Episode 353 - Dave Grohl
Guest:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuckineers?
Marc:What the fuckadelics?
Marc:What the fuckaricans?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:I am Marc Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:You hear that?
Marc:That is a guitar.
Marc:What's the point?
Marc:Why did I just do that?
Marc:I will tell you why I just did that, because I got a point.
Marc:I got a point.
Marc:Dave Grohl is on the show, but what does that have to do?
Marc:Why did I pick up my old K guitar, which I bought for $80?
Marc:It was probably worth $40, and when it was originally a guitar for sale at Sears, it probably cost $10, but I bought it from a guy at a guitar shop, and he restrung it and set it up.
Marc:It's a piece of junk, really.
Marc:so why am i bringing that up with dave growl why am i why am i talking about my shitty k guitar whose strings i never change and just leave as is and occasionally pick up why am i doing that i'll tell you in a second this is a music heavy show folks
Marc:What's the point, Maren?
Marc:What's the point, he just said to himself in the third person.
Marc:What's the point you're talking like, Andy Kindler?
Marc:I'll tell you the point is, I interviewed Dave Grohl at his studio.
Marc:where they're busy working on a concert to support this movie that he has out, the Sound City movie.
Marc:It's a documentary.
Marc:Now, look, I've been trying to get Dave Grohl on the show for about a year and a half, ever since we first started to kind of toy with the idea of having musicians on the show, and it never happened.
Marc:We went back and forth.
Marc:We had dates scheduled, and they didn't happen.
Marc:So now Dave is talking a lot to a lot of people about this movie, Sound City.
Marc:And I was a little nervous about that because I don't really like to do junket shows.
Marc:I don't like to do, sometimes I get caught off guard.
Marc:I'll have a guest on and lo and behold, they're on every show.
Marc:They're on every other show and nothing you can do about that.
Marc:That's showbiz.
Marc:But, uh, so when we got the opportunity to, to go talk to grow and they sent me a link to this movie, I'm like, well, you know what?
Marc:I,
Marc:I don't know Grohl that well.
Marc:I loved Nirvana.
Marc:I like the Foo Fighters well enough.
Marc:He always seemed like a comic-friendly guy, which is why I wanted to have him on the show.
Marc:I didn't want to get into one of those situations where you go and you just talk to him about Nirvana.
Marc:So they send a link to this movie, this documentary that he directed.
Marc:called sound city and it fucking blew my mind it was it was i was laughing i was crying i was so engaged because it caught me at a good point you know i seem to be at that age where i'm getting a little nostalgic though i've always been somebody who has gravitated to uh towards authenticity of any kind i want i want things to be to be real to have some integrity to them which is why i picked up that weird little guitar and played my shitty blues for you is that
Marc:I bought this guitar and the agreement I have with this guitar is that you only play that music on it.
Marc:You don't really change the strings.
Marc:You try to keep it in tune, but don't expect anything to come out of that other than crappy acoustic blues music, because that's what it sounds best doing.
Marc:It's not a studio guitar.
Marc:I'm not a professional musician, but I believe this guitar is magic if you play blues through it.
Marc:Now, magic stuff.
Marc:Look, everybody's looking for that.
Marc:What do you think this vinyl craze is about?
Marc:We want something real.
Marc:We want something organic.
Marc:We want something that's connected to something that turns and moves through circuits in a way that has some integrity to it.
Marc:It's like jeans.
Marc:It's like shoes.
Marc:I do the same thing with everything.
Marc:How does something become magic?
Marc:Well, either the vessel that is magic actually has magical powers.
Marc:Like in the movie, this whole movie, Sound City, is about a recording studio that was around for a long time, then had a huge turn of events happen with Buckingham Knicks, who later went on to become sort of the backbone in a way, other than McFleetwood, a Fleetwood Mac.
Marc:And it all happened in and around Sound City.
Marc:And Sound City had paid...
Marc:a bunch of money to get this soundboard, this Neve soundboard designed by this dude Neve, hand-built, and this thing was fucking magic.
Marc:So after the Fleetwood Mac album, Rumors, and the one before it came out from the studio, everything turned around for this studio.
Marc:And then there was an arc, and then it crapped out, and digital music came along, and nobody cared about a magic soundboard that was hand-built, and all the wires were delicately and lovingly placed into knobs and into plugs.
Marc:to make the sound.
Marc:But the sound of that board had such integrity that after the whole digital music thing started to take off and arc out out of nowhere, they were a down and out studio and Nirvana with Dave Grohl trucks down to, uh, to LA, to the Valley to record at sound city.
Marc:And they do nevermind in there.
Marc:So, uh,
Marc:To me, what I got out of this movie and why it was thrilling to talk to Dave at this point was that he understood, like he was paying homage to the soundboard, to the magic box that Nevermind came out of.
Marc:And he had a respect for it.
Marc:So much respect for it is that when Sound City eventually went under, he bought that board and had it moved piece by piece to his studio and now records through it.
Marc:and is now bringing some of the artists that originally recorded at Sound City in to do this tour and this record, Sound City.
Marc:And I found that so endearing and so respectful.
Marc:And there's such an insight into not just gear, but to the real qualities of sound.
Marc:And Sound City apparently was this magical box that no one could understand why it sounded so good.
Marc:But after Fleetwood Mac recorded there, all the bands from the 70s and early 80s just lined up to get in there.
Marc:The number of records that were recorded there is astounding.
Marc:Then after Nirvana blew up, all the...
Marc:The bands from the early 90s were like, fuck it, that's the magic board.
Marc:And Dave Grohl has the magic board.
Marc:And in my mind, it's magic.
Marc:We're all looking for magic, man.
Marc:Even in our food, organic, local, keep it raw.
Marc:Keep it as close to the source as possible.
Marc:Don't let it get away from you.
Marc:No more chemicals.
Marc:No more ones and zeros.
Marc:We want to see things spinning.
Marc:We want to see things growing.
Marc:We want shoes that we can break in ourselves and own for a lifetime.
Marc:We want a K guitar.
Marc:We want a filthy little K guitar that I never play.
Marc:.
Marc:I just wanted to make my appeal for the magic, for the organic, for the authentic, for Dave Grohl.
Marc:Great talk.
Marc:We're going to get into it in a sec.
Marc:Okay, here's some things to look out for in the interview because we're going to go there now.
Marc:I entered the studio.
Marc:I hung around a little bit.
Marc:I got there early.
Marc:I have my rig, my my mics, my magic mics that I use.
Marc:I'm very specific about the mics I use when I go out there.
Marc:I use blue encore 200 mics, work off phantom power, handheld.
Marc:Those are the ones I take on the road because I've decided they have the best quality and they're magic.
Marc:And this garage is magic.
Marc:I don't know why.
Marc:I don't know why whatever happened to my life.
Marc:You know, we talk about the Neve soundboard or Dave does.
Marc:And that whole movie is built around the sort of magical nature of a box.
Marc:of wires connected to a box that is a room that created some of the best records that we know.
Marc:Like, I don't know why this garage changed my life.
Marc:This is a fucking ritual space, man.
Marc:This is a magic place.
Marc:I don't understand it.
Marc:I don't understand why what happens in here happens in here.
Marc:But I'm going to have to take it with me wherever I go.
Marc:I'm going to have to travel with my garage if I ever move to another place.
Marc:So heading into this, know that when I walked in, somebody asked me if I was a journalist and that was Taylor, the dude who plays drums for the Foo Fighters.
Marc:But I only knew him as the drummer because I'm not on top of the Foo Fighters that much.
Marc:So I had that interaction.
Marc:Then I waited for Dave in the studio and then he came in.
Marc:And I was standing at the board.
Marc:So we're standing at the board talking about the board right out of the gate.
Marc:And then at the end, and I'm just going to tell you this because you're not going to know it when you listen to it.
Marc:At the end, when he says, you know, we're working, the band is working on a set list because they're going to do this concert with Fogarty, Rick Springfield, Stevie Nicks.
Marc:I don't know if Petty's going to be involved or what, but all the people that were in the documentary.
Marc:So they were working on songs.
Marc:And he took me in, and I met the band, and I saw the song list, and then I was packing up.
Marc:They started playing a Credence song, and I'm standing there with Dave's manager, one of the management company, this woman, Gabby, and I go, well, I got to turn the recorder back on.
Marc:She goes, don't even think about it.
Marc:But to hear the Foo Fighters ripping into a fucking Credence number, I think it was playing with a traveling band, if I'm not mistaken.
Marc:was pretty fucking exceptional.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Let's go now to Dave Grohl's massive studio where we are talking at the soundboard.
Marc:Also, folks, listen to him talk about Paul McCartney in this.
Marc:Because Paul McCartney's in the movie.
Marc:I mean, there's a beat in this talk where he brings up Paul, and it was great.
Marc:All right, look, here's Dave Grohl and me.
Marc:Hey, man.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:How are you?
Marc:Good, man.
Marc:Nice to see you.
Marc:Nice to see you.
Marc:Look at that board.
Marc:This is it.
Marc:That's it right there.
Marc:This is the magic altar.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:It's all built around this now.
Marc:Look over here.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:Did you see all the people that have signed it?
Guest:No.
Guest:Okay, so in 1996, Carl Perkins, when this board was still at Sound City, Carl Perkins signed it.
Guest:And I said, wow, what a great sound.
Guest:Thanks a lot.
Guest:It's Carl Perkins.
Guest:So when we moved the board over here and we recorded all this stuff for the Sound City record, I had everybody sign it.
Guest:Like Fogarty and look at how cute Stevie makes.
Guest:Put little hearts next to her thing.
Guest:She's always going to be there.
Guest:Petty.
Guest:You got Benmont.
Guest:You got Paul.
Guest:But look at this, dude.
Guest:A Neve board signed by Rupert Neve.
Guest:Come on.
Marc:That was a good part of the movie, man.
Marc:That dude just sitting there talking about this.
Marc:Those are the wizards.
Marc:But so this is magic, right?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:That's your belief.
Marc:For sure.
Marc:And it's for real.
Guest:All of those albums wouldn't have sounded like those albums had it not been for this board.
Guest:This board, was it sound...
Marc:This board is at Sound City.
Marc:And you moved it over.
Marc:But, like, you know, you got me a good time to have this talk because I'm all about vinyl right now.
Marc:I don't know what the fuck happened to me.
Marc:But, like, what were the albums?
Marc:Like, first, it all started with Buckingham Knicks in terms of the modern sound.
Marc:Did you see the movie?
Marc:I did.
Guest:Okay, good.
Guest:So before this board was in Sound City, they had another piece of equipment that wasn't considered state-of-the-art.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So this was state-of-the-art recording equipment in 1973.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The thing that's different about this board is it was custom ordered by the producer Keith Olson, who was the house engineer at Sound City in 72, 73.
Guest:So what you would do is you would order a board, and they would build it to spec.
Guest:And so this series of boards, there aren't too many of them, but this one is the only one.
Guest:uh like it because um because of this monitor section right uh that a lot of people consider to be the best monitor section of an eve board ever so a lot of bands okay so what bands will do is they'll record their album uh through a desk and then they'll take it somewhere else to mix it right this board
Guest:uh you'd record through here yeah and then you would make sort of rough mixes on this monitor right on the monitor and you could never beat the sound of this monitor section anywhere else so it goes all the tape yeah the tape imagine this yeah it's almost like playing telephone with someone sure
Guest:So, say you're playing telephone with a group of 10 people, you whisper in their ear, they whisper in their ear.
Guest:With the Foo Fighters in that room.
Guest:Yeah, in that room.
Guest:By the time it comes back around, it's something completely different than what it started out to be.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:It's sort of the same thing with signal path.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Okay, so say you have a sound going into a microphone,
Guest:It comes through the cable.
Guest:If it's got six miles of cable to go through before it hits your ear, something's going to happen to it that is exactly worn out.
Marc:That's a long way.
Guest:So the great thing about a board like this is it's a very simple piece of equipment.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's less distance between the mic and the sound.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And there's fewer things that it has to go through, so it's more pure.
Guest:In a very...
Guest:In a very technically retarded way.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Let's go plug in real mics.
Marc:So here's what happens, man.
Marc:I get hung up on my albums.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I'm like, I got 300 records.
Marc:I don't play them anymore.
Marc:And I thought I had good equipment, so then I get hung up on tubes.
Marc:I go buy a tube thing.
Marc:I interviewed Jack White.
Marc:And he had a wall of Macintosh amps.
Marc:So I'm thinking, well, he's got a wall of those.
Marc:I could probably afford one.
Marc:Wrong.
Marc:So I go shop for Macintosh.
Marc:It's like $12,000.
Marc:I can't play it.
Marc:It's fucking crazy.
Marc:I mean, if you don't have that kind of money to drop,
Marc:I mean, you buy one of those, you're never going to enjoy it because you're going to sit around thinking like, does this sound like $12,000?
Guest:You can still enjoy music through an AM radio.
Marc:Oh, absolutely.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Tom Waits once said, what's his favorite music?
Marc:And he said an AM radio across the street.
Guest:You know what we used to do is we used to keep a little AM radio on in the corner of the room as we were recording just so that you had some sort of sonic perspective.
Guest:Like you're listening to music you're recording through these $100,000 speakers on the stage.
Guest:And then you hit stop and there's Barry Manilow on the AM radio.
Guest:Sure, remember how some people are going to hear this.
Guest:And your ears go back to normal.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:Oh, that's what this really sounds like.
Marc:Right, so I've been buying records that I grew up with that I haven't had, like Zeppelin, ZZ Top.
Marc:Because we're about the same age, give or take a few years.
Marc:So we grew up with that shit.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And I'd never heard it through that equipment before.
Marc:How does it sound?
Marc:Well, it sounds amazing.
Marc:It sounds weird.
Marc:It sounds weird.
Marc:It's not what I'm used to.
Marc:It's not listening to the radio.
Marc:It's not listening to the shitty stereo I had when I was a kid.
Marc:Everything's separated.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay, so this is funny because I sort of did the same thing for my daughter like about two months ago.
Guest:I got the Beatles box set.
Guest:I bought that too.
Guest:It's amazing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's 75 pounds, dude.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:It's like a suitcase.
Guest:It means something.
Guest:And so it's amazing.
Guest:So I bring it home and my daughter, who already loves the Beatles, she's six, I bring it home and she looks at it and she goes, what is that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I go, boo, this is the Beatles.
Guest:This is all the Beatles records.
Guest:She's like, oh.
Guest:And I open it up, and I hand her an album.
Guest:Now, she'd seen records before, but she never had any of her own.
Guest:So I said, OK, come on in.
Guest:I got the turntable out of the garage.
Guest:I put it in her room.
Guest:I set it up.
Guest:I said, here's how you do it.
Guest:You take the record out of the sleeve, and you put the hole in this thing.
Guest:Put that down.
Guest:The arm goes, you've got to be gentle.
Guest:Turn this on.
Guest:Hit this power.
Guest:She's six.
Guest:She's six.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Dude, I left.
Guest:I walked out of the room.
Guest:An hour later, she had all the records on the floor.
Guest:She had listened to them all.
Guest:It's the same thing, dude.
Guest:She was looking at the liner notes.
Guest:She was dancing.
Guest:Look at the pictures.
Guest:It was unbelievable.
Guest:But I had that weird buzz that turntables get because I wasn't grounded.
Guest:And I sat there trying to figure out fucking how to ground it because it was impossible.
Guest:And then I was like, well, fuck it.
Guest:This is what it sounded like when I was a kid.
Guest:That's what she gets.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:I'm not going to give her the audiophile version.
Guest:Let her learn.
Guest:Don't get hung up on it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah, let it be dirty.
Guest:It's the same thing.
Guest:It still does.
Guest:If you went to her bedroom right now and turned on the record player, it was like .
Guest:I woke her up this morning.
Guest:She's lying in bed.
Guest:I woke her up by creeping into her room, and I started Here Comes the Sun.
Guest:That's how I woke her up today.
Guest:But it's going like .
Marc:I'm listening to these things and I've got it in my head.
Marc:Because I had this moment where, like we're saying, I'd never heard it through good equipment.
Marc:I've never heard it through the way it was supposed to be laid down.
Marc:But the weird sequence of events that led up to me being here that's kind of fucking with my head is that I'm kind of hung up on Peter Green right now.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I've always liked that original Fleetwood Mac.
Marc:And then you get into the Peter Green story.
Marc:And I just saw this BBC documentary about him.
Marc:Whoa.
Marc:You haven't seen it?
Marc:I haven't seen it.
Marc:You've got to see it.
Marc:Is it nuts?
Marc:Well, it's nuts because I'm going to end up talking too much here.
Marc:Go for it.
Marc:But he's a great guitar player.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:I mean, he's probably better than most of the blues British guys.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Let's be specific.
Marc:I'm not Clapton guy.
Marc:So...
Marc:I think that he replaced Clapton, that original Fleetwood Mac, and made them what they were.
Marc:Whatever.
Marc:So he loses his mind on acid.
Marc:Did he join a cult or something like that?
Marc:Well, it was unclear.
Marc:You've got to see this.
Marc:I'll send you the link to it.
Marc:It's like an hour.
Marc:It's from the BBC.
Marc:So you got Mick Fleetwood, who you talk to in your movie.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Who's a pretty great guy.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:You got McVie.
Marc:And it was one of these weird moments where they were taken off.
Marc:He had a hit with Albatross in England.
Marc:And they go to Munich.
Marc:And they'd all tried acid when they were in San Francisco.
Marc:No big deal.
Marc:But both of them and Jeremy Spencer all track it back to this one gig in Munich.
Marc:Peter Green gets off the plane.
Marc:He's met by these weird kind of hipstery, rich looking people.
Guest:Germans.
Marc:They go to a party.
Marc:Yeah, Germans.
Marc:And they all end up at this party at this mansion.
Marc:And Peter Green and Kerwin, the other guitar player, I don't remember his first name, they drop acid and end up going to jam downstairs.
Marc:And all of them, like, you know, like anyone who was there said, there was a sound coming out of the basement that was, it wasn't right.
LAUGHTER
Marc:And that was it.
Marc:And they were like, we wouldn't even go down there.
Marc:This is a road manager.
Marc:Awesome.
Marc:And then they said they saw Spencer and Green and their faces were kind of fucked up.
Marc:Oh, no.
Marc:And Fleetwood and McVie said, you know, since that day, that was the end of him.
Marc:That was it.
Marc:The beginning of the end.
Marc:Well, right, and then he was in and out of institutions for 10 years.
Marc:And now he's out.
Guest:Wait, this is in the movie, everything you just said?
Guest:Yeah, in the documentary.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:I'm just telling you as a friend here that now he's out.
Marc:A biographer chased him down and wanted to ride on him.
Marc:And he was on all this medicine, and his family had pulled him out of the institution because it didn't look like it was helping.
Marc:So now he's like 60, he's fat, and he's almost got a Buddha-ish kind of thing.
Marc:And this biographer said, maybe you shouldn't take the medicine.
Marc:And he stopped taking the medicine, and he became lucid again.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:But see, the interesting thing about it to me in dealing with who you came up with and what you've been through in rock and roll was that in this documentary, they asked this old Peter Green, it's like, well, what about that night in Munich?
Marc:And all he had to say was like, yeah, we sounded pretty good.
Marc:Ha ha!
Marc:that's awesome we got some good sounds you know it doesn't resonate you know maybe that was his big musical moment in life right everybody has one it may have come a little later everybody saw that as the end for him but in his mind it was just the beginning we were fucking out there man but so needless to say i ended up listening to rumors three times for no fucking reason then i watched a documentary your your movie last night yeah and it all starts there
Marc:With that board anyways.
Guest:With that board.
Guest:So the first thing recorded on that board was the Buckingham Knicks record.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Stevie and Lindsey recorded on it and made the album, which is a really cool record.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it didn't take off and they got dropped.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So they were hanging around Sound City and Mick Fleetwood was looking for a place to make the next Fleetwood Mac record.
Guest:So he comes in, he says to Keith Olsen, play me something that was recorded here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he plays him the song, I guess it was Frozen Love.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he was really into it.
Guest:Like, wow, board sounds great.
Guest:Room sounds great.
Guest:I'm going to make the next Fleetwood Mac record here.
Guest:And I think he just said hello to Stevie and Lindsay in passing.
Guest:And then a couple of weeks later, they needed a new guitar player because Peter Green was out.
Guest:And so he called Keith Olsen and said, hey, what about that guitar guy?
Guest:And he said, well, you're never going to get him unless you take his chick, too.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:And that turned into a disaster, didn't it?
Guest:Well, can you imagine?
Guest:This is the thing.
Guest:And that record... Not Rumors, the one before it?
Marc:The one before.
Guest:The first one was just called Fleetwood Mac.
Guest:The first one was Stevie and Lindsay.
Guest:If you listen to it, it's such a great example of a multidimensional, emotionally dimensional band.
Guest:So you've got Chrissy McVie, man.
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:I swear to God, I think she, she had such a beautiful voice and her songs were just like, pretty, they were like anesthesia.
Guest:It just made you feel so relaxed and beautiful.
Guest:And, and then, you know, Mick Fleetwood, the greatest thing is that Mick Fleetwood, I think was in charge.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Can you imagine that dude being in charge of your band?
Guest:But the personalities were just all so different and crazy that it made for an album that had so much depth.
Guest:It was like a musical seven-layer burrito.
Marc:And that console, that Neve console, is what went through it.
Marc:And that harnessed all that emotion.
Marc:And Rumors, I guess, started the role for that thing, right?
Marc:Or the first Fleetwood Mac.
Guest:Well, it was the first Fleetwood Mac record, and I mean, that's what, okay, so Sound City, before this Neve and before that album.
Marc:I guess I should make it clear that this is the documentary you made.
Marc:Yeah, it's called Sound City.
Marc:But it's great, dude.
Marc:Well, thank you.
Marc:And I don't, you know, I like rock and roll, but, you know, I'm a movie, I watch movies, but I was moved, I was laughing.
Marc:Oh, good.
Marc:I was laughing.
Marc:Right on.
Marc:Because I was excited.
Guest:I don't even know what to think of it anymore.
Guest:You know when it's like when you make dinner by yourself, it's never as good as if someone else made it for you.
Guest:It just isn't because you know what's in it and you know how it was made and you think you could have done it differently and you eat it and everyone's like, oh my God, this is delicious.
Guest:You're like, really?
Marc:Well, it starts as this weird, like, you know, the beautiful thing about the movie is that, you know, it starts as, obviously, the Nirvana chapter of Sound City was in the second, you know, you guys started the second sort of wave of what it was about.
Marc:So the movie is really about this recording studio and these guys who started it.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And it's a documentary.
Marc:But then, like, you know, once you enter the picture in a personal way, it really becomes about your journey.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then sort of you sort of taking that board and realizing like this thing has to remain magic.
Guest:Well, here's the thing is that.
Guest:I think a lot of people don't get the opportunity to understand or appreciate everything that is behind all of those albums that you listen to.
Guest:When you listen to Nevermind by Nirvana or Rick Springfield records or Metallica records or Petty, Damn the Torpedoes, when you listen to those records...
Guest:Dio, Holy Diver.
Guest:When you listen to those records, you never really take these things into consideration, like the board or the room or the family that owns the studio or the stories behind the people that made the record or the producer or that because you just you get the album and you look at the picture and you read the liner notes and you hear the song and that is rewarding enough.
Guest:But
Guest:The thing about music is that I love are those stories and that it's entirely human.
Guest:Yeah, it's the magic.
Guest:So when I say that the Sound City movie is about the human element of music, it's not just the human element of performance or the human element of production.
Guest:It's the human element of everything.
Guest:It's the story between the people.
Guest:The Fleetwood Mac story is amazing because it's like the stars aligned and that band came together.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then in rumors, it exploded though.
Guest:The same thing with Nevermind.
Guest:We were three shitty fucking dirtbags in a van.
Guest:We had 16 days and no money.
Guest:But we managed to get to Sound City with that board in that room and make, Nevermind.
Guest:Had we not made it with that board in that room, we might not be talking right now.
Guest:Imagine if we made it at like,
Guest:you know, some valley studio with some fancy SSL and all this fancy ass digital shit, it wouldn't have sounded like Nirvana.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I wouldn't be here if it weren't for that fucking board.
Guest:So that's why I made the movie.
Guest:I made the movie because there aren't too many moments in life that you're reunited with something as special as that.
Guest:Like, I honestly feel like that board is responsible for the person who I am today.
Guest:It's fucking huge.
Guest:Some people might look at it like, what is this?
Guest:Is this stereo?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's just a bunch of metal and wires and shit.
Guest:But the thing is, is that the metal and wires in that piece of equipment are responsible for all of those records.
Guest:You know, those people wrote those songs.
Guest:Are you a speed wagon?
Guest:Dude, come on.
Guest:Roll with the changes, man.
Guest:You can't tune a piano, but you can tune a fish, whatever the fuck it was.
Guest:So, yeah, I mean, so to me, it's that...
Guest:It's the human... And that thing's hand-fucking-made.
Guest:Someone fucking put a screwdriver to screws and fucking hand-wired that board.
Guest:That thing is handmade, man.
Guest:And so there's something beautiful about that.
Guest:There's something beautiful about the craft and the tangibility of that concept.
Guest:Like, wow, this entire... Because I think the kids need to understand...
Guest:that it's okay to buy a guitar at a fucking yard sale, take it into your garage, invite your neighbor down the street to beat the shit out of some pots and pans, write a song, sound like fucking shit, and then become the biggest band in the world.
Marc:As opposed to do it by yourself with made-up instruments on a computer.
Guest:Or walk and stand in line for eight hours at a convention center to be on a fucking TV show where a judge hears you sing for 30 seconds and says, you know what, you're not good enough.
Marc:Yeah, fuck them.
Guest:I mean, honestly, I honestly believe that if the next generation of musicians doesn't understand that it's entirely acceptable to do it your own way and to sound like shit and to try to fucking do it better and to do it with other people, that that's rewarding in itself.
Guest:You don't have to be the biggest fucking band in the world, but you can get off playing fucking cheap trick songs in your garage with your fucking neighbor.
Marc:And yeah, with a few other dudes and just fucking knock it out.
Guest:It's a community thing.
Guest:That's what the Sound City movie is about.
Guest:And that's why in telling the story of the movie, in telling the story of Sound City, it's chronological.
Guest:It begins with the origin of the studio.
Guest:It goes through these records.
Guest:But...
Guest:In talking about things chronologically, you have to talk about technology because of the way it affected Sound City.
Guest:That was state-of-the-art in 1973.
Guest:That was not state-of-the-art in 1985.
Guest:By 1985, that board was considered obsolete, and people didn't want to go there anymore.
Marc:Well, that was the interesting thing about the movie is the engineer sort of went next door and built the high-tech studio.
Marc:Keith Olsen, yeah.
Marc:Keith Olsen, and then all of a sudden this becomes this relic, and Sound City starts to just deplete.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Because people got away from what that represented, which I think is a musical truth.
Guest:Because when you fucking plug in and play on that board, there's nowhere to hide.
Guest:Truth and magic.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:It's totally magic.
Guest:But there's nowhere to hide.
Guest:If you put a fucking microphone up to your face and sing through it, you know what it's going to come out of that board sounding like?
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:You with the microphone in your fucking face.
Marc:so you better be good well i like the whole subtext and not even such a subtext of like where high-tech production went it just thought there was is a double-edged story it sort of sucked the soul out of what you're talking about organic sounding music and community but then you had to sort of you you like you had to pull trent resner in there to sort of say like look man the technology can be pretty cool if you if you stay connected to it well that's the thing is that
Guest:In talking about technology, you can't blame the computer for what the producer does.
Guest:You can't do that.
Guest:What the computer does is basically kind of what any of this shit will do.
Guest:Let me preface this by saying that sonically, I'm fucking deaf, dude.
Guest:I've been playing 125 decibel music for 25 years.
Guest:So you could A, B, a digital recording versus an analog recording.
Guest:You know what it sounds like to me?
Guest:Wee!
Guest:Tinnitus.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:So do you have a higher set of ears to hear for you?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Where's the ear guy?
Guest:Where are my ears?
Marc:Bring me my fucking ears.
Guest:No, but, you know, so that debate conversation is kind of out the window for me.
Guest:But you can retain the human element of a performer's performance
Guest:With any of this equipment, you could use that computer and set someone up with one microphone and get some heartfelt shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, and the accessibility of a computer, what technology has done for musicians is... God damn it, I wish I could have... I wish that I had...
Guest:all of the power and accessibility of a computer when I was young.
Guest:Because my punk rock bands, when we would go, I dropped out of high school and I jumped in a van, I started touring, and we would go on the road and no one would have our record because we were fucking hand-stuffing those sleeves and selling them out of the back of the van.
Marc:And having some guy do the art for you.
Guest:Yeah, and so it was like, I couldn't get some kid in Norway my fucking single that I made with my friends unless I stuffed it in a fucking package and mailed it to him.
Guest:It took two weeks.
Guest:Now it's a fucking click of a button.
Marc:The distribution element is also great.
Guest:It's unbelievable.
Guest:But it's sort of the same thing with recording, though, because now a kid can get a recording program and a computer and a couple microphones and record his band in his living room.
Guest:But what I'm trying to explain in Sound City is that the magic moments that are made musically happen when a performer embraces and accepts their human element, which I consider to be like the imperfections.
Guest:And that's the personality of playing.
Marc:And also, I think innately, when somebody approaches a computer to make a song and can correct the tone and can manufacture sounds, that it feeds the insecurity of the artist.
Marc:Somebody might not feel confident, so they're like, I can do this and make it feel perfectly, but the integrity of that is limited.
Guest:Oh, dude, I mean, you know what happens now is people walk into the studio and they do two takes and they go, yeah, just throw in the tools.
Yeah.
Guest:Like the second Foo Fighters record, which was made when Pro Tools was available.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:We did it with this producer named Gil Norton, an English dude who made all the Pixies records.
Guest:He's great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He had me doing fucking guitar takes, like 40 fucking takes in a row to get it perfect.
Marc:No Pro Tools.
Marc:No, it's a tape.
Guest:Or I played drums on that record too.
Guest:I'm like, oh, this will be a cinch.
Marc:Yeah, no.
Guest:From fucking...
Guest:noon to midnight on one song right i looked like arnold schwarzenegger by the end of that i was just like i told him like what are you fucking hearing that i'm not hearing dude what do you say i can't remember it's something that i didn't agree with probably right right but um you know
Guest:You can work to make it sound the way it sounds.
Marc:Right, but what you just said is that even in the process, if you do that process, if you follow the organic process, there's going to be an arc of emotion that's going to happen by being driven by a producer who's like, no, and you're like, fuck you.
Marc:You're like, use that.
Guest:Well, there's some sort of honor or dignity in fucking being badass.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But at the same time, accepting the way you sound.
Guest:Like when someone calls me to play drums on a record, I know why they call me.
Guest:You mean everybody?
Guest:When everyone calls me to play drums on the record, if I have time.
Guest:Because you know what?
Guest:You know why they call me?
Guest:Because they want me to sound like me.
Guest:Which is fucking great, because I don't get called to sound like the dude from Rush.
Guest:No, you're not a studio guy.
Guest:Because I can't do that.
Guest:You're Dave Grohl.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I go in and go, the dude from Rush.
Guest:That's what they want.
Guest:The dude from Rush.
Guest:Whatever.
Guest:Where's your gong?
Guest:You didn't bring the gong?
Guest:So that's the thing, is I go in knowing, like, okay, I'll just play like me.
Guest:And it's not fucking, I'm not the best drummer.
Guest:I'm not the dude from Rush.
Guest:I'm not the best drummer in the world.
Marc:But when you watch you drum, you're sort of like, you know, you're like, it's almost like you're driving something.
Guest:Because I don't give a fuck.
Guest:dude you just want to rock i just want to fucking go off honestly like that's how i play yes you know how i learned how to play the drums what i didn't have a drum set right i had records yeah and i had a pair of drumsticks that were marching sticks that i stole from a friend of mine big fucking trees fucking huge dude they're enormous bottom size baseball bat
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I set up pillows on the floor.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I'd sit on my knees on the floor.
Guest:There's a pillow in front of me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'd set up next to my bed.
Guest:So my bed was like, there were like the Toms.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There was a chair here that was a hi-hat.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I would listen to fucking Bad Brains records or I'd listen to the Ramones or I'd listen to DRI or like really fast punk rock shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So because those sticks were so fat and because those pillows had no like play to them at all.
Guest:And because I was playing the fastest punk rock ever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Every time I got onto a drum set, I would break everything.
Guest:Because you had to pound the pillow.
Guest:It was like running with weights on your legs.
Guest:So when I actually sat down at an actual drum set, so that's the only way I really know how to break the drums.
Marc:So no one's going, we want the subtle growl sound.
Guest:Yeah, I'm not getting asked to make jazz records, you know what I mean?
Guest:So that was it, but guitar was the first instrument that you played?
Guest:Guitar was the first instrument.
Guest:And that's where the whole Beatles thing came from, because I got one of those old Silvertone guitars with the amp in the case.
Marc:What, at a garage sale?
Marc:I mean, those were long.
Guest:No, my mother was an English teacher, and there was another teacher at school that was selling hers.
Marc:But that was already 40 years old by the time you were a kid.
Guest:Yeah, that was like a 62 or a 63.
Marc:Right, you opened the top and the thing, you pulled the guitar out.
Guest:Yeah, and the guitar is that really cool black and white.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, and the case was like heavy, made of wood.
Marc:Well, yeah, the case was heavy because there was a speaker amp in there.
Guest:But the guitar was made of like balsa wood.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, it was like so thin.
Guest:So fucking cheap.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And yeah, so I got the guitar...
Guest:and the beatles complete anthology songbook at the same time with the chord charts because i can't run into micartney on the cover well this one was black okay yeah and so or blue maybe yeah but then i had that and i had the two greatest hits the early years and the later years the blue and the red and the red one yeah
Guest:So I would just sit around and fucking play along to those.
Guest:And that's how I learned how to play guitar.
Guest:And that's how I started understanding composition.
Guest:Like, oh yeah, this is the verse.
Guest:And oh, this is the chorus.
Marc:And that's where you got all those pop chords.
Guest:And that's where a lot of the chords came from.
Guest:And I didn't really have a teacher to play drums or to fucking do that.
Marc:So you were just dealing with the fret diagrams.
Guest:Yeah, those things, those little chord chart things.
Guest:That's enough, dude, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't want to fucking go to school.
Guest:I hate school.
Marc:So when you were a kid, though, what was the situation?
Marc:How did you get turned on to music?
Marc:What did your family?
Guest:My father is a classically trained flautist.
Guest:Were you close to him?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's the smarty pants with perfect pitch and the whole deal.
Marc:But did you go to classical performances and stuff?
Marc:What do you fucking think, dude?
Marc:Of course, man.
Marc:Come on.
Guest:One or two?
Guest:No.
Guest:Well, okay.
Guest:When I was young, we had music class.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I played the trombone.
Marc:You played a trombone?
Guest:In school, yeah.
Guest:It was hard.
Guest:Heavy, dude.
Guest:I had to walk to school that sucked balls.
Marc:Like, how old were you?
Marc:Like, nine?
Guest:Fucking, yeah, eight, seven.
Marc:So you were the guy with the case, drag.
Guest:My friend Larry played the tuba, and he lived even farther away than me.
Marc:Fucking tuba.
Guest:Fucking poor Larry.
Marc:So you never went to like, because in terms of like sound, like I imagine classical music at that age would have been mind-blowing, but you just avoided it?
Guest:Well, you know, the music, like we were talking about AM radio, the music that really got into my head at first was AM radio in the car.
Guest:So this is mid-70s.
Marc:Mid-70s.
Marc:So you're talking Andy Gibb, Gary Stewart.
Guest:Talking Andrew Gold and Phoebe Snow and Helen Reddy and Carly Simon and 10CC.
Guest:All that AM Gold shit, man.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And I remember Dreamweaver on AM for some reason.
Marc:And Shadow Dancing by Andy Gibb and then all those other... Yeah, those ones you were talking about.
Guest:Because those, I mean, honestly, and that was... Baker Street.
Guest:Baker, Jerry Rafferty.
Marc:Dude, right down the line.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Jerry Rafferty's a genius.
Marc:I mean, that shit, like that Baker Street was haunting.
Guest:See, there's something about that era, too, of music where...
Guest:um you had all of these incredibly uh gifted songwriters who were really proficient in their playing so someone like andrew gold or even like you know like the eagles or linda ronstadt's band before they were the eagles so they were like all great players andrew gold dude
Guest:I swear to God, not a lot of... Andrew Gold was the one that sang Lonely Boy.
Guest:He sang Thank You For Being A Friend.
Guest:And he sang this song called Never Let Her Slip Away.
Guest:Dude, this song was not a huge hit in America.
Guest:It's the most beautiful piece of music ever written.
Guest:the keyboard sound is a little bit like sort of maybe like so you might call it cheesy yeah it's not cool anymore yeah why don't you cover it melodically why don't you cover it it is we're going to just so you know just so you know i'm just i'll say it right now i have this idea for a single nobody's allowed to fucking take it it's called solid gold okay it's a seven inch single yeah
Guest:Lonely Boy on one side, Never Let Her Slip Away on the other.
Guest:Two Andrew Gold songs.
Guest:Gold vinyl, just a fucking gold cover.
Guest:Yeah, we talked about doing it recently, but we had to wait.
Marc:Is Andrew Gold still alive?
Guest:No, he passed away recently.
Guest:Family would be happy.
Guest:But dude, Never Let Her Slip Away is maybe one of the most melodically sophisticated songs I've ever heard in my entire life.
Guest:You have to hear it.
Guest:It'll blow your fucking mind.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:It'll blow your mind.
Marc:I'm sure I feel like I must have heard it.
Guest:You might not have because I never had.
Guest:I was like, and I love Andrew Gold and I heard it and it was like, it was about a year and a half ago.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it was like an epiphany.
Guest:It was like a mind blowing, life changing experience that I heard this one song like, how come I've never heard this before?
Marc:We might not have been old enough to hear it.
Marc:You might have heard it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But I don't think it was huge in America.
Guest:I think it might have done well in India.
Marc:But do you ever notice that about music where you, like, as you get older, some of the songs that you thought were shit or cheesy or whatever, it's sort of like, oh my God, this is fucking sweet.
Marc:Now you love them?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Or just you, like, I don't get Steely Dan.
Marc:Or you didn't appreciate it at the time.
Marc:I'm not a big enough man or a nerdy enough dude to understand.
Marc:You're not smart enough.
Guest:Just say it.
Marc:I'm not smart enough to understand Steely Dan.
Guest:You gotta be smart to understand Steely Dan.
Marc:Yeah, I'm still like, I can understand some jazz and shit.
Marc:That's a joke, by the way.
Marc:I'm just kidding.
Marc:It's an active fight I have going with myself.
Guest:Dude, have you heard the new Bowie song?
Marc:No.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Seriously?
Guest:It just came out yesterday.
Guest:When I saw that.
Marc:Like yesterday.
Guest:No big run up to it.
Guest:It was like, oh, new Bowie song.
Marc:What's the song like?
Guest:Tony Visconti produced it.
Marc:Oh, like old timey Bowie.
Marc:Visconti is a big guy, right?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:The song's about Berlin.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:And it's heartbreaking, dude.
Guest:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like heroes heartbreaking?
Guest:More.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:I was playing it and our drummer Taylor said, dude, is he going to die?
Guest:I'm not kidding.
Guest:You have to hear it.
Guest:It's fucking the most beautiful thing you've ever heard in your entire life.
Marc:People have been saying that about the last four Dylan albums, so I tell them not to.
Marc:It's beautiful.
Marc:It's really beautiful.
Marc:Well, it's something about artists who have a distinct voice.
Marc:When they see that light at the end of the... When they see the tunnel, you know, the intensity of it, if they can capture it, is pretty... You've got to hear it.
Marc:It's mind-blowing.
Guest:But, I mean, that's the thing.
Guest:You know, there... Yeah, there's...
Guest:I think the whole disco sucks era.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Disco sucks.
Guest:Disco sucks.
Guest:It's fucking digging the life out of music.
Guest:It's not real.
Guest:It's disco sucks.
Guest:And yeah, I mean, I didn't listen to disco.
Guest:I was listening to that other shit.
Guest:But I listen to disco now and I'm like, well, wait, what's wrong with disco?
Guest:I put it on in the morning when I make it breakfast and the kids dance and I fucking, those drummers were amazing.
Guest:The disco drummers were fucking amazing.
Marc:I gotta be honest, man.
Marc:Occasionally I'll listen to Don't Leave Me This Way.
Marc:You got to, dude.
Marc:Disco's great.
Marc:That bass line in Don't Leave Me This Way.
Marc:What's wrong with disco?
Marc:Yeah, that bass line.
Guest:First of all, and also, I don't believe in guilty pleasures.
Guest:If you fucking like something, like it.
Guest:That's a problem with our generation is that residual punk rock guilt.
Guest:Like, you're not supposed to like that.
Guest:That's not fucking cool.
Guest:That's not fucking cool.
Guest:You're not supposed to do that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When I was young, it's like, dude, I listened to... When I was young and I brought 2112 home from my cousin's house in third grade, I was afraid to play it for anybody for two reasons.
Guest:One, because I didn't want them thinking I liked a band that the singer's voice sounded like that.
Guest:And also, remember that picture where they're wearing white kimonos?
Guest:The one dude has the craziest man camel toe.
Guest:You can see one of his nuts on each side of the seam in his white satin pants, you know?
Guest:nothing cool about rush but there is and i should have been able to fucking stand there in third grade and said this is my this is who i am fuck you because that's what it's all about and i think that people should be able to say that like don't fucking think it's not cool to like britney spears toxic it is cool to like britney spears toxic why the fuck not fuck you that's who i am god damn it so that whole guilty pleasure thing is like
Guest:full of fucking shit but sometimes that turns into that's who i am now i'm not sure what's going to happen in three years you're right yeah i don't worship the devil anymore i still listen to slayer i'm not so happy i was that guy then i just want to apologize i'm not as satanic as i was excited but that's i mean i think that's that's a that's an important part of appreciating music is realizing that you're allowed to like anything
Guest:yeah you're allowed to like any music but so you start with the beatles learning guitar and then you just like you know went straight into like punk rock bands for years i mean yeah well i mean it kind of went from you know my first love was edgar winters frankenstein uh yeah and it was it's an instrumental yeah yeah and that was my first favorite song that's where i realized like very catchy oh my god i love music that was that yeah that song yeah
Guest:Then it got into the Beatles, and then I had a KISS poster and a record.
Marc:One KISS record?
Guest:What did I have?
Guest:I had Rock and Roll Over.
Guest:I had KISS Alive 2.
Marc:You weren't a KISS Army guy, though, were you?
Marc:No, not really.
Marc:You just had a few?
Marc:I had a couple.
Marc:And then when was the record where you're like, oh, where is this happening?
Marc:When was the record delivered to you where you got the record and you're like, holy fuck.
Marc:That was... This is my life now.
Guest:You know, honestly, that was the soundtrack to a movie.
Guest:Which one?
Guest:Decline of Western Civilization, the punk rock.
Guest:The punk rock one.
Marc:The very first decline.
Marc:That's crazy.
Guest:I heard the record before I saw the movie.
Marc:Right.
Guest:I had the record for years before I saw the movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that record changed my life.
Marc:With just the drive, just sort of like...
Guest:Well, I had a cousin who lived in Evanston, Illinois, just outside of Chicago.
Guest:I grew up in Virginia, and we would go visit them every summer.
Guest:My cousin Tracy, she's a couple years older than me, and we showed up one summer to the house, and my aunt was like, Tracy, they're here!
Guest:And she came downstairs, and she had on fucking Doc Martens.
Guest:She had fucking bondage pants.
Marc:Oh, bondage pants, yeah.
Guest:She had shaved the skinhead girl haircut.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:One side or both sides.
Guest:She had like the bangs, but then with nothing else.
Guest:Or something like that.
Guest:And I looked at it.
Guest:I'd only seen punk rock on Quincy or Chips.
Guest:I was like, oh my God, look.
Guest:She's fucking.
Guest:And she was like, yeah, come upstairs.
Guest:I went to her room and she had this unbelievable record collection.
Guest:Things that are worth thousands of dollars.
Guest:Like the first Misfits single.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:all these bands from all over the world and she played me the decline which i think had just come out at the time and she played me um the bad brains and dead kennedys and minor threat and uh and i was listening to this music like oh my and she had a band yeah she had a band tracy was the singer of a band and the singer and the guitar player of her band jason yeah was my age yeah
Guest:Actually, I think he was younger than me.
Guest:How old were you?
Guest:13 or 14?
Guest:I was like fucking 12 or something like that.
Guest:And they played in clubs and they wrote their own songs and they were fucking punk rock.
Guest:And I was like, oh my God.
Guest:And then she was giving me these fanzines from all over the world.
Guest:And I was just like, fuck all that other shit.
Guest:Fuck that.
Guest:I want to do this.
Guest:I don't want a white jumpsuit.
Guest:No.
Guest:So I fucking come home.
Guest:Kimono.
Guest:I come home and play this shit for my friends.
Guest:Like, you guys, this exists.
Guest:And they're all like, fuck.
Guest:fuck you this sounds like shit i'm like no this is amazing you know so i had my one other friend yeah yeah and uh that's where i realized like okay fuck it i am doing this myself yeah so i started writing songs by myself and about my dog or my teacher or whatever and where were you living springfield virginia
Guest:yeah and uh and so you were the weirdo for sure yeah yeah there was no other i used to fucking do morning announcements at my school and play like a black flag song to start off the fucking thing how long did that last well my mom was the head of the english department so you had some pull yeah a little bit of leeway i knew some people so when was the first band that really took hold
Guest:The first band where we wrote our own music and shit was this band called Freak Baby.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And we played at parties and proms and crap like that.
Marc:How many songs did you know?
Marc:Could you do a full set?
Marc:Yeah, eight, ten songs.
Marc:That's like a set.
Marc:And then when did it all sort of lock in?
Marc:You weren't a drug guy, right?
Guest:No, I took acid and smoked a bunch of weed before I was 20.
Marc:How many times did it take you to stop...
Guest:You know, I got out before I had a bad one, so I'm okay.
Guest:I got out before I absolutely lost my life.
Guest:The last one was a little weird.
Guest:I got shocked by a percolator.
Guest:I didn't come down for a couple days.
Guest:Did you understand electricity in a new way?
Guest:It was a little weird.
Guest:I was afraid that something was going to happen to me.
Guest:My DNA zipper was going to just fucking unwind.
Guest:You were going to become Shocker.
Guest:Wasn't that the one you could feed on electricity?
Guest:Yeah, who Powder, the guy that channels lightning.
Guest:Yeah, I got out kind of early.
Guest:I didn't do like Coke or Speed or heroin or any of that shit.
Marc:Oh, that's good.
Guest:That was not my trip.
Marc:Those are the, just a lot of pot.
Guest:They'll get you.
Guest:I was more of like an experienced kind of dude.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I didn't want to go to sleep and I didn't want to fucking talk.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:I just wanted to laugh at everything.
Guest:Why do we got to make it bad?
Guest:It works.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so, but yeah, but so I kind of knew in high school that I wasn't going to become the president.
Marc:Did you do well or you didn't?
Guest:Not really.
Guest:I mean, it was weird because I had the high school that I went to.
Marc:And your mom was a teacher.
Guest:At this fucking school that I went to.
Guest:And my sister was a senior there.
Guest:And all the fucking teachers in the high school, I had either mowed their lawn or fucking painted their apartment or babysat their kids.
Marc:What was your mom's name?
Guest:Virginia.
Marc:That's Virginia's voice.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:That's Dave Grohl.
Guest:I knew all of them.
Guest:And so I was the weirdo in high school, but I never got my ass kicked because I just knew everybody.
Marc:Well, you have a good disposition.
Marc:I suppose.
Guest:You're a diplomatic character.
Guest:That's me.
Guest:Maybe I should be the fucking president.
Guest:No, but I knew the jocks and I knew the fucking stoners.
Marc:I was the same way where you could exist in all worlds for a minute.
Guest:And you could navigate.
Marc:Yeah, right, right.
Marc:You don't want to hang around the jocks too long because it would probably go bad.
Guest:You could get your ass kicked at a kegger.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Just enough to make them know that you're a funny guy.
Guest:Right, yeah.
Guest:He's okay.
Guest:Yeah, we don't understand him.
Guest:Whatever.
Guest:Fucking dork.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So but I sort of knew that and also music became an obsession with me because I wasn't taking lessons and I had learned how to do it by myself.
Guest:There was so much that I didn't understand.
Guest:I felt like I had to learn how to do it myself.
Guest:So it was kind of like a Rubik's Cube.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It was like, OK, I really want to figure out this one guitar part.
Guest:So I would take mushrooms and listen to fucking a Zeppelin record and try to figure out the solo to In the Light or whatever.
Guest:Did you do it?
Guest:sometimes well of course exactly i sound amazing so um but uh i'm better than jimmy page right now but i kind of also knew that i mean that was one of the cool things about that punk rock scene in the 80s was that because you had to do everything yourself it was completely independent of any sort of like corporate
Guest:Structure it was all the people doing it for themselves if you wanted to go on tour You had to book your own tour if you wanted to fucking and buy your own van Yeah, if you wanted to make a record you had to stuff the sleeves yourself right to fucking put them on consignment It wasn't like you know, it was almost I mean you were proud of it I think you wish that it were easier But you of course you were proud because at the end of the day.
Guest:It's like I did this Yeah, but corporate rock sucks, right?
Guest:Well, of course.
Guest:I mean that was the whole thing like you can't tell me what to do I fucking done it myself so so
Guest:that became this foundation for the way I looked at life.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, you can do it yourself.
Guest:The reward of playing music or the reward of living should just be
Guest:in itself.
Marc:So you knew that that early?
Guest:Kinda, yeah.
Guest:I mean, because my mom was a public school teacher, we didn't have shit, man.
Guest:I grew up in a house smaller than this fucking room.
Guest:They weren't together?
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, he was in town, and he's a good dad.
Guest:He's a brilliant dude.
Guest:I was raised in a very lower middle class upbringing.
Guest:Well, they're brilliant fucking people and good people.
Guest:They were hardworking Midwestern Ohio sons and daughters of steel workers and fucking civic civil engineers.
Marc:So you ended up in Virginia later.
Guest:Yeah, my dad is a journalist, and so we moved to D.C.
Guest:right around the time of Watergate, and he worked for Scripps Howard, and he was a PR guy.
Guest:He wrote speeches for people, and he was a campaign manager.
Marc:So the flautist thing didn't stick?
Guest:You know, it's hard to fucking keep the heat on playing the flute.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Guest:I think because he is a practical and smart guy.
Guest:Did he have flute time?
Guest:Well, no.
Guest:The other thing was that he was such a heavy musician that he stopped playing the flute because he didn't have six hours a day to practice.
Guest:So when I started playing the drums, it was kind of like...
Guest:don't just call yourself a musician because you play an instrument.
Guest:You have to fucking kick ass.
Guest:You gotta be badass.
Guest:And that was a huge inspiration.
Guest:Like, oh yeah, I guess you're right.
Guest:When someone calls, you don't want to impose on anyone.
Guest:You don't want to walk in and be like, listen to this song.
Guest:You want to be fucking good.
Marc:So you got that work ethic from your father's broken heart.
Marc:Yeah, that's where it came from.
Guest:Thanks, Dad.
Guest:But no, at the same time, it was like,
Guest:I understood at an early age because I didn't have that.
Guest:Like I hate life.
Guest:Gen X mentality growing up.
Guest:You don't seem like a dark dude.
Guest:I'm not really that dark.
Guest:I think you, there might be a little bit.
Marc:You've, you've obviously hung with some fairly dark characters.
Guest:I've,
Guest:I know a few.
Guest:I've known a few, but you know what?
Guest:One coming over today.
Guest:Here's the thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My motto in life is it could be worse.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I worked at the fucking furniture warehouse and I fucking pushed wheelbarrows of dirt to make a flagstone porch in your backyard.
Guest:And I don't want to do that anymore.
Marc:I'm going to fucking do this.
Marc:And so, um, but did your dad, did you, did he have this, did you sense it?
Marc:Like the, was the flute thing, did it weigh heavy on him or was it just done?
Guest:You know, we never really talked about it that much.
Guest:Is he still around?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:You should talk about it.
Guest:Yeah, maybe.
Guest:But my mom, we sort of knew early on that we were happy, but we didn't really have much.
Guest:So in life, I didn't aspire to become the biggest lawyer in Washington, D.C.
Guest:Was she concerned, though?
Guest:No, because I think because my mother had dealt with kids like me for 30 years in the classroom, she could pick out which ones were gonna make it and which ones weren't in life, honestly.
Guest:Part of being a teacher.
Marc:Even the rebellious ones.
Marc:It's like, well, that one's gone bad, but I think he's gonna find his way.
Guest:You know who her favorite fucking student was?
Guest:Who?
Guest:The guy that sold me acid.
Guest:She never knew.
Guest:She's like, you know, the smartest one in class is fucking blah, blah, blah.
Guest:I'm like, mom, you know, he's the one I was buying acid from the whole time.
Guest:What'd she say?
Guest:Well, this is years later.
Guest:She's like, you're kidding.
Guest:I knew it.
Guest:I knew it.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:But you know, that's the thing is like, kids don't do drugs.
Guest:The thing was that she had a pretty good understanding of people and kids.
Guest:And so she looked at me and realized, you know,
Guest:I'm not a total idiot.
Guest:There's something in there that's going to keep me from just winding up on Skid Row.
Guest:So she was always relatively supportive?
Guest:Well, you know, when it was time to drop out, she was like, okay.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Get a job.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because she knew.
Guest:She must have been mad.
Marc:What's that?
Marc:She must have been a little mad.
Guest:Yeah, probably.
Guest:I mean, I'm sure, you know, I'm a parent and the last thing in the world I want is for my kid to say, I'm going to leave school and I'm going to go on tour with the punk rock band in Europe and I'm going to sit for two months and send you one postcard.
Guest:Like you don't want your kid to say that unless, you know, you have some, some faith or some understanding in your child that like,
Guest:God, they might be okay.
Marc:Do you have an older sister?
Marc:I do.
Marc:Just the two of you?
Marc:Just the two of us, yeah.
Marc:How'd she turn out, all right?
Marc:She's great.
Guest:I mean, she's brilliant, too.
Guest:She plays music as well, and she taught herself how to do it.
Guest:She graduated, and she went to college.
Guest:So she had one good one?
Guest:yeah exactly she's like well at least i have lisa um but but that's the thing is like after college and all of that you know what she did she started a coffee shop and she had a coffee shop in north carolina for years and you know and then she went and she worked for warner chapel music for years yeah um and you know she's a pilates instructor she's a human being it's like that was the thing is i never felt like
Guest:I didn't feel like I had to subscribe to that.
Marc:You didn't feel like you were throwing something away.
Guest:No, but I also didn't believe in that conventional root of wisdom or survival.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Because I bet you I could come up with something that could still put food on the table.
Guest:I could always push the wheelbarrow.
Marc:I could always fucking... Get some insurance.
Marc:Protect yourself.
Guest:All my friends back in Virginia who I've known since I was five years old.
Guest:Dude, I mean, you know, they're...
Guest:They did what I was going to do.
Guest:They got a job in town and they wound up getting married and they wound up having kids and they live where we grew up and that was what I was going to do.
Marc:And I didn't think it was a job.
Guest:That was the thing that I just thought would happen.
Marc:Are you close with any of those guys?
Marc:Absolutely, still.
Marc:And they're okay, most of them?
Marc:Fuck yeah.
Guest:you know some of them died but you know whatever yeah yeah yeah but yeah i mean that's the thing is that um most of them work for me now no but you know brought him out yeah yeah gotta do that that's great well i mean good you salvaged the board that turned your life around and you brought your friends out here to work for you you're like sometimes it's like the growl plant the growl plantation over here let's not call it that
Marc:I meant it in a good way.
Marc:They're obviously not slaves.
Marc:No.
Marc:No, but let's do it.
Marc:How about the commune?
Marc:I like that.
Marc:It's more of a cult.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, a cult.
Marc:But all right, so there's something you said at the beginning of the movie that I found sort of powerful, and it was sort of in passing.
Marc:that uh you know in that in the opening monologue the narration where you know you're basically talking about you know committing your life to this dream right and knowing that you know that the excitement of you know playing you know different places every night and also knowing that the people you're playing with may or may not be here tomorrow or whatever but it was sort of like you let it hang there it wasn't like they're gonna quit the band but they might just disappear right
Marc:One way or the other.
Guest:I've had so many friends disappear.
Guest:Some of them have died and some of them just gone home.
Marc:Yeah, I'm done.
Guest:That's how I joined Nirvana.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I was with my punk rock band, Scream.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And we had a bass player, Skeeter.
Guest:I love him to death.
Guest:We're still friends.
Guest:Is he working here?
Guest:No.
Guest:He's back in D.C.
Guest:I think he's in jail, actually.
Guest:But anyway, so he just left.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And I mean, we were living on seven dollars a day and he got a bus ticket home.
Guest:So we were stuck here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Me and Pete and Franz.
Guest:You were out here?
Guest:We were here.
Guest:We were staying with Pete and Franz's sister.
Guest:Sabrina was a mud wrestler at the Hollywood Tropicana.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so she lived in this nice house in Laurel Canyon with some other mud wrestlers.
Guest:It could be worse.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That's where we got stuck.
Guest:And so.
Guest:So.
Guest:But Skeet just left.
Marc:But you couldn't really argue with him, right?
Marc:I mean, how was that fun?
Guest:Well, I mean, we were in heaven because we were living the dream.
Guest:We were in a house full of fucking mud wrestlers for $7 a day.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:And then I called a friend and said, hey, when you come back down here, we're stuck here because Skeeter bailed and we got nothing.
Guest:And he said, well, have you ever heard of Nirvana?
Guest:They're looking for a drummer.
Guest:And that's how I joined that band.
Guest:But what I was trying to say in that introduction, in that narration, was that when you're young, and when you're young, you still have...
Guest:That ambition to follow dreams.
Guest:And it's kind of reckless.
Guest:And you don't know what's going to happen next.
Guest:And you don't really think about it either.
Guest:And that's what's really exciting.
Guest:This is what I'm doing.
Guest:When you're young, I think your sense of consequence is maybe less formed than it is when you're older.
Guest:Or forethought.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so, because who gives a fuck?
Guest:You know what?
Guest:The fuck tomorrow.
Guest:I'm living right now.
Guest:Right now.
Guest:Out of this box.
Guest:And that's a healthy way to live.
Guest:I mean, it's a hard way to survive, but it's nice to have those moments in life just to celebrate right fucking now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was the thing.
Guest:And I think that could apply to every single musician in the movie.
Guest:When I say we were just kids, but we had these songs and we had these dreams.
Guest:So we threw them all into the back of an old van and just started driving.
Guest:I bet you John Fogarty could say the same thing.
Guest:I bet you fucking Lindsey Buckingham could say this.
Guest:Neil Young could say the same thing.
Guest:Everybody could say the same fucking thing.
Marc:I think Neil said it.
Marc:Yeah, there you go.
Guest:Driving in that car.
Guest:Oh, dude, there was so much shit we couldn't fit into the movie.
Guest:Can you imagine?
Guest:Is it going to be on DVD extras or what?
Guest:There's extras, but I mean, there's 1,500 hours of interviews with everybody.
Marc:Dude, have you listened to fucking Creedence on vinyl lately?
Guest:Not on vinyl.
Guest:Dude.
Guest:I mean, dude, that's the thing.
Guest:There's another great quote when Jim Scott, the famous engineer, says, you know what?
Guest:When you turn it up to 10, you crank this board, you know what you get?
Guest:You get credence, dude.
Guest:And I knew exactly what he meant.
Guest:I'm like, whoa, really?
Guest:That was their board, too?
Guest:No.
Guest:But he came in and recorded with Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash and Petty.
Marc:I saw he was on a flight of mine, and it was one of those moments where I never know what the fuck to say to people.
Marc:And he looked good.
Marc:He seems to be fairly grounded.
Marc:And I just said, I love your work.
Marc:Are you wearing flannel?
Marc:Probably.
Marc:And he's like, thanks, man.
Marc:Sometimes there's part of you that thinks, I'm not going to say anything.
Marc:Then there's this part of you that's like, I'm going to go make him know who I am.
Marc:And then there's just a part of you that's like, if I were a dude who does what, you know, I do what I do.
Marc:Anytime someone says, I love your shit, it's good.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:You never annoy him.
Guest:You never know.
Guest:That's the thing is that when you...
Guest:I mean, hopefully every artist feels that way, that someone will come up.
Guest:Because some people ask me, do you get sick of that?
Guest:I'm like, no, it's flattering.
Guest:Why would I get sick of people saying that they like me?
Guest:I'm glad people don't come up and go, you know what?
Guest:Your band sucks shit, man.
Guest:You can't play.
Guest:Wouldn't that suck?
Guest:No, it's awful.
Marc:No, it's great.
Marc:You can get that on Twitter if you're diligent enough.
Guest:Well, yeah, because they're not in your face and you're not going to put their teeth down their throat.
Marc:Right, they'll go to some comment boards.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Well, one of the most touching moments of the movie, really, you know, and I was laughing a lot because I got, you know, my musical taste spans, you know, a lot of time.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, like even with Carl Perkins, I was like, yeah, I was as excited as Tom Petty was.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, I love Tom Petty and I love really everyone who was in the movie.
Marc:Even Rick Springfield, like who I pretty much dismissed.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Was so...
Marc:vulnerable and sort of open about his emotions in relation to the place, because he was really their first star.
Guest:Yes, he is the first one that they had, that they managed and did the production deal with.
Marc:It's sort of a heartbreaking story, but when you get into the studio with him to play that song, you could just tell, it's like, I still got it in me.
Guest:Well, here's the thing, is that I think Rick's story, Rick Springfield's story, is different than everyone else's, because
Guest:had that whole general hospital thing not happened yeah i think people would have thought of him in a different way you know he was sort of pop star as opposed to like yeah well i mean pretty boy i think that he was he was sort of um seen as a pop star you know he's a rocker like deep down that guy's a fucking rocker he was playing great sounded great in that dude you should fucking i mean you know we're gonna do these shows do you know about the shows we're doing
Guest:We'll talk about the album and the shows.
Guest:Okay, so anyway, but when we jammed with him, he has the enthusiasm of a 16-year-old kid.
Guest:He rips guitar just like any other fucking rocker you've ever met in your life.
Guest:And when he does it, he does it for real.
Guest:So because he had these real pop hits, I think people think that it's in some way, like it doesn't hold as much weight as someone like Petty or Fogarty.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:I don't know if I agree with that, because when you listen to the songs that Love is Alright or... Jesse's Girl.
Guest:Jesse's Girl.
Guest:I've Done Everything For You.
Guest:Dude, that is a Buzzcocks song.
Guest:Listen to that song.
Guest:The structure and the melody and the arrangement.
Guest:It's a fucking Buzzcocks song.
Guest:They had different haircuts, but it's the same fucking music.
Guest:So when you listen to it now, I swear to God, if he re-recorded these songs with the Foo Fighters today, you would hear it on K-Rock.
Guest:It would be fucking on K-Rock.
Guest:It just would be.
Guest:As musicians, what we all do comes from the same place.
Guest:might have a different name, might have a different haircut, whatever the fuck, but it all comes from the same place.
Guest:And so that's why when I talk about, it comes from the garage.
Guest:It comes from being the kid that bought a guitar at a yard sale.
Guest:It comes from being- Raw honesty.
Marc:Just driving.
Marc:Well, it should be.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:That's rock and roll.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so it doesn't matter.
Guest:That's why I don't believe in guilty pleasures.
Guest:That's why when I hear this new band Bleeding Rainbows, you heard this fucking band?
Guest:They're great, man.
Guest:And I listen to them and it's like, you look at them and you're like, oh, they're that kind of band.
Guest:Or you hear this other music, you go, oh, they're that kind of band.
Guest:It's like,
Marc:fuck that like why can't you listen to the zombies and listen to craft work and listen to fucking you know well sometimes it just comes down to what you're saying before is that you know if you don't have that moment with the kimono rush like you know you you can listen to whatever you want right exactly if you listen to whatever you want if it doesn't grab you yeah close your fucking eyes but you don't have to close your mind do it right exactly yeah i can listen to craft work a few times and be like hey i'm not sure what to do with this music
Marc:You know, I get it.
Marc:Yeah, so the computer.
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Marc:I can fuck a computer.
Marc:I can pretend I'm a robot.
Marc:Whatever I'm going to do.
Marc:But it didn't really grab me.
Marc:I force myself now.
Marc:There are things that I'm trying to pick up on.
Marc:Like, you know, I've got like I've been hearing about Captain Beefheart my entire life.
Marc:So now I'm sort of like, I got it.
Guest:That's a slippery slope.
Guest:Yeah, you got it.
Guest:I think I haven't even gotten there yet, dude.
Guest:I'm afraid.
Guest:It's true.
Guest:That's the same way I felt.
Guest:It's like, you know, I remember when I first listened to Pet Sounds and my friend Matt Sweeney said, oh, that's a slippery slope, dude.
Guest:Be careful.
Guest:I'm like, really?
Guest:It scared me.
Guest:I was afraid.
Guest:What's going to happen?
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:What do I do?
Guest:Well, you're going to end up in Brian Wilson's head if you're not careful.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Like in pajamas all day long with a beard.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Eating fried chicken in bed.
Marc:That's the weird thing about those songs.
Marc:It's like, oh, my God, they're so pretty, but why am I crying?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And with Beefheart, it's like I'm sitting there with these records going, it's in here.
Marc:The truth is in here.
Marc:And then all of a sudden you're in this weird place that feels a little wrong and a little dark.
Marc:You can't get out.
Marc:I can't get out.
Marc:I'm just kind of parsing it out.
Marc:I'm just being careful with it.
Guest:And then there's another great quote in the movie that Brad from Rage Against the Machine said.
Guest:One of the great things about music is you find an artist that you love and then find out who they loved.
Guest:And then find out who they loved.
Guest:Because the farther back you go in music, because things were maybe like there were more technical restrictions or it was a little more simple recording, that human element really does come through.
Marc:It's also amazing just how much of that search ends up with a black guy sitting on...
Guest:Oh, and always go about, yeah.
Marc:You're not going to wind up with old strings on a shitty guitar.
Guest:That's the guy.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:Oh, he started everything?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Where's he now?
Marc:Oh, he died a poor... Yeah, right.
Marc:Working in a hospital as a janitor.
Marc:But, all right, so when...
Marc:Oh, the moment that I was talking about, though, was like you got some this record that you're doing that goes along with the movie.
Marc:Right.
Marc:To sort of honor, you know, Sound City.
Marc:Like, it was very interesting.
Marc:You got Stevie Nicks in there and you did something with Rick Springfield, too.
Marc:You did something that's sort of hard to do is that you were able to let these artists, you know, be who they are now.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:and provided enough comfort in the music and enough support for them to sort of not look like they were trying again or trying too hard or living on their past.
Marc:Because you see some acts that are now in their 50s or whatever,
Marc:And they're just trying to churn out their catalog in order to sort of sustain themselves.
Marc:But there were moments when I was watching Stevie Nicks and Springfield in that movie where it's like, yeah, he's really in it.
Marc:And this is who this guy is now.
Marc:But the moment that I was talking about was that when you were, when McCartney was in there,
Marc:It was so wild to watch that because, like, clearly, you know, there wasn't a song prepared.
Marc:No.
Marc:And you were just sort of—and he was just sort of riffing, and all you had was—it was one chord at the beginning.
Guest:And then when he said, like— Dude, all I wanted was my picture taken next to him.
Guest:That would have been enough.
Guest:Right, but— Just a Polaroid picture.
Marc:Well, that was the amazing moment when you were like, you know, I was watching Chris, and he was being Chris.
Marc:Like, we were at Nirvana, and I was playing, and what's his name?
Marc:Pat.
Marc:Yeah, Pat was on guitar, and it's like, hey, it's Nirvana—
Marc:what's Paul McCartney doing here?
Marc:Paul McCartney's here?
Marc:I know.
Guest:That was such an honest moment, you know.
Guest:Well, you have to imagine that, first of all, Paul is the greatest dude.
Guest:He's a wonderful person.
Guest:he totally understands his role in the universe.
Guest:He really does.
Guest:And he's important in the universe.
Guest:He is very important in the universe.
Guest:Our universe wouldn't be the way it is if it weren't for Paul McCartney, and that is the absolute fucking truth.
Guest:So I think that he understands that in a very realistic sense.
Guest:He's not egotistical.
Guest:The first thing that Paul will do when you meet him is make you feel like you're okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I know it's hard for you.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I mean, obviously he understands that.
Guest:I remember reading an interview once where it said where this journalist followed him around for the fucking afternoon.
Guest:And, you know, when he walks into a bakery, everyone goes, oh, yay.
Guest:And then he goes to the gas station.
Guest:Everyone goes, yay.
Guest:And wherever he goes, people are like, yeah, it's public.
Guest:And it happens to him every fucking day, everywhere, every fucking day.
Guest:So the journalist says,
Guest:you understand that right yeah and paul mccartney says of course it's one of the great luxuries of my life everywhere i go people are happy can you imagine but i mean fortunately in return we have the beatles we have wings we have his beautiful music but i mean the thing about uh playing music with paul to me personally is that because he is the foundation the beatles are the foundation of my musical
Guest:being my fabric of my musical person and my knowledge exactly that when i sit down and i jam with him that i don't i don't forget that that's not lost like i know that that person is responsible for me playing music it's fucking him and that board is responsible for you being so rock so that day yeah
Guest:In the studio, I'm sharing this with Chris Novoselic and Pat Smear, and Paul is there.
Guest:I was thinking about that the entire time.
Guest:Circle of life.
Guest:It's like your life flashing before your eyes all day, and you don't die.
Guest:It was fucking incredible.
Guest:And it's on a fucking movie.
Guest:And on a record.
Marc:And you did it through that board.
Guest:Right there.
Guest:I mean, we did it right there in that room, and right there in that board.
Guest:And so...
Guest:To me, that's the thing that a lot of people don't get to see or understand in music is what goes on behind the performer.
Guest:And the vulnerability of a performer.
Marc:When Butch is like, there was that great line, it's like, oh yeah, Butch Vig's going to tell Paul McCartney what to do.
Guest:Paul goes, so we'll just try it and you let us know what you think.
Guest:And I go, yeah, Butch, just tell Paul McCartney what to do.
Guest:Because, I mean...
Guest:Can you imagine?
Marc:That's why Butch is so great, by the way, because... And he did the first, the big Nirvana record.
Marc:Yeah, he did Nevermind.
Marc:So, but that moment where Paul says, you know, what if we, you know, you guys decide to do the chord change, right?
Marc:And you elevate it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And then Paul does that fucking Hey Jude thing where he's like, let's take it one more.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's like, that's why he's Paul McCartney.
Guest:Dude, at one point we were sitting right here on the couch and Paul goes, he says, he goes, hey, go in there and just double what I've sang.
Guest:Just sing over what I sang.
Guest:And I go, okay, you want me to sing a harmony over it or just double what you've done?
Guest:He goes, no, no, no, just double what I've done.
Guest:Me and Lennon used to do it all the time.
Guest:It sounds great.
Guest:I was like, are you fucking kidding?
Guest:Who am I?
Guest:Who am I right now?
Guest:You won.
Guest:Honestly, if it were just that moment and there were no album and there were no movie and there was no board, any of that shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I would I would die a happy fucking man, you know?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Do you like when like when all this stuff is happening?
Marc:I mean, do you ever like I mean, because I see that you have a lot of emotion and respect for for for for where you are and how you got here and for the people that are responsible for that.
Marc:Do you ever miss Kurt?
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Oh my God, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I don't wanna get choked up.
Guest:It's hard, still sort of hard to talk about, but if you can imagine all of the great things to look forward to, that's what the Foo Fighters is to me.
Guest:To me, when Nirvana was over, it's like, oh God, am I over too?
Guest:What do I do with my life?
Guest:Fuck music.
Guest:What am I supposed to do?
Guest:So I sort of realized then, like, oh, right.
Guest:Music is what's going to help me get through stuff.
Guest:And it did.
Guest:But if you think about, like, look at how fucking amazing this experience has been.
Guest:So even on your worst day, on your darkest day...
Guest:You have to imagine that these things are still possible.
Guest:And, you know, of course, like, yeah, I think about it like, fuck, that sucks, you know?
Guest:So, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And like, you know, and just the frankness with which you talk about the process of the risk of rock and roll and the type of personalities that were in it.
Marc:I sometimes try to get a sense of people who were around people that shined that brightly but were clearly in trouble.
Marc:Was there an active concern during your time in Nirvana for him in that way?
Guest:Yeah, there was.
Guest:Everybody was concerned at one point or another.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:i mean you can't imagine the worst case scenario it's hard to imagine that the worst case scenario is actually a possibility um but you didn't see it ending like that did you no i don't think anybody ever did um but uh at the same time it's like god we were young yeah and it was such a weird world in those two and a half years really it wasn't long it was
Guest:from 1991 to 1994.
Guest:And we were kids, basically.
Guest:And we were caught in this crazy world.
Guest:And there were times where I would just back out of it.
Guest:I mean, being the drummer, it's like nobody recognized.
Guest:I could walk in the front door of a Nirvana gig
Guest:And fucking no one would know who I was.
Guest:My hair was in my face.
Guest:I played drums that were bigger than I was.
Marc:You were just arms.
Guest:Yeah, I was a fucking drummer.
Guest:So fortunately, I was able to live this perfectly comfortable existence outside of the band.
Guest:I could do that for a lot of reasons.
Guest:I could do that because of my childhood and because of my parents and because of
Guest:My connection to music, you know, my connection to music doesn't come from a dark place.
Guest:It comes from the love of life and the love of music.
Guest:So I fortunately had all of those things on my side.
Guest:You're grounded.
Marc:In a way.
Marc:And you weren't vulnerable.
Guest:I still spent too much money and fucked too many chicks.
Guest:But that's part of the life, I guess.
Guest:So that was my saving grace.
Guest:And I think that's... Without that, it might have been a different story for me.
Guest:I might have gone the other way.
Guest:I might not have survived.
Guest:That's the coolest thing.
Guest:When I see...
Guest:a lot of these musicians like when you go and you see the stones or you see paul or you see pearl jam yeah i mean pearl jam's a great example i look at them i'm like wow they survived yeah fucking a yeah they fucking made it yeah i'm sure the guys from warrant look at bon jovi and say wow he survived
Marc:how did that happen i don't know like how did he get through it's like we had some pretty beat eye of the needle right but you had some pretty beat up dudes in there for this record i mean right and they were great they survived and i mean dude from fear what's his name leaving that was another one of those moments where you showed the old footage of fear and they were great of course and then like you know you sort of pushed him to do what he does but now
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and it was right there.
Guest:Dude, that's the... I mean, honestly, I think that if you begin from that place... From where you are now.
Guest:If you begin from that place that is real... Yeah.
Guest:Then you'll end up there, too.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Like, it should be that way.
Guest:I'm sure that if someone...
Guest:stands in line for eight hours at a convention center and then they get on the TV show and then they win the record deal and then they make a record and then they fucking get dropped.
Guest:They're like, well, that's not fair.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Of course, starting from a different place, they might end up in a different place.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Guest:Go to the fucking yard sale, buy a fucking guitar, start a band with your fucking friends, get in the garage and fucking suck.
Yeah.
Guest:And work on it until you fucking make great music and become the biggest band in the world.
Guest:And when you become the biggest band in the world, you'd be like, God damn, wasn't the garage fun?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Can we go back there?
Guest:Let's build the garage.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:We build a garage in the backyard.
Guest:Fuck these stadiums.
Guest:Remember the garage?
Marc:Let's tour with the garage.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Thanks, Dave.
Marc:Okay, so the record is called?
Marc:Sound City.
Marc:Oh, so it's both the same name.
Guest:I think.
Guest:I'm not a businessman.
Guest:I don't even know.
Marc:I'll do some research.
Guest:I think it's Sound City.
Guest:All right.
Guest:And the movie, it comes out February 1st, and the record will be out in the middle of March, and we're doing all these shows.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Tell me about those shows.
Guest:So I had another idea that besides...
Guest:Okay, so you tell the story of Sound City.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But then you also make a record.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But then you gotta do some fucking gigs.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So I've invited all of the people from the movie, not only back to make the record, but to come and do some gigs, too.
Marc:Who is everybody?
Guest:Well, you've got, on the record, you have Paul McCartney, Trent Reznor, Alain Yohannes, Josh Homme, Chris Goss, Rick Springfield, Lee Ving, the guys from Rage Against the Machine, Timmy and Brad from Rage Against the Machine.
Guest:Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.
Guest:I hope I'm not leaving anyone out.
Guest:Rick Springfield.
Guest:And so I basically, Stevie Nicks, I blasted everybody emails and said, hey, we at least have to take the show on the road and do some gigs.
Marc:Who's in?
Guest:Almost everybody.
Guest:Everybody at some point.
Guest:Sounds like a festival.
Guest:And then even Fogarty too.
Guest:So what we want to do is we want to have a premiere and then that night at a theater downtown do a gig where we not only play the songs from the soundtrack but some catalog songs from each person.
Guest:That sounds like a two night thing though.
Guest:Wait till you see the fucking list of songs we have to learn this week.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Thanks for talking.
Marc:Okay, bye.
Marc:Okay, that's it.
Marc:I hope you enjoyed that.
Marc:Go see that movie, Sound City.
Marc:It's great.
Marc:I'm not getting paid to say that.
Marc:But it is great.
Marc:And also go to matadorrecords.com, pick up that Yola Tango vinyl or MP3 download and get all the special stuff there.
Marc:Go to wtfpod.com for all your WTF pod needs.
Marc:The tour is happening, so you can go look at my calendar over there.
Marc:You can kick in a few shekels.
Marc:You can get the app.
Marc:You can upgrade to the premium app.
Marc:You can leave a comment.
Marc:You can buy some merch.
Marc:You can look into our server, Lipson.
Marc:We've got a deal over there for that.
Marc:Got some new posters coming.
Marc:Holy fuck.
Marc:I am running out of steam.
Marc:You hear me?
Marc:Out of steam, my friends.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Let's try that again.
Marc:To go out on.
Marc:To go out on.
To go out on.
Marc:That was a little off.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:I'm a comedian.
Marc:Boomer lives!