Let me tell you a story about the worst phone call of all time.
You have my interest.
Okay.
So picture this.
We're going to go back to 1970s Surrey in England.
There's like a beautiful old farmhouse called Old Croft.
And a musician has just moved in.
And he's in a band, and they've just had their first top 40 song.
So it's at that point of a musician's career where either this is like, we're about to take off, or we had that one .
And he's just mortgaged like the most insane house, for like his wealth size, like way above his income, because he's betting on his future success.
And he's like, this is the childhood sweetheart dream.
He met his wife when they were 11 years old in drama class and they've got two kids together.
So they've moved into this house together, this beautiful old farmhouse, with their two kids and, like he's managed to get the deal on it.
So it's slightly cheaper than he can afford, but it's still way too expensive.
But the whole thing needs a whole paint job.
It's like the whole building needs a load of different work, kind of like this stuff here right, um shots fired, so he uh, he has to go on tour um, go try and crack america to see if he can pay for this house.
So he's kind of leaving the house.
There's painters there that are doing everything up and he's kind of saying goodbye to his family.
And as he's saying goodbye, he doesn't know if this is going to be the last time he sees this house um, or if this is going to be the new family home.
So he goes on tour for a year.
And surprisingly, the tour goes really, really well.
So he's basically going to pay for his mortgage.
And at the end of the tour, he's having a phone call with his wife and it's not going well.
And she basically confesses, whilst he's been away, she's been having an affair.
And his heart just drops.
He's like, who?
So he starts thinking of whether it's a singer or somebody else in the band.
The guy she was having the affair with was the painter.
He was paying for the house.
So he just loses his mind.
He ends up flying back from the tour, tries to win her back.
Not only can he not win her back, She basically says, I'm taking the kids and I'm leaving to Canada.
So he sits down the band and he says, well, I think the band's over.
I've got to go.
This is no remote work.
I've got to go.
I'm going to fly to Canada and try and put my marriage together.
So the band say, hey, we'll just do a solo hiatus.
We'll go on solo and we'll get back together.
So he goes to Canada for three months. putting the marriage back together.
Flies back three months later.
It's completely failed.
And the only place he has to stay is he goes back to this old house and he says he walks in and he says the paint was still wet with the man who cuckolded me.
So he's just fuming.
So he leaves, goes to his favorite restaurant, orders a ravioli and he's just staring at this ravioli.
He's starving because he's not eating days.
And this ravioli's staring at him.
He's staring back at the ravioli.
He just can't eat.
He goes back to the house.
It's just this old, derelict house that he's made all this money and paid for, but his family are no longer there.
So he starts drinking, he's calling her and she's ignoring his calls in Canada.
He starts drinking, he's calling her.
And finally he goes, well, I've got to start channeling this thing.
So he decides he looks at the master bedroom that she slept with the guy who was on his payroll whilst he's on tour and goes.
Well, you know what?
This is going to become my new music studio.
So he starts like channeling all the energy that's coming up.
And, as he's like in the moment, he grabs the invoice from the painting and decorating company that slept with his wife and he writes a song on it.
Okay.
So should I play?
I've got it on my phone.
I'll play the song.
You ready?
This is the song that he writes.
You're shitting me.
So that's how Phil Collins wrote In the Air Tonight.
It's on the invoice of the painter that slept with his wife.
And what's interesting, what's fun about this- Did you know this story?
What's funny about this story is- Nothing.
Fuck, saddest story ever.
We got a banger out of it.
But he well anyway.
So while he's in this house or in this new music studio that he's created, he then is in a fugue state, writes Against All Odds, which goes on to win a Grammy.
So he makes that song then Against All Odds the next day.
What's interesting about the story?
The funny part is what he makes against all odds, obviously becomes a smash hit on the radio.
And there's a guy in Manchester who's listening to the song on loop because he split up with his partner five years ago his girlfriend five years ago.
So he's listening to this song thinking about her, sees her at a bus station and they end up going out on a date, spend all night till 6am.
They get back together within six months.
We're engaged.
We have three children.
Second child was me.
So the whole, so the whole thing.
He goes, yeah, yeah, with the toothpick.
Yeah, yeah, the second child was me.
So what's beautiful now, when you re-listen to that Phil Collins- Wait, are you Phil Collins' son?
No.
Wait, I got lost there for a second.
No, no, no.
My dad basically loved that song when he split up with my mom, basically.
Okay, okay.
I wasn't sorry.
I was like, this is how I- That's where you got- No, no, no, no, no, no.
Boom, dad!
You know which room?
That was this room.
That's why that room became a podcast studio.
Yeah okay, still crazy.
So yeah, but what's crazy is when you re-listen to that i think that song's incredible.
Anyway, it still holds up 50, 60 years later.
But when you now re-picture him in that old master bedroom where it all happened and the lyrics, often when you go back yeah, what does he say?
Is he saying something that's like direct or coded for that part in there, like if you gave me, if you was drowning, i would not lend a hand.
Um, and it talks about you've been smiling or wipe that grin off your face, right?
Um, it's all about him falling.
Doesn't sound like a breakup song on first listen, But it is.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's crazy.
Dude, I fucking... It's such a fantastic one.
What was it that we found out the other day?
That Dolly Parton wrote two of her fucking biggest google.
What two songs did dolly parton?
Uh jolene, jolene and um, fucking like working nine to five or something in the in the same day.
She wrote them in the same day.
Fucking hell.
Oh, wow.
That's crazy.
Wow.
There's a bunch of those examples of these bursts.
These bursts were like I think the Beatles famously did this where they recorded a fucking album in a day.
They had this insane burst of their greatest hits in a very short amount of time.
I'm pretty sure they did about five.
What was it?
Jolene and I Will Always Love You.
Yeah.
Wow.
In the same day she mentioned in interviews that she wrote them during the same songwriting session and later joked that was a good writing day.
Wow.
So nonchalant.
I think Bobby Darien's Splish Splash was written in 20 minutes or something like that.
Have you guys heard the full Rocky story, the Sylvester Stallone Rocky backstory?
No.
Oh, this is insane.
You know this one.
So Sylvester Stallone wants to be an actor.
But he's got this birth defect.
So when he was born, I think the doctors They did something.
That's why he has that crooked smile.
So he had like a medical, almost like a malpractice issue when he was born that messed up his face.
But he wants to be an actor.
He talks kind of funny, face is kind of funny.
So he's not getting any roles.
Keeps going to casting auditions.
No role, no role, no role.
So he says, all right, if I can't get casted in somebody else's movie, I'll write my own.
So he goes to his house and again, like sort of in that fuge state, he basically does two things.
He paints all the windows black.
And he's like, I'm not leaving this house.
I don't even want to know if it's night or day until I finish the script.
He hates writing.
So he's like, I just got to do this fast because I hate writing.
So in three days, he writes the script for Rocky.
And he has in the story of Rocky, which is like this average guy wants to be a boxer but it's not really happening for him.
It's a story of him wanting to be an actor, but he just shows boxing.
Cause it's more like physical, like knockout punch.
It's easier for the audience to understand, but it's his story.
And so then he goes and he pitches the script and people are like actually the script is pretty good.
He's like, awesome.
And they're like, we'll buy it.
It's great.
He's like, and I'm Rocky.
And they're like, no, no, you're not Rocky.
We'll buy the script, but you're not Rocky.
And so he has an offer, I think for a million dollars or something like that, which at the time was a lot of money.
And he turns it down.
He ends up taking, I think, or some ridiculously low amount of money for the script, but he gets to be Rocky.
And he's struggling to make ends meet.
He literally, he's like eating like canned beans.
He ends up selling his dog because he can't feed his dog.
So he's like, his dog was his only companion in the world.
He goes, he sells it to a guy. and gets like a couple hundred bucks for his dog.
And then it's just like, fuck, he's just literally rock bottom.
To film Rocky.
He basically films the whole movie on like a million dollar budget handheld camera.
No permits sneaking into things.
They film Rocky that way.
Okay, Rocky becomes this huge hit.
He basically gets this money.
He goes and he, first thing he does, he goes back and buys back his dog.
The guy doesn't want to sell it to him.
He's like, I love this dog.
And he ends up paying 25 grand to get his dog back.
And then that was basically the start of Sylvester Stallone's story.
Was this like three-day bender?
He had to write the story of Rocky.
How insane is that?
Isn't the guy in the film as well, right?
And that was part of the deal.
It was like, I'll give you 25 grand and you get to be a cameo in the movie.
And he's in the movie for Rocky.
The guy, he's like by the liquor store is the guy who he sold his dog to.
I didn't know any of that.
Holy fucking shit.
I didn't know that Sylvester Stallone- Isn't it better than the actual story of Rocky?
That dog was George.
Sylvester Stallone is George's dad.
Oh, it does.
Yeah, you've got the nose for it.
We'll get back to talking in just one second, but first tell me if this sounds familiar.
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