Mick Jagger

26:57And like in that song, there's two attitudes. So there's the verse attitude where you're kind of trying to be beguiling. and then there's the chorus attitude where you're kind of throwing something else away you know saying life's too short just make money and what so it's a slightly different different attitude then you come back to the verse where you're then you know throwing sort of these kind of scattered gun images out you know in what you hope is a kind of interesting way I listened to this album. I listened to it a bunch because I really like it. And I noticed that, yes, I can see, obviously, you guys famously started as a blues band, but there's blues in here.

27:42There's rock and roll. There's also country. again i think you've always been interested in many different genres of kind of music and i was very interested in the country aspect of the album because i know that if i didn't know any by the other i think well country couldn't have been an influence but it was an influence country was a huge influence from on well i think on every uh most english musicians of that period Don't forget these songs were also big. A lot of these country songs were big hits. They were like top 10 hits, as they were in the US. But people like Eddie Arnold and all these people, they had huge hits.

28:21They were pop hits, even though they were country songs. And then you got onto people like George Jones, and they were played on the radio. So this wasn't obscure. The blues was more obscure. These were hits. The Everly Brothers were country. I mean, really? I mean, they were pop, but there's still country and Johnny Cash. Johnny Cash had a number one record with Ballad of Teenage Queen. So as soon as you heard that and you liked Johnny Cash, you would explore more Johnny Cash, and you'd realize that he was a country singer. This is what you realize when you listen to 1954 Elvis' Sun Session. It's a click and a half away from country.

29:01It's rockabilly. Yeah. But if you slowed it down a little bit, Yes. The instrumentation, it's so close to country. So close, but he was covering rhythm and blues songs a lot of times. I mean, of course, he did standards like Blue Moon in the same period we're talking about. Obviously, these songs like That's All Right Mama, which is, I think, the first one he did. He did the first one, yeah. And that was an R &B song. And then he did Hound Dog, that was an R &B song. These were all R &B songs. So even though we say, yeah, he's so country, he was covering R &B in a kind of slightly different country way.

29:43I'm not sure. I'm not a great Elvis student, but I mean, I love Elvis and all that. But did he really do country music as we know it? No, probably more, well, gospel. He loved gospel. Yes, gospel he did. Loved gospel. But you can see that, you're right, those early influences, I think it's a gumbo. There's country is part of his makeup, but much more so gospel, rhythm and blues. You never met, did you meet Elvis? No, I never met Elvis. That's incredible to me. You know why? I'll tell you why. The Daily Mirror, an English tabloid that still exists, you always did publicity with the Daily Mirror and the Beatles did it.

30:21There was a Chobis journalist, I can't remember his name, very famous at the time. And he took the Beatles in Los Angeles to visit with Elvis. Yeah. and they there's pictures of this yeah so they went up to elvis's house and his pool and they walked in and he was playing bass was he watching tv playing bass okay but they were all high the beals were high and they none of them have their story straight none of them can remember don't remember anything but i remember john telling me yeah you know should never meet your heroes i would i would never meet elvis mick if i were you that's fascinating yeah and so i didn't I took John's advice.

31:01Yeah. It was really stupid of me, really. But I mean, I would love to have had Elvis. Why I take John's advice? But I mean, at the time, it seemed to ring. Well, I mean, so. No, no. He famously, in the 64 tour, he kept saying, the minute they got to America, John kept saying, where's Elvis? Where's Elvis? Where's Elvis? That's the only person he wanted to meet. Then they met Elvis. And in Bel Air at his house, John walked out and said, where's Elvis? because that was not the guy he wanted to meet yeah he disappointed him yeah and he told me that all this story yeah more than once yeah and and so it sort of put me off so i wanted to keep my elvis to myself my version of the always yeah and so i didn't want my version of elvis shattered like john's was but maybe my always version would have been different well i have to tell you i've always wanted to sit and talk with you and this is a massive disappointment yeah i can imagine it is Here we are, stuck in this little tiny room in West London.

32:03I'm going to leave and go, where's Mick Jagger? And I was enjoying being in Casablanca. This is crap. I did have a good time in Casablanca. And there's something about this album, Foreign Tongues, I was thinking, you're not nostalgic. I can feel an urgency. There's a sense that you guys got into the studio. I know you made it very quickly. and what i'm very impressed by is it almost feels like you've got something to prove which you don't but that's how it feels a lot of these songs really feel like you're having a great time but let's get this shit and get it right is that is that fair yeah it's fair i mean but that's that's how most operandi for when we did hackney diamonds yeah you know it was a way of working so the previous way with the bands obviously had a lot of ways of working in a studio um and and when we did hackney diamonds that was a different way of doing it it's like okay we've got these songs we got them prepped a bit at least they're done um we're not writing songs in the studio which a lot of bands do we used to do if something comes up in the studio fantastic fantastic and this might change this song may change completely and utterly but you have an idea and we're going to plow through them we're not going to hang around we're not going to wait we're not going to play them all day we're going to do them for a couple of hours and we'll move on to the next one and if we'll come back the next day we might do it again or might leave come back next week and do it again so we're always moving ahead always plowing ahead so there's no time for too much uh self-analysis of whether it's the songs any good whether the performances and we'll find out because when it's all finished we'll we'll listen to them all you know and see what have we got after we've done four weeks what have we got left well what's good which are your favorites which ones is there anyone you don't like is is this does this all stand up because we want to set the bar high because we don't want to have we said in Hatton Diamonds this we don't want to any filler we want to set the bar high so every track has to have something special about it okay some might be you might be your favorites but that doesn't mean so that the other ones don't have something to say.

34:17Well, Rough and Twisted, I love. In the Stars, obviously you guys knew we've got something really great here. Yeah. Love the video. Yeah, that's crazy. It's fantastic. You guys sort of reimagined as your younger selves and it's great. It's fantastic. It was only AI with the faces. Yeah. Everything else is real. And you told me that at one point they got a little screwed up because you thought Ronnie Wood doesn't look right. They're young. Young you looks great. Young Keith looks great. They made sort of, they tried to make a faces era. Ronnie Wood. No, I said to, I said to, we were talking with this, the lady that I'm working with on the video.

34:59So they're doing this AI. And I said, stop it at 3.18. I was talking to her. Just, we're on Zoom. I said, stop it at 3.18. I said, that's Jeff Beck. Ronnie, that's not, Your guy, your guy is, he's referring to Jeff. He's got the right, because the thing was, AI makes mistakes. The thing was, the thing was that Ronnie was in a band with Jeff Beck. Yes. So they might have gone back to this footage and said, I don't, please don't bother me about this. I know exactly who these people are. And he got, and it looked exactly like Jeff Beck. So we had Jeff Beck in the band for a minute there. That was interesting.

35:35So I said, now you've got to change it to Ronnie. Because the Keith and I images were taken from Sympathy for the Devil. Yeah. But mostly, it's not quite that simple. Was it Godard who made the, he made a movie? Of course, someone famous, a famous French film director. Yeah, a French filmmaker. And I know at the time you were thinking, why is he shooting us, creating, and now it's a great document. Yeah, it's the only one like that. It's the only one that exists from the 60s. You know what's another great piece of footage is there's this great footage of you and Keith. You've just come back from recording in Muscle Shoals.

36:08You go into a room, I'm sure you've seen this. You walk into a room and you've got the demo for, I think it's Brown Sugar. Yeah. You put it on and you're listening to it. It's not out yet, but you're listening to it. And you see you start to, both of you start to groove to this thing and you start strutting around the room and you have the same reaction that later on everybody's going to have, which is this is a great track, but it's you guys hearing it for the first time. Yeah, you're here in the rough mix or something. Yeah. It's Anne Giving Shelter by the Maisel Brothers. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's great.

36:47It's just a great moment. You as a fan of the Rolling Stones. Yeah, I can be that. Yeah. I can also be their severest critic. Is that true? Well, you kind of have to be sometimes, you know. I mean, and sometimes you're wrong. You know, you can be very wrong because you're not a very good critic of your own work. One is not a good critic of one's own work, really. but you know you are the first person that hears it after all in in in reality i have to ask you i mentioned this when we talked in brooklyn but i have to bring it up your voice sounds as good as ever there are times where i think it's better than ever it's uh defies logic but i know that you are an extremely disciplined guy about your health and taking care of yourself but you listen to this album and I think this is a this is a 28 year old singer it's really amazing oh that's that's very kind of you to say that uh and you're doing falsetto stuff well that's that's pretty easy I find that kind of easy that's not I mean people have given me lots of compliments about that and to be honest that's the and I appreciate the kindness but that that some of the other songs are much more difficult than that that one's relatively easy to do um I I learned Fulsetto singing very early on in Stone's career when I listened to Don Covey.

38:13He was a soul singer, and he was singing this song called Have Mercy. Don Covey also wrote Chain of Fools for Aretha Franklin. He was a songwriter as well, and I met him a few occasions. Anyway, but on his song Have Mercy, he sings only in Fulsetto. So then I copied that, and we covered that song. I mean, I'm sure my version is useless compared to her. I was practicing. But that kind of falsetto singing is relatively easy because you never change from falsetto back into your regular voice. That's the difficult thing to do. The difficult thing is going in and out of falsetto. So I can't really do that very well.

38:54The person that does that brilliantly is Al Green. So if you listen to Al Green, And I was, last month, I was put on this Al Green record, and I hadn't heard it for a while. And I said, I was analyzing what he was doing with his vocal. So he's going for a setter, and then he's going back in the same line. He's going back to his regular voice, and then he's going back for a setter. I said, okay, I see. So I've got to do that too. I have to learn how to do that. And so I just sang along with Al Green trying to do it. I mean, it's not easy, but it's possible. I learned this a long time ago, which is very few people sort of in your caliber.

39:32But I remembered once getting to see Bruce Springsteen, the E Street Band perform. And then I got taken backstage because my drummer for years, Max Weinberg, is Bruce's drummer. he took me backstage and I got to hang out with Bruce a little bit just after the show. And he, at one point had been trying to, had been singing this falsetto. And I said, that was, that was great. I love that part. And I didn't realize you could do that. And he said, yeah, I'm really working on it. And I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying. And I thought, this is fascinating. I see the same thing with you. Everyone else would assume that you've got nothing left to try, but of course you do.

40:09those are things you can do and and you are still thinking yeah i'm gonna listen to this al green record and okay what's he doing here and i want to work on that yeah because i haven't i haven't mastered that so in the studio so i do it like a song like um jealous lover yeah so i so i can sing the falsetto part in the verse first and then then the chorus is in full voice and then you layer it with lots of harmonies that I did in falsetto and full voice, but then I'm not really doing the Al Green thing. I'm doing one set in falsetto and one set in full voice. So, I mean, it's not cheating. That's just the way I layered it.

40:52But I do think there's something about, we all have our heroes. It's your attempt to be your hero that fails, but in the failing of being exactly like the person you idolize, you create something that's yours. Something new comes out. Yeah. Because you can't be that. You guys were listening to blues and saying, we want to do that. And it's, of course, it's different. You're from Dartford. Yeah, exactly. It's going to be different. I can't be Howling Wolf, you know? Yeah. I mean, but you do have, I've never tried to sound like Howling Wolf. Nobody sounds like Howling Wolf. Not even, I've never heard anyone, but yeah, you're absolutely right.

41:29You, you, you, while you're copying people, you create something new. You know, we were talking about how so much has changed. One of the things that this first wave of pop stars in the sixties faced was, well, you can't be doing this when you're not in your twenties. Once you're, you know, once you're 28, 29, this is for young kids to do. You can't be doing this. there's a great clip I saw. It's backstage. It might be Madison Square Garden. I think it's late sixties. Dick Cavett's talking to you and he said, you think you'll be doing this when you're 60? And he said, and you have a cane? And you said, sure.

42:10You said a lot of, you said Marlene Dietrich is still out there and she's amazing. And I thought that's such a great answer because I think the standard answer then was, well, of course not, of course not. But you said, why not? yeah why not well yeah that there had been i mean see the thing about rock music is associated with always associated with youth it's so it was the music of rebellious youth so to speak and um i mean most rock bands are young and you want there to be young rock bands and you know it sort of comes and goes and there's been a slight revival of it now but you thought that that once you're out of the flush of youth, you wouldn't continue.

42:52But rock music kind of evolved, I suppose, in a way as well. And it also remained the popular music with the same group of people that were in your same age group. They still liked it. So they didn't move on to some other music. They might have moved on, but they still kept a thing for their youth. Yeah. So, and you were obviously, so, but yeah, I don't know. I mean, there were people, I mean, Frank Sinatra was still a big star when he was old. But it's a different kind of music. You don't need quite so much energy to do Frank Sinatra as you need to do the Sex Pistols. I mean, or the Ramones. Or to do Hit Me in the Head.

43:32What I think, I mean, I can't, I'm hard-pressed to think of anybody who expends more energy on stage. Still, as you, you're in constant motion. I couldn't do that. I couldn't do that for 15 minutes, let alone a two-hour-plus show. So, you know, the stamina that you have, I know you work at it. I'm wondering, does any of that come from the fact that your dad was a gymnast and a physical fitness guy? Did you think that you grew up a little bit with that? Like, I got to take care of myself? Yeah, definitely, yeah. He kept telling me you have to take care of yourself. You know, if you don't take care of yourself, you're going to be, and he'd point at someone like who was 55, fat and smoking in an armchair.

44:13Yeah, yeah, yeah. You'd be like your uncle so-and-so. Yeah, yeah. and you know you don't want to be like that i'm saying no no i don't yeah but it goes in you know when you're young that coat that sticks with you so yeah i would have been i don't know 12 years old i think when elvis turned 40 and the national inquirer was just vicious yeah about elvis turning 40 because he was the real first wave of rock and roll absolutely so he's you know um he's another generation older than you guys and he was the first one to get isn't this absurd that this man is still doing this at 40 yeah which now nobody wasn't in very good shape no he was that was the thing i mean and then he got back in shape he came he did a great comeback thing where he looked amazing but for a while he what why he was such a figure of fun i'm not saying the national inquirer is the paper of record but uh it why he was everyone used to take the mick out of him was because he did get overweight and he did and he obviously wasn't in a very fit no and and and he wasn't very old i mean this is all and how old was he when he died he was 42 yeah you know which we now we consider quite young for well this is how screwed up things are i was in high school when I would have been 17, 16 or 17, when my sister Kate knocked on the door and she opened the door.

45:45It was in the morning in 1980. And she told me John Lennon was shot and died. And I was lying in bed and I said, what? And she said, yes. And I said, how old was he? And she said, 40. And I said, well, at least he had a long life. That's what I said. Now I am 63 now. I don't think 40 is a long life. I don't think 63 is a long life, but that was my perspective then. Yeah, of course. Just insane. Yeah, well, today, I know this is not going out until later, but David Hockney just died. Yeah. And he was creating experimental art. He was 87 years old and he never stopped. Never stopped. He never stopped, not just repeating himself.

46:26He didn't repeat himself. That was the great thing. he he he just carried on you know trying different things yeah and trying different ways of expressing himself and foreign tongues album is that you i mean he was amazing and 87 i mean he was still painting this year

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49:21i have to ask you is the harmonica that i hear on foreign tongues album is that you yeah it's okay ronnie plays harmonica but he doesn't play on this album well also there's a great quote a keith quote keith is a huge admirer of your harmonica playing and he said that is that's the that's the you know there are many mick can assume many forms that is he always felt your harmonica playing was the key into that's the core mick jagger that's the apple logo that comes up when you've turned on the computer for the first time as you want her money do you think that's close to something true it's kind of true but the thing is you know i think in a funny way uh the the harmonica is an extension of the voice you know because it's a blown instrument and you're we don't you're making a wah wah you know it's it's a voice extension thing so i think it's a for a vocalist it's a good extension of of a voice you know so a natural instrument of a voice of course what i like doing is playing punk guitar so that's what i really like doing so so do you ever do open tunings or do you just do you i do both yeah yeah but uh when i do the slashy indie guitars it's all six strings and that ronnie and keith would sort of look at me but I do it anyway.

50:38They don't watch you on the guitar? I don't think so. But they've sort of learned to put up with it. Yeah. They've learned to put up with it, and, you know, I love doing it because, no, it's harder than that, you know? It's like this, you know? Because on some of these fast songs, it's like, you know, like hit me in the head and all that. It's really slamming, you know? You have to really slam it. I'm not saying Ronnie and Keith don't slam it because they do, but when I've written something like that I think I always want to be on it you know I always want to be playing guitar on it so that's why I gave I mean I love playing harmonica too the harmonica thing was great on the Amy Winehouse song because I played the harmonica it the horn parts on the Amy original I played on harmonica which is a horn part so I played that on harmonica that was a good opportunity.

51:32Do you write exclusively on guitar or do you also sit at the piano and write? I do piano and guitar. Piano and guitar. Piano and guitar. Sometimes I just sing to drum machines, just anything with no instrument, just me singing. Do you find that like you've got to do it early in the morning? No, I hate doing things early in the morning. I don't think early in the morning is breakfast and read the newspaper. That's it. Many people have been asking, is there going to be a tour for foreign tongues and i selfishly would want that because i want to hear these songs live and i know you're going to get me a ticket yeah you guys are saying probably not right away but what do you think do you think it would be maybe in a year is it possible or it's hard to say it's possible i i think i think i'd love to do it too because i think there's a lot of songs on this album that that would translate into live really good um but having said that you can't really do that many new songs if you do stadium shows they the audience is not that accepting accepting of them you know they want to hear what they're familiar can you clock that when you're trying something new and you see people head for the bathroom you kind of yeah you do oh you'll get used to it you you'll like it honestly you'll like it yeah but you must have felt that when you were singing some i mean there were many times in your life where you were singing new tracks of course but no one you know led zeppelin had to play stairway to the heaven for the first time at one point on long island and people were like what what is this shit yeah right it's always the first time now but then yeah the more confident you get the more you just we're doing it you know but there's still a limit to how many you can do out percentage wise so you can see someone headed to the bathroom sometimes i can i don't concentrate on that i would only concentrate on it when when someone i'm talking and people are heading to the bathroom it's all i can think about and it's they often that's when they use the bathroom is when i start talking um i heard you talk about david bowie once i think it was when we were having dinner and you were talking about david bowie at one point and you you said an interesting thing which is we were competitive but we were also good friends that's a very hard thing to maintain but i think you did you guys did that beautifully yeah we were competitive david was so competitive much more competitive i was made competitive by david i mean how else well he was just so competitive that i had to be competitive back you know but he but he would do i mean i mean he he went through up here this david went through all these different yes yeah iterations iterations of david there isn't one david bowie there's kind of like a slowly evolving david bowie there's there's jump cuts of, you know, to another David Bowie.

54:26Yeah. Another style. Then he's the thin white duke. Yeah. You know, when he was doing like Gene Genie, he was very stonesy, you know? Yes. That was very stonesy period. And so he would come over and play me Gene Genie, you know. I've got it. Want to listen? I said, yeah, of course. I said, God, he nicked all my things. Yeah, I know, man. I know. But it's like a homage to you. It's homage. Yeah, sure. Bullshit. It's homage. Yeah. But yeah, I think John and I were very competitive too. John Lennon. But we're more competitive in being sarcastic. Yes. Verbal competitiveness. Have you ever seen the video of him and Bob Dylan in the back of the limo?

55:12Yes. I love that. I love that because Bob Dylan is not in good shape. They're in the back of a Rolls Royce. They're driving around London. And I think in 65, John's got that acid wit where he's saying, come, come, boy, come, come. Do you suffer from scraggly forehead? You know, he turns it into an aspirin ad because Bob Dylan can't pull it together. No, that's very much like John. Did you guys get along? Yeah, we really got along. But I mean, that was John at his most, you know, he's being very sarcastic with Bob, you know, and Bob's not really coming back with the zingy answers. No. No, he's impaired and he's not, yeah, he's not.

55:55It does give you a good illustration because most of the other things you see of John are kind of like short and that's kind of extended sarcasm. Yes. So that was him all the time? No, not all the time. He could be sweet. Of course, he could be lovely. Yeah. But, you know, he's one of these people that if you say something stupid, he'd pick you up, you know? You know, you see it, right. He'd clock it right away, right away, you know? Yeah. But he, he was very competitive about, he wasn't competitive about anything else. You mean just, you think he was most competitive about being funny? Yeah. Being funny and sarcastic.

56:33Yes. More so than music. It's, it's, it's a kind of Liverpool thing, I think. Sure. I think maybe I'm stereotyping, but I think it is. You've always been, you guys have been great at tour promotion. I don't know what you might do for the next tour. One of the greatest things you ever did was all get on the back of a flatbed truck, drive down Fifth Avenue singing, I believe, Brown Sugar. Yeah. And I'm thinking that takes nerve to drive through New York in traffic. And all the press was told you were going to be in this restaurant. And then they hear music and they come running out of the restaurant with their pads and their cameras and you guys are on the back of a truck going by that's it which was fantastic yeah lovely i don't know if people do things like that anymore they don't really um that apparently charlie told me that was a thing that jazz bands did in new york yeah to promote their gigs i think in harlem i think they would get on the back of a truck i think that's where we got it from um i think it might have been charlie's idea yeah um because that was the thing that happened in home and i know you mentioned charlie charlie's you use a track of charlie's uh in foreign tongues yes it's amazing i know you guys are all so readily identifiable by your sounds it's very hard to do on drums but you always know it's charlie yeah it's really incredible yeah he's got two sticks and a drum kit that he doesn't have some keith moon crazy kit with a thousand he's got a standard kit you always know it's him yeah and and the funny thing is on this track which is really fast rock track you're almost punk you might say and and everyone says such a sensitive jazz drummer you know that was so different about him well not on this track no he's banging it yeah the uh i have to ask you oxfordshire pub as we record this i think days ago, you walked into an Oxfordshire pub and started singing to people.

58:39How did that happen? Were you off your meds? What happened? Yes, I didn't know where I was. I had dinner at an Oxford college. I went to an Oxford college. I was invited to a dinner and very interesting people, very pleasant, lots of nice students. And then one of the students that I was talking with said, I play mandolin. I said, that's nice. I said, not the easiest instrument. He said, I play mandolin. I'm going down the road to play with an Irish band. So do you want to come? So I said, sure. And so I took a couple of people that I was with and the provost of the college. And he took his gown off and got into the pub.

59:28and it was a very small pub and very friendly people and the band was doing fiddle pieces and the guy joined in with his mandolin but no one was singing so I thought, oh well, here's an opening you want to sing it? This is my big chance This is my chance for pub crawling singing so I did a song that I'd actually recorded but I had to rehearse it just mentally because I hadn't sung it in years and remember the at least three verses. It's like an old standard, right? It is. Everyone's done it. I think even Bob Dylan's done it, I found out. Right. But not that I've heard it. But I had to remember at least three verses in my head before I started.

1:00:10I didn't just launch into it. Because the worst thing you can do is launch into a song and then you've got one verse. And then, hmm. I would pay to see that happen with you. I'm sorry. I would just love to see it. But it was fine. It's two minutes long. Well, that's, I mean, that keys into, I think, the main point that I wanted to get across in this interview, which is something that really strikes me in the short time that I've been able to hang out with you, is that you were very much living in the moment, making things in the moment. this album, Foreign Tongues, is of this moment. And you, I mean, sitting at a dinner with you and watching you trying everyone else's food, stealing some of Ronnie's dessert.

1:00:57And I thought you can converse about anything. You're, you know, crazily, deeply red. And you're just fascinated in all kinds of stuff. And I thought, I left my time with you and I thought, I need, this is my new spirit animal, is Mick Jagger, I want to, I aspire not to be you because that's not going to happen, but to kind of adopt that philosophy about life, which is just bite into it, stay interested, delight yourself. I think that's like, you know, I don't think that attitude suits everyone. Because some people, some of your creativity, if you're a creative person, let's imagine, you will draw on your past.

1:01:52You might draw on something that you had an idea for when you were 25. You might have written a short story when you were 25 and you didn't publish it. And then you realize that that would make a great film script or that would make a novel I could now write. Now I'm 65, let's say. So it's not true that you can't draw upon this whole well of your past and make it into something. it's and so you you're not you you have to be aware of of your past and but that doesn't mean you live in it and you know you feel of course i'm always asked you know what happened when you did this and it's so long ago and you and you you find yourself like just repeating these stories you know if they're even true anymore yeah you know it's just like a you know footballer in a pub talking about his goal in 1972 you know it's a you don't want to become that and that's a danger so yeah so everyone says live in the moment you know it's just a kind of like a like a kind of fashionable mantra but i mean to a certain extent it's true and i mean i think also when you're writing like these kind of ephemeral pop songs which these this is what this business is you you've got to stay in the present day.

1:03:23So I was writing a song like Ringing Hollow. You're thinking about the now of what you're living through now, which of course, you never know, could change by the time the record comes out. But you can only write, you can't really look into the future, it's hard. So you just write of the writing of the now, you know, in a song like Divine Intervention, you're writing of the now, of what your feelings are, you know so there's there's a there's a thing that runs through these lyrics of these songs that is definitely of the now and the kind of weird period and we're kind of like it's it's difficult for some people living in this period and and um and and you know there's possibly dangers that you know that that we're all in in some way or other but we're geopolitical dangers or economic dangers, and who knows what else.

1:04:20And we're all a little bit sensitive to them. I think people are sensitive to these things. And so when I'm writing stuff, I can't help myself, but I'm not setting out to even write. It just comes out. Yeah, it's what's happening right now. And these are scary times, but I have to thank you because you've given me, you and the other lads have given me an enormous amount of joy in my life. Thank you. I'm glad. That's what we're here for. Before I became a bad guitarist, I was a bad drummer. And when I was a kid, I would set up my drum kit in the living room and put on Stones records and try and do what Charlie was doing.

1:05:03And my parents let me do that. And we had neighbors, they were lovely. I can't believe, I would not let my kids do that. I would smash the kit but you've given me enormous joy lovely getting to know you and talk to you and you're one of my favorite conversations I've been talking to people non-stop for 32 years and you're one of my favorite people to talk to I hope the conversation today we covered a few we got so much we didn't talk about your hillbilly guitar playing much and your guitar collection you may have mentioned that on these podcasts before No, we talked about it at dinner. We did.

1:05:42We got into my fascination with rockabilly and wanting to sing. And funny, Keith heard me do Ronnie Hawkins, a version of Ronnie Hawkins, 40 Days, where I do it twice as fast as Ronnie Hawkins. And Keith said, you sound like a fucking auctioneer. Like, I'm like... But yeah, this is one of the joys of my life. And I'm so delighted that we were able to get together today, really. Yeah, me too. And Foreign Tongues, please, when you get a moment, tour with this. I try. Because I really want to hear these songs live. Yeah, me too. All right. I want to do it. Thanks so much. I salute you. Nice to talk to you.

1:06:26Conan 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, Jeff Ross, and Nick Liao. Theme song by The White Stripes. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. Take it away, Jimmy.

1:06:46Our 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. You can also get three free months of SiriusXM when you sign up at SiriusXM.com slash Conan.

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