homogenized it and took all the enzymes out of it. And it's like, I guess this is not the same thing.

Yeah. And the way that people reacted to Dice in the mainstream, you know, that hatred from the mainstream really caused him to crack. You know, do you remember? He appeared on a camera. I remember what late night show it was, we cried, we changed. Yeah. You think it was Arsenio Hall? Maybe. And he really changed his act after that. But not because it's what he thought was funny. He became a comedian because he wanted to be loved.

Yes. And even though he would go out in front of 20,000 people screaming and doring fans, people would write terrible things about him. And it didn't compute. And somehow he just felt like, you know, they don't see me. They don't get me. Yeah. And it really hurt him. It really hurt him. But it was bizarre to us, comics, because we got him. And we loved it. And so we were like, why is he get so much hate? Like it was so confusing. And the internet didn't exist back then in that sort of form.

So it's like he couldn't find like fan, like today we'd have no problem. Like, you know, the shore, like MSNBC hates him. But you know, all the YouTube people would love him, you know, or a lot of them would. And he would find his voice, he'd find his audience. And I don't think that our senior hall moment would happen today, probably push back against it. But back then, the only reviews you heard of him were negative. It was all negative. And you had to like be a quiet dice fan.

Like you had to like almost not tell people you were a dice fan. I equated to like how it was to be a kiss fan. Yeah. At one hip hop. Hip hop music was the same. Hip hop was like villainous music. Hip hop was like the original in the mid 80s. Hip hop was the first populous uprising in New York City. You know, it was like taking music out of the conservatory and bringing it back to the street. Yeah. And the powers that B did not like that and wanted to cancel it and tried to cancel it.

That's when the whole PMRC thing happened and they were trying to ban rap music. Yeah. It was Al Gore's wife. Al Gore's wife, Timmer Gore, the time was the one who was like leading this fight against these lyrics because to a lot of these like, you know, house moms and shit, like they would hear that those lyrics coming out of their son's bedroom and they're like, what the fuck is this? Like what is going on? But also they wanted to negate prints. They wanted to cancel Madonna.

They wanted to cancel a lot of stuff. It's been going on for a long time, this pushing back against art that you don't understand, you know, that you're too old to understand. Well, it's just, you know, the non-accepting of other people's interests or other people's what other people enjoy. You know, there's always going, like there's a lot of stuff that people really love that I don't get. It's just, I don't have the grateful dead gene. I know I have friends who love the dead.

I hear it and I'm like, maybe if I did acid, maybe this, that's what they say. But I don't know. It's just, this is not, but then I'd hear the almond brothers and be like, fuck yeah. It was like, for whatever it is, it's like whatever your personality is, your life experiences, you know, the place you grew up, like that shit resonated with me. Or the right finding the right way in. Like, the grateful dead didn't speak to me for a long time until they did and I found the way in.

And maybe I'll share some, something we could find a way in. Because it's always a nice find something else to like. Yeah. And then there was stuff that I liked that was like very different than that. Like, I was a giant cool G rap fan. I remember listening to cool G rap when I first moved to New York and I was like, God, damn this guy's good. He to me is one, I mean, he's one of my all-time favorite hip hop artists. And to me, like the most underappreciated.

I mean, you go back to listen to like cockblock and that is a fucking great song. He has so many, the Ilstreet Blues, so many great hip hop songs that I remember listening to them at the time going, why isn't this bigger? Like why don't more people know about this? Why isn't this like, you know, to this day, you know, people will go back and they'll talk about like, Nas, who's fucking incredible. But cool G rap slips by. Like how the fuck? Go listen to that shit. Cool G rap was incredible.

Incredible. You never know. Sometimes it's not based on how good it is. You know, like the stars line up at certain times for certain things to happen and they happen. And sometimes you can make something great and it doesn't connect for whatever reason. I found this out for making a lot of stuff. Like, sometimes you make two things that you think are the two best things you've ever made and one of them connects with the world and one of them doesn't.

And it might not have anything to do with what's in the art. It might have to do with, oh, it came out the same day as this other thing came out and that got in the way. Or there was a bigger story at the time where there was some other, who knows? Or it's not the, it's not in the cards for that person to have that success. It's like there's so much to it that we don't understand. All we can do is make something good and put it out in hope for the best. And that's all there is.

We never know why things, why does something work? Even if you make a piece of art, you might, and it works, you may not know why. Yeah. It's mysterious. It is mysterious. I'm going to use the restroom. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Good. We'll be right back. I'm so glad you liked the date of laughter, died. Oh my God, I fucking love it. It's so funny. It is so crazy. Yeah. It's, well, it's just so bold.

And you know, knowing dice as long as I've known them and seeing so many late night sets, like some of my favorite sets of dice, dice would go up in the OR and he would have like a challenge he would do where he wouldn't talk for as long as possible. And so he would go in front of the mic and everybody would be happy to see him and he'd go, he would just stand there and just stand there like about to talk and not talk and go like minutes, minutes without a word.

And the comedians were fucking dying and there's like 40 people in the audience and they were so confused. Confused. Yeah. And my favorite dice was insulting dice where dice would find some, look at you. He'd find some guy in the audience and just tear them apart. And he'd just insult the shit out of them and they'd be like, what the fuck man? And we would be crying, crying laughing. And dice would just just just fuck around. Like he had no problem with bombing.

He had no, it was fully confident while no jokes and no laughs. Yeah. He often didn't, didn't prepare material. Like I'm friends with Chris Rock and the difference in their work ethic is radical. Like Chris, Chris is always writing and Chris is meticulous and it's always game on. And when he's on stage, it really shows. Well Chris though, Chris will take a lot of chances on stage too.

And Chris also has this very unusual approach where he will like purposely try to find the beats and leave dead air because he's finding these beats. And like stand on stage, the comments don't be like, what else? What else? And he'll have it like where he's just like thinking and like the audience is like, I'm ready to see, bring the pain. I'm ready to see you crushing. Why are you not crushing?

And he would even say sometimes, he would follow people and be like, relax, relax, not going to be that good, relax because he was working on new shit. And when he worked on new shit, he was working. He was working. This audience, I know you're here to see, you know, comedy and you're happy that Chris Rock just showed up. But Chris Rock was not announced. So it wasn't like this was a big production and he was going to do his very best material. He was there to try to put pieces together.

And he would have a team of comics in the back, guys that he'd hired, great comics, guys like Richard Jenny, Nick DePolo, and these guys would listen to his material and then they would all talk about it afterwards. And they would find whatever the embers were. And they're like, okay, we could fucking fan this and add some Tinder and this could be a bit and try to find the beats. And that's what he did.

And that's why he created so many great specials because he had that work ethic because he had that he was an artist, but he was also like he was, he was a craftsman. You know, he was craps. Absolutely. I just saw him play at the O2 arena a couple of weeks ago and it was the funniest I've ever seen him, which is unbelievable. He's on fire right now. He's on fire right now. Yeah. It was Smith slapping him. I think woke up. I mean, I haven't talked to him about this.

My impression was that I think now he understands that those people, those Hollywood people are fucking crazy. They're all in this weird, bizarre cult of actors and Oscars and parties and applause and this very bizarre, disconnected world.

You know, of these are our heroes and these are the most important people in the world and these people that win these awards and make these films, they're the most appreciated, most respected and him getting slapped and then him trying to go back to comedy and seeing Will Smith, like just meltdown in front of him.

And generally, that moment was probably the end of how anybody will ever think of Will Smith again as this movie star guy who's like this happy guy with this family who's like putting together all these incredible films and goes on to win the Academy Award that night, goes on stage and they applaud him after he just assaulted one of the greatest comedians that's ever lived over the most innocuous roast joke, the most innocuous, you know, a loved you in GI Jane, like what? That's it.

It's so mild. And I think him seeing that just fired up that fuck you furnace. It's unbelievable. All I know is it's the funniest I've ever seen him and I've seen him funny, you know, like it's, it's, he's angry now though. He's on fire and it's great. It's great him and Chappelle were playing together. Yeah, both were in, could there been more different and both incredible. Yeah, I've never been to the O2, I was in to the O2 for a UFC once, but I'm there in two weeks.

It was surprisingly good for comedy. I was on my way there thinking prepared to be disappointed because I don't usually like comedy in a big venue like that. I like it better in a club. But somehow it felt intimate and it completely worked for comedy. Yeah, Dave loves it. He was excited that I was going there. We were talking about it and he was saying like, it's a great room. It's a great room for comedy. But Dave's got that arena timing, you know, he does a lot of arenas now.

You know, he's, he knows he can take, like we just did Columbus together a couple weeks ago and he can take a fucking giant room and thousands of people and make it feel like you just hanging with him in a living room somewhere or at a small club. He can transform it. But it's just like the different ways of approaching comedy. It's got a parallel with music, right? I mean, it's got to be some artists that, you know, they just want to riff. They want to figure it out on the fly.

They want to do it all, you know, almost off the top of their head. And then there's other artists where every single word has gone over and meticulously analyzed and pieced together. Yeah, there's no right, right or wrong way and just have to find your way. Yeah. Whatever works for you. Yeah. Yeah, I've worked with artists who do it completely different ways.

You know, you, you'll see like M&M will, he's always writing in a book, always writing all the time and he's always got notebooks writing. And I asked him, it's like, are these all, you know, rhymes to you? He's like, no, no, no, it's like 99% of what I write I'll never use just to stay engaged in the process of writing and finding new ways to write so that it just, when I needed, it just comes. And then Jay Z would, doesn't write anything down.

And he just listens to the beat and hums, hums and then goes into, goes on the mic, you know, 20 minutes later and just says a whole complicated, very complicated verse. I don't know how, I don't know how he can remember it much, much less have just written it and just be able to do it like free. It's crazy. Does he practice on his own? Does he create these wraps on his own with like alone or does he only do it when he's talking to people? Or does he only do it on stage?

No, no, no, no, this is on for a record. Like when we were recording 99 problems, I played the beat for him. He likes the beat and then he says, okay, just keep playing it.

And then he sits in the back of the control room on the couch and he's here and plumbing like, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, as they say, 15 or 20 minutes and then he jumps out and says, okay, I got it and he goes in, no, no paper, no writing, nothing and delivers the whole thing and then says, let's try it again and then he does it again and the words will be the same but the phrasing will be different. So it's more like an improvisational solo.

You know, if you have a melody, you could play the same melody with putting emphasis on different parts of it. So he does it. It's not the same, the words are the same or close to the same but the feeling of it and the rhythm of it changes when he does it again and he does it a few times and he's like, okay, I think that one's good. And but did you ever ask him these things that he's saying? Has he said them before? Does he?

He knows he hasn't because it's happening live in the room in this moment. So but it's not like he's not recited, he's not even though it's live in the moment, it's not like things that he's thought of before. No, just all off the top. Yes, wow, yes, incredible. It's insane. It's the same thing like it. That's incredible. Yeah, he's famous for that. He's famous for having it all in his head. But instantaneously or you know, relatively instantaneously. Does anybody else do it like that?

I've never seen anyone else do that. Do that. Wow. It's not uncommon for singers or rappers to hear something and immediately start like automatic writing where they'll just start saying nonsense words. The first thing that comes to mind over the beat where you can feel a shape of what it can be. And like we just made two new albums with the chili peppers. The second one just came just coming out now, I think. But the first one came out like six months ago, but two double albums.

And the way Anthony works is he'll hear the music and he'll sing along. But he'll sing along with it an idea of a melody, but he doesn't yet have words and just sing nonsense words and just sing along, making up nonsense words automatically real time and then listens back and says, okay, this phrase and this spot sounds good and this phrase and this spot sounds good, what else goes with that? And then it's like a puzzle where you fill in the rest.

It's like you don't necessarily have an idea of what the song's going to be about or you might not even know what the song's about until you finish. You might not even know after the song's finished what it's about. You might not know for years what it's about because it's like a dream. You know, it comes from the subconscious. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great way to work.

It's a great way to write to just like participate with what's going on in a free way and then listen back to what you did and look for clues, look for where, where is the connective tissue here? Are there any things here that sound like they belong there? Dan Hourback from the Black Keys. He does that. He says he gets really high and he just starts, he makes up words like he'll make up words to the music.

Just try to find how it works and he's not, you know, he's just trying to figure it out as he's doing it. And there's like, there's parallels to comedy, I think, because in comedy, you can write things and I do. I write a lot of things. But sometimes when you're on stage, there's like a, it's a path that just opens up and you know that this is the way to do it. It's different than the way you wrote it. Because the audience is there and you feel it because you only feel it when you're performing.

But with comedy, the thing that's so different is the only way we ever know it's any good. The only way we really can create, you can't create an event. I mean, maybe someone can, I heard Cosby used to do that. Cosby used to just write it all out and then he would go on stage or have it out and then not even need to rehearse it, not need to work it out in front of clubs. He would just do it in front of giant audiences and it would be done. But most people, they're creating with the audience.

And until you have an audience, you don't have any idea how the bit really comes together. There might be a setup that you thought was just a setup and it gets the biggest laugh of the bit and you're like, what? What I didn't expect. Does it change from night to night as well? 100%. Changes from night to night. Changes depending upon your opening act. Changes depending upon the mood of the club. News days are different than Wednesdays, everything's different.

It's one of the reasons why it's important to do, I always call it cross training. I'm like, you can't just do arenas. You got to do little clubs. You got to do theaters. You got to do everything. You got to do clubs where they don't expect you to go up. You got to do clubs where they know you're going to work on new material. You got to do clubs where this is a fucking recording. This is a big one. Ready, polished, set, go. It's all different.

And it all comes alive while you're performing, which I guess parallels with music, but the benefit of music is you can create it in the studio. You could put it together in the studio and you can make fucking incredible music almost in a vacuum because you don't need the audience. It's you. It's you and the people you're working with and you put it together, but we need people. Like, we have to, they're in a integral part of the process. The audience has to be there.

How does it work for television? If you're doing comedy for television and there's no audience, how does that work? In what way? What form? Like comedy for television. It's a sitcom or whatever it is. Where there's a joke and there's no response coming back. Or in a movie, there's no response coming back.

Well, you have table reads and in the table read, you find the beats because it's like very fake, which is really weird because one of the things that happens when you're on sitcom is the producers and the writers will laugh really loud at their jokes. I see. And kind of fake sometimes. Like they've heard the joke a hundred times before. And so you walk into the room like, why didn't you tell me that yesterday?

And they were like, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, and like, you know, it's off putting for a comic and you'd be like, hey, you know, you guys are fucking killing me with this fake laugh. What they're trying to do is provide you with a feel of how the audience is going to laugh, but they're also juicing up their own writing. Yeah, but also how do you know how the audience is going to react? You don't know.

So you do a first, like, we have the benefit of working with Dave Foley, who's brilliant. And Dave Foley was one of the kids in the hall. And Dave Foley was essentially like an uncredited producer on News Radio. So when we would do run-throughs and takes, Dave had this incredible sense of how a scene should go. And so when we would do run-throughs, we would go over the script and Dave would go, what this is, how about, how about instead of this? Why don't you come in this?

Why don't we just cut this part out? When you come in here and you're just angry because of something that's incorrect, you're angry because of that. And then Matthew comes over and says that. And Lisa comes over and says that. And then we end it with this. And then he would just like rewrite the whole fucking scene. And so the brilliant, one of the more brilliant things about the producers and Paul Sims, the writer of that show, the head writer of that show, is that he would let you do that.

He would let you come up with a totally alternative punchline. And then he would sit there and laugh and go, yeah, keep that, keep that. Okay, let's do that. That's the new scene. And he would let you fuck around with it. So it gave all the performers all this freedom. And it also allowed the thing to come alive like while performing it, the same way you would kind of do stand up. You would figure out the beats while you were actually doing it.

And then you really didn't know until the audience was there. And then when the audience said, this line's it, I didn't think we're good. And I would say, I don't know. Do we have a better line for this? And they would be like, just try it, just try it. I'm like, okay, I was like, didn't believe it. And I'd say the line and to get a huge laugh. And I'd be like, what the fuck? I didn't see, I didn't think that was funny. It kind of don't know. And sometimes you know, sometimes the line's so good.

Always done with an audience there? Yes. Yeah, well, that kind of multi-cam, you know, you're always doing it with an audience. I've never done a single cam show like that. You know, a show like the office. Right. That's hard. The curb has got to be the hardest because Larry, you get it. No script. Yeah, you're just like, you and I are in an argument about who stole cigarettes or whatever. And then you just run with it. So the castings really important. Very important.

And the vibe of the set is very important. It's got to be this thing where everybody's working towards the same goal. But when you watch curb, one of the brilliant things about curb is because he doesn't have that script, people are talking the way they talk in real life. They kind of talk over each other and they pause when the other person is talking and then they chime in and it seems like a real conversation versus like a big bang theory.

Or one of those shows that's more formulaic, like set up punch lines. So where you like trained monkeys and you're teaching them how to, you know, how to get a piece of candy like da da da da da da da da da da. You know, they, Larry, the way he does it is so different. And it's one of the best sitcoms of all time. And if you watch curb, particularly like the early seasons of curb, I remember thinking like, oh, this is why sign felt was so good. This is why that show was so good.

Larry David's a goddamn genius. Yeah. So funny. And that's his and so was incredible to know that both shows incredible. Well, he's one of the, sign felt is one of the absolute best observational comedians that's ever existed. And the best at the flow and the sound and part of what he was doing was the way he was doing it. Like he had a flow and that flow was infectious and it was contagious and you would, you would like fall in love with the way he talked about things.

And he was so casual and confident in the way he was describing things, you know, and he would just go and he would improvise too. I stole something from Jerry in that he would do his whole set and then afterwards he would take questions from the crowd and he would just riff. And I was like, God, why don't I do that? What a great way to come up with comedy. You already did an hour comedy and then go up and take questions. And I was, I think I was 20 years old.

I saw him at the paradise, which was a comedy club. It was a next to stitches. It was a rock club in Boston and he was a little too big for stitches. So he would do the paradise, which is still at the time relatively small. I want to say it was like four or five hundred seats. And he did his whole set and then, you know, killed. And then afterwards just took questions and would riff and it was genius. This was after the Seinfeld show already happened or no. When did Seinfeld start? I don't know.

I think it was before Seinfeld. What year was Seinfeld? 1990, 91 somewhere in there. Let's find out exactly so I can tell you. It's curious. If it's 1991, then it was before. This was before Seinfeld. This was when he was just a popular comedian. First episode, 89. 89. 89. So that was probably two years before that. I'm going to say, and this is probably 87. Wow. Yeah. It's a, it's a boat. I could see it more for someone who has a popular TV show. Yeah. For someone who's a comedian to do that.

It's very interesting. I think it's how he worked out material. I think that's how he would, he would fuck around and taking suggestions from the audience. I was like, that is such a great idea because he already killed. The show was over. They already knew they loved him. Yeah. You know, it was amazing show. You already got your money to worth. So now he would just go fuck around for 15 minutes. And do you do it like an encore like he would leave the stage to come back?

I don't remember if he left the stage. I'm trying to remember because it was a small stage. It wasn't a big place. He might have just stepped aside, grabbed a glass of water and then come back. Or he might have actually gone through the curtain and back. I don't remember. It's been really exciting for the audience just to feel like, okay, now the show's over. We still get to hang out with Jerry. Yeah. It's even more personal.

Yeah. And for me, it was only like, I don't only see a handful of live performances at the time. So for me, I'd seen like an open mic night once, which was bizarre because that was inspirational. Like Rich Jenny had a great observation. He said one of the great things about terrible comedy is it gives other people the confidence to do comedy because you would go to see an open mic night and the people were so awful. You'd be like, oh, the expectations are not that high.

Like I thought I had to be like Richard Pryor. Like and you know, it's so daunting. So the obstacle was so far away. It was so out of reach. But then you would see people that were amateurs that were clunky and terribly like, okay, at least I won't be as bad as that guy. And it gives you the confidence to like give it a shot just to just fucking see what happens. And the feeling of going on stage for the very first time is I'll never forget was so alien, so bizarre.

I'm not sure my voice and a microphone. How many people were there? Well a bunch of my friends were there. So that was like 10% of the crowd, four or five of my friends, maybe 50 people. But there was a guy named George McDonald and he would have this thing called comedy hell. And comedy hell was open mic night. And he was a professional. So he would joke around about how this is comedy hell and you're going to watch people bomb. It's going to be terrible.

But then you'll see professionals that night and they'll go up. So the first night I ever went to see comedy, I got to see people that were awful. And then I got to see like a couple of like real world class comics would go on stage and kill for 10, 15 minutes. I was like, wow, just the contrast and the difference. So you got to see the levels of it. It's like getting to see someone who's taking their first jujitsu class versus a world champion black belt.

And you're like, what the, this is what a journey that is. And just to see the way I describe it to people, I say stand up comedy is like you're making a mountain one layer of pain at a time. That's what it's like when you're starting. It's like you go there and if you see sign fell to like, oh my god, that's a mountain. It's already there. I mean, you realize like this is one layer of pain at a time.

And you know, 13 sets of night hopping around, catch a rising star and the fucking the seller and going all these clubs in New York and then puts it together and then takes it to Boston or takes it to Cleveland or takes it to all these places. Yeah. It's wild. Yes, I stole that move of going on stage afterwards and taking suggestions from the crowd. Great idea. Well, it was genius. And it was just a smart thing to do to do his whole set and then fuck around.

Yeah. Did you read, born standing up, Steve Martin? Yes. Yeah. Such a great book. It's a great book. And it's interesting him talking about, you know, setting a, setting a deadline, you know, if I'm not successful in 10 years, whatever it is, like a long time, then I'm going to quit. And he gets to the 10 years and he's not successful and he just keeps going because there's nothing else he wants to do. Well, there's nothing like it. There's nothing like killing.

There's nothing like performing, you know, and my friends, we talk often about people who quit comedy and like, how do you quit? Like a lot of us almost quit during the pandemic or resigned ourselves with the possibility that it's never coming back. You're sitting there in your house every day and you're like, I guess I could get used to this. You know, at least I don't have the anxiety of having to perform and, you know, like it just fucking finds some other way to make a living.

And at the time, I was making money doing podcasting. So I was like, okay, maybe I'm not doing comedy anymore. And a lot of us wanted to do it. And Ron White, he's the best example because he was like, well, I think I'm over a tire. I'm going to take my boat and fucking, you know, just, you know, play golf every day. I made it a shitload of money. I don't give a fuck. I'll sell my jet, you know, and he, he was just resigned to not doing comedy.

And then Tony Hinchcliffe had a show at the Vulcan gas company here in Austin. And he was like, just do a guest set. Just come on, do a guest set. And when I was like, man, I don't know. I think I'm fucking done. And then the next day after Ron had said that, Tony was like, so if you thought about it, you're going to do set the night. He was like, oh, fuck yeah, I'm doing a set. I'm doing 15 minutes. And so he had gone over his recordings.

He had an iPad and his girlfriend said that he was like, listening to recordings and writing shit down. I was like, oh, this would be interesting. And so we're hanging out and we're in the back of the club and Ron White goes on stage. And the first sold out show, first thing that happens is because people are so excited to go out. And this is in mid-COVID. These are wild, reckless fucks in the middle of a pandemic. No, not a mask in the place. Everyone's drinking.

And in laughter's like the worst way to not spread a respiratory disease. You know, they're, ah, you know, they're, ah, they're, they're exhaling into giant bursts of fucking particles and spittle and, you know, Ron White goes on stage and fucking murders. Murders. I mean, like he had never missed a beat. And the audience, first of all, just goes insane because he's from Texas. So they see him and they're like, that's, that's our guy.

He comes off stage and I'm going on after him and he grabs me by the shoulders. And he goes, whatever the fuck we have to do, we're going to keep doing this. He was so fired up. I mean, just grabbed my shoulders. Yeah. Whatever the fuck we have to do, Joe Rogan, we're doing this. Yeah. I was like, we're doing this, Ron.

How do you put up with having to travel and having to sleep in strange places and all the, the drudgery of going on the road for that little hit of the excitement to being on stage? It's not just the hit. It's the knowledge that the knowing that you're giving these people an experience, they're having a moment, they're having a great moment.

You're, when you're entertaining a group of people like that, you're taking them on this wild journey of laughter and ideas and they leave like that you just hit them with a drug. You just fucking boom. He just dropped this drug on them and they, they walk out of there feeling better. Beautiful. And it's for everyone. It's like you feel better, they feel better. Everyone heals in the process. A hundred percent. Amazing.

You know, and it's your responsibility to do that work so that that can happen again. And you got to be on point and you got to go over your notes. You got to be prepared and you got to do a lot of sets so that you're polished and smooth and confident. You got all the beats in your head and then you also have to be loose and relaxed so that it can flow and then you can, you can adjust to some chaos if something happens in the crowd. And it's the best.

In the, in the studio recording, it's, it's similar in that there's a lot of time where nothing good is happening. You know, and it's, and it's out of our control where everybody's playing and they're doing their best. But it just, you know, it doesn't matter for, for whatever reason. You know, when you're listening to it's like it doesn't, it's just not great. And, and it's just really game of patience of waiting or trying different things like what, how about, how do we do it like this?

How about, if we do it like this, let's try with the lights off. You know, let's try with, you know, like crazy things, whatever it is. Turn the lights off. See what happens. How much, how important is the ambiance and the, the setup of the studio? It's really important. The, the, one of the, one of the things that's most important is the feeling of like, I'll, I'll use the word like a protected space where you feel like you could be very vulnerable and it's okay.

You know, a place where you could be naked and it's okay. So the, the safety of the environment, if you, if you feel like you're going to try something and someone's going to tell you that was no good, that wouldn't feel like you want to do that again. So part of it is the, like the head space of less people around, no audience. Literally, it's, it's set up similar to this where it's, it'll be, you know, the producer and the artist, one engineer and nobody else.

And if it's a band, it's a just a, you know, it's just this group of people, the least amount of people, not friends hanging out, not anybody watching. So there's a sense of where, where they're to work, you know, where they're to really do something. But we're also there to play and it's free and there's no, there's no expectation that it has to be good. And we try to have it as, as far of, like no, no feeling of deadlines or we have to do this by this or this is going to be the first single.

Never any talk like that. It's, it's more let's, let's have fun, make music, let's see what happens and then down the road will look back on it and see if there's anything good there.

Then in terms of the physical location, you want to, you want to create a space where it feels like a place you want to hang out and it's a good feeling and sometimes we'll do something like on the first album I produced with the chili peppers, we recorded it in a house instead of recording it in a recording studio because they had made four albums prior to that in a recording studio and they had told me none of those experiences were good.

Not necessarily because of the studio, but it was just an interesting point. They had four studio experiences, they didn't like any of them. What can we do to do something different than that? So we rented this big mansion and we recorded Blood Sugar Sex Magic in this house and it was very a different experience for them. So instead of it feeling like the fifth album after four bad experiences, this is the first time we're doing it in the house and it was like an adventure.

Just now we were a few months ago, I was in Costa Rica recording a new album with the Strokes and we rented this house up on the top of a mountain and set up the band outside. So they're playing, it's like they're doing a concert for the ocean on the top of a mountain. It was incredible and we did that every day playing out and I'll show you videos later on. They didn't want to leave. It was like the best experience.

So it's in a way adding the adventure element, especially for someone who's done it multiple times. If it's your first time, your chance to go into the big professional studio is really cool. But if you've done a bunch in a big professional studio, what else can we do that'll spark the feeling of we're doing something new and different? Yeah, I can imagine what it's like for them to just look, blood sugar sex magic was so fucking good and it had so much power to it.

There was like, give it away, it's such a great fucking song. I love that song. God damn that's a good song. I love that song. But it's just there's so much, it's so alive. I wonder how much of that had to do with that. Impossible to know, but certainly didn't hurt. And we did it that way and you like it. So again, we don't know that that's what it was. The songs were good. It was the right time in their career.

John and Chad were both in the band and they were really locked in playing well together and that lineup of the Chili Peppers is the band now. It was a great moment for them. Yeah. So that was in the house. This is in the house. It was so cool. That's pretty dope. What's on the bed? This? Or this? This he doesn't try to plug this into a certain formula or like he doesn't have a way that he works and tries to make it like that. He's just trying to bring the most out of us for what we are.

And he manages to keep his emotional distance from the music and have his objectivity, which is what he has to do. Especially because we're so completely caught up in a re-run on pure emotion. That's what we're all about. And we're making an amazing, amazing groundbreaking, revolutionary, beautiful, artistically heightened and incredible record.

If Baron Van Moochhausen had ejaculated the four of us being the Red Hot Chili Peppers onto a chess board, I would have to say that Rick Rubin would be the perfect chess player for that particular board. That's so funny. What a great quote. What a great way to end that. Your job is such a unique job that that job of it's like your part muse, your part director. It's like a coach. It's not unlike a coach.

It's helping to get the best performance, talk about if the material is good enough, how it could be better, create an environment where it's exciting to do what we're going to do and make any suggestions, not just as it relates to the task at hand, but anything you can do in your life that would benefit the task at hand. And when you decide to work with an artist, how do you make that determination? Do you meet with them? Do you hang out with them? Do you have dinner?

Do you hang out at their house? How do you know if you're going to vibe with them? We usually get together and talk, and it comes more from the energy in the conversation. You can feel it. And if we share a way in, like the chili peppers had asked me to produce them before that, and I went to a rehearsal, and the energy wasn't right. I could feel, so I didn't know what it was, but the energy in the room didn't feel good to me.

And it turns out at that time they were really heavily into drugs, like serious drugs. And you could see this, like these are not people who trust each other. You know, that was a feeling in the room, was like just the way they were looking at each other, it wasn't like we're doing this together. It was more like a pervasive of each other. Oh, wow. And I just remember the feeling in the room was like, I don't want to be around with it. I didn't understand it. I didn't know what it was.

What drugs? It's probably heroin and cocaine. And so they're probably burnt out and fucked up, and their mind was frazzled and everything. Whatever it was, you could feel, all I know is that, you know, I'm never been a drug person. I came into this room, and it was like being in a different, the energy was different in the room, and it didn't feel like I want to be in this energy. But then I met them right before we made that, and they were like transformed. It's like, great, let's do it.

So they got out of it. Yeah. And sometimes it'll be material like the strokes had asked me to produce them several times in the past, and they would send me demos, and I listened to the demos, and I just couldn't see away in. Like I didn't have any thoughts. I didn't know how I didn't know. I didn't think I had what they needed. But then they sent me this for the last album, which is the first album I produced with them. It's called... Here, remember what it's called.

They sent me these demos that were probably the worst demos they ever sent in terms of, you know, like a 20 seconds into an iPhone would be at one song, like completely bullshit demos. But I could hear in those, this is going to be good. Like I can see these little seeds are exciting. And I'm curious to know. But as I like this little 20 seconds, what's the three minute version of that like? And I'm down to go on that journey with them to discover it.

And then there's a band called The Ava Brothers I worked with, and I remember I met them. And just I just loved them as people. They were the most beautiful, soulful people I ever met. I've never hung around people who were so nice. And I just loved it. And I've actually jet aptown made a documentary about them called May At Last. And he called me after me. It's like, that was the best experience in my life. He's like, we don't know any people like this.

You know, we hang out with crazy comedians. And you know, like these are like actual nice people. It's weird. And so just that alone. Yeah, just like I want to be around this. Whatever this is. Yeah. I want to be around these guys. And any chance I get to hang out with them, life's better if you're hanging out with the Ava Brothers. Really? Absolutely. Beautiful people. That's awesome. You must get inundated by requests for people that want to work with you.

Yes and no. But I mean, how do you, I mean, I would imagine there's a lot to filter out. I'm kind of outside of, I've always been sort of outside of the industry. So I'm not in the normal channel of where things get plugged into. I'm not on any of those lists because I just kind of am outside. I don't know why that is. But it's always been that way. But how do you get comfortable with what, do you just accept who you are? Do you just go on instinct in that regard too? Always.

Oh, everything, everything is uninstinct. Wow. There's a valuable lesson in that. I mean, imagine like a lot of the things that you're saying would translate to so many different endeavors, not even just art. Just because I think it all is art. I think when people create anything, it is art. You're just creating in different formats and different structures. But the best stuff seems to come out of that unique aspect of your own perspective, your own thoughts, your own, whatever creativity is.

Yes. Being true to yourself, and it's what the book's about, and it's not about, books not about music, and it's not about painting. It's about if you want to live in a creative way, which will benefit everything in your life, be a better person in your family, be it better if you're starting a new business, do a better job of starting a new business. It's all the same. I don't really know anything about music.

It's more a way of looking at the world and wanting it to be the best it could possibly be, and doing whatever it takes to be the best it could possibly be, and being true to knowing that no one else knows. I'm not saying I know, but that everyone's idea is as valuable as mine. We're all creators. We all have the chance. If we can be true to ourselves and show it, at least that's been my experience. Because I never went into anything thinking anything was going to be successful.

At any point in time, it's always been, I make this thing because I like it. I'm excited to show it to my friend, you know, a friend or two friends. Can't wait till they laugh at this. That's it. That's the audience. And when you set out to write this book, what was the start process? What made you initiate it? Tell you the way it happened. I got a call from Robert Hillburn who is the music critic of the LA Times. This is probably eight, eight or nine years ago.

And he was writing the definitive book about Johnny Cash. And I got to work with Johnny Cash for the last ten years of his life. So the last few chapters of that book was going to be about my time with Johnny Cash. So he spent a few days with me. So we hung out and he asked me a lot of questions and we listened back to some of the recordings and I tend not to listen back to things I've worked on in the past because I'm always working on something new.

And I've listened to it a million times when we were making it. There's no reason to listen back. So it was interesting to go back and listen with him to answer questions. And I listened back and I learned through those conversations, I learned about my relationship with Johnny that I didn't know that I knew. Do you know what I'm saying? Through the questioning, I had a better understanding of that relationship. And it was interesting to me and I liked it.

And then I thought, okay, if this is what book creation could be like, where I could learn something and if I learn it, I could share it and what can I possibly share that would be helpful. And I thought, well, I only get to work with a handful of artists every year. Wouldn't it be great if the things that happened in the studio or this way of looking at the world could be available to other people? That was the idea. Like, how do we, and I didn't know what it was.

I still don't really know what's in the book. It's the information is fleeting. So if you ask me, you give me a hypothetical question or if I think back of two, something that happened in the past and a good outcome happened, I would try to reverse engineer why those decisions were made. In the moment, they weren't made for any thoughtful reason they were made out of reactions or trying something. But they were rarely based on a principle.

So the book was trying to reverse engineer all things that have worked out to see if there were principles underlying that could be applied to other things. And that's what the book is. It's all useful tools that have led to good things. That said, none of the example, nothing in the book, the book's not about me and there's no example of anything I've made in that book.

It's the principles by which the things got made and a way of looking at the world and a way of being in the world, which is the subtytes of the book is a way of being. I started, when I started, I thought it was going to be about how to do things. And I realized it's how you live in the world. It's how you see things all the time, 24 hours a day. How you experience the world is what makes you the artist that you are or the creative person that you are.

And that's what the book shares that information. Why the bulls eye? It's funny. You say it's a bulls eye. That is a bulls eye. It's to you. It's a bulls eye. Or a reticle. It's like a dawn on a bulls eye. It's the alchemical symbol of the sun. That's one thing that it is. It's open to interpretation. Like many things. Like everything. Yeah. Like everything. It's an invitation to think about why is that there? And if you look at the back of the book, so what's that?

If the front is a target, what's the back? The lens and the target's a dot. I mean, that's how I would look at it. But that's you based on your experience. And that's also what the book's about. It's like everything we do is based on our experience in life. You didn't make up the idea that that's a target. Your experience of life tells you that's a target. My experience of life is that's the alchemical sun. Someone else is, is that's a circle of people sitting around a fire.

It's a lot of things. But we all see it differently. And the more open we can be to the different interpretations allows us to make better stuff. Because we start looking for connections in the world. You'll notice something on your drive that doesn't make sense. Or someone will recommend something to you that sounds like that's not for you. In the past, when someone would recommend something to me, it sounded like it wasn't for me. It's like, okay.

Now, if more than one person recommends something to me, that sounds bad. I always check it out. Because like the universe wants me to know about this. The way it tells me is a couple of people came up and said, why don't you check this out? That's, if we listen to what's going on around us, you can overhear a conversation in a coffee shop. And it is the setup for an idea that you're talking about, the right way to say a particular joke that you're working on. You hear a phrase.

It's not a phrase you commonly use. You hear someone else say it. My experience is when you are open and looking for these clues in the world, they're happening all the time. And they're happening often right when you need them. There's a story, there's a song, a system of a down song called, I think it's Song Chop Sui, I think. And there's, it has this big, do you know that song?

It has this big bridge section in it where Serge, the lyric writer, the singer, lyric writer, didn't have words for this one part of the song. And we were singing the library in my old house. And he said, you know, I don't have words for this. And we were finishing. It's like, okay, any ideas is like, he didn't have any ideas. And it's okay, pick a book off the wall. I said, open it to any page. Tell me the first phrase you see. He opened it, first phrase you see, that's what's in the song.

And it's a high point in the song. It's incredible. It's like magic. What was it? It's the part farther to your hands, you have it. Why have you forsaken me that much? Yeah, I've tried it. I think it's right here. It's a wild play from a little before. So you see the context, it doesn't really make sense in what's going on. It's rad.

The Me, oh, dry, stand by Self-righteous suicide I cry, with angels there's no to die Am I so righteous to a side Why cry, with angels there's no to die It's radical, I get chills Yeah It is so cool So when you start writing and you decide that you're going to do this Are you writing longhand? Are you sitting in front of a computer or you dictating?

All interviews All through questioning an interview, recording, loads of conversations And it's just random, just looking for information And it got to the point where it had like a thousand pages of information And then the task was getting from that format into the book

It took years, took four years to get the content And then it took three years to get the form So it's been a long process Wow And so you had this idea to do it And then as it's coming together, did it become what you initially thought it was going to be or did it become its own thing? It became its own thing, the only thing that I wanted it to do was to be helpful to someone who wants to make stuff That's the purpose of the book So that was the only aspiration was at the...

I've known that it's done if someone reads this and it makes them want to make something And there was a version of it a few years ago that was really beautiful prose But it didn't give me that feeling, it didn't feel like a call to arms Whereas this book, I feel like I read this and I want to make something right now So the first version, what did you do with it?

It's a success So you just decided, let's try again in a different form But it has more to do with the form Because the information was similar, it just didn't find its best One of the breakthrough ideas was in the old version there weren't sections It was just like one long thing, it wasn't chapters or anything And I read that and every time a new subject came up, I gave it a name And originally it was 68 areas of thought

And those were things that came up that I thought, okay, even if it didn't do a deep dive into each of these areas of thought This is something related to creativity that's interesting This is a list based on an earlier version of the book This list of topics

And then I did another round of interviews referring to what the reference was in the old version And then another set just using the words, I'll give you an example Because one of the areas of thought is collaboration And you would think collaboration is about working with other people

That's not what that section of the book is about So if I were to do it just based on the word, I would probably go to collaborating with other people But when I knew the context, it would be different Because what collaborating is about is we're always collaborating at all times with the universe

That's how it works Like we're taking in information where vibing on it And I'm looking at this skull and I'm looking at the teeth And then if I were to say something about it, it wouldn't be It's not really my thought about this I can say, oh it's cold

I'm collaborating with this piece to understand something Or to have a point of view into something So the collaboration section is about how we're always collaborating with everything we've ever learned in our lives You were collaborating with bohunting by seeing a target

That's a collaboration with something you've learned If you never bohunted or never shot anything, I don't think that would seem like a target to you If you were an eye doctor, I guarantee you wouldn't think of it as a target So we're always like how we're in the world impacts how we see everything

Then there's another section in the book called Cooperation And that's about working with other people And that section's about having worked with a lot of bands I see that there's often this friction Where, and I'm sure you've seen it in a writing room for comedy Where people are trying to get their idea in Yeah That's not a collaboration No That's a...

It's something else A real collaboration is when everyone who's there is working together Towards whatever is the best thing for the whole thing And whether it's your idea or someone else's idea doesn't matter And if you're invested in the collaboration, you want the best idea to win You don't want your idea to win Right And so it's just things that you can habits you can...

Things to watch out for and habits you can develop that will make you better at working with other people In that section, for example So when you got the first version, which you said was great pros But there was something missing, whatever that was How did you make that determination and why did you decide to try again? I just... I read it and I felt how it made me feel I read it and thought about how it made me feel And I felt like there were a lot of words that...

Nice sounding words But it didn't feel essential Essential Essential I want every sentence of the book to have to be there I don't want... I want it to be The most concise and the most specific And it's explaining, sometimes explaining what I'll describe is technical things

It's almost like I see things as like a machine Like the world's a machine and the wave of gears work together So I could look at a description and say That sounds like the machine or I could read a description and say Well, that's not how that machine works at all Do you know what I'm saying about? I don't know if I'm explaining it clearly No, you are because you're explaining it the way you feel You're using words that are sort of making a facsimile of feelings You know, it's...

Whenever someone's saying something and they're trying to describe a feeling You're like on a dance together They're like, what are you? Where's this going? You know, I feel what you're saying I understand what you're saying But it's a bold move to take something that was, you know, you're done And you're like, nope, it's not it It's not done, it's never done until you think it's great Like it's... I hadn't experienced happen a few months ago

Where we were living in a new house we bought in a little town in Texas And we were asleep and we just moved in, we bought the house maybe a year before And we had some work done on it and we were excited to stay in it And we stayed in it and it was the end of the first week of staying there

And in the middle of the night my wife... I'm sleeping, my wife is sleeping We're all sleeping, my son sleeps in bed with us, he's five years old My wife wakes up, grabs Ra, my son's name is Ra And screams fire and runs out of the room And we're in second floor And I'm thinking... She's got this all good, I'm going back to sleep And I went back to sleep And that was my first mistake Then... You went back to sleep after she screamed fire?

Yes, because I assumed that's a little fire in the kitchen, she's going to put it out What a bizarre assumption Yeah, that's me That was my assumption She takes care of everything, I know she's going to handle it Right Nothing that would have set my sleep, I know she's going to, she's got this Right

She's very capable So I go back to sleep And then I hear her screaming for help from outside, that wakes me up And I go to the window in the next room to tell her to stop screaming It's crazy, what are you doing? So I go to the window, open the window, it's like, stop screaming, what's going on? And she's like, fire, fire, and I said, where? She's like the house, I said, where? The whole house, jump!

Now I'm like 15 feet up and it's a brick floor And I still don't really understand the severity, although I do hear her excitement So I think, okay, I'm going to find a way out, I'm not going to jump, I'm going to find a way out Another very bad, another bad call on my part Go back into the house

And open the door to where I think the stairs are With a ton of black smoke, go down on my hands and knees, and start scampering towards the stairs Hit a wall Start scampering around the wall I'm just moving around, running into walls

And I'm not able to, like I'm getting to the point, quickly, very quickly This happens very fast Getting light-headed Can't breathe, have no idea where I am in the house, can't get back to the window I was at Can't find the stairs, and everywhere I crawl to find the stairs, I'm hitting a wall

And I'm starting to like lose consciousness I don't know if I was losing consciousness, but I was definitely fading And I had the thought, okay, no moody Ellen Rauer outside, they're safe, family safe And I'm so happy the book's done Jesus Christ

Because the book is going to live on with whatever information I have, it's in the book So I'm okay, I can just going to be alright And then I'm still scampering because crashing into wall, crashing into wall And then I end up on the whole opposite side of the house Not what I was going for at all

And I open a window, push out the screen And by now, because moody else has been screaming for help the whole time, some neighbors came And they're outside and they're like, jump, jump, it's going to hurt, but you live And I'm now, I'm so happy to be out the window and being able to breathe after not being able to breathe It's like, no, I'm fine And they're like, you're not fine And it's like, no, no, I'm fine, I can breathe And they're like, get out, get out

And they tell me to climb onto a tree and I climb out, breathe a little bit first But in my mind, I'm fine because if you go from not being able to breathe to breathe, the world's a good place So I climb out, I hang on to the tree And at this point, they find like a six foot ladder, I'm 15 feet up

They bring the ladder around, they prop it up against the tree And then these two neighbor guys climb up the ladder and they grab my legs And they like, guide my legs down to the top of the ladder And I make it out And then, my pulse ox was 82 when I got out of the building And then... What's normal?

It's 99, 98 Pulse ox, you know, pulse ox, yeah Yeah, yeah It's like, you want to be as close to 100 as possible But I felt, I felt fine, like I felt like I'm okay And then I'm walking and they're like, okay, we can't walk next to the house Because the house is really burning

And they walked me out into the street and then I said, okay, I have to sit down And I just sat down in the middle of the street It's in the middle of the night, felt like four o'clock in the morning And I sat there and in three minutes, I watched this 100-year-old two-story house

Completely burned to the ground Flames higher than the trees It was insane It was insane Wow The going back to sleep is so crazy Yeah That's the 100% of the opposite of what I think my instincts would be Yeah Wow So did she smell smoke? Did she see fire?

She heard crackles and thought someone was in the house So she heard what sounded like someone walking in the house So she went down to check and she saw the fire And then came up to get raw and scream at me to get out And I'm about to sleep Jesus Christ Phew Wow So you were three minutes away from dying? I would say a minute Jesus I said, you're horrible what did I do?

Phew Wow The crazy thing is that you were happy the book was done That was the key It was an interesting, well I don't have a very interesting story related to this Which is Lex I did Lex's podcast Maybe five days before this, four days before this And he's talking about art and music and what you'd expect a conversation With me to be about the only thing I know about or care about talking about And long interview and in the middle of the interview he asked me Are you afraid of dying?

And it was completely different than the whole rest of the conversation And it was the weirdest question And I answered the question and then I went home and saw my wife and I said It was a really interesting interview but he asked me if I'm afraid of death It was so it didn't make any sense

Nonsequed her in the course of this interview And then four days later this happens And then the next day there's a clip, the first clip I see from the Lex interview Is him asking me that question and me answering about death After this thing just happened, it was unbelievable What was your answer? I can't remember, you can find the clip You want to find the clip?

No, it's okay, we could play I think it's actually interesting Yeah, let's play it But that's like saying I don't know the information in the book It's like when you're in the moment you answer the question but it's not like a Answer, I don't know

Well more than anybody I think I've ever met you're on instinct in that way And it's almost like you consciously try to stay in the moment Absolutely Absolutely I don't think that knowing anything helps I don't think there's anything to know I think we're here and we're in this and we pay attention

And it's almost like we're animals and getting in tune with our animal selves It's very animal what we're talking about Yeah, no, it is Is that why you're into like physical things like cold and sauna? Are you into those to just feel the animal part of you, to feel the body?

I was sedentary in my whole life, I was in... I basically laid on a couch listening to music my whole life That was my job and what I did, not for my job That's what I like to do and that's all I did And then... and I was vegan for 22 years and got very big

I weighed 320 pounds, 318, my max with no exercise So it's only just not good, huge And I went out to lunch with a Mo Austin who just recently passed away He was Frank Sinatra's attorney and then he ran one of brothers in reprise You might have met him through Warner Brothers

If you were on Warner Brothers, Mo Austin was the chairman of Warner Brothers Records Beautiful guy, he signed the Sex Pistols, he signed Jimmy Hendrix, he signed Black Sabbath, amazing guy And he was one of my mentors in the music business And we went out to lunch one day and he said, you know Rick, I know you watch what you eat and you You take care of yourself but you're really getting big and I'm worried about you

And I want you to... I'm gonna get the name of a nutritionist and I want you to go to my guy and do whatever he says And I said, okay, I'll do whatever he says Knowing it's not gonna work because I've been overweight my whole life and nothing ever worked

But you didn't look overweight in that red hot chili peppers thing That was a weird moment in time It was like a weird moment I had just moved to California I worked out with a trainer that Dice connected me with for the first time And got and was in... well I still was not in good shape But I was in better shape than in any point prior to that and that was before I became a vegan The vegan thing really took me down a dark path How so?

Well, I was eating chicken and vegetables and I was healthier than And then a friend of mine gave me a book called Diet for a New America And he said, if you read this book, you're not gonna want to eat chicken anymore And I said, well, I already gave up everything else

You know, I had given up red meat, I had given up soda, I used to drink a 64 ounce Pepsi with every meal You know, I grew up eating jack in the box and McDonald's every day I grew up on fast food, my mom was terrible cook So I didn't have a good relationship with food

And then I started giving things up when I was in college And I'm not even sure why, I don't know why I don't know why I decided to give up Pepsi Cola and start drinking a picture of coffee instead Which is what switched, but I didn't know why I did that, I just did that

And then I stopped that caffeine and just drank water And then gave up red meat, gave up basically everything other than chicken and vegetables And then I started getting in better shape when I was eating chicken and vegetables And then I met Dice's trainer, started training, got into better shape And then I read this vegan book, became a vegan, and then it all went the other way For 22 years, till I got very big And what about veganism got you that big?

It's a carbony diet, it's just carbs But were you eating vegetables or were you eating pizza? Vegetables, pizza, whatever, like whatever they serve in the vegetarian restaurant They would serve like a It'd be like a tofu steak with a gluten brown sauce Super unhealthy stuff, but I didn't know I thought I was eating healthy It was just bad information And so what shifted, what did you do to shift it?

I read a book, so now I'm big and I'm unhealthy And I read a book by a guy named Stu Middlman who ran a thousand miles in 11 days And I remember thinking, how can it be? How can we both be human beings? And if I walk to the end of the block, I'm exhausted and out of breath And there's a human on the planet who can run a thousand miles in 11 days I don't have good information, I'm doing something wrong Because it's not like I was lazy, I was diligent, I just had bad information

It's hard being a vegan, it was hard being a vegan, harder to be a vegan then When nobody was a vegan You know, there weren't vegetarian restaurants all over the place There was one, there was real food daily, it was the only place you could eat

So I read the Stu Middlman book and he talks about meeting this performance expert Phil Matheton Who changed the way he trained and that's why he could run a thousand miles in 11 days So it's like, okay, Phil Matheton is the answer I email Phil Matheton, I want to become your patient

And he said he just retired, gave up his medical practice and isn't doing that anymore And he gave up doing medicine to pursue his dream of being a songwriter And I said, well, I work in music, maybe you can mentor me with my health and fitness And I'll help you with your songs And we became friends And he started treating me, he very much wanted me to eat animal protein Which I wouldn't do because I was a vegan He got me to eat fish and eggs as a...

To get animal protein, neither of which I liked at any point in my life Growing up I didn't eat eggs and I never liked fish So he said, don't even think of it as food, just think of it as medicine, you need this medicine And I started eating fish and eggs

And he ended up living with me for two years Phil And he was with me all the time, he trained me, he got me to do heart rate based cardio Doing stairs, but still super low level, I was still big But still getting my system turned back on, getting my vitality back

And I got much healthier working with Phil and I didn't lose any weight I might have lost five pounds over two years And he's living with me and he said, I watch everything you eat I watch how you train, he said, 999 people out of a thousand

Who are doing what you're doing, all their weight would fall off And he's not coming off, couldn't figure it out And then I was thinking, well, my mom was obese, it's just a genetic thing I've always been overweight, it's just what it is And then the thing happened with Moe, where I was really big

Now I'm healthier, but still big Go out, tell him to the Moe, he sends me to his nutritionist I go to see the guy and he puts me on seven protein shakes a day Like egg white protein, seven a day, and then fish soup salad for dinner Like super low calorie high protein, no carb diet

And in 14 months I lost 130 pounds Whoa And it was like a miracle, because over the course of my life nothing had worked I guess in some ways when I was doing chicken vegetables it worked Why didn't you go back to chicken and vegetables, if that worked? Because I believe the veganism was good, it's like I was brainwashed So did you believe it was good for the planet, or do you believe it was good?

The healthier diet in the world How was that possible that you could look at your own body though And the effects that it was having on it? Did it make sense? And you were just, there's something wrong with me Something's wrong with me It's not the diet it's me So what is it like when you go on this very low carb high protein diet and lose all that weight?

It was, it changed my life more than anything else that has ever changed my life And it taught me something, I've always lived in my head, I never lived in my body, I always lived in my head And now I started feeling like I had a body to go with my head

And it was an interesting feeling having never had that before And I met Laird Hamilton on the beach I was working, I think I was working with Kid Rock at the time Kid Rock introduced me to Laird and Don Wildman in this group of Malibu athlete guys

And Chris Chelios, first cut person I ever went into a sauna with was Chris Chelios Who's really a fanatic sauna guy for 30 years And he played in the NHL longer than anybody And he blamed sauna on his ability, you know, gave credit sauna for his ability to play for as long as he was able to play

So started doing sauna with him and then Laird invited me to start training at the gym Which was like seemed it seemed crazy But I liked him and was so inspired by him And he was so different from the musicians I hang around, I never hung around athletes before

So seeing someone who's, seeing people, meeting people who are good at anything is interesting And to meet someone who's so good world class at something so foreign to what the people that I know who are world class at stuff It's like a different universe so I wanted to go to hang out with Laird

Really just to hang out with him and see how he thought about the world because he's such an interesting character And I started going there and remember when I went the first day he said, okay, let's do some push ups And he asked me and I couldn't do one push up and I said I can't do it, he's like no Don't say you can't do it, say you haven't done it yet And he would break up a movement for every exercise if I couldn't do it the full way to start He would have me do a piece of the exercise

And then another piece and then another piece and then put the first two pieces together And then put the second two pieces together and finally put all three together until I could do things And with his help I went from not being able to do one push up to working up to a hundred consecutive push ups

Which couldn't believe it. So when I learned through this process of both listening to the nutritionist And listening to Laird in the gym, I gave over control of myself Up till that point I always thought I knew what was best for myself And what the I thought was best for myself was being a vegan

But when I gave myself up to in this case other people I lost weight, I got fit My life changed and then started doing the ice and sauna was another part of it And the ice, I was terrified to go in the ice at first and then worked up to You know, sometimes we'll do 30 minutes in the ice before even getting in the sauna Like 30 minutes Absolutely. How cold is the ice? 39 degrees? 30 minutes?

Wow If you do it every day, like that was during the lockdown we're in Hawaii And we were doing sauna and ice every day You doing it 30 minutes consecutively? In that case it was 30 minutes consecutively So just in there up to your neck, 30 minutes 30 minutes? I keep my hands out, I sit like this, I blow into my hands and focus on the heat, the sensation of the heat in my fingers You weren't worried about hypothermia, you weren't worried about anything?

No Because you'd built yourself up to that Yeah, I couldn't have done it, you know, I wasn't forcing myself past what I could do if I got too much I'd get out What's the benefit of being in there for that long though? It was just like a game, like during lockdown, something to do, like let's see how long we can go It's like you get to fire, let's say we typically did five minutes between rounds So we do five minutes and say I feel like I could stay longer, let's stay longer, let's see

I was doing it with my other friend Jack, we would both do it together and we're looking at each other in the sauna I could stay, you want to stay, you want to stay And like maybe we got up to 10 minutes once, then we got up to 15 minutes once And it was just like a scene what you could do So you're going from sauna to the cold back and forth?

Back and forth four times but we started in the old days we would do sauna first and then cold and back and forth And then we started doing cold first Just to like it was like a challenge, it's harder to get into the ice, not coming out of the sauna Yeah

One of the tricks that I would use to get into the sauna, into the ice was staying in the sauna too long And psyching myself up, I just want to cool off, I just want to cool off I just like talking myself into jumping into the ice was like the best gift Right

So then it's like okay, so now I could do it that way And then once I got comfortable it was like okay can I just jump into an ice tub and just stay there And it was just fun to try these things, experiment, it was just experimenting And what did that do for your body?

It was great, first of all I would say the number one thing that it did was put me in a great mood I would say that I can be moody at times And nothing has made me feel better in my life than the combination of the sauna and the ice back and forth By the fourth round you do not have a care in the world And whatever difficulties you have in life to deal with are not as bad as getting into the ice, whatever they are It's like you described earlier with your workouts, same thing

So if you're doing something really hard then the things that seem hard in life don't seem so hard Yeah, someone said this once that the worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happening It doesn't matter what it is, it could be you got to scratch in your car I can't believe this, that's why spoiled children, like spoiled children cry about things that's just nonsensical Like why the fuck is wrong with you, why are you getting so upset about this?

Because they've never had anything bad happen to them So their ability to be resilient, yeah resilient I had that issue as well because I grew up in a way where I was never challenged And I was not resilient Yeah, and then I've gotten better at it since I went through depression And that was also part of getting to the resilience through depression And so what is your diet like now?

Pretty close to kind of war We just came, we were in Italy for four months so the rules are different in Italy Yeah, I go off the rails in Italy And I definitely gained weight and I don't feel great about it But I'm excited now when I leave here I'm going right back to I'll probably do shakes now for to get back to where I want to be and then I'll go more carnivore And so the shakes are just a calorie deficit thing?

Yeah, and there's something about, again according to the nutritionist who I saw, having the protein all through the day Because like when we do carnivore we don't usually intermittent fast And just eat twice a day or maybe even twice a day close together

And it just mean often I'll be the least strict in that I might have a romaine salad with my mine Which is not carnivore but I will have a romaine and it's just romaine and olive oil and salt And steak and butter and salt So I'll probably do the shakes just to cut weight And what's in the shakes again? It's egg white protein? Yeah, J. Rob egg white protein And what do you mix it with?

Water And taste great, that's good And sometimes I'll mix in coffee if I, you know if there's too many of them and it starts tasting boring Or I don't like the vanilla as much as the chocolate But if I mix a little bit of vanilla into the chocolate it's like a new flavor Find ways to keep it interesting And do you have goals in terms of like body fat or weight or are you just trying to feel good? Just trying to feel good I would say that when I...

I'm just trying to feel good It's like, you know, if I weigh myself and there's if the numbers are going up I'm aware of it and if the numbers are going down I'm aware of it And it's better when they're going down than when they're going up But I've never really been a goal oriented person

It's has never been... I don't set a goal and work towards it I like working on something and when it feels good to me then I know that it's good It's like the goal seems like a false It's like a fiction, you know?

I think the goal is just to get people to work And then along the way you find what you're really trying to do But the getting people to work thing is oftentimes the most difficult I was going to ask you that about music Like how difficult is it and how important is it to have people that are disciplined That show up and do the work because a lot of artists are very impulsive And oftentimes one of the things that comes with impulsiveness Is unwillingness to sit and be uncomfortable

Yeah, the best ones will work through that That's part of... It's like there are a lot of talented people who never make it Because they don't have the work ethic to make it So it's not just talent, like talent's a piece And you could argue for some people the work ethic trumps the talent

You know? Chris Rocks a great example Like when I first met Chris he was my comedian friend who wasn't very funny And I know him when he wasn't funny And he was my music friend because he's got great musical taste And we were just hang out and talk about music

And then I saw him get funny and it was remarkable Because he went from okay to all of a sudden incredible Couldn't believe it Just hard work Just hard work All hard work Hard work in determination and some understanding of what you're trying to do Yeah Wow This is such a valuable conversation for people It's valuable for me and I already do it You know? Wow It's like you need to hear these things from different people, different journeys You know?

And try to understand You know, we were all the same in some way Some core essence of our being We're all the same in many ways We all want to be loved We all want to be happy We all want to be appreciated We all want to be surrounded by people who love us and who we love

And then it's expressing through creativity and art and creation and this thing But very few people figure out how to do it the way you're describing it And I think it's really magical what you're saying Because it's such a pure pursuit The purity of it is what's most inspiring about it It's very...

You're really just trying to do it You're just whatever it is It, you know, it really shouldn't even have a word It's a thing you're trying to get to Yeah, words are insufficient For what we're thinking about Yeah And that's probably the hard part about putting that down, right?

Yeah In a form where people can digest Really difficult to do and so I took so long And it's, and as I say, it's elusive Like I can read through the book and read something and like Wow, like I didn't know that You know what I mean now I'll still have these like epiphanies reading the book

Because it's heavy stuff and it's not understandable We really are talking about magic We're talking about like the universe conspiring on our behalf If we let it And to be in this flow of catching these waves That anyone can catch If you're trying to catch it, you're open to it

You see it coming, you take off on every chance you get And sometimes the ride happens and it's remarkable It's remarkable how it happens And it doesn't come from It's not preconceived, it's not an idea, it's through the doing These things that want to be, that the universe wants to happen now

Comes through us And if we don't do it, maybe someone else will do it Have you ever had that experience where you have an idea for something And you don't do it and then six months later you see that someone else has done it It's not because they took your idea It's that it's time for that

And you can act on it or not And if you see, and the artists, the best artists are the ones Who have the best antenna for this material that's available It's coming through, the best comedians see the best jokes They see them coming We all live in the same world The way you see it

You have the best joke because you see it best And one of the reasons you can, I believe that you can see it best Is because you don't believe What the structure around you assumes to be the case I mentioned before, I grew up watching pro wrestling

And I still watch 11 hours of pro wrestling every week, something like that There's a lot of wrestling on TV And I love pro wrestling It's the only sport I watch It's 100% pro wrestling And I feel like pro wrestling is where it's at Because you don't know where the line is

We know that the people involved are working together to put on a good show I like that, they're not guys trying to hurt each other They're trying to put on a good show I'm with that, I like that better than watching guys trying to hurt each other

So I like that they're putting on a show for the audience But they might have beef in real life And that might work its way into the fight Or there may be a storyline where one guy steals another guy's girlfriend And that may be true and it may not be true and you never know

And I feel like the reality of wrestling is closer to what the world is really like than we think We think, oh that's fake and the world is real I think that's closer to how it really is Everything is like wrestling I would have never anticipated that I would have never anticipated you have a love for pro wrestling It's the best I gotta get you together with Tony Hinchcliffe It's the best, does he love it? Oh my god, you know Tony is?

Brilliant comedian, brilliant He's the host of the best live television show, the best live comedy podcast in the world It's called Kill Tony And it's a show where he takes stand-up comedians He has professionals that come and sit on this panel And then amateurs will go up and do one minute

And there's this incredible band behind him The band is like some of the members are the guys that work with Gary Clark Jr. And just these incredible musicians And they play along with it And then these people go up and they do one minute And then Tony asks some questions and riffs with them And he fucking loves pro wrestling He loves it So hearing you talk about this is gonna give him a boner It's the best, it's the best, it's so wild, so surprising Makes you feel good I don't get it

Really? I don't get it It's the most relaxing thing It's the only thing that relaxes me That's so wild I'll watch it before I go to sleep and I sleep good I'll watch wrestling before I go to sleep Everything is the world's good place I am so engrossed in the world of martial arts competition To me, it's nonsense It's just like, you know, I get the people like it I don't understand it, to me, it's just like, yeah, yeah But they know what's going on, this is fake And it just...

Yeah, it's different than that Fake and real is not what it is It's something else Well also what you're saying, people trying to hurt each other That's not what it is either My description of mixed martial arts is High level problem solving with dire physical consequences

There's this thing that they're doing Where they're trying to achieve excellence In this insanely difficult endeavor And through doing that, you create some of the most exceptional people I've ever met Because they're the people that can rise And figure out their own bullshit through all this chaos

And through these moments And there's so many variables in there like fatigue Mental and physical fatigue Because so much of fatigue is mental You know, when you're inspired, you can do more work And how do you decide when to turn up the gas When to hit the gas and when to coast When to attack, when to defend When to move, when to lure your opponent into a false sense When to set traps And to me, I'm just so engrossed in that world It's like physical chess, would you say?

Yeah, it's more so Because chess pieces are limited in their movement I see Whereas with mixed martial arts There's so much creativity that's happening While it's going on And again, these people that are the best at it Are some of the most interesting and exceptional people that I've ever met

And some of the nicest people Which is really weird Because you assume that people that beat people up are just brutes It has to be some level of respect to be good at something like that I would imagine The great ones, yeah The great ones of a level of respect and the discipline is unparalleled

I only watched it at the beginning when the first Gracie I saw a hoist Yeah And that was fascinating to me Because I didn't understand it at all what was happening But it always seemed like he was losing And then the other guy would give up eventually And it was like, I don't even understand what's happening It's a wild Well that was one of the challenging things about my job When I first came aboard with the UFC Is to explain that aspect of it to the casual To the person that's at home

Like when someone's like if hoist was, I never, I commented some of hoist's fights But later in his career That are one of hoist's fights That the challenges to explain the Jiu-Jitsu Because everybody kind of understands all that guy, just punch that guy

That guy that just kicked that guy, that makes sense to people That's an impact, he got hurt But when you watch a complicated technique like an Oma Plata Oma Plata is a rare move that rarely gets pulled off in the UFC I think Ben Saunders and maybe one or two other people have ever pulled it off

It's a shoulder lock It's fairly common in Jiu-Jitsu because of the friction involved in wearing the kimono But in MMA where it's slippery and there's punches and all this And it's a technique where you isolate a person's shoulder You throw your leg over the shoulder

And the shin goes across their face You rotate behind them Your leg is wrapped around their shoulder, their arm is pointing Their hand is almost like scratching their back And through the leverage of your legs and your upper body controlling their body

You put extreme torque and pressure on their shoulder until they're forced to tap And to explain that to people While that's going on, explain how this person's setting this up And what they have to do next And to try to explain it in a way that's going to make sense To people that have never felt it They don't know what's happening And just to convey my excitement Of this very difficult maneuver being pulled off Would that be as dangerous as let's say a figure four leg lock?

Yeah But let your wrestlers go mad at me because Tony and I were watching pro wrestling I was trying to explain how Dama figure four leg lock was Because I was like he's literally giving up an inside heel hook Because inside heel hook is one of the most devastating submission techniques

Because once someone gets it, the time you have to tap is so small Before your knee gets ripped apart And so a figure four leg lock You will never see an a jujitsu competition Because as someone says, it doesn't work As someone setting up that figure four

You're literally giving up an inside heel hook It's pretty funny It's kind of funny in that regard That you're doing this thing but this thing in the real world It's like the worst thing you do but in pro wrestling He's like, oh he's got the figure four leg lock And the crowd's going wild

Come on wild I remember Ric Flair telling a story Because Ric Flair's famous for doing the figure four That's his finishing hold And he didn't invent it Someone did it before him And he remembers the first time it was put on him He was so afraid

Because he believed it was his deadly as the announcer said It's so funny Yeah There's some techniques that really do work Like the Boston crab That's a real move And guys have done that in MMA And it's crazy when someone pulls it off It's only been pulled off a handful of times

And it's usually a mismatch It's usually someone decides to pull it off Because they're like I'm beating this guy so bad dude I'm going to put a fucking Boston crab on him That's so funny But it works, Boston crab works Yeah here guys got it Yeah he tapped the guy with the Boston crab Look at that

I mean you have to say that guy on top must be so much better than that guy To get him into that position I mean he's, that guy's got to be hilarious And he's got a funny move to that guy on the bottom It's got to be so bummed out too So he just gets on top of him He's like oh here it is

He's setting it up he knows what he's doing Because look see turns to him punches in the face And the guy flattens out The right move is to turn and face him belly to back Because belly to back you get the rear naked choke This guy must be hilarious Because setting up this is like he's being silly

Look at he's got his tongue out and everything He can never happen Maybe he's Sean Michaels fan Because I think that was Sean Michaels He wrestlers now don't call that a Boston crab anymore Because it's What do they call it?

That would be a sharp shooter maybe A wall of Jericho That's what another video is calling it It's fighter pulls up walls of Jericho But it's called different things Depending on who, well Jericho is Chris Jericho is version of that Right And that works You would never get a guy in that

Unless you're that much better than the guy You could say that that guy was already done Because when that guy goes belly down And he's reaching for his legs that guy stayed belly down He's done A guy who is good would go to one hip You would immediately go to your side And you would hip escape

And you would put a hand on the hip And you would try to get to a defensive position Which would either be half-car That's how wrestlers get out of it They turn to the side Yeah, they turn to the side and then put their head on there And they get out Well, it's real wrestling

Like real actual catch wrestling Was the, that's the beginning of pro wrestling Catch wrestling was Catch's catch can Was like a very brutal physical form Of submission fighting And these guys like Farmer Burns Back in, you know, I guess it was the turn of century And they would go on the road

And they would go to carnivals And they would, you know, like, compete with any man Who wanted to get in the ring with them And they would have these submission matches And you could either pin a guy You could win by pin or you could win by tap Or a guy would tap out from a submission

And there's a lot of techniques that came From catch wrestling That are applicable today Including there's some catch specialists That compete and win That's very high level guys in submission matches And it gets jujitsu guys Including the graces One of the best examples is Josh Barnett

Josh Barnett is the youngest guy to ever win the UFC Heavyweight Championship Elite top of the food chain Professional Mix martial arts fighter Who's also a catch wrestler And a huge fan of pro wrestling And has competed in pro wrestling In Japan, down in America Does commentary on pro wrestling

Is just a huge pro wrestling And a big wrestling proponent And a connoisseur And Josh Would use Catch wrestling techniques On elite jiu jitsu fighters and tap them And it's a big deal It's a guy named Timothy Fatcher In pro wrestling Who's I think comes from the catch world

And he's pretty treacherous Oh yeah Well it's a very violent form of submission wrestling Compete very differently than submission fighters Wrestlers kind of go all out and sprint Because matches Although you have to have incredible endurance to compete And an amateur wrestling match

There's a time limit And in these time limits They're fairly short in comparison to say Like Gordon Ryan Who's the greatest jiu jitsu athlete of all time Who's only 27 today Wow And he is One of the most disciplined people In the life And one of the most driven and intelligent Trains 365 days a year

Wow Doesn't matter if he's sick Doesn't matter if he's tired He'll just train less hard Trains every single day Holidays, birthdays Fuck you You're at the gym And he has These no time limit submission matches And he's more terrified to compete against him Because it's a matter of time

Before he gets you And so he has this slow Steady approach Where he slowly ramping up the heat And slowly Putting his foot on the gas Until the guys start to break And then he gets them And he was competing recently against this guy Felipe Peña And Felipe is also elite World champion

And Gordon got him to quit At 45 minutes Because he was so on his way To getting defeated But his pace was a pace That was set up for time limit Jiu-Jitsu matches Where you and it's a lot of explosivity A lot of quick movement, a lot of technique But it's also you're recognizing

That you can only do this for so long Yeah, he's a sprint expert Exactly, at the USER Estimate All right I think I'm going to use the restroom too I'm going to watch the catch wrestling now you met Yeah, Josh Barnett There's a ton of stuff about him On the internet Great mixed martial arts fights

And a lot of submission grappling matches And all kinds of stuff Cool I would have never imagined you for a progressive fan That's one of the most shocking things About this conversation I think It's the most fun Have you ever been To a pro wrestling match Yes Where did I go see

I definitely saw one when I was younger And I think that was it I think Tony's always trying to get me to come to see WrestleMania He's like if you go to WrestleMania You'll get it, you'll get it It's actually better on TV than in person honestly Really? Yeah, yeah Because the commentators are a big part of it And the commentators are super funny Wildly funny Everything's a crazy exaggeration Like I can remember one call from a WrestleMania from childhood Where One of the Japanese wrestler

Would throw some, you know, had a little bit of salt in his palm And throw it in the guy's eyes And grill them on soon Was the commentator at that point And he said He just threw about five pounds of salt in the man's eyes You know, everything is just insane But that's the show

It's like the show isn't It's this other It works on this other level where Everything is ridiculous and insane And you're not going to see a fight I think, do you know what I'm saying If I'm reframing it for I'm not going to see a fight I'm going to have fun seeing this crazy show

It's like the circus And it really is And it's edgy Like they'll do crazies And the women getting hit with chairs It's insane You know, it's completely wrong That's the But that's the What's so cool about it is that They cross lines In the name of telling the story Where it's like

A bad guy could do something really bad Because you're supposed to hate them and boo them So they do something really vile And it's funny Because it's so crazy And it's funny because it's so wrong It's like with dice you know Like a lot of the jokes were The foot what was funny about it was

It's wrong Do you know what I'm saying Knowing that it's wrong is where the humor is Is that the only thing you consume on television Mainly I'd say I watch some documentaries But mainly Mainly wrestling That's amazing It just takes so much time There's so much And it's not like watching a fight

It's all this like a soap opera There are all these story lines that keep going If you miss a week You're not in the story Oh right Yeah, it's all these It's like the matches Are the least of the story Sometimes They'll resolve themselves in the ring But the storytelling rarely happens in the ring It's part of it but it's not the big part of it Have you ever talked to Billy Corgan about this?

Yeah, yeah Of course When I had him on I thought that was surprising I knew that he owned some pro wrestling organization It was one of the owners He owns the NWR now I actually started a pro wrestling Company called Smokey Mountain Wrestling In the 90s At a time when Wrestling wasn't Serving me You know as a fan Wrestling changed And it became a different show In what way?

The real wrestling is really edgy And crazy and like it's outlaw And something happened when Hoko got popular WWE, maybe even been WFF fact then Changed to be more like Aimed at little kids And when it became Aimed at little kids Everybody was just like a superhero And it was Goofy

Whereas the other wrestling was more like Badass Barroom Brawlers So it was different It was like a, you know One was like a western one So when wrestling turned into a kids show And WWE was the biggest The other league used to be called the NWA And it became WCW And WCW followed suit

And they started chasing kids also So for all of the real wrestling fans Like me Nobody was doing wrestling anymore Everybody was doing shows for kids So just again As a fan I want wrestling And I want to start in the south That was more like real wrestling And then the attitude

Error happened in WWE And they turned back into being Hard wrestling The attitude error Yeah, that was like Stone Cold Steve Austin And Triple H And uh Where it got more like It's not for kids anymore Got serious I want to watch pro wrestling with you We'll do it

I want to sit down with you while you're watching pro wrestling We'll do it We'll watch some highlights You're gonna love it Because you have a good sense of humor If you have a good sense of humor It's the most fun Just can't think of it as a fight And I can't compare it to anything else

It's its own thing Maybe that's my problem Maybe my problem is like wanting it to be real Yeah, it wouldn't be better if it was real This thing is better as it is There's good versions of it not But when it's good It's the best So when you started your own organization

How did you go about doing that How did you get talent How did you find the right people There was uh So in wrestling there were wrestlers and there were managers There are less managers today than they were But there's still Paul Kamehman Managers Roman Reigns The head of the table

The longest reigning champion In uh Decades I believe And um The best managers were always really entertaining Kind of like medians And the best ones of all time were Bobby Heenan Jim Cornett And Paul Kamehman And when NWA turned in WCW And started going soft Jim Cornett left Wrestling

And he's one of the great minds of pro wrestling And I met him and through him I talked about We talked about together It was really his dream But it was we had the same dream We both wanted real wrestling At a time when wrestling was going through this Turning into a kids show So he managed it And it was based in Louisville, Kentucky Which is where he lived And so you would go to the events?

So you just set it up Set it up, funded, and would he run stuff by me And I would share my creative opinion But ultimately it was this show And you were just doing it Because you wanted that kind of thing to exist I wanted it I felt like I'm the audience Nobody is serving my needs

Same reason I start making hip hop records Same thing, it's always been Everything I make, I make it because If someone else would make it, I wouldn't have to make it And it'd be fine So if I can see a way to make something crazy And interesting that probably no one else is going to make Then that's a thing for me to make Is there anything else like that in your life That's unusual that you're involved in creatively?

I don't know, I don't know how to answer Because to me it's not odd So I don't know This is just whatever you like We're like, yeah That's not right or wrong It's like we all like what we like Listen, that's a beautiful way to live life I mean, it sounds like you've got a fucking formula

And not just that Something that's I think it's going to resonate with a lot of people I really do It's really so, if you think about it this way If someone would give you two plates of food And say, taste both And you taste both And say, okay, which one do you like better?

That's not a hard question to answer usually Right That's all it is It's as simple as that As like try to get it down to two choices And say, A or B which one is better And then Continuing setting up A and Bs Keep And you know it, you taste it There's no other You just have to block out any other

Oh, what's someone so is going to say Or what this one does or what that other person did Or what they're playing on the radio None of those things matter Because when I hear this Do I want to lean forward? Do I get excited?

Or do I feel like I want to change channel Or I want to put on something else If I want to turn it off It's not for me If I'm excited and want to hear more Great And that's all That's everything comes down to that That is one of the most insidious things about social media Is that it gives people so many of those What does everyone else think about what I'm doing thing?

It doesn't matter It really doesn't matter If you're aiming towards greatness You don't get there by what other people think It doesn't work that way It doesn't It really doesn't And so many people are intoxicated By other people's opinions I mean that said when someone likes something

It's nice. I'm not saying it's I'm not saying you don't care what they think It's nice but you can't make decisions Based on what anyone else thinks Right Again, if I make something And if I have a choice for people to like it Or not, I would hope they like it But I'm not changing one note

Note with the idea of They might not like this so I'm going to change the note Never ever ever Not one note, not one word I think that's the best way to end this I'm not flattered Thank you very much for that Thanks for having really nice video The book is called the Creative Act A Way of Being Rick Rubin, it's available now Did you do the audio version of it?

I know there will be an audio version If I can do it justice It will be me if I can't do it justice Oh it has to be you I'm going to try You can do it It's like acting. It's not just reading Reading out loud is a very particular thing It is but it's got to be in your face I'm going to do everything I can to make it happen I have all my things Thank you very much