Billy Corgan And The Songs That Inspired Him

38:49And what's amazing is I've had the experience now countless times, and I'm always kind of in awe of it, when people pull me aside and tell me, this song of yours, when my kid was born, when my grandmother died, that was the song that got me through. And I go back to that moment. And that's why it's always so humbling, because I understand, I don't want to say a song saves your life, but it save something keeps you keeps you there yeah well this song it's it's interesting you mentioned because i everybody knows this song so well it's such an iconic song i've always noticed and i don't i'm not sophisticated when it comes to music or mixing but it's so powerful the way it starts with that simple riff and then the way it's layered the way uh i guess if you're listening to it in stereo you hear there's the original riff and then these these complementary riffs that are coming in yeah uh on the acoustic guitar i think uh and they're and and the way they're coming in different channels and then suddenly the whole thing comes together and it's very starts with the radio effect yep they want to sound like somebody's listening on the radio yeah if you want a little bit more background so when pink floyd was inducted in the rock and roll Hall of Fame, I was asked to give the speech.

40:02So I'm in my hotel room at the Four Seasons and there's a knock at the door and it's David Gilmore with no shoes on holding his guitar coming to teach me how to play the song. Oh my God. So I got to sit with him and tell him, I can't believe we're going to play this song because the song means so much to me. And I had nothing to do with it. They just decided to play the song. And then, but they were at odds with Roger. So Roger wasn't there, the other three guys were. and then years later this would have been about four or five years ago roger had done this thing where he was working with wounded veterans there was even a guy who's playing drums triple amputee you know iraq vets and stuff he put together this kind of band of vets playing floyd songs and so i got to play on stage with roger and sing wish you were here with roger and these vets you know for a sold-out crowd in dc so you want to talk about like full circle like yeah pinch me are you kidding me like and why this song you know i mean i know i get it but it's on some level like when a song means that much too and then you're standing with the people that wrote the song and played the song it's wild well that's when you go back that's when you i always time travel in moments that are anything like that you know for me it's wait i was the kid in brooklyn massachusetts sitting on the heating grate watching a black and white tv and jack park yeah you know or or Andy Griffith.

41:22I was trying to date you. Yeah, exactly. No, he would have been gone by them. But watching like Andy Griffith or watching any of these iconic performers or Carol Burnett and then how is it that I'm with them now and they even know my name? That's the time travel part that I find amazing. And for you, it's going back to Illinois and you're just like, wait a minute, how can this be? I was that kid that wasn't even allowed to touch my dad's guitar. And now individually members of Pink Floyd are teaching me how to play this song yeah i'm to put a bow on it you know when you're in music and you talk to journalists all the time they focus on a lot of stuff that doesn't have anything to do with music yeah or why are you a musician it's all about the accoutrement like my favorite question tell us a funny tour story you know it's like tell us about the time he snorted coke off the stripper's ass you know right and what they don't really understand is when you're a kid in my case and in Jimmy's case, you're an abusive home.

42:20You have literally no future. Latchkey kids. And suddenly something that Rush is doing or Floyd is doing gets you to animate and practice four hours a day. And it's not like there's somebody waiting at the end of that rainbow. Hey, kid, practice. And someday you'll be on Conan's show. There's none of that. Something in you animates. This is what I got to do. So when you're standing there with the people that got you out of the freaking basement. It's not just like, oh, wow, this is cool. I'm hanging with Floyd. You're like, holy fuck, this is so crazy. Because it literally is the embodiment of the dream.

42:57Yes. Well, it's a religious experience. Yes, absolutely. It's an absolutely pure spiritual experience where, oh, the universe, something, there is magic in the universe. Yeah, and then invariably, you got to sit in a guy with an office who tells you it has nothing to do with magic. Yeah. Here's the piece of paper. Right. I once had a guy, it was like a business meeting, excuse me. And the guy pulls out a piece of paper and he goes, well, we've researched you and your band is the 1055th most searched band on the internet.

43:33Right? Yeah. Yeah. Now he's using it as a negotiating tactic to obviously get my price down. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But if you really think about it, like even hit pause and we're laughing because it's funny right okay but wait there's eight billion people on the planet seven billion people you've made music you're still in the 0.0001 percentile and this guy's still hitting you over the head with this you know fist to the skull down you go down you go so it doesn't feel like it gets you the way it used to but that's what i'm saying is is is you got to know who you are in there. Yeah. Yep. That goes back to the kid in the basement that, you know, when kids were out front, I have enduring memories.

44:16My brother loved the skateboard when it wasn't popular in the eighties or whatever. And I remember on a summer's day, standing in my bedroom, playing scales, you know, trying to be Yngwie Malmsteen and watching kids play on the driveway and laugh and fall. And here comes the cute girl and I'm in the bedroom. you know what i mean why because anybody with the right mind is out there with the cute girl skateboarding right not in your bedroom trying to bring eating by malmsteen so that's what gets you through those moments it's like no motherfucker you don't understand this ain't about that i i get that it's about that and i get we're here to sort of do this dance this i used to tour with this guy called it the dick dance we're here to do the dick dance about the money but that's not why i'm here yeah i'm a musician i mean and trust me it makes no sense at all to be a musician none In the tech world, they call the dick dance negging.

45:06That's when you just say, you know, we're not really, your stuff isn't that good and really not that. And then you think, well, why am I even in the meeting? Why am I here? I'll just go. But that's the older you get, you get better at seeing, why would I even, I'm happy to just walk away. I actually enjoy my family. I was in one of those meetings once and guy was trying to alpha me that way. And I just looked at him. I said, look, motherfucker, you can't get rid of me. That's why you're talking of me. You can't get rid of me. You can't replace me. It has nothing to do with my crooked teeth. I write good songs.

45:38If you could get rid of me, you would. You'd get rid of me at Harpy and he said, that's true.

45:46I like that he said that's true. God bless, right? Because I'd rather him be honest. Yeah. You know what I mean? It is what it is. Let's give Wish You Were Here. Yeah, let's listen to it. Eduardo, do your magic.

46:10my question is when you first heard that song it has this very powerful hold on you you go on to have all this knowledge and mastery of recording so you know you know how the chair is made does that change the way you hear the song yes absolutely and what are you hearing you're hearing choices they made in the studio economy floyd is amazing with economy um patience they have patience in a way that sort of belies their age you know i mean when they're making that they're all like in their probably late 20s uh when you say patience in what specific way not they're not in a hurry to get to anything like floyd works in their own time scale it's very unique um the way david has a way of playing guitar lines that you can literally sing along to it's very rare for a guitar player to solo but not in a wanky way um and the little way they kind of cheat things in there there's like the richard's playing like a little synthesizer brass even the end the the wind at the end is it's made with a synthesizer that's not real wind i think i think it's that's a synthesizer sound so they're working with artificial versus organic tones stuff like that um it can be a blessing and a curse to know how the sausage is made them yeah That's what I was thinking is, you know, I've spent most of my life thinking about comedy and thinking about what's the funny way for something to happen.

47:34And so sometimes I'll be watching some. I like to lose myself in something. I don't want to be thinking that way. And sometimes I'll see, oh, they're doing that thing now. And can you illustrate what like, like, give me a comedy, that thing? Well, OK. I mean, I can't think of a specific example. But I just I want to I like to learn. Just give me an illustration of like what, like there are in the pumpkins, we call it a gag. Yeah. In the, in the world of comedy, I mean, there are all kinds of things that are just the way things are done. One is the callback. You introduce something and then it, you, you bring it back in later on.

48:12And sometimes it's done really artfully. And sometimes the callback is used in kind of a cheap way to kind of let's goose another laugh here. So remember that, that scuba diver that peered in the window earlier in the sketch you're going to see him later on and uh and sometimes it's earned and sometimes it's not earned sometimes it's the exact right thing to do and sometimes people are just doing it to do it and so you when you sometimes when you see an unearned callback or you something like that i i just go yeah you didn't need that and then my wife is saying what why are you speaking over you know i'm just we're trying to enjoy this episode of who's the boss why can't but in the band we call it the power of discernment right so only somebody in the game knows where the line is right um in wrestling we call it cheap heat cheap heat is i can't believe i'm in indianapolis this is the biggest shithole i've ever been in you know boo that's tp not very artful right anything that gets him booing it makes me happy yeah but but but yeah if you believe in the art of something you don't want cheap heat you don't want cheap laughs you want exactly you want the real laugh right right well it's uh i guess it's a bit of a snobbery to it no no but i don't mind it oh it's true because i remembered having uh we did something at rehearsal and it did really well i remember Robert Smigel, our, you know, original head writer, you know, co-creator on the late night show.

49:45He was saying, let's lose that. And some of us were saying, but it did really well at rehearsal. Like it got a big laugh. And he went, yeah, we don't want laughs like that. And I thought, damn, okay. See? That's true. I admire that. Shit, I do love a laugh, but you're right. There are laughs you, you know. Like we - If the bottom line, it's not unlike what you were talking about before where someone's telling you, let's look at the numbers. We all know that when we've done something, when we've done good work, we know it. You just know it. And so if you did anything to add artificial sweeteners or doping, it makes you feel shitty about the whole thing.

50:25Set lists are the same. Yeah. Like we have enough successful music that we can put together a set list that we know people will approve and like and probably buy t-shirts. As we used to say back in Chicago, go no shit sherlock you know but the art is giving them something that they didn't know that they wanted and having them leave and say that was a richer experience than i thought coming in if they just play the songs that i know there's this big event you know this event uh jim there's an event for the museum of natural history that they raise a lot of money and all the big wigs on the upper east side and west side of manhattan go there i had you know they asked people to perform at it and i think i did it at least once um then they would get music and i was there once just i didn't have to perform so i could just watch and it was tom petty and the heartbreakers were performing it came time for them to do their music and you know you just imagine the richest room you can think of and people are in tuxedos and everyone's going to have their picture taken and it's going to be in the most elite magazines that who showed up at this thing and billionaires are there who have their name you know carved into the wall and tom petty got up there with the heartbreakers and they didn't do one hit everything was a deep cut and i was so happy and i could tell that uh tom petty didn't give a shit he was like i'm gonna play you the deepest of the deep cuts and i'm gonna do the stuff that i want to do you're not gonna get won't back down you're not going to get you know free falling you're not going to get you know any of those uh american girl you're not going to get one of those fucking songs i really i don't know it made me really happy to watch him do that yeah i mean i can only kind of nod my head i've been in those situations and i've done that version of that thing in those situations and got a lot of heat for it yeah yeah and i've done the other thing where you're doing what everybody wants you to do and you're just thinking i'm just such a sellout like get me off this island yeah well the next song is metallica yes and you had you made an interesting choice yes because i believe this song fade to black was their first was power ballad is that fair to say um i actually i saw an interview with lars talking recently about how it was controversial because metallica used acoustic guitars and it wasn't very metal of them yeah yeah lars was just here oh very talking on the podcast and um love lars oh my god it was such a good time and every time he says metallica yes yes yes and he says metallica a lot yeah because it's a big part of his life yeah god bless but but i say every time he says metallica i kind of chuckle yeah because only he says metallica like he says metallica yes so it's with pride of ownership and the way he says metallica which is the for him the correct pronunciation well yeah not metallica metallica in this song you know i think this is their second is this their second album yes and ride the lightning yeah ride the lightning 1984 and uh this is them taking a big chance because it's uh it's an it's an acoustic song or it starts out as an acoustic song but then it goes to the fiddly bit yeah which is a technical term which in the industry the fiddly bit where there's fiddles yeah um do you want me to muse on this or sorry sure yeah uh so i i'd gotten kicked out of my house uh my dad i think he wasn't in jail at that point but he was in some form of jail like work release where you got to be in that in the jail at night but you could be out during the day and he wasn't living with us anymore and then i got kicked out by my stepmother so i ended up living with this drug dealer.

54:12And, um, I have this enduring memory where I latched onto the song because it seemed to sum up what I was going through, you know, this kind of existential crisis in my life. And I'd seen Metallica live and I'd seen the power of what they were creating. Um, but I latched onto this song and, you know, this is back in the day of the boom box. And so I remember sitting at the guy's kitchen table, uh, you know, where he used to, you know, fiddle the seeds out of the weed that he'd sell to cute young teen girls. And that's a story for another day. And I was playing the song over and over and over again.

54:46Like I must've played it 14 times in a row. And he came down and he was like, you got to leave. Like he threw me out from listening to the song so many times. Like I basically went from - A drug dealer threw you out. Yeah. I was - That's how annoying me. I was thrown out of my house. And then because of this song, I was thrown out of the drug dealer's house where i was living uh-huh um but uh yeah it's it's interesting because it's sometimes a band creates a song that's like like you were talking about george harrison before here comes the sun is when i love the beatles but it seems to even here comes the sun seems almost like timeless beyond the beatles and to me this is one of those songs from metallica that like somehow it lives beyond the band right it's like a it's like a movie unto itself so um Yeah, I mean, what a song.

55:29James is such a talented songwriter, and I don't know what else to say other than it seemed to sum up what I was going through at the time. Let's listen to it and see what it brings up. Fade to Black. I never understand when I watch Metallica how they can, there's so much syncopation there that has to be so precise, and I don't understand how they can do that without a conductor. do you know what i mean it's it's really incredible to me yeah it's a it's a feel thing when you play that type of music i love that lyric in there i think he sings i was me but now he's gone this is i mean if that's not a 17 year old i'm not saying he was 17 when he wrote it but i'm saying that's when you're going through that yeah yeah i mean i still get that i still get the feels on that this is great does that take you back when you hear that can you go but do you go time travel back to that point i have a weird thing um and i've never heard it explained scientifically but i have like a i'm gonna stumble with the way to put it i have a holographic memory when it comes to music so when i i can put myself back in the time and place emotionally when i heard the song and i have almost like total recall which is how i produce records so i'll be in the studio and i'll think like i want the feel of fade to black not that i want to make that song but i want that feeling yeah i'm able to recall the emotional feeling resonance of it what what i was getting from that and I'm able to recreate it in my own music.

56:54So it's a weird gift, if you can even call it that. And it might be a curse sometimes. No, no, actually, I think it's really quite remarkable and I have no explanation. I've never seen it explained. And what's crazy is Jimmy Chamberlain has something very similar, which is why I think that we've always worked so well together. He has the similar ability to do that, but on the drums. It's a weird thing. But yeah, I literally could go on for 15 minutes on what I was thinking when I heard that song at 17 at table before the drug dealer came down like musically feeling not like i was having a bad day we did this same thing with neil young where we played neil was sitting right where you're sitting and we played some music he sent in some music that i don't think he had listened to or thought about for a really long time and it was stuff that he was listening to in canada in the 50s dell shannon by chance it wasn't it wasn't dell shannon uh do you remember it was um there were like really it was very folky some of it uh yeah ian and sylvia yeah yeah tyson yeah yeah four strong wins but um yeah that's that's a great version i know he covered that at one point that was fascinating too because it's very similar to watching neil listen to those songs and he would do what you're doing which is close his eyes and really go there and then he he came out of it after one song and it was like you i said well where were you right then and he went i remember there was a he described a jukebox and him standing there and it was you know whatever it was a nickel uh that you could put in to play the song and he had a whole pocket full of them and he was standing there and he would just feed them in and play it over and over and over again that was his only access to the song yeah and in his one of his other memories was underneath the covers he could get this one radio station that would play i remember he i think there was some rockabilly song yeah by a guy named ronnie self it was yeah barney lena oh my god that's a killer song yeah and i had never heard it before and i'm a rockabilly fanatic and i'd never heard bopalina i didn't know about ronnie self who had kind of a very strange career outside the lines um and never really quite made it and uh things didn't end happily for him but just but him just time traveling back to he's not neil young the neil young we know yeah he's a kid and he's in some part of canada where no one's ever going to be a rock star that's not going to happen and he's got the covers up and it's late at night and he's supposed to be asleep he's got his transistor radio and he's hearing that song and so to me it's very mystical and powerful to be able to sit with people while they listen to these songs yeah maybe there's some universal language that people with musical ability speak or hear yeah i mean i like i said i find it fascinating that journalists never talk about that right which is why i like talking about it because it's like it's 90 of my experience is what we're talking about here right and not all the other stuff not throwing a tv out the window of the hotel room no i mean that stuff's fun but it doesn't it doesn't pay the bills yeah and what if someone's in the pool um the last song is joy division and i have to admit i didn't i didn't know much about joy division and we got to get you on the on the joy division tip yeah and i i didn't know and then you brought up this song and of course i know a lot now more about joy division now and and what a really tragic story uh it was very much so yeah and uh just their lead singer guitarist i believe also the songwriter or co-writer they wrote they wrote together they wrote the lyrics yeah and just how he suffered from epilepsy and depression and And just what a terrible - I think 24 years old, he killed himself.

1:00:35Yeah. And I believe, and I think it's true, is it was like on the eve of their U.S. tour. They were just about to come to the U.S., and I think he was under a lot of pressure, and he was legitimately worried that he would have, because his seizures were getting worse and worse, that he was going to have a seizure on stage in front of people. and um so clearly someone who i mean just uh terrible um load to carry between that disease and depression and and everything but made this fantastic music and clearly this level tear us apart speaks to you i started making the argument back in the 90s that joy division was probably the second most important band behind the beatles in the 20th century and when i made the argument back then people kind of would make a face like kind of sorta and now people i think have kind of come around to it and what is it that specifically was it was the originality it was uh well a lot of people now would call it like post-punk or something but what it really is is is diy musicians creating great music without the conventional structures of music if you think about like you were talking about rockabilly okay well most rockabilly is based on one four five yep you know 12 bar blues stuff like that buddy holly is probably predominantly 145 but he's a master at it so imagine that start all starts in the 50s obviously coming out of jump blues in the 40s t-bone walker and stuff like that and pound bassy and then uh by the time you get to the you know the late 70s you know uh rock and roll is kind of pretty much run out of steam zeppelin's at the end the who are not at the end but you know you could say their greatest work is behind them And here comes punk, and you have all these people suddenly decide it doesn't matter how well you play.

1:02:20As long as you want to get up on stage and you got some moxie, the crowd will sort of accept you. So out of that comes Talking Heads and The Cure and Psychedelic Furs and Depeche Mode. But Joy Division, to me, was the greatest of them all. um they capture a particular form of nihilism that's really hard to get that in a way that doesn't feel mawkish or childish there's an adultness to it i know that's not really a word but there's a sobriety and seriousness to it um and and because they were from manchester manchester is like the chicago of england very working class and and it's worth pointing out that you know not the same but the same area that's where sabbath came from it's it's a certain kind of doom but it's not the doom of hopelessness it's the doom of like oh my god like is this the life you i meant to live living in the shadow of the the nuke plant or the coal plant or the you know and everybody around them is on drugs or drink and there's no future no hope all that stuff so punk really was this kind of cry against like fuck it all and somehow out of that comes this really beautiful language that's held up really really well and love will tear us apart to me is this perfect pop song for people who are not trying to write perfect pop songs it's such a strange thing uh i i have um some henry darger i don't know if you know that artist he's a folk artist he he was um he was an itinerant sort of janitor uh a uh an orphan grew up in an orphanage basically for 50 years painted these beautiful paintings that no one ever saw and they only found him right before he died and now they're worth hundreds of thousands of dollars but it's the idea that there's a certain if you give if you take somebody who doesn't know how to make art and you they just make art like a child would that there's a different type of beauty that emerges out of the innocence and the purity without having to go to art school right so i I think Joy Division is the great embodiment of, like, they're the anti-Beatles.

1:04:24The Beatles is about craft and consciousness and worrying about, you know, the world that's in front of them and trying to figure out how to interface with. Joy Division goes completely the opposite way and creates music of, you could argue, of equal importance. That still, 50 years later, is, you know, still inspiring people. So how many albums did they, did they just have one or two? I think three albums. Three albums. Love Will Terrace Part, I think was kind of towards the end of that particular arc. before Ian killed himself. And then the only thing I would add to this is that Joy Division then morphed into New Order.

1:04:59And of course, everybody knows New Order. They became a more successful pop band using synthesizers and stuff like that, and really created a completely different musical language. But when they reformed in 2001, they called me and said, we're going on this tour. Do you want to come play guitar with us on the tour? So when we would play, so I did six shows with them. But they were going out as New Order. But for the first time since, I think, I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure, for the first time since Ian had died in 2001, they decided to play Joy Division on stage with Bernard singing. So imagine I'm in rehearsal with them in Liverpool or wherever we were.

1:05:35And when you play the New Order songs, they're playing with the backing tracks, synthesizers, all that. But when they would play the Joy Division, there were no backing tracks. Now I'm on stage with Joy Division. Now, the best way I can explain it is i've been on stage with cheap trick uh i played at the rock and roll hall of fame with three quarters of pink floyd when you stand on stage with the band and you're in the middle of that it is intense yeah because now you're in the three-dimensional space of their world you're in the record with them and every time i'm getting goosebumps telling you about this every time in rehearsal and on stage every time we played level terrace apart i would get goose flesh my whole body would go into complete, like, I cannot believe.

1:06:17And I'm not talking about a fan experience, like, oh my God, I'm playing with Joy Division. I'm like, I am in the, I'm in this song and I'm experiencing inwardly what I experienced as a listener. And it's 10 times more intense in the thing than outward. So, I mean, yeah, this is the real deal, this one to me. All right. Let's let her rip. Love will tear us apart. Joy Division. When you played on that song, what were you, what was your were you playing rhythm were you playing do you remember what you were doing they let me do whatever i wanted to do and um it was kind of funny because they're they're from that world of everybody should just do what they feel but i was getting in the kind of sacrosanct territory where they'd created this beautiful thing and at times i would get these side long looks like you're kind of going in the spaces you shouldn't go uh-huh so it was a little bit of a negotiation sure but invariably i settled on the idea of like i get it because i've been in that situation as a band leader like this is the way it goes but there's a like what's sacred about it isn't whether or not i play the right note in the right spot this is like where it's coming from in your heart and so invariably i think they they just kind of let it go and then it got better.

1:07:37In essence, they let me do my thing. They worried about what they were doing, and then it started to click. And then it just kind of, it was what it was. There's something about, and again, I don't have the words for it, and I might, it's maybe nothing, but when I listen to this song, it almost sounds like the vocals are mixed. They're almost, I mean, I'm not used to it, but usually the vocals on when you're listening to a song are so present and here they're unusually submerged almost they're just under the surface a little bit which which is kind of hot makes it more haunting you know yeah it strikes me because when you listen to it it's not a perfect recording it's not perfectly mixed you can't hear every lyric and yet it's one of the most famous songs of the 20th century and it reminds me of what i said when i was inducting pink floyd in the in the rock and roll hall of fame nobody was looking over my shoulder because i could say whatever i wanted and one of the lines i said in there was um you know it strikes me that the band you're inducting tonight is um one of the greatest selling bands of all time and created one of the best selling albums of all time dark side of the moon which is essentially a conceptual record that i think only really produced the one hit which was money which is a song in 5-4 not necessarily a waltzing matilda you know not necessarily a pop right uh you can't really dance to it um and i and i looked and it was meant to be a a funny line but like with a with a little bit of a shiv behind it and i said um and by the way they made that album at the height of disco and i said i know everybody and i know that there are many people in this room that are totally responsible for disco and i haven't forgotten you and i won't forget your name and there was this weird like one of those like you motherfucker laughs yeah yeah like how dare you say that yeah but that's the point is uh we're talking about in in our own way and it's always hard to find the language we're talking about magic comedy is magic music is magic what makes people laugh there's a lot of talk these days because of you know woke politics about you can't say this and you can't say that.

1:09:51I mean, art is supposed to get into the uncomfortable space. Yes, it is. Yeah. Just the fact like you were talking about Ian's vocals being mixed low. Did that make you listen differently? Did it make you pay a different attention? It really got my attention when I was listening to the song. And of course, I've heard the song many times, but I was really noticing accidents. It's the same thing in comedy and music and probably in a lot of things. Accidents are where the gold is, you know, And I don't know if it's an accident, but you said maybe they didn't mix it correctly, but it certainly makes the song, it's much more haunting that whether it's a, as you say, an engineering error or someone.

1:10:32No, I think, honestly, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I think those are all intentional choices. Okay, yeah. You know, I just, it's, to me, that was arresting. Like, it really got my attention. Because, you know, it was like, I think I can hear him, but he's really back there. we're on the we're on the precipice of ai kind of taking over a bunch of things right and and i'm already out there ringing the clarion bell that once kids get their hands on ai as a songwriting tool it's over for the organic process of songwriting because if you're 15 you have to spend 10 000 hours listening to the beatles enjoy division to learn how to write a song versus you can punch a button it's going to give you seven options and then you could pick the best option off of that right and then you can refine that and press another button it'll tell you a better version of what you think is a good version and all that, it's over.

1:11:18Are we willing? And I'm just saying this in one of those kind of, you know, it's like, I feel like Jason Robards would star in the movie. I'm about to, right. You know, he's not around anymore, so you may have to do it. I gladly play Jason Robards in the movie, but what I'm trying to say is, you know, the guy gives the warning. Yep. Yep. Hey, by the way, do you really want to live in the world where you're willing to give up level terrace apart the imperfectly made perfect song yep are you willing to give that up for all this other perfect shit which really isn't that great and unfortunately we know in human nature that yes they will yeah but this way i can can you see where people are going to have ai start writing their jokes oh sure right yeah hey give me give me 50 jokes on grandma in the kitchen yeah you know what i mean what's something that they're everybody it's got everybody's attention i mean everybody in the um as we record this there's a writer's strike going on and that's this is one of the issues people are afraid of is what's coming up ahead and can these what happens when these big companies realize we don't really i think that decision's already been made yeah i'm not trying to be that guy but i'll be that guy today i think that decision has already been made it's i mean it's easy to say it like this like chicago style it's over bro you know i mean but it's over like the ship's already sailed that's why when you see people arguing about 20 minimum wage yeah well mcdonald's just opened the first fully automated mcdonald's it's over like all that stuff's over we're gonna have to adjust to a new economy on every scalable level i mean there are already people talking about worshiping ai as a god there are people talking about like it's a religious thing like there's there's a jason robards movie right right so um i'm at least glad i lived in the other world before i go to this other one so at least i'll have the memory and i could tell my children what it was like to listen to joy division and they're not going to be listening to you ai will have taken over that too you will not be parenting these children maybe that's a good thing

1:13:27i'll tell you a quick story so um i made the mistake uh it's a fine game so nothing against Nintendo, but I made the mistake of buying a Nintendo Switch. I have a seven-year-old son and a four-year-old daughter. So of course, all they want to do all day is play Nintendo. They said Nintendo so many times, I said, you can't say the word Nintendo anymore, but you can refer to it as na-na. So they come up and they go, dad, can we play na-na? Because they know if they say Nintendo, it'll diminish their chances of playing na-na. yeah so um where was i going with the story i think you reprogrammed them no but i oh there we go so wouldn't maybe i just go now when they come to head can we play no no i go let's go to the ai i'm sorry i love you but you know the conan the conan chat gp yes you'll have your own you'll have your own ai oh i'll go to conan ai they'll have you know figured out i mean because you know because when when i just they're already when i dismiss their their hopes and dreams right it'll at least come with a wry comment yes yes uh they can i'm sure whether it's serious or whoever they've already there's a there's a room where they've figured out my vocal tone just the right irritating somebody just released i haven't listened to it but somebody released an AI version of Kurt Cobain singing a pumpkin song.

1:14:52Really? Yeah. I haven't listened to it yet, but I think it's today, the song today. Do you want to listen to it or do you, is it one of those things you, you'll take a bath? I have no interest in it because, because it's sort of like, it's not Kurt. Yeah. Well, it's also a parlor trick, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want parlor tricks. I mean, right. Cheap heat, right? Right. Like if I came to see you and you just gave me a bunch of lame jokes, that's not why I'm coming to see you. That's what you're gonna get okay well god bless um i don't work that hard anymore i've never i don't know dice you know i mean and i've seen dice perform live a couple times i never laughed so hard in my life i felt like he was in my brain saying stuff that i he has a way of saying stuff that's not even funny yes he does but he says it in a way that's so insidious it's like planning mind virus bombs in my head.

1:15:42And I mean, I could, or I saw Bob Zemuda's Tony Clifton. Yes. Yeah. I laughed so hard. I got mad at him. And I know him a little bit personally. I wanted to strangle him because I was like, stop making me laugh at this other kind of creepy level that you can only you can do. Yes. I know exactly what you're talking about. Dice has a thing where there's a famous recording of him bombing in a club. I think he calls it the night, the laughter dad. is so funny and i've listened to it too it's so funny because he's doing his thing and there's he's not getting anything back and i like that better than hearing someone but you know he did that on purpose yes yes because rick rubin who produced that said you know he did the very rick rubin thing with the beard and buddha buddha rick and we were talking because i knew he knew dice and he was obviously there when dice was headlining arenas and all that stuff and he did the you got the album you really got to listen to is the night comedy died or whatever it's called yeah that shit is funny and it's so inappropriate it's so i mean you want to talk about i mean he it's there's about 8 000 things in there to get canceled there's a famous dice story that i love um that mike mike sweeney uh one of my great writers tells but it was dice in a club before he had you know become a big star and he did borrowed someone part of someone else's act because he didn't have the rest of his act that night.

1:17:02And he was still putting it all together. And he borrowed someone else's act. And the person confronted him afterwards and said like, hey man, you took some of my stuff. And he went, he said, hey, I'm trying to make it. I don't have time to fuck around.

1:17:18Like, that's an excuse. And in a way I kind of, you're like, oh, okay. It's so audacious. I don't have time to fuck around. We got to call this because we have talked and talked and I have to let you back to your life. You know? Yes. I don't have a life. I'm just here. I exist here in like a broth, like a brain floating in a tank. They won't let me go. But I was really looking forward to this. And you met all my expectations, exceeded them. You're just a great person to talk to. You didn't cry, though. I'm incapable of that. i did you ever cry on air i don't think so not that i remember i don't i'm irish we hide all that yeah i mean i'm predominantly irish so yeah we that's all we share that that's all been uh it was beaten out of us in the 1800s yeah exactly that's that that ship sailed a long time ago um this was this was great thank you and i loved having and i swear to god i'm at this point in my life where the thing I prize the most is that I get to, you and I have crossed paths in the past, but to get to sit with you and really have a conversation is magical and meaningful to me.

1:18:32So thank you for doing this. Yeah. Most of our conversations were in loud clubs with really desperate gold digging people. So we never really got to get to the deep stuff until today. This was really special. And I just want to reiterate that you have so much going on. uh autumn which is a rock opera in uh three parts uh is um your latest what's the latest volume you're continuing the journey i think so yeah yeah with you know melancholy and infinite sadness and machina you know like this is carrying you're carrying on in that that story and uh you have a tour the world is a vampire tour starts july 28th and you're going to incorporate some wrestling we will have wrestling on the road that's fantastic dates yeah i own the oldest wrestling promotion in the world the nwa so that is fantastic that's its own uh we should we should do a wrestling podcast yeah yeah that could be a separate thing that could be part two but i some other time but i i got some good stories for you there i'll show you a clip one day of me i was uh taping weird comedy down in mexico city and i taped a whole segment where i was a luchador and I had the whole thing the mask and they were teaching me how to do it and I had the time of my life I absolutely loved it it's an interesting world I'll throw on a mask and come on and wrestle while you play well there was Red Bastine I think he was known as the Red Baron I could do that he's passed away now you could be the Red Baron too people will say I'll be masked no one will know it's me but they'll say something's very wrong with that man's body and also the podcast.

1:20:15We finished that now. There's 33 episodes. But you can still hear them. Yeah, yeah. But we're no longer in contemporary time. But who is? Did I get too deep there? I don't know. I feel like you've posed some sort of deeper question that I can't answer. That's a good way to end. We'll just leave it on a hanging participle or whatever it's called. Billy, thank you so much for doing this. I appreciate it. Conan O 'Brien needs a friend. with Conan O 'Brien, Sonam Ovsessian, and Matt Gourley. Produced by me, Matt Gourley. Executive produced by Adam Sachs, Nick Liao, and Jeff Ross at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson and Cody Fisher at Earwolf.

1:20:53Theme song by The White Stripes. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. Take it away, Jimmy. Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair, and our associate talent producer is Jennifer Samples. Engineering by Eduardo Perez. Additional production support by Mars Melnick. Talent Booking by Paula Davis, Gina Batista, and Britt Kahn You can rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts and you might find your review read on a future episode Got a question for Conan? Call the Team Coco hotline at 323-451-2821 and leave a message It too could be featured on a future episode And if you haven't already, please subscribe to Conan O 'Brien Needs a Friend on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded

1:21:40Thank you.