back to indexRick Rubin: Legendary Music Producer | Lex Fridman Podcast #275
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There are no right answers for anything involved in art.
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We're all trying experiments to find a way.
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And even for the things that I work on,
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I don't have a set way that I do anything.
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I come to every project blank.
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Maybe you're just a meat vehicle
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and you're channeling ideas from somewhere else.
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I believe we know close to nothing,
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close to nothing, about anything.
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If we embrace that not knowing,
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we'll have a healthier experience going through life.
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The following is a conversation with Rick Rubin,
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one of the greatest music producers of all time,
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known for bringing the best out of anyone he works with,
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no matter the genre of music or even the medium of art,
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or just the medium of creating
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something beautiful in this world.
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And the list of musicians he produced includes many,
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many, many of the greats over the past 40 years,
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including the Beastie Boys, Eminem, Metallica,
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LL Cool J, Kanye West, Slayer, Tom Petty,
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Johnny Cash, Dixie Chicks, Aerosmith, Adele,
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Danzig, Red Hot Chili Peppers,
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System of a Down, Jay Z, Black Sabbath.
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I can keep going for a very long time here.
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Most importantly, Rick is just an amazing human being.
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We became fast friends, which is surreal to say,
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and is just an incredible honor.
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I felt truly heard as a person
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when I spent the day with him
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eating some delicious Texas barbecue,
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talking about life, about music, about art, about beauty.
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This was a conversation and experience I will never forget.
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This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
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To support it, please check out our sponsors
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in the description.
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And now, dear friends, here's Rick Rubin.
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I'm not shaky, but I would say I feel uneasy.
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And I feel like the sooner we start talking,
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the more relaxed we'll get.
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Well, maybe we should sit in this moment
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and enjoy the nervousness of it.
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Let me start with Nietzsche.
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He said, without music, life would be a mistake.
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What do you think he means by that?
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Let's talk some philosophy.
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Let's try to analyze Friedrich Nietzsche from a century ago.
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It seems like music has the ability
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to bring us so much depth in our soul
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that's hard to access any other way.
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And without it, there would be a loss
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beyond the pleasure of it.
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Feels like it's a window into something else.
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Something that no other medium
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can express quite the same way.
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I would say not as automatically.
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Something about music can do it automatically.
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Maybe poetry or maybe certain abstract forms
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But there's something about music
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that really can get us there quickly.
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But it's also the time, the place, the history.
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There's something about, like a lot of my family's
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still in Philly, there's something about driving
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through Jersey and listening to Bruce Springsteen.
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And then you just, I'll get emotional.
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Like listening to I'm On Fire.
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That like, one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen songs,
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there's a haunting kind of strumming to it.
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It's not a strumming, it's actually picked.
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It has a country feel to it,
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almost like a Johnny Cash feel actually.
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And it, I don't know, makes me feel,
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so for people who don't know, I'm On Fire.
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That song is, I guess, a love song to a woman
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that you can't have because she's married
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or she's with somebody else,
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which I guess is quite a lot of love songs.
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But there's something about the haunting nature
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of the guitar and then it has to be driving through Jersey.
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And I feel like everyone has fallen in love
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with a Jersey girl at one point in their life.
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I don't know if that's true for her,
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but I feel like that.
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I haven't either, but I just feel like that.
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There's something about Bruce Springsteen is like,
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yeah, I've been there.
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And that just takes you to a place of emotion
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that you just, that captures love,
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that captures longing, that captures the heartbreak
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of just the way time flows in life
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and the fact that it's finite
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and just all of that in a single simple song.
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What else can capture that?
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Yeah, I don't know.
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But it's true that there's a connection
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both between time and place and music.
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And I, certain music growing up on the East Coast
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didn't really resonate with me
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until I spent time on the West Coast.
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Eagles being an example.
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When I lived in New York,
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the Eagles didn't really speak to me.
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ZZ Top didn't really speak to me.
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And then when I started spending time in California
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and driving through Laurel Canyon,
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all of a sudden the music of the Eagles felt
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appropriate somehow.
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And I started listening to it more.
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So not until you went out West
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can you understand the sounds of the West.
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So it's really like New York has a sound.
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What other places have a sound in the United States?
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I think every place does.
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And that said, sometimes we can get an experience
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through music of a place.
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Like we can resonate with the music and not understand why.
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And then maybe when we go to the place
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where it was created,
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it's almost like we have a knowingness of that place.
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It's not a strange place anymore.
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Yeah, Stevie Ray Vaughan with blues and Texas blues.
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You can just listen to Texas Flood and just,
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again, this is like a woman you're missing,
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a broken heart and somehow that connects to the place.
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The Eagles, what song with the Eagles connects with you?
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Are we talking about like Take It Easy
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or are we talking more like Hotel California?
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I'm thinking Take It Easy, but both are great.
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Yeah, there's certain songs
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when I started learning guitar when I was young
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that's like, I would like to be the kind of person
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that not only knows how to play this song,
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but understands the song and like have that song
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be something I played 20 years ago.
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And I've lived with that song for a while.
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Like Hotel California is an example.
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Obviously there's the solo,
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but there's also the soulfulness of the lyrics,
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which I still don't understand.
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And it could be about anything.
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And as you get older,
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I feel like the meaning of the song could be anything.
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Yeah, I think that's true.
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I think that's the beauty of them.
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I think when the person wrote them,
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they may have had one interpretation,
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but it's not contingent on us getting that interpretation
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to like it or resonate with it or feel it.
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In some ways, the best art is open enough
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where the artist gets to have their experience
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and then the audience gets to have their experience
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when they listen and they don't have to be the same.
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And then it connects thousands
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or millions of people together.
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There's a togetherness of music when you share that music,
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when you're listening to stuff together, like in a car.
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First of all, the car is a sacred place.
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So I work in part on autonomous vehicles.
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And you start to think, well,
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what are the things you lose
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when the car stops being the central part of American life?
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The car ownership.
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It just feels like the car, when you're alone,
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it's like a therapist thing, session,
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because you get angry at other humans
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and then you get to like sit in your own anger and emotion.
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You get to listen to the song on a long road trip
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and remember, like run through your memories, the heartbreak.
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I don't know, the one that got away,
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but also like the beautiful moments, all of it.
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Yeah, and all of that in the car.
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Yeah, driving also serves another purpose.
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And it's one of the things that we can do
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that we have to pay attention enough not to crash,
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but typically can essentially run on autopilot enough
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where we could be thinking about something else
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or concentrating on something else.
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And the difference between concentrating on something
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or trying to solve a problem
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when you're solely trying to solve a problem
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versus when you have some little task
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that's keeping you occupied,
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I find if I have something slight to take care of,
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it frees a more creative side of my mind
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to better solve problems.
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You know, I'm kind of jealous of people
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that found that in painting, for example.
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They'll be drawing or painting and listening to,
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so that's the small task you do.
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You're coloring in the lines.
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It's like this gentle, peaceful, slow process
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that requires just a small fraction of your mind
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and then you can listen.
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Some people listen to podcasts that way.
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Some people listen to music that way.
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How do you free your mind?
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Yeah, running is one of them.
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There's a process.
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So most freeing of the mind for me
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has to go through a process of a bit of pain for a bit.
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So doing something difficult,
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so it's like an airplane taking off or something.
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So that's like, for example, running.
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The first few miles would just be,
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just first of all, the physical aspect,
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which is like, ah, you're so fat.
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You're out of shape.
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You're, this is the getting old, this, that.
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Okay, that slowly dissipates.
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And then the demons come in who are like,
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you should be getting this and that and this done.
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You haven't gotten it done.
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You're like breaking promises,
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all those kinds of voices coming in.
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And after that, maybe mile four,
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it's like, fuck it.
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You just run, run with the wind at a very slow pace,
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but with the wind, and then you could think.
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So it's the footsteps, the physical activity.
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Then you could deeply think about stuff, ideas,
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sort of design, whether it's program design stuff
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or like high level life decisions, all those kinds of things.
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I would say running.
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I used to build bridges from toothpicks.
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I used to be a thing.
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It's an engineering.
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I guess some people like glue together airplanes
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and stuff like that.
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But the bridges, it's such deeply honest work
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because at the end of it,
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you're gonna have to test that bridge
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and you're gonna see how good your work was.
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The little details, but also the big picture.
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Do you use glue or no?
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So it's not pure physics.
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It's materials engineering too.
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Because the way you want to do it is
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you actually split the wood as thin as possible
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and then glue it back together
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because the glue is really strong,
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except for the arches and things like that.
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So you're building arch bridges,
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which is a whole nother skill
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because you have to bend the wood.
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because the thing can hold thousands of times its weight.
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And then you get to watch it explode at a certain point
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from the pressure and when you do a really good job,
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it doesn't explode in a kind of some weak point
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that you didn't anticipate just kind of starts cracking.
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Everything cracks, everything explodes.
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It's just pieces fly everywhere.
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And it's literally hundreds of hours of work
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just explode in front of you.
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And that's a metaphor for life maybe.
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And it's all for nothing,
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except for the journey that you took to get there.
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And no one understands.
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Speaking of which, back to Nietzsche,
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these questions are ridiculous.
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So you're gonna have to try to figure out
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what the heck I'm trying to do here.
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So Nietzsche also said,
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a line I love, which is,
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and those who were seen dancing
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were thought to be insane
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by those who could not hear the music.
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Do you, Rick Rubin, ever feel crazy?
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Or maybe you're the one who's sane
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and everybody else is crazy.
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You know that the dancing, the joy of the music,
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of just feeling the music
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and everybody else just doesn't understand.
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And this doesn't have to be literally about music.
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This is about art, about creation.
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I would say I feel different
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and it's hard to say
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it's like which side of the equation is crazy, you know?
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Did you ever find a group of people
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that you get, they get you?
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Is that what producing is essentially?
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Is you try to find the moments
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when you just get each other?
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I would say there are definitely certain artists
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with certain temperaments.
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When you're around them,
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it feels like you can finish each other's sentences.
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You know, just see the world the same way.
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Comedians as well.
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And that's not essential for the two of you together
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creating something special.
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So it could be attention too?
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It could be anything.
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It could be any, there's no rules.
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It'd be like, think of it like a coach.
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A coach could bring what they have to bring
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to any talented individual
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and help them find their way.
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And sometimes the right coach for the right athlete
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really works and other times there's a mismatch.
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Have you seen the movie Whiplash?
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I saw it when it came out
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so I don't really remember it well, but I did see it.
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So there's a coach type of figure.
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Who is pushing a drummer to create,
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to grow as a musician, but also to create something special.
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I don't know if it's even special music skill wise,
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it's a special moment.
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I don't know what he's trying to create.
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From one perspective, it's just an abusive,
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a person who selfishly gets off on being abusive
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to those he's with.
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But from another perspective, the way I saw that movie,
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is it's just the two right humans finding each other
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at the right moment in life
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and risking destroying each other in the process,
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but maybe something beautiful will come of it.
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Do you think that's a toxic relationship?
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Or is there, does some of that movie resonate with you
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as that sometimes is required to create art?
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That kind of suffering.
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Well, there's suffering involved,
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but not that kind of suffering.
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There are some people who that's their process
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and that's whatever works.
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There's no right answers for anything involved in art.
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We're all trying experiments to find a way.
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And even for the things that I work on,
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I don't have a set way that I do anything.
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I come to every project blank
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I really listen to what the artist plays and says
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and through what they explain they wanna do,
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help find the best way to get there.
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Was it implicit in the movie
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that the mean teacher liked being a mean teacher?
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You said the way you described it was
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that he got off on treating people this way.
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Do we know that to be the case?
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I don't remember that in the movie.
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No, but we sometimes project that onto people,
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people who are really rough on students.
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You start to think, well, maybe,
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maybe that is fundamentally who they are
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and if it's fundamentally who they are,
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that there must be some pleasure in it
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or it's an addiction of some sort.
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But it could be also a deliberate choice
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made by the teacher.
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It also could be a lineage.
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Like in the Zen tradition,
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there are sort of the mean Roshi's
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who if you do something wrong, take a physical action.
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And it's just in the lineage,
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it's considered that's how you teach.
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I didn't come from that lineage.
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So I'm much more of a,
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I feel like it's more of a collaboration
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between people working together to make the best thing.
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It's not a boss slave relationship at all.
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It's much more of a let's find our way.
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And we agree at the beginning of the process
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that if either of us or any of us
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don't like what's happening, we say it.
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And the goal is to keep working
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till we get to a point where we're all really happy with it.
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It's like if we make something
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that an artist likes and I don't like,
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or that I like and they don't like,
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we haven't gone far enough.
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In terms of lineage,
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the ones that seek destruction
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and the ones that seek happiness
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all come from the same lineage.
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We all came from fish.
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So somewhere in you, deep down there,
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there's the other stuff too.
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It's just that you haven't been yet, by the way,
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because you said every new project,
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including maybe starting today,
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is an opportunity to channel, to plug into something
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that was always there
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and you haven't gotten a chance to plug into.
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You mentioned listening.
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How do you listen to a person?
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How do you hear a person?
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When you first come in, like we just met,
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what's the analysis happening?
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But I mean, with me is one thing.
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I'm an artist of sorts.
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I program and I'm just, I'm human, I guess.
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I guess we're all creating art.
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How do you see, like, how do I bring out?
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So for people who don't know,
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I mean, obviously everyone knows
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that you've produced some of the greatest records ever,
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but the way I see that is you just brought out the best
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in a lot of interesting artists.
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And so in order to bring out the best in them,
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you have to understand them.
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You have to hear the music of their soul,
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hopefully not being too romantic here,
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but just like, is there something you can say
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of how difficult that is, if there's a process,
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if there's tricks, if it's luck?
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I think it starts with this, again, coming in blank,
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like not having any preconceived ideas,
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being open and really listening,
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listening and not thinking about what you're gonna say next
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or what your opinion is or any, you know,
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not basically being a recorder
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and just hearing what comes in.
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And then once you hear what comes in,
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processing that information
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and trying our best to do that
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without any of the beliefs that we might have
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to impact what that is.
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If I ask you a question, I don't wanna hear what,
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I don't wanna listen to you
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and have any reaction happening when you're speaking.
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I wanna be as neutral as possible.
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For me, my goal is not to form an opinion,
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it's to understand.
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So if anything, I would draw you out further
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and just ask questions to really understand.
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And if you say, or if you say something
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that somehow triggers me in a way that that's, you know,
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I wonder how he came to that.
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I wouldn't challenge you, I would ask,
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like, how did you find that?
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You know, how did you get to that place?
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From a place of curiosity, you would try to figure out.
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Yeah, I wanna understand who the person is.
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And through questioning, we can usually get there.
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Or through just spending time together,
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you find out who the person is.
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What about finding out and figuring out
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how to then take the next steps
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of bringing out the best in them?
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Like, is it just trial and error?
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Like, let's try this.
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It's definitely trial and error.
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It's always trial and error.
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Are you afraid of making a mistake?
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Like, let's add this instrument,
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let's remove this instrument.
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Let's add this line, let's remove this line.
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And let's be open.
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So one of the, we don't really have rules,
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but one of the agreements in the studio is
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any idea that anyone has will always demonstrate it,
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will always try it.
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Because I can describe to you an idea
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and you can think, that's a terrible idea,
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let's not do that.
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And then I can play you the idea
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and then you can say, oh, that's really good.
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And it's completely different because we,
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when we hear, when we're told something,
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we have to imagine what that is
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and the way you see something and imagine it
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and the way I see something and imagine it
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are completely different.
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So you say a thing and now there's two humans
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that play that thing in their mind differently,
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in their imagination, and then there's a cool creative step
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and when you actually do it,
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to see how it differs in the imagination,
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and then the difference or the commonality
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will be like an exciting little discovery together.
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Well, so many groups of people
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making things together in a room,
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one person will suggest something
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and someone else in the room say,
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ah, that doesn't sound like a good idea,
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let's not do that, and then they move on.
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The testing of every idea is really important
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and that's how you get to see,
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oh, that's not at all what I thought it was gonna be.
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Happens to me all the time, I know,
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because someone will suggest, why don't we do it like this?
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And I'll think, that sounds bad,
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and then I'll think, okay, let's try it,
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and then we hear it, and then eight times out of 10,
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it's nothing like I imagined and great.
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And then you try not to have an ego
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about the fact that you thought
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it was not a good idea in your head.
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There can't be any ego in this.
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It doesn't, if everyone's there
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with the purpose of making the best thing we can,
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there's nothing else.
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There are no, there can't be any boundaries to that.
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So there's a moment I saw with,
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I know you don't love talking
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about previous things you've done,
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but it's cool to dive in there every once in a while.
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I'm fine to talk about anything.
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To sample it, anything?
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I have this pain I gotta talk now.
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I'll think of something ridiculous
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that would make you change your mind.
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You mentioned, I saw a video of you with Jay Z
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at Workaround 99 Problems where you suggested acapella,
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opening the song with acapella,
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just no instruments, just voice.
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That to me, I mean, that's one of the characteristics
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of the things, of the ways you've brought out
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the best in artists is doing less.
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Sort of the tending towards simplicity in some kind of way.
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So that choice of acapella is really interesting
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because I could see a lot of people think
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that that's a bad idea,
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but it turned out to be a really powerful idea.
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Can you maybe talk about the simplicity,
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how to find simplicity, why you find simplicity is beautiful.
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It does appear to be beautiful.
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Yeah, I don't know where it comes from.
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It has been with me from the beginning of my work,
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the very first album I ever produced,
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the credit I took was reduced by me
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instead of produced by me for that reason.
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I like the idea of getting to the essential
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and I have a better idea now that I've done it for a while,
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but at the time it was purely an instinctual thing.
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And part of it is a sonic, there's a sonic benefit,
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which is the less elements you have, you can hear each
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of the ones that are there and they can sound better.
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And the less there are, the more space they could have
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around them and the more you can hear their personality.
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If you were to record 10 people playing the same guitar part
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and you listened to it, it would sound like guitar.
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And if you record one person playing a guitar part,
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it sounds like a person playing the guitar.
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It's different than just guitar.
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And often in the studio, the idea of building upon things
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and adding layers to thicken, to make it sound bigger,
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sometimes the more things you add, the smaller it gets.
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So a lot of it is counterintuitive
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until you just in practice see what works.
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Try it, to try removing stuff until it's just right.
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It's the Einstein thing, make it as simple as possible,
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That's such a, like finding a stopping place,
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just keep chopping away and chopping away.
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Yeah, there's something we also like to do
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called the ruthless edit, which is,
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let's say you're at a point where it can work for anything,
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but I'll give you the example with an album.
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We've recorded 25 songs.
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We think the album is gonna have 10.
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Instead of picking our favorite 10,
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we limit it to what are the five or six
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that we can't live without.
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So going past even the goal to get to the real heart of it
link |
and then see, okay, we have these five or six
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that we can't live without.
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Now, what would we add to that
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that makes it better and not worse?
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It's just, it puts you in a different frame
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when you start with building instead of removing.
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And you might find that there's nothing you need to add.
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Sometimes, sometimes something happens
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when you get to the real essence.
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Then when you start adding things back,
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it becomes clear that it was just supposed to be
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this tight little thing.
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Can I ask you like a therapy session question?
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So you mentioned somewhere that one way
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to kind of think about music to get into music
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is to look at the top like 100 albums of all time
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and just go down the list and like,
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just take it all in like one piece of artwork.
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So I was doing that for a while.
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It's a cool experiment,
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because unfortunately I have to admit
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I've gotten lazy and stopped taking in albums as albums.
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And I looked at one interesting top 100 list,
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top 500 actually, which is put together by Rolling Stone.
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And they put, this is the therapy session part,
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and this has to do with simplicity too.
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They put Marvin Gaye's What's Going On at number one.
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So I'd like to maybe get your opinion on that choice.
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The reason that Marvin Gaye is really interesting,
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it'd actually be cool to play What's Going On in a second,
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but when you just listen to his like acapella,
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just listen to his voice, it is really good.
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Like people, it makes me wonder if it's possible
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to pull off like most of his songs with no instruments.
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Like in many parts, there's so much soul
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in just Mercy, Mercy, Me, What's Going On.
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There's so many songs that you could just be like,
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I wonder if you could just like, just go raw,
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or maybe in parts, or maybe do what you do with Jay Z,
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just open up with nothing.
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Anyway, there's something so powerful
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to a great soulful voice.
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Do you mind if I play it real quick?
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This is probably one of my favorite songs.
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I mean, it's up there.
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Hey, what's happening?
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What's up, brother?
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Hey, how you doing?
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There's too many of you to cry.
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Brother, brother, brother.
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There's far too many of you to die.
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there's some just very subtle backing vocals
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father father we don't need to escalate
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i wonder who the father he's talking about is
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oh that's interesting i mean i have so for people who don't know his his own father ended up
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uh killing marvin gay yeah i mean that one is really pain i mean for a lot of people your
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relationship with your father your mother i mean there's different dynamics but there's
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it's almost like part of life is resolving some kind of complex puzzle you have
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or the people you love the people close to you or the people who are not there all those kinds
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of things that's so much pain in that we don't need to escalate father father i never thought
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if it's i always thought it's his father directly yeah i don't get that it could be but i don't i
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feel like it's a more um masculine spirituality like a father figure or just broadly some kind
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of spirituality could be like god father god mother god you know like could be i don't know
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but there's there's so much it's like both hope and melancholy you seeing war is not the answer
link |
it's like you you don't tell your father war is not your your blood father war is not the answer
link |
it's strange conversation it's a bigger conversation they're not personal don't you
link |
think it feels like war if one is personal what's the difference between is the war is personal too
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it's only leaders think about war in a geopolitical sense yeah when people that fight wars you lose
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your brothers you lose i mean you death is just right there so it might feel just like that but
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yeah there is a dance between like the personal and like talking to the entirety of the society
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it's like john lennon imagine like also a song where is that is that a hopeful is that cynical
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is it like melancholy like heartbroken like you you hope you wish things would be a certain way
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and they're not yeah i don't know i don't know john lennon is giving up on the world in imagine
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yeah i don't know you know it's a it's an interesting question there's another uh
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john lennon lyric um in let me think of what it is take me a second
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and different songs keep coming into my head the one that i'm looking and you keep pressing next
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um across the universe um nothing's going to change my world and when i hear that
link |
i hear it as hopeless but i don't think i don't believe that that's
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well it may be how he meant it but i don't think that's how it's normally taken
link |
and it's also the taker is important i'm generally optimistic and hopeful so i i always like look for
link |
the hope and the actually the harshest love uh heartbreak songs are always somehow hopeful to me
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that's a love song uh to me like a song about losing love is is a song about the great capacity
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for love in the human heart that's what i hear so to me losing love is exciting because it's
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like that means you really cared that means you felt something you feel something you can sit in
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that pain and that pain is a reminder what it means to be human when you're that um what is it uh
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we're just listening uh the only man who could have reached me was the son of a preacher man
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so see um it's like that early love or something or partially sexual or whatever that's not as
link |
interesting to me it's fun it's great but it's not as interesting to me as it is to me
link |
it's fun it's great but it's that heartbreak that's the reminder that it can go deep
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although that's a damn good song have you ever heard the uh detroit mix of the marvin gay album
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no call it up how by far better mind blowing i just heard it recently blew my mind
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oh wow reverb distant
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there's far too many of you
link |
it feels like it's all around the room more
link |
to bring some loving here today
link |
more voices more voices
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he's layering his own vocals
link |
just like there's multiple people singing
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don't punish me with brutality talk to me so you can see oh what's going on that's beautiful yeah
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seems to have more energy if you if you listen to the whole album even even though you just said
link |
you don't listen albums anymore the detroit mix of the whole album changes the album a lot
link |
i mean that that felt uh so that's the opposite of a cappella i would say yes because it's saying
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it's it's um there's layers there's um and that maybe i don't know if you remember but
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if memory serves me uh correct here he produces this own album here marvin gay was the producer
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on this i believe i believe so and this one sounds more like it's a get together and the
link |
whole album sounds more like a get together where it's a group of people in a room playing music
link |
together whereas the album version sounds more like an out like a recording this sounds less
link |
like a recording and a little more like a party now you had a series of conversations with paul
link |
mccartney which is amazing that people should should watch but is is there this is continuing
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our therapy session is there a case to be made that uh what's going on is number one album above
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the beatles uh white album or abbey road above pet sounds can you still manage case there's
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there's always a case i mean there's always a case every there's no uh in reality in art there is no
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um there's no metric that makes sense so um you could put numbers on things but it's like
link |
is this apple better than this peach like it's not really a fair comparison but if you just had
link |
to keep one to represent the human species that's the way i think to the aliens so i think it's a
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very personal decision i don't i think you can make you can make your choice to represent the
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human species and i'll make mine you know well i would pick the beatles over the beach boys so
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that's my if i became dictator of the world i was talking to the aliens but i do think that
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aliens but i don't know the full historical context to the impact of the music i don't
link |
know if that's something to consider like this kind of thought experiment of imagine what it was
link |
like back then to create to go into the studio to do such interesting work in the studio
link |
as opposed to like listening to just as a pop song almost from because i've never been able
link |
to understand uh beach boys god only knows the song god only knows god only knows but all of
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it the album the pet sounds just in my room was uh in my room that's all um is that what's your
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favorite on the album that sounds album that sounds um the opening track do you mind if i
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play it please it's it's it's too fun that's part of their trip though the you uh you open
link |
the heart with the fun it's possible original mono and stereo mix versions i don't know what's
link |
the opening song wouldn't it be nice yeah that's the song
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we could say good night and stay together wouldn't that be nice wouldn't it be nice
link |
wake up together but we're not there's heartbreak in this one too
link |
still to me like george harris like um uh is that the way that album while my guitar gently weeps
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i mean that um with the beatles it's so hard to depending on the day i'll i'll say a very different
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song that's my favorite song but i often return to while my guitar gently weeps is my favorite song
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spectacular spectacular anything george harrison honestly something something in the way she moves
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the bet i what would you classify that there's like several beatle songs categories of beatles
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categories of beatles songs so that's like the melancholy love songs or ballads or something like
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that um yesterday let it be what's do you have favorites so from your like how have you changed
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as a man as a human being as a musician and music producer ever having done that lengthy interaction
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with with mccartney hmm anytime you're around someone who's such a hero and you spend time
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with them and they're a human being it helps put perspective on everything you know that they're
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just human that well obviously i mean every everyone's just human and um but i remember
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the first time i got to see paul mccartney play live it was in a stadium of 70 000 people
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and he started playing and i started crying and i couldn't believe i was in even with 70 000 people
link |
i couldn't believe i that this man walks the earth and that i'm in the same place as him
link |
and he's the person who wrote that and played that and now he's here playing it for us
link |
it's mind blowing that's the voice that's the it's overwhelming is it inspiring or is it um
link |
like because sometimes when you have and i've gotten a chance to me i mean i love people in
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general like every every person is fascinating to me but yeah when you've been a fan for a long time
link |
and you meet a person uh sort of uh i'll just remove present company is you um it's like oh
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they're just human so there's both it's both inspiring that just a simple human can achieve
link |
such beautiful things but it's also like almost wishing there were gods moving in around us it's
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it's somehow peaceful this is it's more uh comforting to know that there's you know uh
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there's bigger fish i'm just a small fish and then there's bigger fish and it will take care
link |
of the ocean for us i think we're all capable of being big fish i don't think that there are
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special people i don't think it it's like that i i would make a case so the variety
link |
of artists that you worked with and brought the best out of it does seem the year out of this
link |
world so do you think you would know like if you're the same kind of species maybe you're
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just a meat vehicle and you're channeling ideas from somewhere else i feel like i'm channeling
link |
ideas from somewhere else 100 but i think have you asked questions about where from i believe
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we i believe we all are though you know i believe we are um we're vehicles for information that when
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it's ready to come through it comes through and the people who have good antennas pick up the
link |
signal but um if i'm sure you've had an experience in your life where you've had an idea for something
link |
and you've not acted on it and eventually someone else does it and it's not because they're doing
link |
and it's not because they're doing it because you had the idea and they stole your idea it's because
link |
the time has come for that idea and if you don't do it someone else is going to it's
link |
being broadcast by whatever the source whatever the source is uh yeah i tend to
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i tend to see humans as not quite special in that way yeah it's it's different kinds of antennas
link |
walking around listening to ideas and ideas that are i like the the notion of uh richard dawkins of memes
link |
or it's kind of the ideas of the organisms and they're just using our brains to multiply to
link |
to select to compete to to evolve and humans we really want to hold on to the
link |
specialness of our body of our mind but it's it's really the ideas so for a group when was born
link |
two centuries ago you wouldn't be a music producer you'd be or i mean maybe but you have an antenna
link |
and if no signal is coming in uh or you'd be hearing a potentially a different signal
link |
is there um i think we all have our own antenna for whatever it is that we you know maybe not
link |
everyone has tuned into their antenna to see what it is that their strength and bringing through is
link |
i'm lucky in that it found me because i didn't know that it was a i didn't even know this was a job
link |
i sometimes wonder i mean a lot of young people a lot of people wonder like what's the purpose
link |
and the the specs of my antenna what am i put on this earth to do like if um you know i i
link |
can live a thousand lives there's so many trajectories and imagine the greatest possible
link |
trajectory that reveals the the most beautiful thing i can possibly create in this world live
link |
the most beautiful way uh what is that i feel like that's a good exercise to think about
link |
um because it's also liberating to think that you can do anything i mean that
link |
um more and more i suppose that's kind of life it's like society is pushing conformity on you
link |
you know i thought i i had my own flavor of conformity i thought i'm supposed to be following
link |
and then early on i would say like in the late 20s you realize wait a minute you don't have to
link |
tell you don't have to do what teachers tell you to do what parents tell you to do what
link |
society tells you do you can like um i would never wear a suit if i listened to like my colleagues
link |
and community who think a suit is like the symbol of uh what is it a symbol of conformity actually
link |
which is hilarious but uh it's actually a kind of rebellion and everything else like of that nature
link |
doing doing these silly podcasts like um i have a question i have to ask sure because you brought
link |
up the suit yeah uh do you wear the suit is this your daily uniform outside of podcasting so uh for
link |
the longest time it was some kind of suit and then recently i mean coinciding with going to texas
link |
there's a i'm such a loner i'm an introvert and there's a bit of a hiding from the world when i
link |
wear other stuff i really want to um to not make fame recognition
link |
money all those things a motivation at all and the world kind of wants you to make those motivations
link |
not not the world but i would say maybe the western world and maybe america maybe a capitalist system
link |
does but that's a choice to buy into that or not right it takes a brave person a person of character
link |
to not buy in and i'm i'm like a like a baby deer trying to find his legs you don't have to
link |
buy in because i love people and i think i'm kind of an idiot and so when other people
link |
say do this and do that it uh there's a there is a pressure there it's actually very difficult to
link |
not listen necessarily to the advice of others and yet keep yourself fragile and open to the world
link |
it's easy to be like i'm always right you know just kind of sticking a ground but if you want
link |
to be like vulnerable if you want to connect with people and just wear your heart on your sleeve
link |
then you're going to listen to them i mean that's the double edged sword of it and uh but then again
link |
that pain like if you don't let it destroy you can grow grow from that has fame affected you at all
link |
did you unplug from the system at some point same i've always been sort of removed i don't
link |
feel like i'm part of any system do you feel famous um i'm aware that when i go out people
link |
will you know say nice things to me which is great but that's about it that's about as far as
link |
but it doesn't affect your art about your creativity or your thoughts like when you're
link |
sitting alone and thinking about the world it can't it's a destructive force the the thing
link |
the reason that you're who you are and the reason that you're finding the success you're finding
link |
is because you've been true to yourself to get to that stage so to start changing that
link |
to conform to either conform to someone else's idea what you should be doing
link |
it just seems like uh it doesn't make sense do you have a sense of who you are because i don't
link |
necessarily have a i don't know i i know that i really like making good things and i know that i'm
link |
um crazy about it in that um it's like an obsession and i want things to be as good as
link |
they could be whatever it is and if i'm if i finish a music project and i have a window of
link |
time where i'm not working on music i might be moving the furniture around in the house you know
link |
i'm always looking for a prod a creative outlet to find a way to make something better or there
link |
was a period of time where i was in a weird corporate situation that was uh
link |
that didn't allow me to flourish and i turned i focused the creativity and on myself and i
link |
lost a bunch of weight and changed my life and so that was the kind of art like the you've gone
link |
through a whole process of losing weight getting in shape getting healthy that was a kind of creative
link |
act it certainly was it wasn't an intentional creative act but i had a lot of energy and i just
link |
a series of events happened i read a book at the time that was my heaviest i weighed about 318
link |
pounds yeah and i'd never been i'd been sedentary my whole life basically laying on a couch working
link |
on music so i've never been physically active in my life and i read a book about a guy named stew
link |
middleman a runner who ran a thousand miles in 11 days and i thought wow i you know get out of
link |
breath walking to the corner and another human being can run a thousand miles in 11 days i feel
link |
like i have bad information you know i'm doing clearly i'm doing something wrong and um and i
link |
reached out to a person that stew mentioned in the book phil maffatone who's a legend i i really
link |
appreciate him as well he's math 180 method too he's such an interesting i think he focuses on
link |
heart rate uh training and he was the first person to talk about um essentially a
link |
low carbs paleo yeah keto diet 40 40 years ago for a person who's going to be healthy who can
link |
exercise and actually perform at an early level he's the first person when i um you know talked
link |
about heart rate training him and other endurance athletes he influenced he gave me permission to
link |
like run slower yeah it's the first time i realized oh i can run long distances if i just
link |
run slower and then take that seriously and i actually fell in love with running very much so
link |
because for me everyone's different but for me the love of running happens in the longer distances
link |
yeah did you read born to run great book amazing book there is something special about running
link |
and everybody has their own their own journey with it and even ultra marathon running those
link |
kinds of things it's a it is like many journeys one that can pull you in like you won't be the
link |
same person after and i i try to be deliberate about making deliberate about making choices
link |
after which you'll not be the same person and so i'm nervous about like the ultra marathon running
link |
world i have to talk to you about johnny cash i mean when people ask me what my
link |
favorite musical thing is of all time i'm
link |
you know it's a very difficult question to answer of course but i'm pretty quick
link |
if i'm not allowed to pick anything by tom ways i'm pretty quick to say hurt by johnny cash
link |
the performance the whatever you call it whatever the heck that is because that's
link |
not just a song covered by an artist that's a human being at the end of their life
link |
that the rawness of that the i mean just the there's also a music video which for a lot of
link |
people adds a lot to it uh for me just the music alone is i mean the guitar every choice on that
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see the the few things i've heard about it it seemed like almost accidental i mean like little
link |
subtle choices here and there can you maybe comment on that um to to the degree i i think
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you had a huge role in sort of bringing johnny cash back from from a different part of his life
link |
it's like bringing something out that wasn't there before and it was it was it was incredible
link |
it was a celebration of a really special musician and a totally new kind of celebration now hurt is
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just one of the songs that's that's a that's an amazing celebration of johnny cash but hurt is
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like at the at the at the peak of that so what was that like putting that song together okay maybe
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maybe uh it might be nice to listen to it because i freaking love that song and as a guitarist
link |
i just the simplicity of it uh it seems like every choice contributes to the greatness of the song
link |
simple it's crisp but it's dark too
link |
i hurt myself today it's one of the greatest opening lines of any song
link |
to see if i still feel yeah i'm talking about the lyrics i don't even mean the performance the words
link |
but those words out of Trent Reznor are not the same they have a different meaning
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coming out of johnny cash's mouth
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try to kill it all away but i remember everything
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what have i become what have i become my sweetest friend
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written probably for a young man i think he was 20 when he wrote it
link |
the way the guitarist played the choice of instrument the layers there
link |
the uh the freedom to give him to use the voice that's um fading it's not fading it's changing
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maybe he's losing some aspects of his voice and it's it's almost like shaking a little bit
link |
and it's a little bit out of tune in parts
link |
uh how much of that was deliberate how much was like how do you give johnny castor freedom to
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to do that how do you find that together is there any insights you can give i think it's a it's a
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case almost of like the right pairing the right role with the right actor you could say the the
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song lyrics that the reason we chose the song was because the lyrics purely about the lyrics
link |
and at that point in time both johnny and i would send each other songs of possible
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ideas to record and um that was one that i sent him and he didn't respond to initially i sent i
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would send him see at that time we would burn cds and i would send him like cd of 20 songs or 25
link |
songs and then and he would send them to me he burned a cd for johnny cash and you sent him
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uh of different songs of like songs to consider recording yeah um and we would send these back
link |
and forth and then that i had hurt on one of the ones that i sent him and he didn't respond and
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usually if he didn't respond we didn't go back to it you know and that one i remember i sent it
link |
again and i put it first on the next on the next cd and um and when when we spoke about when he
link |
listened to cd again he didn't respond i said check out that first song and i really feel like that one
link |
could be good what did you see in that song it's the lyrics it's the lyrics because i feel like
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nobody there's very few people in the world that would see these lyrics in johnny cash's mouth and
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think this is a good idea including for president yeah i know that trant was trant had trepidations
link |
in the evening um but if you listen to the words if you forget the music and if you get what if
link |
you forget what nine ish nail sounds like and you just read it like a poem and then you imagine
link |
a 70 year old man reading these lyrics it'll be it'll be profound it's profound so that was the
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based on lyrics that started the journey and then at this point in time johnny was not in great
link |
health and uh sometimes i would go to nashville and record with him at his house sometimes he
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would come to california but he was coming to california less regularly and because there was
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there were so many songs we wanted to try he would start sometimes recording just a straight
link |
acoustic version like you'd have someone play guitar he would sing and they would send those
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to me and we would discuss like is this one to build on um and that was when we said i don't
link |
want to record this one until we're together i feel like we should do this one together
link |
so on the next trip to california we recorded it at my at my old house
link |
i mean all the songs we recorded felt special so i can't say this one felt special
link |
but lyrically it just it's more the the lyrics have such a profound
link |
sense of regret what have i become yeah and to hear when you're 20 years old talking about regret
link |
yeah it's heartbreaking but it's heartbreaking in a different way because you have your whole
link |
life to figure it out when you're looking back over your life at the end of your life with regret
link |
it's brutal yeah it's brutal so that was the initial spark of doing it and then we when we
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recorded it i believe it was um two guitar players if i remember correctly maybe even three um smoky
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hormel matt sweeney and mike campbell i believe and ben montench was playing the piano in my living
link |
room as we were doing it and we cut the basic track and with johnny singing and then johnny
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probably sang over that basic track a few more times and then we comped his vocal and then
link |
built up the drama and you didn't get to the part but at the end of the song it gets very loud the
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music gets very loud it's subtle because it's not anything that takes your ear and the vocal is so
link |
powerful that you don't really think about what's going on but it's building the whole time it's
link |
building and it even gets distorted at the end it gets really uh like over overpowering and that's
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part of the emotion of it you know it's uh i hear almost anger and frustration
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and it just rings out the clean vocal i mean it's so simple so incredible and it's interesting to
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have a young man's lyrics in in an old johnny cash voice and heart and mind i had um are you
link |
a fan of tom waits of course uh tom waits when he was younger had his this is a song called martha
link |
but there's a bunch of songs he's written when he was young it's like how does a young man
link |
have that like melancholy wisdom the song martha is about uh an older man calling a woman he used
link |
to love that she's now married and he's married and they're having that conversation they haven't
link |
spoken for 30 years and they realize that there's still love there and it could have been a different
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life a different world where they could have been together and here's like a 23 year old tom waits
link |
writing so beautifully about something that's very uh i've had a lot of people like tell me how
link |
real that uh as an older person looking back at that love that you had and realizing it wasn't
link |
it was really it's still there inklings of that love are still there i think there's a um
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when a young person writes a sad song
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they almost seem more willing to go to a more hopeless place
link |
because they have they have a so much time ahead and older artists tend to want to look at the
link |
bright side of things which which also i think comes from the wisdom of aging it's it's a more
link |
realistic position so it's not uncommon for younger people to write i think even in the
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beatles you'll see like they're very heavy lyrics um middle to late era beatles which is still you
link |
know they're in their 20s you know early 20s i guess wow that's hard to think about so much
link |
accomplished unbelievable and they they went through the full journey from fun to darkness
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in the span of a few years uh you mentioned lyrics um so you've obviously produced
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albums with incredible lyrics i think you've mentioned the interesting characteristics of
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hip hop of rap is that you're writing poetry to rhythm versus writing poetry to melody so
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that's like one way to think about it and i'm a fan i mean tom waits let it go i'm a fan of
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poetry period is there something um about highlighting the poetry of it the power of
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words as you did with with heart if uh like if i have to play it again it's one uh a tom waits song
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that's like less than a minute long that i always go back to it's one i really love and
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has just a few lines it's called i want you and all it is is him saying i want you
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i want you this is a 22 year old Tom Waits
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give you stars above
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the sun on the brightest day
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giving you all my love
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if only you would see that i want you you you
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you all i want is you you you and then he hums for 20 more seconds beautiful so so
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simple man that young man like low and but for people who don't know tom waits you should
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definitely listen to him and his voice sounds very different now and it's interesting to see
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the evolution of a human voice the the artist over time because that's a young like boy like voice
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hopeful less clever less witty more simple that simplicity is there and he's not i mean that
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takes guts to be so simple i would say lyrically and uh musically is there um sort of laying that
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out on the table is there ways to that you like to highlight the voice the lyrics or there's no one
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rule so do you what is the thing that makes music special is it the rhythm the melody the
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uh or is ultimately the lyrics are always there or the idea you just asked me five different
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questions i don't care i'll just get that it's not about you you don't want the answers i'll listen
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uh i look forward to your comments the internet okay uh you have the greatest producer of all
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time in front of you and you can't shut the hell up that's right friends uh is but you do value
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lyrics is there a way to celebrate lyrics i value lyrics if the lyrics are important i'm not a lyric
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person i'm very much uh whatever the thing that makes the thing good is the thing that i'm drawn
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to for me um for a long time lyrics meant very little i would say from me really yes yes from
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the earliest days for your right to party beastie boys yeah it was it was fun i thought they were
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good lyrics but it wasn't what was important i mean it was in a in a almost a novelty way
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not in a serious way early in my career i was much more focused on the rhythm first the rhythm
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and i would if the lyrics weren't good enough i would be aware of it but it wasn't the driving
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force for me and eventually over time then melody became an important piece which it
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wasn't in the beginning and then uh lyrics became more important over time but it's always been a
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always changing what what draws me in and one of the things i found as it relates to lyrics that
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that can give a lyric a different power has to do with rhythm where if there's no drum
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um the lyrics tend to mean more
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so earlier what you were saying about if it was just acapella
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you felt you felt marvin gay in a different way hearing the acapella
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can you comment on i mean in terms of one of the greatest albums ever why does it sound so raw
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her voice she's just a great singer but this is that you're not doing anything else you're doing
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the uh there's there's there's strumming and then there's just a single beat
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and then it builds
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starting in my heart
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this gets simpler but it feels like it's a giant orchestra
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we almost had it all the scars of your love they leave me breathless i can't help feeling
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there's backing vocals
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the anger i love it
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i just there's something about uh such a powerful voice and the instruments not getting in the way
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i mean the same with the with hurt and johnny cash it is there um why does it sound so
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like raw it's the same as hurt there's a it feels like you're in the room with them it feels like
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they're not even singing they're like uh they're literally freshly mad and angry i think those are
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the things that make great singers sound like great singers it's not it's not anything that
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that's happening in the studio i mean we're i would say the only thing that us in the studio
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can do is kind of get out of the way and not not ruin it you know it's like that's that's
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what comes through of these these people i should also before i forget there is a lot of song choices
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on that cd i would love to see the full options on the cd that you sent to johnny cash that i love
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so solitary man is one of my favorite choices made there uh is it is that a neil damon song
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it's funny you talk about them as songs because i tend to i tend to listen more to albums than
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songs so if you really you're that's what you're doing your head you're pulling up the album
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essentially no i'm like i'm going to that song but i don't know i've never listened to that song
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but i know that when that when that song comes up in the sequence of the album
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um it has a really powerful effect in me let's see what it does if you just started
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if you could read my so interesting wow
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i could tell just like an old time movie about a ghost from a wishing well in a castle dark
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or a fortress strong with chains around my feet you know that ghost is me
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and i will never be set free as long as there's a ghost that you can see
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that's beautiful such a beautiful choice beautiful melody such a beautiful melody
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and haunting words sung so simply i i have to um i mean so uh i was born in the soviet union
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when when you when you're growing up uh there's a few bands that kind of i mean they're probably
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forbidden still but they seep in and you get like uh bootlegged and and they somehow take over the
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culture of the young of the young folk such as myself so uh on the metal side it was metallica
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and iron maiden and uh on the i don't know what you call them but beastie boys i remember hearing
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uh fight for your right and it was just like for some reason that stuck as it did for a lot of
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people in russia it's like wow america is when you get to say fuck you to the man the rebellion the
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freedom um i probably heard it uh a few years after it was released because it kind of it
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dissipates to the culture you get the bootlegged i mean it's hard to get your hands on but i just
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remember me i i wanted to kind of bring that up because it was such a personally important song
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to me and yet probably you didn't even think of that you probably thought of it as its role in
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the culture here in the united states like in terms of musically but i was you know 20 21 years old
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and we just well you were that kid too right we're just making fun songs for our friends there was
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no there was no uh expectation that's just a fun song yeah no one thought we never imagined anybody
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would like any of it one of the greatest albums ever yeah i have to it's i love this so much i
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just remember this is america i didn't even know i didn't even understand the lyrics to be honest
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and the lyrics are ridiculous
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so hearing that and hearing metallica master puppets i was like i knew i'm gonna have to end
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up in america one day i mean maybe now that i'm more mature or maybe a little bit more mature i
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realized like that was kind of the longing for freedom it felt like at least at the time if this
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is allowed that anything is allowed yeah and i think that uh the rebellion of it the uh is i
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guess it's also fun i just i just loved it is there if you look back to that because you're
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you're uh uh i mean you were that person not just the producer it feels like yes and no like it was
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even to us then it was still like satirical you know it wasn't oh absolutely but isn't like music
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in part like you're dancing in the line is part satirical part serious in in the sense like you're
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losing yourself in the satire like when you have anytime you go over the top isn't that part of the
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or is this is it explicitly satirical you make it fun i mean girls there's a lot of
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ridiculous songs in that album i don't know i just think it's it was definitely to make each
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other laugh like we were trying to make each other laugh we weren't trying to make a point we're
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trying to make each other laugh but that person how's that person different than the person today
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in you the the person that produced that i wouldn't say so different it's like it really is
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that that um i like things that make me laugh you know i like ridiculous things it's the same person
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still i think so that is a strange just how many incredible i mean i wouldn't i don't think i would
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make that today but i understand why we made it when we did it's uh in the vocabulary of of um
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ridiculous that would make sense to do you know for the right artist today could make something
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ridiculous and gives you that feeling i mean there's just a sense when you make so many
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many different albums then you look back at that creation and it can feel like a different person
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created that but you're making it seem like if you travel back in time or maybe do a memory replay
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you'll be able to hang out with the with a teenage and the 20s recruitment i think yeah i i don't
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i don't think i was so different honestly that's hilarious it's funny i ran into someone um recently
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in costa rica who i hadn't seen in a long time and who i knew from the new york days when
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those days and um and we spent a couple of hours talking and she said you're exactly
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the same person that you were then so i have a short you know a recent confirmation that that's
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the case that's beautiful was it tim ferris asked you about like who's the most successful person
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you know that's the definition of success i would say it's exactly the same person you haven't lost
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yourself and or rather you found yourself early on i would say there there are aspects of me that
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have changed for sure um but i but i can't say that it's that it's necessarily better it's
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different um at that i would say at that time i was more confident than i am now and i'm very
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confident now but then i had an unrealistic um confidence and i think now it's a little more
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um based in reality at that point in time i had never been depressed and then once you go through
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a depression you well some people i know in my case and when i went through depression afterwards
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i was a different person than i was before and i and i feel more um grounded now than i did then
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and i probably relate to the artists who so many of the artists i work with suffer so many artists
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suffer because that's part of what makes an artist great is their level of sensitivity
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that this the same thing that makes uh an artist uncomfortable other people don't feel at all
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people don't feel at all the time you were depressed what was the darkest moments of your
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life what took you there how did you get out it was triggered by a person making a comment about
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something to do with work that didn't matter you know it was like uh to anyone else they would
link |
hear that and it would just be like okay we'll deal with it next week whatever but for some
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reason i took it in a way that um i felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me even beyond
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the rational part of it of understanding you know even after the problem that came up was solved
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it somehow undermined something in me and made me feel very vulnerable in a way that i hadn't felt
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before and it spiraled how did you get out i did a lot of different kinds of therapy i did um
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starting with alternative therapies i was seeing i would say between seven and eight
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doctors and or therapists a week um acupuncture uh talk therapy um herbs or any any possible
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modality tried everything for a long time and um and and nothing seemed to have an impact and then
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finally um i'm wary of taking any western medicine i'm not a drug taker and or drinker
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partier in any way and um i found a a psychopharmacologist who was a psychic
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but because she was a psychic i was okay to see her because she's like i'll i'll do i'll listen
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to a psychic yeah but i'm not going to listen to a psychopharmacologist but the fact that she had
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the the psychic uh that made her fit into my world view and um and she recommended antidepressant which
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went terribly wrong in the first night that i took it and then i that set me on a journey
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of looking for the right antidepressant which was a long and painful process heck of a journey
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every one that i took made me sick everyone and then finally i don't know five months later six
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months later i found the magic one that worked for me and it um it shifted me out of the depression
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i took it for my camera was six months or a year and then weaned off and was okay and then i had
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another event some years later i think i took it again for a short period of time and got out of it
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and i've not needed it since were you able to kind of introspect the triggers that led to the events
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is there something or is it random events of life i think it's more that um
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because of the way that i grew up i never had to deal with much controversy
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ah and um when i when i was challenged i didn't have any ability to deal with it
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it's like um you know jonathan hight talks about it's like that so you've actually also mentioned
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like business sometimes gives you stress so these this was business related stuff yeah
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it was a business related thing it just made me feel bad it's one of the sadder things about art
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and music is that it's often interleaved with business folk i suppose that's the way of the
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world if you have a capitalist system but it makes that business folks rubbing up against artists
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um can sometimes destroy a fragile mind and soul like uh to me like one of the best representations
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of an artist honestly johnny i have the designer from apple and he's just so fragile with his
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ideas and you talked about like when he has ideas he really wouldn't show it to steve jobs or anybody
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except for a small design team because he was so nervous that it would it would break let's give
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it a chance let it give it a chance to grow and it seems like the outside world uh business people
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pr people people kind of um have not lost themselves in the passion of creating but instead
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of kind of representing or like making deals all that kind of stuff they they can kind of trample
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on those little ideas and it's it's sad to see yeah it's really it's really heartbreaking to
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see because you know how much trampling there's going on it's one of the main jobs my jobs as a
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record producer is to um keep the keep the voices away from the artist from all the people who are
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really on their side but don't know you know like the uh whether it be people um anyone on the
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business side who doesn't make things they're excited to do their part you know they're excited
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if when you deliver the thing the the art that you make to me then we can start the project yeah um
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but there's nothing to sell if the art doesn't happen in the right way and it has to be protected
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and it can't happen on the same kind of a timetable that um that business can it's just a
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different thing it doesn't art doesn't come in a quarterly way and that doesn't apply just to music
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or it applies to art it applies to all creative pursuits like this is generally the case like at
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mit it's just there's the administration and then there is the professors and students and the
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professors students are the creative folk yeah they create stuff they dream they have wild ideas
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that go on tangents and so on they they uh they have hopes and they they go with those and they
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get like on these weird passionate pursuits and then the administration can often just trample on
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that um and they they set up bars on all kinds of in all kinds of ways that you think you're not
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actually hurting um but you really are and you know i won't mention why but because this happens
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to everybody and i have a large amount of leverage at mit now but even i get a little bit of pressure
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in such stupid ways to like don't like be careful be careful like we really want your career to
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succeed be careful and that little pressure to an artist you know do you want to go acapella
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do you want to go do you want to do a country record like be careful like you're already a
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superstar be careful yeah and then in that way you kind of push people like flock of fish into
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one fish tank where they're all the same and it's it's sad to see and it's obviously in the modern
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world there's nice mechanism to protect to let artists flourish a little bit more because they
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get to put themselves to the world and get a little bit more confidence maybe different funding
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mechanisms all that kind of stuff but tremendous problem that the the voices that don't understand
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interfering with the process is huge the other side of it is in success there can be a lack of
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there can be a lack of reality where all of the people around the successful person just tell
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them everything they do is great and then they they don't have anything to bump up against anymore
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have a realistic uh sense of what's what how things work or how how it how the how things measure you
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know um so both sides are really important both both avoiding the voices getting in the way
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and having a trusted group of you know a sangha a group of people who can say you know i don't
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know if that's as good and you can still you know say i don't care what you think that's fine
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but it helps to hear it you know it helps to have if someone who you respect tells you something
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isn't good enough it's helpful when you know it comes from a place of love when it comes from a
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place of wisdom 100 percent and not from a place of fear not from a place of oh this doesn't sound
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like it's going to do as well as your last thing that's yeah that's not the point the point is on
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this uh quest for greatness are you living up to your ability by the way is there something
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interesting to say about your world view because you mentioned psychic and instead of the ways
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we can be healthy the ways we can grow and how much maybe medicine or science or has
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um has the answers is there is there some interesting way to describe that world view
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i would just say i'm open mind i believe anything's possible
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and if i was going to trust in any practical information it would be something thousands
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of years old there's wisdom in that history yeah well it's it's more tested it's not always right
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but it's at least it's been somewhat tested so science is also tested the thing i'm a little
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bit skeptical of sometimes is just the hubris that often comes with the modern with the latest
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the newest the this this feeling like you figured it all out everything that's been done in the past
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has no wisdom and uh we basically solved every problem uh you know there's nothing else to be
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solved this i mean that's the defining characteristic of any age is like we've
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solved all the problems there are we have the final answers and our parents are all stupid
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that kind of energy yeah and that you have to be extremely extremely careful with that when it
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talks about when you think about something as complex as the human body or the human mind
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you have to be very very very we know close to nothing yeah exactly close to nothing that's about
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anything about anything about anything that place of humility is a good place to start to figure
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to figure it all out and in the end we'll still know almost nothing yeah i don't think we need to
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know it's like we need to see what works and we need to see what works for us it's interesting to
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know i i know on the art side knowing how it works isn't what makes it work you know isn't the magic
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of it isn't how it works the magic is the magic and the magic happens in a way that's intuitive
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and accidental at times or uh incidental where you're trying many things all of a sudden something
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works and um and you don't know why and it's okay not to know why it doesn't matter it doesn't
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really matter why as long as it does the thing that you want it to do whatever that is yeah
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that's so weird when you know the components you don't you still yeah the magic what's the magic
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where's the magic like we know the components for stuff i care about artificial intelligence we know
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the components of a powerful computing machinery where does consciousness come from what is that
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uh where does the uh brilliant moments of insight come from what's that when uh even in simple games
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of chess or in simple where do those breakthrough ideas of taking the big risk that doesn't make any
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sense and then all of a sudden it becomes something beautiful yeah we don't need to understand why it
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just happens it just happens and often the things that end up breaking through don't break through
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in the way we thought or turn out to be a third iteration of something that we thought was an
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entirely different thing or we don't know you know it's and i i think it's if we embrace that not
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knowing we'll have a healthier experience going through life you made a lot it's not just music
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everything rearranging the chairs the furniture as well you've done like i said the documentary
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i guess you would say with paul mccartney and um you've done a podcast yourself uh broken
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record podcast and just you've done conversation too so what have you learned from that process
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about the art of conversation and also maybe what advice would you give to this uh to me about how
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what to do with conversation like what is interesting to you about conversation one of the
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things that i i like is to not feel like it's there is any stakes or that it's actually almost
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that it's not happening like the fact that when i came in you were setting up cameras made it less
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good from for me i knew that that would impact the conversation in a negative way the best version
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of it would be if we didn't see the cameras and if we were and we didn't see any technology
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and we didn't see any technology and we were just sitting at this table having a conversation
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maybe even if we were miked beforehand would be okay if it was necessary but then we were just
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sitting here having a conversation no people in the room nothing and feeling like we're just
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having a conversation i feel like it would get closer to um closer to the relaxed feeling same
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thing we do in the studios like you know you've heard of red light fever you know when uh artists
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get nervous when like they play a song great and then the tape starts rolling and they can't play
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it and it's we're all we're all to some degree like that when you were with paul mccartney i mean
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you're did were you cognizant of cameras we had the room black everybody who was working there
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was dressed in black everything was invisible that we were lit in a way where even though
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there were probably 20 people between 12 and 20 people working in the room within three minutes
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of starting the conversation paul and i were alone in the room so it that was the the feeling
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on occasion you'd hear a noise and it would be weird people we also had nobody was allowed to
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wear shoes because it had to we were trying to create this intimate space and and i know from
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in the recording studio when we're recording if even one person is there that's just watching
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and not working you know like does like there's usually i'm usually there and an engineer is there
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technically making it happen if anyone else is in the room it's different because then it goes from
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this moment where the person's doing a performance to the sense or where the person is
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is feeling something internally and we're capturing it to the the other version is
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they're performing for someone it's so interesting so like to push back in the alternatives here so
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one about the third person not to make people self conscious but i find that i'm so torn on that
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because sometimes when that person uh like um so evan is in the room here he's been in the
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room before he's a huge fan of yours by the way uh so he'll he'll nod yeah he'll get excited he's
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like and you can see that nodding and for some reason for me he's like yeah yeah you get it like
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yeah you get excited together i mean that's that third person can be like a really special so
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having an audience uh when it's a friend or somebody that has that love in them it depends
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on the performer right yeah some people really thrive in front of an audience and you're saying
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you like that simple intimacy well i like the reality of it not being i want it to be as far
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from a performance as possible got it and if if someone i'll tell you a story a story that just
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happened and it was viewed as kind of a it seemed uncool in the moment to the person that it happened
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to it wasn't at all um we were recording the new chili peppers album which is coming out i think
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any day now like uh i don't know what today's date is but within the next it maybe by the
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time this airs it will be out and um the band was playing in the studio and it was ripping
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because they play they're incredible and um one of the members walked through the control room
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after a particularly great performance and um the engineer said wow that solo is really great
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and the person who heard this said please don't say that and walked away it's like it it was
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not it it just changed yeah this feeling of we're in this place where we're doing this thing and
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there's there is no outside world yeah you know we're doing this for us we're going as deep as
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we can for us and as soon as there's an acknowledgement to someone else in a way
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it breaks the concentration of being inside of it that's so well told and but it's something
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about saying wow that's always great is is uh shows the it reminds you that there's an outside
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world but i feel like there's a way to enter the inside world as an audience so you just have to
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do that so it matters what you say it matters how you look it matters uh so there's like these
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generic compliments not generic but they they sound in the way an outside world would interact
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as opposed to in that creative thing where you're dancing around the fire together or something
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it was actually i can tell you there's another interesting one that happened to me and i didn't
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know this until i saw the film of it which was a strange one um we were recording with the avid
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brothers and um the song was called no hard feelings and it was this recording of no hard
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when my body won't hold me anymore
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it finally lets me free well i'll be ready
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when my feet won't walk another such a great voice so beautiful
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kissed goodbye will my hands be steady when i lay down my fears my hopes and my doubts
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the rings on my fingers and the keys to my house with no hard feelings
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when the sun hangs low in the west and the light in my chest won't be kept
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hell today any longer
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when the jealousy fades away so bright so hopeful so lighthearted
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and it's just hallelujah and love involved love in the words
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love in the songs they sing in the church and no hard feelings
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Lord knows they have it done
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much good for anyone kept me afraid and cold
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with so much to have and more
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when my body won't hold me anymore it finally lets me free
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is he sound as good as good, yeah? yes, every bit
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of snow from the heavens will i join with the ocean blue or run into the savior true
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and shake hands laughing and walk through the night straight to the light
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holding the love i've known in my life and no hard feelings
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Lord knows they have it done much good for anyone kept me afraid and cold
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with so much to have and more
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under the burning sky i'm finally learning why
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it matters for me and you to say it and mean it too
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life is loneliness
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good as it's been to me