- [Gregory] James!
- [James] Hi.
- Welcome.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Thanks for joining us today.
What happened?
- Okay.
It is not too long of a story,
but I have a newborn.
- Yeah. Congratulations.
- Thank you.
I really had very little to do with it.
My part was easy,
but our baby...
I set an alarm for 3:30
and I was a little concerned
that it was too early,
because I'm very easily distracted.
I'm like a little bit of a cat.
(laughs)
And the alarm went off at 3:30
and then I was like getting set up
and then my baby threw up.
My wife is feeding the baby,
the baby threw up everywhere so I'm like,
so I'm grabbing towels and cleaning her up
and as soon as I'm done doing that,
like I'm cleaning, we're all like in a panic
like, do we have enough milk?
Is there enough milk?
And then I get a FaceTime call
from my nephew who I haven't spoken to
who is trying to call my son,
because it's my older son's fifth birthday in two days.
And he's like, "I sent a gift.
"Did your gift get there?"
And then I get a phone call,
from another niece who's outside
trying to drop a gift off for my son.
So I'm downstairs with my son,
saying at a distance hi to his family
and they're like, "Oh, we should get going. Right?
"It's like 4:20" and I went,
and kind of just collapsed inwardly
and my son's like, "I want to go play drums downstairs."
I'm like, "No, we're going back inside right now." (laughs)
And I had to run upstairs and try and get back on.
- I've been there.
- I mean I have the mind of a gnat.
My wife is an amazing multi tasker.
I mean it's a hack thing to say that it's gendered,
but it's certainly played out that way in my life
but I literally have to attach things to my body
because I can't...
If I don't, I put things where
I wake up in the morning and come down have coffee,
I lay pills that I take every day,
because I'll forget to take them
if they're not in a little jar,
things that I have to do.
This morning, there was a drill
and screws in a little thing,
to make a little hanger for my son's guitar.
Like I have to leave them there
for me to not remember.
So all that happened, one baby threw up and...
- Well you're ready to begin?
- I'm here, yeah.
I'm here in my sonically attuned environment.
- Yeah, the audios, the acoustics
sound really good in that room.
- Well, we're all learning.
I think something that
everyone's going to start learning
is that your ear is an amazing weapon,
tool that helps you dial out ambient sound.
By being in an environment,
your ear can hear the reflections
and then just put them in a like a "ignore me pile"
and then you can hear what people are saying.
And when you use a microphone,
or you remove yourself from that environment,
your ear cannot do that anymore.
So, you'll notice people's rooms
in a way you've never noticed before.
Like, you'll notice the person you're speaking to's
environment clanging and it's very difficult to hear them.
It's why people who do sound for film are so amazing
because it's very difficult,
to capture someone in a space
and give you the impression that
you are dialing that space out
with your own brain when they're actually
doing it for you electronically.
- Okay, well, I'm gonna start
the a series of questions.
And the first one is,
what is your most vivid memory from childhood?
- Childhood's a pretty broad...
where are we looking?
Early childhood?
- However you'd like to answer that question.
- I have a memory that sticks up.
I have these kind of visceral
kind of like visual memories
that are really like critical to me.
Like kind of emotional memories.
I have always since I was little,
maybe because I was the fourth of...
I was the last of four children
and I was a Catholic surprise, you know.
Because, there's a big gap and then they're like,
"Oh, shit, they got another kid!"
I think I was left in my crib a lot, on my back.
So, like looking up is a thing
that really does it for me.
Always has.
If I found myself lying outside
under a tree looking up,
it's the only kind of pure peace, like something...
So, I have all these visions of looking up.
Another one was lying in snow.
Lying on my back in snow that was just deep enough
to kind of cut off my peripheral
and just frame the sky.
And those are probably like,
they're kind of not memories as much as,
like an emotional kind of deep set memories
rather than like, "Oh, when this happened."
As far as like memories of things that happened
well I try to go back as early as I can,
because I think that's the most interesting
because then you're like,
your brain is so different.
I remember being at my aunt's house
and my mother, an whoever else was with her,
might have been some siblings or whatever,
we're going to go to this model airplane show
and in the logic of a four year old,
or whatever age I was,
I suddenly decided I didn't want to go.
I was like, "I don't want to go."
And instead of like, cajoling me
or saying to me like, "Come on,
"I think you'll enjoy it, there's airplanes."
My mother was just like, "If you don't want to go
"then you don't have to go."
Like she was just sort of annoyed with me
and I remember getting in the car.
I remember kind of standing on the front steps
of my aunt's house like...
Being like, "Am I really going with this?
"I'm sticking with this."
And she left and I went back in the house
and I turned around and realized,
what I had wanted,
was a continuation of what was happening,
which was my family around me,
my mother there, my siblings there playing,
and so I was refusing to go
because I wanted the continuation,
but of course, in their absence,
that continuation was impossible,
but I wasn't old enough to kind of like,
think that through
and so what I wound up with,
was a bunch of strangers,
like my aunt's friends.
Who were just sitting around as adults,
smoking and drinking and talking
and I just hid in a in a room
for like, an hour and a half until my family came back.
Which is, you know, be careful what you wish for, I guess.
- So, who were some of your early influences,
when you were coming of age.
- As a human being or as a musician or as an artist?
- I think as a musician.
Maybe the intersection of both?
- I would say,
first would be like my brother.
I have an older brother.
He's about 10 years older than me
and because he's a 10 year older than me brother,
he was the coolest person in the world.
- Right.
- He was not the coolest person in the world,
I've come to realize.
He's great.
- You are. - He wasn't particularly cool.
He really liked prog rock and,
I remember he had a bunch of records
that I memorized.
I wasn't allowed to touch them,
but I would when he wasn't there.
I would go look at them
and he had "David Live," the David Bowie record
recorded in Philadelphia, in like '74.
- Yeah,
- And it was terrifying to look at.
David Bowie was in like his full
cocaine zombies phase, like super gaunt.
- Yes.
- Like bright orange dyed hair
and I remember it just being really scary cover
and I remember my brother saying...
I was probably like six or seven
So it was like 1977.
"When people talk about punk rock,
"that's the first punk rocker." he said.
And I didn't know what punk rock was,
I just knew that, "Okay, this is something for me."
And I guess this is the guy,
and that was a big influence on me, I guess.
- So, I don't know who Reyna is,
but are you still there?
- Yes, I'm still here.
- Oh, yeah, great.
- I'm sorry, until I talk, you won't see me.
- Yeah, everyone should be muted.
So I don't know what that was.
Is there a...
Maybe this is a related  question, maybe not,
but is there a song or album that changed your life?
Was it that Bowie album, or is there another one?
- I mean, many.
I know that sounds like a really empty answer,
but it's not like that.
It's a really like,
- Huge list. - All the time,
over and over songs and albums have
changed my life in radically different ways.
Let me see, first probably
the first record I ever bought was "Fame" by Bowie
and Gilbert O'Sullivan, "Alone Again (Naturally)"
At seven, I bought them together.
- Together.
- I do think indicates the kind of human being,
what my life was going to be about.
Self pity and a desire and fear of my own success.
(laughing loudly)
Most '70s male dichotomy,
(laughs loudly)
but "Fame" was really scary,
because I had that firm, it had that pitch down vocals.
- Right.
- And I thought it was really scary.
That was the first thing I heard,
where I was like, "I like how scary, this is."
- Yeah.
- Another weird influence that was important to me was
seeing the Who on TV in their early incarnations.
Like wild Keith Moon,
and being like, "I love this."
and then going up to my brother's room
and putting the Who record on
and saying, "I hate this."
And the dichotomy between ...
I guess the crazy animal energy
of what they were as a live band
and then the sort of like, thoughtful studied...
I remember just hearing "See me, feel me, touch me"
and I hated it.
I was like, "I hate this.
"There's something about this I hate.
"There's some posturing in here."
It was some sort of like,
I love the animal, the kind of primitive
and bodily nature of them as a live band,
watching it.
And I disliked the arch sort of
pretentious construction that I felt I heard in the songs.
And I think that's been a key thing for me
with every artist,
with everything I listen to.
That's been like a really key...
like a little narrow band in which I'm happy.
Like, I still want the
artifice or like the pretentiousness,
but if it's missing the gut...
Because there a lot of artists that I remember
being like, "Oh, I like them, but I don't like them."
and other people don't know why
and it's just something about the gut
that I became very married to very early.
- It's actually interesting,
because my next question is,
what is the difference for you
between the recording process
and playing live to an audience?
Here, you're doing this talk in your studio.
- It's kind of everything.
I mean, it's an enormous difference.
Technically, there are differences
that are obvious like,
but they don't have to be.
I mean, you can be a live rock and roll band
and go into the studio and play
all at once together and record it
or go onto the stage and play all at once,
together in front of people.
I don't do that,
but I don't think that's the key difference.
For me, recording in a recording studio
is about making an object.
And making that object
is about moments.
It's about finding moments that are...
It's about finding moments,
but there's a permanence to it.
Like, I want that moment to be looked at.
Ones like having a conversation,
and ones like writing a novel.
In a conversation, you can backtrack
and pause your sentences.
It reveals the way human beings talk,
they're constantly cutting off your sentences
and interjecting
and you're getting something from the other person
and there's just all this, ideas floating around
and like you're getting to it.
When you're writing a novel
you'd like to distill all that.
You'd like to boil that down,
so that it has the maximum impact
in the way you want it to come across.
And I think playing live,
it has a more conversational nature to it.
I don't care if there are mistakes
as long as the point is across.
As long as I look at your face
and you understand me
and we're having an understanding between us
and we're two people having a glass of wine
and we're talking and we're having a good time.
That's what matters to me.
Whether I contradicted myself from an hour ago,
as long as we're having this time, I'm happy.
I don't feel the need to be like,
"Well, let me present my case in this dialogue."
But in a record, I want to present my case.
I think, so, though they're both music
and they're both the same music on some level,
I'm obsessed with very different things
in performance than I am in recording.
- Do you have a preference or they're just different?
- I love and hate both of them.
I really do.
Like I hate making records in certain ways.
I love studios.
I love making sound, recording.
I loathe the musical version of the blank page.
You know, like being, "I gotta make this thing
"and I gotta..."
I'm a natural player in a certain way.
like I can naturally just pick up,
I can play and like, I'm happy with
the way things come out of me.
I don't have to like...
but I'm not a natural songwriter.
I'm not a natural.
I don't have this enormous confidence,
that I'm like, "Oh, here's my great song."
So, while I can generate something,
then the schoolmaster comes in, version of me
and just like tears it apart
and that process is hard and unpleasant.
Live is just unpleasant, because it's like I'm not home.
(laughs) I'm drunk and I'm tired,
but I do love both of them very very much.
- It's actually really interesting.
My next...
literally my next question is what are...
- Someone's in your room just reading me this.
- Yes it's amazing.
Because my next question is,
what is your least favorite part of the artistic process.
So, now you have to just come up
with the part you just...
- Facing the...
Okay, I've met some people.
I've met a lot of artists
who work in very different ways.
- Yes.
- A lot of people who are musicians
other people are actors.
I met some actors who have access to themselves
that I find frightening.
What I mean by access to themselves,
it's like, they don't really have...
some of them don't have filters.
I have friends who are just like,
"No, I want to get that"
and you're like, "Well, that's just a shitty thing to ask."
They don't care.
They're kind of like an oral stage,
like just "give me, give me, give me"
and I'm very jealous of that,
because they have like a tap into what they are.
Now well, I don't have that.
For me, it's a very...
my creative voices are really, really quiet
and every other part of my brain is incredibly noisy.
Like the critical part of my brain is very noisy,
the part of my brain that thinks
that I'm not good enough is very noisy.
The part of my brain that thinks,
that I'm doing the same thing I already did,
is very noisy.
So there's like these loud voices
and then there's this little tiny voice.
It's like,
and I have to kind of like, at all times,
try and quiet these things.
It's literally like trying
to do delicate work with your hands,
when you have panic attacks that make you shake.
- Right.
- But you really got to do this delicate work
or everyone's going to die,
but you can't have a panic attack about it.
So, that's the hardest part for me.
Is like getting...
I was able to live in that period,
that experience of hearing my,
for lack of a better word, creative voice.
When I lived crazy and I lived crazy for a while.
What I mean by that is like I was single
and I didn't have a place to live.
Really, I just inflated a mattress in my studio
or crashed at people's places
and was kind of messed up all the time,
and that made it very easy to kind of like...
because the voices that are the kind of
Apollonian-structured, super ego stuff were just wasted.
They were off at the bar and the kid was free,
but any semblance of normalcy,
makes that much more of a spelunking expedition
and I like normalcy.
I really like being a dad
and I really like you know, fixing things with screwdrivers
and fixing toilets.
I just love this stuff.
I'm like a real boring person on some levels
and getting that other voice out
from that other stuff is painful.
It's really painful.
It feels like you're just,
it's like being on a date
that you know isn't going anywhere
and you don't even like talking to each other.
It's just like being, "Oh, god boy,
"and we got to make this work somehow
"I gotta make this work with you?"
(laughs softly)
"I know you don't like me.
"I can feel it.
"Like there's the anti-pheromones, floating around."
- Do you have a favorite part,
the part you'd like best in the entire process.
- Finishing.
I mean making recordings, and finishing and looking back,
and being like, somehow I
got through.
Experimenting.
I realize now that I've gotten away from experimenting.
This whole global collapse
mixed with me having a studio under construction,
which had to stop.
You know, like, I'm almost done.
I mean my studio, I'm almost done with it
and some things had to stop.
And you can't get people in to do the last things.
So like, one of the guys I work with,
is kind of quarantined with me.
He lives alone and rides a bike.
We just, me and my family and I were just like,
he's just part of our bubble.
He can eat with us and stay with us...
We were kind of like, what are we going to do?
What do we do here, you know?
And one of the things we started doing,
was like, I have these wish lists projects
that are really unexciting.
Like backing up all of my DATs,
my digital audio tapes from the '90s, late '80s
into the computer because the DATs
are a really faulty medium, and you want to get that
information on to something a little more stable,
then print them all on analog tape.
Anything that we care about
we can put on an analog tape, and I can store that
and backing, just backing up all this stuff
and by doing this, we found all this old music.
It's old music that was not really meant to be released
and a lot of it is just experiments with equipment,
or just experiments with techniques.
- Wow.
- And I've kind of hit a maturation level technically,
I've hit like, in my life, I've hit certain
proficiencies where I've kind of like...
I recorded really intensely for a long time in the '90s.
I learned how to be recording engineer,
a technical person.
And then I hit a maturation level
with that where it wasn't exciting to learn,
like I wasn't learning anymore,
now, I was just like really good at it,
and I could just do it.
And then I found this other kind of music
and I started all over again
and I had to get this maturation technique,
like, how do I use synthesizers?
How do I do this?
This is not what I did at all.
I worked entirely in the acoustic analog realm.
And then I hit sort of a maturation
with that in some ways where I was very comfortable
and I could just do things.
And in that maturation process,
I stopped experimenting in raw form.
It's sort of like, if you do science,
if you do like chemistry or...
there's just like raw experimentation.
There's just fundamental research,
where you're like, how do molecules work?
Not like, how do we make
a new fabric that's anti-microbial?
Like, not looking for a product,
but when you're just literally
just looking at molecules and seeing what they do.
And I stopped doing fundamental research
somewhere along the lines with sound.
And hearing my old things that I was doing,
I was like, "Oh, I was quite...
I was really inspired by...
And then I was remembering,
"Oh, that's how I got that song
"and that's how I got that song."
And so it's been really nice
to have this kind of moment
and to start experimenting again.
And that's been a really fun way
to go about making music again.
Is to, instead of going in and being like,
"Okay, I need 10 songs to make an album
"and I know how to do this."
But instead of going in and being like,
"Well, what equipment do I not really know how to use?"
Like, "Let's, see what this can do."
"Let's just make sound and let's..."
And I can trust that I know how to...
when I find something, to make it into music.
And that's a little...it's a nice thing
to kind of go out trusting my instincts
rather than trusting my technique
and that's exciting right now.
- Do you feel like your work is
autobiographical in any sense?
- I mean, yeah, totally.
I don't think...
I mean, I'm not like Bruce Springsteen,
who like, writes stories.
- That's right.
- You know what I mean like, I don't...
That's not where my stories...
I write fiction if I want to.
I'm not that good at that.
I've done it a couple of times, there are moments,
but I have to be autobiographical on some level.
I think that's what I...
And I think I'm trapped in that a little bit
because that's what I liked as a kid.
I loved believing that any lyric...
Like I loved thinking that Iggy Pop was five-foot-one
because he sang, "I'm only five-foot-one."
(laughing softly)
And liked it did even more,
when I realized he was taller.
I'm like, "Well, he means metaphorically,
"that he's only five-foot-one."
(laughs)
I'd liked feeling
like Lou Reed was going up to Harlem to score heroin.
I enjoyed that.
There's something funny about rock,
rock and roll or whatever, pop music
or you know, post-1965 popular kid music,
is that it's this...
there's something stupidly essentialist about it.
It's like, these are the people and they sing about the stuff
that they know (laughing)
and something childish in me enjoys that
more than like, well, it's just a story.
You know, I made this really great well constructed story.
I was, "I don't care."
Like, "I don't like your well constructed story
"more than I like reading Bolaño."
I want to know, I want you,
that's what was interesting to me.
So, I think making music I'm forced
into an autobiographical mode.
- Is there a movie or song that makes you cry?
- There's an infinity of movies
and songs that make me cry.
Yeah, watch me not...
I'll just pick up things
that don't make any sense to anybody.
There's a song...
The label that I founded,
that I don't really work at now,
but it's DFA.
But a band called Prinzhorn
and they did a song called "Let Me Go."
And it is...
When I first heard it,
I listened to it like 12 times in a row
and it just made me weep,
but that's because I know something.
I know something about the person singing.
I know something about who I presume
the person is singing it to.
It's embedded in the record in a way
that is really beautiful
and I don't know how it would land on other people.
On the opposite end of the spectrum,
The Roches, the sisters that made "Hammond Song,"
and I had been listening to "Hammond Song,"
we were on tour and we were playing it
backstage all time.
And it was always like somebody's phone,
plugged into like a shitty speaker
in a backstage dressing room and I love it.
I loved it, we played it before we went on.
In a city we'd just play that over the PA
before we played.
It was such a weird energy to play
out... so gentle.
But then I got the vinyl
when I got home, I got a really nice vinyl.
I sat down, put it on and I just wept.
- Wow.
- Part of it was the story.
The story if anyone doesn't know the song,
if I encourage everyone to see...
Both, hear the song as it is recorded,
Robert Fripp producing
and playing all the extra guitar,
and then go watch them do a concert
and you'll be like, "Oh, the production's amazing."
Then you watch them do it live
and you're like, their voices are insane.
I mean, I have like all the hair
standing up on my arms now, thinking about it.
And from what I understand,
it's the story of these three sisters.
There's an older one, middle one, younger one
and they were also being used as backup singers.
They're amazing singers.
They're kind of like Irish-American.
They have that kind of reedy un-vibrato'd.
Almost like Middle Eastern like, solid note harmony.
They were doing background vocals for a Paul Simon record
at some point down in Hammond.
Hammond, Louisiana?
Hammond...? A town called Hammond in the South,
Hammond, Kentucky?
It's a town named Hammond,
which had a recording studio.
And someone working on that record
and the youngest of the sisters
who I think at the time was like 16, 17,
started an affair
and when they came back to New Jersey,
the younger sister was missing this guy.
and was going to go back.
And apparently this song was...
I mean, I could be totally wrong,
but I also love being wrong.
The internet has destroyed
the beautiful mythology of being wrong.
- Yes.
- Which is important.
It is not always important to research
and be right about art.
It is very important to research
and be right about medicine,
you know, maybe economics and politics,
it's really good to know what you're talking about,
but with art it is sometimes I believe,
good to be wrong.
It allows you into things in a different way.
So I could be wrong and just shut up if I'm wrong,
because I am going to die one day
and this wrong will go away
and I'm happily holding on to it,
enjoying it in the meantime.
So, I am under the impression that,
this is the song written by
the oldest sister to the youngest sister,
where she sings the whole thing, like,
"If you go down to Hammond,
"you'll never come back.
"As far as I'm concerned,
"you're on the wrong track."
It's just this beautiful,
scolding older sister song to the younger sister.
And then the younger sister has her verse:
"Well, I went down to Hammond.
"I did what I pleased.
"I'm not the only one who has this disease."
Meaning like, you guys have all done it,
and it's just this beautiful thing of,
sisters, and looking after each other
and also defining themselves against one other.
It's just a beautiful, beautiful song
and I just sat there weeping for this song.
But I wasn't weeping because the song was sad,
I think I was grateful that it existed
and I think that I was grateful,
that right or wrong,
these people had made something that exposed them,
even if it's not true or whatever,
that exposed them to me in some way,
the way that a great acting performance
or any piece of art is,
exposed something about themselves to me
that was so naked and moving
and that I could just go play it.
It was beautiful.
It had some of the best Robert Fripp guitar playing.
He does these things where he sits at the wrong note
and then slides in a half step into it
and there's this beautiful, beautiful, delicate stuff on that song
and it's like, kind of a perfect, perfect song.
So that song...
"O Superman" is another one that gets like...
Laurie Anderson's "O Superman."
Semi nonsensical,
but incredibly beautiful.
And also both "Hammond Song" and "O Superman"
have something in common,
in that just the sound of them, in an instrumental,
lyrical content removed,
are really moving and beautiful and..
- So true.
- They're gentle and they're unaggressive
and you were allowed to kind of go into them,
in which, then they've got you.
Those are good.
- That's amazing and now I'm going
to go back and re-listen to that.
I always loved that song.
- Yeah, I mean in a more classical sense
of song that will make you weep,
is Nina Simone's cover of Sandy Denny's
"Who Knows Where The Time Goes."
- Oh yeah.
- Which is just like...
but that's unfair.
- It's unfair. (Laughing)
- That's an incredibly sad song,
by a great songwriter being performed by
a person who, probably better
than anybody who ever lived,
had access to every other human being's soul.
Robert Johnson had a deal with the devil,
I don't want to hear about that.
Nina Simone had to deal with somebody.
She's just like, the hammer and the nail into you.
She's sort of an incredible,
both this sort of like,
terrifying, aggressive diva
and the most fragile,
most human person at the same time.
And her singing the song about
loss and death and being left alone,
like a "sad, deserted shore,"
all your friends are leaving...
That's an unfair song.
Whereas the other ones are sort of like,
"Oh, I found a way into them."
- Yeah, yeah.
- That's just like, "Oh, when did you cry?"
It's like, "When my whole family died!"
Of course, you cried.
That's like a classical piece of art,
where you're just like, you've lost.
You can't beat it.
- How has success affected your work?
- Well, now I just pay people to make it for me.
(laughing)
I don't know.
I mean, any success will affect your work
in an unconscious mode for sure,
in that you're going to address that success
positively or negatively.
I don't know if it's possible,
you'd have to be like...
have like, a mental condition, let's say.
And I don't mean that flippantly.
I mean like...
- Yeah.
- What one would have to have,
most likely is some form of condition
wherein they do not care what other people,
or do not receive, what other people feel.
I have never had that condition
and there are times I wish I did,
there are times it would simplify things,
but even if you don't "care."
I just air quoted...
Even if you don't care...
It's killing me.
Even if you resist it, 
like, watch Kurt Cobain.
Having lived a life where nobody cared
and then everybody cares.
And then watching that just explode
someone's brain who's trying not to...
trying to engage with that problem
in a way that's really...
There are many, many people who are very successful,
who have wanted to win and have won.
And so there is a kind of alignment
in the way that they work.
If I had been successful young,
I think I would have erred on that side.
I may have.
I really believed in myself as a teenager
and luckily, I believed for me,
the world made it very clear that it did not care.
(laughing)
In no uncertain terms.
Like the level of not caring
was a little abusive.
(laughs)
So I had to adjust how I dealt with things,
but it allowed me to learn through my 20s,
that what I wanted from music,
wasn't success, it was communication.
And sometimes that communication leads to success.
Sometimes you successfully communicate something
in a way that resonates with a lot of people
and sometimes that communication
leads to rejection because like, you've clearly...
If you're Genesis P-Orridge,
you're clearly communicating yourself,
but you are such an unusual person.
Genesis P-Orridge, if you're a Google person,
is the singer and founder of,
or musician-founder of Throbbing Gristle
and then later Psychic TV and...
- Right, right.
- Kind of incredible,
super inspiring human being who lived,
lived their life...
uncompromising is an understatement.
Just like, committed to what it meant to be that person,
but it doesn't mean...
And that's really honest communication
and for the people that love that music,
it was a perfectly successful communication,
but it doesn't translate into commercial success.
And sometimes I think it's critical,
that you don't communicate that much,
if you really want commercial success.
You want to kind of limit message.
That's why they have messaging meetings
and companies are like,
"We got to make the messages...
"It isn't clear enough guys, we're not...
"We're the salad dressing,
"if you care about yourself,
"but we're not the salad dressing,
"that you care so much about yourself
"that you don't want flavor.
"So we got to thread that needle guys.
"So let's get some more ideas.
"Let's get some more ideas."
I do think for me, having had certain successes
and enjoying that communication,
means that when I go back to make more music,
I have that, now there's a new voice,
with all the other loud voices that's like,
"Is this gonna be good to play live?
"Are you gonna be able to do this live?
"Because people really like to come see you live.
"That's the thing you do,
"that you get to go and actually
"experience other people listening.
"Are you going to be that guy,
"who just now goes and rejects everything you've done?"
I don't like that when artists do that,
when they kind of like, make you feel like a rube
for having liked their last record.
- (laughs) Yes.
- Like, "Idiots like you, like the big song."
It's like, "You wrote it jerk.
"Why am I bad?
"Why am I the jerk here?
"I just bought your record and liked it
"and now you think I'm stupid?
"How did we get here?"
So dealing with that...
For me, I think the thing that annoys me the most
the thing that's the noisiest in my head
is thinking about how we will perform them.
- What have you learned through failure?
- Everything.
Freedom.
Happiness.
I'm much calmer.
I think I have much more genuine self confidence
because I've failed.
I think I've been able to fail
and that's a lot like,
it's kind of just allowed me to
not worry quite so much.
Like, what are you gonna take for me?
What's anybody gonna take from me?
My adult life, I was completely scuttled.
From youth, I dropped out of college,
I failed at being in a band,
I was almost unhirable as a producer.
As an engineer, I worked for 75 bucks a night,
in punk clubs doing sound
and I was happy.
I mean, I was not always happy.
I was miserable at times
and I was mad that nobody cared about me
and stuff like that but,
there's not much to take away.
If you didn't have failure,
I feel it would be terrifying.
I look at people who were successful
artists when they were 19.
Look at the Rolling Stones.
They've been rock gods,
since they were legally driving.
- (laughing) Yes.
- I wouldn't even know what to do with that.
I wouldn't understand how that would work
or if you're like just some young kid,
who's got the world on a string,
What are you, if you don't have
that world on a string?
And at some point,
you will think about that.
You'll have to face that
and for me, it's like I know exactly what I am
without the world on the string.
That's most of my life.
This is an aberration.
This moment, like this period of relative success
is not the norm.
It hasn't been long enough,
and plus, even and let's be really clear,
these years now when you're older,
are less important.
Meaning like 10 years to me now,
does not have the emotional impact
on the structure of who I am, as
age 14 to 16.
Those two years are like...
It's like people who are like,
"Well, I was in war for...
"I was in combat for 11 months."
And then this whole, like, age 40 to 60
doesn't even register in terms of impact,
compared to combat for 11 months.
There's just emotional stuff,
that you go through that defines you
and as you get older,
those years are less important.
Like if you're a five year old,
one year is a fifth of your life
and you're like, "Oh my god, a year!"
It's an inconceivable amount of time.
For me a year is just like,
if I don't start it now,
it's definitely not gonna be done in a year.
A year is like a grocery store trip.
I think failure has just taught me...
Weirdly failure has taught me
to believe in myself a lot more,
because I'm just like,
I don't believe in myself like, "I'm awesome."
but to believe myself just like,
"Do what I want to do, because who cares?"
Yeah, there's nothing to...
And also to recognize,
also the gift of feeling lucky,
which I don't think everyone gets that gift.
It's sometimes hard to recognize.
Just to be like, "Oh this is just like..."
I mean, I think a lot about
the way I operate my life and my business,
for lack of a better word, my musical career,
and I don't really do a lot of social media
and I don't really do a lot of these things.
I see a lot of people who don't do that stuff,
like pooh-poohing it and getting very holier than thou.
And I'm like, "No, I don't do that,
"because I don't have to and that's a gift."
I'm given a pass.
I was given a pass somewhere along the line.
Someone said, like, "Oh, he doesn't do that stuff
"and we'll still go see the concert."
That's just a gift.
If I was young and starting, I wouldn't...
I don't know what I would do.
Like if someone asked me what to do,
I'm like, "I don't know, don't do what I did.
"It seems like a bad idea.
"It was all a bad idea."
But it somehow worked out, I don't know.
Do whatever bad idea you have.
Writ large, writ as large as possible.
- That goes into my...
- Of course it does, right?
- Yes.
This is the final question
and maybe the most pressing one.
- Okay.
- And that would be, what advice
would you give the students in this moment of peril?
- I'm always torn,
when you bring up the word student,
because on the one hand,
education to me is a funny one.
I love education.
I love learning.
I always have, but I always hated school.
I got zero academic A's in high school
or junior high school, like never.
I got an A in choir.
I didn't even get A's in gym.
I got A's in choir and art.
Then I got all A's in college.
I was really focused in college.
I took a year and a half off,
to kind of like regenerate myself,
but college was a gift because college...
First of all, my advice to students,
is take a year off between high school
and college if you can.
If it's at all possible.
And it's got to be possible,
because if you just have money, then take a year off
and if you don't have money, work.
Put some money in your pocket,
before you have to go to school and buy books.
I don't know.
I like it because,
it potentially gives you the opportunity
to recognize what education is.
School sucks.
That's what I used to say to kids, school sucks.
We have a kid now
and we had to put him in school.
We're like trying to find the best school
and I turned my wife one day and I was like,
"Why are we working at what the best school is?
"School sucks, don't you remember?
"School is the nightmare.
"It's like prison."
I don't think it's as prisony,
as it was when I was a kid.
I definitely approached school like prison.
First day, beat up the biggest person.
Keep to yourself.
Don't wear any shoe laces.
I think hitting the moment where you recognize
that there's this building that you've hated,
that oppresses you,
that is the only thing in the world,
that was actually built,
paid for by everybody else for you
and for your betterment, which is a crazy idea.
Schools where you're just like, "I'm stuck here."
Moving from when I was a kid,
where it was like school is a prison.
But it is this building that,
the people around you who don't know your name
made for your betterment.
And it's the only time in your life,
where something's just like,
"We made this place.
"It was important enough that we made it."
Everyone just pays money
and then they just go make this place.
We hire people
and those people are there
to educate you now.
Educate is a very complicated word.
Better you, expand your mind, train you for the future.
I'm of the expand your mind camp,
but I think I'm a little spoiled, in that like,
I always found a way to make a living.
I'm a big guy.
I did fine doing construction when I was a kid.
I'm musical, so I was able
to get jobs doing this or that.
I think not everybody has an easy road
to a little bit of money.
For some people I think it should be,
just like you know what you want to do early
and you dig in on it.
If you want to do science, you dig in on it.
If you want to make art,
give yourself technique but,
learn how to just be...
Delay as much as possible growing up.
Grow up in terms of paying your bills, sure
but delay growing up in terms of your brain.
Don't over-learn something
and give yourself overconfidence.
Don't suddenly be the postmodern
or the post post modern
or the post post post modern
who pooh-poohs everything.
Do it for like three weeks.
Be the annoying person
who's like, "Oh, I see you're still doing this."
Just do it for three weeks,
to know what it's like to be a prick.
The most inspiring artists I've ever met,
were open until the days that they died.
Like, I had the luxury of..
I knew Mike Nichols.
I got to do music for a play for Mike Nichols
and I would play him music
and here's Mike Nichols, he's a lion of American arts.
He is an EGOT.
He's like the real deal.
And anything I could play,
I played him music for a thing
and I'm like, "I'm a pissant."
He has every right to just be like,
"Okay, whatever."
And he would weep in rehearsals for a play.
Having seen it all, he wept,
because he was always open.
I went in the studio with David Bowie
and he carried a bag around
of things he was excited about
and open up that bag and be like,
"Have you seen this book?
"Have you heard this?
"I'm going to this art thing Wednesday,
"have you heard about this?"
Early on, I think you get...
It's easy to think that
being above things and better than things
is the position you take when you've learned enough
and I think that's a thing to remember to resist.
Because I think the greatest...
the greatest artists I've ever known,
for sure, going into the longest careers
of doing the most opportunities to make great work,
were open in a way that takes
a different kind of calm and confidence,
and like cultivating that calm and confidence,
is probably the most important thing to do.
I don't have it.
I'm working on it.
I really don't.
I have to check myself all the time.
I'm grumpy and pissy
and I have knee jerk reactions
that feel good to say like, "Yeah, I just beat you."
But I think working on that,
trying to maintain that openness,
and to just keep learning forever,
that would be the only thing.
And that shouldn't change with the pandemic.
- James, that's beautiful advice
and thank you so much for joining us today
and we really appreciate your time,
particularly with the situation with your,
(laughs) children.
- I don't even know what to say.
I'm super sorry about that.
It was a minor incident.
I had an infant that threw up milk.
- No, incident involving vomit is minor.
- It's not even vomit yet, right?
You know what infants are like.
Their shit's not shit.
Their vomit's not vomit.
There's just milk
and then there's other cute stuff.
They aren't eating real food, nothing counts.
They're just like, cute.
- Well, thank you so much.
We really appreciate it
and thanks for taking out time and
it's really fantastic.
- My pleasure.
It's good to see your face.
- Nice to see you too. - Even if it's at a distance.
- I can't wait to hear some of those
tracks from your previous life.
That sounds really amazing.
- I'll send you some. (laughs)
- Yeah, please do.
- They'll have the "do not share" on it.
- Okay (laughs loudly). Thank you, thank you!
-  Bye, everybody.
