John Mayer

23:40if you're at a restaurant yeah and and something isn't right with the food and it's not right enough to bring it up to the to the waiter or waitress don't you defer to them i would never i would never i would why not and why not uh i am probably mostly i would say 80 way i was raised was just, the big thing was that I learned from my mother was you just don't want anyone to be upset with you. That's how, that's just what I'm saying. Yeah. And this is, we're talking about the same thing. Yeah. My looking up to them is related to my not wanting to that, wanting them to be upset. It used to be, I need you to love me.

24:16And now it's, I don't want you to hate me. Right. So I'm getting better. I'm getting there. And I don't, I want to ask a question and it's not a rhetorical question and it's not a criticism. Why do you think it is? the largest community of people who have hurt my feelings at parties over the years have been related to SNL. Oh, is that true? Yeah. Okay. What is it about the SNL experience? And I'm being very open-minded about it because it can't be this sort of ad hoc thing where everyone at SNL is just a little pathological. What goes on at SNL? Is it the fraternity that when you do see someone from SNL at a party?

24:53Okay. Do you know what I'm talking about? First of all, I want to I want to go into a little bit of, I want to do a little bit of forensics before I proceed, which is how most comedians talk.

25:06Make sure you're fully anesthetized. You don't have to name names, but are you talking about performers? Both. And writers? No, not writers as much. Let's just say performers. Okay. Right? I don't want to get too specific. And it's not evil. It's not pointedly mean. It feels knee-jerk to you. It feels almost reflexive. it feels like a coldness because i'm open i show up open and i show up with the weird expectation other people are going to meet me there yeah and there is this sort of pull away this sort of if it's almost like someone on snl has a difficult time pretending to be interested yes they're not does that does that check out uh i think i think it's a a couple of things uh i mean it depends i wouldn't make a blanket statement about like all that i don't mean to i don't want to i'm just saying because of the people who i've left going i feel like i hyper extended and i fell in front of them or that they walked away and weren't interested have is that just my love of snl uh well possibly i think there is something in comedy and and and maybe it's particular to snl because it's you know it's a two-way street here first of all is this wouldn't happen to you if you didn't put maybe snl on a pedestal i think so so part of the problem is maybe you putting other people on a pedestal.

26:20That's where I've been sometimes hurt before. There is a thing which is there's a two school for school philosophy that can thrive at SNL. I've known obviously wonderful, great people there. One of the things I think that makes SNL actually really good or has helped it endure all these years is that there's a limited amount of real estate to get stuff on the show. You think about it, it's really dictated by it's a live show. So there's only so much physical real estate in Studio 8H and they can only get so much show on every week and there is a competition to get your sketch on. And so at the end of the day, you're competing with other people in the room.

27:05Now, that's just the way the show is set up. I saw a lot of lovely collaboration when I was there. And you can also see a very competitive, of someone giving you, putting their shoulder into yours like it's hockey. And you think, Jesus, what's this? So SNL is a very specific environment. And I think it's possible there's a kind of maybe toughness there that it can breed. Does that make sense to you? I wondered if it was because they're so deep in the trenches together that if you're not someone they recognize from the trenches, you can kind of feel it. If like to your point, if they weren't huddled together in 8-H having this experience that is so bonding with the people who are either writing for the show weekly or like friend of show, or I represent something kind of anti-comedy because I'm the tall musician guy or something.

27:58I can't quite figure it out, but I hope this is more interesting than it feels like an indictment or me talking shit about it. No, no, no, it's not an indictment of SNL. It's like this is an experience that you've had where you felt like you've encountered comedians and that's a tough place. That's not always the most comfortable terrarium and anyone who worked at SNL would tell you that. So I would contrast it say with, there are other shows I've worked on like The Simpsons where the only way the show gets done is if everybody works together. And so if this room right now is a Simpsons writing room, I'd be praying if we were stuck on a line for Marge, I would be praying that you came up with it or Matt or Sona or Edward.

28:40I'd be like thinking, oh my God, someone get it because then we can go home. And that wasn't always the way at SNL because SNL felt more like I joined the Marines and it was really scary and I got yelled at and I had to do pushups. This would check out. But I say that with a huge caveat because I've talked about SNL before and I think sometimes it's been misrepresented. I loved that job and that job changed my life and I learned a shit ton there and I wouldn't change a thing. So at the same time, it's both. It's both. And mark the out point where we would edit this. Because I don't... Sometimes my curiosity...

29:20You're making my job easier. Thank you. Yeah. Sometimes my curiosity sounds like this very kind of shrouded criticism of something, but it's really me going, what is it? But can I say something else that is... I'm on Conan's podcast and he asked me if he could say something else. Yeah. Permission granted, Conan. I'm sorry. I just remembered you playing Buckets of Rain and I, my penis went up inside my lungs. Which is quite a void by the way. Oh God. No, you had a penile embolism. Yeah, I did. My doctor's like, what's this doing in here? It happens. And my penis is like, there's so much oxygen.

29:59This is fantastic. Oh my God. But, okay, I'm gonna tell you, I have had the exact same, and I'm not a big believer in naming names, but there are certain comedians who are my generation, or maybe a little older than me, just a little bit old, but certain comedians that come from standup specifically who I've met over the years, and they have left me feeling that way. Yeah, not broken, not destroyed, but, huh, okay. You know when you have an interaction with somebody and you leave and you just have, your body knows before your mind does. So I leave the interaction, And I feel like when you, sometimes you bump into, and this is just not talking about famous people talking to famous people, blah, blah, blah.

30:41This is about talking to other human beings. Sometimes you bump into someone and you leave and you feel like you've been nourished. You just have this nice feeling and you just feel lifted. And I'm only, I'm mentioning a name right now because I just randomly ran into him the other day, but I saw, it was in a restaurant and I'm walking out and Tom Hanks is there. And anytime I bump into that guy, I leave with this tingly, he does something. He's Santa Claus. That makes me feel like, you know, that old way of like, yeah, and he gave me a candy cane. Yeah. Which I found creepy, by the way. He tried to lure me to his van.

31:18No. No, but, you know, he was there with Rita and I just felt, I left and I felt like, it wasn't like a, oh my God, that was Tom Hanks because I've, you know, worked with him and done a bunch of things with him over the years and interviewed him. it was more just that he was so funny and he i could see like he saw me as a person and we had this nice moment and i left and i he made me feel better and he does that for everybody he does that for the person who's changing the oil in his car as if he goes himself i've seen it i mean i've seen him do it it's a magic you know and people talk about that but he's he's you know really beautiful that way but these people i'm talking about these other people who will go unnamed have just i've had interactions with them and when i leave i always feel like They've just taken, there's like a little bit of shit on their finger and they put it on my forehead, like smeared it on my forehead.

32:06That's so specific. Yeah, and you know what? And also I realized later on they did do that. Conan. These are very specific people. They put their hand, their finger up their ass and then they anoint you. Conan. They do it! Like Ash Wednesday. It's true! It's like Ash Wednesday, but with shit. You may not be able to play the guitar like you want to, but you are a born lyricist. That's why we're gonna write a song. Oh, Shitfinger Jones is gonna be, all I know is that it's in E.

32:38Shitfinger Jones. No, but, that's so funny. Have you heard the Deca box set of Shitfinger Jones? Oh, some of the deep cuts are fantastic. He has a urine phase, which is not good. It's acoustic, but. That's when he went to Austria. It was like his Bowie thing. It was the 70s, he couldn't get arrested in the States. He ended up in Austria under the alligator records imprint. But all I'm saying is that there is always... By the way, by the way, real quickly, it is such a great metaphor for someone who has a great thing going with Shitfinger Jones and then one day goes, what about piss? Yeah. And then everybody goes, we don't like the piss thing.

33:18We don't like the shit thing. We tried. We have tapes. We can play for you. It didn't work. We tried piss. The label came to him and said, it's all about piss now. Yeah. When you put urine on someone, they don't always know that it was urine. It's a backwards move. They feel like sweat, yeah. It's just, it's going back. It's going back, it's regressive. And that is TikTok. But exactly. In a world of shit, I'm being sold piss. But, but, there's your lyric right there. Just cut me in for 1%. But John, but John, seriously, seriously, like I have, that is the exact feeling I've had with these people and may have again, where there's like a little bit of a condescension.

33:58And I feel like I extended myself and tried to be, hey, the puppy dog, and then left, and I'm driving home, and I just feel... A little small, just a little deflated, a little two-dimensional. And I think that's everybody. So here's what I think it comes down to. Certain people are nourishers, and certain people can give energy, and other people defend their energy. And I think I'm a nourisher. I want to show up with another person who's going to meet in the middle, and we're going to give, give, give, give, give. But if you're not that way, and I shouldn't expect everyone to be that way. I know that I'm not rare, but it's not everybody who thinks like I think, which is, wow, how can I give to this experience?

34:34How can I, like I'm saying, looking up to people who aren't me, wanting to give to people who aren't me, other people who can do that with you, it's the greatest jam out in the world. But not everyone has that. Other people survive by way of preserving what energy they have, not giving it in hopes the other person's going to give it back. And I think that's the polarity issue with comics. and we don't have to name anyone. It's also sometimes musicians, but musicians are more of a closed loop in what makes them happy and where their validity comes from, their validation comes from. So if a giver is talking to someone who's a defender, then that's when the giver leaves going.

35:09But I don't think the defender leaves going. Was I a little cold? No, I think, no, no, they don't, they're not concerned about it. And there are people, and again, we're not, we're talking about a very specific thing, comedy, show business, but they're just people out in the world where my best analogy is the sixth sense. I'm around these people. And before I even see them, I can see my breath. Suddenly I couldn't see my breath before, but now I can see my breath. And then I turn around and that person is standing right there, you know? So let me ask you this question, knowing that if you can predict that, especially with certain people, will you give less as a self-protection?

35:45Yes. Yeah. I will not only give less, but I will also say life's too short. I don't think I'll go to that party. I think I choose not to interact with, we're talking about Pat Sajak. Let's put it on the table. But I've learned with certain people. I mean, he literally put shit on my forehead. And you can see it on the wheel. You can see it on the wheel. It's how they mark the wheel. It's how you cheat. It's how you cheat the Wheel of Fortune. He always puts it. There's a little bit of shit right near the... It's like marking cards. Yes. No, seriously, look at Wheel of Fortune closely. you'll see a little bit of shit.

36:22It goes like this.

36:26And see, John can hear it because John has a musician's ear. I have the perfect pitch. It's very, it's very subtle. Slish. Slish. Slish. Slish. I saw a piece of corn fly off the wheel once, I swear to God, and they cut to Sajak and he was eating corn on the cob. He was, and he said, Hey, chop, chop, we got a real good show for you today. Who the fuck eats corn on the cob? On television. On television. While he's hosting a game show. Anyway, he'll get his, you'll get yours, Sajak.

37:01Matt Sajak is somewhere, someone's telling him, Conan really outed you on the show for shitting onto your hand and rubbing it on the wheel. Or he goes out to go to the supermarket and everyone's yelling at him, corn man. Hey, corn man. He doesn't know why. Hey, corn man, shit on the wheel lately? Or he goes, they found me out. Yes, yes, that's what he does. Somewhere at Sajak's like, no, how does he know? Shit on the wheel lately, by the way. We're very unnoticed in that back and forth. But those are the things where, those are the things where, okay, so we've been talking a lot about comedy and my curiosity is I always, for me, music is the other.

37:39It's the thing that I don't understand, put up on a pedestal. I've always said if I could make my living legitimately in a rockabilly band, singing and playing rockabilly music, you would never see me in comedy again because it would just make me so happy. That's an illusion because it wouldn't. I'd say, how come no one's laughing? Well, they would be laughing actually. I'm playing Honky Tonk Man by Johnny Horton. How is this not killing? Why aren't they howling right now? Why aren't they howling? Don't they know this is a real Gretsch 6120 from 1959? It's got the cattle brand on it. I've got a harmonic tremolo on.

38:20But no, I've always thought, I've always put what you do as the other. And so then I think, I think what we all do is we tend to think, my thought is, okay, I'm here in comedy and I'm always living like second to second. And if something goes wrong, I've got to quickly figure out how to fix it. And it could all fall apart any second. But if I could play guitar and sing, and write songs like John Mayer, I'd be bulletproof. And yet I talk to you and you don't feel that way at all. Well, I don't feel bulletproof, but for different reasons. I always tend to have a different version of the same problem everyone else has.

38:56I worry the entire time I'm playing on stage, but I don't worry about whether I'm good enough to make it happen. That's set for me, right? It just happens to be set. What I worry about is, am I playing the song anybody wants to hear right now? Is there another song I should be playing other than this one? So I have the fear they're going to walk out and go to the bathroom, not because they don't like me, but because I'm not playing what they want to hear. Right, right. And it's the blessing and the curse of having eight, nine albums and so many songs being so different. And I also don't love playing the hits.

39:30Sometimes what makes a hit lacks a little bit of song fabric that you can work with every single night. Right. And if I don't play something that I'm, well, it goes both ways, right? If I'm playing Daughters, if I'm playing Waiting on the World to Change, I will say to myself, they don't want to hear this. This is all played out. This is just a hit song that used to be on the radio. No one cares anymore. I should be playing something a little deeper, something a little more texture. Then I play that. And in the middle of playing that, I go, they're going to walk out. They came here. They got babysitters.

39:57They want to hear the songs that made me famous. So I can't ever, as I'm playing, find that happy place where I'm like, they're fine. Don't you think it comes down to like, they're fine out there. They can handle themselves. They're okay. Don't worry. If the audience could tell you one thing, it would be, we're fine. Also, it took me a while to learn this, but there's something about a group think. Audiences as a group are highly intelligent. It's one organism. Like when you get that many people together and they smell things and if they sense one of the things, and it may be true in music too, but in comedy, they're just, a lot of times they're looking for confidence.

40:31Do you have the confidence to, are you worthy of our time? Do you know what you're doing and can you lead with authority in music it's are you having a good time doing this yeah and in comedy too yeah they would hate to know if i if i got on stage and said to the crowd it's so good to see you because i have a really bad headache and then i went and played the show they would they would probably develop like you know sympathetic pain in there or they'd go oh he has a headache well for years on the on the for the whatever 28 30 years of doing late night television i always my heart would sink when a guest would come out and they're doing okay and then they'd say ah these stories suck in front of the audience and the audience i would always say afterwards i mean i wouldn't lecture them they would they right because that that was that sounds stupid but i'd be thinking to myself the audience was okay until you i my job is to let the audience know that this is just exactly the interview i wanted whether it is or it isn't but the minute you turn to them and say you just bought a lemon of a car yes that datsun i just sold you suck yes i know there's not you the spiritual leader of them yeah that's why if you break a guitar string most people in the audience don't know how insignificant breaking guitar string is they think you might have broken the instrument and if you go then they go yeah if you play right through it they don't even notice after that i never apologize i've seen artists apologize on stage and i've told them myself never apologize from the stage right i'm sorry i have a cough cold tonight you're not getting my best show never ever say no no you have to you have to i mean this this is all very elemental stuff but it's so fascinating to me that i love that it's true in comedy it's true in music it's probably true in business it's probably i mean it's very uh i think uh cult leaders don't say i'm sorry that thing i said last week about you know i have an angel is gonna come and he's gonna be wearing goggles it's not it's not goggles i misheard the angel the angel will be adept at Google is what I meant, you know?

42:31Yeah, it's authority. And, you know, sadly, I think it works in politics too, where someone who you think is a complete idiot, if they say things with great authority over and over and over again, and I'm not naming names, but I think we know that we're all talking about Gerald Ford. Well, listen, I've said before. You're not a Ford guy either. Good, because we got to take him down. If Donald Trump weren't saying the things he was saying and was saying things, let's say, that were benign, he would have a lovely speaking voice. Yeah. He could have narrated Royal Tenenbaums. And it would be great.

43:11Someone can use AI, I'm sure. A fastidious fan of yours will use AI. And have Donald Trump narrate Royal Tenenbaums. And it wouldn't be terrible. Wouldn't be terrible is my benchmark. you just described that's our that's our best review um no it's funny because a couple of weeks ago i had the honor of very recently of going to to to talk to president biden and i'm a huge presidential uh history buff and and and he was lovely to me and we had a very nice conversation that wasn't really that political uh at all um one of the things i noticed is that he He speaks quietly, but what he's saying was great.

43:55It was a terrific conversation. And he has a quieter speaking voice as opposed to, say, a Trump who can say crazy things like, you know, aardvarks should mate with zebras. But he says it loudly! And everyone goes, that's a leader! And I think to myself, he just said aardvarks should mate with another species. I like when he reads from the teleprompter and reacts to the teleprompter as he's speaking. And aardvarks should be mating with zebras. And they should be mating. He's sort of reading for the first time. And you can always feel the binary of when he's going, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, they should be.

44:33He's reacting. It's a good one. And they should be mating. And then he goes back and he's reading and he's reading. And they should. And they should. And he goes back. I just love the moment he realizes what he's reading and reacts to it in real time. It'd be funny if they just put a recipe in there. and he was just, so he's talking about like, and we're going to do this about the border and another thing, if you're making buttermilk biscuits, a quarter. At high altitude, one egg only? One egg only? One egg only? Only takes one egg. But I like, he's going like, just one egg, you know, because it's a higher altitude.

45:01It's a higher altitude. And then he goes back and you can feel him go back. Yeah. A little bit of honey in with the, because you know, it adds sweetness. It does. Add sweetness to the biscuits. But I'm realizing that its presentation is so much of it and intent. Like, it was your, you know, getting back to, like, comedy and possibly music, but when you talk about worrying whether people are walking out or do people want to leave right now and go buy a soda or alcohol soda? Where have I been? No, they want to get a pop. Okay, yeah, okay. It's the Nickelodeon awards. You're just about to be slimed.

45:45Kids are leaving to get it. I'm just gonna get a soda. Kids have cigarettes, but they're also drinking soda. I'm gonna have a cigarette and a Panta. I don't need to hear this song. But it's just, I think the one thing that's changed with me and it's come with age more than anything else, probably some erosion, like experience, just a lot of abrasion and erosion, but also just time is, I don't wanna misquote, but I think it was George Wallace, someone like that said, who's, you know, this great uh stand-up community around forever and plays vegas and his attitude was well they got the show they got that was the show i had tonight and i gave them the show that i had and i i think about that every now and then they got the show i had to give them that's what i had to give them tonight and i gave it to them i have a couple thoughts on that uh and i forgot one of them but there's a difference between giving a good show and having a good show you're always going to give a good show and it would be nice if you also had a good show.

46:42It's nice when you get both, but even if you didn't have a good show, you can be sure that you gave a good show. And that brings me back to the thing I just remembered, which is I do this thing now, if I start to get in my head while I'm playing and I go, Hey, it doesn't have the spark. They're going to, they're, they're, they're not loving it. I go, let's do a quick checklist. Are these the songs on your albums? Are they played in the original key on the original instruments they were recorded with? Are you singing in English? Are you singing the lyrics that are germane to the song? What else do you need?

47:10What else do you need to give? And couldn't you do that when you were, is it me? Have they come to see me? Am I speaking English? Am I telling jokes? Is my hair up? If my hair is high, that's 50 % of why they came to see me. Yeah. It's all a sag. But it's interesting that you bring that up because it is actually, well, a lot of people know this, but there is a very sort of more scientific type of therapy that I've experimented with in the past called cognitive therapy. And cognitive therapy is very much about your emotions. Everything is driven by thoughts. So you do a checklist. And I've just found what I liked about it was that it made so much sense because I would go into these very dark spirals.

47:52And one of the things they teach you is get out a piece of paper, write down all your thoughts. People hate me, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, my career's over. You write all these things down and then you walk away for like 20 minutes and then you come back and you look at them and your job is to respond to what you wrote. And if you even wait 20 minutes, everything you wrote on the left-hand column usually looks pretty silly. It's naked. So it looks very ridiculous. So if it's you, what you would have written down is, people hate me. And then you come back 20 minutes later and you're like, I just played for 50 ,000 people and they cheered.

48:29And I'd been doing this for 30 years or 25 years, whatever. And I've sold this many albums I suck at the guitar. Let's take a look. I opened for the Rolling Stones. No, that's right. I played with B.B. King. I played with Eric Clapton. I've played with everybody. I play, you know, I'm just a popper. I am a great jazz aficionado. I am, you know, like, and so you look at it and suddenly it all falls away and you realize how stupid our thoughts are. We're bombarded with stupid thoughts all the time. We're really bad researchers. if we applied the same methodology to actual rigid scientific research that we do to our own thoughts, we would, we would be looked at as the most insane people of all time.

49:16Right. Because we would, nothing would compute the measurements and the weights would make no sense. Right. And you would say, yes, there are 400 seconds to a minute. And you go, how did you figure that out? It just felt like 400 seconds or two a minute, you know? Yeah. And so we're just terrible compilers of factual information as to what's going on in our life. And the grand total will come out sometimes in the negative. Yes. And it's just the math is wrong. That doesn't help everything just to know the math is wrong. You have to still fix the math, but it's nice to know. And that's what age affords you.

49:46Yes. You skip all that stuff where you really feel the anguish and you go, well, let's fix it. Yeah. You'll be all right. There's also something about, I'm a magical thinking, which I know is, there's a lot of magical thinking in my family and in my family history. And I have a lot of magical thinking and magical thinking is just what we used to do for millions of years, not millions, but 200 ,000 years, humans would try to explain things they couldn't understand. Why did grog just get hit by a lightning bolt? And so someone else in the cave would say, well, I noticed that he spat out his food, a piece of his food that had gristle in it before he went out of the cave.

50:26See, don't, if you spit gristle out of your mouth before you leave the cave, the gods will kill you with lightning. So rule number one, and it's just like, no, that just doesn't work. And thus OCD was born. Yeah, and every kind of eating disorder. Yeah.

50:53I often wonder, what did my grandfather feel when he didn't feel great? What would he have used? What would your grandfather have used to describe his state? I really think people didn't used to think about it. I feel weird. Annie, I feel weird. But that must have been what it was. I feel weird going for a drink. Also, I think going back to people weren't like us. They behaved. No one sat around talking about how they felt. Hardly anybody went to therapy. Freud shows up very recently in our history. And then it still hasn't caught on with a lot of people. But nobody talked about how they felt.

51:32And when people died, they died. And when people felt grief, someone brought them a pie and then said, you better get out there because your fucking pigs are leaving the barn. There wasn't this. And I'm not saying. No, there's a happy medium. Yeah, because I am not praising that era. But I also think that you can spend too much time in the boiler room of what's, you know, it is not, it's not an objective world. The inside of your head is not an objective world. Visit the way you would visit the spooky basement every once in a while just to grab something out of the second fridge. Right. And bring it back up because there are some people who only stay in the constant reportage of a very subjective world.

52:11Right. That can't stay the same. And so I don't know how you could lean your weight against something that's going to change every day. I don't want to say it's imaginary, but it is highly interpretive. And I think there's a boy, this sounds great, doesn't it? Listen to me go. But that's good. There's a sweet spot between interpreting your feelings and getting lost in too much of an abstract world. And you have to move, go in there for a minute, tinker under the hood, fix what you need to fix and come back up into the more work at a steel factory. do objective things write songs write comedy make things happen action yeah making stuff so can I ask you a question sort of related yeah is the reason there are so many people here in this building sort of buzzing around with work and creativity because that's how you came up working on the TV show and you want to carry that same vibe we knew you were coming and those are actors am I getting pumped we yeah this is like have you ever seen that movie The Sting where they have to pretend it's a casino but it's an off track betting place but it's not and they just hire a bunch of actors.

53:14So Ashton is in the grooming van outside. He's watching. No, I love being around a lot of people. I come from a big family, a lot of siblings and a lot of chaos. I like having people around. You've noticed, like, I just love bouncing off of people. Yes. I get a perverse thrill out of them making fun of me. I don't know. Yeah. And they do. And you get power from making fun of them. Yes, yes. I grow stronger by belittling them. If someone has an ailment, I really go to town. Where's your leg? Oh my God, Conan. Don't say that to Limpy. I should learn Limpy's name by the way. Fell asleep on a train track, terrible.

54:03But I love having people around and I can't work in a vacuum. There are times if I have to really think about something, I need to go off and be by myself and I loathe it. But then I have to go back into this. We have this Keebler Elf tree going here. And I really love that feeling of bouncing off. I mean, it's so funny because I've been in comedy for so long and I can certainly talk a blue streak. But this podcast, I think what makes it the whole thing work is if I was here alone, it wouldn't happen. but I'm here with Sona and Matt and Eduardo and Blay and I can bounce off them. They can challenge me.

54:46Uh, we can get into it. And so there's a, there's a little bit of a chemistry here that really makes it special. It's so good that as a guest, I was wondering on the way here, like, okay, what's going to be my tactic in terms of being funny occasionally. And then, and then as soon as you went, I was like, Oh, I don't have to worry about the carrying the weight of any of that because to bounce off of you, to give you the idea, to set you up for the big joke makes me feel like I made the joke. Yeah. You know? Also, there's a big thing you learn in anything is just, I don't care how we get there as long as I'm happy that we get there.

55:19Like occasionally we'll go and I'll travel the podcast and these two, I don't remember your names, but I'll get it. You just said it. I know, I know. And I had it written on my hand, but then it washed away. My tears as I was laughing about Limpy. Cheers of joy. And yet you remembered his name. I know. He's got one leg. He's got one leg. Okay. I mean, come on. Get it together. You don't sleep on a train track. He didn't even hear the train. Now we can hear the train. But like, Arp this pod. He'll sleep on the train and train. That's the problem with those Acellas. They're so quiet. Coming on strong.

55:55He'll sleep on that train track. When I woke up, I was walking all wrong. Walking all wrong. I love that. Walking all wrong. Oh, man. All night long. I was walking all along with one leg strong. And the other one hanging just bopping along. I was walking all along. Okay, so you've got Ballad of Limpy. Ballad of Limpy. And what is that? Shitfinger Jones? Shitfinger Jones sings. No, wait a minute. You have half an album already. This is what I do. This is what I do. This is where you should come. If I'm lucky, you guys go home tonight, take your jacket off and you go, I was walking all along. And your spouse or roommate says, What's that you're singing?

56:35I like that. Mayor started singing it and it stuck in my head. Is that the ballad of what? I was walking on, no. Sing more. I was walking on, no. And also in your version, the leg is still there, but it's hanging on by a thread. In my version, it's on Tunnel of Love. By Bruce Springsteen. And the man in the sun. Oh my God. Yeah. Well, it's Saturday night. I fell asleep on the tracks. And when I woke up, I felt something different.

57:12I love this song. It's so good.

57:21That was a great contribution. You act like I didn't elevate what John did. I elevated what John did. No, you didn't. John was singing in his barely passable voice. Barely passable. And then I added, which I think is it. That was like a 10 a.m. orgasm. I don't know what you were doing. If I could have an orgasm at 10 a.m., I'd be quite happy, sir. Yeah, you're about right for me. Someone's been looking at my eye count. 10 a.m. high time. People want to go on a date. I'm like, sorry. Every day begins at 10.30 a.m. If you want to go on a date with me, You gotta get your request in before 10 o 'clock AM.

58:03The new Apple watch has a function that lets you know when John Mayer is orgasming. And I didn't, I know how to turn it off. Imagine that in macro, one more thing. It's like the new two album, it's just on there. No, I mean, first of all, you can turn it off, but you have to go in to the fucking whole thing and turn it off. So I'll just be walking, it'd be 10, every morning around 10 AM, it goes like, and I'm like. I'd say one more thing. With Apple's new exciting Jack track, You can find out when you or your loved ones are pleasuring themselves, so as to better time your amorous moments. With a new longer life battery in the Ultra 8 and Jack Track.

58:40I love the Jack Track. That's an app. The Jack Track. You've got two songs and an app out of this relatively short discussion. That's what we do. This is fantastic. Hey, I want to make sure I mention something, which is that you have a channel. I do. Which I think is fantastic, which is you have your own SiriusXM channel, Life with John Mayer, and it's a different approach because you're not just playing your music. Very little of it. It bums me out when my music comes on. It's based on time of day. And I thought of this because of the Jack track. I'm not kidding. Did you really? The riff about the Jack track got me thinking, wait a minute.

59:19I know this sounds like a forced plug, but it's not. I think you have a very cool approach to having a channel and I'm eager to check it out. But tell us what it is. called Life with John Mayer, and it is not genre-based as much as it's based on the time of day. Because when we got into algorithms and Spotify and stuff, we kind of got trapped in this idea of telling a computer what we want to hear. And I always say it's sort of like your grandmother keeping track of what you like. And they're wrong a lot. And I know you're pulling a Jack Track thing in on... No, no, no, no. I wouldn't. I would never go back to something crass.

59:55I would never call back a crass remark. That's just not me. But, you know, you go, I don't know. What do I want to hear? What do I want to hear? And then you tell, you know, Spotify, and Spotify goes, I know what you want after this. And it's the same six, seven songs, and it starts to, like, for me, personally, it was becoming claustrophobic. I'd go to the gym. I'd go, I don't know. Give me George Benson. Give me the night. And it would go, got it, son. And then I would know what was coming after that. And I was just getting more and more confined in what I was listening to, and I thought, If there was a Sirius channel where every time you turned it on, the music was synchronized to the time of day as best as possible.

1:00:30Like at night, it's super mellow music. So you can have it on in the kitchen. You can. And I do. It's great. In the morning, it's like drive time music, you know, because when you wake up in the morning, you don't want it. It's not it's not, you know, it's not Tom Waits time. No. In the morning. It's OK to hear, you know, since you've been gone. And you might not play that. You might not think to tell Spotify to play that. But when it comes on at 7 in the morning and you're in traffic, it's like, right on. Right on. It's great. It's like a cup of coffee, you know? What's programmed at 10 a.m.?

1:00:59Dead air. I'll be back in seven minutes. We're going to take a quick break for between 7 and 11 minutes. We're going to let dead air speak for itself. I'll be right back, slightly out of breath, and let it play you some Pearl Jam. I'll be right back after I find that. Sports Illustrated with Kathy Ireland. from 1992. It's Throwback Tuesday. It's Throwback Tuesday, so that would be Kathy Ireland, Sports Illustrated. We're gonna be, that's so funny. It's Throwback Tuesday. Then you hear me opening a safe.

1:01:37Your hardcore porn is strewn out and about throughout the house. First of all, it's not online. It's not online, it's in a safe. You put on white cotton gloves. Which is in itself. Which is a weird obstacle. Three to the right. Ah, hello, Miss Ireland. It's like, you got the blue booties on, hyperbaric room, it's like the curation room of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. No fluorescent lighting. I love the burglars that come to my house and bust open the safe. They take the safe out of the wall and then they get it back to where their lair and they crack it open. What the hell is this? They follow you home and hold you at gunpoint to open the safe and you finally open it up and club magazines come cascading out.

1:02:22These are all very attractive women from the late 80s and early 90s. This is a printout of Samantha Fox.

1:02:33Half of these are articles.

1:02:39The best VCRs of 1988. You actually printed the article on most poisonous snakes? There was always one article. The deadliest snakes. And every now and then I'm getting aroused by that. An interview with the John 316 guy from the baseball games. Where's Conan? Someone mentioned Egyptian asp and he just, he dashed off. He said it'd be back in seven to 11 minutes. Oh my God. Oh my God. Well this, I mean, first of all, I'm very happy you're doing this channel and you're gonna be like taking calls. you're gonna be talking to people because yeah i i go live i take calls ideally i'd like to do interviews with people uh if you think i'm any good you're i would no but i would love to i mean this this has been an absolute blast and i would happily anytime you want me come up come by yeah i'd love bring a guitar we'll do i'll do buckets i actually mean it i actually mean it you're the most encouraging person i've ever seen during a conversation do you are you are you aware that you give constant kinesthetic encouragement?

1:03:47I'm loving this. This is one of my favorite episodes we've ever done. Okay, I look over to you and this is, if everyone in the crowd - It's so good. We're doing what you were doing. Why do you think Conan keeps him around? You're effusive, it's great. You know what the thing is, everyone else here cuts me down and Bley is always telling me, that was amazing even when it wasn't. No, it's great. It is amazing. It's always amazing. This episode is great. It feels so good. It makes me feel so good, honest to God. No, I would be thrilled, honored to come by and hang. I think I just need to do one really good interview and other people would maybe hear.

1:04:24I'm already down on myself about whether or not anyone would want to do it because it's so new for me. Oh, I wouldn't worry about that at all. I think you're going to do a great job. I was thinking I've survived every scary thought I've ever had in my life. I've survived it. I've woken up the next day. Right. And I've survived everything I thought was going to kill me. And so now, and I got to a place where I feel like there's this trust in what I do with people that if I put a record out a year, two years, three years from now, people go, Oh, I want to hear what he has to say. So everything feels so set in a way that makes me feel like it's this until a doctor sits me down and says, you know, when I first got into medicine, I go, Oh boy, you know, whatever that conversation is someday where I'm told I can't stay.

1:05:06That's the end of it. But until then, And don't you feel like this is the straightaway now? This is the best? Oh, I like this part better than any other part. You did all the work to get here to where you can hire actors to hang on outside. They're all, once you got into this building, I didn't want to pay for them the whole time. They're eating across the street. Yeah, and they're not being paid for that time. But the minute you leave, they're all going to rush back. I actually have one guy in the corner sawing something. And there's no reason for a guy to be sawing something in a podcast video.

1:05:36You're a guy dressed like an Oompa Loompa. Who's the man with the measuring tape? Who's just going around measuring everything. And also, why did I make it look like an off-track betting play? And here comes Lucky Lindy in the straightaway. Hey, John Mayer, God bless. Thank you for being here. Thank you. And before you go, I'll show you, there are a couple of guitars up in my office and you can laugh at them. I really want to hear your buckets of rain. You don't, no, no, no. And then I'm going to play for you. I was walking all wrong. Don't think I don't remember that. No, no, no. I've written them all down.

1:06:07You owe us big time. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Conan O 'Brien Needs a Friend with Conan O 'Brien, Sonam of Sessian, 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. Theme song by The White Stripes. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. Take it away, Jimmy.

1:06:34Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair. And our associate talent producer is Jennifer Samples. Engineering and mixing by Eduardo Perez and Brendan Burns. 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 669-587-2847 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 wherever fine podcasts are downloaded.