Rick Beato: Greatest Guitarists of All Time, History & Future of Music | Lex Fridman Podcast #492

0:00 The following is a conversation with Rick Beato,

0:03 legendary music educator, interviewer,

0:05 producer, songwriter, and a true multi-instrument musician,

0:09 playing guitar, bass, cello, and piano.

0:12 Rick, with his incredible YouTube channel,

0:16 celebrates great musicians and musical ideas,

0:19 and helps millions of people, including me,

0:23 fall in love with great music all over again.

0:26 This is the Lex Fridman Podcast.

0:29 To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description,

0:33 where you can also find links to contact me,

0:36 ask questions, give feedback, and so on.

0:40 And now, dear friends, here's Rick Beato.

0:44 You had, I think, an incredibly fun and diverse beginning to your music journey.

0:49 I heard somewhere that one of the things that made

0:51 you fall in love with music was listening to guitar solos,

0:55 some epic guitar solos.

0:57 What's an early guitar solo that you remember you connected to spiritually,

1:04 musically, where you're like, "Wow, there's magic in this"?

1:08 Well, the first solo that I learned was

1:10 "Hey Joe." It was actually a good beginner song,

1:12 you know, when I first started playing the guitar,

1:15 because it has pretty simple chords, right?

1:18 So it's like E, C, G, D, A.

1:22 And I learned the solo, and I figured out this, like,

1:25 I'll say it's this pentatonic scale, E minor pentatonic scale though.

1:28 I didn't know that's what it was called, but learned this thing,

1:31 and it's like, "Whoa, he's just in this one shape here." Now, there was no...

1:35 You couldn't go look anything up.

1:37 You just, if you could figure out the notes,

1:39 you noticed that there was a little pattern to it.

1:42 And then I got so obsessed with it, and I showed my younger brother John,

1:47 who started playing guitar right at the same time I did.

1:50 So I was 14, he was 11.

1:53 And I would play rhythm for him for five

1:56 minutes while he would solo over Hey Joe.

1:58 And then as soon as I'd start soloing,

1:59 he'd throw the guitar down, then we'd get in a fight.

2:01 And so my mom eventually was like, "What is going on here?" And I was like,

2:07 "John won't play rhythm." "John won't play rhythm for me." She's like,

2:13 "Okay, I'll play rhythm for you.

2:14 What, what are the chords?" And—- That's awesome.

2:17 I was like, "Okay, it's like E, C, G, D,

2:20 A." And so my mom would literally play rhythm for 20 minutes while I'd play.

2:26 Hashtag parenting.

2:27 That's amazing.

2:27 When I look back on it now, my mom's been gone for 10 years now.

2:31 When I look back on it, it's like, "My God, my parents were so cool."- We should

2:36 mention that "Hey Joe," and Hendrix in general,

2:38 is kind of known for the rhythm not being simple rhythm,

2:41 just the chords that you mentioned.

2:43 It's what you do with those chords.

2:45 It's almost improvisation, the rhythm side.

2:47 He did all those really cool chord fragments, riffs,

2:50 and things like that, that's just part of his...

2:53 That's the Hendrix style.

2:54 What do you think?

2:55 I mean, many people put Hendrix as the greatest guitarist of all time.

2:58 What do you think is part of that?

3:00 You know, I make lists.

3:02 You do.

3:03 If you somehow don't know who Rick Beato is,

3:06 go on YouTube right now and watch your excellent interviews with musicians,

3:11 watch your breakdown analysis of different songs, and watch your top 20 lists,

3:18 where you're very opinionated,

3:20 sometimes very openly critical about certain kinds of songs.

3:24 It's fun.

3:25 Opinions are fun.

3:27 But they do change, Lex, from day to day.

3:30 Yeah, exactly.

3:31 You know, like I...

3:32 But when, anytime I do a list, if I do 20,

3:34 I like to do 20 because that gives me some leeway to throw in.

3:37 I have to throw in something that is so weird that people, you know...

3:42 So, something that a lot of people won't know, just to have it on there,

3:47 so I can at least introduce a per- you know,

3:49 I'll put somebody like a- Allan Holdsworth, who's a famous fusion guitar player.

3:53 I'll throw in one of his solos or something.

3:56 Just some, some oddball solo in there,

3:58 just so that people, as they're listening down the list,

4:00 will get exposed to something they would not necessarily get exposed to.

4:05 Yeah, a lot of variety.

4:07 But Hendrix...

4:08 Did you show up here today, Rick, try to tell me that Hendrix is not up there?

4:14 I just am getting that vibe right now.

4:16 No, I'm not.

4:17 I, but I don't want to say greatest, you know...

4:20 You, you can say, well, there, there are people that inspired Jimi Hendrix.

4:26 Charlie Christian, older guitar players.

4:28 Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt were the first two really big,

4:32 and probably, and Andrés Segovia were,

4:35 were three of the giants of the 20th century,

4:38 as far as guitar influences for most of the players that were to follow.

4:43 So here, going to Perplexity, Django Reinhardt was,

4:45 of course, a jazz guitarist and composer, active mainly in France,

4:48 and is widely regarded as one of the greatest guitarists in jazz history.

4:55 So, Django was...

4:56 Well, there's a huge movement right now,

4:59 Gypsy Jazz Movement, as they call it-...

5:02 that is kind of built around this style of music

5:05 that he played back in the early 20th century.

5:08 One of the things about Django is that he was in a fire,

5:13 and he had two of his third and fourth finger,

5:17 so his ring finger and pinky were essentially melted together.

5:21 He had no use of them.

5:22 Although he could use them while he was chording,

5:25 but a lot of these incredibly fast lines, he's just playing with two fingers.

5:32 And it's amazing.

5:45 That...

5:45 What is that?

5:46 So that's Gypsy Jazz.

5:49 That's Gypsy Jazz, yeah.

5:53 Him, Stéphane Grappelli was a violinist that played with him a lot.

5:58 How much of this is improvisation?

6:01 Everything he's doing there is improvised.

6:08 It feels so free.

6:10 And fun like swing, and then at least you said pre-bebop.

6:15 So bebop was a kind of jazz that was

6:18 also influential on you in your own life journey.

6:22 And it's this complicated,

6:23 legendary kind of jazz that was very influential on the music that followed.

6:27 So what was bebop?

6:29 Well, after the big bands were happening in the, you know,

6:33 from the '20s through the '40s,

6:37 Small, people would go out and play in small groups that they would tour with.

6:42 And Charlie Parker, who's really kind of the, one

6:44 of the main figures of early bebop, really developed the language of it.

6:49 Usually, the music that they're playing over are standard chord progressions-...

6:54 that they would use as vehicles to improvise over.

6:57 A lot of them were AA, BA form.

7:01 And Charlie Parker created this language of improvisation that was far

7:08 more sophisticated than the swing players of the big band era.

7:13 You know, think of people like Benny Goodman of that era.

7:16 They would have really fast tempo songs,

7:19 angular lines, chromaticism, things like that, chromatic notes.

7:24 Chromatic notes are just notes next to each

7:26 other on-- Next to each other, yeah-...

7:28 on the keyboard.

7:28 I like to think of it as connecting notes.

7:30 Connecting.

7:30 You're putting in more notes than are supposed to be there and so doing,

7:34 creating some interesting texture.

7:36 Yeah, so that is one of the most difficult styles to master,

7:41 because all these things are a language.

7:44 Blues playing, they're all just languages, right?

7:46 It's like, just like you'd learn any type of language.

7:50 My dad loved bebop.

7:52 Now, when I was a little kid and he's listening to these bebop records,

7:56 whether it's Charlie Parker or Dizzy Gillespie or Oscar Peterson,

8:01 Joe Pass, great jazz guitar player, I'm just hearing this stuff.

8:05 I don't know any different.

8:06 My dad was not a musician,

8:07 but for some reason, he liked incredibly sophisticated-...

8:12 music that was very technical.

8:15 And, I just heard it and just was like, "Oh, yeah,

8:20 okay, cool." And not realizing that it was developing my ear,

8:25 because I really, bebop is one of the hardest to improvise in that style,

8:30 in that language of bebop.

8:32 It's very difficult to do.

8:35 And hearing it as a kid is one of the things that I think enables you,

8:44 just like languages, enables you to learn it as opposed to somebody that's never

8:50 been exposed to it and tries to learn it as a teenager.

8:53 So I think it's very similar to learning languages,

8:56 which kinda is like my theory on perfect pitch,

8:59 that every child is born with perfect pitch.

9:01 And they start to lose the ability around nine months-...

9:06 when people become culturally bound listeners, when babies do.

9:10 They start out as citizens of the world, you know?

9:14 They can, they have the the neural pathways to hear the sounds,

9:19 the phonemes of all 6,500 languages spoken on Earth.

9:23 But then around nine months, they begin to lose that ability and they,

9:27 when they become these culturally bound listeners,

9:29 there's a great YouTube video with this woman, Patricia Kuhl.

9:34 She's a language researcher.

9:37 And I watched this, The linguistic genius of babies.

9:40 I saw this in 2010, this lecture that she did, like a TED Talk,

9:44 and she talks about this, that kids, they did a, an experiment.

9:47 They exposed kids to Mandarin three times a week for 25-minute sessions,

9:51 just a person speaking Mandarin to these babies.

9:56 And they were able to recognize the sounds,

10:00 the phonemes of that language even later on.

10:05 And when I realized that my son Dylan had perfect pitch, I thought,

10:10 "Why does Dylan have perfect pitch but no one

10:14 in my family had ever had perfect pitch?" And I thought,

10:17 "Well, it must be because of the things I exposed to him prenatally and then

10:23 in the first nine months of his life."

10:25 'Cause that's the only way I could explain it.

10:27 We're gonna return to Joe Pass.

10:29 We gotta go to Dylan.

10:30 You mentioned Dylan.

10:31 I guess that's in part one of the origin

10:34 stories of you putting out videos into the world,

10:37 is the early videos you did with Dylan, a set of videos on his perfect pitch.

10:41 And for people who don't know, maybe you can speak to what perfect pitch means.

10:46 It's the ability to identify any note without a reference tone.

10:51 So you can play, it doesn't matter how quickly they are,

10:56 that a person with perfect pitch can hear a note and immediately identify it.

11:01 Or a collection of notes.

11:03 And taking a tangent upon a tangent, you also have a course on ear training.

11:06 Yes, but my course is for relative pitch-- Relative pitch-...

11:08 not to be confused with perfect pitch.

11:10 Is it fair to say that relative pitch,

11:12 as far as the thing you would learn, is more useful-- Yes-...

11:15 for musicians?

11:15 Yes.

11:16 Can you explain the difference between the two?

11:18 Relative pitch is basically learning how to identify pitches

11:22 relative to a stated tonic or something that you've heard,

11:26 or just relative to each other.

11:28 If you hear a note and then you hear another note after it,

11:31 you can recognize, let's say, it's a minor third interval.

11:34 So if you're on the note A, the next note would be C.

11:37 So once you're given a reference note, you can use relative pitch to identify

11:43 the relative nature from one pitch to another.

11:46 And of course, intervals make up scales,

11:49 and intervals make up chords-- Chords, yup.

11:52 and so that if you develop it to any degree relative pitch,

11:58 you can understand, you can hear the music better.

12:02 Yes.

12:03 Um, what does it take since we're taking a tangent on a tangent,

12:06 what's what does it take to train your ear?

12:09 What's a TL;DR on the course before people go out and sign up?

12:14 It's just practice basically.

12:15 You start with intervals.

12:17 Typically, with small intervals like minor second, major second.

12:20 So minor second would be a half-step, major second would be a whole-step.

12:23 Are you listening to the tone one after the other or two of them together?

12:27 Both.

12:27 So played separately it's called melodic intervals, right, like a melody?

12:31 And harmonic intervals are played like a harmony, together.

12:33 So you have to be able to identify them both, both ways.

12:38 What's an early journey?

12:39 Like, we'll give people a preview of what they should...

12:41 Like, what does that look like?

12:43 What does practice look like?

12:45 Well, my course, it will play you an interval,

12:47 and then you identify it by clicking on whether it's, you know,

12:50 a major third, or minor third, or major sixth,

12:53 or minor sixth, or perfect fifth, or tritone, whatever it is.

12:56 And it will teach you gradually, over time, how to recognize all the intervals.

13:03 So you listen to a melodic interval or a harmonic interval.

13:08 How quickly does the ear in the various age groups that we

13:12 humans are in, how quickly does the ear learn the different intervals?

13:17 Is it a week?

13:19 Two weeks?

13:20 A month?

13:21 Two months?

13:22 Five years?

13:23 I think you'd do it pretty quickly.

13:24 Within, you know, if you practice, within a couple of months,

13:27 you can really make a lot of progress on it, if you practice daily.

13:33 What benefit does it have to you as a musician in general?

13:36 Well, it's great if you wanna hear a chord

13:38 progression if you're trying to figure out a song.

13:40 And you can say, "Oh, that's going from the six minor chord, or the four major,

13:44 to the five major, to the one major." And you can just identify it immediately,

13:48 and then you figure out what the first chord is,

13:50 then you know what the rest of the chords are

13:52 'cause they're in relation to whatever that first chord is.

13:55 And for learning solos, for example,

13:58 or learning melodies, being able to sound something out.

14:01 Now, do you recommend people couple

14:03 that with music theory in terms of education, the education journey?

14:09 They have to be taught together because

14:12 these terms are really music theory, right?

14:14 Those intervals, major second, minor second,

14:16 major third, minor third, perfect fourth.

14:19 So as you're doing that, and then you...

14:23 Once you learn the intervals, the 12 intervals in an octave,

14:28 then you learn 'em both melodically and harmonically,

14:30 so played together and separate.

14:32 Then you learn chords, and so then you learn to identify major,

14:37 minor, diminished, augmented, suspended chords, things like that.

14:40 Well, you're basically learning music theory at the same time with that.

14:44 'Cause learning...

14:45 Music theory is just the name of things in music.

14:49 So there's the sound of things.

14:51 There's the name of things,

14:53 and then there's the haptic, like playing the thing-- Right-...

14:57 probably.

14:57 So playing chords, playing scales, you have,

14:59 I believe, a course on scales and on chords?

15:02 Okay.

15:02 Since we're doing the tangent, let's go.

15:04 How do you recommend people...

15:06 There's a bunch of people listening to this that are

15:09 curious about how they can start in playing guitar,

15:12 maybe even playing piano and maybe maybe playing other instruments.

15:15 Although guitar, of course, is the greatest instrument of all time.

15:19 What are the early steps of that journey?

15:21 What do you recommend people do in general?

15:23 Well, if you're a beginner getting a good beginner guitar course and learning,

15:28 first of all, the open chords in first position.

15:31 A lot of songs can be played that way.

15:33 A lot of old songs can be played that way,

15:36 maybe not new modern songs necessarily.

15:39 So learning a few chords and with an eye towards maybe playing a song?

15:44 Yeah.

15:44 With an eye towards...

15:45 You learn the chord shapes and you learn

15:47 how to strum basic patterns to begin with.

15:50 I think the first thing for learning guitar is actually how to position

15:55 your fingers so that you don't mute strings that you don't want to mute.

16:00 That's the hardest thing for people to do, basically,

16:02 is to get their fingers arched to where they...

16:05 If you're playing a C major chord,

16:07 your index finger's on the first fret of the B string,

16:09 and you have to have that open E string ringing there.

16:12 And it's hard for people to make those micro- microadjustments.

16:15 You take it for granted, like, you've been playing guitar-...

16:19 for, I don't know, how many years?

16:21 Forever, right?

16:21 Forever, yeah.

16:22 And you don't even think about stuff

16:24 like that when you're playing a guitar solo.

16:26 Every little thing that you do if

16:28 you're playing your Comfortably Numb guitar solo-...

16:31 you have to, out of mid-air,

16:33 strike the string that your finger's on to play the note.

16:36 And these are all fine adjustments that you're doing.

16:39 I'm just a hobbyist recreational player, but it...

16:41 Wow, you're taking me all the way back.

16:43 You're right, it's the haptic, the physical aspect of it is really tricky.

16:48 Comfortably Numb is a good example, but if you do lead,

16:52 you have to get a super clean sound.

16:55 Now, that's both when you're playing fast, you want it to be super precise,

16:59 but when you play slow, when you have one note,

17:02 and you're holding it, and you're bending it-...

17:05 it better be really clean.

17:06 And for that, it's...

17:07 I guess you have to really place the finger in the right place.

17:10 Plus, there's the...

17:12 Well, there's the calluses, so it doesn't hurt.

17:15 And then the positioning of the string on the curvature of-...

17:21 of the finger.

17:21 Where does it fall?

17:22 Like, how much do you bend the finger?

17:25 You have to have enough flesh on it

17:27 to actually raise the- raise the string and pitch.

17:30 Otherwise it-- Yeah, 'cause you're lifting it with part of the flesh.

17:34 And of course, you have to decide, depends on how OCD you are,

17:37 do you wanna be, like, the perfect, the proper musician?

17:41 Or do you wanna do a Hendrix?

17:43 So the thumb over the top.

17:46 Way over the top, yes.

17:48 And so, like, you...

17:49 if you have a fretboard here,

17:51 I think the more, like, classical guitarists, the very proper,

17:57 perfect perpendicular alignment of the fingertips to the fretboard,

18:02 versus, like, Hendrix's, like, "Fuck it.

18:05 You nerds.

18:06 I'm gonna do it." With the messiness is part of the magic.

18:12 Of course, like B.B.

18:14 King is also kind of messy looking in terms of his positioning of the fingers,

18:20 but his tone is incredibly clean.

18:22 Yes, super clean.

18:23 So, like, that teaches you that maybe any

18:26 position can converge towards a super clean tone.

18:28 You just have to figure it out.

18:30 I think a lot of it has to do with how they wear their guitars.

18:34 If you wear your guitar low,

18:35 if you're Hendrix and you're wearing your guitar- That's true-...

18:39 if you're wearing it lower,

18:41 then you can't get your fingers on top of it like that.

18:46 And the thumb acts as a way to mute the lower

18:49 strings from ringing if you're playing through a loud amplifier.

18:53 So there's so many other micro-adjustments when you're playing leads,

18:56 'cause you have to kind of mute the other strings that are...

18:59 so they don't ring out-...

19:01 if you're playing the first note in Comfortably Numb and the solo at the end,

19:05 and you're at the ninth fret of the G string, and you bend that...

19:09 if you bend that G string and you accidentally hit the B string under it...

19:14 you don't want that ringing.

19:15 So you have to kind of angle your index finger so it- To mute-...

19:19 to mute that.

19:19 So all these micro-adjustments that you don't even think about...

19:22 I mean, you're not thinking about that, Lex, when you're playing it.

19:25 You've done it so many times that these things are just part of your brain.

19:30 That's why this is such a great brain developer for kids to learn instruments.

19:37 Yeah, of course, you have to solve that puzzle.

19:39 It must be really frustrating in the beginning, like holding a chord.

19:42 Like all of 'em, and it hurts too, right?

19:46 It does hurt.

19:47 If you're doing acoustic guitar.

19:48 Not for that long, though.

19:49 For like a week.

19:51 Couple, couple, yeah.

19:52 Couple weeks.

19:53 Couple.

19:55 I don't want to discourage anyone, you know.

19:57 It's actually pretty easy to learn basic stuff.

20:00 Right, but the pain is temporary, I guess is the point I'm trying to make.

20:03 It is.

20:04 Uh, so what else?

20:06 So the physical component, play a few chords,

20:08 where does the journey continue if you're learning guitar?

20:11 Well then, it's like if you play electric guitar,

20:14 then you get into single note playing and stuff like that.

20:16 That's where it gets, to me, where it gets really fun.

20:19 You know, you have single note playing with riffs,

20:22 if you think of Back in Black,

20:25 right, that has a riff embedded in the actual melody.

20:29 Or many songs that have riffs, the Hendrix stuff that has chordal riffs,

20:34 and you're moving up the neck and, Involving

20:38 all the fingers and things like that.

20:40 So there's...

20:41 it really depends on what you wanna, what styles you wanna play.

20:45 So you're thinking about song learning.

20:46 So different components of song learning.

20:48 So riffs in songs, lead-in songs.

20:53 And then you have finger picking,

20:54 if you have Stairway to Heaven, songs like that.

20:56 How 'bout wanting to learn that, that involves finger picking,

20:59 because the, you have to isolate certain

21:01 notes of the chord and play two together, you know, and multiple times.

21:07 There's a few crossroads where you get to select things.

21:10 Uh, so I guess you're speaking to the fact there's a...

21:13 if you're righty, there's a right hand that you

21:16 can use your fingers or you can use a pick.

21:18 Correct.

21:19 And that's a choice you make.

21:21 And sometimes you use both, 'cause in Stairway to Heaven,

21:23 you're using the fingers at the beginning, or fingers and pick,

21:27 hybrid, they call it hybrid picking,

21:29 and then later on, you're using the pick to flat pick the picking patterns.

21:35 On the music theory front,

21:36 do you recommend people learn scales and chords and like the theory of it?

21:40 Uh, later on I would say.

21:42 I wouldn't say necessarily right off the bat.

21:45 I think learning songs is the first thing that you

21:49 should do 'cause that you want to keep people motivated.

21:52 So you get them to like fall in love with music and playing?

21:55 Yes.

21:56 All right.

21:57 And that takes a couple months, three months?

21:59 Depends on how motivated they are.

22:02 So you recommend practicing, what, every day?

22:04 Every day.

22:05 My son, Dylan, when he started learning the guitar a couple years ago,

22:08 I said, "It's better to practice 10 minutes a day,

22:13 seven days a week than to practice one day for an hour,

22:17 which is roughly the same amount of time."- Yeah,

22:20 but it usually turns into something longer.

22:22 But otherwise, like, if you're a busy life, you know,

22:26 taking a day off, that day turns into a week,

22:28 and then a week turns into a month,

22:29 and all of a sudden you haven't touched the instrument for months.

22:33 Which is why I leave my guitar on a stand all the time,

22:36 so that if I walk by it, I'm like, "Oh, okay, I'll just pick it up

22:39 for a second." Then that second turns into 10 minutes, and an hour, two hours.

22:44 All right, we gotta talk about this Dylan video.

22:46 So this might be one of the earliest-- That's the first one.

22:48 That's the first video on the channel.

22:50 It was, it was actually before the channel,

22:52 'cause this actually blew up on Facebook-- Facebook-...

22:55 and then I put it on YouTube after.

22:59 Uh, so if it's okay?

23:00 Yeah.

23:01 Okay, Dylan, we're gonna do the hardest ear training test of all time.

23:04 Are you ready?

23:07 Ready.

23:08 Oh.

23:10 Now, I...

23:11 just a quick backstory on this.

23:12 I made this for my friend Shane's wife who wanted to see...

23:15 'cause Shane was a- a friend that I was producing,

23:20 and he was there, and Dylan had come down the day,

23:23 in the day, and I said, "Oh, check this out," and I played this stuff.

23:26 He's like, "That's amazing.

23:27 Can you make a video so I can show my wife?"

23:30 And I was on the way to a school board meeting,

23:32 'cause I was on the school board at Dylan's school-...

23:35 and I said, "Hey, Dylan, come downstairs.

23:37 I want to make this video.

23:38 It'll take one minute, just need to do this thing for my friend,

23:41 Shane." And he's like, "I don't want to." And I said,

23:44 "Come on, this'll take one minute." "I don't want to." So I said to my wife,

23:48 I'm like, "Nina, would you tell Dylan to come downstairs?

23:50 I want to do this video.

23:51 It'll take one minute." She's like, Dylan,

23:55 go downstairs." And he had, he has a mouthful of candy there-...

23:58 'cause he was eating candy.

23:59 So if you look at him,

24:01 he literally has a mouthful of candy while he's doing this.

24:04 And we should say, on Facebook it went quite viral.

24:08 Yeah, like got...

24:09 I don't know, 80 million views.

24:11 Something like, it had like 250,000 comments.

24:14 Something like that.

24:15 Insane.

24:16 How old is Dylan here?

24:17 He's eight.

24:18 Eight years old?

24:18 Yeah.

24:19 Can you actually give some more backstory about,

24:20 like, how you discovered that Dylan has perfect pitch?

24:23 So when Dylan was about two, he...

24:26 I was doing a FaceTime with my brother Jon, and I was like, "Check this out,

24:31 Jon." And I played the Stone in Love,

24:33 Neal Schon's solo from Journey, and I was like,

24:36 "Check this out." And Dylan would sing along and my brother Jon was like, "Wow,

24:42 Dylan can sing all the notes." And I was like,

24:44 "Yeah." Then I played Black Dog, Zeppelin-...

24:46 and Dylan would sing that.

24:47 And it's like, "Dylan's got a good ear." Then Jon and I were like,

24:50 "Well, we have good ears, too." So it was probably...

24:51 Maybe we could have done that when we were that age.

24:53 So a couple years, more years goes by.

24:55 Well, he was about three and a half, and I'm in the car.

24:57 I was like, "Dylan, sing the Star Wars theme." And he sings it,

25:00 and I'm like, "That's in the right key." And I checked.

25:04 I play it on my phone, and I was like, "Oh my gosh." Then I ask him, "Play...

25:08 Sing the Superman theme." Because we'd been listening to John

25:11 Williams soundtracks the week before, and he sings that.

25:14 And that was in the right key.

25:16 And I ask him another song.

25:17 So I turn the car around, I go back to the studio.

25:20 I go to the piano, I hit the note B-flat, and Dylan says,

25:24 "Star Wars." Star Wars starts on a big B-flat major chord,

25:28 but it's the note B-flat is the main one that you hear.

25:31 And then I play the note G, and he goes,

25:33 "Superman." And that's the first note in the trumpet

25:35 part of the- ...of the Superman theme.

25:37 And then I realized that he had perfect pitch,

25:39 and then in five minutes, I taught him the name of the 12 notes.

25:43 Which he already knew, but he just didn't know the names.

25:46 Oh, so you just associate the names—- Yeah- ...of the thing he knows.

25:49 What do you think is this in his mind?

25:51 'Cause it's not just individual notes.

25:52 He can, like, hear everything.

25:55 What is that?

25:56 He doesn't see colors.

25:58 He just says every note sounds completely different.

26:02 Wow.

26:02 Like you said, maybe it's a language thing.

26:06 Because it really is a...

26:08 He just learned the language.

26:09 Yeah, the language.

26:10 There's-- It's like, it's like perfect it's like native music fluency,

26:14 if you think of it like that.

26:16 So let's listen to some of this.

26:18 Turn around.

26:18 Here we go.

26:19 As fast as you can, we're going to start with single notes,

26:21 then we're going to do some intervals, then chords.

26:24 Okay, here we go.

26:26 A.

26:27 C-sharp.

26:27 B-flat.

26:28 C.

26:29 D.

26:29 A-flat.

26:30 Okay, good.

26:31 Two notes at once.

26:31 Here we go.

26:34 C-flat.

26:34 Great.

26:35 How about this?

26:36 B-flat, A.

26:38 Great.

26:38 What about this?

26:40 B-flat, A-flat.

26:41 This is incredible.

26:43 Great.

26:44 How about this?

26:46 C, B-flat.

26:48 And then how about this?

26:50 E-flat.

26:51 What is it?

26:53 E, E-flat.

26:54 Correct.

26:55 Okay.

26:55 He's, he's annoyed.

26:57 He's annoyed.

26:58 The part of this, when I play these next chords,

27:01 that's really I think why the video went so viral, the next part of this.

27:05 Where I play these super complex polychords.

27:07 Okay, I'm going to do some polychords for you.

27:10 These are really going to be hard.

27:11 You ready?

27:12 What's this?

27:14 C augmented over D-flat augmented.

27:17 Okay, sing a B-flat.

27:19 Mm.

27:20 Very good.

27:21 What's this chord?

27:23 Uh...

27:24 A-flat— Oh, A-flat major over A major.

27:32 Great, sing an F-sharp.

27:36 Mm.

27:37 Excellent.

27:38 What's this chord?

27:40 A minor over D-flat major.

27:43 Great.

27:44 What's this chord?

27:50 E add 9 over F major.

27:51 Excellent.

27:51 E add 9 over F major.

27:52 So I had to look at my hand to make

27:53 sure that that's what it was— ...'cause they're all in inversions.

27:57 So I think the reason that this went so

28:00 viral is that the more that someone knew about music,

28:03 the more that they shared the video.

28:06 Because these polychords...

28:07 So the people that were the best musicians were li- were...

28:13 Would...

28:13 Looked at it and was like,

28:15 "Oh my God." You know, it's C augmented over D-flat augmented.

28:19 Um, and the the second chord was A-flat major over A major,

28:23 but they were both in inversion, right?

28:25 So it was like a first inversion A-flat major chord,

28:28 first inversion A major chord.

28:30 And then an A minor over D-flat major, and then E add 9 over F major.

28:35 And for an eight-year-old...

28:37 I mean, for anyone—...

28:38 plus they're all close-voiced.

28:40 They're all just right next to each other.

28:42 Yeah, yeah.

28:43 It's not like, you know, where you can hear them clear.

28:45 It's all in the mid-range of the piano.

28:46 So you have to really listen and and you have to di—...

28:49 He has to dissect each one.

28:51 Like, what are the notes being played there, and and what is...

28:55 Like, what's the theory?

28:57 'Cause he's actually using music theory—...

28:59 to dissect them.

29:01 It must be in his brain, those components of the chords all sound different.

29:05 Like-...

29:06 very clearly different.

29:08 Yes.

29:08 It's truly incredible.

29:09 The human mind's incredible.

29:10 So you're saying, like,

29:12 some part of that is the things you hear in the first few months of life?

29:18 I did a thing where I played what I call high information music.

29:22 High information music would be Bach,

29:26 Well-Tempered Clavier, fugues, yeah, any- anything Bach.

29:31 And I would play the Well-Tempered Clavier, and I would play...

29:34 I have a, a friend who...

29:36 Turkish pianist who's one of the greatest improvisers I've ever heard.

29:39 His name's Aydin Esen.

29:41 And I would play Aydin's improvisations for Dylan.

29:44 It had very sophisticated harmony and linear things in it.

29:49 And Keith Jarrett, and mainly jazz, classical, and modern classical music.

29:55 And then, then we would play, listen to rock music once he was born.

29:58 I'm talking on my wife's stomach before Dylan was born—...

30:01 starting at 15 weeks, for 30 minutes a night.

30:05 And then when Dylan was born,

30:07 I would sit with him for an hour every morning and listen to music—...

30:11 and I would look at him.

30:13 In order for this for them to...

30:15 hear these phonemes apparently and develop this language, or get the...

30:21 The language acquisition has to involve the social brain.

30:26 So, when kids look at you, when a baby's looking at you,

30:28 they're looking at your mouth and they're getting social cues from that.

30:32 And this is also another component of saying

30:36 "This is where this word stops or starts and stops.

30:42 These are how this, the phonemes are separated from one another.

30:45 These are how they're connected." So I believe that all kids are born

30:49 with perfect pitch and then around nine months they begin to lose it.

30:53 If you don't engage their social brain, making these pitches know...

30:56 I never played pitches for Dylan and said, "This is a C, this is a B flat-""...

31:01 this is a G." I just played complex- ...high-information music form.

31:05 And played with him.

31:07 And that applies maybe even more generally to high-information language.

31:12 Yes.

31:13 And it starts before they're born.

31:15 I think I saw some of these incredible scientists that work on the neuroscience,

31:22 the neurobiology, psychology of language in early life.

31:26 I think a big part is you,

31:30 in the mother's stomach you're listening to the mother speak.

31:34 Yes.

31:34 That's right.

31:35 So, like, that's how on the language

31:37 side you're picking up the language already.

31:40 That's right.

31:40 And you're picking up the music, musical language.

31:43 So, native music fluency, you could call it.

31:46 So if the mother's sitting back and listening to Bach and some bebop jazz,

31:51 you have a, you have a pretty good chance.

31:54 Much better chance.

31:56 Okay.

31:56 All right.

31:57 So as we unwind our way back Joe Pass and bebop.

32:02 You were You were funny enough talking about what is

32:06 bebop jazz and, and that would be people like Joe Pass.

32:08 And in your own life, your dad was somehow listening to that kind

32:13 of incredibly complex and sophisticated music-- But wasn't a musician.

32:17 Wasn't a musician.

32:18 Which was very weird.

32:19 We never...

32:20 I have six siblings and we could never

32:23 figure out why dad liked really sophisticated jazz.

32:27 We just took it for granted at that time.

32:28 Yeah, just took it for granted.

32:30 And my dad passed away in 2004 and we never really talked about

32:33 that, but he and I used to listen to music together all the time.

32:35 We'd put on a record, I'd sit on one side of the room,

32:38 he'd sit on the other and not say a word.

32:41 Listen through the whole side A.

32:43 I'd go flip it over, listen to side B, never say a word.

32:48 And then get up and go do stuff.

32:50 And we did that all the time.

32:52 And so the first time you impressed your dad was with the Joe Pass song, right?

32:57 And by the way, we'll have to go

32:59 to this song 'cause people must have forgot 'cause right?

33:03 People just think you're like a good communicator or something.

33:09 They don't realize how good you are at guitar,

33:11 how good you are at actually a lot of instruments, but guitar especially.

33:16 And there's this video.

33:17 The greatest guitar solo, period.

33:22 Can you give me some context for this particular intricate, complicated solo?

33:27 Who's Joe Pass?

33:29 Joe Pass was a guitarist.

33:31 He lived from 1929 to 1994.

33:34 And he was one of the greatest bebop players and solo guitar players.

33:40 So he made a record that this is off of called Virtuoso in 1973

33:44 that my dad gave me for Christmas when I was in 10th grade.

33:49 And he said...

33:49 And this is not like my dad.

33:51 My dad worked for the railroad.

33:52 He was very, you know, few words spoken.

33:55 Born in 1919.

33:56 He said, "If you ever learn to play guitar like

33:59 this, you've accomplished something with your life." And I was like,

34:04 "What?" So this let, record stay,

34:05 was unopened until about March after Christmas.

34:08 And one day I was like, "Okay,

34:09 I'll open it up." And I put it on, I start listening to it.

34:13 And I was like, "Whoa, this is kinda cool." And so I said,

34:18 "I think I can figure out some of this stuff." So I figured out this thing.

34:24 Is it by ear mostly?

34:25 Yeah, just by ear.

34:26 I didn't know any of the chords or anything.

34:28 If you can listen to a little bit here.

34:30 If you go back to that Brother to Brother,

34:32 Gino Vannelli thing with Carlos Rios playing, that stuff is incredibly hard.

34:35 This, I'm starting, I don't know any of these chords.

34:37 So I start out...

34:38 I don't even know what that chord is, but I figured it out.

34:41 I I just, and it's weird.

34:43 I mean, look at that weird bar.

34:46 So you're just finding like,

34:48 playing around with the, putting your fingers-- Yes-...

34:51 on the various positions.

34:53 Right, but trying every combination of fingers.

34:54 I had never played that chord.

34:55 That's a weird-looking chord.

34:56 And, but I kept...

34:58 I moved my fingers around till I heard to where it sounded like, "Oh, that's it,

35:03 definitely." And I just looked at my hands like,

35:06 "What is that?" Had no idea what it was.

35:08 So you were connected to the...

35:10 you were really connected to the music.

35:12 The...

35:12 And so that, that's why you can hear...

35:14 It's not necessarily...

35:15 Did you even, you didn't have perfect pitch.

35:17 No.

35:18 You, and not even relative pitch.

35:20 No, I did not.

35:21 No, I didn't know anything about intervals.

35:22 I didn't know anything about music theory, anything.

35:24 This is all just-- Yeah.

35:25 You're just like playing-- Ear-...

35:26 around with different shapes.

35:27 That's amazing.

35:28 That's right.

35:28 I mean, look at that weird bar there.

35:30 But then you get into these thing.

35:33 So that stuff there, I could figure out And then this.

35:48 That stuff I could figure out.

35:49 And then these things here.

35:51 Those are just inversions of an— But I didn't know that.

35:57 I had heard Joe play that on the record.

35:59 This is the last song on there.

36:00 I'd listened to it a bunch of times and I started--

36:02 So you just replay over and over and over and over,

36:05 and you're, like, trying to replicate it.

36:07 Yes.

36:07 And I'm memorizing every different chord shape.

36:09 All the chord shapes that I had never played before.

36:13 Would you recommend people do something like that on a really complicated song?

36:17 Yeah, but there are so many YouTube videos that you

36:19 can go and just learn it without having to— Yes.

36:21 Yeah, I would recommend.

36:24 I feel like the struggle-- The struggle is where it's at.

36:27 this is true for education in general.

36:29 People...

36:29 Like, there's all these educators that try to make learning easier and more fun,

36:35 and all that kind of stuff.

36:37 Great, wonderful, but part of the thing is the struggle.

36:41 Absolutely.

36:42 But yeah, let's—- I'm sorry, hearing there's.

36:45 Let's...

36:46 You're nuts.

36:50 I heard licks like that all over this, so

36:53 I knew that that was and then these licks here,

36:59 he plays a lot of ideas like that.

37:02 That's basically a C9 chord in the top notes of it.

37:09 So all these are just inversions of the same chord.

37:12 So if I could play that, then it's just figuring out the single notes, okay?

37:20 So...

37:31 Okay, so if you just take this first part

37:33 here when he goes So this, this intro part is...

37:38 You make it sound so simple when you break it down.

37:40 And, and by the way, Joe Pass, incredible guitar player.

37:43 Like, this is obvious.

37:46 And he improvised all this.

37:46 He could have played it like this.

37:48 But, you know, the first was the individual notes.

37:53 Look at that.

37:55 Ooh, that's hard.

37:57 Maybe just play it like that.

38:01 That sounds more realistic.

38:08 The amount of different genres that you're able to replicate is just incredible.

38:14 This is just taking the needle, moving it there,

38:16 then going back a little, oh, there.

38:18 And then by the end, the record was so scratched.

38:24 It was, but it was worth it.

38:26 When I played it for my dad-...

38:29 he couldn't believe.

38:30 I mean, he didn't say, "That's amazing." He was just like, "Hmm,

38:33 pretty good."- So what was the role of bebop jazz in the history of music?

38:38 It seems like it was influential in your life.

38:40 Another guy you had an incredible interview with Flea.

38:43 People should go listen to that.

38:45 Was a great conversation.

38:46 One of the things that surprised me

38:48 is just how many musical genres influenced Flea.

38:51 And the guy showed up in a Miles Davis T-shirt.

38:54 And-- Bebop.

38:56 And-- Miles Davis played with Charlie Parker-...

38:59 when he was 18 years old.

39:00 And that's...

39:00 He was...

39:01 Charlie Parker was really his mentor.

39:03 Can you explain to me why,

39:05 with many of the folks you've interviewed and in general out there,

39:11 in the world of jazz, all roads lead to Miles Davis?

39:15 Why he's such an influential figure?

39:17 Because he was the greatest innovator in the history of jazz.

39:20 He was at the forefront of all these different styles of jazz.

39:24 I mean, he started as a bebop player,

39:26 and then he, he had records like the Birth of Cool,

39:32 and modal jazz, and hard bop, and records like Bitches Brew,

39:36 where he started to, I guess you would call fusion.

39:40 You start to get these records.

39:42 You had two main groups of Miles Davis.

39:44 You had the Miles Davis '50s quintet and the Miles Davis '60s quintet.

39:50 Now, Miles made records with many people,

39:52 but the '50s quintet had John Coltrane in it.

39:55 Had, I mean, had different piano players.

39:57 Could...

39:57 Wynton Kelly, but Paul Chambers in the bass, Philly Joe Jones on the drums.

40:02 And that particular group was made just incredibly important records.

40:07 And then he had his '60s group, which was Herbie Hancock on the piano,

40:14 Ron Carter on the bass, Tony Williams on the drums,

40:17 and Wayne Shorter on the saxophone.

40:20 And they made all these incredibly important records.

40:26 I forget who said it in an interview with you, but they talked about like, uh,

40:31 Miles Davis his music feeling like I think

40:36 toes hanging over the cliff or something like this.

40:39 Meaning, like, there's always a risk,

40:41 there's a danger that you're willing to make, to fuck it all up live.

40:47 And that feeling is what creates the aliveness of the music.

40:53 Like, can you speak to that?

40:55 Just the, the creating in the music, the feeling like you're on the edge.

41:00 Like, you're challenging the possibilities of what can happen,

41:04 and, and it all can go to shit, and because of that, it feels alive.

41:09 Well, when I interviewed Ron Carter that played in, in Miles's '60s quintet,

41:14 I asked Ron, 'cause Ron did records,

41:18 he played bass on 2,200 recording, famous records.

41:22 And I said, "Did you guys ever rehearse with Miles?" "No,

41:27 never." I said, "So, you, what, what would you do?" He goes,

41:30 "We'd just show up at the studio, and he'd have the charts,

41:33 put them on the stand and we would," "we'd just roll." And I said,

41:38 "Would you listen to it after?" "No." And I said,

41:42 "Well, what about your, what about the, the live records that you

41:45 did at, when you'd record at clubs and things like that?" He goes,

41:48 "We never knew that we were recording." He goes, "Maybe I'd see a, a microphone,

41:52 a different kind of microphone in my bass amp." He goes,

41:55 "Then months later, a record would come out and I'd see it, and I was on it,

41:59 and I would take it down to the union and say,

42:01 'I played on this record,' so you get paid for it." But he said,

42:04 "We didn't even know we were recording." So Miles was always about,

42:09 you know, don't think about it, just play.

42:14 That's crazy.

42:15 That was on purpose.

42:16 That was done on purpose.

42:17 Not to, not to do the rehearsals.

42:19 Not, none, none of that.

42:20 Yeah, he wanted people to just feel it, play it.

42:25 Thought is the enemy of flow, as Vinnie Colaiuta told me.

42:30 Thought is the enemy of flow.

42:32 How do you make sense that Flea,

42:34 the bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, is influenced by bebop jazz?

42:38 So his stepfather was a jazz bass player.

42:42 And his...

42:43 When his parents got divorced, his...

42:46 He was born in Australia, and then they moved to New York.

42:50 Then his parents got divorced,

42:52 and his mom married his stepfather, who was a jazz musician.

42:56 And they then used to have jam sessions at their place, and Flea loved it.

43:03 It was kind of like my upbringing with my dad, playing jazz all the time.

43:10 Once it gets inside you, it's just there.

43:14 And and so he is heavily influenced by jazz musicians.

43:19 Yeah, his impression was just hilarious.

43:20 I mean, he's a character.

43:21 His whole physical way of being is a character.

43:23 And his impression of just upright bass is just fun, fun to watch.

43:27 His whole-- His intensity when he picked up his bass during the interview, it...

43:32 He's an intense guy and funny, and you know, really um, emotional.

43:39 And, And he picks up his bass,

43:41 and there's a fierceness that you immediately feel.

43:44 And he starts, he talks about how he practices.

43:47 And then when he starts doing the slapping stuff, he gets, he's so into it.

43:51 And, and I'm just sitting there going, "Whoa." Like,

43:55 "Wow."- Yeah, he talked about his practicing routine with you.

43:57 And one of the things, he's like, "I have to practice the slap." And-...

44:01 you know, there's differences in the structure of the different bands.

44:03 But usually, like, the bassist has a vibe to them.

44:08 I don't know if we can put words to exactly what that is.

44:10 There's a kind of energy that drives the band.

44:14 To me, the bass is one of the only

44:16 instruments that, when you play a bad note, everybody notices.

44:19 I started on the bass-...

44:22 as a kid.

44:24 Oh, interesting.

44:24 But you also played drums.

44:25 You also played-- Yeah, but my first instrument was the cello in third grade.

44:29 Oh.

44:29 And then I switched to the bass in sixth grade.

44:32 And my, I majored, my undergrad degree is in classical bass.

44:35 So I always think of myself as a bass player first.

44:40 And I always think the bass is

44:43 the most important instrument because-- Strong words.

44:46 because as much as I love to play the guitar,

44:49 and I love to play the guitar more than anything,

44:52 I think, but the bass really defines what the quality of the chord is.

44:55 'Cause you can put the root in there.

44:57 You can put the third of the chord in the bass.

44:59 You can put the fifth in there.

45:00 You can play a lot of notes.

45:02 And whatever you play in the bass kinda defines what kind of chord it is.

45:06 So, the bass player has a lot of power.

45:08 I have to go back to our, the beginning of our conversation.

45:10 What do you think are some of the great solos of all time?

45:14 Can we put a few into consideration?

45:17 You have a great list on top 20 rock guitar solos of all time.

45:23 Yeah, so I put Comfortably Numb as my favorite, as my top one.

45:26 Yeah, on that day, right?

45:27 On that day.

45:28 Right.

45:29 Now the day later, I would have said, "It's the second solo."- Okay.

45:35 But I did the first solo because, because nobody talks about that solo.

45:38 And that solo is equally great.

45:40 And when David Gilmour...

45:41 When I played it for him,

45:44 and we talked about it in my interview with him, it was...

45:48 Just to watch his face when he listened to it was incredible.

45:52 I mean, I'm thinking to myself, it's like,

45:54 I'm sitting with David Gilmour, and he's listening to Comfortably Numb.

45:58 And he's hearing it.

46:00 He's played it a million times live,

46:02 but how many times has he gone back and listened to it on the record?

46:07 Probably not for a long time.

46:09 And then he's hearing it, and he's like, "Ooh."- Maybe you just don't look back.

46:12 When you do great things, you don't look back.

46:14 Miles never looked back.

46:15 He never wanted to hear the old stuff.

46:17 He always moved on.

46:18 There was this funny moment where you made a video

46:23 why David Gilmour will never be on the channel.

46:25 And then you ended up, of course, interviewing him twice.

46:27 He's one of the greatest guitar players of all time.

46:30 What do you think is at the core of his genius?

46:34 He has just an incredible melodic sense.

46:38 He knows how phrases should be put together.

46:42 There's a flow to his ideas that I think is just incredible.

46:46 It's the same with Hendrix.

46:48 This flow, how one idea leads to the next, how there's space between them.

46:54 It's just like speaking.

46:56 That's what I read about Miles Davis is very

47:00 good at understanding tempo and the value of silence.

47:06 And I think David Gilmour doesn't always play fast.

47:12 But he does a lot with less.

47:15 And then some of that is also on the more technical side,

47:18 probably the tone of the...

47:20 I mean, he's one of the most uniquely recognizable tones in all of music.

47:26 What do you understand about what it takes

47:28 to shape the tone that is David Gilmour?

47:31 He has a very sophisticated setup-...

47:33 for his tone, and that was one of the things when I went to his studio.

47:36 And I said to him, "So David,

47:37 is there anything I'm not supposed to see here?" I mean,

47:40 he never sits down and shows-...

47:42 people his gear, and he laughed about it.

47:44 But there I am, sitting there right next to all these pedals that...

47:48 And I, and I asked his tech, Phil, I said,

47:50 "These are the same ones you used on the records?" He's like,

47:53 "Yeah." His tech has been with him for, like, 50 years.

47:56 And I mean, the exact ones?

47:59 Yes.

48:00 It's just, it's hard to...

48:02 It's hard to imagine that those things still...

48:06 Of course, though.

48:07 They...

48:07 He's just kept it.

48:08 Yeah, this is his Binson Echorec that he played through, and this is this.

48:13 You know, these are all the same effects pedals.

48:15 And the...

48:16 Wait, is this the same Hiwatt amp?

48:18 Yeah.

48:18 Is this the same...

48:19 Yes.

48:20 Yeah, you get some new stuff.

48:22 But they keep all their own gear, and that's, uh...

48:26 I mean, he does sell his guitars for charity.

48:28 But, like, he has a black Strat that is a, it's a signature version.

48:32 It's like an exact copy of his old one.

48:35 So to him, it sounds exactly the same, plays the same.

48:39 Well, of course, they converge towards that kind of f-...

48:42 hardware.

48:43 But there's so many tiny details over the years.

48:47 You see the final result of it, but there's a journey there, of exploring.

48:52 And of course, he's not...

48:54 I guess he's not doing any soft...

48:55 Like, no emulation, no amp?

48:57 He does do emulation, actually.

48:58 He does.

48:59 He has this thing, this is...

49:01 I asked him in the first interview about this.

49:03 There's a little rack thing that I had heard that he used,

49:06 but I asked him for sure.

49:07 It's called the Zoom 9030.

49:09 I put out a short where he talks about it.

49:12 I said, "So, that, that Zoom 9030,

49:14 is that a real thing?" 'Cause I've read about it.

49:17 He's like, "Yeah." And he talks about how,

49:19 when he's sitting there recording on his own...

49:22 And he runs Pro Tools himself, and so he'll be sitting there.

49:26 There's no one there to help him.

49:28 He's like, "I'll just plug into this thing,

49:29 and then I'll play a solo with this model." It's like a kind of '90s modeling,

49:35 early modeling thing.

49:37 And he'll play a solo, and then after a while,

49:39 you hear the solo, and it's like, "Well, I'm not gonna replay that.

49:43 That sounds great." You get used to the sound of it, and that's what it is.

49:46 So people always talked about, "Oh, well, he couldn't have used that.

49:48 He's recording through an amp," and...

49:50 'Cause it sounds great.

49:52 And, And then he's like, "Yeah, yeah,

49:54 so that's what I use." And then I have the video of it right there,

49:58 and it says his presets, DG1 and DG2 and, you know, whatever.

50:03 What's your process for preparing for interviews like that?

50:05 You've done a few legendary people.

50:09 I never prepare for interviews,

50:12 because I ask people things that I'm interested in knowing.

50:17 So, just letting your curiosity just pull a-- Yes-...

50:20 pull you forward?

50:21 And I can think of 100 questions to ask David Gilmour, and...

50:24 But I always ask my questions based on what they say to me.

50:28 So, but I do make a playlist of songs that I wanna talk about.

50:33 So, that kind of guides me, is that...

50:35 'Cause I wanna make sure that There's specific things that I

50:41 need to play to, so that you can jog his memory.

50:46 'Cause anytime you play something that somebody recorded,

50:48 even 50 years ago, they'll remember.

50:51 If they don't remember the exact specifics,

50:56 that, that brings it to life to them again.

50:59 And they can, they can kind of piece together some aspects about it,

51:04 and they can really talk.

51:06 He can talk about the phrasing and the, you know,

51:09 the kind of melodic direction of things like that.

51:12 So, there's a lot of tiny details that go into a particular song,

51:15 whether it's in the production or how it's played or how it was composed,

51:18 all that kind of stuff.

51:19 And you don't know what those are ahead of time.

51:22 No.

51:23 You just know the song, and you just are looking to jog their memory,

51:27 and maybe your own curiosity of like, "How did you do this?" Or, "How do, what,

51:30 this sound or that?" You make it look easy,

51:34 but you have to have a depth of knowledge.

51:37 You're saying you don't prepare.

51:39 I have an incredibly good memory.

51:41 Exactly.

51:42 That's what it is.

51:43 It's that I can remember when records came out, who produced them,

51:46 where they recorded them, who was the engineer, what songs are on it.

51:52 And not only that, but the people I'm

51:54 interviewing know that I can play all the parts-...

51:58 of all the instruments, 'cause I've done breakdowns of their songs,

52:01 which is why I get the interviews with them in the first place, really.

52:06 But the actual, like, the skill of the interview,

52:08 the thing you're not saying, the preparation,

52:10 is the you young listening to bebop.

52:14 That's right.

52:14 It's the, it's the background knowledge, it's the soul carrying with you,

52:19 being able to radiate the love of the soul of music.

52:25 I will say this, Lex, is that the other thing is that most

52:29 of these people have a really good sense of humor.

52:32 When I was, when...

52:33 The first time I interviewed David in New York,

52:35 my brother John came along, and he is a massive David Gilmour fan.

52:40 That's his biggest influence as a guitar player.

52:43 And so he said, "You're interviewing David Gilmour?

52:45 Oh, I'm coming." I was like, "All right.

52:47 Come on.

52:47 Come on down." So, so my brother John's standing about five feet away.

52:51 And John is a sales guy, but he...

52:53 Great guitar player.

52:54 So John's like...

52:55 I was like, "This is John...

52:56 This is...

52:56 David, this is my brother, John." "David, great to meet you,

52:59 buddy." And you know, it sounds like it's so...

53:01 He's a sales guy.

53:03 And, and so during the interview, I said,

53:05 I was like, "Hey, John, what was I gonna ask David?

53:08 Oh, ask him about the Gilmour effect." "Oh, yeah,

53:10 that's right." And the Gilmour effect is my thing

53:12 that I say in the comments section when people say...

53:15 Anytime anybody plays anything technical, "Oh, yeah, that's great,

53:20 but I much prefer David Gilmour." And so I always call it the Gilmour effect.

53:27 Anytime I have, like, Yngwie Malmsteen-- Mm, yeah.

53:28 Anybody that played, that has chops that I—...

53:31 interview, the negative comments are always,

53:33 "Well, I prefer David Gilmour."- Yeah, yeah.

53:36 And I said that, I told David that.

53:38 He's like, "Well, maybe they should keep their opinions to themselves."- Yeah,

53:44 a lot of these folks have really wonderful personalities,

53:46 with a, with a trusted person to be able to reveal that personality.

53:49 So, Comfortably Numb at the top on that day.

53:52 What else is up there?

53:54 Stairway to Heaven.

53:55 Hey, Joe.

53:57 But in that list, your top Hendrix solo is Hey, Joe?

54:01 It's the first guitar solo I ever learned, so I had to put it on there.

54:04 So, I don't, necessarily do these by...

54:06 I do those in kind of how important they are to me and my development.

54:11 So, there's always a biographical component to these lists.

54:16 Number three was Kid Charlemagne, a Steely Dan solo— Larry Carlton.

54:21 Amazing solo, extremely difficult to figure out.

54:25 Probably, there's two solos on the list that are just about, are very...

54:30 That one I can play.

54:33 But there's a few solos that are very hard to play.

54:35 Stone in Love by Journey, by Neal Neal Schon, is very hard to play some licks.

54:41 Um, the, um—There's a song...

54:44 There's a solo by a guitarist, Carlos Rios, that people don't know.

54:48 It's Brother to Brother, a Gino Vannelli song,

54:50 but it's extremely hard to play and figure out.

54:54 And that people don't know the solos.

54:56 I put it on my list 'cause I knew that a lot

54:58 of people were gonna watch it and they're gonna know what this solo is.

55:01 For me, the sentimental one, my, my first solo is Mr.

55:04 Crowley, Randy Rhoads.

55:05 I like the musicality of Mr.

55:06 Crowley, that there is a melodic component to it.

55:09 You're playing really fast, but there's a melody to it.

55:12 And also, there's like a legendary nature

55:15 to the, the brief time we had Randy Rhoads.

55:20 Yes.

55:20 It's probably one of the greatest guitarists ever.

55:24 '56 to '82, I think.

55:27 Terrible.

55:28 Um, he was an absolute brilliant guitarist, had his own style.

55:34 We should say he's the guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne, the band.

55:37 Yeah.

55:38 And that Mr.

55:39 Crowley solo is a great solo, great solo.

55:42 And, He's incredibly influential as a guitar player too,

55:49 for metal guitar players and, um, I love Randy Rhoads.

55:54 Uh, another guy, so one of my favorites is Mark Knopfler.

56:00 Yes.

56:00 And I did have Mark Knopfler on my list, Sultans of Swing.

56:03 That's right, you did have-- Now,

56:04 I had it high on the list, and I'll tell you why.

56:07 I would've had it lower 'cause it's one of the early ones,

56:09 'cause I wanted people to be like,

56:11 "Okay, oh, this is a serious list." So Rick's gonna talk about serious stuff.

56:17 So, um- And Rick's gonna play along with all these things.

56:32 So I wanted to kind of state that at the beginning of the video.

56:34 I mean, I made the video in one day to do 20 solos.

56:37 I think I played 19 of them, but the Heart solo that I had on there-...

56:42 Nancy Wilson, I played the video of.

56:43 And I tried to get a couple of my friends

56:47 to play the Ice Cream Man, Van Halen solo.

56:50 Yeah, it was just-- So I called Dweezil Zappa,

56:52 and I was like, "Dweezil, can you play the Ice Cream Man solo?

56:55 I'm making a video about it." He's like, "Oh,

56:57 I'd have to practice that." Then I called

56:59 my friend Phil X who's an amazing guitar player,

57:01 and he's like, "No, I'd have to practice that." I was like,

57:04 "Come on, man, can't let me play Ice Cream Man?" The opening lick of Ice

57:07 Cream Man that he plays is very hard

57:09 to play 'cause it's an incredibly long stretch.

57:13 And it hurt my fingers to do,

57:15 and Eddie would turn his guitar up like this to play.

57:18 And plus, it's a tricky...

57:20 It just...

57:21 It's a tricky rhythm, and, and it's such a big stretch.

57:26 It's like, "Man, I can't...

57:27 That hurts my hand."- I just love that that's the Van Halen solo you have.

57:33 The top 20.

57:34 See, I have to do some-- Yeah, yeah, yeah-...

57:36 There's so many Van Halen.

57:37 My God, it could be...

57:38 There...

57:38 I could pick 25 different Van Halen solos.

57:42 But to me, I mean, there really is nobody like Mark Knopfler.

57:47 I mean, his is unique guitars.

57:49 There's something about his tone.

57:51 Speaking of Gilmour, there's just the tone, the care, the timing of the notes.

58:00 His improvisation, like the live performances of Sultans of Swing

58:03 that's been actually going like somewhat viral around recently,

58:09 his pretty old live performance of Sultans of Swing.

58:14 For me, Brothers in Arms, these kind of-- Great-...

58:19 soulful, mournful type of solos, he does really, really well.

58:24 Also, the interesting instrumentation of Romeo and Juliet.

58:28 Just so many...

58:29 Just...

58:29 Truly one of the greats.

58:31 Now, obviously the intro to Money for Nothing is one of the greatest.

58:35 Almost impossible to recreate that because of the sound is so unique and his...

58:42 It's just improvised.

58:44 It's so cool.

58:46 Yeah.

58:46 There's certain songs like Europa by Santana, Santana can have that tone too.

58:52 That Mark Knopfler makes me real- just how clean it is.

58:55 I think he beats B.B.

58:57 King in my book in terms of the cleanness of just pure beauty of a single note.

59:03 It's like a power of a single note.

59:05 I don't know anybody who beats Mark Knopfler.

59:09 Well, that thing about being able to recognize somebody from a note.

59:14 You know?

59:15 Yeah, that's-- When I hear Brian May,

59:17 I can immediately recognize it's Brian May.

59:19 Incredibly melodic, the tone that he has.

59:22 Gilmour, Hendrix, everyone that we're talking about, Van Halen.

59:26 It's just, they have that one note.

59:30 It's like, "Oh, I know who that is." And that's,

59:32 that's why we're talking about him.

59:35 That'd be funny.

59:35 That'd be a good video-- B.B.

59:37 King, you hear one note-...

59:39 as a test of like how quickly can you

59:42 recognize just a solo starts playing-- That's a great...

59:45 I'm gonna make that video--...

59:46 one note-...

59:47 tomorrow.

59:48 Lex, you'll-- I don't know.

59:49 The day after tomorrow, you'll see it.

59:52 I would love to see that.

59:53 Can you say, can you recognize these players by one note?

59:55 By one note.

59:56 I think it's...

59:57 I think we're being a little too aggressive with that.

59:59 I think you need like two or three or four-- No, no, no, no-...

1:00:02 or five notes.

1:00:02 I guarantee you.

1:00:03 So I was gonna do a video last week

1:00:05 where I was gonna play songs in reverse, okay?

1:00:09 See if you can recognize these songs in reverse.

1:00:11 And I had my two assistants come in.

1:00:13 It's like, "Do you know what song that is?" They're like, "Oh,

1:00:16 that's Adele." Like, "What?" Then they're like,

1:00:18 "Oh, that's, that's Nirvana." Instantly, they could recognize.

1:00:21 Like, "Well, that's not worth me." It's like, yeah, it's so obvious.

1:00:23 You hear the tone of the voice backwards, forwards, it doesn't matter.

1:00:26 You know who it is.

1:00:27 Oh, interesting.

1:00:28 Okay.

1:00:28 So it's about the tone.

1:00:30 How could you possibly know the...

1:00:32 from a single note?

1:00:33 I guess Van Halen, you can.

1:00:36 One note of, of B.B.

1:00:37 King's vibrato, you could know.

1:00:41 I'm gonna...

1:00:41 What I'll do is I would separate the guitars.

1:00:44 I can actually separate the tracks, and I'll just play one note.

1:00:47 You think you could, from a single vibrato, you can know it's B.B.

1:00:50 King?

1:00:51 Yes.

1:00:51 Well, we'll see.

1:00:53 Put it on record, I'm skeptical.

1:00:54 I'm gonna do, I'll do twenty of them.

1:00:57 Can you recognize these guitarists from a single note?

1:00:59 Could you recognize Stevie Ray Vaughan-- Absolutely-...

1:01:02 versus Eric Clapton?

1:01:04 All right.

1:01:05 You might be right.

1:01:08 You might be right.

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1:01:37 Choose wisely, my friends.

1:01:39 And now, back to my conversation with Rick Beato.

1:01:43 What do you think is the best Eric Clapton song?

1:01:47 One of the things we haven't mentioned so far is

1:01:51 the importance of lyrics and maybe meaning of the song-...

1:01:56 and what it represents, so in that sense, Tears in Heaven.

1:02:00 Well, the story behind that is heartbreaking.

1:02:03 And then, I personally really love the sound of Wonderful Tonight.

1:02:08 That's a great song.

1:02:09 That's one of my favorite Clapton songs.

1:02:11 And I, as I was, like, listening to it,

1:02:14 just doing a whole personal journey introspection,

1:02:18 knowing that I'm gonna talk to Rick Beato,

1:02:21 listening to just a bunch of songs, and I learned,

1:02:24 it's embarrassing that I didn't know the stories behind the music,

1:02:30 but I learned that Eric Clapton was married for 10,

1:02:33 for a decade to the same woman that George Harrison was married to.

1:02:39 And that this woman was the muse, the inspiration for, like,

1:02:46 so many of the legendary songs of rock-...

1:02:52 including Wonderful Tonight, including Layla-...

1:02:56 and including George Harrison's Something.

1:02:59 Legendary song also.

1:03:00 The same woman.

1:03:01 Is she the greatest muse in rock history?

1:03:04 Probably, yes.

1:03:06 This is great.

1:03:07 So in your interviews of musicians and producers,

1:03:12 I think the thing you're ultimately fascinated by is their whole,

1:03:16 the process, the recording, the production,

1:03:19 the songwriting, the different elements of the process.

1:03:23 So, Are there examples of different things that stand

1:03:26 out to you from the all the interviews you've done?

1:03:30 And all by the way, all the recording and production you've done yourself.

1:03:34 So on the recording front, on the production front,

1:03:37 on the songwriting process front, just things that pop into memory.

1:03:42 When I've interviewed the guys that are the producers,

1:03:45 like Rick Rubin, Daniel Lanois, Brendan O'Brien, Butch Vig,

1:03:49 the thing about producers, as opposed to people that are musicians,

1:03:52 if you're a in a musician, even if you're David Gilmour, you do a record,

1:03:57 and then you tour, and then you do another record,

1:04:00 maybe years go by, but producers are working on multiple records,

1:04:05 you know, sometimes at a time.

1:04:07 Rick Rubin could be working on multiple records,

1:04:10 and the variety of things that they do, you can talk to.

1:04:15 I mean, I can talk to Rick about the Chili Peppers.

1:04:18 I can talk to him about Johnny Cash.

1:04:21 I can talk to him about Tom Petty, and all these records that I love,

1:04:26 and there's just so many interesting stories that...

1:04:29 I mean, these interviews could go on for, for days with Rick,

1:04:33 and the variety of records that he worked on.

1:04:38 And there's so much knowledge to be gained, for me at least,

1:04:43 and I think that the craft of production

1:04:47 and recording engineering is something that is not well-documented.

1:04:54 Especially since there's so few studios nowadays,

1:04:58 where there used to be a mentorship thing,

1:05:00 where you'd go and you'd work as an assistant engineer.

1:05:03 And you'd work your way up.

1:05:04 I interviewed a guy named Ken Scott that worked with the Beatles.

1:05:07 I interviewed him at Abbey Road Studios, it's just two months ago,

1:05:11 and he started as a tape op when he was 16.

1:05:15 He started on the Hard Day's Night record with the Beatles,

1:05:19 and he worked his way up,

1:05:20 and he said the first time he ever recorded an orchestra

1:05:23 was he recorded I Am the Walrus, the orchestra part.

1:05:26 He set up the mics, and I asked him, I said,

1:05:29 "So where was the band?" "Standing right

1:05:30 behind me." The Beatles, right behind him.

1:05:32 The guy I'm interviewing at Abbey Road recorded I Am the Walrus there.

1:05:38 I mean, he recorded many Beatles songs, and, and he was 18 years old, and the...

1:05:44 I mean, I just can't, I can't even fathom that.

1:05:47 We...

1:05:47 They have a little cafe in the basement of Abbey Road,

1:05:49 and I said, "Did the Beatles come in here?" He goes, "Oh, yeah,

1:05:52 they come in here and get coffee," and I remember when

1:05:54 they got two microwaves that like the first microwaves in 1965,

1:05:59 and they were amazed by them, and, It's hard to imagine that I'm talking

1:06:03 to people that worked on these historic records.

1:06:07 But, you know, they all start with a blank

1:06:10 tape or an empty hard drive, and then,

1:06:14 you've eventually filled them up with this music that you can't,

1:06:18 you can never imagine it not existing,

1:06:20 like Stairway to Heaven, or whatever it is.

1:06:25 It's funny, like, looking back, even probably for them,

1:06:27 just to realize they've created that magic is hard to believe.

1:06:31 'Cause you're looking at a blank thing and then magic comes out,

1:06:34 and you don't even, you don't even understand.

1:06:37 I you don't understand,

1:06:38 probably a lot of these artists don't understand where that came from.

1:06:43 They're channeling some deeper thing.

1:06:45 When I interviewed Brian May, he told me, I can't even remember if this was,

1:06:49 if we talked about it on camera or not, but we talked about Bohemian Rhapsody,

1:06:53 and at the very end...There was a thing where

1:06:57 he was depressing his whammy bar a little bit,

1:07:00 and it sounds like the piano is out of tune.

1:07:03 I never noticed it before.

1:07:04 He mentioned this to me.

1:07:06 And he said it always bothered him.

1:07:09 And there's always something about these songs that bothers people.

1:07:14 Even these songs that he-- These old things, yeah.

1:07:17 Right.

1:07:17 There's always little things-...

1:07:18 and they sit and they hear it, and they're like, "Oh, man.

1:07:20 I wish I'd been up a little higher on that," or whatever.

1:07:24 I mean, that...

1:07:25 there's certain moments in songs that are just unlike anything else.

1:07:31 In Bohemian Rhapsody when Freddie Mercury is,

1:07:34 "Sometimes wish I'd never been born at all." And then guitar comes in.

1:07:40 I mean, there's just nothing like that.

1:07:42 That was...

1:07:43 That...

1:07:43 I don't even know.

1:07:45 I mean, that whole thing, you've done videos on it.

1:07:48 It's an incredibly complicated composition.

1:07:50 It's crazy that a popular song,

1:07:53 popular rock song could be this operatic, so complicated.

1:07:57 The other thing akin to that moment is,

1:08:00 Phil Collins with In the Air Tonight, the drum bridge.

1:08:05 Do do do do do do do do.

1:08:08 Yeah.

1:08:09 What is that?

1:08:10 I don't understand how you can create that.

1:08:15 What is that?

1:08:16 Why is that so magical?

1:08:18 Why is that so singular inside a particular song and in rock history period?

1:08:24 Like, these moments, I don't know, musically,

1:08:27 I don't understand how you create them 'cause it might be bigger than musical.

1:08:30 It might be cultural, all...

1:08:32 a bunch of different elements, and plus, it's him filled with...

1:08:35 Like, I've seen live performances.

1:08:36 He has, like, a headset.

1:08:37 He does something.

1:08:38 He's like a telemarketer or something.

1:08:41 Like, his whole vibe and look to him,

1:08:44 he doesn't look like a rockstar, but he is.

1:08:48 Those are hooks when you think about it, right?

1:08:50 It's like, it's as much of a hook as any, as the chorus of the song or any song.

1:08:55 That drum thing is something that people wait for, and they air drum to it.

1:08:59 Everybody air drums to it, and it is a hook, and those are hard to create.

1:09:04 Those are...

1:09:05 Those moments are really hard to create, and usually they're done by accident.

1:09:10 Yes, it's hard.

1:09:10 If you chase it, you're not gonna get it.

1:09:13 In your conversation with Sting,

1:09:16 he said something about how modern music is simpler,

1:09:22 more minimalistic, and, "The bridge is gone," I think-...

1:09:27 he said.

1:09:28 And he said he thought that, "The bridge is therapy." It's,

1:09:34 like, a chance for you to reflect, I guess, on the verse-...

1:09:37 before the chorus comes in.

1:09:39 That's right.

1:09:40 It changed my view of the bridge, I suppose,

1:09:42 is the therapeutic nature of it, at least lyrically.

1:09:44 You think he's onto something?

1:09:46 The value of the bridge?

1:09:48 The bridge is a place, I think,

1:09:50 where you can kind of change the frame of reference of a song.

1:09:55 You could probably do anything, I guess.

1:09:57 Lennon used to...

1:09:59 He would have some kind of biting lyrics,

1:10:04 like "We Can Work It Out." So McCartney writes the, you know,

1:10:07 "Try to see it my way.

1:10:08 Do I have to keep on going until I can't go on?" And then,

1:10:11 but the bridge is very Lennon.

1:10:12 "Life is very short, and there's no time.

1:10:14 For fussing and fighting, my friend.

1:10:16 I have always thought that it's a crime,

1:10:18 so I'll ask you once again." I mean, it's very, you know, very Lennon-esque.

1:10:22 This is...

1:10:22 That was really a...

1:10:24 kind of a real collaboration between the two of those.

1:10:30 This is where different parts of the band can clash-...

1:10:33 in interesting ways.

1:10:34 I mean, the Beatles are the epitome of that.

1:10:36 Such...

1:10:36 Like, each individual Beatle is a great talent in their own right.

1:10:42 How were the Beatles able to create some of the greatest

1:10:46 songs of all time all before they turned 30 years old?

1:10:51 I have never been able to figure that out, but I have a theory that-...

1:10:57 because PA-- I have a theory.

1:10:59 Because PA systems were so bad back then-...

1:11:01 and the Beatles...

1:11:02 People screamed so loudly that the Beatles thought, "Okay.

1:11:06 We don't, we don't need...

1:11:07 We can't tour anymore 'cause we can't even hear ourselves,

1:11:10 so we're just gonna be a studio band." And maybe because of...

1:11:15 We have all these great late Beatles records,

1:11:18 they're from 1966 on, just because they had bad PA systems.

1:11:24 And they had no monitors.

1:11:26 You know, they're in Shea Stadium.

1:11:28 People are screaming so loudly they can't hear themselves.

1:11:30 They're like, "Okay, forget this.

1:11:32 We can't tour.

1:11:32 We'll just make studio records," so that's what they did,

1:11:35 and in that one year, like, from August 6th, 1965, they put out Help.

1:11:40 Then in December 3rd, they put out Rubber Soul, of '65.

1:11:45 Then August 5th, they put out Revolver.

1:11:50 So within 365 days, they put out three 14, I think, 14-song records.

1:11:55 So they wrote and recorded three incredibly important records.

1:12:00 They were in the studio.

1:12:02 It's like working out.

1:12:04 They're practicing their craft every day,

1:12:07 writing songs, trying to outdo the other ones,

1:12:11 and so you had the perfect thing of four supremely talented musicians,

1:12:18 songwriters, singers, and then the best producer you could possibly have,

1:12:24 George Martin, and it was just a perfect storm.

1:12:27 I think that when I would talk to friends that would just play in local clubs,

1:12:32 and they'd play four-hour sets five nights a week,

1:12:35 and they never lost their voices because they're always working those muscles.

1:12:40 And same with the Beatles.

1:12:41 They were always in the studio singing every single day, doing takes,

1:12:46 and I think that that was part of it, at least.

1:12:52 But you also have this theory- that you know,

1:12:57 that the greatest productivity that musicians have is before they turn 30.

1:13:01 The greatest, sort of, creative genius that can come out

1:13:05 of the human mind musically is before the age of 30.

1:13:09 Well, I think it's the same in mathematics, as well.

1:13:12 You have this fluid intelligence versus crystallized intelligence.

1:13:16 Fluid intelligence up until you're about, you know, in your late 20s,

1:13:19 30 years old, and then crystallized, so you're using...

1:13:22 The crystallized is you're using your life experience to write things,

1:13:28 so you'll find that composers:

1:13:31 Bach, Beethoven, Mozart wrote their most important

1:13:34 works at the end of their lives.

1:13:36 Beethoven, the late string quartets, the Ninth Symphony, things like that.

1:13:39 So, they have a whole lifetime of experience

1:13:41 that lead up to this, and there's not...

1:13:43 They're not improvising, but things for improvising,

1:13:46 writing pop songs, and that...

1:13:48 I think when your mind is really most active

1:13:53 and your brain processing speed is at its pinnacle, that...

1:13:58 This is just my theory-...

1:14:01 that people can come up with those kind of ideas.

1:14:04 Same with improvising.

1:14:05 I think that most jazz improvisers, not all, but most,

1:14:09 do their best improvising before the age of 30.

1:14:14 Creating something new.

1:14:15 Yes.

1:14:16 Truly novel, that requires youth.

1:14:20 It's just a theory though, but it seems to apply.

1:14:23 What do you think about the 27 Club?

1:14:25 A bunch of the music greats died at 27.

1:14:28 Hendrix, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse.

1:14:34 Kurt Cobain.

1:14:35 Kurt Cobain, of course.

1:14:36 A big part of music history is linked to drug history.

1:14:43 LSD, coke, heroin, weed.

1:14:49 Smoking.

1:14:50 Smoking.

1:14:51 I think about this a lot.

1:14:52 If you go back and you watch videos, The Beatles,

1:14:54 any of their movies, they're smoking all the time.

1:14:58 The Get Back documentary, they're smoking constantly.

1:15:00 Go watch any of the MTV Unplugged, Nirvana,

1:15:04 Kurt Cobain is smoking every second that he's not playing, he's smoking.

1:15:09 Every singer smoked.

1:15:10 Every musician smoked.

1:15:12 Nowadays, I asked my son, Dylan, "Dylan, does anybody smoke" at his high school.

1:15:16 He's like- ..."Smoke?

1:15:17 Nobody smokes." He's, he's...

1:15:18 The- it was an absurd question.

1:15:20 And that was part of culture.

1:15:24 It was for everybody.

1:15:25 I mean, that was, that was a big transformation

1:15:27 over the past 20 years and just everybody stopped smoking.

1:15:30 But I don't think smoking has the kinda

1:15:33 hard negative effect that we're talking about.

1:15:36 I mean, I almost would rather have them smoke than some of the other hard drugs.

1:15:41 Maybe smoking distracts them from the hard...

1:15:44 I mean, heroin and coke, I mean,

1:15:47 those, those things really, and alcohol, unfortunately-...

1:15:50 can be easily abused, I think.

1:15:52 It seems like it's a...

1:15:54 The, the life of a musician, this dopamine thing of getting on stage and be it,

1:16:03 being adored by tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people,

1:16:07 the high of that, and then the comedown after is a really hard life,

1:16:13 for just even neurobiologically, of like, how do you deal with that?

1:16:17 You have to be able to control the rollercoaster of your mind,

1:16:21 and of course drugs will be a part of that.

1:16:23 And you think everything is allowed and everything is possible.

1:16:27 And then there's also culture, depending on who you hang out with, that certain

1:16:32 kinds of categories of drugs are good for your creativity.

1:16:37 And so, naturally, you start to abuse those drugs.

1:16:43 I don't know.

1:16:44 I think the, I think it's really interesting the role

1:16:47 that drugs have played in the, in the history of music.

1:16:50 They have certainly been extremely destructive,

1:16:54 but they have also certainly been productive muses,

1:16:59 inspirations for some of these folks.

1:17:03 Oh, absolutely.

1:17:04 Now, would we want to, you know,

1:17:08 advocate people doing things like that to boost their creativity?

1:17:13 No.

1:17:13 Well, I wouldn't, but just like smoking,

1:17:16 which I think improved people's voices-...

1:17:21 I mean really, the raspiness of it-...

1:17:23 this is the reason that the, that so

1:17:26 many of these, virtually every famous singer-...

1:17:31 no matter what genre of music, jazz, soul, rock, they all smoked.

1:17:37 Yeah, yeah.

1:17:37 Nat King Cole.

1:17:39 Miles Davis too?

1:17:40 Miles smoked, everybody smoked.

1:17:41 Miles did...

1:17:41 Well, Miles was a heroin addict too.

1:17:44 I mean-- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:17:45 so many jazz musicians.

1:17:47 Well, Miles had a sound to him.

1:17:48 You're right.

1:17:49 I mean, smoking must,

1:17:50 must play a gigantic role to that, adding some complexity to the voice.

1:17:56 Yes.

1:17:57 Yeah, some richness to the voice.

1:17:58 Nat King Cole, he smoked, I think, four packs a day.

1:18:01 He died of lung cancer.

1:18:03 Lotta heavy smokers though, as singers.

1:18:07 Frank Sinatra, heavy smoker.

1:18:09 McCartney was a heavy smoker.

1:18:10 Lennon, all those guys smoked.

1:18:13 Yeah, it's hard to know, chicken or the egg.

1:18:15 But I certainly wouldn't recommend doing drugs as a way to get better at music.

1:18:24 But, you know, it does seem to go hand-in-hand.

1:18:26 And some of it has to do with the period,

1:18:29 with the time period, with the place, 'cause sometimes it's part of the culture.

1:18:33 The drug is like you're saying, smoking.

1:18:35 If you were smoking now,

1:18:37 that's gonna be a very different experience than smoking 10 years ago,

1:18:40 20 years ago, 50 years ago.

1:18:42 There's a different vibe.

1:18:43 So, sometimes the drug is a deep integrated

1:18:47 part of the culture versus an actual chemical substance.

1:18:51 The '60s, right?

1:18:52 They're...

1:18:52 I don't know.

1:18:53 They were on everything in the '60s.

1:18:56 Yeah....

1:18:57 I mean, it has to account for something, Lex, you know?

1:19:04 Uh, on the songwriting front, you mentioned a story about Elton John recording.

1:19:08 So he's one of the legendary songwriters.

1:19:11 But yeah.

1:19:12 You've met him, and you know something about the process of his, um-- Yeah,

1:19:17 'cause he was recording in a studio in Atlanta

1:19:20 that I was working with a band that I was producing.

1:19:22 And he was in, I was in Studio B, he was in Studio A.

1:19:25 And this band that I was working with, they were called Jump, Little Children.

1:19:30 And so, he had his assistant come in and ask, "Hey, is this...

1:19:32 Are you guys Jump, Little Children?" "Yeah, yeah,

1:19:34 yeah." And then all of a sudden, I couldn't see out into the live room.

1:19:38 Elton walked into the thing, and we were getting ready to track,

1:19:41 and I'm, I'm pressing the button.

1:19:42 "Yo, where are you guys?

1:19:43 What's up?

1:19:44 I thought we were gonna start this." And no one's responding.

1:19:46 I can hear talking, it's like, "What, what is going on?

1:19:48 Where are they?" Then all of a sudden they

1:19:50 come back in the studio and they were stunned.

1:19:52 I said, "Where were you guys?" "Elton John just walked into our session.

1:19:56 And he said he's a big fan.

1:19:57 He said to come over when we're done and, and hang out in Studio A." So,

1:20:01 so we did, and he was there with Bernie Taupin, and they were working on a song.

1:20:06 And he, we talked there for, for an hour,

1:20:08 and he was talking about recording two records a year,

1:20:11 and then they'd go on tour,

1:20:12 and they'd write and record the whole record in two weeks.

1:20:15 So Bernie would give him lyrics.

1:20:17 Elton would go out and spend 15 minutes writing all the melody.

1:20:22 He'd look at his lyrics, and he was doing that that day.

1:20:25 Bernie was there, and they had a lyric sheet up on the piano.

1:20:28 And Elton would go on, and they'd just...

1:20:30 "Okay, just record this." And Elton would sit there

1:20:32 and, and play and come up with the song-...

1:20:36 in 15 minutes or so.

1:20:38 Yeah, that's crazy.

1:20:38 There's a great version of, I think, Tiny Dancer,

1:20:41 where Elton is coming up with it on, it's on YouTube.

1:20:44 And he's just coming up with the music right there.

1:20:46 And then the band, "Okay, here's how it goes." And they record it right then.

1:20:50 Then move onto the next song.

1:20:52 I see this.

1:20:53 I mean, it's really incredible.

1:20:55 That's it.

1:20:55 Yeah.

1:20:55 True.

1:20:56 There's one there that I've sort of done the other day with Tiny Dancer,

1:20:59 which is about Bernie's girlfriend.

1:21:01 So I just sort of ran it through and then put two verses together,

1:21:05 then a mid-like, then a chorus,

1:21:06 and then back to the sort of verse sort of thing.

1:21:09 It's, it's a very...

1:21:10 It happens very quickly.

1:21:10 It sounds long, but it's sort of, it sort of starts off-<< Blue jean baby,

1:21:19 LA lady, seamstress for the band.

1:21:27 Pirates man, pretty eye, you marry Okay.

1:21:36 I mean, it's really amazing that he just-- Yeah.

1:21:38 He's looking at just the lyrics.

1:21:40 Yeah, and it's one of the, he's one of the very few

1:21:42 people that has the lyrics first and writes the music to it,

1:21:46 which to me is far more difficult.

1:21:49 99% of songwriters write the music first,

1:21:52 and then they put the melody and lyrics to the finished backing track.

1:21:58 And maybe they write, like, lyrics,

1:22:01 they write, like, Nonsense words kind of-- Yes-...

1:22:04 thing.

1:22:04 And then they figure out from there.

1:22:06 Yeah, that's...

1:22:07 I mean, I don't know what skill that is exactly, but that's incredible.

1:22:11 I mean, in that process he makes it his own.

1:22:16 Yes.

1:22:17 Okay.

1:22:17 You had an amazing interview with Kirk Hammett.

1:22:20 I'm a huge Metallica fan.

1:22:23 Same here.

1:22:26 Uh, there is a lot of interesting stuff

1:22:27 that came out of that, from that conversation.

1:22:29 One is the distinction between heavy metal and hard rock.

1:22:34 Yes.

1:22:34 Which is very interesting.

1:22:35 Of course, Metallica went through their own evolution.

1:22:37 They had many periods.

1:22:39 I mean, they've been around 40 years.

1:22:43 Over 40 years, yeah.

1:22:45 Crazy.

1:22:45 The other thing is the downpicking, which was interesting,

1:22:48 which is creating that really distinct sound.

1:22:52 James and Kirk's, the down, the downpicking, I used to be able to do that.

1:22:57 I just can't do that anymore.

1:22:59 It hurts my thumb-...

1:23:01 to, to do it.

1:23:01 I think honestly, I thought a lot about it.

1:23:03 It's like, why does it, why is it so painful?

1:23:05 Why is it so hard?

1:23:06 It's from swiping with your thumb on phones.

1:23:09 And I think it affects that basal joint there, and, I'm sorry- No, I'm serious.

1:23:13 I love your theories.

1:23:14 Well, I think that that's actually right, 'cause I'm thinking like,

1:23:16 "Why does that hurt so much to do that?

1:23:18 All the downstrokes and stuff." It's gotta be something.

1:23:20 It's like, yeah, it's from, from swiping with the phone.

1:23:24 The other thing that came through is that he's an improviser at heart.

1:23:28 And that, I think clashes with this kind of rigid structure that metal is.

1:23:32 So there's a real soulful, melodic aspect to him.

1:23:35 And he gave a lot of props to James Hetfield for just being a great composer,

1:23:41 being a great musician and writer of riffs, of rhythm.

1:23:45 The improvisation part of it you don't think of 'cause they've,

1:23:48 they, 'cause you have the finished songs that you listen to.

1:23:51 But those songs are born out of improvisations,

1:23:54 of jams, of little fragments of ideas.

1:23:58 And then they craft them into these masterpieces.

1:24:04 Also, you mentioned that...

1:24:05 This is weird that I didn't know,

1:24:07 that Hendrix was, used different gauges of strings.

1:24:10 Yeah, he was the one that talked about that, wasn't he?

1:24:13 Yeah, that was really interesting.

1:24:14 See, these are the things that I like

1:24:16 to learn from these interviews with these people.

1:24:20 I was like, "What?

1:24:21 Why have I never heard of that?"- It's like,

1:24:24 it's one of the ways you can find uniqueness of sound,

1:24:27 is by trying different things that are not...

1:24:29 I mean, I guess Apple was really good at this, right?

1:24:32 Like, completely breaking out of what you're supposed to do,

1:24:35 the ways you're supposed to do them, and doing it completely differently.

1:24:39 You often ask musicians what their perfect song is.

1:24:42 First of all, that's an interesting question.

1:24:46 What is a perfect song?

1:24:47 Like, one surprise is, Hans Zimmer said God Only Knows by the Beach Boys.

1:24:52 I was surprised by that too, but I thought it was like, "Yeah, okay,

1:24:54 that's a perfect song for sure." The first interview

1:24:56 I ever did was with Peter Frampton in 2018, and I asked him in that interview,

1:25:02 "What's the perfect song?" And he said A Whiter Shade of Pale.

1:25:05 And I was like, "Ooh, that's a great song." And I then I thought,

1:25:10 "I'm gonna ask that to people,

1:25:12 just to see what they..." Now people are prepared if I ask that.

1:25:15 But it's like, they're willing to go out on a limb and say it.

1:25:18 Like, if you ask me, I don't even know.

1:25:20 I guess you just say it, whatever, right?

1:25:22 Like, what would I even say?

1:25:24 What's a perfect song?

1:25:25 Yeah, I would go...

1:25:27 See, I feel the pressure.

1:25:29 Right?

1:25:30 Because the problem is, the reality is,

1:25:33 it changes day by day, like minute by minute.

1:25:37 I...

1:25:37 Yeah, I would probably, I'm sorry, but I would have to go Mark Knopfler.

1:25:46 And I would probably go...

1:25:49 Is it, is it really cheesy to say the obvious thing?

1:25:52 I would go Sultans of Swing.

1:25:54 Even though like I'm tempted to say Europa, but then like...

1:25:58 Sultans of Swing hits on so many levels-...

1:26:01 'cause it's got a great melody,

1:26:03 great lyrics, and then multiple great guitar solos.

1:26:07 And has such a unique sound to it.

1:26:09 The other thing is that it sounds very different from other Dire Straits songs.

1:26:13 I mean, this is like early-...

1:26:15 Dire Straits Strat tone.

1:26:16 And then you think of like Money for Nothing is a Les Paul,

1:26:19 and it's a totally different kind of vibe

1:26:22 than him playing it on Sultans of Swing.

1:26:25 But that song's amazing.

1:26:26 Plus it, it's about music.

1:26:28 So it's like there's a, there's a meta aspect to it.

1:26:33 But then there's also like,

1:26:34 we're talking about this guitar stuff, but Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah.

1:26:37 I mean, Leonard Cohen in general.

1:26:39 Like these songwriters, they go super simple on guitar.

1:26:43 And there, it's just what's that called?

1:26:46 Singer-songwriter type.

1:26:47 Uh, I told you off my one of my, maybe

1:26:53 the music guest that's a dream guest is Tom Waits.

1:26:58 I've wanted to talk to Tom Waits for a very long time,

1:27:03 and I've gone through different periods of...

1:27:07 You've met me at a point in my life where I've given up on it a little bit.

1:27:10 And I was trying-- That's when it's gonna happen.

1:27:13 That's-- Okay.

1:27:14 Once you give up on it, it's gonna happen.

1:27:17 Yeah.

1:27:18 Yeah.

1:27:20 Why Tom Waits won't be on your podcast.

1:27:23 Exactly.

1:27:23 Exactly, dude.

1:27:24 This is, this is my, this is my moment.

1:27:27 Tom, come, come here.

1:27:28 Let's do it.

1:27:29 I wanna see it.

1:27:31 I'm such a fan of, like the Zappa artistry on the musical front,

1:27:37 which Tom Waits has, but I'm a sucker for great lyrics.

1:27:42 Lyrics to me is such a big part of great songs.

1:27:46 And, and he's another example.

1:27:48 He has a song called Martha.

1:27:50 It's about a love story that didn't work out,

1:27:53 and it's an older man calling the woman that he

1:27:57 was in love with, and basically reminiscing about like,

1:28:00 you know, thinking about like,

1:28:01 "What would've happened if it worked out?" That kinda thing.

1:28:05 And then, you know, I loved that song for a long time,

1:28:09 and you know at some point I found out

1:28:12 that he wrote that when he was in his early 20s.

1:28:15 And you realize, it's similar with the Beatles, like-...

1:28:18 these guys somehow were able to capture

1:28:20 the human condition so masterfully, and they're kids.

1:28:24 This, I don't get it.

1:28:27 I don't understand it.

1:28:29 I can't speak for Tom Waits, but in the Beatles case, they went to Hamburg,

1:28:34 they spent time on their own, they played cover gigs that were eight hours long,

1:28:38 and they lived-- Yeah, they've lived-...

1:28:41 they lived life.

1:28:42 It's not like, not like kids today.

1:28:46 Now you're on a porch.

1:28:49 You also had an amazing interview with Billy Corgan, of Smashing Pumpkins.

1:28:54 Uh, he is definitively one of my favorite musicians.

1:28:59 I love Billy.

1:29:00 You asked him an interesting question about how he creates

1:29:03 this melancholy feeling that permeates a lot of his songs,

1:29:06 and he jokingly said that the secret is all about the seventh and the ninth.

1:29:12 Um, so like, musically, chord-wise, what do you think about that?

1:29:17 You think he's onto something?

1:29:19 He's talking a little music theory there.

1:29:21 Seventh and ninth over the chord that he's playing.

1:29:23 So if you're playing a C chord, he's singing a B,

1:29:25 would be the seventh, D would be the ninth.

1:29:27 And he does use a lot of those notes.

1:29:29 But almost all these people that we're talking...

1:29:33 No, all these people that we're talking about use these notes,

1:29:35 and this is why their songs...

1:29:37 When I interviewed Sting, I called them surprise tones, and Sting's like,

1:29:41 "I like the way you use the word "surprise." Notes that are

1:29:46 outside the chord that are dissonant with the chords that they're playing,

1:29:50 but then that creates emotion.

1:29:51 Dissonance equals emotion.

1:29:53 And that's what I like.

1:29:56 I want music to be...

1:29:58 to depress me.

1:29:59 Yeah.

1:29:59 What is that?

1:30:00 I don't know.

1:30:00 They, the, but melancholy, and I think you articulate it in areas,

1:30:04 it's not actually that depressing.

1:30:05 There's something about that melancholy feeling that is

1:30:10 somehow the other side of the coin of happiness.

1:30:13 It's a kind of longing.

1:30:16 Or there's a hopefulness to it.

1:30:17 That aloneness that you feel.

1:30:18 I mean, that's actually like one

1:30:19 of the intimate connections you have with music, is when you're alone.

1:30:24 There's, I think there's a social way of listening to music when maybe a concert

1:30:27 and so on, but there's this, there's nothing like you're alone in a car driving,

1:30:33 listening to, like, whatever it is, Bruce Springsteen.

1:30:36 Well, I think Louis CK has a bit about that.

1:30:40 And was it Bruce Springsteen?

1:30:41 But he's, sometimes he has to pull over to the side of the road and just weep,

1:30:46 or something like this.

1:30:47 It's just the, there's something about that.

1:30:49 Sometimes a song just connects with you.

1:30:51 And I don't know, nothing like a melancholy song could do that.

1:30:55 It...

1:30:56 You think about, like, maybe things you regret or how life could've worked out.

1:31:02 And sometimes it's not even about, like...

1:31:04 It's not even real.

1:31:05 It just connects something to the, in the soul.

1:31:09 The uneasiness that we all feel.

1:31:11 Maybe the loneliness we all feel that underpins so much of the human condition,

1:31:14 and it just connects with that.

1:31:15 I don't know what that is.

1:31:17 There's a Kurt Cobain lyric.

1:31:18 It was on the In Utero record, from the song Frances Farmer.

1:31:22 The chorus part is, "I miss the comfort of being sad." And I was like,

1:31:28 "Yes." I miss the comfort in being sad>> I was like,

1:31:33 "Yeah, that's it right there."- In terms of love songs,

1:31:37 I somehow I find powerful that kind of desperation.

1:31:41 So like I've always connected with Pearl Jam's Black.

1:31:45 Oh, amazing.

1:31:46 Like that line is...

1:31:47 A friend of mine was going through a breakup, so I was listening and he,

1:31:51 he's the one that introduced me to Pearl Jam during

1:31:53 that whole period when Pearl Jam was huge with Ten.

1:32:00 That line is "Someday-"- "Someday you'll have a beautiful life.

1:32:05 You know, someday you'll be a star in somebody else's sky.

1:32:09 Why, why, why can't it be mine?" Oh my God, that—...

1:32:15 blows me away.

1:32:17 That's an amazing line.

1:32:19 Well, yeah, I mean-- The delivery is incredible on it too.

1:32:22 Yeah.

1:32:22 Eddie Vedder, one of the great frontmen of all time.

1:32:24 Yes.

1:32:25 And that whole period,

1:32:26 that whole moment in history of Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder that captured...

1:32:32 That was the '90s.

1:32:33 That was one side of the '90s that just...

1:32:36 This singular moment in history.

1:32:38 Who, who do you think are the great frontmen in history of music?

1:32:45 Freddie Mercury, Robert Plant.

1:32:47 Freddie Mercury number one, probably.

1:32:49 Steven Tyler.

1:32:50 Jim Morrison.

1:32:51 Jim Morrison?

1:32:53 Yeah.

1:32:53 Roger Daltrey.

1:32:55 Um-- Well, we have to say, I have to say, we have to say James Hetfield.

1:33:01 James Hetfield?

1:33:01 I mean, there's nothing...

1:33:03 I mean, I have to talk to you about this.

1:33:05 I have...

1:33:06 I mean, it's just the greatest, I think the greatest concert of all time.

1:33:09 This is their historic performance in Moscow in September of '91.

1:33:15 This is shortly before the Soviet Union collapsed.

1:33:19 Plus, we should mention AC/DC and Pantera-...

1:33:23 were there too.

1:33:24 And about 1.6 million people were there.

1:33:27 Now, by the way, there's like some kind of reporting

1:33:30 that there was a half a million people, 500,000 people.

1:33:34 There's somewhere I've seen statements like that.

1:33:37 That's a ridiculously inaccurate statement.

1:33:39 So it's a free concert, so any official counts don't count.

1:33:46 It's, it's definitely over a million.

1:33:49 It's, it's very likely to be 1.5, 1.6 million people.

1:33:52 And this moment in history that I think they channeled,

1:33:55 it's like whenever great music, the...

1:33:57 Metallica was firing on all cylinders at the very top of their game,

1:34:01 and they meet this moment in history and this place in history.

1:34:04 There was a defining part of the 20th century collapsing,

1:34:08 and you have these people who are for a moment through music,

1:34:15 are able to escape the fear, the anger they feel, the...

1:34:18 all of it.

1:34:19 There was also a political, social, cultural moment meeting the musical moment,

1:34:25 and the set list, I was just...

1:34:27 I was li- I listened to it several times over the past few days,

1:34:31 just taking myself back into that moment in time.

1:34:34 Listen to this set list.

1:34:35 Enter Sandman, Creeping Death, Harvester of Sorrow, Fade to Black, Sad but True,

1:34:41 Master of Puppets, Seek and Destroy, For Whom the Bell Tolls, One, and Whiplash.

1:34:47 Look at that.

1:34:48 How is that-- That's- just- That's my kind of set-...

1:34:52 get the fuck out of here.

1:34:53 That's-- This is amazing.

1:34:54 This is-- That's my kind of set right there.

1:34:57 I don't know if you can think of anything that could beat that.

1:34:59 I think that the guys in the band would say that, too.

1:35:01 That was...

1:35:02 I mean, they were really at their, at their peak.

1:35:04 The Black Album had just come out then, and that must have been so, so exciting.

1:35:12 I mean, Woodstock was big.

1:35:14 There's certain moments in time that really, really meet the moment.

1:35:17 Are you a fan of live, live like big?

1:35:21 I used to be, but at this point-...

1:35:25 I can't you know...

1:35:27 I'd much rather see people play in small clubs-...

1:35:31 and, or go to the...

1:35:33 I'd like to listen in the studio.

1:35:35 Go to the studio, even.

1:35:37 I generally almost entirely agree with you.

1:35:39 I just think that there's these historic moments, but you don't know-...

1:35:43 which are gonna be which, but you're making the concert free,

1:35:47 it's just all of it, you get plus Pantera and AC/DC.

1:35:53 The other, which actually is a legitimate thing you mentioned,

1:35:57 is as one of the greatest concerts of all

1:35:59 time is Beethoven's world premiere of Ninth Symphony.

1:36:03 You know, I didn't really know the personal side

1:36:06 of Beethoven until I saw this movie called Immortal Beloved.

1:36:10 It's an excellent movie with, uh-- Gary Oldman-...

1:36:14 Gary Oldman.

1:36:14 Just a really...

1:36:15 it's a masterful celebration of Beethoven in an interesting kind

1:36:18 of way through the perspective of a love letter that he's written.

1:36:21 But then I realized like...

1:36:22 and this is early, this is many, many...

1:36:24 this is a couple decades ago now, that, you know,

1:36:27 he went deaf before he even started writing the Ninth Symphony,

1:36:31 which is why they consider it to be

1:36:33 one of the greatest compositions of all time,

1:36:35 the greatest symphonies of all time.

1:36:38 He went deaf, couldn't hear anything before he even started writing it.

1:36:43 And so there's that famous story of him in that world premiere

1:36:48 of having to be turned around because he can't hear people applauding,

1:36:52 so he has to be turned around to see that people are actually clapping.

1:36:56 I mean, there's just this whole tragic element.

1:36:59 Plus, the meaning of the symphony that ends in this beautiful Ode to Joy,

1:37:05 the symphony itself is a kind of...

1:37:08 It starts with the chaos and conflict

1:37:11 and ends with this celebration of peace and brotherly

1:37:20 unity and a- I guess a call for that, a reaching for that, for that peace.

1:37:27 And it's a...

1:37:28 and there's a tragic element to it, again,

1:37:30 connected to history, which is it was post Napoleonic Wars-...

1:37:34 and before the American Civil War.

1:37:35 So like, you're in this, in this middle......

1:37:38 this respite from war, calling for peace,

1:37:42 not knowing that truly horrific wars are coming.

1:37:46 So you have the American Civil War,

1:37:47 and you have the, of course, the two World Wars coming.

1:37:50 So this, all of it together, and the fact that he's conducting deaf,

1:37:55 and he wrote this whole thing deaf.

1:37:57 I was reading a lot about his process,

1:37:59 and he just edits and edits and edits and edits.

1:38:01 So the fact that he had to edit in his head is just insane.

1:38:07 I mean, it— Beethoven was sick all the time too.

1:38:09 I mean, a lot of people were sick all the time.

1:38:11 It was very common.

1:38:14 What would motivate you to write music,

1:38:19 this beautiful music that you can never actually hear except for in your head?

1:38:25 Right?

1:38:25 Like, why...

1:38:26 The amount of time it takes to write, to write a 35-minute, 40-minute piece,

1:38:33 all the parts, you got to hear all the orchestration in your head.

1:38:37 You're editing, you're doing all these things.

1:38:39 Where do you get the motivation when you can't hear the actual finished work?

1:38:46 One, and people would say, "Well,

1:38:49 he's hears in his head." But what kind of enjoyment is it?

1:38:53 You wanna hear the orchestra...

1:38:55 I mean, it's really profound that he was inspired to do this.

1:39:01 There's a thing called the Heiligenstadt Testament that he wrote.

1:39:05 It was a letter to his brothers in, from 1802.

1:39:08 I think they found it in his desk after Beethoven died,

1:39:11 and he felt a sense of shame and humiliation because of his hearing loss.

1:39:16 And he said that he was afflicted with this thing where him of all people,

1:39:23 that someone standing next to him could hear a flute that he could not hear,

1:39:28 or a shepherd singing in the field that...

1:39:31 And he could not hear this.

1:39:33 And, and of all the people, why him?

1:39:35 Where hearing played such an important part.

1:39:38 Another person that would have had to have had perfect pitch,

1:39:42 'cause you could never do this-...

1:39:44 if you didn't have perfect pitch,

1:39:46 which I think all of these great composers, for the most part.

1:39:48 Brahms didn't, from what I know,

1:39:50 but all the rest of them, for sure, had perfect pitch.

1:39:53 So they could hear these things in their head, and that's how they composed.

1:39:58 I mean, you love sound and music.

1:40:03 What do you think it was like gradually losing your hearing for Beethoven?

1:40:09 It must have been terrible.

1:40:12 I mean, I, just...

1:40:14 Terrible.

1:40:15 I mean, I've heard things where he would have a stick in his mouth,

1:40:19 and put it on the soundboard of the piano,

1:40:21 and you could feel the vibrations in his skull, and things like that.

1:40:26 Yeah, desperately trying to-- Yeah.

1:40:28 I just—- But also, there's, what is, what is that, that he's able to write

1:40:35 like one of the greatest symphonies ever, while deaf?

1:40:39 So there's something about that.

1:40:41 We mentioned darkness, but torment that he's going through.

1:40:46 And ultimately, Ode to Joy.

1:40:48 Like, not a cynical thing—...

1:40:52 but a call for the positive.

1:40:56 Yeah.

1:40:57 Yeah.

1:40:57 That's, that's— I've devoted many, many hours thinking about that.

1:41:04 And plus, Napoleon broke his heart, because he was a supporter of Napoleon-...

1:41:09 because Napoleon was supposed to represent the French Revolution,

1:41:12 this, this hopeful future of no more kings,

1:41:15 no more monarchs, no more authoritarian regimes.

1:41:18 And Napoleon ended up becoming, essentially, king.

1:41:22 Uh, becoming an authoritarian.

1:41:25 And Beethoven, sort of famously was critical of that.

1:41:30 Nevertheless, I think maintained a fascination

1:41:31 with Napoleon throughout his life.

1:41:33 But sort of a kind of more sophisticated,

1:41:36 complex view of human nature and human civilization.

1:41:40 So becoming more cynical.

1:41:42 Like, seeing more clearly that the world disappoints you,

1:41:47 that dreams get shattered.

1:41:48 And through that, is able to still do this call for the hopeful future.

1:41:56 All right, so okay.

1:41:57 So Beethoven, one of the greats, for sure.

1:42:00 Like basically everybody,

1:42:02 I know how to play the first movement of Moonlight Sonata,

1:42:06 but I always avoided the third movement 'cause I was like,

1:42:09 "I'll never be good enough." Never, never, but I need to-- Never say never, Lex.

1:42:15 One of these days, maybe.

1:42:16 You know what would be great?

1:42:18 If Tom Waits writes me an email that says,

1:42:20 "I only talk to people that can play-""...

1:42:23 the third movement."- Play the third movement.

1:42:24 That'd be, that'd be a dream come true.

1:42:26 There you go.

1:42:27 I'd be like, "For this-"- That's motivation.

1:42:29 "That's my dragon," or whatever you do.

1:42:30 You have to have a prince and rescue the princess.

1:42:33 My dragon is the third movement of Moonlight Sonata.

1:42:36 Okay.

1:42:36 You often highlight the importance of Bach.

1:42:39 In fact, so many of your guests...

1:42:42 Every famous songwriter is influenced by Bach.

1:42:44 They are.

1:42:45 The greatest composer of all time, the greatest musician of all time.

1:42:50 Even Sting and Dominic Miller said they go to Bach even for, like, practice.

1:42:55 Every day.

1:42:55 People talk about Bach was not known other than in his, the places he lived.

1:43:01 Eisenach, he was born in.

1:43:03 Leipzig, he spent many years.

1:43:05 But Bach was known to great musicians.

1:43:10 It was difficult to find manuscripts,

1:43:12 but there was a premier of the Saint Matthew

1:43:16 Passion that Mendelssohn had done in 17, in 1829.

1:43:19 It was on March 11th, I believe.

1:43:22 He had a manuscript because his father and mother collected manuscripts.

1:43:30 And he got a manuscript of this piece, and he,

1:43:32 I think he was 20 years old, and, and they had a performance of it in Berlin...

1:43:40 and Beethoven, Mozart.

1:43:41 They studied the Well-Tempered Clavier,

1:43:43 the two books of the Well-Tempered Clavier.

1:43:46 But Bach wrote profoundly beautiful music,

1:43:49 and some of the most complex contrapuntal music

1:43:55 that I don't think anyone has ever done like that.

1:43:59 Extremely bright guy.

1:44:00 Had 20 kids, 10 of them, only 10 survived till adulthood.

1:44:04 Lost both his parents when he was nine, within nine months of each other.

1:44:09 Went to live with an older brother.

1:44:11 And extremely productive.

1:44:13 Also.

1:44:13 I, yeah, I think from all the music teachers I've ever had,

1:44:19 I understood the importance of studying Bach.

1:44:23 He didn't write Master of Puppets, but he wrote some great powerful-- Well put.

1:44:28 music.

1:44:29 Well put.

1:44:30 I tried to educate the aforementioned music teachers

1:44:37 of the brilliance of the Master of Puppets.

1:44:40 Sometimes a good riff is greater than any musical composition.

1:44:44 So—- I agree.

1:44:45 I go back and I play Master of Puppets

1:44:49 every time I'm trying out a new amplifier.

1:44:51 That's my go-to.

1:44:53 That's your go-to?

1:44:54 So, like, so the stereotypical, like,

1:44:57 guitar store when you come in you're playing Master of Puppets?

1:45:01 I'll play Master of Puppets.

1:45:02 I will play, I have to play some heavy riff—...

1:45:05 and so usually it will default to some Metallica or something like that.

1:45:09 Or I'll play Alice in Chains, or I do usually, like,

1:45:11 a lot of times I'll go and I'll do drop D something or play Tool.

1:45:17 I usually would do something, do some drop tuning thing.

1:45:19 And it's always gotta be some some type of metal that I'll test

1:45:23 to see if the, if the bottom end's tight on the amp and stuff.

1:45:27 So, yes.

1:45:28 All right.

1:45:28 We have to talk about this a little bit.

1:45:30 You made a bunch of videos about it.

1:45:33 There was a moment in time,

1:45:34 it still goes on, but there was a moment where really

1:45:37 people were freaking out about the use of AI in music.

1:45:41 Uh, so there's these, I would say, incredible apps like Suno, Udio.

1:45:46 ElevenLabs Music is also great.

1:45:49 They can generate basically text to song, full song from a text prompt.

1:45:56 And a lot of people started freaking out just based on how good it is.

1:46:02 And so you start to immediately imagine how this is going to transform music,

1:46:05 and you're going to replace musicians and all that kind of stuff.

1:46:09 It is legitimately nerve-wracking because these are early versions,

1:46:12 so you don't know where it goes.

1:46:14 But in your intuition now,

1:46:15 you've been thinking about this, you made a bunch of videos.

1:46:18 Now, like, being able to reflect, "Okay, everybody chill.

1:46:21 Calm down."- So if you write a prompt in Suno and it spits out a song,

1:46:27 which I've done, made a bunch of videos on this.

1:46:29 I made up a fake artist, Eli Mercer, in this video.

1:46:32 Then I did a thing for CBS News, I made up this fake artist,

1:46:36 Sadie Winters, and came up with this song, Walking Away.

1:46:39 Well, the computer, the program came up with it.

1:46:42 There is some creativity in a process.

1:46:44 So in this particular thing, the process is you generate an image.

1:46:48 I did it in ChatGPT, the image.

1:46:50 Then I went to Claude and I wrote the lyrics,

1:46:53 'cause Claude's way better at lyrics-...

1:46:55 than Suno is.

1:46:56 Suno's bad at lyrics, at least right now.

1:46:58 So I so I did, I created the lyrics

1:47:01 in Claude and then I imported the lyrics into Suno,

1:47:04 and I had great results with the songs that I came up, that it came up with.

1:47:09 I always have to qualify that.

1:47:12 But then I started thinking about this.

1:47:13 People freak out about this, "Oh, this is bad, this is bad." And then I thought,

1:47:17 I was like, "No, who are gonna be

1:47:18 the ones that are gonna benefit from AI?" Well,

1:47:20 the people that are already great songwriters,

1:47:22 because you have to be able to recognize when it spits out

1:47:26 something good versus when it spits out something that's not that good.

1:47:30 And every other song, I've probably created 130 song ideas,

1:47:34 out of which there's three good ones.

1:47:38 And there's a thing that's happening where people's

1:47:42 ear very quickly is becoming attuned to AI slop.

1:47:46 Yes.

1:47:46 And that's actually quite fascinating.

1:47:48 Like, for example, One of the things,

1:47:51 there's this viral clip going around of an AI-based,

1:47:54 like a soul jazz remix of songs like 50 50 Cent's Many Men,

1:47:58 and I think it is super impressive.

1:48:00 And there's a different pipeline actually.

1:48:02 Yes.

1:48:02 It's a tricky pipeline to how to pull that off,

1:48:04 and I think a lot of the creativity in that, even that kind of remixing,

1:48:09 is in the pipeline of how you actually do that, because

1:48:14 there's actually a lot of manual stuff in that pipeline.

1:48:17 Uh, but I think ironically it's very cool at first,

1:48:21 but when you listen to it for a while you understand that this is AI slop.

1:48:28 Yes.

1:48:28 For a soul remix, it actually lacks soul.

1:48:32 But it made me think of, like, when I listen to soul or blues,

1:48:36 I think I really want, in that case, to know...

1:48:40 I don't want an AI B.B.

1:48:42 King, I want the real B.B.

1:48:45 King.

1:48:46 And, and I, if I know, if any AI is involved in the B.B.

1:48:52 King process, I'm tuning out.

1:48:54 Yes.

1:48:54 And the, I don't think I'm being curmudgeonly old dude in that.

1:48:59 I think we humans want authenticity.

1:49:04 So when AI, when I first started making these AI videos,

1:49:07 it started back in 2023, I made my first one,

1:49:11 and I would take my phone, come up in the kitchen,

1:49:17 I'd play a song, and then my youngest and Dylan...

1:49:20 My youngest, Layla, and I have three kids,

1:49:23 and my oldest, Dylan, as soon as I played it,

1:49:26 "Why are you listening to AI?" And it's like, oh my God, instantly.

1:49:29 It's like, how do you know?

1:49:31 Oh, it has this ringing sound in the thing.

1:49:33 So it took me probably about four or five days to figure out,

1:49:36 "Okay, what are they hearing that I'm not hearing?" So I did it,

1:49:40 I separated all the parts,

1:49:42 and what they're hearing was the artifacts that are in the vocal reverb.

1:49:46 That sound- that were...

1:49:48 That made incomplete- It just couldn't do the ambiances correctly, right?

1:49:53 Because it's trained on...

1:49:54 A lot of these AI programs are trained on very low bitrate MP3s, right?

1:49:59 So, they feed all this stuff in there.

1:50:03 So, they're getting really inferior information on the in the training process,

1:50:07 whereas now when they make these deals with the major labels,

1:50:11 they'll get the multitracks,

1:50:12 and they'll get high-quality WAV files to train from, right?

1:50:17 And whoever opts in, they get the solo vocal tracks.

1:50:20 You know, if Ed Sheeran wants to do it,

1:50:22 or Drake, or whoever wants to give their voice to it,

1:50:24 let it do its thing, and then get the royalties from it.

1:50:27 I'm not saying that any of them are doing it.

1:50:30 I'm just giving an example.

1:50:31 But every time that I would do it, I could be down the hall,

1:50:35 and I would play something in my phone just to see if they'll be like,

1:50:38 "Why are you listening to AI?" They can instantly tell.

1:50:40 Then it eventually started getting better.

1:50:42 And then- and then, it'd be like,

1:50:45 "Is this AI?" I'd be in the car with Layla coming back from taekwondo practice,

1:50:49 and she's like, "Is this AI?

1:50:51 Why?

1:50:52 Does it sound like AI?

1:50:53 Sounds like it could be AI." And I'd be like, "Yeah,

1:50:56 it's AI." She's like, "Oh, it's getting better." And then I did this song for...

1:51:01 It was an NPR interview, and I created a song with a fake artist.

1:51:05 And the song was called Neon Ghosts, and I played it for Layla in the car.

1:51:09 She's like, "Can you separate the tracks?" I said, "Yeah,

1:51:12 I have them separated back home." "Okay, I want to go down to hear it." So,

1:51:15 we go down to the studio,

1:51:17 and I play it for her, and she listens to the soloed vocal.

1:51:20 She said, "Wow, this is really realistic." "This is very hard to tell,

1:51:26 even with the soloed vocal."- I think the room

1:51:30 for creativity right now for humans is lyrics.

1:51:34 It seems like the lyrics that are being generated, they lack soul somehow.

1:51:39 Yes.

1:51:39 And that's- I don't know the words correctly.

1:51:41 I mean, they can be incredibly sophisticated,

1:51:43 but there's so- something, the edge is not there.

1:51:46 Some kind of edge that you- we want in our lyrics.

1:51:51 Some kind of surprise, but not cringe or not cliché.

1:51:56 Or something truly novel in the lyrics.

1:52:00 But that- if that's the case, it's kind of sad that that's where the creativity

1:52:09 has to come from, but not from the music.

1:52:12 Because then if we can create very realistic music that sounds really damn good,

1:52:18 where's the role of the musician there?

1:52:21 I think the role of the musician is that in actually...

1:52:24 If they use AI to assist them in coming up with ideas,

1:52:29 they could as a creation tool.

1:52:31 Then the musician...

1:52:32 Like, some of the stuff is just not high quality sonically, high quality.

1:52:36 So, the musician goes in and redoes stuff and changes things and adds parts,

1:52:42 and then they actually do music production,

1:52:44 and maybe they re-sing the parts, and they change the stuff.

1:52:47 And then then it's just basically like an idea generator,

1:52:49 and I think that that's a great use of AI, is for that.

1:52:54 But see, if you do that, does it make

1:52:58 you sad that you don't necessarily need to learn instruments?

1:53:01 So, basically, you can...

1:53:03 I mean, you can think of it as a different kind of instrument,

1:53:07 but you can write lyrics.

1:53:09 You can hum the melody.

1:53:11 You can just hum parts.

1:53:13 You know?

1:53:14 And then and then do A, B kind of thing.

1:53:16 Just kind of rhythm this kind of, and stitch them together.

1:53:20 And never actually have your fingers on a guitar or- or fingers on a drumstick.

1:53:26 That's why I'm not gonna use AI, Lex,

1:53:28 is for that reason, because to me, it's just boring.

1:53:32 And I-- Yeah, it is-...

1:53:34 when I use it, it's just like,

1:53:35 "Eh." But I used it for about a month or so, just because I was making videos.

1:53:40 And I was trying to see how it's advancing.

1:53:42 Every- every three or four months, I'll- I'll sit down,

1:53:44 and I'll see whatever new versions they have.

1:53:47 And I'll write some songs.

1:53:49 Write some songs.

1:53:49 I'll prompt some songs and see what they come

1:53:52 up with and see if they're improving on the things.

1:53:54 But ultimately, I don't find it interesting to- to use.

1:53:59 I hear you.

1:54:00 You're a bit old school.

1:54:02 I'm old school.

1:54:02 As am I.

1:54:03 I'm trying to think about the future, and I think it's still,

1:54:07 even in the future, also going to be boring.

1:54:09 I think there's something-- I agree-...

1:54:11 fundamentally boring about it, and I've been trying to figure it out.

1:54:13 For- so for example, I use it a lot for- more and more and more for programming.

1:54:18 So, for building stuff.

1:54:19 And there, it's not about the...

1:54:21 The final output is not the code.

1:54:24 The output is what the code creates.

1:54:28 And there, it's extremely useful, not...

1:54:30 It doesn't matter if it's boring or not, it's useful.

1:54:33 But when the final output is the thing that AI creates,

1:54:36 which it would be in- in music,

1:54:38 then there's something about us that just, like...

1:54:41 We know.

1:54:42 We- there is something boring about it.

1:54:45 Yes.

1:54:46 We want to celebrate and see the thing that's hard to create.

1:54:49 And if AI can just text a song,

1:54:52 "Generate a top 10 hit," we- we- we'll quickly lose value for that, I think.

1:54:58 And so, we'll want raw, like raw.

1:55:02 Whatever- whatever shape that raw takes, I want to say raw talent,

1:55:07 but that raw talent of any kind.

1:55:09 And per- perhaps...

1:55:10 It would make me a little bit sad, but that's also awesome.

1:55:15 Perhaps the new kind of raw talent that civilization

1:55:19 is asking for is how to make great TikToks.

1:55:24 Maybe that's what raw talent looks like.

1:55:28 It makes me a little bit sad because I'm a huge fan of long-form.

1:55:33 Uh, but that also...

1:55:35 Creating TikToks is also talent.

1:55:38 It's a- it is a talent.

1:55:40 Absolutely.

1:55:40 When I see anything that's AI generated, I instantly recognize it.

1:55:44 Any video, I'm like, "Ugh, boring, boring,

1:55:46 boring." And my kids do the same thing.

1:55:48 They just have no interest in engaging with it.

1:55:50 As soon as they recognize it, and they can spot it a mile away-...

1:55:54 and they're just like boring, boring, boring, boring, boring.

1:55:57 And then they kind of dis- then they don't even

1:55:59 wanna engage with the social media platforms, which is a danger.

1:56:04 Which I think they need to crack down on the AI slop.

1:56:07 YouTube's done a pretty good job on it, but it's hard to stay on this.

1:56:13 It's it gets flooded with so much of this stuff,

1:56:17 it's so easy to create and put up there.

1:56:20 And to just be in the, In the whack-a-mole thing where

1:56:23 you're just trying to get rid of it all is a-- Yeah,

1:56:28 it's fundamentally like, it's fundamentally boring.

1:56:29 I think boring is a really good-- Yes, boring.

1:56:32 And it's, and it's annoying to have to flip through the AI slop.

1:56:38 But I think actually, as a civilization,

1:56:40 it's just inspiring for authenticity 'cause you wanna be real.

1:56:43 And being raw, which I, you know,

1:56:45 one of the things I like about podcasts is people just shooting

1:56:49 shit and just being themselves in, in the long form versus overproduced.

1:56:53 'Cause I think AI is making people

1:56:55 realize that AI is good at being overproduced.

1:56:59 So there'll be more.

1:57:00 Let's get that covered.

1:57:02 Yeah.

1:57:02 Even artists, 'cause you're saying like, yeah, they'll use it as tools.

1:57:05 Part of me thinks like not really.

1:57:08 Like, I think they'll quickly,

1:57:11 this kind of process of generating a bunch of different options,

1:57:15 And choosing the one you like the most,

1:57:17 I think is a really frustrating process for artists.

1:57:20 And it, I think it, I think AI will definitely be

1:57:26 used extremely effectively as a very fine-grained tool in the image domain,

1:57:34 it's editing images.

1:57:36 But not like macro editing,

1:57:39 but very specific kinda editing that Photoshop is increasingly integrated in.

1:57:44 Uh, I'll mention to you offline, so the whole uh,

1:57:47 iZotope RX group of software that does a lot of the de-noising,

1:57:54 All the D, removing the wind,

1:57:56 all the, they integrate machine learning extremely effectively-...

1:58:00 for working with audio in different kinds of ways.

1:58:02 There's a bunch of different other programs that do that.

1:58:05 Maybe for like B-roll footage and a, same thing on the audio,

1:58:11 if you just need a little audio to create a feeling of a scene,

1:58:15 the AI might be used there in that kinda way.

1:58:19 But truly original stuff, eh.

1:58:21 I've saved videos where I'm doing,

1:58:23 speaking over music, for example, in an interview.

1:58:26 Somebody's playing and, and we have two dialogue- two people speaking in lavs,

1:58:30 but it's, but there's so much bleed coming from the person playing-...

1:58:34 that you can't hear what we're saying.

1:58:35 And then we'll split out the voice for that section,

1:58:38 the two voices, separate them-...

1:58:40 and then take the music and separate that stuff in.

1:58:42 So it's really helpful for things like that.

1:58:46 And now, once again, quick 30-second thank you to our sponsors.

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1:58:53 Go to lexfridman.com/sponsors.

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1:59:11 Choose wisely, my friends.

1:59:14 And now, back to my conversation with Rick Beato.

1:59:18 So you have this video breaking down Sabrina Carpenter's song Manchild.

1:59:24 And you use that as an example of building up people's intuition about the music

1:59:30 business and how the music production

1:59:34 for these popular songs is being done these days.

1:59:38 Who's doing the songwriting, how's it being done and all that kind of stuff.

1:59:42 I was wondering if you could speak to that.

1:59:45 In that particular song, Jack Antonoff,

1:59:47 who is one of the writers, Amy Allen, Sabrina Carpenter,

1:59:50 said in some awards thing that there's an old guy on YouTube

1:59:54 that says that Sabrina had very little to do with the song.

1:59:58 And so he said in this clip-- You being the old guy.

2:00:01 Me being the old guy.

2:00:03 That, well, Sabrina really was the—she's amazing and she's

2:00:05 the one that wrote everything in the song.

2:00:08 It's like, so my response is like, "Well,

2:00:10 why are you guys even included on the songwriting then?"- So one of the things

2:00:16 you highlight is a lot of people are included on the list of songwriters.

2:00:22 Yeah, 10 people-...

2:00:23 11 people.

2:00:24 I mean, you know.

2:00:25 Like, why does Song of the Year have songs that are interpolations,

2:00:29 meaning that they have melodies from other songs in their interpolation?

2:00:33 They used to call it stealing.

2:00:36 And then you have songs that used samples for the whole thing.

2:00:40 Like the Doechii song that's out right now.

2:00:43 And I said, "Look, she took a Gotye song and basically took

2:00:48 off his melody and she created her own melody over it." It's like,

2:00:52 well, it's, I mean, it saves time for her.

2:00:54 You don't have to actually create a track,

2:00:56 you just can sing over someone else's song that was already successful.

2:00:59 Yeah, you pointing that out, the song Anxiety, it broke my brain.

2:01:03 I mean, it's so absurd.

2:01:05 It, yeah, it just feels unfair.

2:01:07 It feels, it's a good song, but it was also a good song before,

2:01:11 and it was, before that, it was also a good song.

2:01:15 Right, 2011, or Luiz Bonfá in 1967.

2:01:19 So why is that considered to be in the top songs of the year?

2:01:25 It's like, come on, you can't find another song that's not based on that?

2:01:29 That's ridiculous.

2:01:30 And Doechii has some really good songs-...

2:01:34 on her record.

2:01:36 Yeah, but why are these the ones that are coming to the top, right?

2:01:38 Well, you know.

2:01:39 This is interesting.

2:01:40 Hey, that might be just a criticism

2:01:42 of the machinery of the business-- Absolutely-...

2:01:45 that drives them.

2:01:46 It's not necessarily, like, a lot of these folks are really good musicians.

2:01:53 First of all, I think a lot of them are also good,

2:01:55 like the actual songs they make at the top are good.

2:01:58 I'm a big fan of Bruno Mars.

2:02:00 He's a great songwriter....

2:02:01 and is a great musician all around.

2:02:04 Absolutely.

2:02:05 You know, is a Michael Jackson, eh, reincarnated.

2:02:07 I mean, he's-- Super, super talented guy.

2:02:09 Incredible, right?

2:02:10 Yes.

2:02:11 Um, you mentioned Billie Eilish and her brother write a lot of the songs.

2:02:14 So good.

2:02:15 Yeah, super talented.

2:02:17 I mean, Taylor Swift is unlike anything.

2:02:20 I mean, that's a historic figure in music,

2:02:23 but she's a fundamentally, at least originally, a singer-songwriter.

2:02:27 Yes.

2:02:28 So that's a, I mean, that, I mean, I'm sorry, but that, that is a, like,

2:02:31 of the kind of music that Rick Beato gives props to.

2:02:37 She's the, she carries the flame forward.

2:02:42 She works on her own songs, absolutely, and she,

2:02:44 but she never has more than two co-writers on things.

2:02:47 Wanna take a quick bathroom break?

2:02:49 Okay.

2:02:49 I have to ask you about this complexity

2:02:51 that you're facing on a basically daily basis.

2:02:54 I think it's a challenge a lot of YouTube folks experience,

2:03:00 but you're just so viscerally experiencing it because a lot

2:03:04 of what you do in your channel is celebrate music, broadly.

2:03:07 And so, as part of that process, you have to sometimes show clips of music,

2:03:11 and I think all of that falls under fair use, quite obviously.

2:03:15 And so you get all these YouTube copyright claims,

2:03:19 and for folks who don't know, if you get three,

2:03:22 three of those, it's each one of those can be

2:03:25 a strike on the channel and could take down your channel.

2:03:28 And you get some insane amount.

2:03:30 You said you got, like I think I had a similar thing on my Rick Rubin episode,

2:03:36 like, I think you said 13.

2:03:39 13.

2:03:39 So, what, can you just speak to this whole thing?

2:03:42 You've been in a constant battle, WMG, UMG, all the, all,

2:03:47 all-- All the, all the three-letter name-- All the--...

2:03:50 record labels, right?

2:03:51 The, the music business people, so, what, what's the story there?

2:03:54 Well, this has been going on since the beginning of my channel,

2:03:57 and I've made videos periodically.

2:03:59 When I first started, it was just instant blocks,

2:04:03 so you never knew back in, I started, it'll be 10 years in June.

2:04:07 So, when I'd play music in a video,

2:04:10 YouTubers were not playing music in videos because they didn't,

2:04:14 because of the Content ID things and the take-downs and stuff.

2:04:17 So, I would play music, and I'd just see what happens,

2:04:20 and then you get a content ID claim, or you— or you realize the people were,

2:04:25 quote, unquote, "blockers," and I came up

2:04:26 with that term that they would block your video, take down your video.

2:04:31 And I realized at first it was, like,

2:04:33 anything Guns N' Roses, which is still the case,

2:04:36 Guns N' Roses, AC/DC, I mean, many bands, Fleetwood Mac,

2:04:41 um, Led Zeppelin, and then, and then something happened.

2:04:46 There was a guy on the skateboard on TikTok that had

2:04:50 the ocean spray thing and, and he was listening to-...

2:04:54 Dreams by Fleetwood Mac.

2:04:56 And that blew up and became a number one song again.

2:05:00 And the labels then realized, I mean, I'd made many videos about,

2:05:06 about why this is wrong, and it should be fair use and everything.

2:05:08 Well, because of that, the label's like, "Ooh,

2:05:11 maybe we should rethink this." And then they just started demonetizing videos.

2:05:16 Demonetized means they get all the money that you make.

2:05:18 They get all the money.

2:05:19 In a one-hour video, if they, if you use 20 seconds of a clip-...

2:05:23 they get all the money.

2:05:25 Okay?

2:05:25 So, I hired a lawyer finally after the Rick Rubin video,

2:05:31 'cause I thought it was ridiculous.

2:05:33 I go over to, to Tuscany, I interview Rick at his house,

2:05:39 and I hired a— hired a lawyer to fight this, who I'm gonna have on my channel.

2:05:44 I don't wanna say who it is, but he's another YouTuber.

2:05:47 And he had approached me a couple years ago, and and it's not cheap to do.

2:05:53 Oh, you, you're gonna do, like, a public interview with him?

2:05:55 I'm gonna do an interview-...

2:05:56 with him, yes.

2:05:57 Awesome.

2:05:57 Okay.

2:05:57 I talked to him today about it, actually.

2:05:58 I can't wait.

2:05:59 That'd be great.

2:06:01 So he said, "You should fight these 'cause every single one

2:06:03 of them is fair use." And he went through my entire catalog.

2:06:09 I have 2,100 videos,

2:06:11 and he's fought 4,000 Content ID claims and won every single one of them.

2:06:19 4,000.

2:06:19 That's a lot— I mean, when I do top 20 guitar solos,

2:06:25 there's 20 Content ID claims, you know?

2:06:27 It's, and it's either, it can be either from the sound recording,

2:06:31 if I used that, or if I just play it, it can be from the publisher.

2:06:36 That's amazing.

2:06:37 So is there, I mean, that's- it's still, he's still a lawyer, still work.

2:06:43 Does that, is there a hopeful thing you can say about the future of-- Yeah,

2:06:50 fight these Content ID claims.

2:06:51 If it's fair use, if you're not just playing the song and listening to it,

2:06:55 and, 'cause a lot of stuff that are reaction videos, or whatever, that are not,

2:06:59 where they play the whole song, I mean, I'm using these things, and I'm talking,

2:07:02 lot of the times it's in interviews,

2:07:04 or it's in, I'm breaking down a solo, and there's a-- Yeah.

2:07:08 See, that's an--...

2:07:09 you know-...

2:07:10 obvious one, but even reaction videos, right?

2:07:11 Where those-- Yeah.

2:07:12 Even reaction videos, yes, absolutely.

2:07:14 Uh those are more borderline.

2:07:17 But I don't know.

2:07:18 I love those videos.

2:07:21 Absolutely.

2:07:21 Like, when a person's just sitting there and listening to it,

2:07:24 and they're like, you know, like,

2:07:25 a, like, a voice teacher is listening to a vocal performance,

2:07:28 and like-- Yeah, but those are breakdowns.

2:07:31 Yeah, those are breakdowns, yeah.

2:07:32 I think that the Content ID stuff that was happening with these major labels,

2:07:36 they would hire third parties-...

2:07:38 that would go out, use AI, and go and anytime they detect anything,

2:07:44 they always go to the biggest channels first to get the most views,

2:07:46 makes sense and stuff.

2:07:48 Yeah.

2:07:48 Yeah.

2:07:49 And, and they would claim everything that they could,

2:07:51 and historically, YouTubers never would fight back.

2:07:53 They were like, "Oh,

2:07:54 this is easy money." YouTubers never fight back and, at these things,

2:08:00 because they're afraid to have their channels taken down.

2:08:03 So-- Right, you gotta say, "Hold my beer."- There you go.

2:08:06 So, I mean, it's important.

2:08:07 So, you-- I mean, it took me years though, Lex.

2:08:09 I didn't...

2:08:09 I've been doing this...

2:08:10 So, I've been doing it for one year now,

2:08:12 and I'm nine year- almost 10 years into my channel.

2:08:15 So, it took me that long.

2:08:17 I mean, hopefully, there's a ripple effect also.

2:08:20 It's not just your situation.

2:08:22 Hopefully, you don't have to deal with this for much longer.

2:08:27 Um, how has Spotify changed music?

2:08:29 Sometimes we highlight the fact that they changed the nature

2:08:32 of music and that it's the scarcity is not there.

2:08:35 But also, a lot of it's like every kind

2:08:39 of music is available and so fast and it's so easy.

2:08:42 It's easy to explore.

2:08:44 It's a commodity.

2:08:45 It's like turning on a water faucet.

2:08:47 Do you think-- Once you get going--...

2:08:48 that there's some good to...

2:08:49 I mean, there's a lot of good to that, right?

2:08:52 Uh, well, have you...

2:08:53 Did you go through that whole pro- I still

2:08:55 remember where I had to basically throw away the albums.

2:09:00 I never did that.

2:09:02 When, after you uploaded them into your computer?

2:09:06 Yeah.

2:09:07 So, there's that two-step process.

2:09:09 One, there's like the hard albums, CDs for me.

2:09:14 And then, and then you upload them into your computer.

2:09:17 And you save them.

2:09:19 And then you, how do you put it?

2:09:24 Allegedly, a friend of yours pirates some extra songs.

2:09:29 And puts them on the computer.

2:09:31 So, you have your stash on the computer.

2:09:33 You're like, "This is my finely selected stash of greatness." Uh,

2:09:38 sometimes organized by album, sometimes not.

2:09:41 And the big moment for me that was really difficult to do,

2:09:46 really difficult to do, is throw away that stash.

2:09:49 Bec- and switch to Spotify.

2:09:52 Switch to streaming, and basically,

2:09:54 rebuild the stash of playlists and all this kind of stuff.

2:09:58 And that, it was heartbreaking 'cause so much love and effort went into that.