Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Steve Schnur. Steve, what exactly is
Speaker 1: your title of electronic arts? I think the last time
Speaker 1: we spoke you were laughing, commenting, joking with me about
Speaker 1: how long it was at the time. So I'm frankly
Speaker 1: partially because of that conversation years ago. It's some sat
Speaker 1: Bislas event. I shortened it to president of music. There
Speaker 1: was a lot of word their global Jedi sort of thing,
Speaker 1: but president of music and what do you do as
Speaker 1: president of music? Uh? Well, I I say that every
Speaker 1: I'm responsible ultimately for every single note that goes in
Speaker 1: every single game, every single trailer, every artist that shows
Speaker 1: up at every single event. Anybody who's you knowsociated with music,
Speaker 1: whether it's Snoop showing up at the launch of a
Speaker 1: battlefield event or whether it's them you know, a hundred
Speaker 1: songs that go in a FIFA. UM, I'm responsible ultimately
Speaker 1: for for all of it. I UM. I think over
Speaker 1: the years, UM, we used to sort of look at,
Speaker 1: you know, how do we how do we represent culture?
Speaker 1: And I think what we've tried to do now is actually,
Speaker 1: um become culture. You know, to the point where these
Speaker 1: playlists and these um pieces of music we put in
Speaker 1: all of these franchises are so meaningful to people now. Um,
Speaker 1: going back the last ten twenty years, so long winded
Speaker 1: way to say, I guess I'm in charge of all
Speaker 1: of that. And why do you live in Nashville. I'm
Speaker 1: glad we have some time here. Listen. I lived in
Speaker 1: Nashville in the nineties, all of my friends. In nine
Speaker 1: five when I worked for Clive uh when I told
Speaker 1: him I was thinking about coming down here and running
Speaker 1: a record label for Tim Dubon Mike Dungan, which was
Speaker 1: a blessing. But who knew at the time. Um, they
Speaker 1: said I was crazy. Um they don't let Jews in Nashville.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, you're gonna be you know, ha ha
Speaker 1: ha Uh. It was the most amazing time of my
Speaker 1: life working for those guys back then. Uh. So when
Speaker 1: I moved to l A, initially to work at Capital,
Speaker 1: but then for years to work um eddie A. You know,
Speaker 1: I always figured how do I get back? Um, it
Speaker 1: just seems like a more normal place to me. It's
Speaker 1: also closer for me to get home to New York.
Speaker 1: I like that. I like that I'm centrally located. The
Speaker 1: answer to your question is that, UM, I tried knowing
Speaker 1: that games. Uh. We were always told way back when
Speaker 1: that we were bigger than the film industry and the
Speaker 1: music industry combined. But when I started, we still sounded
Speaker 1: like the toy industry. And even though there's nostalgia in
Speaker 1: the Mario Brothers and pac Man, UM, I needed to
Speaker 1: find a solution so we could record live with real orchestras.
Speaker 1: If I'm gonna hire Hans Zimmer and I'm gonna hire
Speaker 1: a hilder off of an Oscar Win, you know I
Speaker 1: have provided them with some great orchestrash. We had a fallout,
Speaker 1: you know, we had a fallout, not just e A,
Speaker 1: the entire non signatory industry had a fallout with the
Speaker 1: A f M UM. We were able to record for
Speaker 1: years in UM in Los Angeles and a non signatory
Speaker 1: single performance Agreement UM. And when the new guys came
Speaker 1: in to run it, I warned them kindly that they
Speaker 1: were gonna lose not just the entire game industry, but
Speaker 1: they were gonna learn lose the independent film industry. They
Speaker 1: were gonna lose you know what what you know inevitably
Speaker 1: came the TV business, you know, Netflix, Amazon, none of
Speaker 1: these modern media companies, We're going to become union signatories.
Speaker 1: And they were gonna lose all of this business to
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe. That's where everybody was gonna go to prag Bratoslava,
Speaker 1: you know, etcetera. Um, And so it happened. And I
Speaker 1: was the one knowing this town pretty well from living
Speaker 1: here in the nineties that said, let's go see if
Speaker 1: we can cut a trailer in Nashville. I know the
Speaker 1: steel players, I know the drummers, I know the guitar players.
Speaker 1: Not sure if I know the cellist, but let's try it.
Speaker 1: But guess what, um, mind blowing, mind blowing horn sections
Speaker 1: as you can only imagine, think of all the great
Speaker 1: horn horne arranged, horn arrangements. They came out of here
Speaker 1: for years and years and years, and I ended up
Speaker 1: recording a score to a game called Dragon Age Inquisition here.
Speaker 1: I had a very loud mouth among the composer community
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, from Hans to John Debney, you name,
Speaker 1: and it it goes on and on and on and next
Speaker 1: thing you know, people were coming year to record and
Speaker 1: their minds were blown. So I think Nashville has become
Speaker 1: easily the top one of the top two greatest places
Speaker 1: to record orchestra for film television in games, London being
Speaker 1: the other. Uh. And I think the stages sadly in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles have emptied the musicians, so many of them
Speaker 1: are out of work, a lot of them are moving here,
Speaker 1: and so rather than commute back and forth, I figured
Speaker 1: it would make sense for me to plant my butt
Speaker 1: here in Nashville and to help further and build the
Speaker 1: community um of you know, great orchestral recording for media. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: I've spoken to the guy who's the chairman of the
Speaker 1: tourism board and told him, the next time you're you
Speaker 1: have that tour bus driving down Music Row and you
Speaker 1: tell the blue haired ladies that this is the studio
Speaker 1: where Johnny Cash and Elvis recorded. Two blocks down is
Speaker 1: the studio where Call of Duty and Fortnite was recorded.
Speaker 1: Every kid's going to freak out and want to go
Speaker 1: with our moms and those tours. Now, so we've built
Speaker 1: one hell of a community down here, um. And that's
Speaker 1: why I live here now. And you know, it's a
Speaker 1: commute to l A, but it's no big deal. And Frankly,
Speaker 1: half the time, my flight is shorter than half the
Speaker 1: people that work for me and have to drive from
Speaker 1: Eagle Rock to Marina del Rey. Okay, just going sideways
Speaker 1: for a second. Your father was recently ill. If you're
Speaker 1: from the East Coast, how's your father being treated in Irvine? Well,
Speaker 1: my dad saw the light of California twenty years ago
Speaker 1: and moved to uh Orange County. Um, proclaiming he had
Speaker 1: wished we had he had moved us out there, uh
Speaker 1: when when we were kids. But I'm a Jersey slash
Speaker 1: New York City divorce bratt and you know this, Bob,
Speaker 1: you can't take that out of us. We are who
Speaker 1: we are. We just bring New York with us to California. UM. So,
Speaker 1: my dad's been living out there for twenty years. I
Speaker 1: do think it's the greatest thing he could have done
Speaker 1: for himself. Um. Who wants to be, you know, in
Speaker 1: their nineties, little one, even in their seventies and shoveling snow.
Speaker 1: I think you've written about this quite a lot. You know,
Speaker 1: he was a Vermont drive to Vermont, go skiing, come
Speaker 1: back to Jersey, go to work, and finally twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: he's like I'm done. He didn't do the Florida route.
Speaker 1: He did the California route. Okay, I gotta go here
Speaker 1: because I tell this story all the time. Do you
Speaker 1: still have your condo in Mammoth? No? I mean this
Speaker 1: is fin finance mistake one oh one. When the recession hit, Okay,
Speaker 1: the thing went severely underwater, and I did a panic
Speaker 1: and I sold it and I called the financial guy
Speaker 1: at Mary Lynch and I said, I'm about to, you know,
Speaker 1: do one of those the bank wants you? Am? I
Speaker 1: actually gonna sell it for way under the mortgage? And
Speaker 1: what does that do to my credit? And they said,
Speaker 1: just get out, get out, get out. It'll take you
Speaker 1: fifteen twenty years to get back to where you bought it.
Speaker 1: So I sold it now. I got divorced, so I
Speaker 1: would have lost it anyway, So what the hell? Okay,
Speaker 1: but the story that I tell is you were renting
Speaker 1: it out and what ultimately happened with the Golden Platinum Records.
Speaker 1: Why don't you tell us? You remember this? It's fantastic.
Speaker 1: So I had this idea, you know that if I
Speaker 1: rented it out, you know, how am I going to
Speaker 1: compete in that Mammoth marketplace. First of all, you're hiring
Speaker 1: a property manager at a fifty fifty split, which is
Speaker 1: absolutely the stupidest thing imaginable, but that's the way it's done.
Speaker 1: So I remember taking all of these golden platinum records,
Speaker 1: putting them up on the wall. We had a view
Speaker 1: from the living room of Mammoth Rocks. So I said, okay,
Speaker 1: well let's call it, you know, Mammoth whatever it was,
Speaker 1: Mammoth Rock dot com or whatever. I thought I was
Speaker 1: so smart to get at the time, but I really
Speaker 1: was a little you know, being an East Coaster, I
Speaker 1: was cynical about it from day one. So I figured,
Speaker 1: how do I get these platinum records on the wall
Speaker 1: without somebody just lifting them off? So I had them
Speaker 1: mounted to the wall like they used to do with
Speaker 1: the hard rock in Las Vegas. You know, they're mounted
Speaker 1: from behind. It would take a superman to rip it
Speaker 1: off the wall. Only to come up there one time
Speaker 1: and found out there were holes in the wall. Somebody
Speaker 1: had rented my place, shown up with a crowbar and
Speaker 1: just basically ripped them out. And so when I went
Speaker 1: to the property manager, remember fifty fifty split, you think
Speaker 1: they do more? Um, I told them, and they said, well,
Speaker 1: we've had three people in there, so we don't know
Speaker 1: who to go to. So sorry. So yeah, that was
Speaker 1: my uh hard earned lesson in not really renting things
Speaker 1: out on a weekly basis and having high expectations when
Speaker 1: it comes to maintaining. UM, you know it was. It
Speaker 1: was a high quality place. But it is what it is.
Speaker 1: I lost a blink quantity to um Platinum Record and
Speaker 1: a couple others, but you know what it is, what
Speaker 1: it is. I kind of don't listen to blink anyway anymore. Anyway,
Speaker 1: how many did you lose all in total? It had
Speaker 1: to be five or six that they were. There were
Speaker 1: five or six holes in the wall, good gigantic you know,
Speaker 1: six inch circumference holes in the wall. This person literally
Speaker 1: went out of their way to getting it. I don't
Speaker 1: know why I looked on eBay. Uh they never showed up.
Speaker 1: So okay, let's go back something you said earlier. Explain
Speaker 1: the A f M union situation. Well, listen, I'm a
Speaker 1: union person, ironically, and I believe there's a purpose, particularly
Speaker 1: for the pension paying into the pension when you use
Speaker 1: union musicians. Um, but I do believe, uh, and I'm
Speaker 1: not running for office here to run the union. But
Speaker 1: I do believe that the union works through the musicians
Speaker 1: and not the other way around. And if you go
Speaker 1: back to the history of the particularly the a f
Speaker 1: M to the forties, I think the guy who ran
Speaker 1: back then was a guy named Fiarello. I could be
Speaker 1: his name, and Um, you know, we could look back
Speaker 1: and think of him as a tough s ob who
Speaker 1: got shipped done. But the truth is he was abusive
Speaker 1: and he was um. He got in the way of progress.
Speaker 1: He was so upset as far as I know, and
Speaker 1: I've learned with musicians being replied, musicians being replaced on
Speaker 1: radio by recorded music, that he went out of his
Speaker 1: way to shut it down. He did not accept technology
Speaker 1: and or technology has brought us as a music industry
Speaker 1: for the last hundred years. We have to ride the
Speaker 1: technology wave, not try to shut it down. Otherwise, I e. Napster,
Speaker 1: We're just wasting years where we could be a part
Speaker 1: of it. UM. And I think, you know, I think
Speaker 1: the current union UM is in the same situation. Um.
Speaker 1: You can come to Nashville and do union recordings. The
Speaker 1: only difference is that Nashville is a right to work state.
Speaker 1: So the union members can't be sued for making their
Speaker 1: own decision on whether they want to work on a
Speaker 1: project or not. By the way, when I put out
Speaker 1: the call two musicians, the greatest musicians in town, no
Speaker 1: one's ever said no. But they have a choice. So, UM,
Speaker 1: I hope you know union members musicians understand that. UM,
Speaker 1: many of us, most of us who work for you know,
Speaker 1: companies that aren't signatories to the union. And that's most companies. Now. Remember,
Speaker 1: the people that are really still signatories are the ones
Speaker 1: that signed it back in the Charlie Chaplain era, Warner Brothers, Disney,
Speaker 1: Paramount and this goes back lord knows how long. But
Speaker 1: a lot of Netflix, the majority of their projects are
Speaker 1: non union projects. So why not try to get the
Speaker 1: business here in the US rather than lose the business
Speaker 1: to Eastern Europe? Why not try to figure out ways
Speaker 1: to work with companies? UM, And I think Nashville has
Speaker 1: become an incredible solution. I mean, you know, Spike Lee
Speaker 1: does you know records uh music for his movies here
Speaker 1: with you know, and and and the list goes on
Speaker 1: and on. I mean Lost in Space on Netflix was
Speaker 1: all all that score was recorded here, And like I said,
Speaker 1: so many games, Um, not my games, even some of
Speaker 1: them call a Duty and Fortnite and others. So it's
Speaker 1: become a high quality solution. And there's not a day,
Speaker 1: Bob that I don't go out to lunch or dinner
Speaker 1: here when somebody who plays cello or a tuba or
Speaker 1: whatever the case may be comes up to me because
Speaker 1: it's Nashville, still a small town and says thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you for letting us work six days a week,
Speaker 1: you know, And UM, I'm not doing it for that.
Speaker 1: I make no money from that. I don't know in
Speaker 1: the studios, I have no personal financial incentive. I just
Speaker 1: know that we, you know, in the modern media business
Speaker 1: needs solutions to have high quality recordings with the best
Speaker 1: musicians of the world and not be driven out and
Speaker 1: forced to go to places like Prague and and uh
Speaker 1: you know other places in Eastern Europe where there's problems.
Speaker 1: You have to edit the hell out of those. Um recordings. Um,
Speaker 1: the musicianship is good, but it's not mind blowing at times.
Speaker 1: Most of the time. UM, I'll tell you a funny story.
Speaker 1: My friend John Julihan, I don't know if you know him. Um,
Speaker 1: he was here doing the film that they did about
Speaker 1: a year or two ago on Tammy Faye Baker. Um,
Speaker 1: and uh, he asked me to help put together a
Speaker 1: horn section because guess what it was, um, a non
Speaker 1: union film, you know. Um and uh I got to
Speaker 1: I put together a horn section for him. And he
Speaker 1: came down and Dave Cobb, who I think you know, um,
Speaker 1: was recording it producing it. And John looked at me
Speaker 1: and said, oh my god, I can't believe these horns.
Speaker 1: I'm they're playing this, these these parts just like that's
Speaker 1: just like the original records. And then one of the
Speaker 1: trumpet players said, and that's because we were the guys
Speaker 1: that actually played on that record. So listen, you've got
Speaker 1: a swinging brass section here that's incredible. You have string
Speaker 1: sections that are as good as London, which is a tall,
Speaker 1: tall order. And uh. The only thing we're short of
Speaker 1: here in town is a magnificent stage the size of
Speaker 1: Abbey Road one. We can put about seventy five on
Speaker 1: the floor at Ocean Way, you know. So for me
Speaker 1: where I do Star Wars and I need a hundred
Speaker 1: plus people on the stage, I go to London for
Speaker 1: those things. But we've come up with a solution for
Speaker 1: three industries. And you know I said from day one,
Speaker 1: I always wanted to pay into the pension, you know,
Speaker 1: for the union. I believe in it as long as
Speaker 1: they handled the pension correctly. Um. But um, my home,
Speaker 1: my thing is that I just don't want them hurting
Speaker 1: the musicians. I don't want them suing the musicians. And
Speaker 1: this is a place where musicians work. They work six
Speaker 1: seven days a week doing what they do. They don't
Speaker 1: have to work at Jerry's Deli or any place like
Speaker 1: that to make it. You know, they have a lot
Speaker 1: of work here now in film and TV and games. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's just assume, for the sake of discussion, you were
Speaker 1: a signatory and you did cut in l A. What
Speaker 1: would be the difference to you. Yeah, that's a great question. Um, well,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what it's not. It's not a matter
Speaker 1: of cost, because people think this is a cost solution,
Speaker 1: which it's not. You know, listen, there's a set rate here,
Speaker 1: set right there. Um. If I were a signatory and
Speaker 1: I cut there, Um, I would have some of the
Speaker 1: greatest stages in the planet, the barber strikes and stage
Speaker 1: you know this, and that I would have some of
Speaker 1: the greatest musicians in the planet. Um and the different
Speaker 1: says now sadly, thanks to the Union, I would have
Speaker 1: a lot of dates at these stages to choose from
Speaker 1: because they're empty a lot of days of the month.
Speaker 1: Abbey Road is sold out two years already now in advance.
Speaker 1: You can't even get in there until uh Nashville's about
Speaker 1: six months eight months. Um, So why is that happening?
Speaker 1: Why are there empty stages there when it's not a
Speaker 1: matter of cost, you know? Um? So, we did amazing
Speaker 1: scores in Los Angeles. Michael Jaquino did our Medal of
Speaker 1: Honor scores back way back when we did lots of
Speaker 1: SIMS scores back then with Mark mothers Bow and Steve Jablonsky.
Speaker 1: I'm really proud of those scores. The quality is incredible.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately we're driven out. When I say we, I
Speaker 1: mean an industry was driven out. So you gotta you
Speaker 1: gotta come. If it's not the cost, what is the
Speaker 1: burden of the union production? I see what you're saying.
Speaker 1: You're asking me. Why are you asking me why modern
Speaker 1: media companies are in signatories to the union. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: go there, I think, yeah, um, and I usually don't
Speaker 1: go there, but I know you, so I'm gonna go here. Um, listen,
Speaker 1: there's back end, and you know there's back end for musicians,
Speaker 1: and most companies Amazon, Netflix, Activision, the list goes on.
Speaker 1: You know. UM, they're different, they're set up differently than
Speaker 1: the old traditional major movie studios. UM, there's no back end.
Speaker 1: But there's also not back end, by the way, for
Speaker 1: the executive producer or the director or the other people
Speaker 1: that have worked on a UM project like a game
Speaker 1: for three years. And so it's pretty hard to justify
Speaker 1: not giving an executive producer who's worked on a game
Speaker 1: for three years and then giving back end to a
Speaker 1: violinist who worked on a game for three hours. That's
Speaker 1: kind of an equation that doesn't work out very well.
Speaker 1: So that's it. It comes down to back end. And
Speaker 1: that's why most companies now, like I said, Netflix and
Speaker 1: others are not signators. So how did you get your
Speaker 1: gig dy a And what was the status of the
Speaker 1: music department? Then there wasn't a music department. There wasn't
Speaker 1: a music department in any game company. I was working
Speaker 1: at Capitol Records. UM. I had left at Nashville to
Speaker 1: move to capital be one of the guys that ran
Speaker 1: and r um roy Lot left. As you'll recall, Andy
Speaker 1: Slater came in. Um. It was a miserable environment, to
Speaker 1: be honest with you. Um and Uh. Fortunately, at the
Speaker 1: same time as I was a capital UM, I was
Speaker 1: also music supervising films, particularly Sandra Bullock films. I had
Speaker 1: done the music supervision for a smaller film called Gunshot,
Speaker 1: but then a much bigger film called Miss Congeniality. I
Speaker 1: also was able to write cues on that, which I
Speaker 1: always joke when I get might BM, I check every
Speaker 1: single year. Uh we can go to Nobu once, but
Speaker 1: that's about what it can afford. Um and uh there's
Speaker 1: your back end story by the way. Um. But um
Speaker 1: and then I so I had I didn't realize that
Speaker 1: I had this experience, for lack of better term, in
Speaker 1: music and music supervision. I sort of took it for granted.
Speaker 1: I got a call from Terry McBride because I had
Speaker 1: worked with Sarah McLaughlin in the nineties when she I
Speaker 1: think we struggled to put fifty people at Cafe Shane
Speaker 1: I think it was called in New York. It was
Speaker 1: Marty Diamond. Uh. Terry McBride and I. We're trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what is it gonna take to have her
Speaker 1: play Radio City Music Hall in a year? How do
Speaker 1: we get from fifty to whatever that number is. So
Speaker 1: I had a history there. Terry was, um, you know
Speaker 1: lives up to the you know, don't ever burn bridges
Speaker 1: because my bridge was so solid between network and myself
Speaker 1: and we all loved each other so much and then
Speaker 1: gone through thick and thin together that he happened to
Speaker 1: be friends with the then president of e A. It's
Speaker 1: a Vancouver thing and um, Terry called me and said,
Speaker 1: you're going to get a call from a guy named
Speaker 1: Rusty Roof. I'm like, come on, who makes that name
Speaker 1: up as the radio guy? And he goes, yeah, he
Speaker 1: actually used to be a radio guy. Um, but he's
Speaker 1: the head of hr at e A. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: was telling them that they should start a music department
Speaker 1: like a film studio. I was so in love with
Speaker 1: music supervision, especially for Fordace Film which was Forda Films,
Speaker 1: which was Sandy Bullock's company, that my dreams had changed.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be the head of a studio, paramount universal,
Speaker 1: head of music in a studio. Um, so my initial
Speaker 1: commented Terry was games. Anybody your mind? Like I pretended
Speaker 1: to play a few of those. You know when I
Speaker 1: was trying to sign a band back in the nineties,
Speaker 1: What do I, he said, take the meeting. I don't
Speaker 1: even think twice. Just take the meeting. So I flew
Speaker 1: up to Vancouver and um met with Don and Rusty
Speaker 1: roof Um, who were spectacular guys. But here was the difference.
Speaker 1: And I think I told you the story years ago.
Speaker 1: I was working in the record business in two thousand
Speaker 1: and one. Napster was right there. It was in the headlight,
Speaker 1: and it felt you felt fear and of the unknown
Speaker 1: in the record business, even though people stay oh and
Speaker 1: sync it was selling Millie who cares? We saw fear
Speaker 1: right there in front of us. UM and I walked
Speaker 1: into those buildings A d A and it was like
Speaker 1: I was back in MTV in the eighties. There were
Speaker 1: kids everywhere. It was loud, people were playing games, there
Speaker 1: was creativity. And I remember calling my now ex wife
Speaker 1: at the time and saying, if they offered me this job,
Speaker 1: I'm taking it. And she said, whoa wa wa, wait
Speaker 1: a send, what are you talking about? I said, I
Speaker 1: haven't felt this energy in so many years. Okay, the
Speaker 1: record business had it for a moment, but it's not
Speaker 1: there right now. And she said, are you gonna take
Speaker 1: a job based on energy and a building? And I said,
Speaker 1: actually think so. Something's going on here. So I met
Speaker 1: with Don President and he said what I said to him?
Speaker 1: What's your vision? And he said, the greatest thing you
Speaker 1: could ever hear to an entrepreneurial guy like myself. He says,
Speaker 1: I don't know. He said, we toyed with Robbie Williams
Speaker 1: in a FIFA game, we toyed with bar naked ladies
Speaker 1: in an NHL game. We got some press. We think
Speaker 1: there's something there. What do you think? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: I think you guys are spending too much time trying
Speaker 1: to sound like sports, and I think eventually sports need
Speaker 1: to start sounding like us. I think we need to
Speaker 1: be what I'll call the new MTV. At the time,
Speaker 1: people labels are spending millions upon gazillions to to pay
Speaker 1: for promotion, to get to to get records on the radio.
Speaker 1: Remember this is before Spotify, before this UM. But the
Speaker 1: audience is gaming. People that are twelve and seven and
Speaker 1: in seventeen, they're in games. We have the real estate,
Speaker 1: so let's bring music to where they are. Let's change
Speaker 1: the sound of sports. Let's change the sound of games.
Speaker 1: So if we have a game called Madden two thousand
Speaker 1: and four, let's make it sound like two thousand and five.
Speaker 1: Why are we still playing a C D C and Queen?
Speaker 1: Where are the champions? And why God's name would you
Speaker 1: ever license Gary Glitter? Haven't you've heard that story yet?
Speaker 1: So they so they said okay, And um, I said, also,
Speaker 1: you still send sound like the toy business. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to go out there and hire. At the time,
Speaker 1: the first guy hired was a guy named Michael Jaquino. Um,
Speaker 1: this is pre Pixar, pre Lost on ABC. Let's hire
Speaker 1: some of the next greatest generation of composers because we
Speaker 1: have such an advantage in this medium we have. If
Speaker 1: you if you're if you're writing a score to a film,
Speaker 1: you know there's Tom Cruise and oh yeah, he's doing that,
Speaker 1: and he's running and he's doing Okay, let's find the
Speaker 1: emotion and present what Tom is feeling. But in a game,
Speaker 1: you've got millions of people on their couches and you
Speaker 1: need to create the emotion that each and every one
Speaker 1: of them is feeling. And I bet you once I
Speaker 1: present that to the next great generation of composers, when
Speaker 1: I untether them to picture, when they become a part
Speaker 1: of the story itself, they're going to freak out. And UM.
Speaker 1: So that's how it started. So it was really an
Speaker 1: entrepreneurial beginning because I started just me and UH. Within
Speaker 1: a year, I had two people working for me. UM.
Speaker 1: I believe we're still all together, by the way, even
Speaker 1: though we're many more people now. UM, and I'm I'm humble,
Speaker 1: but I'm also smart enough to know that if you
Speaker 1: surround yourself with people that are better than you and
Speaker 1: have impeccable taste in music and wonderful ideas, that you know,
Speaker 1: the tide rises all boats. As the cliche you know says,
Speaker 1: So UM, we just started instead of putting a C.
Speaker 1: D C and queen into football games and soccer games.
Speaker 1: You know, I went all around the world for my
Speaker 1: first year, and I went to every I went top down,
Speaker 1: every CEO, every president of every label, and every publishing company,
Speaker 1: every artist I can get in a room with. UM.
Speaker 1: I met with Steve Berman and Jimmy back then. They
Speaker 1: got it from the first second I presented it to them.
Speaker 1: Jason Flam got it from the first second I presented
Speaker 1: it to them. Craig Calman got it from the first second. Julie,
Speaker 1: you know then at def Jam got it from the
Speaker 1: first second. A few didn't. Um and we started putting
Speaker 1: bands in these games, and next thing, you know, bands
Speaker 1: like a Sabian and Kings a Leon. None of these
Speaker 1: bands had sinks, nobody knew who they were, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden they started kind of gaining attention. To listen.
Speaker 1: Fast forward even ten years whatever the number is. Later,
Speaker 1: um uh thirty seconds to Mars. I I put Jared
Speaker 1: Leto's band in UM Madden I think it was at
Speaker 1: the time, and um Kevin Weatherly called me and he said,
Speaker 1: did you guys put a band called thirty seconds to
Speaker 1: ours in UM Madden or something? And I said we did.
Speaker 1: I said why? He said, because it's testing like familiar
Speaker 1: and we haven't played it yet. So I knew we
Speaker 1: were on to something and I wasn't looking to be
Speaker 1: the hero I wanted. I knew that we could be
Speaker 1: ground zero to launch bands, that that's very MTV esque.
Speaker 1: We could be ground zero and we could affect. But
Speaker 1: I knew. The winning point of doing all of that
Speaker 1: was when somebody here's a band. Now, when people here
Speaker 1: Kasabian or they hear whatever the list is. We can
Speaker 1: go through hundreds of bands. They remember FIFA nostalgically from
Speaker 1: two thousand seven or two thousand three. That's where the winning,
Speaker 1: That's where the win was. You know, to be forever
Speaker 1: associated with that moment. You and I have those moments
Speaker 1: when it comes to MTV. You know, you think of
Speaker 1: a cure, you think a flock of seagulls. Oh, those
Speaker 1: are MTV moments. I thought we could, we could create
Speaker 1: FIFA moments or maddened moments, and that has proven to
Speaker 1: be true. So um, the people that got it a
Speaker 1: hundred percent were the artists. Every artist from day one.
Speaker 1: I remember sitting going, remember this is two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: Snoop Bust, Jermaine Duprie, all these people that you think
Speaker 1: about what it was twenty years ago. We gotta get in.
Speaker 1: What do we need to do to get in? Madden?
Speaker 1: You know, they had a front row seat to their
Speaker 1: fans every night. They knew that their fans played games.
Speaker 1: They knew that they and their bands played games. So
Speaker 1: that was very important real estate to all artists back
Speaker 1: then still is by the way, So that's kind of
Speaker 1: where it all started. It was an idea, it was
Speaker 1: an entrepreneurial idea, it was a vision. Um and um.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't believe in repeating. I'm I'm absolutely
Speaker 1: against anything that's cut and pace who Every year we
Speaker 1: just have to rip it up and reinvent, do better,
Speaker 1: do bigger, do more, um and UM. I think now
Speaker 1: I look, you know, in the last year, and I'm
Speaker 1: very proud when I see Travis Scott doing a show
Speaker 1: in Fortnite, you know, pre the Houston thing. But you know,
Speaker 1: I'm very proud of when I see these huge moments,
Speaker 1: you know, or Spotify having Spotify Island on the roadblocks.
Speaker 1: These are all amazing things. Um. But it's all because
Speaker 1: of the years, you know, uh, the evolution of it all,
Speaker 1: you know, having Kings of Leon and started Madden too,
Speaker 1: sorry FIFA two thousand and two or three, whatever the
Speaker 1: year was. Um. Then came guitar hero, then came rock
Speaker 1: band and if you look at it that way, you
Speaker 1: can see where how the evolution you know, occurred of
Speaker 1: it all. And now everybody's paying attention. But we kind
Speaker 1: of knew it all along. Okay, you say you were
Speaker 1: going to Vancouver. I think, uh, Electronic Guards started in
Speaker 1: northern California. Where is the company now? Yeah, well it's
Speaker 1: a good story. Um. So they had the president of Studios,
Speaker 1: Don Mattrick, who I mentioned before, lived and was based
Speaker 1: out of Vancouver because the e A had bought his company.
Speaker 1: I think it was called Dynamic Software something like five
Speaker 1: or ten years before I met him. So the head
Speaker 1: of studios was based at A Vancouver, but e A
Speaker 1: has always been based in northern California. So I I
Speaker 1: sold my house in l A, moved to Vancouver, moved
Speaker 1: in December. I do not recommend moving to Vancouver in
Speaker 1: December because for three or four months, uh, you don't
Speaker 1: see the sun. It's freezing. And don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: I love Vancouver and I'm friends with lots of people
Speaker 1: that live there, but they all say, oh, but you
Speaker 1: should see this place in July. I don't want to
Speaker 1: be in a place eleven months a year for one
Speaker 1: month's sick. Um. But um, you know it was Larry
Speaker 1: Probes who was the CEO of e A then who
Speaker 1: um he was my Grammy date that year in two
Speaker 1: thousand and two. Uh, And he said, who the hell
Speaker 1: hired our head of music? It can put them in Vancouver.
Speaker 1: And I didn't want to throw our then president under
Speaker 1: the bus, so I started a him and haunt. He said,
Speaker 1: I get it, I get it done. Hired you Uh uh,
Speaker 1: We're in northern Cali. You should where should you be based?
Speaker 1: And I had that one moment where I could have
Speaker 1: said anywhere by the way, I could have said Aspen.
Speaker 1: I know that would have made you happy. Um. And
Speaker 1: I said, I don't know whether I want to say
Speaker 1: this out loud, but you probably should have never moved
Speaker 1: me out of l A. You know. So he says,
Speaker 1: moved back to l A. And I said, oh, I
Speaker 1: wish you would have told me that before I sold
Speaker 1: my house. You know, I'm all in um. Anyway, that
Speaker 1: was a crazy year, but I ended up spending only
Speaker 1: three four months in Vancouver and then moving to l
Speaker 1: A until I moved here to Nashville. And I still
Speaker 1: somewhat commute. Up until the pandemic, I was doing every
Speaker 1: single week back and forth Nashville l A UM and
Speaker 1: the pandemic gave me the opportunity to slow that down
Speaker 1: a little. Bit, but uh so we still have massive studios,
Speaker 1: really beautiful, impressive studios in Vancouver, where UFC has created,
Speaker 1: where FIFA is created. I mean, it's it's unbelievable, but
Speaker 1: we are in northern California based company. Well, it used
Speaker 1: to be the only direct flight from Nashville was an
Speaker 1: American and then Southwest went in. So which one do
Speaker 1: you fly? Well? I fly Southwest because they have the nonstops.
Speaker 1: American only has one poorly timed NonStop unless you want
Speaker 1: to go on a red eye, which I do not.
Speaker 1: So um. I literally just got off the Southwest flight
Speaker 1: from l a X this morning seven am. Um, so
Speaker 1: I do that. And uh. Up until the pandemic, the
Speaker 1: advantage of flying Southwest was that a list companion pass,
Speaker 1: which was brilliant. But the pandemic obviously none of us
Speaker 1: traveled so much. So that's gone now. So ironically that
Speaker 1: you it's ironic. You asked me that because as we
Speaker 1: flew in today and I was squished, you know, like
Speaker 1: a like a you know, like a sandwich, like a
Speaker 1: Deli sandwich in between people on Southwest. I said, you
Speaker 1: know what, once I don't get my status again at
Speaker 1: the end of this year, even if I have to
Speaker 1: change planes in Dallas, I'm going on American from now.
Speaker 1: It was really good for a while. I don't know
Speaker 1: why you think everybody would have multiple flights here nonstops
Speaker 1: all day long, because I don't know the last time
Speaker 1: you were in Nashville. But this is Las Vegas, for
Speaker 1: God's sake. It's out of control, you know, even though
Speaker 1: most of us that live here don't ever go down there.
Speaker 1: But why wouldn't you have five nonstops today? I don't
Speaker 1: get it. Okay, So what was the status of the
Speaker 1: gaming business then when you took the gig in twenty
Speaker 1: two two? Has opposed it today? And where does e
Speaker 1: A fit in the hierarchy of gaming companies? Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a great question. I think back in two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: gaming was massive, but gaming was thought of pretty much
Speaker 1: as a chldren's activity by those of us in mainstream media.
Speaker 1: I don't think we knew then the impact that gaming
Speaker 1: had or could have, or would have had or has had.
Speaker 1: I think we were making great games, sticky games. There
Speaker 1: were people that were obsessed with it, but they looked
Speaker 1: particularly comparative to what you see now. They looked like
Speaker 1: you know animated, they weren't as real life as they
Speaker 1: are now. They were limited in what they could contain.
Speaker 1: It was a single player world, not a multiplayer world.
Speaker 1: That's a key difference what I just said. You went
Speaker 1: to the store, you bought a disk, you stuck it
Speaker 1: in your Xbox or your PlayStation two or whatever it
Speaker 1: was at the time, and you had a single a
Speaker 1: single player experience, and the and the community of that
Speaker 1: experience was when you had your buddies come over and
Speaker 1: sit next to you on the couch and you had
Speaker 1: two controllers that looks like a teen fifty. Now now
Speaker 1: you have a multiplayer environment completely online. You're playing with
Speaker 1: people all over the world you'll never physically meet. Um.
Speaker 1: Everything about it, from from the cloud to the technological
Speaker 1: advances is completely on fire. You're living in what you
Speaker 1: think is a real world. Everything looks if you play
Speaker 1: FIFA Madness. It's really close. People actually getting mixed up
Speaker 1: now between what's real and what's not real. Um, And
Speaker 1: I think the difference not that you ask me this,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to volunteer without you asking me this.
Speaker 1: Having come from the record business to the game business.
Speaker 1: Although as I like to say it, took me in
Speaker 1: two thousand and two, leaving the record business to finally
Speaker 1: get into the music business. I know you'd like that,
Speaker 1: but it's it's true, um is that the game business
Speaker 1: I noticed, because I was on both sides, did not
Speaker 1: try to hang on to the past. They did not
Speaker 1: try to keep brick and mortar retail in business. They
Speaker 1: didn't go out of their way to keep the shiny
Speaker 1: disk boxed in a nice little jewel case and that's
Speaker 1: the way to sell it. There was no attachment. Actually,
Speaker 1: I was in many rooms where they would say, how
Speaker 1: do we put this this stuff out of business? How
Speaker 1: do we go direct? How do we create a one
Speaker 1: on one to our players? Why is there a middleman?
Speaker 1: Why are we sacrificing the dollars we're paying to the middleman.
Speaker 1: So that's the financial point of view, but as importantly,
Speaker 1: how to create a one on one relationship? I don't
Speaker 1: recall up until two thousand and one, two thousand to
Speaker 1: ever a record company where they said, how do we
Speaker 1: create a one on one relationship with our music fans.
Speaker 1: It was astonishing to me to hear the difference technology.
Speaker 1: They weren't waiting for it, they were creating it. The
Speaker 1: expectation of the player, but also the expectation of the corporation.
Speaker 1: We're in the technology business. We can't look the same
Speaker 1: in two thousand three like we do in two thousand two.
Speaker 1: We need to evolve every year or else they're gonna
Speaker 1: players are gonna hate us. We can't keep putting out
Speaker 1: the same features and expect them to show up every year.
Speaker 1: So look at look at how it looks in two
Speaker 1: thousand and three. You see an animated, interactive fun game
Speaker 1: on a on a limited platform, and now you're playing Fortnite.
Speaker 1: By the way, the model changed to free to play.
Speaker 1: Now you're going to place like Fortnite, free to enter.
Speaker 1: The micro transaction replaced all that. Or if you're playing
Speaker 1: Call of Duty, or in the case of e A
Speaker 1: FIFA or Battlefield, you're downloading directly from the cloud and
Speaker 1: gone of the days when you have to wait six
Speaker 1: hours for it to show up. Shows up in six minutes,
Speaker 1: sometimes one minute, and as it's downloading, you're already playing.
Speaker 1: By the way, you're already in with thirty people from
Speaker 1: all over the world. So imagine if you not just
Speaker 1: if you not just create technology, you don't have to
Speaker 1: fight technology. If you're a part of the evolution in
Speaker 1: the creation of technology, and that's the thinking. Imagine what
Speaker 1: the game business is gonna look like in five years
Speaker 1: or ten years. Think about everything that's evolved now. I
Speaker 1: know you're I've read lots of things you've done between
Speaker 1: VR and a R and AI and on and on
Speaker 1: and on. But I think you know, I've been watching
Speaker 1: the difference now for twenty years between the two businesses
Speaker 1: now the music business now meaning the label business and
Speaker 1: and the publishing business. I think that they've realized that
Speaker 1: technology is a great thing. Um my question my challenges
Speaker 1: are they meaning my and your friends at labels, the
Speaker 1: guys that and the women that run labels. Are they
Speaker 1: becoming too complacent right now on the Spotify Apple model,
Speaker 1: because at some point that has to end. You're going
Speaker 1: to have to evolve to the next level. Are you
Speaker 1: a part of building that. I think there are labels
Speaker 1: like Warners and Juana, who's the head of digital there.
Speaker 1: I think they invest properly. I think they're attaching themselves
Speaker 1: and growing forward with new technologies. But but the point
Speaker 1: is complacency is very, very dangerous, as we saw in
Speaker 1: the record business, and as i've learned in the game business.
Speaker 1: We cannot be where we are today in six months,
Speaker 1: so twenty years. To answer your question, it's a whole
Speaker 1: different medium now. And I don't just believe it. I
Speaker 1: know it. The facts are out there. It is the
Speaker 1: most important medium for anybody under the age of X.
Speaker 1: And you can fill an X by the way. X
Speaker 1: could mean twenty, it could be forty, depends who you ask.
Speaker 1: Is interactive media? Is interactive entertainment? I think so apart
Speaker 1: of the next generations thinking that they expect it in
Speaker 1: all media. Are people who are five and ten in
Speaker 1: fifteen and twenty now, really in twenty years going to
Speaker 1: go on to go to a movie theater where they
Speaker 1: see a film with a beginning, a middle, and an
Speaker 1: end when all they've known their whole life is choice,
Speaker 1: going left, going right, having an impact on the story.
Speaker 1: You know, it's something we need to really think about.
Speaker 1: And again I'm volunteering this. You didn't ask me, but
Speaker 1: I've had many, many conversations with the CEOs of many
Speaker 1: labels I where they really start needing to pay attention
Speaker 1: to you GC user generated content. I get it. There's
Speaker 1: clearly problems and you know, Lucy and others. You know,
Speaker 1: they should fight, you know, formats like TikTok because they
Speaker 1: need to be compensated fairly. But the one thing they
Speaker 1: do need to understand, and it's proven music fans want
Speaker 1: to get their hands on the music they want to create.
Speaker 1: I think that really comes from gaming. They want to create.
Speaker 1: So how do we untether music in the future and
Speaker 1: become fairly and fairly compensated, not do what we did
Speaker 1: before twenty years ago with Napster where we held tight.
Speaker 1: We're gonna show them we're not going to let that
Speaker 1: new technology disturb our model. How do we acknowledge that
Speaker 1: you g c is what is expected? You know, I
Speaker 1: was shocked at first, frankly because I came from the
Speaker 1: record business. When all of a sudden, I saw so
Speaker 1: many players creating their own FIFA moments or their battlefield
Speaker 1: moments and attaching our music to it and uploading it
Speaker 1: to YouTube at the time, and I used to think,
Speaker 1: where's the takedowns they're stealing? And I was told by
Speaker 1: our lawyers, no, actually, we actually want you want don't
Speaker 1: you put all of our music up online? Why don't
Speaker 1: you put all of our music on TikTok? We want
Speaker 1: our players to create. That's what keeps them engaged. And
Speaker 1: my shift in my thinking was immediate. I oh my god,
Speaker 1: I've been trained in another business where I thought it
Speaker 1: was theft. It's actually engagement. So how do we monetize it?
Speaker 1: How do we make it fair? Is Spotify I can
Speaker 1: to continue to have walls continuously for the future, or
Speaker 1: is there another model? I mean, I don't know where
Speaker 1: we gonna charge. If you charge me twelve bucks a
Speaker 1: month for one service, but you know fifteen to untether
Speaker 1: x amount of songs that I can go create, And
Speaker 1: there was some model. I'm making that up. I'm going
Speaker 1: to spend that money, particularly if I'm fifteen or eighteen.
Speaker 1: I want to create with this music. So these are
Speaker 1: things you know that I'm challenging people, not for the
Speaker 1: sake of what I do. I created a catalog of
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands, thousands of cues. When I got there.
Speaker 1: We didn't even own some of the music when I
Speaker 1: walked in there. From all the years, now we own
Speaker 1: some of the greatest, most well known themes period. There's
Speaker 1: not a kid you're ever gonna find me that doesn't
Speaker 1: know the theme to the sims or the theme to
Speaker 1: Battlefield seven notes? You know, to me, I grew up
Speaker 1: with those seven notes of Star Wars, don't dunt unt huh?
Speaker 1: That was everything to me as a kid. But to
Speaker 1: another kid who's fifteen or twenty now they listen to
Speaker 1: do dundunt dun't don't, which is the theme to Battlefield,
Speaker 1: and they go, holy, that's a holy ship moment. So
Speaker 1: how do we monetize that but untether it? How do
Speaker 1: we let kids get their hands on it and go
Speaker 1: create with it? And I think this is the greatest
Speaker 1: opportunity moment we have in twenty years, the untethering of music.
Speaker 1: We can't repeat history. We can't do it. We can't
Speaker 1: hold off when the art, particularly now that we if
Speaker 1: we and we do have one on one relationship with
Speaker 1: the music play the music consumer or the player gamer,
Speaker 1: then we need to listen to them. And it's clear
Speaker 1: people want to create, So why are we limiting them?
Speaker 1: So I applaud Universal by the way for taking it on,
Speaker 1: but we need to come up with a solution. And
Speaker 1: I know them very well. I know that's the way
Speaker 1: they think as well. But we need to get there
Speaker 1: as a community um in music and gaming. Hope that
Speaker 1: makes sense. Let's just go sideways for a second. What
Speaker 1: is the future for Microsoft and Sony. They have certain
Speaker 1: game franchises, but they historically have had the consoles. Is
Speaker 1: it really ultimately just to own the games? What's going
Speaker 1: to happen there? I listen, I believe that. You remember
Speaker 1: when um Bill Gates years ago said the Xbox is
Speaker 1: going to be the center of your living room. Um,
Speaker 1: that kind of is true now, I mean gaming. You
Speaker 1: can get Netflix, you know it's the center. Um, they're
Speaker 1: gonna be um cloud based boxes, right, I mean, uh,
Speaker 1: there's no more disk than needs to be put into it.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be able to download, You're gonna be able
Speaker 1: to what I hope to see. I hope this comes true.
Speaker 1: I think they're all working on it is. Imagine a
Speaker 1: world a community. Let's use sports as an example. Or
Speaker 1: on your PlayStation or your Xbox, you can find your
Speaker 1: other Titans fans. I'm in Nashville. I can play, you know,
Speaker 1: a game of Madden with them an hour before the
Speaker 1: Titans are playing you know, the Broncos. And then without
Speaker 1: even touching it, my whole community of thirty people that
Speaker 1: I just played with sits there without even blinking an eye,
Speaker 1: and we watched the game. We watched the actual game together,
Speaker 1: and then we can tell we can go over here
Speaker 1: to our music section and we can talk about the music. Well.
Speaker 1: In other words, it's our virtual community. It is the
Speaker 1: center of my living room. It is the center of
Speaker 1: my community. People find each other with commonalities, and that
Speaker 1: is where they find each other. Um, I do believe
Speaker 1: that that's where it's going to. Well, it's already going there.
Speaker 1: You know. Look at the fanaticism rightly so of a Fortnight.
Speaker 1: That's a community. Look at the fanaticism of Call of Duty.
Speaker 1: That's a community. Look at the fanaticism of FIFA, that's
Speaker 1: a community. So those communities have other interest maybe they're
Speaker 1: associated with or aligned with gaming music one of them.
Speaker 1: But as if you hear a new artist for the
Speaker 1: first time, you know, in FIFA and you're in your
Speaker 1: FIFA community, Hey, let's all meet tonight at o'clock on
Speaker 1: Xbox and we're gonna do a one on one with
Speaker 1: that artist. Let's all get some virtual merch together so
Speaker 1: we can play in our Billie Eilish jerseys tonight versus
Speaker 1: our Titans jerseys. Whatever. The point is that that is
Speaker 1: where the community begins and ends. It's what you and
Speaker 1: I used to do when we were kids, but we
Speaker 1: had to go down the block and hope some other
Speaker 1: kids showed up. But now you can do it, you know,
Speaker 1: right from where you are. So I believe there's a
Speaker 1: huge future in in in these boxes. Uh, in your
Speaker 1: living room. Uh. They were very limited before. UM. I
Speaker 1: think now listen, the question you didn't ask, but I
Speaker 1: assume you were thinking was what happens when Microsoft acquires
Speaker 1: Activision eventually? But since you jump, let's go, do we
Speaker 1: does that limit them? Are they still going to Is
Speaker 1: Activision now Call of Duty going to only be available
Speaker 1: on Microsoft and not Sony anymore? Tbd? They say that's
Speaker 1: not the way they're thinking. I hope that's true. I
Speaker 1: think it'd be foolish personally. But Halo did quite well
Speaker 1: on Xbox only. UM, so let's see what happens there. UM.
Speaker 1: But I think it really is about community. It's about interactivity.
Speaker 1: It's about interactive entertainment. Interactive just doesn't mean a button
Speaker 1: on your controller. Interactive means our community is try link together,
Speaker 1: looking watching sports together, listening to music together, talking about
Speaker 1: music together, playing games together. I think it's a really
Speaker 1: exciting future. So let's go back to the players in
Speaker 1: the field and market share, etcetera. Who are the big
Speaker 1: players here? The big players are Activision e A, UM,
Speaker 1: you know, take two. I used to work for straus
Speaker 1: Zelnick at BMG and now you know he's across the hall,
Speaker 1: so to speak. UM, certainly Epic, you know, UM and others.
Speaker 1: I think the addition to your question is who are
Speaker 1: the big players? But what what are their franchises? Are
Speaker 1: they relying on one or two games or do do
Speaker 1: they have a very well spread out portfolio? I think
Speaker 1: that's where you know, one of the many reasons why
Speaker 1: I've been any A for twenty years is that we're
Speaker 1: not reliant on one franchise for every battlefield. We have
Speaker 1: FIFA for every Madden, we have SIMS for every UFC.
Speaker 1: We have f one now we just did it. We
Speaker 1: have Star Wars, we have Marvel. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: a lot of tent pulse, so to speak, as opposed
Speaker 1: to certain companies which are massive, but they rely on
Speaker 1: one or two franchises. UM. So those are the players.
Speaker 1: Of course, ten Cent you know, as a player, they
Speaker 1: own a piece of everything. UM and Uh. I have
Speaker 1: friends that have left e A to go work for them. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know how happy they are though that they've left.
Speaker 1: I think once you leave, you I know there's a
Speaker 1: lot of they call them the boomerangs. There's people at
Speaker 1: the A that have left and come back three or
Speaker 1: four times. So it must it must be a good
Speaker 1: place to work. I haven't left, but you know people
Speaker 1: keep coming back and saying thank God? Okay? Is it
Speaker 1: analogous to the movie business, which is at this point
Speaker 1: almost solely franchise in terms of dollars? What war? Can
Speaker 1: you get a new game started? In a new game?
Speaker 1: Does it have to be aligned with F one or something?
Speaker 1: Can you start from the ground up? Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: great question, and it has changed dramatically. Long cone of
Speaker 1: the day when you could put a bunch out and
Speaker 1: see what sticks. Um. It takes years to develop original
Speaker 1: I P. We do it, UM. I would say once
Speaker 1: every year or two we take a bold step and
Speaker 1: go for it, but there's years behind it. Sometimes we
Speaker 1: bring back our old original I P and reinvent it.
Speaker 1: Dead Space is a good example. It was a huge
Speaker 1: hit in the late in the in the two thou
Speaker 1: two nine Uh, and we're putting it back out this year.
Speaker 1: We do enough research to know there's significant demand for it.
Speaker 1: The same thing with Skate. Skate was original I p
Speaker 1: UM back in the early two usins. However, we're changing
Speaker 1: the model. It will be a free to play model.
Speaker 1: It's in beta now with five hundred or a thousand people.
Speaker 1: In two years it will be up to ten million,
Speaker 1: fifteen million people. UM. But there's a lot of testing.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of UM player feedback. UH. We listened
Speaker 1: heavily to every player that comes into early beta's. UM.
Speaker 1: But to answer your question, UM, putting out new I
Speaker 1: p is significantly risky. UM. It's always preferred, you know,
Speaker 1: to have your own original I p UM. But long
Speaker 1: gone of the days when I first started, I remember
Speaker 1: sitting with many executive producers talking about ideas for games,
Speaker 1: and we go for it. UM happens a little more
Speaker 1: and often now. UM. Also, the release schedule has thinned
Speaker 1: out over the last five to ten years. There used
Speaker 1: to be you know, Lord knows dozens and dozens of releases.
Speaker 1: Now there's fifteen. UM. So you have to be very
Speaker 1: confident in what you're putting out. UM. If you if
Speaker 1: you put something out that you are either unsure about
Speaker 1: or that is testing terribly um or testing poorly. I
Speaker 1: should say, UM, then you better be prepared to engage
Speaker 1: players after it comes out and continually give them content
Speaker 1: to re engage them. You you don't run, you don't
Speaker 1: kill things so quickly. Even if you have a poor
Speaker 1: first showing, you double down and you engage them. The
Speaker 1: investment is significant. UM. The reason why, in the case
Speaker 1: of F one, we did an acquisition. We acquired a
Speaker 1: company and the UK called code Masters that makes some
Speaker 1: of the greatest racing games on the planet. UM. So yeah,
Speaker 1: in there there's a high level of confident. They had
Speaker 1: a hugely successful F one game. UM. And last year
Speaker 1: our first one to put out under e A Sports,
Speaker 1: with all the talent, by the way that was associated
Speaker 1: with building in that game still intact. We didn't suddenly
Speaker 1: buy the franchise and replace Um. We had a hugely
Speaker 1: successful showing. So there needs to be a high level
Speaker 1: of confidence going in. That doesn't mean there isn't room
Speaker 1: for original thinking. UM. But it takes years. I mean
Speaker 1: I'm working on games right now that won't come out
Speaker 1: until we're that far ahead. Okay, when do you get
Speaker 1: involved in a project. Yeah, no, that's a great question. Um.
Speaker 1: The second something is green light. I get involved because, um,
Speaker 1: I don't live in a post world and I don't
Speaker 1: live in a quote unquote in production world. Once something
Speaker 1: begins to be thought out, it is green light for
Speaker 1: the first step. And we're building towards what we call
Speaker 1: a vertical slice, and that means we're building one level
Speaker 1: out just to present internally, to make sure that every
Speaker 1: feels everybody feels confident about going the next step. I'm
Speaker 1: heavily involved in building that vertical slice. I'm doing it
Speaker 1: right now, hiring a composer or thinking about the tone
Speaker 1: of the game and if it if it involves licensed music, um,
Speaker 1: and and that that by thinking those things out early
Speaker 1: enough that actually helps to evolve the characters. You know.
Speaker 1: I have a thing that I do when it's a
Speaker 1: more filmic based game, and I've done this in films
Speaker 1: as well, even though we might we may never have
Speaker 1: licensed music in the game and it's completely filmic. And
Speaker 1: I'm hiring Lauren Ball for Hans Emmer to do the score. Hypothetically,
Speaker 1: I look at the characters and I like to build
Speaker 1: playlists if they were real What would they be listening to?
Speaker 1: Who are they? Are they into new music or the
Speaker 1: into classic music or the anto you know which genre
Speaker 1: of music? What would their patterns of listening be. Because
Speaker 1: by associating music to them, each individual helps grow the personality.
Speaker 1: And actually by building those playlists, that helps the writers
Speaker 1: also begin to go I never thought about it that
Speaker 1: character would do this, that characters like this, that character
Speaker 1: has the possible ability to do this. So music helps
Speaker 1: us define who those characters are. Um, I've sat there
Speaker 1: with major composers for two years coming up with tones
Speaker 1: and ideas and themes. Some themes never make it to
Speaker 1: the final product, but what they do is they'd help
Speaker 1: develop the story. So the answer to your question is
Speaker 1: very very very early, you know, um, long one in
Speaker 1: the days, you know even by the way, to further
Speaker 1: answer your question, FIFA twenty three launches, you know, one day,
Speaker 1: and I'm working on a FIFA the next day, so
Speaker 1: there's never a pause. Those are annual products, so you
Speaker 1: only have a year to figure it out. But the
Speaker 1: more filming, you know, filming games like Battlefield or Mass
Speaker 1: Effect or Dragon Age years three years, sometimes four, Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're in there you're making playlists, etcetera. When do
Speaker 1: you establish a budget and when do you spend dollar one? Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: usually when we get past the with the exception of
Speaker 1: hiring a composer early, where I'm exposed to an initial
Speaker 1: payment to that composer. UM. I usually don't start spending
Speaker 1: money until our vertical slices passed the the internal test
Speaker 1: and we're on our way. We're on a production schedule.
Speaker 1: At that point, I develop a budget. I take a
Speaker 1: look at what we need, possibly what we don't need.
Speaker 1: I take a look at the what the score might
Speaker 1: sound like, so I can begin to project, um ahead,
Speaker 1: what the costs of recording that orchestra will be. UM,
Speaker 1: what level of composer, unless I've hired that composer already,
Speaker 1: a level that composer I'm going to be able to
Speaker 1: afford to bring on. UM. So I would say, the
Speaker 1: day we get the vertical slice pass full thumbs up, greenlit,
Speaker 1: move forward, I'm in. So I'm managing that budget usually
Speaker 1: for about two years. Our next Star Wars project, which
Speaker 1: comes out in March, I've been working on for well.
Speaker 1: I measure it now by the pandemic, through the entire
Speaker 1: pandemic so what was that one? Um, sorry, it's almost
Speaker 1: three years. So that's the length because I remember starting
Speaker 1: it there. Um, so I built that budget out three
Speaker 1: years ago. UM, and uh, we're just finishing it now.
Speaker 1: We have one more thing to complete and then we're done.
Speaker 1: So that's a full full three years of writing, recording,
Speaker 1: managing a budget, um, and delivering against what the expectations are. Now,
Speaker 1: of course there's the issue of whether you're going to
Speaker 1: have a score, whether you're gonna have licensed music, whether
Speaker 1: you can combine those. How do you come up with
Speaker 1: the raw number for a budget? Does it depend on
Speaker 1: the overall budget of the game, or do they say,
Speaker 1: we trust you, Steve, just tell us what it should cost.
Speaker 1: How do you come up with a number? I think
Speaker 1: it's a combination of the two. I mean, certainly on
Speaker 1: a smaller mobile game comparatively to hypothetically Star Wars, you imagine,
Speaker 1: the budgets are quite different and so the expectations are
Speaker 1: much different as well. By the way, so, um, I'm
Speaker 1: able to suggest uh and usually get signed off on
Speaker 1: a budget big enough to be able to deliver on
Speaker 1: a title like that. Um. But there is Yes, I've
Speaker 1: been there twenty years So I think I am confidently
Speaker 1: um and humbly at the place where you know, I'll
Speaker 1: present a budget and people trust me. Um. I'm not
Speaker 1: stupid uh, and I'm certainly um trustworthy enough internally to
Speaker 1: where I'm not going to spend million dollars on something
Speaker 1: where the expectations should be fifty grand. Um. So I
Speaker 1: think I'm to the point now or after all these years,
Speaker 1: where I can suggest a budget to the ep UH
Speaker 1: and have finance sign off on it uh quickly because
Speaker 1: they understand what I'm delivering will deliver. So to speak, Um,
Speaker 1: that takes time. It takes um delivering winning scores, It
Speaker 1: takes years of seeing audience player feedback. You know, nobody
Speaker 1: blinks an I fortunately with me right now, you know
Speaker 1: when I put in a budget for FIFA, because everybody
Speaker 1: sees the cultural impact and the and the return on
Speaker 1: investment of that license music budget. Um. But I'm also
Speaker 1: not stupid to where I'm gonna go and say I
Speaker 1: want to triple my budget. I pretty much delivered on
Speaker 1: the same numbers every year, you know, and if something changes, um,
Speaker 1: then I adjust, okay, Uh, just because I remember the
Speaker 1: question I was going to ask in terms of mobile games.
Speaker 1: How big a part of that is e A. And
Speaker 1: of course, if you're on the iPhone platform, apples taking
Speaker 1: you have the Google Play. What's going on in that
Speaker 1: world is opposed to the stuff that's downloaded for play
Speaker 1: on the Internet or whatever. I mean mobile games. We've
Speaker 1: invested heavily in mobile games. I mean we acquired Glue, um,
Speaker 1: which remember the days when this little help was I'm
Speaker 1: anticipating a question in this conversation about Kanye So remember
Speaker 1: when his ex wife had her big uh mobile game.
Speaker 1: Glue did that. And Glue also did the Taylor Swift
Speaker 1: game that I don't know if that ever came to life,
Speaker 1: but and so there they were a massive mobile platform
Speaker 1: and we acquired those guys. In the last two years. Um,
Speaker 1: we're finally pouring out all of our franchises like FIFA
Speaker 1: and others onto mobile platforms. So we're investing heavily in mobile. Uh.
Speaker 1: The economics, like you said, you know, think about it.
Speaker 1: You're wherever you're buying those is a piece being taken out.
Speaker 1: Of course, you know you're gonna buy a mobile game
Speaker 1: on Apple, you know the economics of it, um, But
Speaker 1: you know console games are where the significant expenses in
Speaker 1: creating and developing significant. Okay, So if you have one
Speaker 1: of your big games, whether it be uh end well
Speaker 1: or every three or four years, if it's solely score,
Speaker 1: or if it's solely licensed music, what's the number for
Speaker 1: the budget ballpark? UM? I can tell you this. I
Speaker 1: can tell you what I can and cannot answer, but
Speaker 1: UM it is to answer an earlier questionnaires. It is
Speaker 1: somewhat like the movie industry in that regard. Somewhere between
Speaker 1: one of the overall score UM closer to one usually
Speaker 1: is what I can get for a music budget. It's
Speaker 1: small comparatively to the overall numbers in developing a game. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, I. I know you didn't ask me this,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna say it anyway. UM I I believe
Speaker 1: that we should always pay, you know, for other people's
Speaker 1: IP We pay to license music into FIFA. We pay
Speaker 1: the license music in the Madden There have been thoughts
Speaker 1: for years about what television used to do. Well, we
Speaker 1: have a we're a promotional vehicle, so you should give
Speaker 1: it to us for free. And I fought that every
Speaker 1: single ounce of the way for several reasons. Number one, UM,
Speaker 1: the minute we start not paying for music and either
Speaker 1: accept payment for the placement or take it for free.
Speaker 1: The credibility of our curation goes down the toilet, and
Speaker 1: that can never happen. We have to make decisions based
Speaker 1: on great music that will travel around the world. I
Speaker 1: also believe you pay for other people's intellectual property, and
Speaker 1: if we're licensing something, we're gonna pay for it. So um,
Speaker 1: you know, I manage, you know, to get a hundred
Speaker 1: plus songs in FIFA close to that in Madden, and
Speaker 1: I set a budget incording accordingly where the money goes
Speaker 1: the right way, it goes to the people who are
Speaker 1: licensing from We make better decisions. Everybody wants to be
Speaker 1: in that real estate. But you know we don't make
Speaker 1: those We don't make those decisions based on cost or
Speaker 1: money spent. We make those decisions based on the best
Speaker 1: music possible. And you know, fees and budgets set on that.
Speaker 1: Everybody has an expectation as to what we're gonna pay.
Speaker 1: Let's go to the easier side the score. So you
Speaker 1: may hire someone prior to the layer cake being complete,
Speaker 1: but you're gonna hire somebody shut either after over the
Speaker 1: period of years, which is longer than it takes to
Speaker 1: make a movie. How involved is the composer? Tell me
Speaker 1: the relationship from the moment you hire them to end
Speaker 1: of production. Yeah, this is a part of the business
Speaker 1: in particular that I genuinely and deeply love. I didn't
Speaker 1: know how much I loved it, frankly, Bob, until I
Speaker 1: got into it to the point where I have such
Speaker 1: a deep connection to the composer community. Um, listen, I
Speaker 1: allow the composer to be involved, he or she as
Speaker 1: deeply as they would like to be. I would prefer
Speaker 1: more than less. I would prefer to them to have
Speaker 1: input into the story, into the characters. I want that
Speaker 1: because I want the music to inextricably tie in with
Speaker 1: the characters and the action. Um. So, these are very
Speaker 1: long periods of time, So I don't have Hans Zimmer
Speaker 1: or Hilda or others exclusively for these three years they're
Speaker 1: doing they're doing movies, they're doing television shows. But when
Speaker 1: we get closer to release, after years of building these
Speaker 1: tones and ideas, then they come in the time exclusively
Speaker 1: and they helped me finish out the project. That's kind
Speaker 1: of where it's just that's more like a movie. Um, Frankly,
Speaker 1: I've never seen a composer now that I think about
Speaker 1: it to this day that hasn't just dove in the
Speaker 1: deep end. They want all in the biggest composers in
Speaker 1: the world. I watched, you know, shows on Netflix and
Speaker 1: HBO and others, and I'm blown away by some of
Speaker 1: the music that's happening in television right now, which is
Speaker 1: one of the most exciting places too for entertainment. My
Speaker 1: you know, there's I don't even know if we announced
Speaker 1: it yet. We will in a minute, So while say
Speaker 1: here here, I'll say it here anyway, pardon me, um.
Speaker 1: I was watching the show on Apple called Servant. It
Speaker 1: was a Shamalan thing. The music was so damn good.
Speaker 1: It was horror music, but like I never heard before.
Speaker 1: Horror music is supposed to sound like Bernard Herman meets
Speaker 1: you know, um, Halloween, but this was psychological. The music sick.
Speaker 1: It's scared the b Jesus out of me, the music
Speaker 1: in that. And so for Dead Space, which comes out
Speaker 1: next year early next year, I wanted this guy, Trevor Grecus,
Speaker 1: didn't meet him, never knew, blew my mind. So this
Speaker 1: relationship now is two years old. He has contributed so
Speaker 1: much in challenging us. What does horror feel like? What
Speaker 1: does fear feel like? How could you psychologically get into
Speaker 1: the head of somebody on a couch who you'll never meet,
Speaker 1: to where they are emotionally messed up from what's happening
Speaker 1: on screen musically speaking. So I think you want somebody
Speaker 1: like that who has huge ideas, who's the next generation thinker,
Speaker 1: who understands the medium. Because Trevor is a game fanatic.
Speaker 1: He understood massive fact he he played the old Dead Spaces,
Speaker 1: he knew it. I don't need composers because they're gamers,
Speaker 1: because they understand the technology. But I want composers who
Speaker 1: understand the opportunities that come with the medium, and that
Speaker 1: to me is where it changes the whole game, no
Speaker 1: pun intended. Lauren Bolf does the same. He does Mission
Speaker 1: Impossible and all these great movies that are that are
Speaker 1: in the theaters. But when I work with him, he
Speaker 1: digs in because it's like it's like a sandbox. Now
Speaker 1: I get to explore. Now I get to have fun.
Speaker 1: Now I'm not tethered to that thing the director shot
Speaker 1: that's on screen. Now I can come up with all
Speaker 1: these crazy ideas. I can invent instruments. We can play
Speaker 1: the instruments in ways they're not even supposed to be played.
Speaker 1: We can go and you know, just whatever wacky ideas
Speaker 1: that enhanced that emotional participation. And um, I just think
Speaker 1: it's it's really become. Frankly, one if not my favorite
Speaker 1: parts of the gig is digging in with these intensely
Speaker 1: creative minds and coming up with ways. Well, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: give you another example. Hilder, who won the Oscar for Joker,
Speaker 1: who I learned warners wanted to fire her every single day,
Speaker 1: not Todd Phillips but everybody else because she was doing
Speaker 1: something very against the grain. Um. When I first met her,
Speaker 1: I was smart enough to go to Berlin. It was
Speaker 1: my last trip before the pandemic. Uh. I knew she
Speaker 1: was going to win the Oscar, but she hadn't, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to hire her to do battlefield the next battlefield.
Speaker 1: Battlefield takes place obviously in the future, but the not
Speaker 1: too distance future. Climate change has completely destroyed the world
Speaker 1: as we know it. Sounds like it could be true.
Speaker 1: Hurricanes are ten times stronger, snow snowstorms or growing up
Speaker 1: in July, nations are underwater, there's two nations left, Russia
Speaker 1: and the US, and they go to war. They're not
Speaker 1: fighting for land, they're fighting for control of climate. So
Speaker 1: I sat with Hilder and at first she said, m hm,
Speaker 1: war game. I don't know how I feel about that.
Speaker 1: Remember I knew her for an hour, and I said,
Speaker 1: you know, the difference between call of duty and battlefield
Speaker 1: is battlefield isn't about war. Let's see how many people
Speaker 1: we can shoot. Choo choo, choo shoot. It actually makes
Speaker 1: you think as to why we're in war. It actually
Speaker 1: is a war game with a conscious And imagine if
Speaker 1: we could write a score we didn't know there was
Speaker 1: a pandemic that was about to happen. Imagine if we
Speaker 1: could write a score that was indistinguishable between the music
Speaker 1: and the sound design, to where the bullets sounded like percussion. Sorry,
Speaker 1: the helicopter sounded like cushion, the bullets coming out of helicopters,
Speaker 1: and the string sounded like the wind. But to the
Speaker 1: point where the fear of the inevitable, unless we get
Speaker 1: a grasp as to what the hell is going on
Speaker 1: with climate change in this world, it makes you shake
Speaker 1: in your shoes, shake in your chair. Can we write
Speaker 1: a score where you can listen to it on Spotify,
Speaker 1: and I really recommend it from the beginning to the end.
Speaker 1: Get some wine, smoke a joint, I don't care, Get
Speaker 1: into a place, lean back in a chair. Can it
Speaker 1: live in its own? Can it be a warning? Can
Speaker 1: it let us know? Can it let us feel what
Speaker 1: we're doing to this planet, the inevitable where we're headed?
Speaker 1: And her eyes lit up. I said, so, think about
Speaker 1: it as a piece of music that works in the game,
Speaker 1: but think of it also as a piece of art,
Speaker 1: a piece of music that can live in its own
Speaker 1: and shake our souls to what we've done to this
Speaker 1: planet and what's an inevitably going to happen unless we
Speaker 1: get on the right track. Can we do that? And
Speaker 1: within an hour here's a woman that just won the
Speaker 1: Golden Globe, was about to win an oscar, and she
Speaker 1: was signing on to do music for a game she
Speaker 1: never played, a game she never wrote for a game.
Speaker 1: We decided not to record any live instruments. We decided
Speaker 1: to invent instruments. We decided to go to a shipyard
Speaker 1: in France and record the scraping of the hull against
Speaker 1: the metal and the cement. We wanted it to not
Speaker 1: necessarily be musical. We wanted it to be emotional. So
Speaker 1: I've sat in the studio at my house many times
Speaker 1: and listen to the score album. It is not like
Speaker 1: listening to you know, Fiddler on the Roof or or
Speaker 1: anything like that. It makes you go. It's if there's
Speaker 1: a little nine inch nails in there in the sense
Speaker 1: of electronic what the f is this? There's a lot
Speaker 1: of pulsation in there that makes your heart go to
Speaker 1: a place you can't imagine. And there's a hell of
Speaker 1: a lot. At the end of forty something minutes, you're
Speaker 1: sitting there in your chair saying, what the funk was that?
Speaker 1: And hopefully, and now I believe she's about to be
Speaker 1: hopefully nominated for two Oscars I hear this year. But
Speaker 1: I've seen it performed eleven minute piece at Disney Hall,
Speaker 1: and I just saw another maybe fifteen minute piece of
Speaker 1: the score performed at the Opera House in Sweden. And
Speaker 1: it lives on its own. It can sit on its
Speaker 1: own and be a masterpiece and art piece because art
Speaker 1: is supposed to and I think you'll agree shake you
Speaker 1: to your core. If you see something or feel something,
Speaker 1: it's supposed to shake you. It's supposed to make you think,
Speaker 1: wake up, even if you don't like it, even if
Speaker 1: you disagree with it, even if you hate it. I
Speaker 1: don't need war in this case. Every time you in
Speaker 1: a battle for it to be Timpani who said war
Speaker 1: has to a victory has to sound like fog horn
Speaker 1: d I mean if I ever was in a war
Speaker 1: and I just want a battle and I killed people,
Speaker 1: I'd throw up. Probably I would not have a victory.
Speaker 1: Lap so we wanted today could take a different approach
Speaker 1: out of it that hopefully to answer your question, is
Speaker 1: the level of high involvement that some of the best
Speaker 1: composers in the world all get involved with when it
Speaker 1: comes to this medium. It's pretty phenomenal to see it
Speaker 1: now there are a lot of old rockers involved in composition.
Speaker 1: Is that window still open? And what is the barrier
Speaker 1: to entry for newbies to the sphere. When you say
Speaker 1: old rockers want, you mean old rockers wanting to get
Speaker 1: their music into you. No, no, no, no, I'm talking
Speaker 1: about his composers like Mark Mark m M. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: get a lot of calls, Bob from a lot of
Speaker 1: guys in bands that I worked with in the old
Speaker 1: days or bands that I certainly know of in the
Speaker 1: old days that they want to be composers. Um. Very
Speaker 1: few can make that transition. There are great exceptions. Trevor Rabin,
Speaker 1: Mark Mother's Bow, you know, certainly the guys in nine
Speaker 1: inch Nails. You know, Trent and Atticus UM, Jeff Russo, UM.
Speaker 1: Certain guys can do it. Most camp and I've done
Speaker 1: it with many, probably a few too many times because
Speaker 1: I was a fan and thought, oh, this is just
Speaker 1: gonna be awesome. I've always wanted to work with this
Speaker 1: guy or this woman. UM. But there's it's it's a
Speaker 1: big gap between being a rock star and being a
Speaker 1: composed The first one is collaboration. If you're making a record,
Speaker 1: you're going into studio, you're shutting everybody out. You deliver
Speaker 1: the record, maybe to your A and R guy, Maybe
Speaker 1: he gives you an hour or three of feedback. Maybe
Speaker 1: you adjust, maybe you don't. But it was done in isolation.
Speaker 1: Hans Simmer doesn't do anything in isolation. He calls me.
Speaker 1: He's working with me right now every single day. What
Speaker 1: do you think about this? Should I change it? Does
Speaker 1: it fit? Yeah? Hans? Why don't we try doing this?
Speaker 1: Instead of this, I need to get this emotion out
Speaker 1: of it. Okay, I'll be back. It's a collaborative thing.
Speaker 1: So sometimes a little ego gets in the way of
Speaker 1: the rock star trying to be a composer. Sometimes the
Speaker 1: idea that they're being given direction doesn't fall so well
Speaker 1: on their ears. I was working God, I was so
Speaker 1: optimistic about working with this big, high profile hip hop guy, um,
Speaker 1: and after a couple weeks, I just we just couldn't
Speaker 1: go any further because every time I would give direction,
Speaker 1: he would come back with a different version of what
Speaker 1: he did. And I'm not saying my my word, my
Speaker 1: direction is the end and make it like me. That's
Speaker 1: not what I'm saying, But like Hans or Hilder, where
Speaker 1: we'll sit there and we'll come up with crazy ideas.
Speaker 1: What if we could do this? What if they challenge me,
Speaker 1: I challenge them. It's a pretty deep relation. Listen, a
Speaker 1: lot of these composers have become my best friends. I
Speaker 1: spend more time with them than anybody you know, to
Speaker 1: three years on a project, every day, hours every day,
Speaker 1: so that transition is really really tough. Um. Like I said,
Speaker 1: there are exceptions, you know, Jeff Russo has become an
Speaker 1: incredible composer. Played guitar in a rock band. Who knew
Speaker 1: he knew probably I worked with him before. Um incredible
Speaker 1: collaborative spirit. But then there's the next generation of great
Speaker 1: composers who did play in rock bands, Chris Bowers, Hilda
Speaker 1: who I just talked about. It's collaboration from the second
Speaker 1: you enter the room together. There's no here's my idea,
Speaker 1: that doesn't exist. It's let's create the vision where when?
Speaker 1: And and very humbly speaking, Hans Zimmer, biggest composer in
Speaker 1: the world. What do you think? Did I get it wrong?
Speaker 1: I might have gotten it wrong? What do you think?
Speaker 1: And they want feedback. There isn't an ego asking here,
Speaker 1: you know. It's I'm not saying ego doesn't exist, because
Speaker 1: that would be naive. But it's a very different thing
Speaker 1: than making a record. UM. And I really enjoy UM.
Speaker 1: You know. I'm heavily involved in the SCL the Society
Speaker 1: Composers and Lyricists, and this community of collaborators is quite impressive,
Speaker 1: and it's something I was never really exposed to when
Speaker 1: I was in the record business for so long. You'd
Speaker 1: go in there and you'd make a record with the
Speaker 1: band end, but you had to make sure you were
Speaker 1: good to their ego. You know, that's great. How many
Speaker 1: hopefully I wasn't in too many, But you know how
Speaker 1: many times did you go in the board room once
Speaker 1: a week and they played a record and you thought
Speaker 1: the record was average? But everybody's bobbing their head up
Speaker 1: and down because everybody's looking at each other, and because
Speaker 1: the CEO is in the room, Oh my god. But
Speaker 1: you're going, oh my god, this thing's gonna stiff the
Speaker 1: second and it's radio. You know, everybody's bullshitting each other.
Speaker 1: Composers and myself and others. We don't bullshit each other.
Speaker 1: We just we understand the end result is the most
Speaker 1: important thing. How we get there, it doesn't matter. There's
Speaker 1: no feelings to be hurt. You know, there's no my
Speaker 1: way or the highway, you know. So just going back
Speaker 1: to the Hilder thing, you know, it's it's it's going
Speaker 1: to disturb you to listen to the score for Battlefield,
Speaker 1: and that's the intention. But that wasn't something that she
Speaker 1: came up with and said, Okay, I got it, I'll
Speaker 1: write it, I'll send it to you in three months.
Speaker 1: That was Monday through Saturday. She was in Berlin. I
Speaker 1: was in Nashville during a pandemic. We had our Swedish
Speaker 1: producers every day on the phone hours listening to not
Speaker 1: just Q by Q, listening to bar by bar of
Speaker 1: collaborative effort to create something that all of us. I
Speaker 1: remember I handed the first portion to score in and
Speaker 1: I had some people go, what is this? This is horrible?
Speaker 1: We can't deal with this. Why because it's upsetting us.
Speaker 1: Good We're on the right track. Okay, let's flip the
Speaker 1: story over. Uh, let's talk about a totally licensed UH score.
Speaker 1: What I mean is different individual rock, pop, hip hop tracks.
Speaker 1: How do you decide to do that? And what are
Speaker 1: the steps in that? So? I have some rules I've
Speaker 1: had for twenty years with my team, and my team
Speaker 1: has been together for that long. Uh. Nobody is allowed
Speaker 1: to listen to the radio. Ever. Nobody is allowed to
Speaker 1: be influenced or looked at charts. Ever. Nobody is allowed
Speaker 1: to define success in a one dimensional way. Having a
Speaker 1: number one or a top ten record is meaningless because
Speaker 1: success in the year two and music can be defined
Speaker 1: in many different ways. Is somebody who gets a hundred
Speaker 1: million streams on Spotify more important than somebody who has
Speaker 1: a million streams. They're both successful, depends who they are,
Speaker 1: depends what the expectations were. So I believe if we
Speaker 1: pay attention to trends, if we understand who's on their
Speaker 1: way up, who's potentially not where to certain where are
Speaker 1: certain genres going in the World's hip hop? Certainly, you
Speaker 1: can look at the numbers of hip hop. It's the
Speaker 1: most popular genre in music around the world. But where
Speaker 1: is it in its life in its lifetime right now?
Speaker 1: You know, we were we were we were working with Anita,
Speaker 1: you know, years ago, you know, in Latin America because
Speaker 1: we believed we saw this trend of the globalization of
Speaker 1: Latin music. So we were placing Anita in the sims
Speaker 1: like before. We were fighting our own folks internally, you know,
Speaker 1: um rock, I told Sabelle on my team the second
Speaker 1: I started hearing a couple of years ago, rock is dead.
Speaker 1: I said, take the NHL franchise and bring rock back.
Speaker 1: It's gonna come back. There's no way you're gonna convince
Speaker 1: me rock is dead forever. Go find the greatest rock
Speaker 1: bands on the planet, not the old ones, not the
Speaker 1: ones that sound like the old ones. What is rocks?
Speaker 1: And what is a kid? Who's a team? Who was
Speaker 1: raised on jay Z and Metallica because parents played it?
Speaker 1: What is the what is that sound like? What is
Speaker 1: the next evolution of rock? Sound like? Take the entire
Speaker 1: NHL soundtrack and devoted to bringing rock back, pay attention
Speaker 1: to the fact that it's not dead forever, and have
Speaker 1: confidence that we can be a part of that. So
Speaker 1: I my job is to surround myself with people with
Speaker 1: impeccable taste. I have an opinion. Um, my opinion is strong,
Speaker 1: and we all fight and the best Remember those fights
Speaker 1: he used to have? I remember them so finally, when
Speaker 1: I used to have all my buddies over, usually to
Speaker 1: our living room or sometimes in my bedroom, and we'd
Speaker 1: all bring records and we'd play it, and we'd play
Speaker 1: Talking Heads of the Police, and we'd fight over which
Speaker 1: one was best. That track sucks, No, you're wrong, this
Speaker 1: track is huge? What's wrong with you? Elvis Costello's I mean,
Speaker 1: I love those fights because they weren't fights, weren't batting
Speaker 1: each other up. We were being passionate. We loved it
Speaker 1: so much. I was allowed to love one band more
Speaker 1: than you and vice versa. I love those conversations we
Speaker 1: have at work. I actually encourage them once a while.
Speaker 1: I'll stick my neck out and go, you know, I
Speaker 1: like Coldplay, but I don't know if Coldplay is really
Speaker 1: for him. You know, an eighteen year old play. You
Speaker 1: know who's listening, Who's going to see Coldplay right now?
Speaker 1: I'm not denying their talent. I'm not denying how huge
Speaker 1: they are, you know, but um, maybe there's some other
Speaker 1: choices we should make. Maybe we should invest in a
Speaker 1: lot of artists that people have yet to hear from.
Speaker 1: Because if I did a focus group today for FIFA
Speaker 1: twenty four, people would tell me to put in the
Speaker 1: bands from last year because they love them so much.
Speaker 1: But last year they hadn't heard of them yet. So,
Speaker 1: as taste makers, and I say that with humility, as
Speaker 1: people with real estate, where we need to be highly
Speaker 1: responsible for what gets into that real estate, musically speaking,
Speaker 1: we better be damn good. I don't expect you to
Speaker 1: love every one of the hundred songs. That would be impossible.
Speaker 1: But if you actually love a couple and they change
Speaker 1: your life, and you can look back and say, oh
Speaker 1: my god, the first time I heard this was an
Speaker 1: NHL two thousand and seven to change my life, and
Speaker 1: you're talking about that in two that's a huge, huge
Speaker 1: positive thing we've we've created. So we spend a year
Speaker 1: and we look at every possible angle. Where is music going,
Speaker 1: where is it not going? You know, how much do
Speaker 1: we invest in this genre? How much do we invest
Speaker 1: in I can't. I can't. I learned the hard way.
Speaker 1: For a couple of years, I would spread the genres
Speaker 1: out in Madden Football because I would go to a
Speaker 1: Dallas Cowboys game and they would play country. And then
Speaker 1: I'd go to a New York Giants game and they
Speaker 1: would play hypothetically jay Z. And I'd go to the
Speaker 1: NFL and they'd say we are nine and ninety were
Speaker 1: everything for everybody. And then I realized it's impossible. If
Speaker 1: you think you're everything for everybody, then you're nothing to everybody.
Speaker 1: You have to make a choice, you have to put
Speaker 1: your you know, whats on the line. You have to say,
Speaker 1: this is what we're gonna sound like, this is the tone,
Speaker 1: these are the limits to where we're gonna go. These
Speaker 1: are the artists we're going to invest in in this year,
Speaker 1: and hopefully it'll stick. And once you engage the audience
Speaker 1: year after year, they have higher and higher expectations. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I went from Blake Shelton five years ago in Madden
Speaker 1: Football to Kendrick lamar Uh to the baby before he
Speaker 1: did what he did, and now we're all hip hop
Speaker 1: because and not just hip hop. Like, let's take a
Speaker 1: look at the charts. As I said, who are the
Speaker 1: next stars? Who's change? We hired you know, um hit
Speaker 1: Boy to do the score. There's a rock star turning
Speaker 1: into a composer. He did an incredible job this year.
Speaker 1: The players, and I don't mean our players, I mean
Speaker 1: the NFL players. They listen to our soundtrack. I don't
Speaker 1: care about the guys in the Budweiser stand, the people
Speaker 1: my age who go in there and they want to
Speaker 1: hear more Bong Jovi in a football game. I don't care.
Speaker 1: I care about what the players in the field listened to.
Speaker 1: In the locker room. At the Titans games we used
Speaker 1: to have I've been in a game this year yet,
Speaker 1: but we used to have the Madden twenty when everybody
Speaker 1: was walking into the stadium, not into the suits, but
Speaker 1: into the regular seats with their kids. They would play
Speaker 1: all the music from Madden that year in the stands
Speaker 1: and the NFL did a focus group a test and
Speaker 1: they said it tested through the roof, and I said,
Speaker 1: that's amazing. Used to tell me that only NFL fans
Speaker 1: want to hear. All they want to hear is classic rock,
Speaker 1: and they said, yeah, those are the people in the sweets.
Speaker 1: But we were talking like kids and they were freaking out,
Speaker 1: and I said, do you know how easy it is?
Speaker 1: Look how easy that is. You're making yourself relevant just
Speaker 1: by the association. All those kids play Madden. We can't
Speaker 1: deny it. They play Madden. The players obviously play Madden.
Speaker 1: That's the soundtrack that they hear for months. It's embedded
Speaker 1: in their brains. They walk into a football stadium, maybe
Speaker 1: it's the first time they've ever gone to see a
Speaker 1: live sporting event, and the first thing they hear is
Speaker 1: that it's credible. So, um, long winded way, I hope
Speaker 1: I answered the question. Maybe I didn't. I apologize, but um,
Speaker 1: it's from now, um through the fall through January, all
Speaker 1: we're doing is talking about how we did, what we did,
Speaker 1: what we got right, what we got wrong. What is
Speaker 1: the next year to look like? Genre wise? We're gonna
Speaker 1: have a lot of conversations about hip hop. Where is
Speaker 1: hip hop going? What's the next underground of hip hop?
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk a lot about Latin music, We're gonna
Speaker 1: talk a lot about rock and roll, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: make some decisions based on next year. That doesn't mean
Speaker 1: Madden's gonna necessarily sound. It's not gonna become I'm not
Speaker 1: telling you it's gonna be all rock and roll next year.
Speaker 1: But we really have to look at, Okay, fifteen and
Speaker 1: eighteen year olds, this is what they listened to this year.
Speaker 1: We're going to actually hopefully be a part of shaping
Speaker 1: their musical taste for the next year. Now, what about
Speaker 1: next year's fifteen year old? What does that look like?
Speaker 1: In cases like FIFA, what does that look like? In
Speaker 1: Italy and the UK and Argentina and the US and Japan.
Speaker 1: We do not localize the music. We localize games for language,
Speaker 1: but we do not localize the music. So when an
Speaker 1: artist gets into FIFA, everybody in the world heard, you
Speaker 1: know Lewis the child. I just love this because you
Speaker 1: know this is years ago, maybe eight years ago, six
Speaker 1: years ago. Um, I think I don't quote me on
Speaker 1: the number, but on Spotify, it was like seven thousand streams,
Speaker 1: and then we announced that year the soundtrack list and
Speaker 1: Louis the Child's name was on it and went to
Speaker 1: a million in twenty four hours just from a list.
Speaker 1: Nobody had heard the song yet, So we really need
Speaker 1: to get it right. And I take that responsibility, and
Speaker 1: that responsibility it doesn't always reflect my personal taste, you know,
Speaker 1: I just I think I have pretty good taste. But
Speaker 1: I need to think about that player, that player around
Speaker 1: the world who's going to learn something new musically speaking
Speaker 1: for the first time. So we need to be impeccable
Speaker 1: in our people culturally, clem clairvoyant and understand trends. And
Speaker 1: I need to make sure I'm surrounded by people always
Speaker 1: that understand that. And that goes back to the beginning
Speaker 1: of this. Why I don't let anybody listen to the radio.
Speaker 1: I don't want to hear from anybody. It's number one
Speaker 1: on Billboard, it's number one, and my book cares anymore.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to I'm not a nostalgic guy, Bob. I
Speaker 1: don't live in the past. I've you know, it's nice,
Speaker 1: you know, once a year to listen to a Springsteen record,
Speaker 1: and remember high school, but it's pretty meaningless to me
Speaker 1: in my life. I really want to I really want
Speaker 1: to make sure that you know, I really get excited
Speaker 1: about what music can do to people going forward, and
Speaker 1: I think, um, we have the real estate to help
Speaker 1: with that. Okay, So let's just you've gone through the
Speaker 1: process with your team of what you want the sound
Speaker 1: to sound like. We know there's a very aggressive business.
Speaker 1: There are people who are pitching you, etcetera. Once you've
Speaker 1: locked in what the music should sound like, what are
Speaker 1: the steps? Do you go to the usual suspects? Do
Speaker 1: you not contact anybody and ultimately is in the most
Speaker 1: favored nations? Or do you pay more for one track
Speaker 1: as opposed to another. I mean, the people that know
Speaker 1: that we're looking at them are obviously the artists and
Speaker 1: the labels and the publishers. I get great joy, um,
Speaker 1: humbly speaking, when uh, we put in a license request
Speaker 1: to a label, uh and they're looking it up and
Speaker 1: they say, we don't have this song yet in our system.
Speaker 1: I love that the band got it to us so
Speaker 1: early that they didn't hand it into the label yet.
Speaker 1: I get tremendous joy out of that because we're so
Speaker 1: freaking early, um, and we all have to be really quiet,
Speaker 1: and even the artists, nobody's really broken that code of
Speaker 1: silence as far as I remember for years. You know,
Speaker 1: you'll know in July. If you're going to make it
Speaker 1: in a FEEFA that comes out in September, you'll know
Speaker 1: in July. And we they're all on board with making
Speaker 1: sure that nothing gets said in social media and it
Speaker 1: stays quiet because they're a part of our launch. Uh M,
Speaker 1: A fan is not typical, you know, M fan. There
Speaker 1: there's certain licenses that are have valued more than others.
Speaker 1: You know, if I'm going to license uh um, a
Speaker 1: big artist who has a new material that we think
Speaker 1: is going to blow up, and the value of that
Speaker 1: is more than an artist that's putting out their first single.
Speaker 1: You know, I think everybody pretty much agrees with that.
Speaker 1: I mean, um, I'm willing to pay if I support
Speaker 1: a band this year and it blows up and next
Speaker 1: year I want to put their single from their next album,
Speaker 1: I'm certainly prepared to pay more for it because they
Speaker 1: got bigger. Only once, by the way, in my twenty
Speaker 1: years did I get was I told by a person
Speaker 1: in a label licensing department on a band that had
Speaker 1: yet to put out even a record that I was
Speaker 1: offering too little because it was going to be a hit.
Speaker 1: I said, well, sorry, then I'll pass because I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna pay you on futures. Um. But um, but let's
Speaker 1: do you watch it? How do you actually find it?
Speaker 1: Do you do it yourself? Do you have regular contacts?
Speaker 1: Are you inundated with you know, whether it be tracks, text,
Speaker 1: whatever people want to be in uh, inundated? Yes, Um,
Speaker 1: but that sometimes isn't what necessarily works. I think it
Speaker 1: is us being proactive, us getting out there. Um. Sabella
Speaker 1: my team at the beginning of every year goes to Europe.
Speaker 1: She literally goes to everyone in her network, which is
Speaker 1: pretty massive. What bands are going in the studio? When
Speaker 1: can I get in the studio to hear the tracks
Speaker 1: they haven't recorded yet? Can I come to the studio
Speaker 1: and hear the demos? You know, I think we are
Speaker 1: out there. We're out there like crazy. Certainly you know,
Speaker 1: the pandemic stop that, let's get out there. It made
Speaker 1: it more challenging, so we had to rely on hopefully
Speaker 1: security of you know, it being sent to us. Um.
Speaker 1: But for the most part, we're out there. We don't
Speaker 1: wait for it to come to us. If I waited
Speaker 1: half the time for it to come to us, it
Speaker 1: would be in shrink wrapping and radio on radio stations
Speaker 1: desks already. You know. Um, we need to be very proactive.
Speaker 1: I'm sure. Um, if we sat down with my team
Speaker 1: for the most art for the most part, they could
Speaker 1: tell you every artist that's writing and hoping and planning
Speaker 1: to put a record out in the next year or two.
Speaker 1: There are exceptions, of course, I'm not saying we know
Speaker 1: of you know, three million, you know, But where the trendsetters?
Speaker 1: Who's the next generation of artists that we've been following?
Speaker 1: Where they at? That's our responsibilities. I have a lead
Speaker 1: music supervisor, Sabel Pettis. She's amazing. She's been with me
Speaker 1: for twenty years. She comes from a and R at
Speaker 1: Warners before that, and her job, her job is a
Speaker 1: strictly creative job. Where's every band at? Who do you
Speaker 1: believe in? Where are the trends? Where they are they
Speaker 1: writing right now? Have you heard it? Have you gotten
Speaker 1: on a plane to the studio where they will play
Speaker 1: it for her? You know, I have many many, um,
Speaker 1: fond memories of bands sitting down with a guitar or
Speaker 1: something and saying, this is what the song is. We
Speaker 1: just wrote this, what do you think. My favorite story,
Speaker 1: which dates me for a second, is when the guys
Speaker 1: at Green Day were in um Ocean Way in l
Speaker 1: A and UH asked us to come out to Ocean
Speaker 1: Way and they played us American Idiot and they said,
Speaker 1: we're about to go in and record it. Rob Cavallo
Speaker 1: was there and UH, this, when do we need to
Speaker 1: finish it by to get it in Madden, and I went, oh, man,
Speaker 1: we have arrived and so um do we miss some things? Yes?
Speaker 1: But the beauty of the medium that I work in
Speaker 1: is that if something comes, if it's not finished by
Speaker 1: the time we lock, I can add it to downloadable content.
Speaker 1: In a month or two, I can always add it.
Speaker 1: I can refresh it. As a matter of fact, we
Speaker 1: just did you know the Ultimate FIFA Soundtrack. That's we
Speaker 1: had a narrow down to thirty or forty songs of
Speaker 1: the best songs to come from FIFA over the last
Speaker 1: twenty years. We took a lot, We worked with Spotify,
Speaker 1: we looked at playlists, we talked to gamers, and we
Speaker 1: came up with that playlist. It's just a list of songs,
Speaker 1: but the fanaticism of getting in that on that list
Speaker 1: was mind blowing to me. But that didn't ship with
Speaker 1: the game. That ship this week when we give you
Speaker 1: a free downloadable World Cup portion of the game, and
Speaker 1: now you get thirty or forty new songs, including Casabian,
Speaker 1: including Blur song number two, which is now forever tied
Speaker 1: to the game of soccer. Um uh, so on and
Speaker 1: so on each The list is long, but so we
Speaker 1: can always update, We can always take things out if
Speaker 1: we don't believe in something, but more importantly, we can
Speaker 1: always add, which we do. Okay, this is the music
Speaker 1: business in general. People are on neither one side or
Speaker 1: the other there the business or their creators. You talk
Speaker 1: about writing cues, Tell us about that in your own
Speaker 1: musical creativity, writing cues um as in scores. Yes, okay, um, Well,
Speaker 1: you know I when I was I know you didn't
Speaker 1: ask me, but I'm gonna answer it this way. When
Speaker 1: I was for my mom put a guitar in my
Speaker 1: hand because I asked for it. Uh. And when I
Speaker 1: was seven, I guess she saw me doing some crazy
Speaker 1: things to some crazy songs. I would want to take
Speaker 1: the horn parts from Chicago c t A. At the time,
Speaker 1: as you recall and rewrite them. I thought Terry cath
Speaker 1: was the greatest guitar player in her But I wanted
Speaker 1: to rewrite Robert Lamb's parts. I wanted to rewrite all
Speaker 1: of this stuff. I was seven. Probably sucked what I
Speaker 1: was rewriting, but I wanted to do it. So she
Speaker 1: used to put me on a bus to Port Authority
Speaker 1: at seven, by myself on the bus, sometimes by the way,
Speaker 1: on a side. And it was Mark Shaman, who was
Speaker 1: a couple of years older than me, who inevitably went
Speaker 1: on to be becoming a massive composer and Broadway writer.
Speaker 1: But we were going, we've we we've since reconnected. And um,
Speaker 1: I used to go to Carnegie Hall and study with
Speaker 1: this guy who looked ancient to me. He actually was
Speaker 1: like and I was seven to me, he could have
Speaker 1: been three thousand, and he was so old that he
Speaker 1: was the composer to the one of the first silent
Speaker 1: films with score, called The Nook of the North Okay Classic.
Speaker 1: And um, he taught me, at seven, nine, ten years old,
Speaker 1: how to rewrite these cues and how to begin to
Speaker 1: write for picture. What does this scene looks like? The
Speaker 1: scene looks like this. The actors are doing this, the
Speaker 1: script does this? Where does silence serve? Where does music serve?
Speaker 1: Even better? How do you create the emotion and the
Speaker 1: person in the chair in the theater? What are your options?
Speaker 1: What is the orchestration, the instrumentation. It was unbelievable to
Speaker 1: me that you could control the emotional experience with one
Speaker 1: minute of music. And I also learned when I lied
Speaker 1: to my Jewish grandmother at seventeen, and she said, hey,
Speaker 1: that's a nice hobby you have, but in our family
Speaker 1: the choices. You can become a doctor, you can become
Speaker 1: a lawyer, or god forbid, a dentist. That was a quote,
Speaker 1: and I felt bad because my dad was a dentist. Um.
Speaker 1: I lied, and I went to school to study music. Um.
Speaker 1: But the one thing I learned was I'm good, but
Speaker 1: I'm much better if I hire other people to do it.
Speaker 1: I can contribute, but I'm gonna hire Hans Zimmer to
Speaker 1: write it, but I have enough knowledge to be able
Speaker 1: to communicate with him on musicians terms. So to write
Speaker 1: a queue, and to write a queue in an interactive format,
Speaker 1: you're not talking about what's happening on the screen. You're
Speaker 1: talking about all of the possibilities. Are you going left?
Speaker 1: Are you going right? Are you running and falling under
Speaker 1: the log and the bad guy gets you, or you
Speaker 1: jumping over the log and you made it or the
Speaker 1: other ten thousand or ten million possibilities? How are you
Speaker 1: writing that in one minute? What is the objective of
Speaker 1: the music? Is the is the objective to sit above
Speaker 1: and to have a you know, as I mentioned before,
Speaker 1: we won the war, so bring on the timpany that
Speaker 1: sits above it? Or is to be so subtle that
Speaker 1: you don't even know the music is there. It's there,
Speaker 1: but it's you're two in the scene. So the but
Speaker 1: you're feeling anger or anxiety or fear or joy, and
Speaker 1: then you probably don't even realize what's doing. That is
Speaker 1: not what's happening on the screen. It's when that music
Speaker 1: gets in your in your soul. Because I don't believe
Speaker 1: that music is meant to be or written to be heard.
Speaker 1: I believe music is written and meant to be felt.
Speaker 1: So a composer, if guided well and as a collaborative person,
Speaker 1: can find that emotion and not even rely what's going
Speaker 1: on in the screen. What happens if you get up
Speaker 1: to go to the bathroom and the screen, but you
Speaker 1: hear the music, you're still feeling, oh my god, I
Speaker 1: gotta get back, I gotta get back, I gotta get
Speaker 1: back to the couch. What's going on the screen is
Speaker 1: not what's doing that. What's going on in your ear,
Speaker 1: to your heart, your soul. So doing that in one
Speaker 1: minute or sometimes twenty second moments is incredibly challenging. Now,
Speaker 1: the beauty of gaming is that you're not writing one
Speaker 1: continuous queue. You're writing pieces that technology can allow it
Speaker 1: to go left or right. So if you're running in
Speaker 1: a horror film running and you trip over the log,
Speaker 1: the trigger in the technology is triggering that music to
Speaker 1: do one thing. But if you make it over the log,
Speaker 1: it knows you did it. So now the music is
Speaker 1: doing something else. So it really is interactive with your experience.
Speaker 1: It's not tethered to that screen. Um, and it's pretty.
Speaker 1: And those are just one example. You know, years ago,
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago, maybe we did the Lord of the
Speaker 1: Rings games and I thought, you know, we were going
Speaker 1: to hire a composer and I could use the music
Speaker 1: from the films, which uh, we did. Um, but I
Speaker 1: had a moment where I wanted to hire Jimmy Page.
Speaker 1: I thought, anybody who listens to Zeppelin like me, knows
Speaker 1: that Lord of the Rings was a part of this mindset. Okay,
Speaker 1: I mean it was there. And if you ask any
Speaker 1: of guys in Laura in in Zeppelin, they'll tell you
Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings right, the books in particular, you know,
Speaker 1: because it's previous to the films. And so I reached
Speaker 1: out at the time to David Dorne. I know you
Speaker 1: probably know, Um, we understand by the way runs maps
Speaker 1: now for Apples. Yes, he's in Maps. Yeah, I need
Speaker 1: to call him and tell him I'm lost. I think
Speaker 1: I just need to have that moment with him. Um.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I reached out to him, and everybody believed.
Speaker 1: Everybody agreed. I said, let me license a bunch of
Speaker 1: Zeppelin tunes and have Jimmy right, that's Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 1: That's how the next generation should should learn Lord of
Speaker 1: the Rings. So of course we went to the lawyers,
Speaker 1: whoever they may have been, and they said, well, with
Speaker 1: the tunes, with the Zeppelin tunes, we didn't even get
Speaker 1: to money. But like we realize it has to mix
Speaker 1: itself during game play, so we need to hear the possibilities,
Speaker 1: like what are the three or four ten mixes that
Speaker 1: the engine is going to create? And I said, I
Speaker 1: can't play you that because it would be millions. I
Speaker 1: don't know what the computer you know that, sorry, the
Speaker 1: technology might change, you know, the base might go here
Speaker 1: and Jimmy Page's guitar Michael here, and Robert Plant's voice
Speaker 1: might soar and stay in a note. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It depends what the players doing. And at the time
Speaker 1: they couldn't. I didn't do the deal. They couldn't wrap
Speaker 1: their heads around it. I couldn't get approval on every
Speaker 1: single mix because the number was infinity. I still think
Speaker 1: it's the most badass idea and I wish I could
Speaker 1: still do it, you know. Um. So that's to me
Speaker 1: about writing a queue. It's um. It's not writing something
Speaker 1: to be listened to like a record many times, it's
Speaker 1: something to be written to be felt. And if you
Speaker 1: don't understand that, and I guarantee you knowing you you do.
Speaker 1: But if you don't understand that, think about, for instance,
Speaker 1: what John Williams Scores and Star Wars did to all
Speaker 1: of us back in the seventies. Think about how we felt.
Speaker 1: Think about when we were soaring into the world of
Speaker 1: Star Wars and that very Stravinsky classical type of score,
Speaker 1: which was not what we were listening to on w
Speaker 1: an E W where I was from, we were listening,
Speaker 1: we were listening to rock music. But that score made
Speaker 1: me feel a certain way. It made me feel my
Speaker 1: chest puffed out. I felt bigger than life. I didn't
Speaker 1: listen to it like I listened to a pop song
Speaker 1: and w ABC in New York that was a different experience.
Speaker 1: I listened to it like with confidence. That's what we
Speaker 1: have to get. Okay, you depict a very full life.
Speaker 1: We're talking to you, just one composer every day and
Speaker 1: you have multiple games. You're talking about travel. What degree
Speaker 1: did this contribute to your divorce? Wow? What an amazing question,
Speaker 1: all of it, all of it. Listen, I married the
Speaker 1: wrong person, and I want my kids to hear me
Speaker 1: say that, because that would hurt them. But that didn't help.
Speaker 1: But you know, I ended up marrying this job, and
Speaker 1: I love this job and I have no regrets about that.
Speaker 1: I devoted my life to this job because I believed
Speaker 1: in it. I didn't do that when I worked at
Speaker 1: Capitol Records. The Andy Slater days of Capitol Records were
Speaker 1: not worth marrying, but being in the next being a
Speaker 1: part of the evolution of entertainment and knowing I could
Speaker 1: use that real estate to do what I always like
Speaker 1: to do since I was fourteen years old, play really
Speaker 1: cool ship for a lot of people and saying, what
Speaker 1: do you think I'll never forget playing Houses of the
Speaker 1: Holy from a next door neighbor. Holy crap, are you kidding?
Speaker 1: Playing again? I still do that. My wife, I'm remarried,
Speaker 1: always says, my god, you act like a fourteen year old,
Speaker 1: and I go, yeah, And I've been able to make
Speaker 1: a living out of that. I don't think she means
Speaker 1: that when she says that, I think she means it differently,
Speaker 1: is my point. But you know it contributed to my divorce.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to avoid your question. It contributed to it.
Speaker 1: I traveled a lot. I still do um and I
Speaker 1: missed a lot, and I would try to come home
Speaker 1: a lot. I would go to London to work and
Speaker 1: then come home in the weekend to see my son's
Speaker 1: baseball game, and then go back the next day to London.
Speaker 1: But you can't you can't do that forever, so it
Speaker 1: didn't contribute to my divorce significantly. Um and um, it's okay,
Speaker 1: and your present wife accepts that your job is number one. Well,
Speaker 1: my present wife. From the first day I met her,
Speaker 1: I found out that Zeppelin was her favorite band of
Speaker 1: all time, so I was ten steps ahead. UM uh yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, of course, and we listen, we're
Speaker 1: adults now, I what at tangent I'm about to go on.
Speaker 1: I don't understand why people get married now that I'm
Speaker 1: an adult in their twenties and early thirties. I do
Speaker 1: not believe in it. I believe the best time to
Speaker 1: get married, if you do get married, is as an adult.
Speaker 1: Get married in your forties, when you're grounded, when you
Speaker 1: know what your life is, when the expectations of each
Speaker 1: other are set. You know. Um, my growth took me
Speaker 1: one way and my ex wife's growth took her another way.
Speaker 1: So I am very fortunate that I found the most
Speaker 1: amazing person on earth who loves what I do, appreciates
Speaker 1: what I do, by the way, and all my friends
Speaker 1: like Hans Zimmer and they love her. I don't hold
Speaker 1: her back from that. She's a part of it. She
Speaker 1: comes to the studio all the time, pops in. My God,
Speaker 1: I can't get her away from half the composer she loved.
Speaker 1: Her dad was a musician. He was a recording artist
Speaker 1: for him c a way back in the day. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: So she understands. She comes from the world of music
Speaker 1: her parents. Um. And I think she sees the excitement
Speaker 1: that I have when I'm working on a score. She
Speaker 1: understands the isolation that I have to go through to
Speaker 1: get there. Um. She understands why you know, I suddenly
Speaker 1: just added to move to Nashville, And she said, Okay,
Speaker 1: she's a California board and raised person. Um. But said,
Speaker 1: let's go And um, so you have to have somebody
Speaker 1: who's on board. But I don't think that can happen
Speaker 1: when you're in your twenties, because you don't know when
Speaker 1: your twenties and know in your twenties where you're gonna
Speaker 1: be in your forties and your fifties. You just don't know.
Speaker 1: And sorry, you have to have somebody who goes along
Speaker 1: for the ride. Okay, let's go back to Nashville. At
Speaker 1: the top, you talked about being a Jew in Nashville.
Speaker 1: We have the whole Kanye self immolation. We have Dave
Speaker 1: Chappelle talking about Jews on Saturday Night Live. We're recording.
Speaker 1: This is only a couple of days ago, and you
Speaker 1: wrote a piece about this, So give me your take.
Speaker 1: I could go deeper, but you know exactly what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about, Ah, Dave Chappelle, the normalization of anti Semitism,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Sarcasm by the way, UM, let's
Speaker 1: since I'm not a religious person. Um, most Jewish people
Speaker 1: I know are not. But culturally we are bound food
Speaker 1: where we're from, the way we talk, the way we think.
Speaker 1: You know, we're bound together through this culture. There's only
Speaker 1: but fourteen million of us on the planet. Um. But
Speaker 1: shocking news anti Semitism. There's nothing new. It's been around forever,
Speaker 1: thousands of years. UM. Every hundred years, history repeats itself.
Speaker 1: Look at the Spanish Inquisition, look at the programs we
Speaker 1: can keep going. When I did that one of those
Speaker 1: twenty three and me things was unbelievable. It was a
Speaker 1: map from Tunisia and Morocco to Portugal, to Spain, to
Speaker 1: France to Italy, belong all the way across to Croatia,
Speaker 1: straight up through you know, Austria, Hungary, Germany, Poland straight
Speaker 1: up to Finland which used to be Russia. That's a
Speaker 1: map of people fleeing, you know. Yeah, my kids said,
Speaker 1: oh my god, are we French? Well we probably were
Speaker 1: for twenty years or a hundred years. I have no
Speaker 1: freaking idea. So here we are again. Did we think
Speaker 1: that in ninety three through that that was the end
Speaker 1: of it? No way. So here we are with the
Speaker 1: current normalization of anti Semitism, the hatred that spews from
Speaker 1: the mouths of celebrities, politicians and just regular people. And
Speaker 1: I never thought, probably none of us ever thought in
Speaker 1: our lifetimes that we would be sitting here defending it
Speaker 1: like our relatives. Did you know we're more than a
Speaker 1: generation or two since World War Two. I've got a huge, wonderful,
Speaker 1: loving family in Israel. Secular family lives in Tel Aviv.
Speaker 1: I'm a liberal Zionist. None of us are bb people.
Speaker 1: We don't believe in settlements, we're not right wingers, were
Speaker 1: not religious. We don't spit it people when they walk
Speaker 1: down the streets. By the way, that's the majority of
Speaker 1: tel Aviv. We believe in rights. We believe in gay rights,
Speaker 1: we believe in equal women rights. We believe in equal
Speaker 1: rights for Arabs and everyone. Um, and here we are
Speaker 1: being hated again. We are not Israeli politics. I am
Speaker 1: not American politics. Tom York said it so well. I
Speaker 1: started an organization ten years ago with David Renzer called
Speaker 1: Creative Community for Peace that was about using music to
Speaker 1: build bridges, not through boycott, where you use music to
Speaker 1: bring people apart. I and the one thing that a
Speaker 1: Palestinian and an Israeli kid might have in common is Rihanna.
Speaker 1: For God's sake, Let's try to get bands to go
Speaker 1: to Tel Aviv and then go somewhere in the Arab world.
Speaker 1: Let's try to have music be the bridge. Elton John
Speaker 1: gets that. Lots of artists gets that, gets that, Lady
Speaker 1: Gaga gets that, Donna gets that. The list goes on. Um.
Speaker 1: I was. I felt this rise in anti Semitism, not
Speaker 1: just by through the organization, the nonprofit that I started
Speaker 1: with David, But I see the stats. I see what's
Speaker 1: happened in the last two three years. I heard Jews
Speaker 1: will not replace us, just like you heard it. They
Speaker 1: were taking down rightly so, taking down Confederate statues, and
Speaker 1: they were marching, yelling, about Jews. So you see this,
Speaker 1: I asked the question, you know, a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: when did we as Jewish people stop being a minority?
Speaker 1: Because we are a minority. I'm actually in the middle
Speaker 1: of reading a book. When did Jewish people start becoming white?
Speaker 1: Because are we really white? You know? Sure? Okay, you
Speaker 1: we can we we we can get away with it.
Speaker 1: But remember that map I told you Tunisia, Morocco, all
Speaker 1: that stuff. I bet you I had a lot of
Speaker 1: relatives that didn't have this skin color. And then if
Speaker 1: you trace it back two thousand years, I guarantee you
Speaker 1: I had relatives that didn't have a skin color. So
Speaker 1: why are we suddenly hated again? Or have we just
Speaker 1: always been hated and it's just coming out? I said, yes,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get political here. You know. One of the
Speaker 1: things that Trump did was when I lived in New York.
Speaker 1: Remember um, when we lived in New York, so many
Speaker 1: of us, and we come home at night after a
Speaker 1: day at work, and we turn into lights and all
Speaker 1: the cockroaches ran back in the cabinets. So Trump, by
Speaker 1: not by by supporting the Jews, will not replace us
Speaker 1: group in Charlottesville gave permission for the cabin for the
Speaker 1: cockroaches to stay out and not have to run back
Speaker 1: in the cabinet. My point is the cockroaches were always there.
Speaker 1: This is a racist country. Come on, look at the
Speaker 1: history of this country. It's a racist country. So anyway
Speaker 1: to answer your question, Pittsburgh synagogues shootings, Kanye West, he don't.
Speaker 1: Don't people who have voices and celebrity have some level
Speaker 1: of responsibility, you know, for him to say death not
Speaker 1: death death, con don't Kanye is meaningless. It's what he
Speaker 1: has create, helped to create. Kanye didn't invent anti Semitism,
Speaker 1: but he furthered it along because of those folks that
Speaker 1: dropped all those pamphlets in Los Angeles and stood on
Speaker 1: the bridges and the people that stood on the bridges
Speaker 1: with of Jacksonville with the signs that said Kanye is right.
Speaker 1: And then Dave Chappelle what he did on Saturday. I'm
Speaker 1: a fan of Dave Chappelle. I believe, you know, I
Speaker 1: could believe in complete free speech, but don't normalize hatred.
Speaker 1: I'm very concerned, deeply, deeply, deeply concerned about the relationship
Speaker 1: between the Jewish community and the Black community. We grew
Speaker 1: up arm in arm. Literally, my best friends were Jewish
Speaker 1: and they were Black. There was this commonality between us.
Speaker 1: We felt we had been put through hell in our
Speaker 1: histories and we're survivors, and yet people are I don't
Speaker 1: like what I see in the last couple of years,
Speaker 1: the riff between these communities that should be there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, sure we know Jews were there when Martin
Speaker 1: Luther King crossed the bridge. I get it, and but
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, the relationship is so
Speaker 1: deeply important for both communities, brotherhood and sisterhood, and it's damaged.
Speaker 1: And I'm very concerned about that. To be honest with you,
Speaker 1: I would expect that from rednecks living somewhere in this
Speaker 1: country or other whatever the equivalent is in Europe, people
Speaker 1: who are ignorant and poorly informed. And I think that
Speaker 1: Jews run this or Jews run that. I haven't gotten
Speaker 1: a call, by the way, if there is a conspiracy conspiracy.
Speaker 1: Nobody called me about running a bank or running I mean,
Speaker 1: it's unbelievable. But I'm mostly and deeply concerned about the
Speaker 1: riff between the Jewish and the Black community. Additionally, and
Speaker 1: I saw this has come up lately, this is not
Speaker 1: original thought. But one of the things is that Dave
Speaker 1: Chappelle said that really deeply offended me, was using the
Speaker 1: term jew versus Jewish. This is an original thought to me.
Speaker 1: I think Michael Rappaport or somebody said this recently. But
Speaker 1: if you're Jewish, you can refer to me as a
Speaker 1: jew um. But if you're not, we are a part
Speaker 1: of a Jewish community. It is condescending. I'm saying this
Speaker 1: for anybody who will listen to me hear me. It's condescending,
Speaker 1: it's degrading. And I do not believe somebody says the
Speaker 1: Jews says that naively without meaning some level of anger
Speaker 1: anti Semitism attached to it. I think, you know, we
Speaker 1: deserve to take that phrase back. We really do, and
Speaker 1: I think we need to be loud now. The one
Speaker 1: thing that has changed in the last hundred years is
Speaker 1: that we have the ability to not just be out,
Speaker 1: but we have. We didn't have Israel, and again, remember
Speaker 1: where I started here. I'm a liberal Zionist, but my
Speaker 1: family in ninety one didn't have an army, and for that,
Speaker 1: I'm really proud of Israel. I do not like a
Speaker 1: lot of things the government does. I don't like a
Speaker 1: lot of things the American government does. Trust me, I'm
Speaker 1: a bleeding liberal. But what's going on? A friend of mine,
Speaker 1: who is the director of Creative Community for Peace, said
Speaker 1: it really well to me recently. Suddenly, in the last
Speaker 1: couple of years, Jews are getting squeeted out, squeezed out
Speaker 1: from the extreme right and the extreme left. When did
Speaker 1: Berkeley or U see I I just came from Irvine.
Speaker 1: Suddenly that's a hotbed of anti Semitism. So now we've
Speaker 1: got both sides, so we better do something about this.
Speaker 1: We gotter be loud. Guess what, everyone. We don't control Hollywood,
Speaker 1: guess whatever you and we don't control all the things
Speaker 1: that they say we control. We're smart. We're smart because
Speaker 1: our parents believed in education. That's why we're smart. That's
Speaker 1: why doctors are Jewish, doctors can be Indian, doctors can
Speaker 1: be Asian doctors cannot be in some of those. But
Speaker 1: our parents pushed on us what their parents weren't able
Speaker 1: to do. Education, Work your ass off, sleep as little
Speaker 1: as you can. That's why some of us might be successful.
Speaker 1: Not all of us are successful. You know, we're a
Speaker 1: part of the fabric of this world, and I can't
Speaker 1: imagine that we're gonna let anti Semitism rise to the
Speaker 1: heights again in this century as it did in the
Speaker 1: last and the one before that and the one before that.
Speaker 1: So Kanye West started a load of ship, you know,
Speaker 1: just malignant stupidity. I understand if he has mental illness,
Speaker 1: but that's not an excuse right now, because he has influence,
Speaker 1: significant influence, as do many other people right now. Marjorie
Speaker 1: Taylor Green, are you kidding me? This is one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why anti Semitary people really believe that we
Speaker 1: had lasers. I'm still waiting for a jet pack, God
Speaker 1: damn it to get me across town a laser. It's
Speaker 1: amazing how gullible, ignorant, and hateful so many people are.
Speaker 1: So I want to be very vocal about it. I
Speaker 1: don't want to be one of these complacent American Jewish people,
Speaker 1: just like the German complacent Jewish people of two where
Speaker 1: they were more proud to be German than they were
Speaker 1: to be Jewish. That didn't get them far. So I'm angry,
Speaker 1: angry in a good way, and I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: I had a experience in Nashville where I've never had
Speaker 1: poor experiences with anything, you know, anti Semitic wise, I
Speaker 1: got thrown out of an uber car in June or
Speaker 1: July because I was talking to our head of Swedish
Speaker 1: studios on non Jew by the way, I can say
Speaker 1: jee because I'm Jewish. And I guess the uber driver
Speaker 1: heard me talking to him about how I was going
Speaker 1: to visit my family in Israel. And the guy pulled
Speaker 1: over and says, get out of the car, you fucking jew,
Speaker 1: you dirty jew. What I mean? First, for me, I've
Speaker 1: read about this, it's actually happening. And I said, excuse me.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was shaking and I was shocked. I
Speaker 1: wanted to jump out of the car and go let's go, buddy.
Speaker 1: But he said to me, if you don't get in
Speaker 1: the car right now, I'm gonna get out and pummel
Speaker 1: your face into the ground. And I believed him, so
Speaker 1: I got out of the car. I walked up the
Speaker 1: I walked down to my house, which is a few down.
Speaker 1: I walked up this gigantic hill I live in live
Speaker 1: On and I said to my wife, Um, it's time.
Speaker 1: And I know that sounds dramatic, and I told her
Speaker 1: the story and I said it's time not to leave.
Speaker 1: Not that you know six year ago thing where so
Speaker 1: many of us said if Trump wins weren't moving to Canada. No,
Speaker 1: this time it was we need to get a passport
Speaker 1: somewhere else just in case. I'm not saying I'm going
Speaker 1: to move now. How am I going to get a
Speaker 1: British or a Canadian or another passport? But I can
Speaker 1: get an Israeli passport that law of return, So I
Speaker 1: can't believe I'm doing that. I'm doing that and I
Speaker 1: hope to never have to use it. Um my entire
Speaker 1: family and as real again, this secular liberal freethinking, why
Speaker 1: you were we why are we building settlements? How how
Speaker 1: do we create a two state solution? Huge amount of
Speaker 1: beautiful family that I have are all there because one
Speaker 1: person survived the Holocaust and he created this incredible family.
Speaker 1: And my cousins and my relatives married people who I
Speaker 1: consider to be my sisters and brothers, even though we're
Speaker 1: not quote blood relatives. And they come from one person
Speaker 1: who now at eighties something, when she was seven, saw
Speaker 1: her father shot in front of her in Paris, and
Speaker 1: they fled to the south of France and got hidden
Speaker 1: from house to house to house until they could get
Speaker 1: to what was going to become Israel. And I'm sitting
Speaker 1: here in front of people who are survivors because of
Speaker 1: horrible things, and I never thought we'd be here having
Speaker 1: to talk about this again. But that's naive. Um So.
Speaker 1: I I just have no tolerance for anti Semitism, by
Speaker 1: the way, just like I have no tolerance for racism, misogyny,
Speaker 1: anybody who speaks out against the LGBTQ community. We were
Speaker 1: raised as Jewish people to stand up for everyone who
Speaker 1: is being oppressed or hurt or or or anything, anybody
Speaker 1: who's being bullied upon. That's how we were raised. And
Speaker 1: I would just hope in this century that these other
Speaker 1: communities this time will stand up for us too. Okay, Now, Seinfeld,
Speaker 1: legendarily George was Jewish and they changed his religion because
Speaker 1: they didn't want the show to be Jewish. To what
Speaker 1: degree with the people in the music industry who are
Speaker 1: Jewish afraid to stand up and own it, and what
Speaker 1: could be done in terms of the communities we touch? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I I loved that George thing you just said.
Speaker 1: It's very similar, like I said, to what happened a hundred.
Speaker 1: You know, eighty, I should say eighty years ago in Germany.
Speaker 1: You know, if we just assimilate, if we just bury ourselves,
Speaker 1: pretend we're not Jewish. Don't go to don't go to synagogue,
Speaker 1: or only go once a year, but don't tell anybody
Speaker 1: go to work after you go to synagogue. Russia's Shanna,
Speaker 1: you know. Don't wear it on your sleeve, don't wear
Speaker 1: a higher on your neck, don't put a massos on
Speaker 1: your door, because the ups guy will know you're Jewish.
Speaker 1: Let's try to just fall in line. Guess what, you're Jewish.
Speaker 1: They know you're Jewish. They hate you anyway. My grandmother
Speaker 1: used to say that to me, they hate us because
Speaker 1: we're Jewish. She got fired for her job at eight
Speaker 1: T and T in whatever, the thirties of the forties
Speaker 1: because she took off for Young Kippoor and they said, wait,
Speaker 1: you're Jewish. Don't come back. And so, yeah, we can assimilate,
Speaker 1: we can hide, we can become a part of all
Speaker 1: the white nss in America we want. But they know
Speaker 1: you're Jewish, So why not be proud of it? You know,
Speaker 1: I again, I say this again, that doesn't mean religious.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying go to synagogue on Friday night. I'm
Speaker 1: not an organized religion guy in any religion, by the way,
Speaker 1: But your culture is which culture is. Okay, you are
Speaker 1: who you are. So music business, hey, there's Jewish people
Speaker 1: in it, there's non Jewish people in it. I've worked
Speaker 1: for a lot of Jewish people in the music business.
Speaker 1: I've worked for a lot of non Jewish people in
Speaker 1: the music business. They didn't bring their Jewishness to the music.
Speaker 1: They did bring their jewishness to the label. Okay, we
Speaker 1: all maybe the office was a little emptier on Russia
Speaker 1: Shaanna in New York. But guess what, that's not what
Speaker 1: Dave Chappelle made that just heinous, asinine comment about I've
Speaker 1: been to Hollywood and I'm gonna unfortunately paraphrase it. But
Speaker 1: there's a lot of Jews in the business. Well, guess what.
Speaker 1: New York has the biggest Jewish population in the world.
Speaker 1: Jerusalem is the second Jewish biggest population in the world.
Speaker 1: Los Angeles is the third biggest Jewish population in the world,
Speaker 1: and Tel Aviv has the fourth. That's a population thing.
Speaker 1: This isn't a control thing. So you know, I just
Speaker 1: think Jewish people don't need to necessarily suddenly go all religious.
Speaker 1: But you can't hide from who you are. Be proud
Speaker 1: of it. I am. I'm proud for where I come from.
Speaker 1: I'm proud from the cultural things that I've learned because
Speaker 1: of it. You know, I'm I'm dead against some of
Speaker 1: the politics that come out of Israel, particularly in this
Speaker 1: up and coming regime BB part whatever, but I'm certainly
Speaker 1: proud of the contributions that country has made. I'm really
Speaker 1: proud of it. I have I have pride in that,
Speaker 1: just like somebody who's from Ireland has pride and things
Speaker 1: that come from there. People that are British have pride.
Speaker 1: I have pride. I'm not gonna apologize for that, and
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna hide. And if you hate me because
Speaker 1: I'm Jewish, ego, funk yourself and be you just don't
Speaker 1: know me. Been scapegoats forever and we're gonna be scapegoats
Speaker 1: in a hundred years and three hundred years and five
Speaker 1: hundre years. But for God's sake, can we at least
Speaker 1: all suddenly have a voice. And I feel we need
Speaker 1: to hide. I don't know if that answers your question,
Speaker 1: but that's how I feel. Well, I you know, I
Speaker 1: hope that a lot of people hear that, because normally
Speaker 1: use your message good. So is the delivery certainly much
Speaker 1: better than good? Now I knew you know, you flew
Speaker 1: from so Cal over a couple of time zones to Nashville.
Speaker 1: So I think we've come to the end of the
Speaker 1: feeling we've known, even though we could talk for much
Speaker 1: more time. But you've really been fantastic, Steve. I want
Speaker 1: to thank you for taking the time unbelievable and thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. I'm so glad to reconnect with you.
Speaker 1: I had such amazing memories of you and I sitting
Speaker 1: across the dinner table together, and I remember wanting to
Speaker 1: talk non stop with you, and I'm just so grateful.
Speaker 1: I'm great. You know. That begs a couple more questions
Speaker 1: that I want to ask you about you, But as
Speaker 1: I say, that's it for today, Okay, fine, thank you
Speaker 1: until next time. This is Bob left set