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#2330 – Bono Podcast Episode Description
Bono is the lead singer of the rock band U2, as well as an activist and author. His memoir, “Bono: Stories of Surrender,” is available wherever books are sold. Watch the companion film on Apple TV+, and the soundtrack is available digitally and on limited edition vinyl.
www.u2.com
https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/bono-stories-of-surrender/umc.cmc.oxoxnpaecaatg9tzf6pgfsh2https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/804259/bono-stories-of-surrender-by-bono/
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#2330 – Bono Podcast Episode Top Keywords
#2330 – Bono Podcast Episode Summary
In this episode of the podcast, the discussion revolves around the themes of listening, community, and the essence of America. The conversation highlights the importance of deep listening as an act of surrender, emphasizing that it restores humanity and fosters genuine connections. The speakers critique the superficial nature of talk shows and public performances, advocating for more authentic, open-ended conversations that allow for true human connection.
A significant portion of the dialogue focuses on America’s current state, with reflections on its ideals of freedom and greatness. The speakers express concern over the divisive nature of politics and the influence of artificial intelligence and social media on public discourse. They stress the need for unity and community, suggesting that political differences should be secondary to the collective goal of improving society.
The episode features insights from notable guests, including discussions about the band U2 and their approach to collaboration and creativity. The speakers share anecdotes about their experiences with public figures and performances, highlighting moments of greatness and the pursuit of excellence.
Actionable insights include the advice to engage in more complex tasks to build trust and the importance of focusing on collective goals rather than individual achievements. The conversation also touches on the dangers of censorship and the need for clear thinking in decision-making processes.
Overall, the episode conveys a message of hope and the potential for a better future, emphasizing the need for vision, community, and genuine human connection to navigate the challenges of modern society.
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#2330 – Bono Podcast Episode Transcript (Unedited)
Speaker: 0
00:01
Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan experience. Showing my day. Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
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00:13
I fucking love the film. It was really great.
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00:15
You saw it?
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00:15
Watched it last night. Yeah. Oh. It’s cool too because I always feel special when I got to enter in the password because I know that nobody else has seen it meh. You know, I gotta enter in the email and the password, and I watched it. You know, I screen meh it on the TV. It was great, man.
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00:28
And it’s it was so, like, almost like a fever dream. It was ai, like, the way you set it up, all black and white.
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00:35
Get past the first three minutes. Yeah. Ai could I even my own mates are ai, oh, don’t do that. It’s like, wow. And and it is like a fever dream
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00:44
Yes.
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00:45
That opening, but that really happened to me. So yeah.
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00:47
It was great, man. It’s great. And it’s also, like, I love the way you did it. Like, you played the beginning of some songs, and you talked about the origin of the songs. The thing that I have a hard time believing though is that you weren’t a good singer when you were young.
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01:00
Well, you know, punk rock, you’re a bit of a shouter. You know, that’s really what you do. You just get up there and shout. You I’m shouting at God. I’m shouting at everyone. Ai shouting at the band. That scene in the in when we’re doing I Will Follow Yeah. That’s really true.
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01:16
So I’m I’m there, and we’re improvising this song that becomes I Will Follow If You Walk Away, Walk Away, Walk Away. I mean, it’s like this. Wow. We’re ai to get just do something original. And we’re really ripping off the irony as we’re really ripping off Public Image Limited.
Speaker: 0
01:32
This Johnny Rotten became John Lydon again for this band called Public Image Limited back in the late seventies. And and I’m singing about you know, it’s a suicide note, really. And I’m singing about this and they’re saying, like, what’s it about? And I said, I think it’s this it’s this guy who’s gonna follow somebody into the grave. You know?
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01:53
They’re gonna it’s I think it’s about a it’s sai it’s a it’s a child following their mother missing them so much that it’ll follow them into the grave. Woah. And then we ai that our our our rehearsal room, the little yellow house, is beside the cemetery where my mother is buried, and Ai never visited her once or talked about her once.
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02:19
And we’re we’ve been rehearsing there for months. And it’s funny, you know, you can deny somebody in conversation. You can deny somebody to yourself, but in the songs, all that shit comes out.
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02:31
Wow. Wow.
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02:32
Yeah. But thank you for watching it. That’s that’s
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02:34
I loved it.
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02:35
And thank you.
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02:36
It it was such an interesting way you put it all together. I’ve never seen anybody do that like that. Like, you did, ai, it’s like a documentation of your career, but in this, like, very unique way with, like, talking about things and explaining these moments, and then the music plays.
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02:55
It’s and it’s all black and white. It was really cool.
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02:58
Yeah. There’s a there’s a sort of black and white lens it a ai clarity. I did this series of shows in the the Beacon, theater in New York, and and it was going so well, we thought we should record it. I will tell you the night before we opened our show in New York, my missus Ali sai, I don’t think you should do this.
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03:25
Just please please do not do this to yourself in front of, you know, a New York crowd. Cancel it now. Do what most people do on a book tour. Get somebody to interview them, and just they’ll come anyway. Everyone will be happy. And I don’t know. I just went for once.
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03:42
I’m I didn’t take her sage advice, and I I did it. And the difference was with an audience, it was funny. And she was like, oh, that’s the bit I didn’t get in the rehearsals. It’s funny.
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03:57
Sai what was she thinking? It was
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03:58
It’s just I thought it was dull, self indulgent. Here you are. I mean, all these things, they’re a version of let me here’s another great thing about me. No. I I mean, it isn’t I was calling it a memoir. Me me book what I wrote myself. It’s the memoir. And it it look. There’s something narcissistic and but it’s it’s your material. You know? That’s what you get. Your you you know, your it’s not just your body. Your psychology is the canvas.
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04:24
And, you know, I grew up John Lennon, you know, the Beatles were everything for me. And, you know, John Lennon made
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04:33
a
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04:33
sort of performance art out of his wedding to Yoko, and he did a bed in for speak, and he was ready to look ridiculous for peace. And, you know, I do ridiculous quite well, I’m told. So that was my definition, you know, of of arya, really Yeah. Was to just just go out there.
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04:52
But the thing that being in U2, which sai given me everything, took away if it took away anything was, you know, people don’t come along to our shows for a belly laugh. You know what I mean?
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05:07
Right. Right.
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05:07
So as a comedian, you understand that. You know? It’s it’s like I, you know, I wrote this line that came out of nowhere. I I haven’t put it in a song meh, I don’t think. But, you know, I think it’s, laughter is the evidence of freedom. And I don’t tyler I don’t trust people to talk about freedom now. I want people to be free. If you are if you talk, be be it then.
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05:31
Be it. Yeah. And and so I wanted to be that on stage. I wanted to be loose. I wanted to be myself.
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05:42
I wanted to own up to the ridiculousness of my life as I’ve just explained, the madness of my family, but turns out it’s everyone’s family is a little opera. And And it is a bit of a soap opera, but it’s also also a a real opera. These are big feelings. You know? You’re going after your dad.
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06:01
Like, you’re like a young or, you know, elk is a romantic word for it, but it’s, you know, you’re just taking them on. Yeah. And this poor man is just he’s lost his his wife. He’s trying to bring up two kids. I’m just an obnoxious kind of thing who some somehow psychologically blames him for the death of my mother.
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06:26
Because as Jim Sheridan says to meh, it doesn’t have to be actually true to be psychologically true. And that kids feel
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06:36
Yeah.
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06:36
All these feelings, you know, and they don’t have to be logical. And and I went after my dad, and I by playing him every night in in the Beacon Theatre and around the world, I actually learned to to love him. I learned to like him, actually. I always loved him. Ai always liked him. That was he made me laugh more. So I got humor. Mhmm.
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07:02
Humor was the gift from that show and
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07:05
And the humor was evident with the audience there. Mhmm.
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07:09
Yeah. But not evident when my business came, which is why she wanted to pull the plug.
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07:15
Well, rehearsals are hard. It’s also hard when someone is too close to you. They’re there with you every day. Like, this is true with comedy as well. Like, if someone sees your act too many times, like, if someone’s traveling with you, like, if my wife went to see my shows all the time, there’s parts of it she’d be like, oh, don’t do that.
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07:36
Oh, don’t do this. Oh, like, that’s not like, you get too close to it. Like, she’s too close to you. But to see it with fresh eyes, like, to see it in front of that audience, the joy that they have when the music starts playing, when some of the songs that they love, it’s amazing.
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07:51
Like, you could feel it in the show. It’s ai the the pure joy when they get so because the people that came to see it were hardcore fans.
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08:01
Well, the one what happened was Andrew Dominic’s Australian director, and he did some of the the the the shots without any audience. Just he cleared them out on a day off. And then some of them came in, which were hardcore fans, as you say. And that was in a way, that was that was that was the most terrifying, because I, as a performer, I’m drawn to spontaneous acts.
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08:32
That’s what when we started out as a band, I was attracted to performers who I thought might leave the stage Right. And follow me home, mug meh, or,
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08:44
you know you
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08:45
know, tell my fortune or, you know Yeah. Whatever.
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08:49
Wild people.
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08:50
Well, just yeah. I meh, and I’m still a try Iggy Pop when I was growing up as the, you know, Patti Smith. And I’m Yeah. Patti Smith used to enter the stage, elbowing her way through the crowd. Myself and Larry Mullen, drummer and you too, we we left stage one night in the like, when we were, like, 21, 20 years old, elbowing our way through through the crowd to get out.
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09:12
Just got into a taxi in London, fucked off, and and we felt a liberation. You know, breaking the fourth wall has been everything for our bands. Trying to smash it by surfing it, you know, by by jumping into the crowd. I had the, preposterous moment of going into a crowd in the in Los Angeles, I forget, the forum or somewhere like that with the white flag. Right?
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09:46
The nonviolent white flag. The same flag that I’m still on about the flag of surrender, right, in that show. But back then, I’m 23 or whatever, and I’m going into the crowd, and I see people who are, you know, pulling at me and all that. The next thing, I know I’m throwing a punch. Somebody in our own our in our own audience. That’s how much nonviolence meant to me.
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10:11
You know, but Ai I’m attracted to feral performers, I suppose, is a word for it. Yeah. It’s just it’s it’s you’re in it, and you’re fully in control of it. Right. And Mark Ai is a great one.
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10:28
Daniel Day Lewis walked off stage one night, saw a ghost of his father rumored had it when he’s playing Hamlet. But yeah. So having the crowd in who knew it was gonna happen, that unnerves me a bit because, like, how do I surprise them? Turns out, by making I I became a sit down comic. Is that what you mean?
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10:52
If you’re a stand up for a minute, a minute, I was a sit down comedian.
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10:58
Well, what you’re doing and what what I think what you’re saying that you’re attracted to is something that’s not contrived. Something that’s pure. It could be meh. It could be ai. It could be, you know, Patti Smith elbowing people or you running through the crowds. Mhmm. It’s it’s real.
Speaker: 1
11:13
And there’s so much in this world that’s not real. There’s so much that’s manufactured. There’s so much that’s produced and run through a focus group and there’s so there’s so much that doesn’t resonate. Like, you don’t feel it as a piece of art. You don’t feel it as ai a real person pouring out their emotions and their soul. But great music, you feel. It it gets into you.
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11:37
It gets into your cells. You know? It’s sai and no one can figure out how it works or why it works or why this does and this doesn’t, and why does Johnny Cash have such a fucking cool voice? Like, it’s what is it? What what is it? Ai, but there’s something about real that’s just it’s like a vitamin.
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11:57
It’s like going out in the sun when it’s been raining. Like, Like, ai you you soak it in.
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12:02
Yeah. It is. You know? I mean, you can there’s pretentious ways to ai, and then people say it’s we we first sang to each other before we spoke. You know? It’s like it’s like birdsong. I don’t know who said that. He’s probably on drugs. But it could have been a scientist.
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12:20
And anthropology might suggest we certainly the goat song. You go back to Greek tragedy. You had a drum and a voice. So it’s very primal. Yeah.
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12:33
And and there is it is the language of the spirit. It we we it it is somehow there is worship involved, whether it’s God, nature, money, a extraordinary woman has just walked across the street, but it seems to be that music is where we are creatures of awe Yes. And and wonder. And and and, you know, you meh Johnny Cash. I had I had the blessing in my life of of getting to know him.
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13:16
And as a believer I don’t know if you know. I Ai I’m a believer. I’m I’m just not a very good one. But he there was no not a pious bone in his body. And and I learned that ai the company he would choose.
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13:32
He didn’t like he he got nervous around people who are too self ai, and he had this huge spirit in him, you know, prayerful spirit. Myself and Adam Clayton were were, driving through America, I think, around the time of the Joshua Bryden. And Ai met Johnny a couple years where he said you know, I found out where he where he lived. He had a zoo in Nashville.
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13:56
He had a house in Nashville. And we go in to to to meet June, his missus and and Johnny. And and he shows this table. It’s filled with plates of like, I’m like, wow. We’re coming with just the two of us. Shah they said, no, honey. That’s my cookbook.
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14:17
I’m just doing a photo shoot for my cookbook. We’re in here. You know? We’re having sai so we go into their kitchen, and we sat there, myself and Adam. And and Johnny goes, shall shall we pray? And, Ai wasn’t a praying type at that at that time, but he was ai, wow. It’s Johnny Cash.
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14:40
So, you know Yep.
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14:41
We
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14:42
all held ai, whatever. And Johnny Cash made this beautiful poetic blessing, and I I just thought, like, wow. Of course, he is touched. And then he just turned to Adam and just sai, sure missed the drugs, though. And Adam just fell in love with him, you know, because he couldn’t be pious.
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15:03
Right. He just he had to be himself. Yeah. Years later, if it’s years later, when we read that. Oh, wow. There you go. Oh, that’s so oh my god.
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15:17
There it is.
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15:18
That’s Adam there. Yeah. Yeah. He looks like he might have had a few tequilas. And and Ai don’t know. But oh, wow. And I’m giving it the arty poetic face. I am a poet ai you are. And, Ai call calls. I heard I heard he was, I heard he was in trouble. He was he was very ill years later than this.
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15:46
And I called, I called up, and and June answered the phone. Excuse the poor Texas accent, all you Texans out there. But ai like or Nashville in her case. She was like, oh, Wow. Thank you for calling. It’s so good to hear from you. How’s Dublin? How’s Ally? How’s the Burlington? This is a hotel. Right?
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16:13
And I was like, great. And we’re talking, you know, Frasier’s with with, with June. She said, what’s going on with this? And I’m going, what’s going on? And I said, look.
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16:23
Eventually, I said, look, June, I’m just Ai just calling because I heard John wasn’t well, and I just I just wanted you wanted him to know and ai we’re thinking about it. She said, oh, honey, we’re in bed. He’s right beside meh. And he hands me the phone, or she hands him the phone. He goes, sorry about that. Ai fine.
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16:46
And, and bless her. Actually, June passed away first. And and Johnny called Rick Bryden, and those American recordings were were result of a conversation he had with Rick Rubin where he said, please, will you work with me? Because if you don’t, I will die. Wow. And that’s why if you hear those American recordings, amazing version of Ai Inch Nails, Hurt? Hurt.
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17:18
Yeah. Did
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17:18
a version of one also to Meh Mode’s personal geez. I mean, it’s just
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17:23
what a voice. Yeah.
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17:25
Are you a fan of of of of Johnny Cash? What’s what’s your I used
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17:29
to have a dog named Johnny Cash.
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17:31
Does the dog bite?
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17:33
No. He’s not anymore. He’s dead. He was he didn’t bite when he was alive. He was a nice dog. It’s just Ai I had a habit of naming my dogs after famous singers.
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17:43
Wow. We have a dog called Lemmy.
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17:46
Oh, wow.
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17:46
Named after Lemmy from Ram.
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17:48
That’s awesome. Yeah. It’s a
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17:49
girl, ai, and thinks she resents it.
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17:52
Yeah. I had a dog named Frank Sinatra, and Arya is named after Eminem.
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17:58
Oh, man. Well, they’re two incredible people. Don’t get me started on on Frank Sinatra because, how long is this, by the way? The As long
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18:07
as we wanna go.
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18:08
Well, no. Because
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18:09
Why?
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18:10
Well, just Ram Sinatra. It’s just two questions. One of them shouldn’t be Frank Sinatra because I I just I can go on and on and on. I learned so much from him, and I got to know him. And as bizarre as that sounds, he’s such a name dropper, Frank. No. But, I did. And probably if you’re interested in singing, I could tell you one miracle that I learned from Frank Sinatra, which is a version of of Ai Way.
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18:43
And the original version. You know? It’s a boast. And years later, he sang it, and I have a copy of it. It’s, and Pavarotti stars in the film as, you know, Ai I’m Yeah. I I Ai play him for for a moment.
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19:00
But it’s a version of ai way with Pavarotti is the greatest singer on Earth, but shouldn’t sing in English. Friends, I do it now. You don’t want Yeah. You don’t want that. And so I have a version of it with without the greatest singer in the history of the world, Pavarotti, on it.
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19:18
It’s just Frank singing twenty years after he’d sung ai way as a boast. Same key, same text, same arrangement, and now it’s an apology. Wow. And that’s a that’s a thing about singing, and Johnny Cash had that. And, you know, I I I wish Sai ai to the place when my voice to to ai and answer your first question, when I become a singer that can do that.
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19:51
Sinatra, most people don’t ai, had a completely different voice when he was younger. Mhmm. His voice when he was younger was very high pitched and beautiful. It had so much flexibility to it and so much tone. And then probably all the cigarettes and Jack Daniels
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20:08
Mhmm.
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20:09
Over the years sort of hardened his voice. Mhmm. And
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20:11
then Skinny kid. He he used to he used to swim underwater to ex to get his lung expanded sai he could get those bigger bigger bigger Really? Yeah.
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20:23
And we have his shah
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20:24
out there. He got arrested.
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20:25
He was, like, 25.
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20:27
Wow.
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20:28
Yeah. He got arrested for, what was the term? This seduction? I think it was seduction. I think he seduced a married woman. Yeah.
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20:38
Oh my lord.
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20:39
Yeah. There he is.
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20:40
Oh, look at that. Well, he said Ai the only he sai, you’re the only I don’t know if he said cat. He said I don’t certainly, he didn’t say dude. He said, you’re the only something with a who who wears an earring that I’m ever gonna like. You’re the only cat with an earring that I’m never gonna Sai I and and I did.
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21:01
I had a if we’re gonna talk about singers, you have to talk about Sinatra. I had extraordinary times with him. He used to send us send me gifts every year. I have a gold and sapphire Cartier watch he sent me Oh, wow. With with Francis Albert on the you know, I got just every year he would send stuff. And because we did a a duet together on his first duets album.
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21:27
I’ve got you got you under my skin. Although, Ai we had a a management received I hope this is not I’m not being I’m in awe of Japan. Sai, Tom, please don’t take this as a as a as a as a as a cruel joke, but we did get from a a a a a, it was a it was a fax back then from Nippon EMI saying, we hear that Bono has done a duet with a mister Frank Sinolta called I’ve Got You Under My Chicken.
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22:01
And that’s just
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22:03
the great Boston translation.
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22:04
The great surrealist anthem of all time. But, yeah, for meh, that was a an unusual relationship. And Ai, if I ask myself why I would go after these great singers that perhaps people of my own generation had moved on from, but I hadn’t, There is a part of me that wanted the blessing of an of the older generation and probably the male.
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22:38
I didn’t really by now, the bit of age, I realized I didn’t have the sense to go after the same with women, but I was looking for my father in them. You know? Whether it was Willie Nelson, you know, whether, you know, Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, Pavera, all these people. I mean, I I would they I would I kind of I became their students, really.
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23:05
Mhmm.
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23:06
And the band would be like, yeah. And and I’m going, yeah. And there’s so much for me to learn from these people, so much for all of us to learn. These are extraordinary for a reason. Sinatra had, you know, incredible sense of humor and and great timing. He what I learned from him was he he read the the the the text of the song like an actor.
Speaker: 0
23:35
So he would learn it as an actor would learn a part. Then he would on the piano, he’d ai of roughly with his, you know, BNS to figure out where where to be in the bar and all of that. And then when he went into the orchestra to meet them, you know, Nelson Riddle or whatever, you actually hear him.
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23:59
You hear Frank Sinatra hearing the song in its full arrangement for the first time as he’s singing it. Wow. And that’s it’s fresh paint. You know, it’s like any painter will tell you. That’s just the it’s ai Francis Bacon. It’s just that first stroke or first touch football.
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24:17
The great players where the ball lands at their feet. They don’t stop it and pass it. They they they pass it as they stop it. It’s it’s it’s really a very high level of of artistry, and and he had that. I learned that from him. Ai learned lots of other things.
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24:36
I also tried to drink with him, on a few occasions, which did not work out well, for me.
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24:46
Was it surreal when you were a young man and you were just starting to achieve success to encounter these people that were essentially heroes and be embraced by them and hang around them? You know, a lot of people feel imposter syndrome, like they feel just it’s bizarre to be around these legendary human beings. Like, they’re right there.
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25:09
Like, I I I still kinda get weirded out by it. Even when I met you today, I’m like, oh, that’s Bono. Like, it’s still weird. You know? It’s still weird to meet people that are, like, hugely famous.
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25:20
And when you were a young man, when when you two was just blowing up, was it strange that the transit like, to accept the fact, like, this is where we arya. We belong here.
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25:29
Bug, you you you got it right the first time. There is a part of you that doesn’t think you belong here. Right. And then when you’re younger, you you you’re not admitting that to yourself. And I have a I’ve I’ve a few annoying more than a few annoying aspects depending on who you you’re talking ai.
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25:54
But if I have an annoying gene, part of it is when I’m at my most vulnerable, I’m at I give it the most swagger. Okay. Playing the Super Bowl. We walked on just after 09:11, big emotional moment, and we’re you got eight minutes or whatever to switch over, and I’ve got my ears in because the only way I’m in touch with what’s was was what’s going on, and we’re walking through the crowd.
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26:30
We’ve got the crowd on the on the page. I think one of the first times that was ever done. And and somebody goes, yay. And they and I can feel my ear come out. And that will mean I’m all fair.
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26:44
And if you look at the film as I’ve had to of us walking up to get on stage, I am giving it so much chin. You just go, who is that obnoxious Ai fucking what? Why does he get that attitude?
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27:03
Here it is right here.
Speaker: 0
27:05
Oh, there it is. I think I’m singing there, so if you just go back a little bit, you’ll get the real that’s the chin. No. No. Just before there. But but but look, not a care in the world. And that’s I mean, bullshit is a word for it. Yeah. Swagger is another word for it. It’s a shield.
Speaker: 0
27:28
It’s a shield. Yeah. And as I get older, I you know, part of the film was taking off my armor and just dropping the sword, dropping the shield, taking it off. And now in that moment, you wake up. It’s a bit like the dream where you’re naked in front of the whole school, and and it’s really cold.
Speaker: 0
27:55
And and and then you realize, yeah, your life as you are realizing yourself now. Oh, how did this happen to meh? And and how do I get to meet these extraordinary people? And so it’s that’s why I wrote the book Surrender. That’s why I did it.
Speaker: 0
28:16
But because it was just starting to realize when I was younger, I was like, yeah. You know? Bob Dylan once asked us I was 24, and he says, he was recording there. I was gonna interview him. And he said, you wanna go on stage or whatever and do a song? And I said, well, he said leopard skin pillbox vatsal. Amazing ai.
Speaker: 0
28:39
I said, oh, the lyrics about it too. Ai and I’ve been learning to improvise as a singer. And and I, I went out on stage, and he said, do you know blowing in the wind? I said, I probably, I probably got that one down, but I didn’t. Oh.
Speaker: 0
28:57
And I just walked out on stage, and I could see it was at a home crowd, Ireland. People, oh, wow. One of our artists is up there with Bob Dylan. Wow. Oh, it’s Paul. Wow. Okay. And he’s gonna sing oh my god.
Speaker: 0
29:12
He can’t oh, oh, he’s changed his melody. Oh, he’s changed the words, and he could just see I mean, go down in flames. And afterwards, I see Bob, and I sai, look. I’m sorry about that. I’m just it’s just the way we’ve been working at the moment is just kinda improvising stuff.
Speaker: 0
29:29
And he was like, well, it’s okay. You know? Everything I I make him up all the ai, and he was generous about it. Nothing’s fixed in time. Something like that.
Speaker: 1
29:39
That’s a great Bob Dylan impression.
Speaker: 0
29:40
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
29:41
One of my favorite moments in the film was when your bandmates were concerned that Pavarotti was gonna show up with a camera crew. Yeah.
Speaker: 2
29:49
And he showed up with
Speaker: 1
29:50
a camera crew.
Speaker: 0
29:50
He did. He did. One of the
Speaker: 1
29:53
It was just funny. It was ai a it was a really well timed moment, like and when you said it on stage, it was so well ai. Because it’s like, here, you’re honoring this sai who’s ai this incredible fantastic singer, But your bandmates, they’ve got a good instinct. Like, this is gonna be a big press op as well. Like, this is part of the reason why he wants to do this.
Speaker: 1
30:12
And then that’s not gonna be fun because it’s gonna be weird, and then boom.
Speaker: 0
30:17
Yeah. One of the great one of the great armwrestlers, emotional armwrestlers of all ai. It’s interesting that there was a generosity there, which which which he wanted opera, because opera was ai of the punk of its time. Classical musicians looked down on opera. You know? Really? These are stories from the street. They’re they’re too accessible. You know? Really? Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
30:46
Oh, that’s crazy. Ai
Speaker: 0
30:47
never imagined that. Rougher. And and he instinctively knew, and he was constantly trying to make relationships that would cross the divide and and make sort of opera popular. And so to the point where, yeah, he did he used to call our house and say, you know, at first it was with meh, but then when he would haunt our housekeeper, Teresa, and sai, like, is God at home?
Speaker: 0
31:18
Well, tell God to he is late on the song or, you know, he do this kinda carry on. And and I again, this these figures in in my life, I knew that I was in, you know, on sacred ground when I was near him. I knew this. But the band, they didn’t have the they didn’t have the relationship with opera.
Speaker: 0
31:43
They well, actually, Edgesdow was into opera, but my dad would it was it was I I was using Luciano Pavarotti to get to my dad. That was the real thing. And so as you see in the film, I I play my my father just by turning my head. Yeah. And I become him.
Speaker: 0
32:03
And and and and I was trying to impress him. I’d be in Finnegan’s pub where we’d be sitting, not speaking to each other. And and and I try something, and I go, what do you think about Luciano Pavarotti calling mouse? And he’d go, did he get a wrong number? You know, it’d be all that. And and sai, yeah, there was an emotional through ai because our house was an opera.
Speaker: 0
32:33
Unfortunately, my dad was going on in his ai, was operatic. But it’s also funny.
Speaker: 1
32:42
Yeah. Yeah. And it’s also this you you are both celebrating the brilliance of this incredible singer, and also you’re you’re taking the piss out of this whole cult of celebrity thing that comes along with it.
Speaker: 0
32:57
Yeah. And Princess Ai. The the best line thing with your dad
Speaker: 1
33:01
and Princess Diana was hilarious.
Speaker: 0
33:03
So because Edge is Edge is that is is Edge is mother and father from Wales. So to you know? So we’re with Pavarotti in Modena, I think it was, and and he’s so the princess of Wales is is meeting the great tenor, and he is offered to meet, you know, anyone who wants, you know, a sai family because they’re from Wales to meet the princess of Wales.
Speaker: 0
33:31
And he says to me, look. Do do do does your dad want to go? And I, of course, know the reason. I I know I know the answer and the reason for the answer. But he says, well, just just ask him. So I ask him. I just go, Ai, listen.
Speaker: 0
33:48
You we wouldn’t want to, go meet Lady Ai, you know, the princess. What? What? Ai would I want to meet a member of the British royal family? That that I mean, that’s like asking meh, do I want to meet the winner of the lotto? And I’m like, okay. Got it. Got it. Got it.
Speaker: 0
34:07
And then later, she comes into our dressing room and melts him just by reaching her hand at how do you do. And he’s like, oh, very well. Thank you. And as I say, eight eight hundred years of oppression gone in a second. And if you wonder about the reasoning for having a royal family, and a lot of Irish people do, there Ai I’d I’d Ai sai is that that’s the reason.
Speaker: 1
34:43
Right? The weight of it the weight of it overcame him.
Speaker: 0
34:45
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
34:46
Yeah. It’s a very bizarre relationship, though.
Speaker: 0
34:49
You know. I got one quarter Irish and I Oh, boy.
Speaker: 1
34:52
The relationship between Ireland and Ai Kingdom and England, and it’s ai it’s it’s complicated.
Speaker: 0
34:59
Were you were you I’ve I’ve read that you got into martial arts because you felt picked on at some point. Is that true?
Speaker: 1
35:09
Yes. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
35:10
Yeah. So you don’t like bullies?
Speaker: 1
35:12
No. No. No. I don’t like that at all. It’s the weakest inclination of the human spirit, you know, to to pick on the weak. It’s it’s terrible. It’s, it’s a terrible instinct that humans have from probably from the time where you had to ostracize weak people because you lived in a a tribe of people barely surviving and you couldn’t tolerate any weak links in the chain.
Speaker: 1
35:37
I mean, that’s essentially probably where it came from. It probably came out of a ai.
Speaker: 0
35:40
Darwinian thing.
Speaker: 1
35:42
Where everyone was barbarians and you had to force people to be the hardest version possible because otherwise, the genes wouldn’t survive.
Speaker: 0
35:49
Yeah. It is the survival of the fittest, it’s yeah. Which is the world we live in. Yeah. I mean, this is one of the things that attracts me to Christianity. It’s the idea of the first will be last, the last will be first is so radical. Mhmm. And it’s the literally the opposite of the survival of the fittest. Right.
Speaker: 0
36:09
But America why I love America is is it has I mean, the British Empire bullied it, and it stood up. I was we were coming here. I was asking someone in the car about the the declaration of ai independence and you know, how many Irish signatures there were. Wasn’t that many. I can’t remember what they were, but they were all committing treason.
Speaker: 1
36:35
Mhmm. They
Speaker: 0
36:35
were putting their lives. They were pledging their lives, their fortune, and their sacred honor. So Meh, the very essence of America is this idea of sticking in to the bully. Yeah. And and I know America can be a bully. We all we have our moments and all and all that, but it’s the essence of who you are.
Speaker: 0
36:59
And and it happened again with the the geezer with the tash. The geezer with the tash.
Speaker: 1
37:06
That’s a great You know? Colin Hitler.
Speaker: 0
37:08
You know? But Yeah. You know, you weren’t you weren’t having it. Right. And and I you know? And Ai and as a as a as an activist, which we can talk about later, but the you know, I remember going to, it’s only a few hours from here, but I was in Lincoln, Nebraska, and, Warren Buffett came to one of our it’s called Heart of America tour.
Speaker: 0
37:36
We’re raising awareness on this pandemic, this AIDS pandemic that shah killed just, you know, thirty million people at this point. And why might America be interested? And I’m very Irish and very given a lot of that. And afterwards, I ask the sage of Omaha for for any advice.
Speaker: 0
37:56
And ai he gives me two pieces of ai, but probably well, the one was don’t ask people to do something simple because they won’t trust you. He said ask them to do something complicated.
Speaker: 1
38:09
What do you mean by that?
Speaker: 0
38:11
Well, I said he said, what are you asking people to do here? And I said, well, they’re I’m asking them to we’re asking them, the one campaign. We’re we’re asking them to sana, you know, a note to their local congressperson. He said, no. No. No. No. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t do that. Too simple.
Speaker: 0
38:30
Make them do something more difficult, and they’ll trust you. Maybe 10 postcards. It’s harder to do. And I was like, okay. And anything else?
Speaker: 0
38:39
And he he said something which really changed my life and changed my conversation with this country of yours. He said, don’t appeal to our conscience of America. Don’t do that. Appeal to the greatness of America Oh. And you’ll get the job done. Americans wanna be great.
Speaker: 1
39:03
That is true.
Speaker: 0
39:04
I think it is true. And because in Ireland, we work with guilt. You know, you can bring guilt people. Right. It’s a lot of countries. You can work them just, you know Yeah. But Meh, it’s not. Give them the chance to be the cavalry. Yeah. And they’ll I mean, Omaha Beach, the heroism of Omaha Beach, the lives poured out, you know, and to to save Europe from from tyranny. That’s who America is.
Speaker: 0
39:31
And, you know, I gave it the Joshua tree because I you know, it’s not just as an Irishman, but probably more because I, as an Irishman, fell under the spell of America. Even as kids, you know, coming here, a lot of the cooler bands would just play the coasts, you know, the cooler UK bands or European bands.
Speaker: 0
40:03
But I wanted I wanted to be all over America. I mean, we played we opened for a wet T shirt competition in in Dallas. We opened year was this? ’81. First ’20
Speaker: 1
40:19
‘1. Wow.
Speaker: 0
40:20
We we we in Austin I don’t know if if anyone can remember, but it was it was called the clubfoot. It’s a bad pun, but there was no Sai. And I remember it was a tin roof. And for Irish people, we were just being boiled. But I have really, really great memories of just busing it through this sort of mythical landscape. You know?
Speaker: 0
40:50
There was there’s nowhere nowhere in this country I would wanna fly over, but I do now. You know, we got the the plane, we had the this, but I I just remember thinking this is there’s so many Americas. Yes. But the the mythology of America was reading, you know, Sam Shepard. I was reading, you know, On the Road.
Speaker: 0
41:15
I was reading, you know, all these great writers and just opening up my imagination. That’s where the Joshua Tree came from. And, yeah, it’s it’s it’s a it’s it’s a mythology that then can you imagine? I get to discover that in my case, it’s not just a mythology. It I was part of something that was extraordinary.
Speaker: 0
41:48
So former governor of this of Texas, George w Bush, conservative, starts to lead the world in the fight against the AIDS pandemic, the greatest health crisis in six hundred years since the bubonic plague. And I’m like and people ai, that’s impossible. It’s just not gonna happen. And he does. And it becomes a bipartisan thing, and twenty six million lives are saved.
Speaker: 0
42:23
So it’s strange the way you see things. I had this it wasn’t a naive sense of America, but it was a sense that everything could be possible here. That there was somehow the landscape of America was was a little more magical than than everywhere else, and it wasn’t just a country Meh. It was an idea.
Speaker: 1
42:51
Yes. Yeah. Ai at its greatest, that is what America is. At its greatest, it’s an ai, and it’s an idea that was, like Ai sai, was founded with the the concepts behind the Declaration of Independence. And those those men who wrote that, the men who signed the Bill of Rights, they were so young. They were so young.
Speaker: 1
43:10
Some of them were 18 years old Yeah. At the time, which is so crazy.
Speaker: 0
43:14
Jefferson was 32 or 33 when he wrote that.
Speaker: 1
43:17
He’s an old codger.
Speaker: 0
43:18
I mean, that’s why and then, by the way, years later, he’s in France. I think it’s in about, and he loved wine. And this I found this out because I saw sai signature in in a in a book. I was on some tour. I like to drink, red wine. I’ve never been to Bordeaux in my life, but I I went with some people who knew their way around ai.
Speaker: 0
43:41
And they asked me to sign a book in this particular, vineyard, posh kind of vineyard, but this was across the road from the big names or the thing. And I asked I said, can I see the first book? There’s Thomas Jefferson’s name in the first one. I thought, wow. This guy’s dreaming of America on some very fancy meh plonk. Yeah. Or not plonk, actually.
Speaker: 0
44:09
Some really there’s just but, you know, Ai I know there’s lots of contradictions Sure. In Meh. And I know there was slavery still and that he had slaves, and I understand. But I’m encouraged that America perhaps doesn’t exist yet, that it’s still being written. If you think about it as a song, you think about it as a piece of music, it’s not finished. Right. Right. It’s still being written. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
44:42
They started at those signatures. Yeah. You and if you let people like me stay, you you know, we’re still you know, you’re writing us. I’m I’m I’m I’m not writing. I’m the annoying fan who follows America into the bathroom and and with the liner notes, which are the declaration, like, didn’t you say this here? And meh out.
Speaker: 0
45:05
Who followed me into the bathroom? It’s like but but Ai, yeah, I I I like the idea that it’s that this is far from finished, this composition. Yes. And for some people, the America that is available to you and me doesn’t exist yet, but it will, and it can. And, and yeah.
Speaker: 1
45:31
We hope that every election ai, like, this this will be the one that finally makes us what we truly believe we are. Mhmm. But the the country is just so co opted by this. First of all, you have this genuine issue with the fact that it’s essentially a popularity contest Right.
Speaker: 1
45:50
To see who gets to be running the government. You have a popularity contest that’s fueled entirely by special interests and the military industrial complex and pharmaceutical drug companies, and it’s just it’s a it’s all it’s all the opposite of of an authentic song.
Speaker: 0
46:07
Right.
Speaker: 1
46:07
The thing about an authentic song where it makes your fucking goosebumps stand ai, be like, goddamn. Do you sing it’s
Speaker: 0
46:14
an AI comp company? I tell you a story.
Speaker: 1
46:19
A long time ago, probably twenty five years ago, I was on mushrooms with a friend of ai, and we were laying on the side of this hill overlooking this canyon, and we played In God’s Country.
Speaker: 0
46:31
Oh, wow.
Speaker: 1
46:34
And it was just the the the peak of the mushrooms and the songs, the melody, the way that song hit, it just it gave me this insane appreciation for things. Like, at that it was ai this very unique fusion of the beauty of the music and the love of the experience, ai, the mushrooms bring out this, like, loving, like, communal quality, ai, happiness and and joy, and just lying in this field looking up at this canyon and hearing that song.
Speaker: 1
47:13
It was ai, this is what what music does. It takes these moments, and wherever they’re at, it breaks them through the membrane into this new place. Like, this moment, it broke through this membrane and brought me to this. I think about it all the time. I think about that particular experience all the time.
Speaker: 0
47:31
We need the line in that when I’m singing it is, is a line that doesn’t just apply to America but applies to us personally. Wherever you are is, you know, we need new dreams ai. And you can’t be living on we’ve got we can’t be living on secondhand dreams. And that’s, I think, the renewal, I think, is what what we’re all looking for. And, and, yeah, it’s it’s it’s something to be protected, and and I not protected.
Speaker: 0
48:13
That sounds like it’s it’s ai
Speaker: 1
48:17
Sai think you’re right, though.
Speaker: 0
48:18
I I but I I think I I think Meh more vulnerable now than it’s ever been. It feels like Meh fallen out of love with the rest of the world. I don’t think the world wants to fall out of love with America. It it just feels like and, you know, I’ve twenty twenty five years, and and I’m just a tiny cog in, I suppose, you know, people look at personalities or, you know, even luminous ones or ones that have ideas way above their station and think that will you know, that that might change things, but it’s social movements always change things.
Speaker: 0
48:59
And what happened back then with the Heart of America tour was was mind blowing because I learned a few things that I wasn’t expecting. Like, I had grown up with a couple of more than a few bumps, with evangelicals. You know, Ai was like, whoop. You know, it’s like Yeah. Because, you know, how do you you can’t approach the subject of God without metaphor. Right? So literalism is ai its nature anti metaphor.
Speaker: 0
49:35
And, you know, Jesus, all we know is that he spoke in parables because they’re not literal. How do you explain these as poet poet, just music? And I found it really difficult to be around evangelicals because they were so, you know, just literal ai anything. And then on that same tour where I met Warren Buffett, I end up at a college called Wheaton College, which is ai a big, in Chicago.
Speaker: 0
50:03
It’s a big evangelical thing. And they were, like, they were really helpful. And there was, like I realized that these were kind of and this is not to be at all dismissive of a of some incredible people. But it was, like, I felt it was there was sort of narrow minded sort of, what would I say, just sort of narrow the the the vision.
Speaker: 0
50:32
If I could just open the aperture of their vision just a little bit wider Yeah. That they could be the most incredible force for good because they just worked harder. They didn’t tell lies. They they were just great people. And I think they they led part of this movement that then ended up saving 26,000,000 lives, you know, and called PEPFAR that George Bush started and Obama continued.
Speaker: 0
51:00
Then I go to Catholics. I’d end up in Notre Dame. Now I had a few Bruce Catholics over the years too. And I’m meeting these people, and they’re like, no. No.
Speaker: 0
51:11
We’re we’re we we wanna we we we believe in the value of human ai, and we if we can do this, how much does this cost? And I’m like, well, you know, all of foreign aid is probably just less than 1% of government spending, but the part that keeps people alive is on is half of that.
Speaker: 0
51:34
So it’s ai half a percent. Now it’s not my money. It’s up to you if you wanna do that, but they did. And lots of people came together. It was priests and punks. You know? It was the wildest collection of people.
Speaker: 0
51:50
And and just recently, ai, in in the last three months and this is not about politics because I’ve worked with conservatives. I’ve worked with liberals. I I don’t care. You know? I don’t have those. I’m Irish. I don’t have a chance to vote.
Speaker: 0
52:05
But all of that was torn down without a heads up, without any notice because people thought foreign aid was, like, 10% of the budget or 20%, and it was doing things that it shouldn’t have been doing. And I’m sure there was some waste, but I can tell you as a person who who saw what The United States were doing around the world and saw this this I saw America display itself at its ai.
Speaker: 0
52:41
And I remember being in the Oval Office with president Bush and and had and these antiretroviral drugs. I sai, paint them red, white, and blue, mister president. These are the best advertisements for America they’ll ever be. And he’s looking at me thinking I’m taking the piss, but I’m not. And he wasn’t as it turns out.
Speaker: 0
53:00
And and he he spoke about the the least of these, which is a wild concept. I don’t know if you know this, but it’s like the it’s, it’s in Matthew, I think it is. It’s it’s it’s the only time that, Jesus speaks of judgment. It’s not like what’s going on in your pants. It’s not like what’s going on over here or over there.
Speaker: 0
53:25
The first time Jesus Christ speaks in kind of force of judgment is the way we treat the poor, the poorest of the poor. And he says, well, in the way that you’re treating these, the least of of them, the the sick, the blind, the people who who are suffering from malnutrition, that’s how you treat me.
Speaker: 0
53:51
I am them. And so now when we cut to the people like, you went to Boston University, you taught at Boston University.
Speaker: 1
54:03
I taught martial arts there.
Speaker: 0
54:04
Yeah. So so just recent report, it’s not proven, but their surveillance enough suggests three hundred thousand people have already died from just this cutoff, this hard cut of USAID. So there’s food rotting in boats, in warehouses. There is this this this will will fuck you off. This will not you will not be happy.
Speaker: 0
54:32
No American will, but there is, I think, it’s 50,000 tons of food that are stored in Djibouti, South Africa, Dubai, and wait for it, Houston, Texas. And that is rotting rather than going to Gaza, rather than going to Sudan because the people who know the codes arya for the warehouse, the the the are fired.
Speaker: 0
55:00
They’re gone. And so this I don’t know. I just it’s I’m what do you think? What what what is what is that? That’s that’s not America, is it?
Speaker: 1
55:11
Well, they’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Speaker: 0
55:13
Right.
Speaker: 1
55:13
Right? This is the problem. The problem is for sure, there have been a lot of organizations that do tremendous good all throughout the world. Also, for sure, it was a money laundering operation. For sure, there was no oversight. For sure, billions of dollars are missing. In fact, trillions that are unaccounted for that were sent off into various they they they don’t even know where because there’s no receipts.
Speaker: 1
55:40
The way Elon Musk described that he said if any of this was done by a public company, the company would be delisted and the executives would be in prison. But in The United States, this is standard. When Biden left office, when it was clear that Trump won in the seventy three days, they spent $93,000,000,000 from the Department of Energy on just radical loans, just throwing money into places.
Speaker: 1
56:09
Right. And there’s no no oversight, no receipts. Like, the the whole thing is it’s there’s a lot of fraud, a lot of money laundering. But also, we help the world. And when you’re talking about making wells for people in The Congo to get fresh water, when you’re talk about food and medicine to places that don’t have access, like, no way that should have been cut out.
Speaker: 1
56:34
And that should have been clear before they make these radical cuts. Like, there’s gotta be a way to keep aid and not have fraud. And you can’t you can’t say we’re gonna kill everything so that there’s no fraud. But then you’re killing all the good and you’re doing it without letting anybody know it’s gonna happen. So no one’s it’s not like they had three years to prepare.
Speaker: 1
56:55
Let’s build a new infrastructure. Let’s make sure that everything’s set up. Mhmm. They sana change and they wanna change quickly. And due to the nature of American politics, they have about two years before the midterms. Right? So everything has to get done as quickly as possible.
Speaker: 1
57:07
You have to have shah a growth in GDP. You have to show that the economy is booming again under these ai. Make America First, tariffs for the world, bring back American manufacturing in this mad rush to do it all as quickly as possible while cutting out as much waste as possible.
Speaker: 1
57:21
Yeah. But the ironic thing is even though Elon Musk has proposed all these things and the Doge Committee has proposed all these things, they’ve made no cuts in terms of the budget. They’ve cut nothing.
Speaker: 0
57:32
We would it’s They vote against tiny part. I mean, if if if if it’s big government or whatever people wanna wanna shrink, I I I I I get the instinct, but this, the ai saving part, it’s the little finger of the giant. Right. Exactly. I mean and and I’ve I’ve met all these people, and I’m sure there’s there’s part of it.
Speaker: 0
58:00
You know, there’s I think about 10% of it goes to things like governance and, you know, the human rights organizations. You might say that’s political, and we shouldn’t be involved in that. And those reforms, I imagine, that might have been necessary. But you have the reforms, but but to to to destroy, to to vandalize.
Speaker: 0
58:23
I mean, it felt like with glee, these life support systems were being pulled out of the walls. And I was I was reading today, you know, it’s like I think it’s in Christianity today, and they’re just talking. I think it’s called Christian Relief, one of these organizations. And they’re dealing with malnourished kids, and they are having the conversation now about we don’t have the funds.
Speaker: 0
58:48
We have to choose which child to pull off the IVs. And it just seems to me ai a kind of I I I don’t know if if evil is a strong word, too strong a word, But what we know about pure evil is it rejoices in the deaths, you know, of the squandering of human life, particularly children.
Speaker: 1
59:15
And suffering.
Speaker: 0
59:16
Yeah. It actually rejoices in it. And and I just you know, whether it’s whether it’s incompetence, whether it’s unintended consequences, it’s it’s not too late for people. Like, I’ve I I have conversations with with with Marco Rubio. He’s convinced people aren’t ai dying yet.
Speaker: 0
59:37
He it’s it’s it’s I don’t know who’s telling him or not telling him rather. But he his instincts are correct. He, you know, he wants to he used to wear a one campaign armband. Americans, no matter what political color, they just they just they just you you see them just the size sort of they just grow in stature when they know they’re being useful.
Speaker: 0
01:00:03
I had a truck driver on that same tour. He’d ai tattoos all over his head and whatever, and he was just saying, can I drive? I heard fifty percent of all truck drivers in Africa are gonna die. Is that right because of this disease AIDS? I said, yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:00:16
He said, can I give you my number? I will drive. Like, that’s America. And and, yeah, this the bureaucracy, the the the the the meh pushers, I get it. I get people’s frustration for it, but but I’m just I just wanna remind Americans of the size of their country, and it’s and I’m not talking about the geography.
Speaker: 1
01:00:44
The impact.
Speaker: 0
01:00:45
I’m just the the size of the idea Yes. The the the you know, it’s just it’s it’s just an extraordinary thing. It’s an ai, I think, big enough to fit the whole world. And when it becomes a continent, you know, when it becomes an island rather than a continent, I think it’s a subcontinent. Ai is it?
Speaker: 0
01:01:09
I should’ve should’ve gone to geography, lessons more, but, you know, you know what I’m talking about. When it shrinks, America seems to stop being Meh. And I know you don’t wanna get into wars, and you shouldn’t, but that are that that that don’t concern you. But but there’s this this word freedom, land of the free. Yeah. That’s and the brave.
Speaker: 0
01:01:37
This is this is who we look to you for, and we look to you for these qualities. And I believe they’re everywhere, and I don’t believe any one party has a has a hole on them No. On these on these qualities. But, you know, it’s just to say it’s a funny one for me. I one of the reasons I came on on on the show Ai wanted to on the show was I Ai wanted to interview you.
Speaker: 0
01:02:09
I wanted to I just wanted to get your take on where America is at the at the present time because because you’re talking to everyone. You know? This isn’t this is a compliment to you, but my book, you know, wrote this book, surrender. And sort of if there’s a point to it at the very end, it’s it’s just Ai I’m shouting at God.
Speaker: 0
01:02:38
I’m having my wrestling match with my maker, and you just get this thing of and and you probably picked it up by now. Shut up and listen. And I need to listen more. You are a amazing listener. And I don’t know who was or some who sai listening doesn’t grant the other side legitimacy, but it grants them their humanity and restores your own.
Speaker: 0
01:03:10
You sit in this ram, and you listen to everybody. And that makes you very vatsal, in to to the country. And and I wanted to just get your your take on it. What what would your advice be to me and people like me who are not part of the big industrial complex. Just we just we just wanna serve the idea of America and the people who depend on that idea.
Speaker: 1
01:03:43
Yeah. I I think
Speaker: 0
01:03:44
What are your advice to me?
Speaker: 1
01:03:46
Ai would give you zero advice. I don’t I don’t know if I’m qualified to give advice, but I would say that America goes through these great periods of overcorrection. It goes these great periods of, like, you you saw it during COVID, during the lockdowns and the authoritarianism, and we fell into a ai of state of tyranny where there was just massive oppression of free speech, including government sponsored oppression.
Speaker: 1
01:04:11
They were contacting, different social media platforms and banning legitimate doctors and scholars because they had different opinions about how things should be handled. There was, wide scale censorship, a push for a changing of the First Amendment. The First Amendment needs to be overhauled.
Speaker: 1
01:04:29
The First Amendment doesn’t plot apply to hate speech or to disinformation. There was all these, like, new ways of talking about censorship in this country and condoning censorship, and it’s very dangerous because it’s all about money. It had nothing to do with protecting people.
Speaker: 1
01:04:45
There’s That’s
Speaker: 0
01:04:46
what I worry about. Yeah. The the argument about free speech is that it seems to be sponsored by a lot of people who you sense don’t really respect it so meh, and it but it is a very economic, for them to not have to to live with the consequences
Speaker: 1
01:05:06
Yes.
Speaker: 0
01:05:07
Of of a story. I think well, is it the communication? I think it’s the it’s 1996. This is a long time ago. Communications Act decency act that meant the Internet did not have to apply by the same rules as the rest of the media. Right. So we could say anything we wanted. And at first, that felt like liberation, but I’m not so sure anymore.
Speaker: 0
01:05:32
And so, I mean, I I I you can tell me more about this. I’m I’m Ai am not a free speech absolutist, but I like I do one believe in free speak. But I’m nervous that the people who are supporting free speech and and using their bots and their their their own activists are are people from countries who would not at all respect our, your, mine ability to express ourselves.
Speaker: 0
01:06:10
And, that’s ai I worry about is Ai think I think the the old interweb is being is being played like a like a harp. Unquestionable. Like ai an orchestra.
Speaker: 1
01:06:24
Yes.
Speaker: 0
01:06:24
And the people, you know, behind the curtain would would surprise us, I think, if we knew.
Speaker: 1
01:06:30
Worse than that. I think it’s programmed like an EDM concert. I think I Ai think it’s not even an orchestra. I I I worry, and this has been substantiated by data that more than 50% of the interactions going on on the Internet and social media are not real. And there was a That’s ai. Former FBI analyst. Meh. Former FBI analyst that said it might be as much as 80%. It’s bots, as you sai.
Speaker: 1
01:06:57
And this is this is a problem with the concept of free speech. I’m I’m completely wholly in favor of free speech just like the ADL was back in the day when they let the Ku Klux Klan march. They they like, look. You you got to
Speaker: 0
01:07:12
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:07:12
You the way to combat bad speech is with better speech. The way to find out whose arguments are correct is to let them debate in the marketplace of free ideas and expose these people for what they are arya have the people that are on the sidelines that are letting these great thinkers have these discussions sai, okay.
Speaker: 1
01:07:28
This guy makes sense. This guy is clearly a grifter. This guy has ulterior motives. This guy has an ideology that’s very toxic, and he’s trying to push this on the whole world for control, for power, for money, to benefit the special interest groups that he’s a part of or whatever it is.
Speaker: 1
01:07:44
That the problem with free speech is you’re you’re also gonna get a lot of ugliness because there’s a lot of ugliness in the world. You’re gonna get a lot of people that say horrible things. Ai I think the only way we sort through all that is you have to let them, and then you have to let people rise up that oppose those horrible ai.
Speaker: 1
01:08:02
And those people become heroes. Those become the Martin Luther Junior’s. Humor helps.
Speaker: 0
01:08:07
Like, cute humor helps. One thing we know about the Ku Klux Klan is if you meh the silly costumes, they they don’t like that. They you know, it it’s like they want you to be afraid or you want to be nervous, but it’s like Yes. Dude, look at the stage gear.
Speaker: 1
01:08:25
You’re in ghosts. It’s like it’s like,
Speaker: 0
01:08:27
come on.
Speaker: 1
01:08:28
Do you know who Daryl Davis is? No. Daryl Davis is a musician who, he’s was a traveling blues musician and, did some shows where afterwards he met some people that told him that they were in the Ku Klux Klan. And he was ai, are you kidding? And they show the guy shows him his fucking Ram Wizard Ai card or whatever the hell it is.
Speaker: 1
01:08:51
He becomes friends with
Speaker: 0
01:08:52
his Here’s my card.
Speaker: 1
01:08:53
Daryl’s black. Right. Daryl’s a black man and becomes friends with this guy, goes to his house, vatsal his family. The guy throws the robe away, gives up his membership in the KKK, renounces his meh, and gives Daryl the ropes as I want you to have this. Daryl has done that personally. The last time I talked to him was a few years back.
Speaker: 1
01:09:13
He’d done this personally to over 200 people just by being an amazing human being, by being a brilliant arya, and and hanging out with them, just being kind and talk and as an example of just a great human. And they were ai, I guess I’m wrong. I guess I’m wrong. This idea that black people are inferior and the white man is a superior race, that can’t be true because I love this guy. And so they would just quit.
Speaker: 0
01:09:39
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:09:39
They’d quit. And he has the
Speaker: 0
01:09:41
stat. Theory.
Speaker: 1
01:09:41
It’s a terrible theory. But if you’re in the place with only terrible theories and that’s what you grew up, there’s Darryl. And they give him all his ropes.
Speaker: 0
01:09:50
Ai you know, good man.
Speaker: 1
01:09:54
He’s a great man.
Speaker: 0
01:09:55
Good man.
Speaker: 1
01:09:56
And and he’s a kind, like, very peaceful, like, when when you speak to him, he’s but real he’s amazing.
Speaker: 0
01:10:04
One of your you know, again,
Speaker: 1
01:10:06
one of
Speaker: 0
01:10:06
the reasons I’m I’m here is the I think there is a sense that people just wanna be part of something. And, you know, when we’re growing up, there there were clubs you could be a part of, you know, there there there’s there are there’s people you could hang out with and you knew where that was going, but if you wanted to belong and have a sense of purpose, you ended up there.
Speaker: 0
01:10:40
Mhmm. And and so I think that it’s okay to on for for for men to admit that in this moment, they are probably, you know, we’re we’re we’re a little adrift. I hear this from my daughters. I hear this from my wife, and it’s it’s ai that’s where this feeling of of of being dislocated, it’s it’s so you’re attracted to these simple ai, you know, the the concept of the gang or Meh, ai, it’s a team sport between the reds and the blues.
Speaker: 0
01:11:30
Meh the team. That’s all yeah. That’s and and and this thing ai and and look, I’m vulnerable. We were we are all especially when you’re growing up, teenagers, you know, you are very vulnerable to to those points of view.
Speaker: 1
01:11:46
Yes.
Speaker: 0
01:11:47
I you know, early on, we had sort of yeah. I would say I had I I got close to what you might call fundamentalists, and this is all versions of fundamentalism. There are
Speaker: 1
01:12:02
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:12:03
It’s all a very narrow view.
Speaker: 1
01:12:06
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:12:06
And and, you know, what you see going on, right, in in Gaza is you see you see Palestinian people being held hostage by Hamas. It’s not just Israeli is that are being held hostage by Hamas. Right. The Palestinian people and the fundamentalists in in in in Israel, in this in in in the cabinet, these far right fundamentalists.
Speaker: 0
01:12:32
Because at a time you remember a few years back, everything was kinda wishy washy and kind of the new age and whatever you have in yourself, and now these strong clear points of view have arrived. And It’s the great overcorrection. It’s the great overcorrection.
Speaker: 1
01:12:51
Yeah. The the there’s a real problem with ai, and there’s a real problem with fundamentalism, and there’s a cowardice in it. And there’s a cowardice in I’m the only one that’s correct. There’s a cowardice in not listening to any other ideas, not listening to any other positions, and we’re being played against each other in this country.
Speaker: 1
01:13:09
The thing about the bots and the social media stuff is it just accentuates this divide between the left and the right, which I think is mostly bullshit. Most people are good people. Most people just want to be happy and healthy and have friends and family and do what they wanna do for a living and have the freedom to pursue those things.
Speaker: 1
01:13:28
Most people aren’t trying to victimize people. Most people aren’t trying to destroy other people’s lives and destroy destroy society. They they they they just want to live their life, but they’re being sucked into one side or the other that which is radically opposed to each other.
Speaker: 1
01:13:42
The great overcorrection. Did you think
Speaker: 0
01:13:46
that president Zelensky was being bullied in that meeting in the Oval Office? Like, does that just just to think about it as a playground. This is a ai. His maybe maybe his life depend but certainly the life of many, many people he knew depend sana, and he had to he had to he had to listen to that.
Speaker: 1
01:14:03
Well, the whole thing is strange. Right? I mean, the argument in the White House of, like, you you don’t have the right hand of cards and, you know, the just the fact that this is all being done publicly is very strange. Yeah. Right? That there’s cameras and photographers, like, I don’t like live podcasts.
Speaker: 1
01:14:21
Ai, I’ve done them before, but there’s something about having an audience where you’re playing to an audience, having, you know, these com conversations should be just couple people in a room. That’s what I think. I think that’s the the ones that resonate with me the most. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:14:36
This is I just think it’s the best way to do it the way that resonates the most. I think the kind of conversation that you’re gonna have with the world leader shouldn’t be performative, And it it certainly shouldn’t be with a bunch of people snapping photographs and pointing cameras and then pushing each other back and forth, you know.
Speaker: 1
01:14:55
You don’t you don’t have the right hand hand of cards. This is not cards. You are playing cards, and it’s just a it’s a crazy way and each calling each other disrespectful. It’s a crazy way to handle any world events. It’s just terrible platform for it.
Speaker: 0
01:15:09
Yeah. Just think of again, I think of America the Americans of Omaha Beach, the people who ai, the level of courage.
Speaker: 1
01:15:18
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:15:19
And I think of these people on the front line in in Europe. I mean, I haven’t really spoken about Europe with with you, but, you know, if if if if America is the melting pot, I would say Europe’s the the mosaic. You know? It’s all these different people who speak with a different language, but have are trying for one voice in Europe, which is can sound like cacophony.
Speaker: 0
01:15:50
They call it Eurobabel in in in Brussels. But I’ve I’ve really I’m really now realizing how romantic it was, you know, with the ai, with the renaissance. You know? We’ve got we’ve got a lot to offer, and and and Europe has Europe’s under threat. And those bots, every election now that where this candidate is pro Europe and pro European unity, they are just getting a shitstorm of disinformation. And I just think, wow.
Speaker: 0
01:16:26
But it’s I think Europe is and America are just sexier than these people. It’s not a a a trite thing to say, but it’s like they’re they’re so kinda unsexy. You know? That’s I mean, that’s sorry. I I have driven it up.
Speaker: 0
01:16:44
Unromantic. Unromantic. It’s Yes. That’s right. It’s just these very dull, not funny people
Speaker: 1
01:16:53
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:16:54
And Not funny. Ai to take over the world. They’re not funny. Lukashenko of Belarus, that dude is not funny. We don’t have to go further. We don’t have to go further.
Speaker: 1
01:17:05
Think is the funniest world leader? Oh my god.
Speaker: 0
01:17:09
Who yeah. That’s a really good question.
Speaker: 1
01:17:11
It’s gotta be Trump. He’s the funniest.
Speaker: 0
01:17:13
Well, he has the thing that a lot of stand up comedians have, which is he can say the thing in the room that no one else is gonna say.
Speaker: 1
01:17:27
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:17:27
And that generally creates a laugh. And, but I also think he mightn’t be able to take a joke.
Speaker: 1
01:17:37
Well, he’s not good at that. He doesn’t enjoy a joke coming his way. No. He ai.
Speaker: 0
01:17:42
I mean, Zelensky is actually a comedian.
Speaker: 1
01:17:45
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:17:45
I I met him before he became president.
Speaker: 1
01:17:47
He played piano with his penis on television.
Speaker: 0
01:17:50
It it’s quite a it’s it was quite a piano.
Speaker: 1
01:17:55
I mean, it’s funny to go from playing piano with your penis to becoming the president of Ukraine.
Speaker: 0
01:18:01
Becoming the president of The United States Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:18:03
By all accounts. Right.
Speaker: 0
01:18:04
So so, but he he came to Ireland as a comedian. He told me. I didn’t know. And he played, like, small towns. Ai can he played Dundalk or Drogheda somewhere in the East Coast Of Ireland. But comedians can read a ram. I mean, performers, I think comedians are at the top of the food chain because you don’t have a band. You don’t have a fucking tambourine.
Speaker: 0
01:18:36
You don’t you just have the read of the room and the material has to be really funny. I use this sometimes with our band. Not a lot of our music is just experimental and innovative. We improvise, and then we try to turn it into songs. But sometimes we’ll write a pop song, and and we’ll end up with a pop song. And I’ll say, well, the thing about a pop song is it is empirical.
Speaker: 0
01:19:03
It’s like it either is or it isn’t. It’s like a joke that doesn’t have a punchline. It’s like a comedian does not walk out on stage and tell a joke, and if people don’t laugh, go, they just don’t get it. It just means the joke isn’t funny. So I it’s not a popular theory in our band, by the way, but I hold on to it very tight.
Speaker: 0
01:19:26
I just say, if you can’t go out and play this song and it just connect, then it’s not pop song. We don’t we only do a few pop songs every every decade probably because a lot of what we U2 does is different ai of rock and roll. But I do think there’s something empirical about some songs are better than the others.
Speaker: 0
01:19:51
Ai witnessed a I witnessed one of the most ridiculous, moments in in my life, but it was kinda funny. Oasis. You know, Oasis are our good ones. They’re amazing. They love them. And, so I witnessed this. It couldn’t be a more childish fight between two of my friends.
Speaker: 0
01:20:18
Liam Tyler was a friend at that point, I know know about it now. But and Michael Hutchens, who was the singer of Ai XS, and they really were doing the ai song’s better than your song. Oh, no. No. No. What about no.
Speaker: 0
01:20:34
No. And and and I was thinking I was laughing to ai, and then I thought, it’s interesting. Both of them have a point. That song of theirs might be better than that. And I started to think about it. And comedians don’t get a chance to have to be subjective.
Speaker: 0
01:20:59
It’s not like Prince walks out and plays a whole new album and can go, they just don’t get it. It’s like you’re either funny or you’re not. Right. You’re going down have you gone down in flames?
Speaker: 1
01:21:12
Oh, sure. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:21:14
Where is what was your worst gig?
Speaker: 1
01:21:16
Oh, I’ve had so meh. Especially in the early days, you’re you’re trying to figure it out and, you know, the the thing about material is material is essentially like like a calf that’s newly born and it has awkward legs and it has to develop into a bull, but it takes a long time.
Speaker: 1
01:21:37
It takes crafting. You have to sit with it. You You have to go over the some guy ideas come to you in full form and some ai you have to believe in them. You know there’s something there and you have to dig and, you know, trust the muse and find it. And, you know, sometimes those bits would just fucking bomb and you have to just, like, go, gosh. Should I abandon this? Should I keep working on this?
Speaker: 0
01:21:58
Do you have a team of writers?
Speaker: 1
01:22:00
No. Wow. No. I just write everything myself. You’re kidding? No. Always. Yeah. Always have. Always
Speaker: 0
01:22:07
write my
Speaker: 1
01:22:07
I just like my my view on stand up, the kind of stand up that I do is supposed to be here’s the world through my eyes. This is how I’m seeing things ram the most ridiculous, awestruck, and laughing at everything perspective. And I have it has to be through my lens.
Speaker: 0
01:22:23
Well, that’s amazing. I mean, because I’ve seen, you know, on Saturday Night Live when we do it or I’ve seen some of the talk show, I see these geniuses, you know, crunching jokes and coming out with material and That’s a different thing.
Speaker: 1
01:22:37
Yeah. Like a Saturday Night Live monologue or, you know, a Ai Show monologue or any of that kind of thing. It’s a that’s a different thing. The the real stand up is clubs. You know?
Speaker: 0
01:22:46
I went to the club with Dave Chappelle to a club. He brought me to it’s amazing. Are you still friendly with him?
Speaker: 1
01:22:52
Oh, real good friends. Yeah. I love him to death.
Speaker: 0
01:22:55
Yeah. He’s he’s he’s that’s jazz. Yes.
Speaker: 1
01:22:58
He’s a real artist.
Speaker: 0
01:22:59
He can go there. Well well, you know, it’s like yeah. No. Ai I’m I I think what I’m what I’m talking about this I’m talking about this. Oh, yeah. Because people can’t take a joke.
Speaker: 1
01:23:10
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:23:11
And some people I mean, we don’t need belly laughs out of our leaders. We just need vision. You need vision and kindness. But to deal with the Klu Klux Klan Yeah. Humor helps. To deal with the Right. The fascists or whatever, I I mean, certainly, Hitler in, well, I think late thirties was getting rid of the Dadaists and the surrealists because the language of fascism was to fight back, but that they ai that language.
Speaker: 0
01:23:40
And, I mean, the the language of resistance against, you know, Hitler was to fight back and and but they that suited them. They did not like being laughed at. So Ai did not like being laughed at.
Speaker: 1
01:23:53
Well, because if you can mock something, like, you can you can have a position or an opinion on something and someone can disagree strongly. But if they make everyone laugh at that position, now you’re now they’ve made a real point because it’s actually, an opinion that you might not have even agreed with has caused you a belly laugh.
Speaker: 1
01:24:11
Like, oh, god. Like, that’s how you really get it. Because if you go on stage and just have a bunch of opinions and just lecture people, there’s people in the audience who go, well, okay, well, fuck you. I feel differently. Mhmm.
Speaker: 1
01:24:22
But if you could go on stage with that opinion and make people laugh at something they know they shouldn’t be laughing ai, like, oh meh god. And you’re like ai, then you’re introducing ideas into a person. It’s a spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down.
Speaker: 0
01:24:36
Yeah. No. You’re certainly the because with rock stars and, again, honestly feel like I’m just sai per impersonating one. I don’t think Sai am the material really, but people when they see me coming, they sit in their wallet. You know what I mean? They’re like, whoop. Here he comes, and he’s gonna have a sign up, and it’s like, whereas comedians, people are much more open. Mhmm. People will people will will are just more open.
Speaker: 0
01:25:05
I think that’s a that’s that it’s a responsibility, but it’s it’s something to be valued. It’s just I I I was saying to somebody recently, I’m not sure I trust people anymore who aren’t a little bit funny.
Speaker: 1
01:25:22
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:25:23
I mean, funny in the Right. Not the funny peculiar.
Speaker: 1
01:25:25
Right. Right.
Speaker: 0
01:25:26
But there’s a place for that too. Right. But, you know, people who make you laugh are open.
Speaker: 1
01:25:31
Yes. And also the contradictions of the world and how bizarre things are Mhmm. It’s just ripe with humor. And if you don’t ever pick up on it, like, what are you focusing on? Like, you don’t ever see the hypocrisy and the ludicrousness of just this existence, this temporary existence on a spinning orb hurling through the universe and concentrating on who gets to use what bathroom?
Speaker: 1
01:25:56
Like, is this like you know what I mean? It’s like we’re weird. We’re very weird. And if you don’t see that, you’re not paying all attention. You’re not all in. You’re certainly not balanced.
Speaker: 0
01:26:07
Those mushrooms were working very well for you.
Speaker: 1
01:26:09
Yeah. That I’m telling you, meh. In God’s country, that’s the ticket.
Speaker: 0
01:26:14
That’s beautiful. I I, wow. I’m I’m so touched. That album, you know, a lot of the songs on that were, you know, very vulnerable.
Speaker: 1
01:26:27
Mhmm.
Speaker: 0
01:26:28
You know? And I don’t know if you know Ai Eno, was a producer that invented ambient music and worked with David Bowie, Talking Heads, you know, and recently, Co Play and other people. But he was had a profound influence on us because we didn’t go to I didn’t go to art college.
Speaker: 0
01:26:52
All, like, the Beatles, the Stones, they all went to art college. We went to Brian Eno, and he had this incredible musician in partnership with him for the production of that album called Daniel Lanois, one of the greatest musicians you will ever meet in your life. And that some songs come really quickly, ai, boom, meh just but some are just like what you’re saying. They’re like the the the foal.
Speaker: 0
01:27:18
The the the legs are going around.
Speaker: 1
01:27:21
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:27:21
And the one that was like that was where the streets of no name. And so we were working on it for what felt like weeks, And Ai, you know, came in and he just said, I ram not having us speak one more minute on this saloni. And he went to wipe it. So he was actually gonna wipe it. And and so there’s no other copies.
Speaker: 0
01:27:46
And Pat McCarthy, who was our engineer, went on to produce Ram and Sana, great dude. He physically blocked Brian from it. And but that song ram me and it’s it’s not the lyric that I’m most proud of or anything because it’s Brian was just saying to us, just go with your first sketch.
Speaker: 0
01:28:11
Remember talking about paint on canvas? Yes. But I’m saying it’s not it’s not that clever. I sana we don’t let it be clever. Just that’s what you said.
Speaker: 0
01:28:21
That’s what you meant. And and it’s the strangest thing, Joe, because we go on stage, and I sing that song. We sing that song. We play that song. And it’s like, what the fuck? Where where the streets of no name? What’s that about?
Speaker: 0
01:28:41
Ai started it in Africa when I was with my wife when I was a kid, and you were 25, something like that, maybe 26. She was 24. And it was about the devastation that was happening in the Ethiopian famine, and I just couldn’t explain it to myself. There was other inferences about the song, but none of them matter as much as this question to your audience, which is, do you wanna go there to this place, the place of imagination, the place of soul, place of that other place?
Speaker: 1
01:29:22
Do you
Speaker: 0
01:29:23
want do you sana go there? Should do you wanna go there together? And everybody feels it. Yeah. Because we all want to be outside of ourselves at a certain ai, and we all wanna have that experience, that meeting with some call it the universe, some call it gods, some call it themselves, whatever.
Speaker: 0
01:29:46
But it’s it’s music now. I think, you know, all arya aspires to the condition of of music, but but we I was saying we go to church in the dark. You know, that’s what rock and roll is, and we’re just looking for little shards
Speaker: 1
01:30:06
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:30:06
Of light. We find it in in an audience. We find our transcendence together. With the movie, we also go to church in the dark in cinema. You’re sitting in it you’re in you’re in a dark speak, and it’s projected light telling other people’s stories. And somebody said sana is like being born.
Speaker: 0
01:30:32
Like, you go into the womb. It’s like you’re floating around in the as Jim Sheridan would say, he’s so I hear a psychological genius, Irish director, Ai Left Foot, The Boxer, some great films. He’d say, yeah. You’re in the amniotic fluid. You’re inside the mother. And and you’re about to come out into the light. That’s cinema.
Speaker: 0
01:30:57
Great cinema is that journey towards the ai. And I love that. I love that. But it’s the same for some people. Their their cathedral is a ai, the natural world. Yeah. Have you ever heard Richard Rohr? No. R o h r. He lives in Albuquerque.
Speaker: 0
01:31:22
He has a thing called it’s called the center of the center of action and contemplation. And I really love it that it’s that way around. And he’s a Franciscan friar and but very otherworldly thoughts about the natural world and finding the the divine in it. Mhmm. As well as just in each other, but just seeing it in the world. Ai? I think you didn’t enjoy him.
Speaker: 0
01:31:58
He’s he’s he’s he’s he’s worth he’s worth a a read. Do you is if Bryden is it Irish? Is it Catholic Irish? Is it Yeah. Right. Yeah. K.
Speaker: 0
01:32:09
You might enjoy him.
Speaker: 1
01:32:10
I’m sure I would.
Speaker: 0
01:32:11
Yeah. He’s a he’s a he’s a he’s a real beauty. He lives got a little hermitage, and and and yeah. And he’s he’s good. He’s great on the Enneagram as well. Do you know the Enneagram? No. It’s a sort of archetypal thing. Goes back to Sufi.
Speaker: 0
01:32:31
I think early Sufi and then the Christian fathers, ai they what they call the desert fathers in the fourth century, but it’s a way of recognizing archetypes and our own I I I it’s not a it’s not a big thing for me or anything. It’s not archetypes, but I think my our daughter, Eve’s an actor, and she said a lot of writers are interested in it.
Speaker: 0
01:32:59
And she said in some of the clever schools, they teach this, the Enneagram. He’s anyway, Richard was an expert in ai. I think oh, here it goes.
Speaker: 1
01:33:08
Oh. Enneagram three centers
Speaker: 0
01:33:10
Oh, looks like a cult.
Speaker: 1
01:33:12
Of intelligence, the mediator, peacemaker. So the perfectionist, reformer, the giver, helper, supporter, performer, achiever, romantic, individualist, the observer, thinker, the loyal skeptic, the trooper, the epicure, enthusiast, generalist, and the protector, the leader of the boss.
Speaker: 0
01:33:30
What would you say you are? Oh, Jesus. Ai don’t know how you could tell. I wouldn’t.
Speaker: 1
01:33:35
This I think I just keep on keeping on. I try not to pay attention to me as much as possible. I think there’s a thing that happens what you’re talking about on stage where everyone achieves a higher state of consciousness through a song. I think that’s that’s where it is really like a church. That’s where it is really like a religious experience.
Speaker: 1
01:33:57
When when a a great song is playing that, like, really like, when people hear it and, like, you know, maybe it’s the first couple of bars of Sunday Bloody Sunday. They hear it and they’re like, yes. It’s like this thing that washes over everyone collectively. We’re all experiencing it together, and it takes you away from yourself.
Speaker: 1
01:34:16
You know, everyone’s caught up in their own struggle and their their self and how they exist in this world and all the problems of reality. And then there’s something about these moments of divine inspiration where they impact people. It’s very profound way. And I think that’s one of the reasons why people are so deeply drawn to music and especially live performance because music is wonderful. Music by yourself is great.
Speaker: 1
01:34:39
I love listening to music in my car. I love listening to music, period. But music, when you’re in a live setting, when everyone’s experiencing it together, it’s it’s a religious experience. There’s something there’s something attuned to it. There’s a reason why they sing in church. Right? To and she’s very similar.
Speaker: 0
01:34:55
Yeah. I miss that. You know, when we were kids growing up, the tunes weren’t back great in the church. And I said to my I mean, no offense to whoever was there, but they
Speaker: 1
01:35:07
I agree.
Speaker: 0
01:35:08
But, you know, I was like I’ll I said to our kids, you know, as and they were all none of them were baptized Protestant or Catholic because my father was Catholic. My mother was I just said, you wanna be Christian, you wanna be Christian, but you decide. So, you know, I never got religion ram down my throat.
Speaker: 0
01:35:26
I’m certainly not gonna put it down yours. So we go, and sometimes you just get a feeling in a place. I sai, just trust that feeling. Yeah. And they might say, well, the tunes aren’t that good.
Speaker: 0
01:35:38
And I’m ai, it’s okay, but but I I I will I remember when I was really walking in and hearing, like, the Salvation Army band and people singing, and I ai meh getting the shivers just thinking, these are these are these these hymns, these ancient Yes. Songs, they they really connect us. And I I miss that.
Speaker: 0
01:36:03
And I I think people I think people would return to religion if if if religion wasn’t so fucked up. Yeah. And and I think people you know, the the the church has to serve the people and and and not the other way around. And, you know, the church presently I don’t know how many churches you’d have here in Austin, Texas, but I’d probably say if there’s 276 different kinds of, churches, you know, it’s it’s just one church.
Speaker: 0
01:36:45
It’s just in 276 bits, pieces. It feels sometimes like it’s at odds with science, but it’s not. Science is the pursuit of truth. And so these are pilgrims too. Great ai are trying to crack the code of the physical world. The great theologians are trying to crack the code of the metaphysical world. And nobody knows.
Speaker: 0
01:37:21
That’s the thing about literalism. You know? That beautiful thing in you know, everyone has it at their wedding. Love is patient. Love is kind. It can roll over ai.
Speaker: 0
01:37:30
Love is is this. Love is that. And then it goes faith, hope, and and love, but the greatest of these is love. And I remember talking with somebody and I was saying, well, why is love more important than faith? Why is love more important than hope?
Speaker: 0
01:37:43
And the clue is a few verses later where it says we see through the mirror darkly, But one day, we’ll see face to face. We know now in part, but one day, we will know fully as we ourselves are known. You cannot be a fundamentalist sana and not understand that that is an explanation to just realize that you can have faith.
Speaker: 0
01:38:26
You can have hope, but love means you need love. We need love because we cannot be sure our certainties our certainties. That’s the scary thing. And, you know, I trust the feeling as a musician. I trust it when I’m going, you know, to sing or to improvise, but they’re not certainties. Right. They’re instincts.
Speaker: 0
01:38:48
Yeah. And and I love that you feel that music is a still a communal place. Our festivals are amazing, and and people people people are deprived presently of of a place where they feel comfortable. Ai comfortable in the back of a cathedral. I’m comfortable.
Speaker: 0
01:39:13
It’s, what’s your friend, the the blues guy or, you know, a gospel
Speaker: 1
01:39:19
Gerald Davis. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:39:20
I’m I’m I’m just I’m just looking for the spirit Yeah. Wherever I find it in a conversation. In a song. Ai can feel it when it’s happening. Yeah. Where when we’re having an honest conversation, you feel it. It’s a it’s a thing, and I’m and I can put down my salesman and just have a conversation because the three on that Enneagram is probably my number.
Speaker: 0
01:39:43
I I because it’s so excruciating. But, it’s the salesman. I sell ideas as well as songs, and I sometimes just have to just just shut up and listen.
Speaker: 1
01:39:59
I think we’re all those things just to varying degrees. And I think the spirit of the thing is what you’re talking about. This intangible moment where everybody realizes they’re in it, whether it’s in a church where they’re singing or one of my favorite moments with you was on, the Jimmy Fallon shah singing Ordinary Love.
Speaker: 1
01:40:20
Oh, wow. I loved it. We played it on the podcast when it happened. The next day when it got out on YouTube, I I brought it in here, and I go, you gotta listen to this. This is just such an amazing rendition of a song because it’s just you sitting on these chairs, and Jimmy Fallon is next to you on the table.
Speaker: 1
01:40:40
Like, this is it here.
Speaker: 0
01:40:42
What a beauty.
Speaker: 1
01:40:43
We played sai. I wanna listen to it. Let’s put this on. Put the headphones on. I fucking love this version.
Speaker: 0
01:40:59
Sai wants Ai, yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:43:08
Yeah. I love this part.
Speaker: 0
01:43:09
Oh, come on. Ai love.
Speaker: 1
01:43:53
That is that is without a doubt, hands down, my favorite performance ever ever on a talk show ever. Because it was so first of all, it starts out so relaxed. You’re sitting on the couch and you’re singing it, and you’re just so on it. You’re so on it that everyone just gets captivated by it, and then the music builds, and then you bring in roots. It’s fucking phenomenal.
Speaker: 1
01:44:18
And that’s so, like, that is what we’re talking about. That’s, like, this moment that elevates people. It takes people out of their life and just this joy of expression all happening simultaneously with everybody in the crowd and every and then when you stand up and you start dancing and roots are playing.
Speaker: 1
01:44:33
Woah. Just watches over everybody.
Speaker: 0
01:44:36
That is it’s odd that you should should bring it up because I’m sitting in a table with a couple of journalists, friends of a friend of mine, this economist called David McWilliams. You’d love him, by the way. He’s the guy who says, the poor think in minutes, the the rich think in years. You know?
Speaker: 0
01:45:00
They’re kind of one of the one of his quotes. But anyway, sitting with a bunch of people, and they’re from Bryden. And this ai going, yeah. He says McWilliams here. He’s all about you too. He’s all about you. Yeah. He hasn’t got any of your fucking records. I have your records.
Speaker: 0
01:45:20
I’ve got all your records. I’ve fucking gone off you. Right? Gone right off you. That fucking song, Ordinary Love.
Speaker: 0
01:45:27
Now he’s sana a whatever, a glass in his hand, and he’s getting the the the Dutch and the British courage and the Irish courage. He’s going, that sana, you you about Mandela and all that. So Ai listened to it. It’s like fucking nothing. And then Ai I I was watching Jimmy Saloni.
Speaker: 0
01:45:49
You played the same song. And he said, I was in tears. He said, it’s just something something happened. Yeah. So I look at it, and I’m going dodgy haircut on the singer. But I am also being defensive because I can feel something too. There is something going on.
Speaker: 0
01:46:14
That is the thing. And if and you two, you know, were making an album at the moment, and it has to be framed around that. Not that song, not that even style of songwriting, but that thing, the the the thing, the moment
Speaker: 1
01:46:29
The spirit.
Speaker: 0
01:46:30
Whatever that is.
Speaker: 1
01:46:31
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:46:33
And the conversation you’re having with your audience, with somebody, a deep listener. Ai the way, that same woman who said about listening, she said deep listening is an act of surrender. And so it’s coming full circle for me.
Speaker: 1
01:46:57
Oh, if you’re in that audience, there’s an act of surrender, for sure.
Speaker: 0
01:47:00
Ai if you’re an artist, if you’re singing it Yes. That’s
Speaker: 1
01:47:02
you have to. And everyone ai that. That’s why it resonates.
Speaker: 0
01:47:06
Sai, I mean, I I just think if we’re a rock and roll ram, there’s four people in your band. There’s nobody sounds like Adam Clayton. You know what I mean? There’s nobody sounds like Edge. There’s nobody sounds like Larry Mullen, and there’s nobody wants to tyler me. No. No. There’s I can sing.
Speaker: 0
01:47:24
I can sing. And I’m becoming the singer Ai I Ram. And that’s the reason I’m still in a band because we all have to answer that question, don’t we? Why why would we still be in a band? We’ve got to feel that it’s our best album that’s gonna come. Yes.
Speaker: 0
01:47:43
But if it is, it’s going to be because we frame it around that moment in the room when that happens.
Speaker: 1
01:47:53
Yes.
Speaker: 0
01:47:54
I promise you. I can’t deliver that promise you for every song on the album. I’ll come back if you have me, and I’ll play you some of the, the the the songs. But but but for the live rock and roll pieces, it has to have that. I recognize that.
Speaker: 1
01:48:12
You could come back anytime you want Well by the way.
Speaker: 0
01:48:15
Oh, thank you. Anytime.
Speaker: 1
01:48:17
But, yeah, that that that’s what everybody wants out of entertainment, out of celebration. That’s what everybody wants, these moments. Yeah. And that was a real moment. That was a real moment that resonated through the television. I couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to be in that room.
Speaker: 1
01:48:31
And I was thinking that, like, god. I wish I was there. Because, you know, you see Will Smith, and Will Smith’s in the corner. You see him just taken over by the music, like, nodding his head, like, oh my god. Just in that moment, it was so pure.
Speaker: 0
01:48:45
Strange resonance. I don’t know if it was mentioned, but he played Nelson Mandela. No. He played Muhammad Ali. He played Muhammad Ali.
Speaker: 1
01:48:54
Right. Right.
Speaker: 0
01:48:54
Shah wrong. That would just would be funny.
Speaker: 1
01:48:56
That would be funny. Yeah. But it was that that’s what everybody’s looking for. That’s what everybody’s looking for out of art, out of religion, out of just love and community. We’re looking for these moments that elevate us above everything else, and there’s a moment when a a great performance like that, just when everyone in the audience realizes what you’re doing, and we’re all in it together.
Speaker: 1
01:49:23
And people at home are in it. Like, that was so powerful. It’s everything through the television is, like, 60% of what it is in person at the most.
Speaker: 0
01:49:33
Like, you know, we we used to avoid TV because it’s actually Bruce Springsteen ai years and years ago. He sai, be careful of being on TV because people can turn you down. You know? They can go off to the kitchen and,
Speaker: 1
01:49:50
you know Right. Right.
Speaker: 0
01:49:50
Right. Coffee. So he’s kinda right about that. It can it can take away the mystery. But, you know, that that studio that he’s in, Jamie, you know, that’s a historic place, you know, Beatles here or whatever. You know? Think of all the
Speaker: 1
01:50:08
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:50:08
Artists that have been in on. So there’s something going on there.
Speaker: 1
01:50:12
Oh, yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:50:13
And and he he’s he’s a very beautiful spirit. He he just really cares.
Speaker: 1
01:50:19
Ai a I don’t know him, but he seems to
Speaker: 0
01:50:21
be a real sport. I’ve been out late night with him. I’ve been, you know, in in in all kinds of situations, and it’s just a a really a see through heart, you know, ai transparent person. Just use you see you see you see what he’s thinking. Now how he does that night after night, I will never know. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:50:47
Like, I’m I’m terrified going on those shows. This is easy for me because I’m talking I don’t do full stops and commas. You know, I don’t have to you’re not asking me to. I’m just having a conversation. But to be sharp and be on it.
Speaker: 1
01:51:05
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:51:06
I don’t know if I’m gonna be shah or on it. And part of being in you too is Sai ai to be true to my mood, and then Ai I’ve to allow the the song to take me somewhere else. And, yeah, my my yeah. It’s it’s a funny thing, you know. Yeah. There’s performing.
Speaker: 0
01:51:28
There’s not much psychology written about being a being a being being in books about on about the psychology of a singer.
Speaker: 1
01:51:37
Probably
Speaker: 0
01:51:37
Right. There is for comedians
Speaker: 1
01:51:38
or No. There’s barely for comedians. I think the problem is that only the people that can truly do it understand it.
Speaker: 0
01:51:45
Right.
Speaker: 1
01:51:46
That’s the problem. You know, the the problem and then you the the what you’re talking about ai for the talk show format, that’s also what makes that moment so much greater is because you ai. Yes. It’s just it’s it it’s it doesn’t belong there. That that format is for hollow platitudes and selling a new television show and getting in and out before the seven minute commercial break.
Speaker: 1
01:52:16
It’s a very it’s the worst way to have a conversation where you’re gonna get the most out of people. Because the most that you when you have time constraints on conversations, you immediately feel under the gun, so you’re kind of, like, tense and you’re pressured and you don’t know when.
Speaker: 1
01:52:30
And then Yeah. And then the the audience is staring at you and then there’s bright lights. Everything is wrong. Everything is it’s opposed to the way, normal, comfortable human conversation and connection works.
Speaker: 0
01:52:44
Mhmm.
Speaker: 1
01:52:44
It works with silence around you and just people talking or in a pub or wherever you’re at, you know, in a living room with friends at a party. Like, that’s the real human connection where it’s open ended and you’re just talking. Mhmm. Soon as you, like, lock it down. And then, you know, you have to lock it down for commercials and you you have to button this up and there’s a new person coming in in five minutes sai they gotta shuffle you out the door and hold up your album and tell everybody to buy it and then you leave and, like, was that good?
Speaker: 1
01:53:11
I guess it was good. It’s ai, you know what I mean? If it’s I don’t I never liked doing them. I’ve always felt confined, and I would never do stand up on them. I was always asked to do stand up on them. Ai, that’s not where stand up belongs.
Speaker: 1
01:53:22
Like, but if someone can pull it off, like, there’s been great comedians that pulled off incredible tonight show sets like Richard Jenny and George Carlin.
Speaker: 0
01:53:30
Who’s your yeah. Who’s your favorites? I mean, probably I’m not gonna ask you a bit about your mates, but people that you we’re talking earlier about singer people that I just looked up to. Who were who were the ones that formed you?
Speaker: 1
01:53:42
Well, when I was a child, I was probably I guess I was 15 or 16. My parents took me to see Ai in the Sunset Strip in a theater, And it was Richard Pryor. He performed. He did a concert special in the theater, and I think it’s his greatest performance. And when I was there in the theater, I was laughing so hard, and I remember very clearly looking around at all these people, and they were falling out of their chairs laughing.
Speaker: 1
01:54:09
People were just falling back, slapping each other, going, oh
Speaker: 2
01:54:13
ai god. Oh my god.
Speaker: 1
01:54:14
Like, they couldn’t breathe. And I remember thinking, this guy is doing this just talking. And I remember all the funny movies that Ai seen like Stripes and, you know, all the great comedies, Animal House, funny comedies. Nothing compared to this. And this guy’s just talking. It was incredibly profound moment for me. I remember I got obsessed with Richard Pryor. I started buying Richard Pryor cassettes.
Speaker: 0
01:54:37
Wow. I
Speaker: 1
01:54:38
would buy, like, whatever I could. You know? You could find them. Sai found a bunch that were, like, you had they were, like, weird printings of him at Red Fox’s comedy club. I actually found them in a truck stop once. They were selling these cassettes. I was like, what is this? And then I I bought them, and there were incredible performances, like, 15 people in the crowd.
Speaker: 1
01:54:55
He’s just ranting and going on these, like, unhinged rants about things and just having fun and being really loose. And I just couldn’t believe that someone could do that, That he could just by talking, this theater filled with people were just falling down laughing. They’re just blown away.
Speaker: 1
01:55:13
Yeah. So that was probably my first thought about stand up comedy. My first real thought just how it what a crazy power to have. Like, what an unbelievable thing to be able to do with just your words.
Speaker: 0
01:55:27
Yeah. I saw Robin Williams do that a few times. I was in a room with him, and I just he just could not turn it off. It was just and it was wild. It was he he he was certainly not in control of
Speaker: 1
01:55:40
it. Right.
Speaker: 0
01:55:40
And that’s we’ve there’s a genius, comedian called Tommy Tiernan. I don’t know if you’ve
Speaker: 1
01:55:46
seen him or
Speaker: 0
01:55:46
I I’ve heard him. He he again, when he goes out and he doesn’t go out often because I think it scares the ai out of him what he’s gonna say next. Yeah. And so that is the thing of having the material and then being able to blow you know, just let go of the material.
Speaker: 1
01:56:04
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:56:04
That’s I think must be part of this, is it? Yeah. I mean, I I don’t know. I I am
Speaker: 1
01:56:10
Yeah. That’s part of it. Yeah. The these ai, they come to you, and you just have to decide whether to embrace them or not.
Speaker: 0
01:56:16
Ai don’t want to into such trouble Yeah. Because you just you say the thing Yeah. That you thought of, but the art is in fact being able to say the thing you thought of. That’s I did It’s a strange one.
Speaker: 1
01:56:28
Truly ai that, and I never had any aspirations of comedy whatsoever when I was young. When I was in when I loved Richard Pryor, I just loved it as a fan. Just like I loved rock and roll. I didn’t wanna be a singer. I just loved it. And then I saw Kinison. And I think that was the first moment where I went, oh, this is comedy too? Wow. Okay. What is comedy?
Speaker: 1
01:56:51
You know, because everybody else had been, like, telling jokes or with ai, it was like these stories of life that was so, like, revealing and so vulnerable, but also hilarious, like, deeply fun, just ai sai accurate in the caricatures of speak of people. Mhmm. And then it was Kinison. I was like, okay. This is comedy too.
Speaker: 1
01:57:13
And the the first thing I ever saw of him, I was actually introduced to him by a girl that I worked with. A girl that I worked with at a gym. I worked at the Boston Athletic Club. I was a trainer. I was teaching people how to lift weights.
Speaker: 1
01:57:24
And there was a lady who was a volleyball player who I was friends with that worked there. She worked the front desk, and she was like, I saw HBO last ai. This comedian was so funny. And in the parking lot of this gym that we worked out, she did Sam Kinison’s bit of homosexual necrophiliacs paying a bunch of money to be with the freshest male corpses.
Speaker: 1
01:57:44
Oh, okay.
Speaker: 0
01:57:44
Have you
Speaker: 1
01:57:45
ever seen the bit?
Speaker: 0
01:57:45
I have not. So the bit is
Speaker: 1
01:57:46
the guy he’ll say, imagine this. You’re at the end of your ai. You know? You’re lying now. You’re like, well, I guess I’m dead now. I’m gonna be alone with Jesus, and that’s gonna be great. Ai gonna be in heaven. And, hey. He starts rocking back and forth.
Speaker: 2
01:57:59
What is this? He still feels like someone’s got a dick in my ass. Sai mean, life keeps fucking the ass even after you’re dead. It never ends. It never ends. Ow. Ow.
Speaker: 1
01:58:09
She’s doing this impression. She’s lying on the parking lot on her stomach going back and forth, and I’m dying laughing. I was like, I gotta see this. So my first introduction to Kinison was this friend of mine, her doing it on the concrete. You did it. That was good. It was amazing.
Speaker: 0
01:58:28
You no. No. That you you’re you’re you’re doing her doing
Speaker: 1
01:58:32
Yeah. It was she did a great job. She had me howling.
Speaker: 0
01:58:34
Who else?
Speaker: 1
01:58:36
Well, he was a huge one. Eddie Murphy, for sure, that was a huge one. But then again, that was also, like, I I still didn’t think I was going to do stand up until I saw Kinison. The fir when I first saw Kinison, that was when I was ai, maybe I can do because I had friends telling me to do it, but it was friends that I did martial arts with.
Speaker: 1
01:58:57
So we would have to from the time I was 15 till I was, like, 21, 20 two, all I did was travel around the country competing. And I was with this such
Speaker: 0
01:59:08
a wild combination, if you don’t mind me saying. It’s just ai it it just the martial arts seems so unfunny.
Speaker: 1
01:59:16
It’s true.
Speaker: 0
01:59:16
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You you know, you you were the you were fighting for your life.
Speaker: 1
01:59:21
It’s very scary. So in the when it’s terrifying like that and everyone’s nervous, that’s when gallows humor comes in. Oh. And I was the guy who may I always needed attention when I was young. So I was getting my attention from being really good at fighting, but but then I was also getting my attention around the also the people that are really good at fighting and being funny.
Speaker: 1
01:59:40
So when we were all, like, you know, a bunch of fucking crazy people, the the their hobby was to travel around the country ai to kick people unconscious. Right? So this is the group. This is the group that we’re hanging out
Speaker: 0
01:59:53
with. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:59:53
And, you know, most of them were older than me. I was the youngest because I was in high school at the time. Most of these were grown meh, and I was competing against grown men while I was in high school, which is another crazy thing. My instructor was hardcore, and he threw me to the grown men when I was 16. It was terrifying.
Speaker: 1
02:00:11
But because it was so terrifying, I developed this way of releasing steam. And so my friend of releasing steam my way of releasing steam, I’d make fun of different guys that we trained with having sex, ai, how he probably does it and this and vatsal. And we were always just I was just always trying to crack people up.
Speaker: 1
02:00:27
And I had one friend that I’m still really good friends with to this day, my friend Steve Graham, who talked me into doing stand up. And I never thought I’m like, you think I’m funny because you like me. I go, but you’re crazy too. Like, you’re a fucking psychopath as well.
Speaker: 1
02:00:41
Like, you’re you think I’m funny because you’re doing the same thing that I’m doing. Like, we’re nutty people. We’re not normal. Other people are gonna think I’m an asshole. And then
Speaker: 0
02:00:49
The when you walked out, though, do you do you tell tell me what how was he there when you walked out on the stage?
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02:00:55
The first time? Oh, yeah. He was there the first night.
Speaker: 0
02:00:57
Yeah. So so can you paint me the picture?
Speaker: 1
02:01:00
Ai, I was at a comedy club. I was terrible. I went to open mic night. I did, like, five minutes. It was horrible, but I got a couple of laughs. I got a couple of chuckles. And I I was like I got off stage. I was like, I think I could do this. The weirdest thing was, like, I had probably, at that ai, I was 21 years old, I’d probably fought at least a hundred times.
Speaker: 0
02:01:20
Wow.
Speaker: 1
02:01:21
And I was way more terrified of doing comedy. Way more scared.
Speaker: 0
02:01:24
Ai imagine.
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02:01:25
Way more scared. Like, fighting was scary, but I was like, I know it just has to start. Once it starts, I know what to do. Like, the real fear of comedy or of fighting was before the fight. It was all the demons. All the the thing, why am I doing this? Why are you doing this?
Speaker: 0
02:01:39
That’s what
Speaker: 1
02:01:39
you’re really
Speaker: 0
02:01:40
fighting in the end.
Speaker: 1
02:01:41
That’s what you’re fighting. You’re fighting the fear. But I knew once it started, I wouldn’t be scared at all. Because you don’t feel fear when you’re fighting because it’s you’re so in the moment. Ai. You’re you’re in the moment. You’re you’re meh. You almost don’t exist. Mhmm.
Speaker: 1
02:01:55
You know, you have to to operate at the highest level to have, like, instantaneous reactions Mhmm. And to be able to manage your pace and all these different things. You can’t think about yourself or how you look or how you feel or whether your girlfriend’s mad at you or whether you’re gonna fail out of high school.
Speaker: 1
02:02:10
You have to be locked into what you’re doing. So I wasn’t afraid of fighting. I was afraid of everything before fighting. I was afraid of feelings. And so but that’s where the comedy came from. The comedy came from, like, alleviating that, you know, and Right.
Speaker: 0
02:02:24
So there is a symbiosis there.
Speaker: 1
02:02:26
There’s there’s a thing in it. It’s a task, a very complicated task. The way I describe fighting is it’s high level problem solving with dire physical consequences. That’s what it really is. You could call it fighting. You could think
Speaker: 0
02:02:42
it to British and aggressive again. It might be the title of our new album.
Speaker: 1
02:02:44
High level problem solving with dire physical consequences. So as as far as, like, ai
Speaker: 0
02:02:50
Sai just put meta in front of the physical consequences.
Speaker: 1
02:02:53
Yes. We
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02:02:53
got ourselves in that ball.
Speaker: 1
02:02:54
Yes. Mhmm. It’s the most consequential of all sports because when someone beats you, they don’t just beat you, they take away everything you are as a man. When someone destroys you in in a competition, you are not a man anymore. You are significantly decreased in your value. Everything about you, you feel terrible.
Speaker: 1
02:03:16
It’s you were you are as good the day you walked in there confident and you still feel like shit Where you felt like you could take on the world, you have the same skills. You’re as good as you felt when you could take on the world, and now you feel like utter dog shit.
Speaker: 0
02:03:33
And yet we know that failing is how we succeed. You know, the Samuel Beckett lines, fail, fail again, fail better. I may have failed to get the quote right, but it that’s it. You know, fail, failing, fail better.
Speaker: 1
02:03:49
Pain is fuel. Yeah. The pain of failure is the most potent fuel, the most potent inspiration known to meh, and the more terrifying the failure, whether it’s failure in stand up comedy or it’s failure in That’s very high stakes.
Speaker: 0
02:04:04
If you think about and I’m just thinking this through the saloni. Both your chosen passions entail the risk of humiliation.
Speaker: 1
02:04:16
Yeah. You have to have that. That’s the only way you get bad. That’s the only way you really get bad.
Speaker: 0
02:04:21
That’s tricky.
Speaker: 1
02:04:21
Yeah. Super tricky.
Speaker: 0
02:04:23
I my my grew up my best mate, since I was three years old, he just gave me my name. My Sana, he gave us all names. But and his family names is genius, really. Painter became his painters. Father, there was tough stuff going on on our street in their house. And, he he grew up well, they the father used to was ai of religious, extremist, let’s call it that, used to humiliate the kids by putting a bowl on their hair on their hair and cutting their hair.
Speaker: 0
02:05:02
Sai he’d walk around with his pudding wires. So everyone would be, like, around and be like, ah. They were just sai fast. They were all they could all look after themselves. And
Speaker: 1
02:05:16
Like the boy named Sue?
Speaker: 0
02:05:17
It’s it is the Johnny Cash song Boy Named Sue. They are they and sai Gogi, my mate. So I grew up sparring with him. That’s just how literally how we grew up. And his so we watch all the boxing matches, all the obvious ones, and he just really went into his obsession became mixed martial arts. So he wants his kids.
Speaker: 0
02:05:41
He’s you know, they’re going down to the gym. And then my godson, okay, his name is Noah, and he comes to go get this is not a joke. This is not a joke. So Googie, my mate, since I’m three years old, comes up and he goes, oh, he says, Noah. He’s he wants to give up fighting, you know, cage fighting. And I said, oh, that’s that’s okay. I said, what do you wanna do?
Speaker: 0
02:06:08
He wants to be a doctor. And I’m like, Guggi, this is a really your kid wants to be a doctor, and you’re disappointed that he could be such a great fighter. And I I said, Guggi, he wants to be a doctor. This is by the way, he became a doctor. This is not this story, that’s how it ended.
Speaker: 0
02:06:27
But I said and he put it cookies, but he was such a good fighter. I said, why did he give up? He said, well, he’s down the gym. He said, I can’t even beat the best guy in the gym. If I can’t beat the best guy in the gym, there’s no point in me having a big career.
Speaker: 0
02:06:44
He said the best guy in the gym was Conor McGregor, and and he was a few years older. So it’s and then two of the other kids are fighters
Speaker: 1
02:06:54
now. Wow.
Speaker: 0
02:06:55
So I’ve I’ve grown up around it and because of my mates and his and his kids. And but that thing of of combat, being comfortable in combat is a thing you need to be careful of because you can end up there. And sometimes I do you because it’s an art form for you. It’s a it’s a it’s a it was a, you know, profession. It was a it’s different.
Speaker: 0
02:07:29
But people like me, fight or flight is a problem because sometimes fight is on. And I and there is no fight.
Speaker: 1
02:07:39
Right.
Speaker: 0
02:07:40
So that’s part of the shah up and listen instructions I’m receiving from which is I’m kind of born that’s with my fists up. And and from whatever way just growing up and being around what I was around and experiencing what I experienced, I have that. And and and and and even in the band, I’m a bit like that.
Speaker: 0
02:08:03
And and so I’ve gotta be careful because it’s not always somebody coming around the corner who wants to take you out, and they might actually just wanna take you out. Right. Right. Right. Right. And it’s it’s not becoming of to to be combative at all times. So I’m I’m I’m learning to put my fist down.
Speaker: 0
02:08:31
I’m learning to spend those times in the morning thanking God that I’m alive because I had a heart surgery as we talked about earlier. And just waking up is great. Just like, wow. I’ve just woken up. What a thrill.
Speaker: 0
02:08:45
And I’m trying to get to that place with not with the world, but with myself. I’ve not made peace with the world. I certainly have not, but I am making more peace with myself, which is sometimes a bit harder. And and ai and the and the family and listening to them more And and and, yeah, that’s that’s that’s it. This this combat thing is is interesting.
Speaker: 0
02:09:16
Were you in in the neighborhood? I asked you earlier, but were there people were is there people you can remember?
Speaker: 1
02:09:25
Sure. From like
Speaker: 0
02:09:27
Ai, as being, like,
Speaker: 1
02:09:29
on you Compatid On you. On me On you. Not from the time I started training. Once I started training, I got very good very quick, and I became kinda known for it.
Speaker: 0
02:09:38
Yeah. So people start picking up
Speaker: 1
02:09:40
in Sai was doing it at a, in a crazy way. It wasn’t as simple as, like, oh, he takes karate. It’s ai, no. He on the weekends, he’s traveling around the country and fighting in tournaments. You know, ai I I was winning them, you know. So Ai was it was I found a thing very early on that I could excel at that was scary, that people and I’ve realized through that thing, you get good at anything.
Speaker: 1
02:10:05
You just have to put your attention and focus to it. And, well, when do you put your attention to focus to something the the most? Well, when your literal health relies on success. It was so scary that you couldn’t half ass it, which is ai, I have a problem with things that involve too much personality and charisma where they could mask truth.
Speaker: 1
02:10:27
And I think this is the problem with evangelical preachers. This is the problem with politicians.
Speaker: 0
02:10:33
I’m rock
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02:10:34
stars. And it could be anybody, but it’s ai there’s this siren call that will lead you to the rocks and it’s believing your own bullshit. And fighting was it didn’t matter what your personality was. Right. It didn’t matter.
Speaker: 0
02:10:50
It’s empirical.
Speaker: 1
02:10:51
Yeah. It did nothing mattered. It didn’t matter how many people liked you. If you get kicked in the head, you get fucked up. And on the flip side of it, I used to love when I would go to someone else’s hometown and they had all these people beating, like, cheering for them.
Speaker: 1
02:11:07
All these people, like, you know, you’re gonna fuck them up. All these people cheer in the corner. I would love that. It was my favorite thing. Okay.
Speaker: 1
02:11:13
My favorite thing. It’s ai they can’t help you.
Speaker: 0
02:11:15
Do you have rage?
Speaker: 1
02:11:19
Me now?
Speaker: 0
02:11:19
No. I’m just when you’re fighting I mean, obviously, my what we do in music is we try to turn rage into something beautiful, and that’s what rock and roll is, the sound of you know, I think it was Neil Young that said it’s something like the sound of revenge.
Speaker: 1
02:11:36
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
02:11:37
But whatever it is, rage for sure. There’s rage. That’s what separates certain bands. You wanna know what the difference between a pop band and a rock and roll ram? Rage. It’s rage.
Speaker: 1
02:11:46
Rage against the machine.
Speaker: 0
02:11:47
And you bet. Yeah. And and Fuck you. I won’t
Speaker: 1
02:11:50
do what you tell me. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
02:11:52
We we we have that, and that that was that was coming through me. Yeah. And and I had to so I’m just wondering where you where’d you get that rage ram? Or or maybe you didn’t have it. I mean, I’m told by some people that it’s like, Mike Tyson had rage, but some boxers, you know, they didn’t.
Speaker: 0
02:12:11
They could they could they thought it made them weak.
Speaker: 1
02:12:14
It it well, it gets in the way of clear thinking. And, you know, I had this guy named Yuri Prochaska on the podcast recently. He’s brilliant fighter who’s in the UFC, who is the light heavyweight champion at one point in time and is still one of the top light heavyweights in the world.
Speaker: 1
02:12:28
And he we were talking about anger and rage, and then it leads you down a bad path of decision making when you’re fighting. Yeah. It interferes with the flow. It interferes with the way. And then, like Ai was saying before, when you’re competing, you know, and I’ve never competed at that level.
Speaker: 1
02:12:43
When you’re competing vatsal world championship level, anything that fucks with your mind, anything where you’re doubting yourself or talking to yourself or all that is resources that is being allocated towards something that’s completely useless as opposed to being, like, completely in the moment and in the zone.
Speaker: 1
02:13:01
If you get taken out of it for a moment, if they feel for a moment that you’re thinking and they’re ai, you’re looking for a way out, you’re looking to quit, you’re gone. You’re done. Like, when your friend was saying that his son didn’t wanna be a fighter anymore, this is my advice always.
Speaker: 1
02:13:14
Whenever someone ai, I’m thinking about stopping ai, I’ll quit. Quit right now. Because somewhere out there, there’s someone who’s not thinking about stopping at all. They’re gonna fuck you up. Yeah. They’re gonna come for you. It’s gonna they’re gonna it’s gonna be terrifying.
Speaker: 1
02:13:27
You’re locked in a ring with Mike Tyson and you’ve been thinking about getting a regular job, like, yeah. You’re fucked. You’re fucked because there’s all in people. In my opinion, I I love fighting, but I think only all in people should be fighting. And the moment you’re not all in, get out. You gotta get out.
Speaker: 1
02:13:44
Because the difference between an all in person and a one foot out the door person is enormous. It’s enormous.
Speaker: 0
02:13:51
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
02:13:52
Even if skill level is similar, the the person who’s all in is a terrifying person. They they all they wanna do is this one thing, and they’re completely focused on it just being the best in the world, this one thing. They’re gonna find holes in you. They’re gonna find they’re gonna find your weaknesses.
Speaker: 1
02:14:09
They’re gonna push you in a way that maybe you didn’t push yourself as far in the gym. So come the second round, come the third round, you start breaking down, and they’re not breaking down at all. They’re breaking you down. It’s a terrifying place to be when you know you’re not all in and the other person’s all in.
Speaker: 1
02:14:24
So anybody if that was my son, he’s like, I’m thinking about quitting. I’m like, good. Quit. That’s what I’d say. Quit. Find something else you love.
Speaker: 1
02:14:30
Find what you love. You don’t have to do this. But if you’re gonna do this, you gotta you gotta only do this. This has to be your fucking life. Right. Your fucking life.
Speaker: 0
02:14:40
I mean,
Speaker: 1
02:14:40
I don’t want you to be a rock star and a fighter. Shut the fuck up. You can’t be both.
Speaker: 0
02:14:44
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
02:14:45
It’s not possible. If you wanna do that thing, that thing is your whole life.
Speaker: 0
02:14:49
There’s a I don’t have any, tattoos, but if I did
Speaker: 1
02:14:54
Kinda amazing you got this far without no tattoos.
Speaker: 0
02:14:56
If I did, it it’s I have a I am there’s a quote. It’s from Nietzsche, and I wouldn’t normally quote from Nietzsche. You know, I’m not bad interested in Nietzsche, but I he’s done he’s written some some some aphorisms that I like and whatever. But in our summer place in in in in where we go to, there’s a little trail called the Nietzsche Trail, and it’s very he apparently came up with this line, which is for anything truly great to take place, there requires, and this would be my tattoo, a long obedience in the same direction.
Speaker: 1
02:15:39
Oh, that’s good. So so That’s so
Speaker: 0
02:15:42
And I think of edge when I think of that. I don’t think of me. I’m I’m sort of I’m just I’m I’m I just meh I’m just my curiosity just takes me into place I shouldn’t be. But that long obedience in the same direction, that’s that’s what you’re talking about. Yes. Does it ai to people to tickling? I always wondered, would it be great?
Speaker: 0
02:16:10
And if you’re, like, the biggest fighter ever and just little tickle. And, it’s ai maybe that’s ai I don’t
Speaker: 1
02:16:18
think that would work.
Speaker: 0
02:16:19
I think people would
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02:16:20
have already tried that.
Speaker: 0
02:16:21
Come on,
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02:16:21
man. Totally unaffected. Ai
Speaker: 0
02:16:23
do it.
Speaker: 1
02:16:24
You’re so filled with adrenaline during field tackles. Mhmm. Yeah. Fuck. You’re sparked out. Do you
Speaker: 0
02:16:29
know that there’s a group comedian called Ken Dodd, I remember ram Liverpool, and he’s a kid growing up. He had a he had a feather. He used to just tickle people. I’m telling you. I I’ll get the tattoo. You get the you get the the feather.
Speaker: 1
02:16:45
The feather’s awesome. Oh, fuck. It is a funny thing. It that that quote is so accurate. It’s it’s one of the greatest quotes of all time.
Speaker: 0
02:16:53
I think it’s a strong quote, and and it’s, you know, as a person who’s he was pushing away ai. They had even the concept of higher consciousness for a lot of his ai. Mhmm. And yet you’re managing to bump into it. There’s a quote of his, I swear I Sai ai read, but when we were doing the book, we couldn’t find it anywhere, so I might have made it up.
Speaker: 0
02:17:17
But he was he was because that’s the history of that in our family.
Speaker: 1
02:17:20
Jamie will find it.
Speaker: 0
02:17:22
Well, it’s not. It’s it’s sai Jamie, it’s it’s it’s about friendship, and I don’t think it’s Ai don’t think so. But it’s the idea is that friendship is it is is deeper, ai tyler. It’s less dramatic, than, you know, romantic love, but it is it’s it’s somehow the essence of great relationships is is actually friendship.
Speaker: 0
02:17:57
I think that’s Nietzsche, but we couldn’t find it. So I I may have just made it up. Though love be deeper, friendship is more wide ram, like, Chronicles of Narnia. Oh, I’ll take that too. Something like that. Thank you, Jamie. I’ll take it.
Speaker: 0
02:18:13
My dad was funny. He he used to quote this playwright, Irish playwright, called Singh, you sai, about because he was suspicious of nationalism. Because in Ireland, you know, you would be. Mhmm. This is a country with an area of civil war and along sectarian lines. So he used to sai, Ai.
Speaker: 0
02:18:34
What is Ireland but the land that keeps my feet from getting wet? Sai that’s a great quote of Singh’s. So when we did the book, Surrender book was on Knopf. So they went off couldn’t find it anywhere. He couldn’t find the quote anywhere because he made it up.
Speaker: 0
02:18:52
Wow. And and it’s a great quote. And I think it’s okay if you say something three times, it’s yours. Right? Sai I’ll ai, you know, I’m in a band with my friends, and that friendship is pulled and pushed, and it’s difficult.
Speaker: 0
02:19:12
And at some point, one of us is usually trying to break up the band, but it’s a very deep bond.
Speaker: 1
02:19:20
Can I say something about that? Yeah. I thought was really great about the film as well.
Speaker: 0
02:19:23
Well You
Speaker: 1
02:19:23
went to the fact that it’s a true democracy in your band.
Speaker: 0
02:19:28
That’s annoying, isn’t it?
Speaker: 1
02:19:29
Well, it’s but I would expect nothing less from you. Mhmm. When when you said that and I wasn’t aware of that, I was like,
Speaker: 0
02:19:37
of course. Of course, that’s
Speaker: 1
02:19:38
how you would set it up.
Speaker: 0
02:19:39
But we well, the it’s it’s fine to be a democracy, but we share things also the economics. Yes. That’s where he planned.
Speaker: 1
02:19:48
Exactly.
Speaker: 0
02:19:49
And and we had a manager, Paul McGinnis, for most of our ai, and it was one of these things. He said, just don’t ever be fighting about whose song it is and because in the background, it’s like Sai want my song on the album or I’ve got two just get rid of that. Yeah. Just share everything and make sure that you all feel ai a stake in each other. Yes.
Speaker: 0
02:20:10
And and so the arguments in you too are never about, well, this is my idea, so you’re really stepping on my toes. We’ve developed a call a sort of band ego bigger than individual egos. Even an ego as big as mine. It this is bigger. This is even bigger.
Speaker: 0
02:20:33
And, it’s the quiet ones. But, yeah, I think we’ve we’ve learned to just the great we don’t we don’t argue about what’s very good. Sorry. We do argue about what’s very good. We don’t argue about what’s great. Sai if we’re talking about, is that good? That chorus? Nah. That guitar. Well, it’s no.
Speaker: 0
02:20:55
You you
Speaker: 1
02:20:56
But it’s all for a purpose.
Speaker: 0
02:20:57
We’re all just talking about it. We never but when it’s great, people just back off. We just know. It’s like greatness has its own what’s the word? Has its own brings with it a certain acquiescence to that thing. And then you learn that very good is the enemy of greatness. It’s not even next door neighbors.
Speaker: 0
02:21:24
Like, we we used to be with you two. We were really crap or great, but then we got very good, very dangerous. Being very good is not helpful because there’s a chasm chasm between what is very good and great. Greatness, what you were talking about there back on on Jimmy Fallon, that’s a moment of greatness. It it’s it’s it’s not ai is different ram saying we were great.
Speaker: 0
02:21:54
It was great. And and very good could be just sitting there playing the song. Good. It’s it’s a very fine song, and these are very fine players. But that could just be very good.
Speaker: 1
02:22:07
It didn’t make that moment that that resonated so deeply with me that I brought it up. We we played it multiple times on this podcast over
Speaker: 0
02:22:14
the years. I I’m I’m really happy you did, and and that’s what the my friend, I forget his name ram my friend that I just met for the first time at the kitchen table, who is who had, you know, had the guts to say. He’s so disappointed because this the recording of that song was just very good. That’s really what he was saying.
Speaker: 1
02:22:38
Yes. Yes. It you hadn’t captured ai this. But I think that unique moment of the way you guys did it is what made it so speak. It’s because, you know, Jimmy Fallon’s sitting there, Will Smith is sitting there, and you’re just on these chairs, and you’re singing on the chair.
Speaker: 1
02:22:56
Sai you’re moving on the chair, and then eventually everything picks up and you’re standing up and dancing, and the whole crowd, like, felt it. It was like this build up to it. It all flowed together, but it just
Speaker: 0
02:23:07
I haven’t seen that back, by the way. So Really? No. No. I haven’t seen it. I’m probably sai it on the night or the next day. Oh, wow. So I haven’t,
Speaker: 1
02:23:16
I sent that to everybody.
Speaker: 0
02:23:18
Yeah. I
Speaker: 1
02:23:18
sent that to all my friends when as soon as it came out online, I was like, you gotta see this. It’s incredible.
Speaker: 0
02:23:22
You, for for that. But there might be something to do with the fact that the four members of that band feel equally involved in that song. There might be. And that the the democracy, which is such a pain in the hole, is actually one of the reasons that when you two walks onto a stage, people tell me even if they’re not fans, you know, they just come along as guests, the hair come up in the back of their neck.
Speaker: 0
02:24:01
And I explain, actually, that happens to us too. It’s a strange thing when we walk out. And it seems to me that I haven’t figured this out, that the the whole the universe conspires to break up great relationships. Right? You fall in love. It’s romantic.
Speaker: 0
02:24:25
It’s because this this is families now. This doesn’t have to be your partner in life, your wife, your husband, your but families, kids, everything. It’s it’s just the whole world is just seems set against its them ai. You know, all the it just pulls at us. Ai gravity itself, you’re resisting.
Speaker: 0
02:24:51
And so when you manage to get through it and you’re standing there in the forest and there’s something going on, it feels like you’ve resisted gravity or whatever forces that pull you apart. There’s something about it, and some nights it’s really not easy. And but, I mean, not the music, but the the friendship.
Speaker: 0
02:25:20
And but we we we’ve we’ve we’re through it right ai, and you you feel it in these recordings. And you’ll feel us in a way rediscovering each other. That’s amazing. Haven’t been playing for you. We just played in London acoustically at the Ivor Novellas.
Speaker: 0
02:25:41
It was the first time in five years the four of us played together because Ai had a back injury and, so but, yeah, there’s something in the chemistry.
Speaker: 1
02:25:51
Well, there’s also the fact that you guys continue to create because one of the things that happens to great bands is they become a prisoner to their old songs.
Speaker: 0
02:25:58
Yeah. That we gotta be be careful there.
Speaker: 1
02:26:01
Yeah. A lot of bands ai
Speaker: 0
02:26:03
Yeah. Ordinary Love. That’s what’s so beautiful because that’s in the last is that that’s, like, 10 years old or something.
Speaker: 1
02:26:10
Something along those lines. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
02:26:12
Which is a mere a mere minute
Speaker: 1
02:26:14
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
02:26:14
If you’ve been around for we’ll be around I think the first time we met in Larry’s kitchen is it will be fifty years next fall. Wow. In the kitchen. Wow. Drummer wants musicians, whatever. We got we’re literally and in the in the film, you know, we’ve got the the, kitchen table.
Speaker: 0
02:26:37
We got the chairs, you know, because I’m on the road with, you know, 250 Mack trucks and a space station and whatever else with you too. But here, you could put everything into a station wagon. It’s like a literally a table and chairs. And the chairs are edge Adam and Larry, and and I’ve got to you know, I use the the kitchen table as operating theater, so it starts with the sir a heart surgery.
Speaker: 0
02:27:05
It’s the it’s the, it’s hospital bed where ai father says goodbye with the to me with the expletive. And, and it’s and it’s the kitchen table where all operas really begin in the kitchen, don’t they? It’s like you’re sitting there, and in our case, it’d be me, my father, my brother, mother’s past, and we’re just it’s just male rage in its different shapes and forms.
Speaker: 0
02:27:37
So I get to to be on the road with a table and chairs, but then I get to bring out the chair. There’s Larry. Yeah. There’s Edge. There’s Adam.
Speaker: 0
02:27:51
I introduced them as chairs. And it was it was amazing for me to have that experience of of doing things and telling their story. If their memoirs come out, I’m fucked. But but no. I really am. But it’s over, and I’m done with the past.
Speaker: 0
02:28:15
I’m not sure the past is done with me, but I’m doing my very best to deal with the past in order to get to the present to make this the sound of the future. So the songs on the next album, when you are or whomever you’re with or your kids or whatever are out at the Joshua Tree or wherever it is, park or at the lake here in Austin, Texas, and you’re listening to our new saloni, that we will take you somewhere because it has to be these songs have to be they have to be everything or what’s the point?
Speaker: 1
02:29:03
Right. What is the creative process for you when you are when you have a concept for a song, when you have an ai? Like, how does it work? Do you do do ideas just come to you? Do you sit until they come to you? Do you sit in front of a a pad and write
Speaker: 0
02:29:18
them down? Is it that has never been an issue. Like, Edge and myself are the sort of song starters. And and, I mean, he is I think we were counting them up the last time. Sai keep, like, 526. He sai, ai 526 songs I have here. I said, Edge, they’re not songs. They’re ideas. And he goes, well, this one’s a song. And I go, oh, yeah. That might be.
Speaker: 0
02:29:48
And and I will have and have stuffed in my phone and paper and Air India sick bags and whatever else. I’ve written my life and the glimpses that you get. And I don’t write out of misery, which is great because I know some people have to be really miserable before they’re out.
Speaker: 0
02:30:09
I write out of joy a lot of the time. Sometimes Ai I’m writing my way out of a situation. Mhmm. But but most times, I’m writing my way into something. And and especially with this next album, I just think the world needs it needs some it needs some, yeah, some wild guitar music, but it also does not need the blues.
Speaker: 0
02:30:39
Right. We’re in the blues right now.
Speaker: 1
02:30:41
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
02:30:42
And, But
Speaker: 1
02:30:43
we’re in danger.
Speaker: 0
02:30:45
We’re in danger. But you you did sai, in one of your recent podcasts, you were saying, hold on a second. Still more people got access to water and heat and or air conditioning and have in the history of the planet. Mhmm. So we got we gotta keep we just don’t wanna lose that perspective, and we don’t wanna, you know, this incredible thing in in twenty years if you think about it.
Speaker: 0
02:31:14
I mean, maternal mortality halved, more than halved, and people coming out of extreme poverty. Some of this is Ai. Some of this is capitalism. Some of this is that. But it’s I do I don’t wanna lose the sense of the next chapter could be our best, and and that’s gonna need vision. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
02:31:43
And I’m not talking about U2’s new album.
Speaker: 1
02:31:45
But but that is part of it because art changes the collective consciousness of a civilization. And songs that really deeply resonate with young people that have a that that are great songs vatsal also have a message and carry with them conversations that people have about the songs and about what’s going on in the world, it shifts consciousness.
Speaker: 1
02:32:06
It shifts consciousness in a positive way and those young people may grow up to become people that aren’t corrupt politicians, that aren’t corrupt congress that that don’t give in to the lobbyists and the special interest groups, but really look out for their constituents, and they they get into it for the right reasons.
Speaker: 1
02:32:23
Because everybody’s gonna be co opted if you don’t.
Speaker: 0
02:32:27
Well, you’re right. Yeah. We better be good then. Yeah. And, yeah, and I for me, the go to group was The Beatles. And Mhmm. And I I had this moment where Paul McCartney, picked me up at John Lennon Airport. He was driving the car and brought me and kinda showed me where the different neighborhoods of The Beatles and which is an amazing experience.
Speaker: 0
02:32:53
And he’d stop, and he’d say, oh, this is where this happened, and that’s what and he said, do you mind me telling you this? And I’m like, are you kidding me? And and then he stopped at the traffic lights, and he said, oh, yeah. That’s where I ai, like, our first real kind of conversation, you know, with with me and John. I said, hold on a second.
Speaker: 0
02:33:13
I’m a bit of a Beatles student. Didn’t you have that when you were in the Quarrymen and such? He says, no. No. No. No. It was different level.
Speaker: 0
02:33:21
He bought a bar of chocolate, and after the war, you know, chocolate was really hard to come ai, you know. It was kind of a real luxury. And and he bought the bar of chocolate and he didn’t give me a square. He broke it. Cadbury’s milk chocolate broke it in half.
Speaker: 0
02:33:39
And I said, oh, so you’re into sharing too? He said, yeah. And he sai, I don’t know why I’m telling you that. And he drove on, and I just thought, oh, I know why you’re telling me that. Greatest collaboration, not just in music, in the history of music, maybe the greatest collaboration in the history of culture started with half. Wow. They shared. They gave it.
Speaker: 0
02:34:09
My mate, Gogi, who I just spoke about, the the who knows all about you and knows all about your your your speak, he taught me everything he had. And and they came you know, it was tough at ai, as I told you in their accent. He just gave me half of it. Whatever he got, just half.
Speaker: 0
02:34:30
So when I we’re in U2 and our manager McGinnis says you should share everything. I was like, yeah. I’ve been sharing everything. I’ve been sharing everything anyway. And it’s and even now, Edge and myself, we’re sitting in our house, you know, we we share this place in the South Of France.
Speaker: 0
02:34:50
We’ve been there for thirty years. All our families have kinda grown up there. French are too into themselves to bother us, which is really the way we like it. And, and we sit there, and we think the real owners are gonna come.
Speaker: 1
02:35:05
Right. Right.
Speaker: 0
02:35:05
You know what I mean? Because we still we still don’t really believe this has happened to us. And you know what? I think that’s probably ai, because we don’t really own this stuff. You you you you get it for a short period, and then you hand it on. I think it I think something about the four and the way we share is in the sound of our music.
Speaker: 1
02:35:31
I think that’s it. No. No. No. I think you’re dead right.
Speaker: 0
02:35:34
I think that when you you know, and I was just standing there with the tambourine, Jimmy Fallon. And it’s but it’s him playing this tambourine. And and, yeah, there’s something again, there’s not much scholarship about this type of stuff that you can read up on.
Speaker: 1
02:35:52
But it resonates. Ai? You
Speaker: 0
02:35:53
can feel
Speaker: 1
02:35:54
something. Ai believe it. Mhmm. I think there’s something to it. It’s it’s the the you’ve got you’ve made decisions that have sort of affirmed this commitment to a higher goal. It’s not a hierarchy of, you know, who’s who’s the lead singer.
Speaker: 0
02:36:11
Oh, yeah.
Speaker: 1
02:36:11
Who’s this? Who’s that? It’s not who’s the big star. It’s just we’re all together to do this thing.
Speaker: 0
02:36:17
I’m in a band where every member of the band thinks they’re the leader. I think that’s every band. And, I mean, that’s sai ai it’s and I voted for this.
Speaker: 1
02:36:27
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
02:36:29
And and it’s sort of great.
Speaker: 1
02:36:31
And it gets worked out, you know, and you guys are still together, you know, which is also a giant win. You know? I mean, that’s
Speaker: 0
02:36:38
one of the most difficult things to do. Any minute, but but whilst whilst we’re whilst we’re running down the road, it’s it’s a it’s a it’s a thrill.
Speaker: 1
02:36:47
I think that’s also what makes you great is the same feeling that some of the real owners are gonna come. Like like, you never really buy into it even though it’s you. And that’s Yeah. That’s real. That Ai think we all should have that. And I think if you lose that, you’re in trouble.
Speaker: 0
02:37:03
By the way.
Speaker: 1
02:37:04
I think we should all have that.
Speaker: 0
02:37:05
Sai think that that’s right. Sai call this I’m gonna learn some of this from my wife. He used to sai, don’t, you know, look up to me. Don’t look down at me as a woman. Look across to me. That’s where I am. K? And there was a lesson in that about horizontal relationships rather than vertical ones.
Speaker: 1
02:37:33
Right.
Speaker: 0
02:37:33
I don’t have a boss. I don’t wanna be a boss. Yes. I mean, I I have that relationship with the band that is equal. I have it with my mates, and it’s just I it’s just the way Ai I know it to be the most efficient. And, you know, the boss is the boss. I mean, Bruce, it’s an amazing thing what he does, and it’s it’s his vision.
Speaker: 0
02:38:03
And he’s found a team around him to help him realize his visions. Like, you going out on on the boards, you write your own material. It’s your point of view. That’s not I’m I’m arya I think isn’t there two stories they say in the cinema? There’s the the gang and the man against stranger comes to town and gets one. That’s and then there’s the stranger goes off in the Odyssey.
Speaker: 0
02:38:33
But, usually, there’s a gang. That’s that’s a different story. That’s the third story maybe. I’m in the gang.
Speaker: 1
02:38:41
Yeah. Comedians are in a gang too. We’re in a gang at a club. We’re in a gang together. Like, we all convene together. And I meh I mean a gang in terms of, like, a collaborative gang too. We work together. We work on ideas together. We talk about bits together. You know?
Speaker: 1
02:38:58
Especially in my place at the Comedy Mothership, it’s set up like that. The whole club was set up entirely for comedians.
Speaker: 0
02:39:05
Right.
Speaker: 1
02:39:05
Completely different pay structure than any other club, pays way more than other clubs do. The comedians get most of the money. We get most of the most of the we meh the money from liquor, essentially. Liquor and a small percentage of the ticket sales. Uh-huh. But most of it goes to the comics. And the the the vibe of the place is not that it’s my place. The vibe is that this is our place.
Speaker: 1
02:39:28
I I paid the bill, but I shouldn’t have had that much money in the first place. It’s ridiculous. Like, the whole thing is crazy. Like, that you could do something like this. And if you could do something like this, you’re supposed to.
Speaker: 1
02:39:38
If you’re the person that for whatever reason, the universe has blessed you with some whole lot of zeros, Throw it at something fun. Let’s do it. And so it’s ours. And so there’s there’s that in comedy too.
Speaker: 0
02:39:49
You can’t I I mean, look, it sounds glib, actually, as I sai it, but, you know, I’ve lived we’ve lived you can’t out give God. No. It’s like, you know, you just the more you
Speaker: 1
02:39:58
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
02:39:58
The more you that’s and that’s what I’m saying also about the the blessing on America. You know, one of the things I do like about some of these churches is not the ones that put pressure on you, but, you know, people will give some cash every week to help with what’s going on, you know, in faraway places or whatever, and they tithe.
Speaker: 0
02:40:19
I think they call it tithing.
Speaker: 1
02:40:20
Mhmm.
Speaker: 0
02:40:21
And and it’s it’s just part of the blessing of America. It’s this okay. So it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s less than 1%. It’s half of 1% of the government budget to keep all these people alive all over the world. They love Meh. Because they love America, they’re not gonna be a problem for America. They don’t look it it takes them away from terrorism, takes them away from anti Americanism.
Speaker: 0
02:40:50
It takes them puts points in the direction of freedom. That’s a blessing. So if you count your zeros and you sai, that’s ai. That’s ours. We’re not sharing that with those people. The definition of neighbor is, oh, it’s just next door. Right. Be careful because because there is a bigger blessing out there.
Speaker: 0
02:41:15
There’s just a bigger blessing.
Speaker: 1
02:41:16
And ai There most certainly is.
Speaker: 0
02:41:18
And you it sounds like you’re in it. And and and and it is in the bit by the way, it is in the business where you’ll see it because people have have a a great mouth on them. I have a big fucking mouth. But it’s not about what you’re talking about. It’s what you’re doing. It’s how you’re living.
Speaker: 0
02:41:37
It’s how you it’s that’s the you two thing is not just about the songs. It’s the it’s the way. You did you use the word way a minute ago? You said it’s the way when you’re ai. Yeah. The anything that takes you away. Sure. What is what did you mean by that?
Speaker: 1
02:41:54
There’s a great quote by Miyamoto Musashi. This is the guy I actually have tattooed on my right arm. It’s once you understand the way broadly, you can see it in all things. Beautiful. Yeah. And the the concept is he’s the greatest samurai that ever lived. He killed 60 men in one on one combat with swords.
Speaker: 1
02:42:14
He got to the point where
Speaker: 0
02:42:15
No problem.
Speaker: 1
02:42:16
He was killing
Speaker: 0
02:42:16
people No problem.
Speaker: 1
02:42:18
He was killing people so easily, he decided to stop using swords and he would, like, fashion a wooden sword out of an oar from a boat on the way over to go kill a guy.
Speaker: 0
02:42:27
Sai It was like Googie.
Speaker: 1
02:42:28
He he was a extraordinary human being, but he wrote a book on strategy called The Book of Five Rings. Yeah. And Gohru no shah, The Book of Five Rings. And it’s it’s this book is all about Where is he from? Japan. All about how you ram the fourteen hundreds. You you had to be balanced in everything.
Speaker: 1
02:42:47
To be a great warrior, you had to be great at calligraphy. You could you had to be great at poetry. You had to be an artist. You you had to be able to meditate. You you had to be balanced. You had to know the way. And don’t let any bullshit.
Speaker: 1
02:43:01
It’d be this is the modern interpretation. Don’t let your ego, don’t let other people’s perceptions, don’t let insecurities and don’t let anything sai on the way. And the way is ai this way of thought that once you you know, everybody says how you do anything is how you do everything.
Speaker: 1
02:43:19
This was his earliest version of it.
Speaker: 0
02:43:21
This is wonderful.
Speaker: 1
02:43:22
Once you understand the way broadly, you will see it in all things. It’s that Nietzsche, this path to greatness, once you ai what that is, like, oh, this is this is this intense focus and dedication to something that could be applied to anything. You could be apply you could apply it to being a better father. You could apply it be to being someone who writes books.
Speaker: 1
02:43:42
You could you could apply it to music. You could apply it to anything, but it’s that’s what it is. It’s ai finding what the thing is and throwing the essence of you at that thing, ai, really doing it. And to do that correctly, you can’t have, you know, macho issues. You can’t have insecurity pro things that you’re compensating for. You you should be pure.
Speaker: 1
02:44:06
You have to you have to
Speaker: 0
02:44:07
and it’s sai constant struggle. Stunning as they have a stunning ai in my path or I suppose or whatever you call it, my practice. I have this Ai am the way, the truth, and the ai. This is what I learned from Jesus. Become a bumper sticker. Probably taken the the the meaning of it away, but it’s but it’s the same thing.
Speaker: 0
02:44:32
I’ve got to because when I focus on this this kind of this this radical idea to serve, you know, you know, to rather than to lead, to to be no greater love and all that. All this stuff. Unfortunately, this language has been ruined for you guys. I’m so sorry.
Speaker: 1
02:44:56
Kind of, but no. But it’s We can get past that. Powerful. Yeah. It’s real.
Speaker: 0
02:45:00
And it’s and and this this Jesus is a long way from the one that you you meet on these kind of sales ram. And but it’s it’s it is humility, and it is it is it is service, and it is discipline, and it is not my will, thy will. It is indeed surrender. And anyone, wherever they are in the world, Japan in 14 hundreds or the fifteenth century, whatever, anyone ever, ai, you know, the pursuit of truth, it just gathers.
Speaker: 0
02:45:43
There’s, yeah, there’s there’s the there’s there’s something about Ai trying to think of the word. The sort of gathering where you you you we we will all end up in the same place if we’re really and I’m not talking about ai after death as in, like, if to, you know, enter a competition.
Speaker: 0
02:46:06
But we all we’re we’re in the same consilience, I think, is the word. I think it was I think it was I don’t know who wrote wrote a book called consilience, but it’s the idea that all disciplines, all art forms, everything comes together on a point of ai of convergence. But the word is consilience. And if it isn’t, I just made up a great word.
Speaker: 1
02:46:27
It’s a great word.
Speaker: 0
02:46:29
Ai. Yeah. There it is. Go, Jamie.
Speaker: 1
02:46:31
Well, that that those moments that were That’s
Speaker: 0
02:46:34
the book.
Speaker: 1
02:46:35
Where great art hits that peak
Speaker: 0
02:46:36
in really good. Thank you. You’re you’re that’s really good.
Speaker: 1
02:46:39
Jamie’s the best.
Speaker: 0
02:46:40
How did you ai know off? How long have I been talking?
Speaker: 1
02:46:44
Ai mean, I’m three hours.
Speaker: 0
02:46:46
Because I this I mean, I don’t know why you this my family at this point would be gone to bed. It’d be just the two of us
Speaker: 1
02:46:52
at the ai. Locked in. Jamie’s locked in.
Speaker: 0
02:46:55
They were like, see you later, dude.
Speaker: 1
02:46:57
That thing though is ai what we all it’s what we we know how hard it is to reach to, Like, ordinary love, like, when you guys were doing that, we know that that’s not a first take. You know, that’s not like you just wrote the song and you guys ai out there jamming. No. That that that’s it’s a polished song.
Speaker: 1
02:47:12
And the fact that you’re doing this and you’re you’re you’re you’re doing it acoustic right there sitting on a chair. Like, everything is off. Right? Like, you’re not on the stage. There’s not a spotlight on you. There’s no mist. There’s no lights. They’re like all the theatrics are removed.
Speaker: 1
02:47:28
You’re in a brightly lit studio sitting down with a bunch of people beside you, which is like the most un rock and roll thing of all time.
Speaker: 0
02:47:36
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
02:47:36
Right? It’s corporate almost. Like, no one does that. Yeah. You got a corporate haircut too. Yet you fucking nailed it. And it that moment, it took everybody to a better place. That’s what we’re all hoping for in in everything. We’re hoping for the for our from our leaders.
Speaker: 1
02:47:56
We’re hoping for that one speech, that one JFK speech where you just go, oh ai god.
Speaker: 0
02:48:02
Yes. That’s that’s that’s the prayer. We don’t wanna meh.
Speaker: 1
02:48:06
Clinton when he was young. He had some hangers. Obama when he was
Speaker: 0
02:48:08
young. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
02:48:09
They had these speeches that made us feel better about human as as human beings, better about the country. That’s the danger of the conflicted times that we’re in is that people don’t feel good even about America. There’s people that think that the American flag is a a symbol of injustice. It’s ai it’s that’s a crazy thought. Like, America is you too.
Speaker: 1
02:48:28
It’s not just you too, the band, but it’s all it’s it’s us. It’s all of us human beings regardless of your political ai, and we gotta think of that first. We’re a community. We’re a neighborhood. You know?
Speaker: 1
02:48:42
We we should think of ourselves as a giant neighborhood, and we don’t. We we think of ourselves as opposing tribes that are in in this battle to stay in control of whatever the direction of the country is. And it’s being orchestrated by artificial intelligence bots that are constantly battling with people online and state actors and intelligence agencies and money and all this shit is together and it’s all confusing everybody as to what is the purpose of being a human being that’s alive with other human beings.
Speaker: 1
02:49:17
The per the purpose is community, communing. We’re supposed to be a Ai States. We’re supposed to be a community. And all the differences that we have, the political differences and the ai, they should be so fucking secondary that it should be, a small part of the elections.
Speaker: 1
02:49:36
A small part of the election should be policy because we should just all agree that we should figure out you wanna have a good use of AI? Figure out what’s the objective best use of resources to support the collective whole, and how does that get accomplished? How does that get accomplished without fraud and waste?
Speaker: 1
02:49:54
And what’s the best way to to navigate where it doesn’t have fraud? That should be done whether it’s Democrats or Republicans. It should be like, what are we looking for? We’re looking to clean up the lakes. We’re looking to stop pollution. We’re looking for clean energy sources.
Speaker: 1
02:50:08
We’re looking for education. We’re We’re looking for health care. We’re looking for housing. For each. We’re looking to get people off the streets that have mental health issues Mhmm.
Speaker: 1
02:50:15
And get them help. And don’t just give them fentanyl and give them money for needles. That’s stupid. Don’t let them camp on the street. That’s stupid.
Speaker: 1
02:50:22
Also stupid ignoring them. Ai? That’s stupid too. So surreal resources. And once we do that, we could all do better. The whole country can do better.
Speaker: 1
02:50:32
We’ll be less at each other’s throats. There’ll be less anxiety. It could be accomplished, but we have to address the the the primary factor in this country for crime and horrible behavior. It’s completely disenfranchised neighborhoods. It’s areas that have been fucked since the nineteen forties, and they’re no they’re not doing anything to change them, and no one’s pouring any resources to try there’s no plans to try to revitalize these communities and elevate these people out of, like, dire poverty and gang violence and and and drug use.
Speaker: 1
02:51:09
There’s there’s a way to do it. It’s not impossible, but there’s no resources put out at it vatsal. That should be another thing. That shouldn’t be a Republican thing or a Democrat thing. Why should we spend money on them?
Speaker: 1
02:51:20
But it shouldn’t be a it should be
Speaker: 0
02:51:21
The people community. Look. The people who who voted for Donald Trump, who I’m not a fan of, and and I know you have respect for him, and I I respect that. But the people who voted for him, I have immense respect for them and their sense that they felt left out of the American dream, a lot of people.
Speaker: 0
02:51:46
And in so many ways, when, you know, the world got globalized and a a lot of people did very well out of that, particularly in the global South, but everyone in Meh, I think, you know, a lot of people a lot of communities paid the price for that. And I don’t know what the pie was grown. Ai, I think, was supposed to be a trillion dollars.
Speaker: 0
02:52:11
It ends up being the pie was was, I think it was 1 and a half trillion. So there was enough money to reinvest in communities, but it never happened. And so people were pissed off. If if and and I’m I’m I think we should be with those people. I’m not sure this is gonna be the answer that they’re looking for. And if it’s not, I would encourage people because I’m not American.
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02:52:39
I can’t I Sai don’t vote. I’m Irish. Just you’ll know. The I I trust in the wisdom of crowds. I really do.
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02:52:46
I mean Ai mean Sai mean, you too. And I, you know, Americans will know, and they and they and they must I I can see where they’re going right now. They’re trying out this new version of themselves. And we’re it’s we’re we’re we’re we’re we’re not interested in the wider world as much.
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02:53:06
We’re trying to fix our own problems. I would say they are bound up in each other, and I would say there’s a higher purpose for America than the one that’s being offered presently. But I don’t wanna get into the ai of others.
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02:53:18
Sai overcorrection. Yeah. I think I
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02:53:21
just don’t I ai, you know, I I really hope so because we really, really, really need you. The world we need America. And this this European project, we we’ve a land war on the outskirts of Europe. It is the most astonishing thing, and and it and and we don’t know what’s next. Poland.
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02:53:48
Have you ever you know, the Polish people have 2,000,000 Ukrainians staying with them. They never complain. These are the most remarkable people you’ll ever meet. There’s all that money that was invested in Sai guess who? George c Marshall, an Meh general who became secretary of state who had the cleverness to say after the the war, the second World War.
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02:54:14
And they I think it was, like, 4% of the GDP was invested in your in the rebuilding of Europe. And the idea was we have to make Europe succeed, and that’s how we will defeat communism. And so when Ronald Reagan, you know, pronounced a death sentence on the the Soviet Union and the reason Mikhail Gorbachev threw his hands up and and said we’ve got a this project is over is because he knew that people could see it was dysfunctional.
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02:54:51
He knew there was a better life across the wall, the other side of the iron curtain. And sometimes it takes putting your money where your mouth is to show what freedom is. America did that. We owe America, and and we need you. That’s all I wanna say. We we we we need you, and and together wow. There’s 450,000,000 people in Europe.
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02:55:20
It’s like, you know, we don’t be fighting with Canadians and Mexicans here. Ai? You put all this together, this is formidable. And these boring people who are listening to here probably tuning in now. Shah they saying? They said something about the good goods country.
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02:55:41
Like it and and they hit the mushroom. It’s ai, you wouldn’t know. You’ve never been lifted by music, sir. You know you know, you wouldn’t know. You send people to death. Build some saloni up the bum. This is ai, come on. It’s like you come in. Your time’s up.
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02:56:02
And, ai know, I know we wanna rewrite history and all the rest of it, but but he can’t do that. We are free people, and it is great to be free. And I Ai I’d I’d wanna stop singing songs about freedom. I want to be it, and that’s what we talked about earlier. And that’s
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02:56:25
I think That’s it. As human beings, there’s a constant struggle. I think there’s a constant struggle to find the path, and I think we go through a series of overcorrections and a series of going really far left and really far right and, you know, an Order disorder really. Yeah.
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02:56:42
I think
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02:56:43
That’s a Richard Rohr’s thing.
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02:56:44
It’s part of the battle of good and evil. There’s there’s a thing that
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02:56:48
Well, do you believe there’s good and evil?
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02:56:49
I do.
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02:56:50
I do.
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02:56:51
I I believe it. I I think it’s naive to think that if evil acts occur, there is no true evil. I think it’s naive, and evil acts are undisputable, and the concept of evil has always existed. I I I think there’s
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02:57:03
And we can become part of it. Yes. You’ve seen it outside a pub when people if somebody’s down, kid goes down.
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02:57:09
People just kick it. Oh, yeah.
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02:57:11
You’ve seen it at a football match. Yep. Probably in American football, you you don’t. But in in Europe, in football and soccer, you sai mad ai. And it’s like a spirit. You can watch it in a crowd.
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02:57:22
Yeah.
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02:57:23
And and it’s we’ve, you know, we’ve we’ve all been part of it. None it’s not like we’re separate from it. Right. It’s an it’s an entanglement. Right. But rarely is evil so obvious. There’s great, there’s a great book by by Bulgakov called The Master in the Margarita. Have you heard about this? No.
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02:57:46
So the devil appears in the rooftops of Moscow and he goes, oh, this is gonna be fun. Nobody believes I exist. It’s one of the great ai saloni, sympathy for the devil. I think that’s what inspired by him. But this it’s some it’s insidious sometimes.
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02:58:03
Evil is harder to speak, but I think we know we we kinda know it when we when we see it at full force.
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02:58:12
We just can’t be afraid of sounding foolish. No. And when you say that you I think evil’s a real thing, you you can
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02:58:21
You can’t measure it. Right. You can’t prove it exists.
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02:58:24
Right.
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02:58:24
But, you know, that’s what I sai, you know, but science, you know, ai, we we need science. We don’t need science to prove that evil exists. We we need religion to suggest that it exists and how we might deal with it. And in ourselves first, I’d I’d suggest you were talking about fighting the biggest opponent you it would appear is your is indeed yourself. Yeah.
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02:58:52
You’re
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02:58:52
up against yourself. I’ve got to that place, and I’m not a sportsman competent. But just in my own walk, I realize, wow. All these people I thought I was, you know, I was up against, you know, in my head. It’s it’s yourself. Yes. I love this thing of the way. I’m gonna remember vatsal, and I love the truth, and and I love I love I love I love being alive. I love the life.
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02:59:22
I’m gonna I’m gonna hold on to that.
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02:59:25
Please do, and keep doing whatever you’re doing, man. I appreciate you very much. Thank you. Thank you for coming here.
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02:59:30
You’re It was a lot of fun. Absolutely. I loved it. And absolutely I enjoyed it ai.
