You look amazing, man.
You look great.
Look at your hair.
You look the same.
So do you.
What's up with that?
We go back.
90s.
Probably farther than anybody.
Maybe by like months.
Maybe Mike D. Maybe Mike D. But it's the same family.
I mean noah, for sure, i mean we are.
We are early.
No, you might be number one, actually we're early 90s.
This is crazy way back um, i said on the air i've had such a beautiful, It's been such a beautiful part of my life to get to know you personally, but also just to continue to bring these songs that you gift us into my life.
And we all feel the same way.
They're just gifts, man.
And this one is all time you, acoustic guitar, and your feelings.
Fucking love it.
I love it, man.
Thanks, man.
It feels to me when I pressed play on this it was almost like an old friend coming into town and you see them walking in from a distance.
It's like, I know that walk.
I haven't seen you for so long.
How are you?
How did it feel when you started writing this music and you knew that it was going to be another one of these moments in your life where you get to lean in with your friends and make this kind of music, you know.
Yeah, I think um, you know.
So I started out with a group of musicians that were in my band for years.
They've all gone off to amazing careers and uh, And we did some shows, I don't know, maybe four years ago.
We were doing some kind of more acoustic kind of shows.
And it just felt like we need to do this again.
You know we miss this.
We all get busy in our lives and all the projects we're doing and uh it's, but it's essentially the, the group of musicians that i toured with most of my 20s.
We did records like mutation, sea change, morning phase.
You know, hugely successful records for you in lots of ways, not just in terms of like, really speaking to your audience, speaking to us.
But also, I mean, Morning Phase won Grammy Album of the Year, man.
It's like... Right, yeah.
And it's funny because the way things started out for me was really Loser, which was kind of a kind of anomaly.
It didn't really match up with most of the music I was making, which was more of a folk kind of singer-songwriter.
Well, that's what I was going to say.
I sort of wanted to go back even further than Loser.
And for me, in many respects, it starts with as far back as one foot in the grave right you're dabbling in this world I mean take the Nigel Godrich out of it and all of the beautiful Studios out of it and you know this is not that far away from that beautiful songwriter through line of yours you know right yeah foreign We're gonna get through a chorus of this, but leave that.
I love that one so much she'll do anything.
It's so good man.
You know tom petty covered that song.
When was that?
I didn't know that.
It's probably 95 or something 96.
So you're just a young Los Angelino who's just figuring it out.
You write that song, you put it out on an independent album, loser takes off and then next thing you know, some icon is covering Asshole.
Very surreal.
That must have been maybe the first truly surreal kind of moment when someone that's a true goat goes.
No, I see in this guy, I see something in this guy.
No, I think it was overwhelming.
And just for context, maybe a year or two before that, I was just making these tape cassettes.
They were like tape cassette albums, and I would just sell them or give them to people.
I didn't have any kind of... you know, foothold in anything you could call the music business.
I was just making music for me and my friends.
And so that was wild.
I know.
And I mean, you know even Stereopathic Soul Manure, which is also like just these wonderful shapes that you're just grabbing and just deciding to release without any.
It felt to me like you weren't putting any thought into the.
There was no anxiety about the release of it.
Maybe the care went into how I'm going to record them on the tape, whatever tools I have.
But once you did them, it was just like, set them free.
What could go wrong?
Yeah.
Yeah, it was kind of, yeah, pretty unpremeditated, just making stuff and, you know.
It's kind of pure in that way.
We spoke about this at a party we were at the other day, and this is all leading back into Ride Lonesome, into this beautiful new era, following on from these timeless albums that you've made with these wonderful players and friends.
You know I feel like after loser and there was this sort of desire for you to be that Beck for a while.
Festival Beck, you know, running around.
It really was kind of...
It was that best summer ever, like that documentary, like that tour that happened in Australasia, which was the Somersault tour, with the amazing line of bands which Tamara Davis has just done, a documentary which hopefully everyone will get to see soon, which is beautiful.
And Pav, the promoter, booked you as an acoustic solo artist on that tour.
Everyone else bought their full thing.
It was Beasties full show, Sonic Youth full show, Pavement full show, Jawbreaker, all these bands.
And then it's like, you're like, well, I guess I'm not bringing the band with me.
Did that reinforce to some degree this kind of like, hey, that is who I am still.
I don't have to be this guy with a band making alternative rock, you know?
Yeah, it was, you know, I didn't really know how to make it all work together.
It was really two different things.
You know, I had the song on MTV was on the radio and then I had all this kind of weird folk songs and country songs that I would write and I didn't really know how to put it all together.
It probably.
Initially I thought I would just call them.
Come up with a name, you know the way, like Damon Albarn has gorillas and blur, you know, and I just I never.
I just kind of left it all in one big mess, which I think has been a little confusing, maybe for some friends.
But on that tour, Pav, I think he was more of a fan of the folk stuff than the MTV stuff.
So he's like, he can come, but just bring your acoustic guitar, which was great.
And God bless Tamara for filming that.
She just bought a camcorder and filmed it.
And it's one of the only documents from that time that we have.
I was at that tour.
All those tours we did with Pavement and Sonic Youth and... uh jesus lizard the beastie boys you know there were all these tours we were always together yeah and there's hardly any documentation of it so this is one of the only things we have it was emotional for me i went to the to the melbourne date uh i flew from oakland to go to that amazing because it didn't come to new zealand and i the lineup that's right the lineup was it was crazy It's like when you're seeing Rancid at 3 o'clock in the afternoon on some side stage, and they're just tearing it up.
And then I'm like what, when else would i get to see jawbreaker?
And like only a few people really the jawbreaker, but we were beside ourselves watching that band right, it was just so amazing.
And then watching you and it was incredible, man and um, And I feel like you know that was 95.
When did Odelay come out?
90?
It had already been recorded.
It had been recorded.
Yeah.
It came out six months later.
What a strange time for you to be out there playing these weird folk songs, knowing that you had this life-changing, fully produced Dust Brothers masterpiece sitting in the can.
Yeah, it was just waiting.
Just waiting.
Yeah, it was a weird in-between time.
It was really good times though.
What's one of your favorite memories of that time or that tour?
Hanging out with all those guys, that crew was a lot of camaraderie, a lot.
My favorite thing was so we're in australia, you have to fly to each city, so i'd be on this airplane at 10 am with literally every band that was on the radio at the time just all in one plane together, and it's one of those um, you know there's versions of that in different eras like the 60s and 70s, and it was one of for my time.
It was one of those moments where you know every everybody was together.
You know that was the good side of it.
But again we've spoken about like, how tough the nineties were too, and trying to get a foothold into the scene.
And it was definitely a scene.
And appeal to the audience that loves you and not be judged harshly by them, while also trying to achieve success was tough right.
It was trick, it was treacherous, yeah.
Yeah, there was a.
I think it's hard for people to get their heads around now.
The atmosphere, the way that all the pitfalls of an artist.
God forbid you have some success or you get on the radio.
But at the same time wanting to move things and wanna make music.
That's pushing things and reaching people and changing things.
It was a real delicate, dance, it was really hard to navigate.
Ambition was... I mean, this was... Really frowned upon.
Yeah, it's a dirty word.
And anything that was remotely commercial or you know.
But of course all these bands were wildly successful and commercial.
Yeah, yeah.
But you had to somehow... be almost apologetic for it.
Like it happened by accident, which often it did.
I mean, I can't speak for everybody else, but we were constantly sort of trying to sabotage ourselves commercially by, you know, not doing the things you're supposed to do, you know, saying no to the magazine cover or refusing to make a music video.
Do not do an ad.
Do not do an ad.
Well, I got asked to do many of these.
One of these was a Ford pickup truck commercial.
And I remember the presentation is they wanted me to be playing this Woody Guthrie guitar in a Ford factory.
While they're building trucks, singing about Ford trucks.
And I remember thinking, No one will ever buy one of my records.
I will not come back to this.
I will not come back to this.
Nobody will ever speak to me or, you know, take me seriously again.
And then a few months later, I'm watching TV, and they got Johnny Cash.
Oh, my God.
Same commercial, but it was Johnny Cash.
Oh, my God.
And to be fair, he pulled it off.
I don't think I would have pulled it off.
It was a lot of those.
There's a lot to unpack there.
I mean, first of all, nice to be able to sit on the couch, have held your line and know that you're being kicked around in conversations in the same breath as Johnny Cash.
Yeah, and I'm worried about whatever Mike artistic credibility and the legend of all time.
It's just, you know, that was a lesson, I think.
But there were different rules for us, I think.
Yeah, I think so.
And you were right.
I mean, you were at a different stage in your career.
No one's going to sit there and look at Johnny Cash and judge Johnny Cash harshly.
No, not at all.
But they could definitely judge you.
And to be fair, like 30 years later, it's probably a great commercial.
What a weird, cool document to have.
I was going to say what creative sits there and goes.
Let's make sure we have Woody Guthrie's authentic guitar in a Ford pickup ad.
I mean looking back on it now, even though in the 90s I would have judged that so harshly.
I kind of wish that people thought that.
Something like that now.
Yeah.
Someone was that detailed and that dedicated to culture and history to be able to do that.
I know.
It's crazy.
I know.
And so what we did during that time is we just said no to everything.
It was just sort of the default.
I feel that that changed and I've said this before, but I feel that changed when Jack and Meg did the coke ad.
Yeah, there were a few things, I think.
Things definitely changed in the 2000s.
All these things that were verboten had became totally acceptable.
When you came off the back of the success you had with Odele and you became a bonafide festival headlining act, you won Grammys on that album too.
And it remains to this day, it is one of the 100 best albums of all time.
And I would love that record.
And for me, when you release Mutations, after that It felt like all, and you talked about wanting to combine all the Becks and just not dividing them into different images or different names or whatever.
That was the moment where I was like, oh wow, like this makes total sense.
Like I guess the quality of everything had met each other.
And what prompted you to really lean into the singer-songwriter side of you in a really beautiful, tasteful and rich-sounding way and get it out of that kind of four-track acoustic figure-it-out folk kind of way.
Yeah, it was kind of a split because I had all these songs that were on the radio and MTV.
And it was this whole kind of, I didn't plan that whole side of my music.
People came to our shows, that's what they wanted to hear.
I would pull the acoustic guitar out and they would mosh, they would boo.
I saw it at the power station and you were like, why are people stage diving to my acoustic set?
Yeah, and or booing, or yelling hee-haw yeah yeehaw, you know, and uh, kind of making fun of it?
Um it's, it's strange to think, and i and i think younger people probably don't know but if you pull out an acoustic guitar you would be ridiculed.
You know, at a certain time that started to change.
You know nirvana, mtv unplugged and that kind of thing kind of went oh okay, acoustic guitars, it's not it, but that was not cool, remotely cool.
Um, but no, after odelay we, we had spent a year trying to make a record but the technology wasn't there yet.
So it was this really laborious process of trying to make do these things that technology couldn't quite get there.
And we're trying to reinvent how you can make songs.
And it was very arduous and then, With the next record, I wanted to record it live to tape.
Just a band in the room, song a day.
We recorded the whole thing in 12 days.
And it was, you know, sort of the antithesis of, you know, the process of the previous record.
And in this new record, you know, like the new song that we did, it's just like the, it's all these musicians in the room together.
We're just playing.
It's a take.
Yeah, it's live.
It sounds so beautiful and that's something that i'm always drawn back to, is as interesting.
As you know, you make music.
You know all the, all the plugins and all the computer programs.
It's, it's all seductive and we, The sounds you can make.
It's unlimited.
You can get lost in it, but taking it back to just a microphone playing music in a room with people it's something I need to do from time to time.
I was going to play something off mutations in accordance with the conversation, but I actually think that what you just described at a time when we are just drawn into technology, and that's cool man.
You're right.
I use it.
Everyone uses it, but it's important to remember what things can sound like when you just sit in a room with your friends.
Music attaches itself to memories in such a real way.
I've realized that as I've gone through my life, which is why music is such an important part for people who are struggling with cognitive issues.
It really unlocks a lot.
And so I think about all of the memories attached to music over the years, and You've given us so many.
And in particular, this type of music that you make, man, it's a traveler.
It's a real traveler.
What travels with you as a music fan?
What do you never leave behind and always have with you at your disposal when you want to draw on something to listen to, whether it's traveling or whatever?
No, I think we all have those records we go back to, especially as life, as you live life longer and longer, there's certain perennial records.
I mean, there's dozens for me.
You know, I like the latest music.
And over time, some of it doesn't age well.
Some of it's just really for its time.
But you know, there's certain classics that you, just You know.
For me it's like certain Caetano Veloso records, but also Neil Young and Joni Mitchell.
And I'll go back to Hank Williams.
I'll go back to Just the great songwriters of the 60s and 70s from my childhood.
Chet Baker sings.
That's a record I've probably listened to 2,000 times.
I don't know.
I was saying that one is definitely a big one in my house and has traveled with me since.
I mean, that was a big, big moment for me when I discovered Chip Bacon.
My friend played it to me when I was a kid and I was just like, what is this?
Yeah.
It's almost the thread line I see is like there are records that are very intimate.
You really feel the person directly there.
Like Nick Drake or... You know, a lot of folk country artists have that.
You're right, Neil has that very much too.
I mean, Neil, I feel like he's just having a direct conversation with you.
Whatever mood he's in is what you're hearing.
And it's just what he came up with that day.
It doesn't feel precious.
I asked him once about.
This is a funny story.
I was interviewing him about a record he just put out, which is where he's at his happiest, if at all, talking about music.
But someone had asked me within the wider team looking for another very end, if you just get a couple of words about you know harvest, because it's an anniversary and we're not going to get it out of him.
So they really threw me under the bus.
So i started to ask him these questions.
He was very kind, he was like i know where these came from, you know.
So he answered one or two and then by the third one he's like look you just, you're just better off asking that guy right he's, he's still back there.
Oh, loving that music yeah, he'll talk about it all day.
But this guy there's thousands of guys i'm yeah, and it's all him.
He's like i can't relate to that guy anymore right, and i wonder sort of what your relationship is like as you continue to make new music with your older music outside of playing it on stage when people want to talk to you about it or bring up things.
Does it come naturally to you to talk about your old music?
Or do you really like to leave it behind?
Uh, I don't feel... I don't have this rejection of the past.
I embrace it, obviously, and, uh...
What I find interesting is how the music shape shifts over time.
Like the way a song sounded in 1998 versus 2022, it's the same piece of music. completely different.
And it changes each decade as well, like the way I hear certain things that I grew up with or that I've made.
And some things have aged well, and then some things feel like a curiosity of the time.
And I don't really know how to explain it and you know it's something strange that that context and time does.
Well, i believe it's actually music.
It's tactile.
I mean we talk about music like it's this invisibility thing that just moves around us, but i think it actually, like anything like this table or you or i or anything, has an energy force.
Yeah, that changes depending on how you absorb it and share it and feel it.
No, I know.
And things that were ugly.
Movies we hated.
Uh... Food we didn't like.
You know, 20 years later, we love it.
Or we hate it.
It's...
So it's a changing, ever-evolving thing.
There are certain records that I've made that I couldn't listen to now, but maybe in 10 years I'll love it.
And there's records I put out that people really disliked at the time and then, decades later, tell me it's my best record.
So there's no rhyme or reason to any of it, and you can't really And they shouldn't be, by the way.
We should feel free as human beings to like or dislike or move with whatever we want.
It's almost rude to make music for people.
It's almost offensive.
Yeah, don't make music for me.
I'm entitled to like and dislike whatever i want.
Don't try and put something in front of me that i'm supposed.
You know what i mean.
It's weird, and often when you're making music uh, a lot of the times i i don't know if i like it or not.
I don't know why i made it.
What i had in my head is not necessarily what came to fruition in the recording.
And I think, um... it's not really up to us.
It's not up to us.
It's not.
You just make it and, uh...
I admire people who can conceive of something and execute it perfectly, exactly how they thought of it.
And it hits all the marks that they intended.
But for me, it's a little bit more like, you know, we'll see where we land.
It's not going to necessarily be what I intended, but it'll be something.
And it's wild.
Some of these records um, they just don't work in a certain time and then they completely connect in a different time, which brings that seven day period that i think was last year, where you did three or four shows.
One was with the band doing the review, One was the full-on dynamic.
We're going to have a good time show.
The big festival.
Yeah, yeah.
And then there was one show you did when you were out with the orchestra.
And then I think you did one solo acoustic show.
And then there was maybe another one that was more of a sea change.
I don't know.
There were four times. styles of Beck in one week.
Does this ring a bell?
Yeah, that was last summer.
So we headlined this festival in Korea, which was crazy, crazy festival energy.
Can we go one at a time?
Because I really need to know what a festival in Korea is like to play.
That was my best gig of the last 20 years, easily.
I had zero expectations.
It was raining.
We'd only played Korea maybe once 12 years ago in all these years.
I'd never seen an audience that I don't even think we've sold a record in Korea.
I didn't think anybody would know my music, and it was out of control.
Pandemonium.
Wild and uh and this is from a 90s guy we've seen some people like lose their at gigs.
Yeah, back in the day yeah yeah, and this was not recently.
This was yeah yeah, and this was up there with that like, oh yeah, it was like you know, gigs we would do with the prodigy In the UK in the mid-90s.
It was rat craziness.
Amazing.
So you went from that.
Yeah, then we fly to San Francisco.
We play with a symphony in Golden Gate Park.
It's like, you know, very foggy and kind of ethereal.
It must be very emotional being in an environment where you're surrounded by strings.
Hearing your songs being brought to life with that level of emotional width.
Yeah, 80 musicians.
I mean playing with an orchestra was When I was coming up.
That was the sign when somebody's career has really gone off the rails.
Like they've lost... Again in the 90s, strings, careful.
Very careful with strings.
When they get the orchestra, it's like, uh-oh, they've gone Vegas or they've gone...
They've kind of lost the essence of what they're doing.
But that's kind of one of the strange wonderful things of making records over the years and discovering that orchestral sound and that it's so rich.
And we go play these shows with the orchestras.
And I'll ask the audience, 80% of them have never seen an orchestra.
They've never heard one in person.
So it's a... Yeah, because very few contemporary artists will go and make that move.
Yeah, exactly.
And sort of strip out the band so it's really the orchestra.
And as an artist who across varying stages, of what you do on stage.
Certainly at the festival in Seoul, there's a lot of beats to hit and things.
You've got to try to make sure you're immersed in order to have a good time.
Was that a very different sort of almost out-of-body experience performing with an orchestra?
Could you sit in it in a different way, because so much of it is in the hands of other people interpreting your music rather than having to lead it, if that makes sense.
Exactly.
That's a real balancing act.
Way more difficult to play with the orchestra.
And there's a stillness.
You really have to calibrate how much you're putting out. you know, how loud you're singing.
It's a completely different discipline, which I love because most of my performing has been it's pretty maximal.
You're just trying to get out, get over the crowd.
And this is about reducing and, you know, getting more intimate and smaller and more subtle.
In Golden Gate Park.
But still holding the audience.
It's really...
I remember doing the Hollywood Bowl a couple of years ago with the LA Philharmonic and I walked out and the entire orchestra is in white tuxedos and it's a beautiful summer night.
Very Frank Sinatra.
It's one of those things like well, this is a different world of music than where I come from, and what music's evolved to?
Amazing that we're in a time that we can go to that.
We can, you know, and people embrace it.
And also that guy who started at like pay no mind, just trying to find your voice and figure out, like how do I hold a song right?
How do I hold a song and keep your attention and find some emotion?
What tools do I have at 21, 22 to do that?
To be on a stage at the Hollywood Bowl knowing that it was just your voice.
You had to do that with your songs and your voice.
There was no dancing, no dynamics, no band to play off, nothing.
Did you allow yourself the space to appreciate and acknowledge that?
A that moment and b also, not to sound trite, but just the fact that your voice had had evolved so much through your life lived that you could do that as a singer?
Yeah,
I think it takes a while.
Yeah.
Some people are born with it.
I have friends who, they sing and it's like, you hear the sound of the ages.
You hear this depth and they're, whatever, 24 years old.
Where'd that come from?
Who is that for you?
What are your mates?
Who is that?
Who has that?
Who makes you feel that way?
I mean, I remember I met Sia when she was probably 20.
Yeah, yeah.
Years before she was a pop star.
She was just a local star.
We would hang out at my house and she would just sing for us.
You know, Greg Kirsten, get on the piano and...
You know, just like, where did this voice come from?
Yeah, yeah, no, she goes deep.
And, you know, just hanging out with...
Tom York or Eddie Vedder, they just opened their mouths and just glorious sound would come out.
But yeah, being up there, it's a vulnerability, I think.
It's just really just opening up. everything you've lived and letting it come out of the voice.
And that's a... I think that's a... It's a little bit scary.
I think, you know, that idea would have been kind of scary to me when I was younger.
But, you know, I think that's...
I think that's what we're looking for as a listener.
Yeah, it's where the truth lives and that's all we have.
Listen to each other, tell the truth.
And trying to get closer to that somehow.
It's very seductive to fall into mannerisms and you know, creating an image or a you know uh, a personality in the music, you know, but then just kind of getting i mean, everybody has a persona, i think in in the way they approach their music and you know an image or some kind of thing, you know, Which is fun too.
Which is great.
I've seen those shows with you and Justin and Joey and Swamp and it's great.
And you guys are just like man, we're gonna play with all of the things, all the toys, all the toys, you know the images and the ideas and the dancers, and we're going to take these, these beautiful magpie, all this beautiful, into a night you'll never forget, you know, and that i guess that's soul.
And then there's golden gate, and then we're from san francisco in that one week, because you're doing this, this is your life tour, that's right.
Uh yeah, just wait for my uh, my electro techno album, and then i'll do my jazz residency.
Yeah, i just, i think i've always been genre um free, i guess, or agnostic, would that be?
Uh, I just, I just, maybe it's growing up in Los Angeles.
I never saw divisions in music.
Something that was very true when I was growing up.
If you listen to hard rock metal And this guy listened to punk
They couldn't talk to each other.
No, yeah, it was a division.
And if you liked pop or Michael Jackson or something, you were not hanging out with the guys who were breakdancing listening to rap.
Everything was very, very, very... divided and codified.
And I just never saw things that way.
I just, I don't know for whatever reason.
I think partially environment, partially just the attention span.
I just kind of liked it all.
Where were those early shows you were doing in the videos with the leaf blower and stuff?
Were they in Silver Lake?
Where were those places?
That was at a place called Raji's, which was kind of the cool bar in Hollywood.
I believe I might be wrong, but I believe the cover of the first Nirvana album is taken on that stage.
Same stage, yeah.
And it was one of the few places that had good music at the time.
Because Los Angeles has a reputation of being this place where bands form or whatever, but they don't.
They come here to be able to make something happen.
But you were a Los Angelino back in those early 90s.
Well, during that time, it wasn't cool to be from LA.
That's what I'm saying.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think Guns N' Roses was the only thing from LA yeah, you know, at that time, and it wasn't like there were venues on every corner for you to go play out, like in new york, i feel in the lower east side around that time you just like fall over, trip over places to go and find an audience.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I went to New York when I was 18 and played all the little places, the bars and cafes there.
But yeah, LA was a bit kind of, the scene was very small.
Yeah, very, very small.
You didn't find your people in New York?
Most people go to New York.
I did.
No, I found a lot of people.
You did?
Yeah, yeah.
There was all kinds of people.
But you didn't want to stay?
Well, that's a long story.
Good.
We've got something to talk about in the future.
We'll get to that at some point.
That's a whole story.
I just want to make sure we've got room to keep growing this conversation.
Oh, yeah.
No, you know, you and me, we can go.
We can go off.
We can go off.
We could pick a little pocket of music in one year and do a whole hour on that.
We could.
For sure.
Right now we're going to take it back to that album that changed your life Mellow Gold man with the leaf blower and the fucking you know setting fire to the windscreen with the windscreen wipe.
Right, which MTV made us... You can't set fire to a windscreen?
Well, actually, we could do that.
I think we had fake blood on the windshield.
Oh, that's right.
So I was squeegeeing blood off a windshield.
That's right.
I remember the red.
In New Zealand, that was fine.
I remember that image very clearly.
But in America, we couldn't have...
Blood on the windshield.
On the windshield.
There's a lot of things.
I remember I would do interviews on MTV and they would have to edit most of it out.
Well, I made you think there was anything to edit out.
I remember interviewing you back in the 90s.
You barely said boo to anybody about anything.
No.
That venue that I saw you at in Auckland for the first time.
Beck's in the studio live with us right now.
And some of the most amazing shows in the nineties happened in that place.
And it was like, probably you'd be lucky if you got a thousand in that room.
And it was just a concrete, it's still there.
It's called the power station in Auckland.
And it's just a concrete box, no windows no, nothing.
Very shallow balcony know, i think is a slightly raised or sunken floor and uh, and that's it.
And and you know, i mean sound wise, not trying to be rude or anything, but it's not like, it's just like the most sonically beautiful experience, but something about that room just pulls out these remarkable performances or sound garden in there.
So rollins in there was like i'm surprised the place survived, that it the Yeah, the walls were probably melting.
I mean, he's just like, his energy is like out of control.
He's like Thanos with a microphone.
I had a song about him on one of my first records.
I remember.
Was it Rollins' Power Sauce or something?
Yeah, Rollins' Power Sauce, yeah.
Rollins' Power Sauce.
I mean, it's so much of that.
He was a big hero of mine growing up.
I used to go to his poetry readings.
Yeah.
So he was the singer of Black Flag, for people who don't know.
That's right.
Who were the most hardcore band in LA.
Yeah.
And he would do poetry readings.
He put out poetry books.
And he wrote some amazing long-form books as well, some real literature and all kinds of shit.
I mean, he's an interesting dude.
I remember being terrified of him when I interviewed him as a younger guy in New Zealand.
And he was so smart and thoughtful and cool.
You know, he was just like.
I remember walking away, just being like oh, thank God that went well because he was such an intimidating guy.
We were very intimidated.
So intimidating.
Yeah.
He had this energy of just like, live a righteous life or you'll hear from me.
I mean, He'll show up at like you know you'll be asleep and you'll wake up and he'll be standing over you, like you didn't do your press-ups yesterday.
You didn't drink your smoothie.
I'm watching you.
Yeah, no, he was very aspirational.
He was just like this Renaissance man who did everything.
And it was very inspiring coming from a place where I'll never have a record deal.
I'll never have a book publisher.
He just made his own book publishing companies and just did it all.
He was never asked for permission.
Yeah.
And he was actually really funny.
His poetry shows were like one-man stand-up shows.
And shouts to him.
He's had an incredible career, multiple different art forms in his podcast and his interviews.
It's so brilliant.
I've listened to so many amazing conversations that he's been at that level.
He's a great DJ as well.
Exactly.
Great taste, fucking amazing heroes who just continue to find new ways to just like, stay in art.
That is, that's the trick.
Right, you're a dad, i'm a dad.
I mean there's lots of people out there who um, remember the, the various transition points, when the quote unquote industry or the ways to get in changed or whatever.
But isn't the idea just to keep it moving and just stay engaged and stay curious?
Yeah, i mean, for me there's not enough time to do all the things.
Amazing, what a beautiful thing to say.
Yeah, i love that.
There's just not enough time.
Uh, for me like, there's five six, seven albums on the runway And there's only so many hours in the day to finish them all.
And I hope to get to them all at some point.
What's that techno album, that jazz album, all these great albums we're waiting for?
Oh, yeah.
I have, yeah.
And some of them are partially recorded.
You know, they're sketched out, you know.
Just got to find that six months to really dig in deep.
Have you ever done an album that we've yet to hear?
That there's a genuine collaborative album or a genuine collaborative project, not just a guest on one song or whatever.
But like i like you, you like me, let's come together and let's actually connect our talents.
Yeah, I had a record.
I started with this Japanese artist named Cornelius.
I love Cornelius.
It was probably around 25 years ago.
And we were sending things back and forth.
And we never finished it, but that was one.
But I've done a lot of, I love collaborating.
Being a solo artist, I always wanted to be in a band.
I'd be touring with Pavement and just thinking, man, that's so cool.
I wish I was in a band or the Beastie Boys.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. just to have that collaboration with a group of like-minded people.
But I got to work on.
I did a record with the Black Keys, who I took on one of their very first tours, maybe 23, 24 years ago, when they were just starting out.
We did a whole US tour together.
And they reached out to me, I don't know, four or five years ago to make a record with them.
And I came and got to write songs with them.
We did like 10, 12 songs.
That's right.
I remember speaking to the band about that album with them.
I'm surprised you could keep a straight face for more than five minutes with those guys.
I mean, they're two of the straight funniest guys I've ever spoken to.
There's a lot of, yeah.
It's just nonstop laughter.
And Jack White.
We also have a lot of songs that we've recorded over the decades and have talked about putting that out at some point.
Yeah, I wonder about that.
I wonder whether or not you just go set yourself up at Third Man for a week or whatever and just jam it out.
Because it's such a unique sound and unique environment and aesthetic to what's going on up there.
I love that just the, it's so multi-sensory what he's created.
It's not just a singular distribution tool.
You walk in, it's like I feel, when I touch it, it's Third Man.
I smell it, it's Third Man.
He's created his own world, yeah.
Which is what I tell people.
I said, you know, if you're starting out something, I don't know if you're making short films or you're trying to do comedy or something just make your own world.
Just ignore everything else.
Just indulge yourself in everything you love and don't ask for permission.
Don't wait for somebody to tell you what's cool.
Just make your own thing.
And even if it's just for your five friends great uh, you know, just write songs about your friend, you know.
Uh tom, you know, or you know, just write, write things about your world and make things for your world.
And and jack's a perfect example of that he he, when i met him pretty early on and he Even at that point he hadn't sold all the records, he didn't have all the notoriety, but he already had his whole.
He had this whole world that he'd made.
And I think that's where lot of the great art comes out of you know when you think of art collectives you know when you think of uh even like london in the 60s you know it's it's a scene of bands and they were they all kind of came up together and they fed each other creatively um you know that's so that's what we're born to do even in the absence of that i feel like he was already creating that world in his head i went to the we were in detroit and we were walking around detroit with him we were doing some filming and stuff and we went to the place where he was he did his upholstery work Yeah.
And have you been there?
Yeah, he was an upholsterer.
He was.
Before music.
And on the walls, all this graffiti and stuff that you just put up there.
And there's like Jack White III.
And he's got like the three.
And then he's got like the color schemes of the red, white, and the black.
And then he's got the yellow and the black of Third Man already sitting.
Like he's figured it out.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
It's inspiring.
It's so inspiring.
I wish I had done more of that.
Can you imagine having one of those couches or one of those chairs that has an early Jack White demo stitched into it?
They were out there.
I know.
I know.
I remember him telling me about that when I first met him.
I'm waiting for it.
I love the idea of secret albums.
It's the great Wonka Factory play.
It's like, I got the ticket.
How would you even know?
I mean, there might be some secret Beck albums on YouTube somewhere.
Seriously?
Wow.
Who knows?
I love you, man.
Love you.
Yeah, man.
Always great.
