Episode 1036 - Sean Lennon
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking East does?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:It's Mark Maron.
Marc:It's me presenting Mark Maron.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:What's going on?
Marc:Before I get too carried away, Sean Lennon is here.
Marc:Sean Lennon.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Son of John and Yoko.
Marc:One of the sort of, by no intention of himself, somewhat royalty.
Marc:Rock and roll royalty.
Marc:A prince.
Marc:Really, and I'm sure that's not going to make him happy.
Marc:But we had a lovely conversation, and you'll hear that soon.
Marc:I would like to say I hope everyone's all right here in Manhattan.
Marc:Apparently, half the fucking island went dark last night, and one of our screenings got canceled.
Marc:The early screening up at the Landmark 57 got canceled because, I don't know, I think some kid stuck a fork in a plug.
Marc:up on the west side and just shut half the city down.
Marc:A transformer went.
Marc:I can't trust my brain anymore around this stuff.
Marc:I don't know what that means.
Marc:I did watch the entire season of Stranger Things.
Marc:There could be monsters involved.
Marc:That's all I'm saying.
Marc:I haven't seen anything that indicates that.
Marc:But I hope everybody made it through all right.
Marc:We did lose the screening.
Marc:I apologize to the people that went to that.
Marc:There was nothing I could do.
Marc:There was nothing any of us could do.
Marc:There was no one we could call.
Marc:And oddly, and this is hard for me to admit...
Marc:It didn't have anything to do with me, and it affected a good deal of Manhattan, and I'm happy to say that it didn't have anything to do with me, but even the fact that it was on the second night of our premiere weekend here in New York City, there was a time where something like that would happen, and I'd be like, this is just my luck.
Marc:There are people stuck in elevators, people locked in things.
Marc:Thousands of people were compromised.
Marc:I think most of them are okay.
Marc:But the blackout went on a long time.
Marc:I don't even know if it's fixed today.
Marc:I'm recording this Sunday.
Marc:But there was a time where I'd be like, this is a sign.
Marc:This probably happened because of me.
Marc:This is payback.
Marc:This is karma.
Marc:For some past behavior.
Marc:For a vestige of shittiness.
Marc:I looked up the word vestige before this show, so I'll be using that.
Marc:Today's word is vestige.
Marc:Noun.
Marc:A trace of something that is disappearing or no longer exists.
Marc:Yeah, my past?
Marc:Here's the other definition.
Marc:The smallest amount in parentheses used to emphasize the absence of something.
Marc:Oh, and then in biology, a part or organ of an organism that has become reduced or functionless in the course of evolution.
Okay.
Marc:That, of course, is happening to a good deal of people with their brains.
Marc:So, the movie.
Marc:We did a lot of screenings here, and there's screenings coming up that I want to tell you about.
Marc:I'll be in Chicago tonight, Monday, at a screening of Sword of Trust at the Music Box Theater.
Marc:I'm doing a Q&A with Joe Swanberg after the movie.
Marc:I've been doing these Q&As in New York with Lynn Shelton.
Marc:It's just going to be me and Joe.
Marc:Lynn's going back to work.
Marc:in Los Angeles.
Marc:This Friday, July 19th, the movie opens at the New Art Theater in Los Angeles.
Marc:Opera Plaza Cinemas in San Francisco.
Marc:Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley.
Marc:E Street Cinema in Washington, D.C.
Marc:Tiff Bell Lightbox in Toronto.
Marc:Kendall Square Cinema in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Marc:And the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York.
Marc:Wow, this movie's really opening up in places.
Marc:We didn't know this was going to happen.
Marc:You kind of hope it happens, I guess.
Marc:But I didn't anticipate any of this at all.
Marc:I didn't even think that Lynn was going to be able to make a movie out of what we shot.
Marc:And not only did she make a movie, but people seemed to like the movie.
Marc:And the press has been crazy.
Marc:It's been crazy.
Marc:It's been written up in very big outlets that people think are credible.
Marc:New Yorker Magazine, the New York Times, all the ones.
Marc:We've done a lot of talking on the radio.
Marc:Press tours are crazy, but it's been fun.
Marc:But the movie's getting very well received.
Marc:It's a very watchable, funny movie.
Marc:And I'm not bullshitting you.
Marc:Am I the kind of guy that really bullshits?
Marc:Am I the kind of guy that even remembers to self-promote?
Marc:I like the movie, and people are enjoying it, and it's very exciting to kind of step into all these theaters and see the laughter come from the room.
Marc:Like, real laughter.
Marc:Not the program laughter that happens after you watch a movie that took a lot of money to make and the jokes are all worn out before they come out of the faces.
Marc:And you kind of laugh because there's a rhythm to it and you know you're supposed to laugh.
Marc:That kind of weird surface laugh that kind of hovers somewhere between the brain and just above your heart.
Marc:It's sort of a reflex.
Marc:See, that sounded kind of real, but it wasn't.
Marc:The laughter that happens with this movie comes from a deep place because you can't control it.
Marc:It's funny how many things we do on Reflex.
Marc:Patterns, people.
Marc:Vestiges.
Marc:I don't know if that even fits, but I've established it as the word of the day.
Marc:Lynn and I did Q&As at several.
Marc:We did like five of them.
Marc:The first night we did at the 92nd Street Y with my friend Sam Lipsight.
Marc:It was great to see Sam.
Marc:It was a nice conversation.
Marc:And then my family was supposed to come out.
Marc:They were all planning to come to the show.
Marc:That would be my father, his wife, Rosie, my aunt, Linda, my uncle, Bill, my cousin, Lisa, my dad's cousin, Jeff, my dad's cousin, Norman, Lisa's kid, Nick and his girlfriend.
Marc:I didn't realize it was going to be that many.
Marc:But, you know, I don't see them that much.
Marc:So I thought, well, that would be good.
Marc:And then the movie starts.
Marc:They're not there.
Marc:And then we're about about an hour into the movie.
Marc:An entire parade of my family just kind of waddles into the theater and walks by me and Lynn sitting at the back of the theater.
Marc:I'm like, you give me an hour in.
Marc:So I don't know what happened, but it didn't work out exactly right.
Marc:And now I'm going to another screening today because it's Sunday and they're trying again.
Marc:And I've already already gotten a text that there was a train problem.
Marc:family man it's great right it's great good times uh so that but that screening was great because sam was there and then the the following day ben sinclair hosted one i never met him before we had a nice conversation about southwestern jews not on stage off stage he grew up in phoenix where you know my brother lives and where my ex-wife one of them is from i spent a lot of time in phoenix so that was exciting people were laughing and asking fun questions and
Marc:And then Tom Sharpling and Brendan McDonald, not together, they moderated a couple of the Q&As down here at the IFC.
Marc:Always good to see Brendan.
Marc:It's interesting when Brendan moderates a thing with me because, honestly, nobody knows me as well as Brendan McDonald.
Marc:This guy, he has to listen to all of this shit that I'm saying right now twice a week on top of me talking to people.
Marc:He's actually got pretty good boundaries, but you know, he knows me real well.
Marc:So, so that's always an exciting thing.
Marc:I always learned something about me.
Marc:I didn't know when Brendan talks to me in public.
Marc:Uh, and you know, it's one of those moments where it's like, Oh, okay.
Marc:That's okay.
Marc:Yeah, that is me.
Marc:You're right.
Marc:You're right.
Marc:And now, now everyone knows.
Marc:And Tom Sharpling, of course, is terrific.
Marc:And we had a great time with him.
Marc:And then the next night, Ira Glass, uh, moderated too.
Marc:That was last night.
Marc:And, uh, we went out to, uh, me and Lynn went out with, uh,
Marc:with Ira for a little snack afterwards.
Marc:Had a nice conversation.
Marc:I don't think I've ever talked that long to Ira Glass in a non-professional environment.
Marc:And you know what?
Marc:He's a nice guy.
Marc:Smart, nice guy.
Marc:And apparently he's got a radio show or something on.
Marc:You're going to have to check that out.
Marc:This Life is American?
Marc:I think...
Marc:But so it's been good.
Marc:The reception has been good.
Marc:We've had fun, you know, and moving through the vestiges.
Marc:You know, Lynn has a past here as well in New York.
Marc:So she got to show me the vestiges of her past in New York in the shape of buildings and things that used to be there.
Marc:That's what you do when you've lived in New York and it's all gotten away from you.
Marc:It's like, oh, there used to be a place here where people did bad things.
Marc:I miss that when people did bad things right here at this place.
Marc:And I lived right there, right over the bad things happening.
Marc:That's, that's the memory of New York.
Marc:If you lived here in the eighties or nineties.
Marc:Oh, back when I lived here, some really horrible shit was going on over here, but you got to know them, the people that were doing the horrible shit.
Marc:So Sean Lennon came to my house, and it was kind of exciting.
Marc:As Duncan Jones, David Bowie's son, told me, this is a very small club of these children of particular mythic musical presences that are somewhat eternal.
Marc:I mean, I guess it's a matter of taste.
Marc:If you're a certain age or a certain person, meeting somebody related or the offspring of a Beatle,
Marc:or of David Bowie, you know, or of Bob Dylan, you know, there's a few people that, you know, where you're kind of like, wow, that's wild.
Marc:That's your dad?
Marc:Whoa.
Marc:But Sean Lennon,
Marc:put out a record.
Marc:He's put out many records.
Marc:He's a talented musician.
Marc:And his most recent album, South of Reality, by the Claypool Lennon Delirium, is available now wherever you get music.
Marc:And he's on tour this summer all across the country.
Marc:You can go to the ClaypoolLennonDelirium.com for tour dates and cities.
Marc:Les Claypool, of course, from
Marc:Primus and many other Les Claypool oriented projects.
Marc:Les Claypool is one of those guys where it's sort of like he just keeps making stuff.
Marc:And it's usually kind of amazing and it's weird and it's its own universe.
Marc:I know I know I should interview Les Claypool, but I really need to sort of swim through, jump into the rabbit hole of Claypoolness.
Marc:and figure that out before I do that.
Marc:But he is doing this.
Marc:It's a fun record, and it actually is fun and funny and a little dark and instrumentally satisfying.
Marc:You can kind of feel a lot of different influences in there, but it's a wild record, this record, and I enjoyed the record, and I listened to a lot of Julian.
Marc:Oh, boy.
Marc:That's the other one.
Marc:I didn't talk to Julian.
Marc:I talked to Sean about Julian, but I get my kids of John Lennon mixed up in very rare circumstances.
Marc:But I just did it.
Marc:How often does that happen?
Marc:I didn't mean Julian.
Marc:I meant Sean Lennon.
Marc:How often do you get to say that?
Marc:But I talked to Sean.
Marc:I listened to a lot of his music.
Marc:I listened to a lot of Yoko's music.
Marc:Because as you know, I just watched that documentary called Above Us Only Sky about the process of making Imagine and that part of the life there.
Marc:But I was sort of pleasantly surprised because Sean worked with Yoko and obviously it's his mother.
Marc:But it was a good conversation.
Marc:And I never know how delicate it is.
Marc:Do we talk about your dad right out of the gate?
Marc:You know, I don't want to be disrespectful to your talent or any of that.
Marc:So how do you manage that?
Marc:You know, I don't know the guy, but we actually had a really, really sweet conversation.
Marc:We had things in common in terms of our brains.
Marc:And there's some really interesting moments in this.
Marc:So this is me and Sean Lennon back at the garage.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's only recently that I've even started calling myself a guitar player.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I just kind of, I don't know, it just seemed, it wasn't my identity because I never sat and did too many scales and I was never trying to shred or anything.
Marc:Right.
Guest:I was always just trying to make music, you know, write songs.
Guest:So yeah, I never got a Les Paul and it did seem kind of like the Holy Grail.
Marc:But you're playing serious guitar.
Marc:I mean, you're playing leads and you're doing the thing.
Guest:Yeah, I've been playing more leads in this band, I think mainly because Les Claypool is sort of known as an instrumentalist and a sort of athletic player.
Guest:And I think it's more expected.
Guest:But at the same time, it's also that he sort of encouraged me to solo more, which has been nice because I had never really considered myself a guitar player, per se.
Guest:I was more of a songwriter in my mind.
Guest:And he was the one who was like, no, man, you got some traps.
Guest:Why don't you play?
Guest:And I'm like, really?
Guest:You play with everybody.
Marc:Why do we judge ourselves like that?
Marc:Because if you really think about...
Marc:Because I'm not even a professional musician, but I judge myself.
Marc:Like, why do we think, what do we think being a guitar player is?
Marc:Like virtuosity?
Marc:But if you listen to most of the leads you probably like, they're just like, they're not, they're not like virtuosity.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And I mean, it's almost, it might be a kind of arrogance or something because, you know, what do you expect yourself to be like, you know?
Marc:What do you want to be, Ingwe Malmsteen?
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Who wants that?
Guest:I can't even listen to that.
Guest:It's like listening to math.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I felt really good about him encouraging me to take more solos.
Guest:And then it's funny.
Guest:I mean, not to bring this up in an ego kind of way, but I wound up on the
Guest:cover of guitar player with him and i was just like whoa what's going on i mean i just it definitely was surprising yeah it totally surprised me because i just never expected that to happen i mean when i and you know when i grew up the people that were on that it was exciting it was like wow but i also still don't fully accept that i can play guitar that well and you know i think it's actually you know the self-critical part of your brain it's like always you know
Guest:always critiquing every little thing you can do or not do.
Guest:And I think, to a large degree, that part of my brain is correct.
Guest:I am a sort of poser with a guitar.
Guest:I'll try, but I never put in the hours to actually get the dexterity that someone like Les has on the bass.
Guest:I think people imagine him as I did
Guest:To literally be living in some wizard castle in the woods and taking mushrooms every day.
Guest:But he's really surreal and oddball in his art, but in private, he's a responsible dad.
Guest:He's running his wine business.
Guest:He's fishing.
Guest:Yeah, he's fishing all the time and fixing his cars.
Guest:He's a real reliable dude.
Marc:But it seems like, I just guess musically, he likes to get out there.
Guest:Well, I think he's one of those people that is just sincerely unique in his approach to his instrument and to songwriting.
Guest:And that's really rare.
Guest:I think a lot of people try to find originality, and maybe you can get there through just the kind of methodology of trial and error.
Guest:But with him, I think he just has an innate perspective on music that...
Guest:that it just comes naturally to him.
Guest:And he's one of the only players, which is especially difficult on bass, whereas if you hear about 30 seconds of him playing on anything and you kind of know, oh, that's Les Claypool, if you know he's playing.
Marc:Exactly, especially bass.
Guest:Which is really hard to do on bass because...
Guest:well, it's sort of a rhythm section instrument, so it takes a back seat often, and he treats the bass the way lead guitarists treat the lead guitar.
Guest:For sure.
Guest:There have been people who took bass solars before him, but he has an oddball approach.
Guest:It's fun, too.
Guest:He's a fun bass player.
Guest:No, he's honestly one of the best players I've ever played with, and
Guest:It's just made me a much better musician having to keep up with him.
Marc:The one thing I realized in just playing the crappy way I play is that it's about you being able to communicate with however you play.
Marc:Like some of the most notorious players just in relation to Guitar Player Magazine, it's not because they're virtuosos, it's just because you can feel them through how they play.
Marc:Like you can identify them like you just said about Les.
Marc:Keith Richards is no genius, but he's Keith Richards.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean, it's semantical at that point, because I think I would consider him a genius if we're talking about rock and roll guitar players.
Marc:Right, but it's not complicated.
Marc:He has figured out a way to be at one with that thing and express himself uniquely through it, and it's simple.
Guest:Well, yeah, I mean, I agree with you.
Guest:And that's why I think it's interesting to me that taste seems to be a more important factor in making good music, at least, than skill.
Guest:Because, as you said, there's all these people who have chops out the window and, like, you don't want to listen to their music.
Guest:Whereas, you know, people like Lou Reed, who, you know, he wasn't an accomplished guitar player.
Guest:Somehow he connects with music.
Guest:So I think it's more about...
Guest:your feel and your taste than anything.
Marc:And also the working of the people you're playing with.
Marc:That's the beautiful thing about being a musician is that you've got a few other people with you, and the combination of them, even when you're not feeling great, or maybe you think you're not playing up to where you need to be, everybody works together, right?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, in the best case scenario, there are people who are just singular and want to do it alone.
Mm-hmm.
Guest:I mean, not completely alone, but there are some Stevie Wonder records or Prince records where they basically played the vast majority of the instruments, including drums and everything.
Guest:It's crazy.
Guest:Yeah, and those people managed to get this kind of jam going with themselves.
Guest:It's like they're a multiplicity of musicians.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But for the most part, I think music is collaborative, and I think that's what makes it so hard because...
Guest:these bands, when they find their chemistry and their success, I think there's also an inherent resentment that a lot of people have towards each other because they rely on something that they can't quite quantify.
Guest:Right, and they can't do it on their own.
Guest:And they go off to do their solo career.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it doesn't work as well.
Guest:And I think that's... Therein lies the complexity of, you know... And then there's the expectation, right?
Marc:There's the expectation of them to deliver their sound or whatever they put out before by the label, by the audience.
Guest:Yeah, and that's an interesting thing.
Guest:You know, for example, Mick Jagger's solo career.
Guest:Like, it's famous that he...
Guest:tried to move on.
Guest:I think it was in the 80s.
Guest:And it was hard, and it's hard to, because on paper it would make sense.
Guest:As you said, there's nothing Keith is playing that is impossible to learn for the average guitar player.
Guest:It's hard to play it like him, but you can learn it.
Guest:Yeah, but you'd imagine that at Mick's level he could get musicians that would, you know,
Guest:fit the bill enough to make it compelling, but it didn't work out.
Guest:It's really interesting, actually.
Marc:But the other side of that is when Keith did his solo, you're like, oh, these would be great stone songs.
Guest:Inversely, exactly, in the same way.
Marc:But even like, I just read this thing about McCartney on tour, which was an amazing observation.
Marc:It was kind of haunting that
Marc:Like he's doing these stadium shows doing the Beatles songs and everyone's like, yay.
Marc:And he said that he actually accused the audience of being like a black hole.
Marc:But it seemed kind of really like when I read it, I'm like, that's heavy.
Marc:But what happened was...
Marc:is that he's playing arenas, and when he's doing Beatles songs, all the phones are up.
Marc:And then he does one off a new album, all the phones stop.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So you just see this, you know, thousand points of light, and then he does whatever the hell the song is, and they all go out.
Guest:The blackness.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's a trip.
Guest:It is so funny how the cell phone has supplanted the lighter as well.
Guest:And also the experience of being there.
Guest:I mean, people are experiencing it in real time through their phone.
Marc:It's once removed.
Marc:It's crazy.
Marc:It's really odd.
Marc:So before we talk about specifically the because there's a couple.
Marc:songs on the new album and one on the last one that are dark and one is I think potent and kind of haunting and sad, the Oxycontin girl song on that last one.
Marc:But the one on this one about Parsons, the Crowley-ite rocket scientist who used to hang out with Hubbard and his wife and that whole business, as a subject matter, I want to discuss how that comes up.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Because so few people know that story.
Marc:I think they might have tried to make a movie about it.
Marc:What was Parsons' first name?
Marc:Was it John or Robert?
Marc:Jack Parsons.
Guest:Jack Parsons.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Someone gave me a book called Sex and Rockets.
Guest:It's a biography of Jack Parsons, which I realize now is controversial in some bits.
Guest:I don't think it's considered the official historical document.
Guest:I think there's some subjective stuff in it.
Guest:I mean, that's probably true, though, of all biographies, which is another subject.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:But it's fascinating.
Guest:And, you know, as you said, he was a JPL rocket scientist.
Guest:In fact, he founded JPL.
Guest:Some people say that JPL doesn't stand for Jet Propulsion Labs, but Jack Parson Labs because he was sort of.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And he's conjuring demons with L. Ron Hubbard by doing Crowley rituals.
Marc:And sex magic, right?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:So he's in OTO, which is the Aleister Crowley religion.
Guest:And he becomes a Magister Templi, which apparently is the head of that, I guess, branch.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think also Elrond had wanted to be an OTO and wasn't allowed in or something.
Guest:So there was some kind of tension there.
Guest:Whereas Elrond wound up maybe sleeping with Jack's wife or something odd like that.
Marc:Or it was a threesome and it was sex magic.
Guest:Yeah, dressed as goats or something.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And yeah, so I just, I mean, I love that story.
Guest:The thing about the delirium is that it's kind of a whimsical project.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:more so than anything I've ever done before.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So it's sort of given me permission to really have fun with the lyrics.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, and even the music as well, but it's more playful.
Guest:So I'm always looking for fun stories to encapsulate and, um,
Guest:You know, I really like looking for real life stories to write these kind of surreal carnival-esque songs because, you know, it's a cliche, but life is definitely stranger than fiction.
Guest:So, you know, this is a true story.
Guest:It just seemed like the perfect fodder for a delirium song.
Guest:Yeah, and there's a lot of examples like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's a song called Amethyst Realm on the record that I wrote about this girl I'd read about in England who claims to have cheated on her fiancé with a ghost.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think the fiancé walked in on them somehow, and she breaks up with him and renounces living men because she says, you know, phantom sex is so much better.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So I thought that was just amazing.
Marc:So I turned that into a song.
Marc:It's one particular point of view on masturbation.
Marc:If you're not using porn, aren't we all having phantom sex when we do that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, look, if that's all... But I think her claim is... Ghost coming.
Guest:It's interesting.
Guest:And her name was actually Amethyst Realm, which was just like, that sounds like a song title.
Guest:It's trippy.
Guest:But a lot of the subject matter is just...
Guest:kind of just me looking at how weird the world can be.
Guest:There's another song called Boriska, which is about a real kid in Russia who through his mom sort of declared that he was from Mars.
Guest:And then his mother and some people around him claimed that he had magical powers or psychic powers and that he could read at three months old or something.
Guest:And my whole take on it was just after watching a couple of videos, because his mother's a doctor,
Guest:she seemed like she was in charge.
Guest:And so I don't know if this is true, but my take was she put him up to it and the kid just looks kind of miserable but is like regurgitating all the stuff he's been told to say.
Guest:And it's sort of a scheme.
Guest:Sure, it's a con.
Guest:Yeah, it's a con.
Guest:So that song is about that.
Marc:But America is such a fertile landscape for that kind of looking at things in a satirical way or looking at things that aren't satirical and realizing like, what the fuck?
Marc:The Easily Charmed by Fools is like, that's a fundamentally American song.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, Easily Charmed is more of a Les song, and so is the other one you mentioned, which was, I forget the first one you asked.
Guest:Oh, yeah, Oxycontin Girl.
Guest:I think for Les, that was just...
Guest:Again, yeah, it's pretty real-life stuff.
Guest:Obviously, we have a major Oxycontin epidemic in this country, and I think having kids made him especially worried about that, kids of college age.
Marc:The turn in that song where the boyfriend turns her out, and given the world we live in, to have to listen to those lyrics and go like, yep.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:He's lucky.
Guest:Both of his kids are totally straight-edged and really smart and cool, but I think there was a moment where he just...
Guest:He always talks to me about how having kids has influenced his universe.
Guest:He describes it as your universe goes from you being the sun and things orbit you to suddenly there's a sun that's your kid and you're one of the planets orbiting it.
Guest:That's the center.
Guest:And you have to make sure he's...
Marc:Nourished.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:You're the nourishing planet.
Guest:Yeah, so I think some of the songs or some of the narrative perspective come from him just having kids and worrying about that.
Marc:And I like that sort of both records kind of move through just straight up kind of orchestrated psychedelic trips, but also there's kind of like some...
Marc:Floyd-y stuff in there, and then there's some, like, Zappa-y kind of thing.
Marc:Like, it kind of moves through, like, him and you, but, like, you can hear the influences in there, you know?
Guest:Yeah, well, I just feel lucky that I've managed to find myself in a project where we can just be that playful.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and we've been given permission because under the guise of Prague or Psych, we're allowed to just...
Guest:have fun.
Marc:You get the permission anyways.
Marc:I mean, you can do whatever the fuck you want, really.
Marc:Sure, sure.
Marc:You're not in a high-pressure situation.
Guest:I guess that's always true.
Marc:You want to sell a few records, but it's not like you're competing for billboard charts, are you?
Guest:Sure, but I guess, no, it's not so much that.
Guest:It's just there's something about...
Guest:there's something about the character of this project, whereas it doesn't feel odd to have a five-minute intro of noise and random jumbling spoken word or something, and no one blinks twice.
Guest:Whereas I think in other projects, if I did that, I think people would be like, what is this?
Guest:There's just, it's an expectation kind of thing.
Marc:Well, that's a question that sort of going back now, that I remember you, because I used to do comedy,
Marc:back in the day at the Boston Comedy Club, which used to be above the Baggett Inn.
Marc:Like, there was a period there where you were playing in there.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:That was years ago, probably.
Marc:I think it was before you even recorded.
Marc:I think it was, like, some of the first outings with whatever combo you had put together at the time.
Marc:And, like, I remember it was sort of a thing.
Marc:Like, you know, like, Sean Lennon's downstairs.
Marc:Like, what does he do?
Guest:Yeah, well, it was weird for me at first.
Guest:I think I was incredibly naive, and I had no idea how people or the world might feel about me.
Guest:Because I was in a group of musicians in New York.
Guest:We were all friends.
Guest:There was the Beastie Boys, and there was this band I joined called Chiba Motto.
Guest:Were you in your teens?
Guest:I joined Chihuahua, I think, before I turned 20.
Guest:I don't remember exactly.
Guest:And that was before your first record?
Guest:My first record was 2021, yeah.
Guest:So it was right around that time.
Guest:But it was weird because I sort of took it for granted.
Guest:We all played in each other's bands.
Guest:We hung out.
Guest:We played shows.
Guest:And then so I went to do a solo record thinking, oh, it's just going to be like that.
Guest:And it just wasn't.
Guest:Because of the legacy?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's funny that I didn't anticipate that.
Guest:I mean, I should have.
Guest:You really didn't?
Guest:Well, I mean, I knew that it wasn't going to be exactly the same, but the degree to which it kind of made me feel, I guess, invisible in a way, because what I noticed is...
Guest:That a lot of people who don't know me, because I'd only grown up with immediate friends and family and teachers and school.
Guest:I wasn't exposed to the public per se.
Guest:So I didn't realize the degree to which people would find it impossible to just sort of look at me and form an opinion based on me and not project...
Guest:either how I'm not fulfilling or am fulfilling some idea they have about my dad or my parents.
Guest:It took me years to even understand that.
Guest:Were you insulated on purpose?
Guest:Was that your mom's intent?
Guest:Well, no, I don't mean I was insulated.
Guest:I just simply mean I'd never been public.
Guest:Most people are insulated in that way.
Marc:You weren't doing something that was demanding public attention.
Guest:Yeah, I just had never had press or media stuff.
Guest:I mean, a little bit, but...
Guest:It was shocking in a way, and it's taken me a lifetime to kind of completely internalize it and understand what it's all about.
Guest:And now I don't really blame people because I understand it's like, you know, if you have this person that seems significant in your mind, even though you never knew them, but because of the music, like my dad...
Guest:It's unreasonable to expect them to see me and not be clouded by the triggers of their ideas of this person.
Marc:It's so bigger than I think anyone, I mean, maybe not you, but can imagine because I go through my life.
Marc:I don't think about the Beatles every day.
Marc:But I watched a recent documentary that your mom must have signed off on, because she's a big part of it, and it really reframes her in the history of the Beatles, that Above Us Only Sky, right?
Marc:And I just watched it on Netflix, and I watched that, and I was like, I found myself going like,
Marc:oh my God, there's so much footage of John and just talking.
Marc:And I became like crazy.
Marc:And I had this moment where I'm like, I did not realize how important that guy was in my brain.
Marc:And I imagine for most people that grew up with that, especially that generation, I mean, it's like bigger than life.
Marc:So you gotta deal with that.
Marc:When you decided to do music, you didn't really, was it sort of a family business thing or you didn't really anticipate that you would be up against it?
Guest:Well look, there's two things I would wanna say to that is, what's interesting I find is that as big as the significance of the Beatles or my dad might be to the biggest fan,
Guest:I think what people underestimate is that still doesn't compare to how important a father is to a child, right?
Guest:So however anyone frames it to me, and often, it's almost weekly, someone will say, you have no idea how important your dad was to me.
Guest:And, you know, I'm not cynical.
Guest:I understand it.
Guest:I'm like, thanks.
Guest:But there's also this part of me that feels like, well, you actually have no idea.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Well, maybe you could... Like, you would have an idea if you just imagined how important your parents were to you.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's...
Guest:That's a big deal, you know.
Guest:So I feel like my relationship to my dad, sometimes I feel like it's hijacked or something.
Marc:Right.
Guest:In that people don't even seem to consider it.
Marc:That's very interesting because, like, you know, when tragedy came, you know, you were so young, but, you know, you're dealing with the absence of a father.
Marc:And they're dealing with the absence of almost a mythological being.
Guest:Right, and not to be critical, but for the most part, as real as their feelings are, it's a dream.
Guest:As opposed to what I'm talking about as a physical person who taught me how to cut my food at dinner.
Guest:Which actually leads to the other question you had, which is, when I started music, was I doing it because it was a family thing?
Guest:Honestly, I kind of feel like,
Guest:a bit of an imposter and you know I've been talking about this with guitar like I don't consider myself guitar player or whatever but compared to all my professional musician friends my introduction to music wasn't natural in the way that it was for most of them meaning a lot of them were the best musician in their school or
Guest:Or they just had a prodigal talent or they got a scholarship because they were just so good at piano.
Guest:Those are the people you know, not just people like, I want to get chicks and play guitar.
Guest:Well, no, I think all of us are motivated through wanting to get chicks, you know, I mean, at least boys, but, or some boys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, um,
Guest:But what I mean is I was never this prodigy where teachers were like, my God, you've got an ear.
Guest:We've got to send you to Juilliard.
Guest:So I never had that sort of natural path into music.
Guest:For me, it really was what you mentioned, the absence of my father.
Guest:There was this huge void in my life.
Guest:I associated him with music.
Guest:And so I just played music because it was the only way to try to fill that void.
Guest:Because as I played music, as I learned the Beatles songs and learned to play guitar, it just made me feel like I was...
Guest:connecting to him or right I mean not literally spending time with him but but as close as I could you know render to that kind of connection with him because his music was an extension of him so me playing music was really it came from
Guest:childhood trauma basically it wasn't because like oh I'm you know I've got this talent there was always a better musician in my school I mean there's always people with perfect pitch or whatever who go to Juilliard and become legit musicians you know I always had a certain amount of talent but it was never a prodigal I wouldn't say so yeah for me you know that's why it's kind of odd when I'm looking back at my life it's interesting because I came to music more out of a kind of
Guest:as a kind of instinct to try to heal childhood trauma as opposed to, you know, because I was good at it or something.
Guest:How old were you when you died?
Guest:I was five.
Guest:And do you have intact memories of him alive?
Guest:Well, that's the other interesting thing.
Guest:I don't know if there's any legit neuroscience around PTSD and memory.
Guest:But for me, the years leading up to my dad's death,
Guest:I have more memories than I think I should.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, quite a bit.
Guest:And I've checked them as well because, you know, like the name of this doll that I had or this person that worked for my parents in Japan when I was only three or four.
Guest:Like I remember things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I know memory is...
Guest:unreliable and every time you remember you're not remembering the moment you're remembering the memory and then you change it so but i i i think something about the trauma of that really kind of uh made those memories indelible and then you know my my teen years my memories like yeah not so good so there's something about the trauma that really woke me up and um
Guest:Yeah, I'll never forget it.
Guest:I mean, it's not fun to talk about, but I have a lot of memories of, you know, I mean, you might know, but there were crowds of people in Central Park, which was right outside of our apartment.
Right.
Guest:It was a rude awakening.
Guest:I didn't really know even what the Beatles were, and then suddenly there were a thousand people outside singing these songs 24 hours for months.
Guest:For years, actually, they would come back on my dad's birthday.
Guest:And it was very surreal.
Marc:And how did your, like, you know, in terms of... Because your mother is very musical as well, despite what people might think.
Marc:Thank you for saying that.
Guest:I appreciate that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I agree, too.
Guest:She...
Guest:I mean, the reality is she taught me more music than my dad did simply because she was around.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So she was making records.
Guest:I mean, that's how I learned to mix a record, what a compressor was, what this kind of mic did, what EQ was.
Guest:I learned that all from my mom.
Guest:Being in the studio?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, yeah, and I was curious to know as you got older and got more interested in music and started to have this experience with your father's work and then with your mother actively working, how did your mother compensate for John being gone in your memory, either emotionally or as having that role of being a single parent?
Guest:Well, you know, I wouldn't want to necessarily speak for her because I was very young.
Guest:But I'm not sure exactly how to answer that question because I've never quite thought about it that way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I would say that my mom's parenting was unconventional in that she didn't want to repeat what I think she would consider the mistakes of her parents or her parents' generation.
Guest:And I think my father had felt that way too for the time that he was raising me.
Guest:And I guess most parents feel that way.
Guest:You're trying to be an improvement on what you had.
Guest:And I do think there are incremental improvements.
Guest:So I think what distinguished my mom's parenting was that she didn't want to control me in the way they tried to control her.
Guest:And so she was very respectful of me from an early age and kind of treated me as a sovereign individual.
Guest:So in a way, I guess that's what a lot of maybe hippie generation parents did.
Guest:They sort of went for a kind of mutual respect friendship kind of thing, which was definitely radical, I guess, in comparison to the generation before who kind of treated kids as slaves.
Marc:But also looking out for your best interest and trying to imbue you with a sense of moral decency.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I wasn't raised with any particular religion, but my mother definitely has a very, she has a very specific moral compass.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:individuals and their autonomy and kids as well.
Guest:I mean, she would always say that to me, that she disliked that kids were condescended to when she was growing up and sort of their desires and wants were sort of overlooked.
Marc:And it seems that the source of a lot of her creativity is childlike and informed by trauma and grown-up fears.
Guest:Yeah, well, she came from a very conservative family in Japan.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's interesting how life works, but I think a lot of the restricted life she had in terms of social mores and behaviors that were expected of her, I think kind of made her the radical artist that she was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Famously, my grandfather told her that when she was starting to play classical piano that women can't be pianists or successful pianists.
Guest:She always talks about that story as if it was the thing that gave her the impetus and the energy to become who she is.
Guest:She was like, fuck you.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:That's a lot of people's impetus.
Guest:yeah exactly fuck you dad yeah exactly I mean it's well it's interesting because I mean I just find the relationship between trouble or trauma or difficulty in life and and and sort of successful outcomes in terms of the characters of the people who go through it it's sort of a paradox isn't it I mean life is very odd in that way um
Guest:What I mean is like you can't, you know, obviously some of the most interesting people tend to have had a lot of difficulty at some point.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:It's sort of the way that you learn about the most profound things in life.
Guest:And you can't really get there unless you kind of have some, I guess, suffering or something.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Which I just find that to be so interesting.
Guest:It seems like a paradox.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, often when people get even diagnosed with some illness or something, they always say, like, you know, now I'm awake.
Guest:Like, now I understand.
Guest:I understand myself.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I appreciate.
Guest:Takes that.
Guest:Yeah, and there's something harsh about that reality.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, a lot of people move towards as secure a life as they can have that, you know, something that like might seem to guarantee them a certain sense of safety, whether it's institutional or job or all that other stuff.
Marc:And then they kind of like just lock into a pattern.
Marc:Whereas creative people, if they really pursue that, they're always going to be at emotional and physical risk because of the lifestyle they live or the risks they take emotionally.
Marc:Or if they're really talented, usually that comes with a certain amount of doubt and addiction problems or whatever is going to happen.
Marc:So they're out there battling this stuff day to day.
Marc:And if they survive it, they come upon a real wisdom, I would think.
Guest:Yeah, and it's interesting to me.
Guest:I mean, this is just philosophically interesting.
Guest:But people can tell you these lessons when you're a kid.
Guest:And you can even take it seriously and try to internalize the wisdom.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it isn't until you go through those things that you...
Marc:And then you have your own story about it that you can tell somebody else who'll be like, yeah, right.
Guest:Yeah, and I just wish it wasn't that way.
Guest:I wish you could just be told and then you get it.
Guest:But somehow our biology is stubborn.
Marc:Yeah, fuck you, Dad.
Guest:But even in a superorganism way, in terms of the human race, it's like, for example, with something like global warming, it seems like no matter how much we talk about it, I fear that it's going to take some kind of real-world consequence, like an experience, that will then, obviously, then we'll take it seriously.
Marc:I think that I feel that way, too, and it makes me sad as well.
Marc:I do...
Marc:I'm doing a bit about it now, just sort of what is it going to take?
Marc:And at that moment, will we be able to adapt?
Marc:Whereas like you would think right now, it's like, well, it's pretty clear what has to happen.
Marc:It's just dumped like six feet of hail in Mexico.
Marc:And we're just sort of like, that's an anomaly.
Marc:But people are also in denial because I think either out of shame or out of a sense of hopelessness or they just don't want to believe it's true.
Guest:Well, denial must be evolutionarily useful.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:I heard something about how it's not enough from an evolutionary standpoint to be a good liar.
Guest:Because humans are just so naturally sensitive.
Guest:I mean, that's why we love good acting, because we're all quite nuanced in our perceptions of facial muscles and vocal tone.
Guest:So it's not enough to be good at lying.
Guest:You have to also kind of believe it yourself.
Guest:You have to have the ability to lie to yourself, because only then can you truly not get...
Guest:caught by the enemy or whatever.
Marc:Well, that's why we have this president.
Guest:Yeah, for example.
Guest:But I find that to be truly interesting because the idea is that believing your own bullshit is an evolutionary skill that was selected for in all of us.
Guest:Obviously, we all know people who are...
Guest:who are too far gone in that direction and we're just shocked.
Guest:I mean, we've encountered like, really?
Guest:Do you really believe what you're saying?
Guest:But I think the truth is that we all have that ability.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:And if we hadn't had it, we would have died and our genes wouldn't have passed on.
Guest:So we are the survivors of a lying species, which I find to be interesting.
Marc:Wow.
Guest:It is really interesting.
Guest:You can write a song about that?
Guest:It's a little complicated, but, you know, it's hard to whistle along.
Marc:We are the, what is it?
Marc:We are the survivors of a lying species.
Marc:First wine.
Guest:It's a hit.
Guest:Definitely going to be a hit.
Guest:If I can get my mom to just do some wailing over it, then we'll have something.
Marc:She'd do it.
Guest:Oh, she's always up for it.
Marc:All right, so going back, though, I think it's interesting that in order to build a relationship with your father's absence that you integrated his work into yourself.
Yeah.
Guest:It is interesting, and I don't know if... It's kind of pop psychology on my part, too, because it's not like a professional told me this.
Guest:This is my own interpretation of me, and so I could just be making it up.
Guest:I don't know, but it felt that way.
Guest:The reason I say that is because I remember playing piano before I could play or had a lesson or anything, and just playing it knowing that that was his piano and kind of missing him.
Guest:So, I mean, God, it sounds...
Guest:Like a sob story.
Guest:But it's true.
Guest:So, I mean, so that was my... It's a sad story.
Marc:Yeah, it was sad.
Guest:But, you know, I remember the first time I figured out some of his songs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It felt really good.
Guest:What'd you start with?
Guest:I think the first one I learned was Hide Your Love Away.
Guest:Hmm.
Guest:That Norwegian wood and Julia was the hardest one.
Guest:In fact, still today I can't play this one F minor 9 chord.
Guest:It hurts.
Guest:Even though I play guitar every day, it just never stops hurting, that first fret.
Guest:But yeah, it felt really good in a way that it never felt learning other people's songs.
Guest:I mean, I loved learning Hendrix and Cream, but that was always just like an accomplishment on the instrument, whereas learning one of my dad's songs felt kind of like a sacred thing.
Guest:It felt like an intimate, spiritual kind of thing.
Marc:It also has genetic resonance.
Guest:Nice.
Guest:I think you should coin that term, too.
Guest:That's another hit.
Guest:Another hit song.
Marc:That's the name of my next CD.
Guest:Genetic resonance.
Marc:So, because it seemed to me, listening to all this stuff, that on the first record, you were really making a sort of fairly sophisticated pop record.
Marc:employing some of those chords and that style of writing.
Marc:Is that true?
Guest:Honestly, I'd like to give you an intelligent response to that, but I don't know.
Guest:My first record...
Guest:was me literally making up a song a day and then mixing it that night and moving on.
Guest:I think I did the whole album in two or three weeks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think it was my mom's influence.
Guest:She really believes in spontaneity.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:So she really believes in channeling lyrics.
Guest:Like they just come to her.
Guest:And I really looked up to her.
Guest:So I made a record in that fashion thinking that people would think it was cool that I was doing something that was like a diary, like a demo, like something really intimate but not overworked and just sort of a stream of consciousness thing.
Guest:But then I realized...
Guest:when we were releasing it that there was kind of no way to make that clear it just even if I said that it was just like no this is your debut this is this is John Lennon's son deciding to you know make a statement about who he is as a musician whereas for me the statement was supposed to be like I'm gonna kind of I'm gonna be really loose and and not uh polished about this in order to to counter expectations of me getting a
Guest:big record deal or something like my brother had done and you know i respected him for that but i felt like and i had been offered those kinds of lucrative deals where like we'll get you this guy to write your song and this producer and it just didn't feel like me and because i was hanging out with all these indie cats like the beasties and yeah and sonic youth to me it just seemed cooler to do something understated and new york too
Guest:Yeah, and so it was really off the cuff and kind of random.
Guest:I mean, I look at the lyrics sometimes, I'm like, man, what was I thinking?
Guest:It literally was just like, the cat in the mat, okay, done.
Guest:You know, because I sort of, I think I was also scared to work on the lyrics too much because I was scared to try to be smart, so I was just like, you know, forget it.
Guest:Just write stuff that rhymes.
Guest:So that record is a little hard for me to listen to in a way, to be honest.
Guest:It's like, some of it I really like, but...
Guest:It's kind of like listening back to some Walkman recording that you made when you're just jamming with your friends and you're all just hanging out.
Guest:And you're like, hey, there was a cool moment there.
Guest:But I think I was so shy that not really working too hard on completing a real album, whatever that meant, was my way of sort of...
Guest:easing my way into music through a back door or sideways as opposed to taking it on head first.
Marc:And because of the reception of that record or the sort of rude awakening of expectations?
Guest:The ruthless reception.
Guest:I'm sure you've seen Spinal Tap when they're just reading the bad reviews and Rob Reiner's like, you've had some terrible reviews throughout your career.
Guest:This one review comes to mind.
Guest:It's simply a two-word review.
Guest:It's for the album Shark Sandwich.
Guest:Shit sandwich.
Guest:They're like, you can't print that.
Guest:Is that even true?
Guest:Like, no.
Guest:But yeah, I had a shit sandwich review.
Guest:I'll never forget it.
Guest:It was NME.
Guest:Basically just said, are the Beastie Boys releasing Sorry No Hopers as a joke on the world?
Guest:And that was it.
Guest:That was the whole review.
Guest:I was like, wow, that's my shit sandwich review.
Guest:But to be honest, there was no negative review for that album that I didn't agree with on some level deep down because it's true.
Guest:It wasn't meant to be something that kicked ass.
Guest:It was more like little bits of a diary of a very naive kid.
Marc:But did those reviews, like you said, was that more the moment of what you would have to go through to be a public person doing something?
Guest:Well, I think that would have been true if I had made a different kind of record.
Guest:So it was kind of compounded, meaning not only was there the difficulty of being a son of...
Guest:But then there's also the difficulty of the kind of odd record I made.
Guest:Each of those things would have been difficult independently, but together was just kind of a clusterfuck.
Guest:Did it spin you out?
Guest:It definitely made me not want to make a solo record for a long time.
Marc:Well, you didn't, right?
Guest:I didn't.
Guest:In fact, to this day, I still sort of have cold feet about doing solo work.
Guest:It's mainly because...
Guest:Well, I don't know.
Guest:I mean, I want, I was going to ask you actually, do you, cause this is how I feel.
Guest:Do you feel like when you get a really negative statement review or just even like a YouTube comment, do you feel like it only will hurt?
Guest:It only hurts if you kind of agree on some level.
Guest:That's how I feel.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, I think that's true.
Guest:Like if you don't agree at all, why would it hurt you?
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, you're just like, Oh, you're crazy.
Marc:But the problem is depending on you, you know, you're, you're,
Marc:almost all the negative ones are gonna be like, no, I never really thought about that, but that's probably true.
Marc:You can take it too far.
Marc:Sure, you just use it as a bat.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:And then when you see a positive one, there's part of you that's sort of like, nah.
Marc:I don't do the comment thing anymore.
Marc:or look at it, and I've learned how to deal.
Marc:I'm very sensitive, so it's all gonna hurt.
Marc:But I've learned to be like, just wait till it goes away and move on with your life.
Marc:But they're trying to hurt you.
Marc:I mean, if somebody does a sophisticated, real piece of criticism,
Marc:with interesting points, you can integrate some of that, I think.
Marc:And those are the ones where I'm like, well, that's sort of true.
Marc:Usually a real review or a real piece of criticism will say some almost good things, then one really good thing, and then two paragraphs of what was wrong.
Marc:And, you know, if it's if it's well thought out, you know, sometimes that that that's encouraging in some weird way.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, it kind of makes you more like, well, I'm going to I never thought of that that way.
Marc:And now I'm going to integrate that.
Guest:Well, if it's if it really resonates and it's an accurate criticism, that's like a gift in a way.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I guess from my perspective is it's I wish in a way that a lot of the people who say.
Guest:Oh, is that me?
Guest:Sorry.
Guest:I'm so sorry.
Guest:It's OK, buddy.
Guest:You good?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's Paul's son.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:He's a sweet guy.
Guest:But, oh yeah, I just, I often wish that the people who were spewing the venom about me, I just, I don't wish they would stop.
Guest:I just wish they knew that I totally agree with them.
Guest:Like, there's nothing they said that is like a new idea to me, you know?
Marc:Yeah, right.
Guest:It's like, it's like not, it's like, that's the only difference.
Marc:Well, that's a clinic in your head.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I, yeah.
Marc:I envy people that aren't that hard on themselves, but I just can't, it's not something I can manufacture.
Marc:It's not one of those genetically alterable things that I can just believe.
Guest:It's also a cultural thing, maybe, because I grew up in New York on the Upper West Side, and there was, I think it was... You guys still in that house?
Guest:Well, my mother is, yeah.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:But I think there was a sort of an unspoken idea that the more self-critical you could be was proportional to like what a good person you were.
Guest:Like it was sort of rewarded being self-critical.
Guest:Whereas if you weren't self-critical, you were teased and made fun of.
Marc:Unless you were the teaser.
Guest:Right, which is that you're a bully.
Guest:So I feel like I was sort of raised with that value.
Guest:You know, it's like the Woody Allen perspective on life.
Guest:And that was considered being a thoughtful person.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, self-loathing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Was thoughtfulness in a way.
Guest:Whereas I don't think that's true of all...
Guest:cities but it's right but there's also a false humility to it and there's also a sort of narcissism to it well that's I'm glad you said that because I was going to say because well that's what I meant about you know feeling bad that you're not Ingwe Malmsteen is a kind of narcissism it's like who do you think you are you're not even close it's inverted narcissism yeah exactly so you're just it's an excuse to spend all your thoughts on yourself without you know thinking you're a narcissist because you're not grandiose right
Marc:So when you do the first record and you have this thing like, you know, and you're sort of put off of doing solo work now in that moment, you know, your mother is doing her work.
Marc:How does she handle that rejection with you?
Guest:Well, she's a world leading expert in rejection, I would say, you know, I think she's got a doctorate in in snarky media.
Marc:That's why I feel bad after watching Above Us Only Sky, you know, because you get this thing locked in your head and, you know, there there's some.
Marc:Did you watch it?
Guest:Yeah, but yes, I have.
Guest:I mean, I've seen all that stuff.
Guest:Sure, before.
Marc:But the interviews with the guys who were there, the older guys, were just sort of like, it was all Yoko that shifted his perspective.
Marc:And I think it's important for all those people that mythologize this whole thing.
Marc:That's important new information to reframe your mother's art and talent.
Marc:And it was very exciting for me to be able to see it that way.
Marc:Because I hadn't thought about it in a long time, but it's a rebirth in a way.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I mean, I have a lot to say about that.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Firstly, I think that the culture has come to a point where we are collectively re-examining the past.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sometimes too much.
Guest:But in terms of more recent...
Guest:understanding understandings of what sexism and racism were and whatever people call the patriarchy or whatever and I think the simplest analysis of what happened to my mom is I think it was a different time in which a lot of kind of subtle latent racism and sexism was you know unnoticed and I think she was a victim of that but on the other hand I would say that
Guest:recent history especially, it is sort of an optics war between arguably subjective views of reality.
Guest:And the reason I say that is because I grew up being able to read lots of different biographies and histories of not just the Beatles, but my parents.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Each of them with a completely contradicting or disparate view of what they were or what they did.
Guest:And so I've always been aware that if people who actually lived in a time of film, video, microphone recordings, photographs could be misinterpreted so drastically...
Guest:then how could I expect any history of anyone in the past to be anything like a truth?
Guest:So I do think that history generally is a kind of optics war.
Guest:And the real truth will always have to be probably harder to understand because it's probably going to have conflicting elements.
Guest:And more mundane in a way.
Guest:Maybe more mundane, but I'm not sure.
Guest:But I guess what I'm trying to say is there's usually truth to all perspectives to some degree.
Marc:But I think the most important thing you said about that was people who live this dream, in a dream about who your father was,
Marc:And, you know, as compared to your experience of him and your loss of him, you know, that that there's no way they can engage the empathy in that moment necessary to even take that in.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So so the real life element of living, you know, in that that zone.
Marc:And it's a rarefied zone.
Marc:I mean, I've talked to.
Marc:Like I've talked to Duncan Jones.
Marc:I've talked to Jacob Dillon.
Marc:I mean, there was a small crew of you.
Marc:I mean, and Duncan said that to me.
Marc:He said, you know, there's only a few of us who have these fathers or parents.
Guest:That's true.
Marc:That like you could like, you know, even talking to him, like, you know, you guys are, you know, eating as a family, you know, watching TV, you know, learning how to put your pants on and stuff.
Marc:And I don't know that that people even want to humanize these guys that much.
Marc:So when you have this human experience, it almost doesn't even register.
Guest:Which, you know, is something I totally understand and sympathize with because it's happened to me.
Guest:I mean, I've had, you know, people that I put on a certain kind of pedestal and then it kind of gets ruined if you get to talk to them too much or something.
Guest:Like who?
Guest:Lou Reed?
Guest:Well, I won't say any names, but, you know, Lou was great.
Guest:He was cool.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, sometimes your idea of what an actor is going to be like and then you talk to him and you're like, oh, God, now it's ruined for me.
Guest:And so I understand that.
Guest:You know, you want to hold on to that kind of precious feeling you have.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because that's what it's it's a you know, it's in the same area of religion and hope and and and faith.
Marc:You know, it's mythology.
Marc:I think I read you said that somewhere.
Marc:about religion that you choose to see it as mythology.
Marc:I don't know where you said that.
Guest:Well, yeah, no, I do.
Guest:That's amazing.
Guest:I've said that before.
Guest:I mean, I guess I've had different feelings about religion throughout my life.
Guest:I mean, I grew up without any religion, so I was really extremely cynical about it, actually, when I was young.
Guest:But I think I've gone from being a sort of militant atheist to admitting that I'm actually agnostic in the end because...
Guest:I don't think you can honestly say you're an atheist.
Guest:You can say you err on the side of atheism.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But truly, if you're honest, I think you have to say you're agnostic until, you know.
Marc:Right.
Guest:You want to hedge your bets.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, because you can't really say, even if it's unlikely.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I consider religion mythology, but that doesn't mean I'm putting it down.
Guest:No, no, I get it.
Guest:It's through the kind of Campbellian power of myth.
Guest:I don't know if you've read Joseph Campbell, but his idea of how there are these archetypes throughout all the religions and therein are very profound lessons and important stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's not to say it is or it isn't supernatural, but the lessons are there and they're important whether they're supernatural in origin or not.
Guest:It almost doesn't matter because it's about these universal human stories that are helpful.
Guest:So, yeah, that's what I mean by that.
Guest:But I have so many different minds about it because part of me also just looks at all of it as—and when I say all of it, I mean especially established religion as a kind of acceptable insanity.
Guest:Like, there are different things—
Guest:In all societies that we allow, there's different tolerances for what is basically a kind of craziness or delusion.
Guest:So I think of it as acceptable insanity because no matter how much progress we make with science and...
Guest:How austere and important and accomplished our culture is in terms of figuring out the standard model and, you know, quantum computing or whatever.
Guest:We always still have a tolerance for this kind of...
Guest:accepted insanity which is interesting to me because it's fascinating that we could have all we could have all of this rational thought and like you know math and the principia of mathematica and all these incredible rational accomplishments but still that doesn't really chip away at all at this sort of belief in these unprovable you know deities and forces and
Marc:Wasn't in the same sort of rubric, if that's the way you use that word, is what we were talking about earlier, that you need to, you have to believe the lie.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Like it's a survival.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:So I think, I think that's, I guess it's a bittersweet truth is that we all have probably an inherited ability to kind of.
Guest:believe in fantasies to our own, you know, to our own benefit because I think maybe without that skill, the reality of life might be harder to deal with.
Marc:Well, yeah, the human, like most people, have an innate compulsion to believe in something bigger than themselves to find meaning in life.
Marc:But getting back to, like, your mother's PhD in rejection, so was she able to put it into perspective for you?
Guest:Um...
Guest:I wouldn't say that she completely figured it out.
Guest:I think she remains human.
Guest:I was always amazed that after having gone through so much negative attention, let's call it, that she was still hurt when there would be some snarky comment.
Guest:Yeah, she's still very sensitive, to be honest.
Marc:Well, she was one of those people, what we talked about before, where she was...
Marc:A totally unique individual expressing herself in a way that was not diplomatic or pandering.
Marc:So she was one of those freaks that was going to be made fun of.
Guest:She's uncensored.
Guest:And even our Japanese family at one point disowned her.
Guest:technically yeah i think from the official family books yeah whatever um and that was actually when she married this guy tony who was her second husband but he was you know american it was essentially that was all it took just marrying someone who wasn't japanese and so she was rebelling against that they didn't do it with your dad though
Guest:By then, well, what's interesting and I guess typical is that once they became kind of famous as John and Yoko, then the family kind of started, you know, this isn't the whole family, but certain members of the older generation.
Guest:Because my cousins and stuff, I love all of them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I think at least what I've been told is that they started to be nicer again, which I think was hurtful as well.
Guest:And the same thing happened to my dad, actually, with my grandfather on his side.
Guest:I think it's famous that my grandfather came to one of his shows and wanted to hang out or something, and my dad tried a little bit, but I think ultimately he felt kind of hurt that...
Guest:he wasn't around before and then kind of seemed excited about the Beatles thing.
Guest:So I think that connected my parents in that they both went through this kind of rejection from their family.
Guest:And then I think that made them specifically complementary to each other because they understood that experience together.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:and when he finally did another solo record yeah how'd that go friendly fire was my second solo record um yeah it went better than the first one i was more prepared i worked harder you know i wrote string arrangements and i uh i worked on those songs and i'm i'm definitely prouder of those songs but um
Guest:You know, there's something weird about me.
Guest:I almost never play music from the past when I'm touring a new project.
Guest:And I don't really know any other musician who's like that.
Guest:I mean, it's usually just sort of expected that you accumulate a catalog of songs and you kind of refer to them throughout your life.
Guest:But I just have this weird...
Guest:I just have this weird part of me that almost can't deal with the past.
Guest:I'm just like, I don't want to deal with it.
Guest:I don't want to listen to it.
Guest:If someone puts on those records, I'm just like, ah, just shut it off.
Guest:It's like, I can't.
Marc:I don't either.
Marc:I've got six or seven or eight hours of comedy under my belt over the past two decades, and I don't remember half the shit, man.
Guest:Yeah, and I don't know if I want to necessarily.
Guest:I mean, not to be too mean about it.
Guest:I'm grateful that there are people out there who like those records, and I'm really grateful for that.
Guest:But just personally, I've never, and it could be shooting myself in the foot, but I've never nurtured that kind of catalog thing.
Guest:So I'm always kind of burning a bridge with myself.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And totally committing to whatever I'm doing at the moment.
Marc:Well, that's the freedom.
Marc:And you can see that in the work you've done.
Marc:And also, in some ways, not to be a dick, but it's fortunate that you didn't make an album full of hits.
Marc:Thank God.
Marc:Thank the Lord.
Guest:I mean, can you imagine if I had those hits?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, you'd be playing them.
Guest:Yeah, I'd be playing them.
Marc:And then you'd have to deal with the phones going off.
Guest:I'd have my Botox surgeon on the phone all the time.
Guest:Who knows?
Guest:I need more Botox.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah, you know, I...
Guest:I believe in the idea of not having any regrets, though I think that's impossible.
Guest:But I think conceptually it's a good goal.
Guest:And I don't know, recently, I don't know if you saw, I watched a podcast, I think it was Rogan had this guy on named Naval.
Guest:Naval.
Guest:I don't remember his last name.
Guest:It's an Indian name.
Guest:And he was talking about how happiness is not proportional to intelligence.
Guest:There's tons of high IQ, highly functioning, successful people who are miserable.
Guest:But he said, so how smart are you really if you're not happy?
Guest:And so he talked about this idea of how he practiced reframing
Guest:everything that he could in a positive way, if he could, not because he thought it was more true or less true, but because treating it like a muscle, like doing sit-ups.
Guest:You just keep doing them.
Guest:It's not fun, but you develop an ability.
Guest:So I've been trying to do that.
Guest:Did it work?
Guest:It's working.
Guest:I mean, it's only been a couple of months, but I have this tendency to kind of, as I said, I guess it's the Woody Allen school of thought, where I can be kind of...
Guest:I'm pessimistic about things or critical as they're happening, but I've been attempting to reframe things positively.
Guest:What I'm thinking to myself is, would it hurt to just try?
Guest:Does it hurt to just try to see if you can look at this?
Guest:more positively.
Marc:It also frees up some of your brain because a lot of times it's just habitual reaction.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:And it's something, people who do that, which I do, it's sort of like home base for you.
Guest:Exactly, but it's a learned identity, I think.
Guest:I don't think it necessarily came.
Marc:No, it becomes an obstacle because you're afraid to experience happiness or you're afraid to experience vulnerability or joy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because when you have that thing,
Marc:if that's your first thing, it's protecting you, whatever, wherever your heart's at.
Guest:Yeah, I agree, and in fact, now that you say it that way, I also think that all of us can, our comfort zone doesn't necessarily have to be comfortable.
Guest:Of course not, of course not.
Guest:to anything.
Guest:If you wake up every morning and just bang your head against the wall for six months, one day if you don't do it, you'll be like, man, I really feel like I gotta bang my head against the wall.
Marc:I did that on a special.
Marc:My comfort zone is uncomfortable.
Marc:It's a weird thing because it's a weird way to use the word comfortable, but it's true that
Marc:Whatever patterns you've created to either protect yourself, your sensitivity, or from whatever pain you caused that callus, it's how you engage in the world emotionally.
Guest:Exactly, and I think what a lot of us do is, without realizing it, is we're kind of, some part of our brain is trying to recreate
Guest:whatever the most traumatic experiences we had were in our childhood.
Guest:So you're kind of looking for that because it imprinted you.
Guest:So whether you know it or not, you might be seeking negative feelings.
Marc:Sure, right.
Marc:Yeah, it's family of origin stuff that you tend to repeat with relationships.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And the only way to escape it is to realize it and then make a concerted effort to learn how to not do that, which is as painful as sit-ups, basically.
Guest:They suck to do, and it hurts to do.
Guest:It doesn't feel natural.
Guest:But I've been trying to do that.
Guest:So this was a long answer to my...
Guest:my second record or whatever, how do I feel about it?
Guest:You know, I felt more negative about it in the past, and I actually, you know, I see the positive in it.
Guest:It was good, it was a good experience, and I've evolved as a musician since then.
Marc:Well, yeah, you do, you guys, when I was looking at the work, I do what I do, but you guys seem to always be doing something.
Marc:And the soundtrack thing, that must be a whole other world of expression in a collaborative way to do film soundtracks.
Marc:That must be a whole other set of chops and a whole other, to collaborate with visuals.
Guest:I do love it.
Guest:The thing that's great about doing film scores is that you're not serving the purpose of your own artistic sort of desires or plans necessarily if you didn't make the film.
Guest:You have this framework that takes primacy over any of your feelings or intuitions.
Guest:You have to serve this sort of set framework
Guest:structure narrative and so it's kind of uh freeing in a way because you don't have the pressure of figuring out what that backbone is or fulfilling some kind of you know uh indulgent artistic vision yeah you have the you know what needs to be done right right the the map is laid out for you right so it actually kind of frees you up in a way and i really enjoy it
Guest:I've only done like three or four scores.
Marc:And production's sort of similar too, right?
Marc:That you're there to service someone else's vision in a way.
Guest:Yes, and I have done some production work, and it's funny because it was only when I started producing other artists that I realized why it's great to have a producer, which I do wish I had had for Friendly Fire, for example.
Guest:I don't think of myself as an egomaniac or something, but there was something in me that wanted to do it myself, produce my own stuff.
Marc:The control thing.
Guest:Yeah, it's definitely, it's not always a successful strategy, but when you produce other artists, what I realized was,
Guest:It almost doesn't matter if I have a musical skill as a producer.
Guest:It's just the fact that I'm not that person who wrote the song, who's singing it and recording it.
Guest:The fact that I'm not them gives me this perspective that they simply can't have because they're caught in the myopic, you know, vision of the macroscopic.
Guest:I mean, the microscopic looking at everything, you know,
Guest:in front of your nose whereas like I can step back and be like oh no it's not working or your voice sounded better 10 takes ago it's really hard to understand that stuff when you're in it sure so it's such a simple conclusion but it's hilarious to me that I never truly understood it because I you know I never wound up working with producers because I think I never really understood what they were going to do it was kind of like okay well you know I'm playing this I wrote the songs and there's the engineer like what are you going to do you're going to stand there and kind of
Guest:I literally just didn't get it.
Guest:Producing has been really helpful to me.
Guest:You produced some of your mom's stuff?
Guest:I did co-produce.
Guest:She's always a producer in the studio.
Guest:She's very...
Guest:you know she really has a vision and she doesn't doubt her vision at all it's interesting you know it surprises me that I'm related to her because she's so singular in her vision and she moves forward without any hesitation and I think you can see that you know just watch her do her improvised kind of vocalization stuff that people often make fun of she's so committed though
Guest:There's not one hair on her head that's wondering like, oh, should I do this?
Guest:She's 100% committed to the music or being a vessel for her music.
Guest:And I find that to be...
Guest:Well, it's very compelling to watch and to listen to for me.
Guest:I think part of what I like about Hendrix's solos or something.
Guest:It's just someone thriving and owning their own vision and realizing the music without any kind of...
Guest:second guessing and I think it's something that I strive towards doing honestly I think for people like me who are more you know prefrontally occupied meditation has been really good for me and both my parents did TM and so that's the reason I started doing TM just because it was kind of in the family tradition but it's really helped me in terms of
Guest:not being totally controlled by that rapid fire critic.
Guest:And at least long enough that you can just play music and get it done.
Guest:And then you can be critical afterwards.
Guest:For me, I think it was hard to put that down.
Marc:Oh, no, yeah, I can't.
Guest:Yeah, it's really hard, but I think you can learn to do it.
Marc:No, I think so.
Guest:For some people, it comes naturally.
Guest:I mean, my mom just had it.
Guest:She's definitely self-critical in a healthy way when she's not working, but she never brings it to the performance moment.
Marc:Do you think that's sort of one of the more important things you've gleaned from her?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, because she...
Guest:And yeah, she just has this uninhibited commitment to the music or to the art when she's doing it.
Guest:She's unapologetic.
Guest:And yeah, I admire it a lot.
Guest:It fascinates me.
Guest:And it's so alien, actually, to what my...
Guest:that I think that's why I was such a big fan of hers and I wound up producing those two records for her or with her and putting them out on my label because I knew that I needed to absorb some of that.
Marc:It's a kind of... You had to sort of shift the relationship to being in artistic collaboration with her as a grownup as opposed to sort of a son and somebody who sees her doing what she's doing.
Guest:Well, in terms of my relationship with her as her son, I think I looked at it as just a cooler way to spend quality time with my mom as well.
Guest:It's like, you know, we could go to lunch or have tea or, you know, go to a museum or we could rock out.
Guest:It felt a lot more connected.
Guest:So that was cool, you know, because I'm always looking for things to do with her and playing music just felt...
Guest:like the best thing we could do.
Marc:I listened to, I think, Take Me to the Land of Hell, which is, I enjoyed it.
Marc:I listened to it yesterday, the whole album.
Marc:I never listened to it before, and I'm like, this is, and now, after seeing that documentary and reframing it, I'm like,
Marc:She's great.
Marc:She's really doing what she does.
Guest:She's interesting, and I think people underestimate her as a songwriter as well.
Guest:My label, Chimera Music, with this other label, Secretly Canadian, we've remastered all her vinyl solo records.
Guest:again it was a nice way to figure out how to be a good son was to remaster all her records and give them to her i remember giving her a package of all the new vinyls that were you know we recreated the cover and the artwork and stuff and i was like here you know merry christmas and she was just really touched so you know it's just like a nice way to do something with her that's not just boring
Guest:And also her visual art's a trip, too.
Guest:She's very talented at drawing.
Guest:And it's funny because she didn't do that much drawing until she was in her 70s.
Guest:And then she started doing these pointillist, abstract drawings.
Guest:Like she did about a thousand of them in a couple of years.
Guest:It just came out of nowhere.
Guest:And it was really fascinating to witness.
Guest:I've never seen anything quite like it.
Guest:She just went from not drawing at all to drawing constantly every day.
Guest:Like we'd be on the plane, she's doing it.
Guest:We'd be, you know, the news would be on, she'd be doing it.
Guest:And I think those pieces, I don't know if you've seen them, I can show you some, are one of the most important things she did in terms of changing people's understanding of her.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because her art was so conceptual always.
Guest:Installations, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, so I think the average person just doesn't even connect with what she did as art.
Marc:Or see it.
Marc:You got to go walk through it usually and sit in it.
Guest:Yeah, it takes a lot.
Guest:It demands some attention in a way.
Guest:But her drawings just speak for themselves.
Guest:They're very immediate.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so, yeah, she's done really well.
Guest:I mean, she's, in fact, she's very inspiring in terms of me seeing the kind of success one can have after 50.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That most people don't talk about as even being possible.
Guest:Right.
Guest:in the last few decades.
Guest:And she won the Lionsgate Award, I think it's called in the Venice Biennale, a lifetime achievement.
Guest:And that's like a big deal.
Guest:That's like getting an Oscar for an actor.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:But she wasn't getting that kind of respect for most of my life.
Guest:So to see that come to her...
Guest:It's like a hero's journey.
Guest:It's like if you just stick with it and you believe in yourself, it's so cliche.
Guest:And keep evolving as an artist.
Guest:Yeah, it can come to you.
Guest:People might come around, and that has happened to her.
Marc:That's great.
Marc:And I listen also to the stuff you do with your partner.
Marc:Oh, Charlotte.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You guys still together?
Guest:Yeah, she's at the hotel.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, and that stuff's like totally different too.
Marc:It's kind of like, I don't know, like I just noticed that, you know, your willingness, whether it's out of insecurity or compulsion or actually a need to...
Marc:to express things differently you know you definitely do a lot of different things musically depending on who you're working with yeah and that stuff with her is is is pretty you know it's it's sweet it's it's not you know it's it's it's danceable it's got a pop vibe to it but it's also has sort of a a strange kind of um uh uh
Marc:not campiness to it, but there's something.
Guest:There's a carnival aspect to it.
Marc:Right, yeah.
Guest:I mean, we were very influenced by early Psyche.
Marc:Right, there's that thing, almost a garage Psyche thing.
Guest:Yeah, like Sid Barrett and the Pretty Things and the Zombies and stuff.
Guest:But again, I mean, people notice that kind of nod to the past with that band in a way that they also do with the Delirium.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:With The Ghost, I don't think it's purely retro.
Guest:It was kind of an amalgam of all sorts of stuff.
Guest:Ghost of Sabertooth Tiger.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just call it The Ghost.
Guest:Yeah, Charlotte is one of the most remarkable songwriters and musicians I've ever worked with.
Guest:So that band is totally her and me.
Guest:Ongoing.
Guest:I think a lot of people assumed because she is pretty and she was a model that she was just kind of, you know, a stand-in or something.
Guest:But she completely produced those records.
Guest:She wrote all the songs with me.
Guest:And...
Guest:It's one of my favorite things I've ever done, and it's because I got to work with someone as inspiring as she is.
Guest:She really helped me with, for example, lyrics.
Guest:She's a very good lyricist, and she also has incredible grit.
Guest:She never gives up.
Guest:She's never lazy.
Guest:She has an amazing work ethic.
Guest:So she really gave me some muscles in terms of just pushing through and trying to make the lyrics better.
Guest:I think I'd always been...
Guest:not lazy about it, but almost like terrified to try.
Guest:So it wasn't a laziness, it was actually kind of fear or something.
Marc:Well, it's good that you're with her on that level because if you're like me and it seems like we have these things in common, that self-critical thing or these wired in ways of sort of avoiding a type of vulnerability that's probably necessary to write songs that
Marc:Because even now, I'm just trying to get through it now, and just to present your ideas to someone else, if they're really coming from your heart, you're sort of like, nah, I don't wanna, why fucking show that to anybody?
Marc:Because even if they look at you, if you give them something to read, and you're looking at their face, you're like, give it back.
Guest:You're like, no, I like it.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I know exactly what you mean.
Guest:I can be like that, too.
Guest:I've definitely gotten tougher, though.
Guest:I've gotten thicker skin over the years.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But, you know, it's important to be empathetic enough to realize that they probably don't.
Guest:don't mean it as badly as you think.
Marc:Why would they?
Guest:They just probably have no idea what a freak you are and how sensitive you are.
Guest:They just think you're a normal person.
Guest:So they're just saying, yeah, this part could be better.
Guest:And you're like, what?
Guest:You mean I shouldn't exist?
Guest:My very existence isn't justified.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Hard to live with.
Guest:I have that part of me, but I've decided to be tougher about it because otherwise you have to be able to grow from constructive criticism.
Guest:You have to be able to internalize it from your smartest friends and
Guest:Well, take the advice seriously and improve, because otherwise you're just going to basically be you forever, which is OK, maybe.
Marc:But no.
Marc:But what it is, I think it's fundamentally childish.
Marc:And, you know, coming from, you know, whether it's a kind of permissive upbringing or from, in my case, parents that were sort of self-involved to the point where it was permissive, is that, you know, you know, if you don't get some sort of healthy sense of failure, either through sports or whatever the fuck it is.
Marc:or at least one parent teaching you how to shoulder that stuff, I mean, you're going to have this emotional part of you that's like five.
Guest:Exactly, which I think is why I hope the next generation of parenting, the post-Boomer parenting, takes a page from both previous generations.
Guest:Because I think it may have swung too far the other way, which is...
Guest:not wanting to have your kid dislike you because you're being tough on them.
Guest:There's this, I guess, fable I read.
Guest:It's about parenting.
Guest:A good parent will tell their son, jump off the stairs, I'll catch you.
Guest:Like, don't worry, you can trust me.
Guest:And the son jumps and you just let him smack himself on the floor.
Guest:And he goes, why did you do that?
Guest:And he's like, because that's, you know, this is what the world is going to be like.
Guest:And I think that's really hard to do as a parent because you actually have to
Guest:You have to be mature enough to rationalize that this is best for the kid, even though it's going to be uncomfortable for you because they're going to be mad at you for a while.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But if you actually care about them and not your feelings, then you can prioritize their growth over, maybe they'll always be mad at you for that.
Guest:But if you really love them, you should be able to take that, your hurt feelings, for their growth, which is, I think that's difficult.
Guest:And you don't have kids.
Guest:No, I don't.
Guest:You want it?
Guest:I mean, theoretically, I do.
Guest:I mean, at this age, every time I see a kid, I'm like, oh, my God, I love kids.
Guest:But it's not something that I've always been, like, headed towards.
Guest:And Charlotte and I have been together for, like, 12 years, and we're still not married.
Guest:And we're kind of...
Guest:Well, in one way, I think we're closer than a lot of our friends who got married and divorced like several times since we've been together.
Guest:You know, we're tight.
Guest:So I don't know if we need marriage to qualify it.
Guest:But it's also because I don't think either of us had many examples of marriage being somehow close.
Guest:a beacon of real love.
Guest:It's always been kind of complicated in our lives.
Guest:We don't have many role models who are necessarily better off because they're married.
Guest:I'm sure they're out there, but we're just kind of finding our own way, I guess.
Marc:That's good.
Marc:But in terms of, you were talking about
Marc:We really talked about your mom a lot, and we talked about your dad to a degree, but when I watch something like that, Doc, when you see that stuff, was that part of your building a relationship with him?
Guest:Yeah, it's hard to explain this.
Guest:Whenever I see a film about my dad or go to – there have been museum shows about archival stuff like in Japan or whatever.
Guest:As grateful as I am that all of that's out there, it kind of feels uncomfortable for me because there's something really personal –
Guest:in my heart regarding memories of him, real memories of him, and just his books and his guitars and being in the house and just watching the Muppet show with him.
Guest:That stuff feels so precious to me that when it's externalized into some kind of media format, it actually feels kind of
Guest:uncomfortable i mean i'm not it's it's not like it's traumatizing right it doesn't feel as connected as the real life real world stuff i'll just say it's not as important to me as just you know my personal sure memories in my own life
Marc:And you have a relationship with your brother and everything?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That's great.
Guest:I do.
Guest:And that's always been the case?
Guest:It's always been the case.
Guest:I think there have been different times when we haven't been actively as close, but we've always loved each other deeply, irregardless of whatever kind of public media complexity there was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't think people realize how close we were.
Guest:I mean, there were times when he stayed at our house in the Dakota and he taught me guitar.
Guest:And, you know, when his first record came out and was a huge hit, I mean, he was absolutely my hero.
Guest:You know, I mean, I...
Guest:I was as inspired to play guitar because of watching him play the show at the Beacon that I saw as I was by my mom and dad playing music.
Guest:He was like the cool, successful leather jacket wearing, better singer-than-me musician who really was killing it.
Guest:So I totally looked up to him.
Guest:I think the media perception of our relationship is...
Guest:one of the most false narratives I've ever seen.
Guest:I mean, I think people imagine that we were kind of pitted against each other, but that just never happened between us.
Guest:There have been tensions between the family publicly about certain things, but it never spilled over into our relationship.
Marc:We've always loved each other, yeah.
Marc:It's so funny, too, because you both sort of, like, there is a genetic component to your vocalization styles that is Lenin-esque.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, but he definitely has better pipes than I do.
Marc:Right.
Marc:He can really sing.
Marc:There's a phrasing thing that seems similar.
Guest:There's something in there for sure.
Guest:It's funny because, again, my first album, I remember intentionally trying not to sound like my dad because I was kind of nervous about that.
Guest:So I wound up singing in this way that to this day I can't deal with.
Guest:It was very...
Guest:It was sort of like a whispery whine and I didn't use any effects on my voice because every time I did, it would make it sound more like my dad because my dad used slap or he'd use flange or whatever.
Guest:So I avoided all that stuff that actually makes my voice sound good.
Guest:And then I intentionally didn't sing out because whenever I sing out, I start to sing more like him.
Guest:Like if I push the air, I get more of a grit and then people start to say, wow, you sound like your dad.
Guest:So I kind of regret overthinking it when I was young.
Guest:So now I actually just sing the way that comes natural to me.
Guest:But I do sound more like him when I do that.
Guest:And there's nothing I can do.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I think it's nice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I've got that texture in my voice and I can't really avoid it.
Guest:But I'm just praying that there's positive growth in my future.
Guest:It's daunting to imagine that I already had my chance.
Marc:Don't think about it that way.
Marc:Apply your new skills.
Marc:Yeah, no, I am.
Guest:I definitely play better than ever, and I feel like I understand music better than ever.
Guest:Well, I think you're doing great, and I like the new record.
Guest:Thanks.
Guest:I really appreciate it, man.
Marc:That's cool.
Guest:I mean, I was surprised to even know that it was on your radar.
Guest:That's cool, man.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, it's like things get on my radar by people saying like, you know, do you know this stuff?
Marc:And I'm like, I don't.
Marc:And then I ended up listening to like a lot of this stuff and getting in to your mom's stuff and then to your, you know, some of your dad's other stuff and then like all your stuff.
Marc:So like, you know, it's been it's been a fun week.
Guest:That is the cool thing about the internet is you can find something and then very quickly kind of learn so much about it.
Marc:And just listen to experience your own, your creative evolution because there's so much out there.
Marc:How are you going to choose this stuff?
Marc:But it's great.
Marc:And it was great talking to you.
Guest:Mutual, man.
Guest:It was fun.
Marc:That was great.
Marc:You got to know that guy, huh?
Marc:And, you know, everybody's coming along.
Marc:Nice.
Marc:The album, South of Reality, by the Claypool Lennon Delirium, is available wherever you get music.
Marc:They're on tour this summer all across the country.
Marc:You can go to ClaypoolLennonDelirium.com for tour dates.
Marc:You can go to SwordOfTrust.com for information on...
Marc:on the Sword of Trust, Lynn Shelton's movie with me in it, and Michaela Watkins, John Bass, Julian Bell, Toby Huss, Dan Bakadal, funny stuff.
Marc:You can always go to swordoftrust.com for details about all the different places it's playing.
Marc:There's a lot of places coming up.
Marc:All right, no music.
Marc:Boomer lives!
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