Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to another episode of Questlove Supreme.
Speaker 2: I'm not Questlove or Supreme, but it is an honor
Speaker 2: to be here Today's especial. Today we are doing one
Speaker 2: on ones. I suppose no Team Supreme, just me Unpaid
Speaker 2: Bill and we can get into why I called Unpaid
Speaker 2: Bill if you like, because it's just me so I
Speaker 2: have a lot of time to talk about myself in
Speaker 2: other news. Today's guest is I will say, one of
Speaker 2: the most interesting, enigmatic, incredible people I have ever met
Speaker 2: in my life, and we have only known each other
Speaker 2: for like what like a year and a half. Maybe
Speaker 2: let's just go with it. Okay, I had this whole
Speaker 2: big intro plan, but I think we should just get
Speaker 2: into it. Today's guest is songwriter, producer, composer, top liner, father, husband,
Speaker 2: and all around incredible human being. Sam Hollander. Yes, Ca, okay,
Speaker 2: here we call your name is Sam. My name is Sam,
Speaker 2: So Sam. I suppose you've listened to a few Quest
Speaker 2: Love Supremes over time, couple. Okay, you know when they
Speaker 2: asked me to do a one on one, the first
Speaker 2: person I thought it was you because people don't necessarily
Speaker 2: I mean, you did write a book about yourself, which
Speaker 2: was a nice touch.
Speaker 3: I thoughts up for.
Speaker 2: Just you know, so people would know who you are,
Speaker 2: but you are responsible for so many things that I
Speaker 2: don't think the majority of listeners may or may not know.
Speaker 2: And so I thought we'd get into them all. And
Speaker 2: I think my favorite way to start all quest Love Supremes,
Speaker 2: which is the most way, is where were you born?
Speaker 3: Well, let me just start off by saying, it is
Speaker 3: an honor to be Questlove Supreme. I know you were
Speaker 3: looking for mid season summer replacements, and I feel like
Speaker 3: I'm sort of like Stephen Botchko's nineteen ninety cop Rock
Speaker 3: right or you know it was. It was highly heralded
Speaker 3: and then forgettable. And that's sort of the story of
Speaker 3: my life. So I was born in New York City, Bill.
Speaker 3: I was born in New York City, and uh through
Speaker 3: some of the darker times in the city. It was
Speaker 3: a very violent, violent place, and my parents ushered me
Speaker 3: out of here to Westchester County, and eventually, through lots
Speaker 3: of stops and starts, I ended up in Bedford Hills,
Speaker 3: New York, site of the Bedford Hills Correctional Women's Correctional Prison.
Speaker 3: You might remember Gene Harris who murdered the Scarsdale diet doctor.
Speaker 3: She would have been one of the many I would
Speaker 3: I would remember that. Do they call him tenants?
Speaker 2: Inmates?
Speaker 3: Inmates? I like tenants better. Bedford Hills attended fox Lane
Speaker 3: High School. You might know it from Dukes of Hazzard's
Speaker 3: John Schneider bo Duke was in fact a fox Laner,
Speaker 3: as well as Susan Day from the Partridge family, KIMMYA. Dawson,
Speaker 3: Moldy Peaches, MRSA Winaker. The list goes on and on.
Speaker 2: Are you here to speak on behalf of Fox Lene schools?
Speaker 3: It's like a recruiting tread. I'm here for That's what
Speaker 3: I'm doing.
Speaker 2: Sam. Yes, what is your first musical memory as a child?
Speaker 2: Because you have. For those who don't know, Sam wrote
Speaker 2: a book, and I highly recommend reading the book for
Speaker 2: two reasons.
Speaker 3: It's a salacious tell all.
Speaker 2: It is a salacious tell all from a very silacious life.
Speaker 2: Lad No. The best part about your book, in my
Speaker 2: personal humble opinion, is not only that it's you have
Speaker 2: an incredible story and it's almost impossible to believe any
Speaker 2: of it to be honest. I mean, but there's parts
Speaker 2: in it, and this is important. There are parts in
Speaker 2: it that any producer, anyone interested in music, any engineer
Speaker 2: or mixer, or anybody who even wants to be anywhere
Speaker 2: near music and needs a piece of advice, an unsolicited
Speaker 2: piece of advice, and not like in a dickhead way,
Speaker 2: like in a I've lived this life and I'm going
Speaker 2: to tell you about it and how to get there.
Speaker 2: There are what you call what is it called in
Speaker 2: the book footnotes, Yeah, the footnotes, and there's other things
Speaker 2: you put in.
Speaker 3: The bonus cuts. Bonus cut.
Speaker 2: All the bonus cuts are these parts of these random
Speaker 2: paragraphs in the book where it's just pieces of advice.
Speaker 2: Like some of them are go to events that as
Speaker 2: kap or B and my sponsor and meet people. And
Speaker 2: I think there's a lot of the book is about
Speaker 2: networking and talking to people and what I like to
Speaker 2: call the other side of our job, which is like
Speaker 2: the bullshit. Well, you can be the greatest writer, the
Speaker 2: greatest musician of all time. If you're a dick and
Speaker 2: no one wants to hang out with you, then no
Speaker 2: one's going to hire you to do anything.
Speaker 3: I learned something pretty early on, right, So I mean,
Speaker 3: I'll get back to earliest musical memory. But I did
Speaker 3: learn something early on when I started to have any
Speaker 3: morsel of success. Jonathan Daniel, who owns Crush Management, is
Speaker 3: one of my best friends and really my mentor in
Speaker 3: many ways. One day, I was melting down about something
Speaker 3: and I can get kind of fiery, and he took
Speaker 3: me for a walk and he put it in such
Speaker 3: succinct terms. He said, you know, everybody likes happy Sam,
Speaker 3: nobody likes angry Sam. And I walked away from that
Speaker 3: and it was like a Yoda moment, you know, and
Speaker 3: it dawned on me. Likability is something and I never
Speaker 3: really took stock in it. You know, I'm genuinely curious
Speaker 3: about people. I like people. I'm pretty social and I
Speaker 3: root for people and I think I always have to
Speaker 3: some extent. And you know, in the music business, that's
Speaker 3: something they don't tell you. It's important, is be curious
Speaker 3: about other people and cheer for their victories even when
Speaker 3: you're losing, because there will be a moment where the
Speaker 3: tables turn and you will have your moment and when
Speaker 3: you finally sort of actualize whatever it is that you're chasing.
Speaker 3: It's just such an incredible feeling to know that people
Speaker 3: are actually rooting for you and not shooting darts at you.
Speaker 3: So that was my little sidebar. But let's get back
Speaker 3: to let me get back to the genesis of it.
Speaker 3: The first song I ever heard was Magic by Pilot,
Speaker 3: which I believe is the ozembic song now, but before
Speaker 3: before it was pressuring, you know, an era of weight loss.
Speaker 3: It was the first first song I ever heard. I
Speaker 3: think my brother had the forty five, and you know,
Speaker 3: I was completely hooked, and I took guitar lessons. I
Speaker 3: started guitar lessons at seven with a woman who was
Speaker 3: in the fast folk movement in Grawich Village and she
Speaker 3: was really rad. I took a guitar for a few
Speaker 3: years and I quit, and I do it again, and
Speaker 3: I quit, and even today I have like five chords
Speaker 3: at my disposal. I think it doesn't really work with
Speaker 3: my ADHD. My hyper focus doesn't exist outside of lyrically,
Speaker 3: so it's very hard for me. But I do fumble
Speaker 3: with it and I use it in the writing process,
Speaker 3: as we'll discuss. But you know, the Magic song was
Speaker 3: interesting because that was this weird gateway drug to k
Speaker 3: Tel Records, and I got really into k Tel records, which,
Speaker 3: for those of you who are too young to appreciate,
Speaker 3: sort of worthy equivalent of the now, that's what they
Speaker 3: call music series or any sort of compilation of current hits.
Speaker 3: But in the seventies, when I was this little kid,
Speaker 3: very tiny, they these k Tel records. They would mix
Speaker 3: genres sometimes, so you'd have pop hits that would and
Speaker 3: it would be solo songs, disco songs, rock songs on
Speaker 3: the same record. And that's how I first heard music,
Speaker 3: and that's still how I hear music. So I've never
Speaker 3: really been genre specific. I always hear it as like
Speaker 3: this weird amorphous just grouping of genres and sounds, you know,
Speaker 3: And so that was it for me. I also became
Speaker 3: a huge fan of the notion of a three minute song, right,
Speaker 3: and that's my attention span, which is why I don't
Speaker 3: make jam band records, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 3: I have we'll get to that, well, we'll get there,
Speaker 3: but yeah, I have three minutes of my disposal and
Speaker 3: that's where my attention wear was off. So you know,
Speaker 3: I was just exposed to so many different quote unquote
Speaker 3: genre as at a young age, and I loved all of it.
Speaker 3: And I always envisioned songs dressed up in any any fashion.
Speaker 3: I never really so when I heard a disco record,
Speaker 3: it wasn't the notion of the four on the floor
Speaker 3: and the sort of the pounding beat. It was just
Speaker 3: the song and the structure and stuff like that that
Speaker 3: I fell in love with. And I've taken that into
Speaker 3: everything i've done since. It doesn't matter what the assignment
Speaker 3: is or who I'm working with. I just strip all
Speaker 3: the noise and anything extraneous about it, and I just
Speaker 3: take it primarly to what is the basic song in
Speaker 3: the smallest shape, and let me figure out how to
Speaker 3: dress it up. And that comes from just being exposed
Speaker 3: to tons and tons of genres very young.
Speaker 2: So your family is an interesting story, and we don't
Speaker 2: have to go too deep into it, but I'm very interested.
Speaker 3: They like me.
Speaker 2: No, well, you're already ahead of the game. I'm interested
Speaker 2: in musical families. A lot of the families, or a
Speaker 2: lot of the people we talked to you in this
Speaker 2: line of work grew up in churches which we clearly
Speaker 2: did not, and or like come from families where music
Speaker 2: is a big thing. I know you quote your brother
Speaker 2: as like, you know, turning you on too music. I
Speaker 2: was just telling before about how my sister doesn't even
Speaker 2: listen to music. I know your parents were hippies and
Speaker 2: Da da da da, my preio.
Speaker 3: Like almost before hippies, they were rad man, they were
Speaker 3: a generation before that, but they were incredible artists.
Speaker 2: But good yeah, sorry, And like my parents were doctors
Speaker 2: and my dad like smooth jazz. Mom likes Mandy Patinkin,
Speaker 2: which is also fitting, but moving on, it's.
Speaker 3: Also kind of awesome.
Speaker 2: It's also that part of it is great. I'm not
Speaker 2: gonna lie and yoyo ma, those are her two fixtures.
Speaker 2: But talk to me about how your family and how
Speaker 2: your brother's record collection I believe affected your overall.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I owe a lot of it to
Speaker 3: my brother. You know my brother, you know, when we
Speaker 3: grew up, he was listening to a lot of seventies stuff,
Speaker 3: and he was listening to a lot of Southern rock
Speaker 3: and all this shit kicker kind of GARYA the Z
Speaker 3: twenty eight, And he used to cruise around listening to
Speaker 3: Mally Hatchet and stuff like that. And I was listening
Speaker 3: to tons of disco. So I was on the other
Speaker 3: end of the coin. You know, I wasn't a kiss
Speaker 3: kid as much as I was a Beg's kid, So
Speaker 3: you know, I was bullied a lot. But what was
Speaker 3: funny about my brother, though my brother went off to college,
Speaker 3: he went to Boston University. In his first semester, he
Speaker 3: became friends, I believe, with the radio DJ who lived
Speaker 3: on his floor at the you know, at the university station.
Speaker 3: My brother came back with crates of vinyl crates, and
Speaker 3: it was all this early new wave, like the two
Speaker 3: tone Sky stuff, chronic Town, I believe, murmur, so It's
Speaker 3: gonna be eighty three, murmur, all the Ram stuff, obviously,
Speaker 3: the Smith stuff. Like he came back with just this
Speaker 3: incredible knowledge of this music that didn't exist in the
Speaker 3: suburbs where I was, you know, certainly not in sixth
Speaker 3: grade or seventh grade. And when he came in and
Speaker 3: I was exposed to it, my head fucking exploded. It
Speaker 3: was just this whole other It was like a revolution
Speaker 3: of sound because I, you know, I at that point,
Speaker 3: I was listening to the Beatles, and I was listening
Speaker 3: to Who and a lot of disco, and then suddenly
Speaker 3: I'm exposed to this entire weird cultural clash of stuff.
Speaker 3: At the same time, hip hop was beginning to happen,
Speaker 3: and you know, I had friends who were really in
Speaker 3: a rapper's delight, and you know, we got into all
Speaker 3: the Sugar Hills stuff early on. So we would buy
Speaker 3: all those twelves who'd go to stores and just get
Speaker 3: all the twelve inches anything that came out on you know,
Speaker 3: Sugar On Prelude or Tommy Boy or you know, Sleeping
Speaker 3: Bag and Fresh, and we would bring back all these records.
Speaker 3: So between the new wave and the hip hop stuff,
Speaker 3: you know, I began to really have a taste level
Speaker 3: for the first time in life where I was really like,
Speaker 3: I felt like I was early on stuff as opposed
Speaker 3: to just listening to classic rock and stuff. So I
Speaker 3: owed my brother immenseally for that. My mom was bad ass,
Speaker 3: because my mom was like this jazz head, you know.
Speaker 3: So my mom was mingus and all this cool stuff
Speaker 3: and chick Corea and stuff like that. And then my
Speaker 3: dad was really into Brazilian stuff. There was a lot
Speaker 3: of stan Getz and with Jilberto. Jill asked Gilberto all
Speaker 3: that stuff, and I was exposed to tons of stuff.
Speaker 3: There's lots of sounds in our house. And me I
Speaker 3: had the mom who was listening to talking heads and
Speaker 3: was listening to what was the record that she really
Speaker 3: she dug, It's gonna Hit Me Again, and it wasn't
Speaker 3: the water Boys, but it was one of these Scottish things,
Speaker 3: and she was just really cool. And so it's funny
Speaker 3: because I think I was the least cool of anybody
Speaker 3: in my house, but everybody who's listening to really cool stuff,
Speaker 3: and I just, you know, I was, like I said,
Speaker 3: I just absorbed anything around me, and I just was
Speaker 3: trying to at all costs just sort of learn learn
Speaker 3: from all of it and combine it. And that was
Speaker 3: the most That's what I look back on growing up.
Speaker 3: I remember, you know, I had two turntables, like two
Speaker 3: techniques at a Gemini mixer, and that was pretty terrible.
Speaker 3: But I loved mixing genres, you know. So I took
Speaker 3: the instrumental from Brass Monkey, you know, the Beastie Boys,
Speaker 3: and then I put the Bob o' riley arpeggiated scent
Speaker 3: behind her something like that. Like I'd mess around with
Speaker 3: different genres, different sounds, and then I learned about Rick
Speaker 3: Rubin from a Village Voice article. A Village Voice wrote
Speaker 3: this piece, He's the king of rock. There is no
Speaker 3: higher sucker. MC should call him sire or something like that.
Speaker 3: It was a Village Voice and it was my senior
Speaker 3: year in high school. And I'm like this colossal. I'm
Speaker 3: graduating the bottom of my grade. I'm djaying at parties,
Speaker 3: I'm singing in a band doing like hohoskerdo and and
Speaker 3: you know which is crazy? You know, do hooskier do covers?
Speaker 3: Just screaming into the mic. And I'm lost. I have
Speaker 3: no idea who I am, but I know I'm a
Speaker 3: music kid, and I'm really trying to figure out. I'm
Speaker 3: writing all this like weird beat poetry stuff. And I
Speaker 3: read the Rick Rubin article and it was about a
Speaker 3: suburban kid from Long Island who had gone into the
Speaker 3: Weinstein dorms at NYU and started a label and he
Speaker 3: basically took what he knew from rock and he'd brought
Speaker 3: it into the dorm and hooked up with hip hopcats.
Speaker 3: And I was doing the Tela rock stuff and I
Speaker 3: was so blown away by it. My head exploded because
Speaker 3: I thought, Wow, this is me. I'm one of these
Speaker 3: multi genre quote unquote guys. I listened to everything, and
Speaker 3: I sort of have an idea of why the hip
Speaker 3: hop stuff, like why it's resonating at least with my
Speaker 3: friends and stuff. And at the same time, I'm a
Speaker 3: rock kid, So that's why that sort of was like
Speaker 3: that that lightning bolt, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 3: that was the moment where I thought, wow, like there's
Speaker 3: a there's a precedent, and I didn't think I could.
Speaker 3: I don't really never want to be a producer to
Speaker 3: the other Rick Ruben variety. I really wanted to be
Speaker 3: more of a top liner. I wan to write lyric
Speaker 3: and melody, but just expose the notion that you could
Speaker 3: get into this from out of nowhere. I didn't understand it.
Speaker 3: There was no manual, so I wrote a book. There
Speaker 3: was no manual like coming up now you can watch
Speaker 3: you two tutorials on anything. But we grew up like
Speaker 3: trying to become like a professional songwriter. There's nothing about that.
Speaker 3: You just had to sort of learn, you know, I
Speaker 3: mean Streets of Hills kitchen.
Speaker 2: But like, talk to me about your career and also
Speaker 2: generally the way you talk about music is like in
Speaker 2: this totally genrealist thing. I feel like as a person
Speaker 2: who writes music too, I get pigeonholed into certain things
Speaker 2: all the time. It's like, well, you're the sesame street guid, which,
Speaker 2: by the way, I'm not saying is a bad thing, but.
Speaker 3: It's a very sexy call.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's how I got you.
Speaker 3: I know, here we are.
Speaker 2: It worked, It did fu yeah anyway, but I I
Speaker 2: you know, or like, you work on a theater thing.
Speaker 2: In my line of work, it's like you're the music
Speaker 2: theater guy, and I feel like you don't live.
Speaker 3: There or you have is it that it's intentional?
Speaker 2: Right, but like, how have you done that? Well?
Speaker 3: Because I had the luxury when I came up, you know,
Speaker 3: after attending three colleges and two semesters and crushed education.
Speaker 3: Obviously you can tell you tell so well. I'm a
Speaker 3: soub verbally dextra. Just tell tell all the skills that
Speaker 3: I have. You know, when I when I moved to
Speaker 3: the city, I was living in the in the East village,
Speaker 3: and I started hanging out a bar called Nightingales, which
Speaker 3: is on twelfth and Second, and it was a place
Speaker 3: you didn't need an ID And I started hanging out there.
Speaker 3: I was eighteen with my friend Jake Miller, who was
Speaker 3: this incredible singer songwriter, had a band called Xenix twenty five.
Speaker 3: He passed away a long time ago. He's a beautiful soul.
Speaker 3: And Jake and I started hanging out this bar and
Speaker 3: there was the scene of like, you know, sort of
Speaker 3: jam bandy, kind of crunchy, and I describe it, but
Speaker 3: like sort of greasy, sort of cool bands of the
Speaker 3: era that were beginning to pop out of there. There
Speaker 3: was Blues Traveler, there was Spin Doctors, There's Maloz. And
Speaker 3: I started hanging around this scene and although musically some
Speaker 3: of it wasn't my thing, I began to notice how
Speaker 3: instantly the industry swooped in signed all the bands, and
Speaker 3: then these bands were immediately pigeonholed into that thing. Right,
Speaker 3: and Blues Traveler have gone on and had incredible careers
Speaker 3: and they're dear friends and they've transcended it. But I
Speaker 3: think a lot of these bands got bunched into a scene.
Speaker 3: And I was twenty one, and I could tell that
Speaker 3: they were already labeled. You know, I didn't listen to
Speaker 3: hairband stuff in high school. You know, that was sort
Speaker 3: of a. That was my big rebellion. I didn't listen
Speaker 3: to hairbands, right, But what I realized about hairbands is,
Speaker 3: you know, the hair band thing was a scene and
Speaker 3: it was probably the most magical time ever for a
Speaker 3: lot of people. And then you know, grunge comes and
Speaker 3: it's eradicated, and I think a lot of people who
Speaker 3: were connected to it had a hard time getting footing.
Speaker 3: And that was always my biggest fear, is I love
Speaker 3: this so much. I just never wanted to get to
Speaker 3: a point where I was. I was completely intertwined with
Speaker 3: a moment in time, and it was over hard to avoid.
Speaker 3: But I've consciously always taken steps in the process to
Speaker 3: go after things that are out of character, outside of
Speaker 3: the box in terms of what people think I can do.
Speaker 3: So I'm hard to label. You know, when Panic of
Speaker 3: the Disco happened and High Hopes was this this massive
Speaker 3: world wide number one. The next record I took was
Speaker 3: the OJ's Farewell record.
Speaker 2: And really interesting to a lot of people.
Speaker 3: Don't do that, and you know, but on purpose, I
Speaker 3: think it was very intentional.
Speaker 2: Because you because you didn't want to. My guess is,
Speaker 2: if we're going to go okay too, the High Hopes
Speaker 2: business is the minute you wrote High Hopes, ten different
Speaker 2: similar ish pop rock outfits called you or like, we
Speaker 2: want the next High Hopes and you said no, or
Speaker 2: you said I'm doing the OJ's record, which is a
Speaker 2: hilarious sense.
Speaker 3: Of well, I can be bought, Bill, Let's not lie.
Speaker 3: So I probably attempted versions of it. But what I
Speaker 3: would say is when you have a moment and you're
Speaker 3: like in the songwriting zeitgeist for a second in time,
Speaker 3: and I've had waves where I've sort of been deeply
Speaker 3: in the mix, in times where I'm an afterthought, the
Speaker 3: one thing I would say is it's just it's strategy.
Speaker 3: And I think a lot of writers are probably less
Speaker 3: strategic to some extent because maybe they're less calculated humans
Speaker 3: than I am. The probably better people. But what I'm
Speaker 3: going for is I just I'm trying. I look at
Speaker 3: music as this entire sort of weird canvas that's in
Speaker 3: front of me, and I'm trying to paint corners of it,
Speaker 3: and always I want to be able to look at
Speaker 3: it and think I sort of I hit everything I
Speaker 3: thought I was capable of. And you know what, I'm
Speaker 3: not gambling, huff, but man, I lived for those records
Speaker 3: as a kid, and I studied them and I wanted
Speaker 3: one shot to do what I would do with the OJS,
Speaker 3: and I thought that was that would be to me,
Speaker 3: that's cooler than working with any band that wanted, like,
Speaker 3: you know, a assimily of what I've already done.
Speaker 2: Do you look at this like work? Does this feel like?
Speaker 2: Do you? Because people ask me this a lot, like
Speaker 2: they think that I you know, we write songs for
Speaker 2: people and kids and enjoyment, and it's creative and all
Speaker 2: creative pursuits. I think to some people are sort of
Speaker 2: just shrouded in like happy and enjoy it's all great
Speaker 2: and whatever, but like it's a fuck ton of work.
Speaker 2: Do you how do you look like? I know, we've thought,
Speaker 2: we talked about this. It's puzzles to your routine, They're puzzles.
Speaker 3: Everything is a puzzle and I'm trying to crack the
Speaker 3: code on a puzzle. And I have, like I do,
Speaker 3: treat it like sport, like a professional athlete in terms
Speaker 3: of their seasons. There's training and I'm I'm extremely thorough
Speaker 3: and religiously like sort of dialed in when I'm in season,
Speaker 3: and it is work. It's my passion and it's the
Speaker 3: only thing I probably am. I can function as a
Speaker 3: capable human doing. But it is work, and it is
Speaker 3: an absolute mind fuck a lot of the time. And
Speaker 3: you know, the business stuff I hate. I'm not business. Ye,
Speaker 3: I don't have that wiring that would have if I
Speaker 3: had continue to matriculated some university probably would have helped
Speaker 3: that cause. So I thankfully I'm surrounded by people are
Speaker 3: who are competent humans in a way that I'm not.
Speaker 3: But just the puzzle of song is something that eats
Speaker 3: at me twenty four hours a day and where I
Speaker 3: write something and then I relive it in my dreams
Speaker 3: and I constantly am reworking and trying to figure out
Speaker 3: where the flaw is and it can you know, it
Speaker 3: just beats me up, you know. And it's one of
Speaker 3: these things where it's such a strange thing to articulate
Speaker 3: because you know, people think, oh, how hard is that? Well,
Speaker 3: you know what, it's a voice in your head all
Speaker 3: day long where you feel like you're losing your shit,
Speaker 3: where it's just like I'm walking around just singing something
Speaker 3: over and over and over and nause even why is
Speaker 3: this not working? And then eventually when it happens, then
Speaker 3: it's no longer work, and it's just it's the greatest
Speaker 3: feeling in the world.
Speaker 2: Do you feel like this is what your ADHD and
Speaker 2: your anxiety are actual benefits.
Speaker 3: I mean the think about the ADHD is, you know
Speaker 3: they always say, you know, it's it's you know, it's
Speaker 3: your superpowers, your superpower. Yeah, well it wasn't in school,
Speaker 3: so it definitely wasn't a superpower. My parents went to
Speaker 3: ivy universities. I graduated the bottom of my high school
Speaker 3: and did eighteen hours at the University of Pacific in Stockton, California.
Speaker 3: No disrespect, go Tigers or whatever the mascot is.
Speaker 2: Eighteen hours.
Speaker 3: Eighteen hours. That's true. So you know what's interesting about
Speaker 3: in life? What I found about ADHD it's interesting is
Speaker 3: I do have this strange ability to handle many micro
Speaker 3: assignments at once in song and things like that, where
Speaker 3: I can have like four or five records going at
Speaker 3: once and I'm really laser focused on all of them,
Speaker 3: which is wild and I and then if I just
Speaker 3: have to focus on one, I lose my shit. It's harder.
Speaker 3: It's like I'm better with more plates, like sort of
Speaker 3: flying in my hands. So that's a toy even answer
Speaker 3: the question.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we talked about college. You went to four
Speaker 2: different colleges, and you did really well at all of them,
Speaker 2: as we can tell. I believe Temple was in there
Speaker 2: somewhere or something like that. Well, go al, good Philadelphia situation. Anyway,
Speaker 2: So you leave college, you don't, will you? I passed
Speaker 2: college on your way to great news.
Speaker 3: I was. I was on a semester at sea.
Speaker 2: Sure, oh, like one of those that's good, all right,
Speaker 2: like a pirate. So you left college and you moved
Speaker 2: to New York.
Speaker 3: I'm in New York City. The last school I attended
Speaker 3: was NYU.
Speaker 2: And following Rick Rubin, following.
Speaker 3: Rick Rubin at n YU, and it wasn't what I expected.
Speaker 3: And I delve in that in my best selling book,
Speaker 3: I Want To Under Matt Holt ben Bella books available
Speaker 3: at a local Barnes and Noble or any chain you have,
Speaker 3: or on Amazon.
Speaker 2: And I will say, I don't read books. It's the
Speaker 2: first book I've read in ten years, and it was fantastic.
Speaker 2: I read it in eight hours and I loved her
Speaker 2: a minute of it.
Speaker 3: People say that to me a lot. Bill People say
Speaker 3: it was a very fast read. Now I don't know
Speaker 3: how to.
Speaker 2: Take that mean if they loved it.
Speaker 3: I feel like, you know, I have a friend who's
Speaker 3: a speed reader. She's actually really a speed reader, and
Speaker 3: she's like, it's amazing. I thought, well, you spent six
Speaker 3: minutes on it, what was your takeaway?
Speaker 2: But is that a profession speed reading?
Speaker 3: She's a speed reader like for life. No, but she's
Speaker 3: like part of clubs like speed reading clubs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of weird friends.
Speaker 3: Well I'm available, it's true.
Speaker 2: But like you also, I was just going to get
Speaker 2: to you later, but like, you know, fucking everyone. And
Speaker 2: that's one of my favorite things about you is that
Speaker 2: everybody who I drop your name to, they're like, oh yeah, Sam,
Speaker 2: he's the best. Like there's no everybody speaks not only
Speaker 2: speaks very highly of you, but everybody knows who you are.
Speaker 3: Well, such a quest love Casino showed it.
Speaker 2: Well, Ques, but he also doesn't know who you are,
Speaker 2: and you've worked with him, but he probably I wouldn't
Speaker 2: remember that.
Speaker 3: But that's and I'll hold it against them. I like people, man,
Speaker 3: I like people. I also I like people. I'm probably
Speaker 3: a pretty lonely guy, so I like being around people.
Speaker 3: And I like to learn from people, and i'm I
Speaker 3: like characters. I'm really into characters, and it doesn't matter
Speaker 3: who that you know. There's no hierarchy in my brain.
Speaker 3: I just sort of like people, and I'm I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm much happier person when I'm out socializing than when
Speaker 3: i'm by myself. By myself, I'm kind of dark. And
Speaker 3: when I'm alone around like big groups of stuff, I
Speaker 3: like holding court because I just love watching all the
Speaker 3: interaction between people, and I like connecting people. Something I
Speaker 3: learned from Jonathan Daniel again from Crush and who early
Speaker 3: on was the first people who explained to me the
Speaker 3: notion of being a connector in life, where you really
Speaker 3: connect people and don't ask for anything, want anything, or
Speaker 3: assume anything. Just connect people who I think might like
Speaker 3: each other because it puts like a really good energy
Speaker 3: out there and it will manifest in different ways and
Speaker 3: always has.
Speaker 2: This is also something I'm very good at, which I
Speaker 2: think is why we're friends one.
Speaker 3: By the way, look we have very similar wiring. We're
Speaker 3: both very very attractive people in podcasts, so.
Speaker 2: All the cameras are working very well good at this.
Speaker 3: Moment, my light incredible right now, it's that shirt.
Speaker 2: I can't that that shirt and the shirt the whole
Speaker 2: color scheme is like so.
Speaker 3: Well, while I'm doing it, this is a floral Paul
Speaker 3: Smith number.
Speaker 2: Why you gotta drop brand games now?
Speaker 3: Underneath would be the homage Doc Ellis t shirt when
Speaker 3: he did the LSD, when he did throw a no
Speaker 3: hitter on LSD. Okay, it went with the matching nikes.
Speaker 3: And there is a blue sock thing happening that was
Speaker 3: not intention.
Speaker 2: And you always wear a hat as if we're you
Speaker 2: are a.
Speaker 3: Stunted man child. Here's the thing. You know, I wear
Speaker 3: lids and hoodies everywhere, which makes me very recognizable, and
Speaker 3: there's five people who care. But the reason I do
Speaker 3: is I don't really the shape of my head. And
Speaker 3: also I've been doing it since I was a little boy.
Speaker 3: It's funny. I related to Adam Sandler in so many ways.
Speaker 3: Obviously very attractive Jewish men but with very Doe features.
Speaker 3: But what I would say about Sandler is I still
Speaker 3: I never grew up, and I you know, I look
Speaker 3: at pictures of me in high school and I got
Speaker 3: my dad's and there was there was, there was the
Speaker 3: baseball half phase, and then there was like the I
Speaker 3: went full ducky, yep, pretty and pink, so I was
Speaker 3: like doing the pork pie. And then I went to
Speaker 3: a fedora for a while.
Speaker 2: There's a snow hat like there.
Speaker 3: Was always like the snow hats. I always like the
Speaker 3: snow hats. And what I realized is, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I just I feel like I never want to lose
Speaker 3: the youthful spirit. It's in my writing and it's how
Speaker 3: I wake up every day. I still feel like a
Speaker 3: little kid anything that is a constant reminder. When I
Speaker 3: look in the mirror and I still feel like I'm sixteen,
Speaker 3: I feel very free, and that's sort of who I am.
Speaker 3: That's sort of the composite of my thing.
Speaker 2: Here's a sidebar. How does that affect you as a parent?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean I wouldn't want to be my kid.
Speaker 2: I mean what does that mean?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean when you go to parent teacher night
Speaker 3: and you know, there's there's seventeen, you know, hedge fun
Speaker 3: bro guys and suits in the back of the room,
Speaker 3: and there's one very florally draped, sloppy guy with ill
Speaker 3: fitting clothing.
Speaker 2: Bank account reads tis motherfucker.
Speaker 3: It's just it's just it's for a child. It's it's
Speaker 3: probably a lot toun back. I have a feeling now
Speaker 3: I'm hoping. I kind of feel like I'm nearing that
Speaker 3: age where my kid is like, oh wait, he's not
Speaker 3: that mortifying. But you know, for many years it wasn't easy.
Speaker 3: In La was simple though. In La I was just
Speaker 3: part of that thing then, But in Westchester it's a
Speaker 3: little different.
Speaker 2: There's a great there's a great line in your book
Speaker 2: because it ranked he to me about you took the
Speaker 2: Descendants gig. What does it total? We're skipping head made years,
Speaker 2: but whatever, you took the Descendence gig, so you kid
Speaker 2: would think you were cool. And I have to tell
Speaker 2: you that all I do now shout out to Jake Cousin, Jake,
Speaker 2: our producer who's about to have a kid. I was
Speaker 2: explaining to him that his life is about to be
Speaker 2: over because anything that he ever did for himself doesn't
Speaker 2: matter anymore. All you're about to do is think to
Speaker 2: your kids. So all I try to do and fuck
Speaker 2: you for this, is to get a goddamn descendance gig.
Speaker 2: Because all I listened to in the car is Camp
Speaker 2: Rock Descendants High School musical the musical, the musical, the
Speaker 2: musical and all.
Speaker 3: And I had that moment, right did I did? So?
Speaker 3: I had that moment. I remember I did this record
Speaker 3: called Shake It with Metro Station. It was a really
Speaker 3: really big song. And when that blew up, I was
Speaker 3: connected with Steve Vincent at Disney and lovely guy. He's
Speaker 3: been there forever, he's been, you know. He shepherds the
Speaker 3: music on every property they have, starting with high school
Speaker 3: musical on and he's a lovely guy. And I remember
Speaker 3: sitting with him and I was basically begging to work
Speaker 3: on camp Rock, you know, And I just watched it
Speaker 3: last week and I don't know if you I don't
Speaker 3: think he really got it. I couldn't. I don't know
Speaker 3: if he understood where I was coming from. And I
Speaker 3: was like, man, I just it would be a big
Speaker 3: flex for my kid, she's three, I need something. And
Speaker 3: what happened was through the years, I would take a
Speaker 3: lot of these Disney gigs and it was awesome because
Speaker 3: you're working with very sweet people. And the flip side was,
Speaker 3: you know, it was so cool when like the Descendants
Speaker 3: blew up and my kid and her friends are, you know,
Speaker 3: watching these songs. You know, maybe they're reacting to that
Speaker 3: in ways that they didn't react to boys like girls
Speaker 3: or gym class heros or one of these other thinks
Speaker 3: it was super cool. But obviously I'm pretty needy.
Speaker 2: That isn't lost on either of us today and every
Speaker 2: day Jesus all right back in time, so pot we're
Speaker 2: post NYU. And the reason I want to get into
Speaker 2: this is because you after your NYU career, you started
Speaker 2: to be your performer. Yet that didn't work well, I know,
Speaker 2: but I find that. But you look the part of
Speaker 2: the comparisons and the contrast between like you write music,
Speaker 2: people assume that you perform it versus you don't and
Speaker 2: you just write it. And I feel like you dabbled
Speaker 2: in all of it. And this was that early time,
Speaker 2: right post your fake college career.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to look. I wanted once again, there's
Speaker 3: no manual. There's no manual, you know, and I'm in
Speaker 3: and I'm in the city and hip hop is is exploding,
Speaker 3: and I fall in love with all this Native Tongue
Speaker 3: era stuff, right and it was it was Daylon tribe
Speaker 3: really and the Jungle Brothers like those three were sort
Speaker 3: of the pillars of what I got into off the
Speaker 3: bat and then there's obviously all the black sheets and
Speaker 3: roots and everything else that came along with it, you know,
Speaker 3: but the early native tongue era that eighty nine ninety.
Speaker 3: I became obsessed, and I knew that I wasn't verbally
Speaker 3: dexterous in the same way you know.
Speaker 2: It's texious word it is, sure it is, now, let's
Speaker 2: go with it. Isn't dexterosa drug.
Speaker 3: Whatever, dexidrin, dex dexadrine, dexterius.
Speaker 2: Is that dexterius. No dexterous. You're the lyricist and be dexterous,
Speaker 2: so it'd be dexterous, okay.
Speaker 3: But I you know, I knew my way around words
Speaker 3: and word play. I just didn't really it wasn't uh
Speaker 3: innately and I'm seeing any way, shape or form. But
Speaker 3: I thought it'd be kind of rad to take my jukebox,
Speaker 3: which was full of, you know, some pretty out records.
Speaker 3: And I was a you know, I was a record collector, man.
Speaker 3: I was a flea market guy, just like all these
Speaker 3: kids were. And I thought I had some pretty cool samples.
Speaker 3: I tried to get people to wrap over. I couldn't
Speaker 3: get anybody alive to work on my tracks. I start
Speaker 3: making beats, you know, and so I decided to just
Speaker 3: wrap over my own stuff, which basically met me screaming
Speaker 3: over them because I didn't really know what I was doing.
Speaker 3: So I sounded like this weird amalgamation of Doctor Dre
Speaker 3: and Hell. But I uh I. The craziest shit happened
Speaker 3: is I got a record deal. We had a group
Speaker 3: Perfect and my friends Don and Jason Don Jason Lynn
Speaker 3: two of my best friends, and we had this weird
Speaker 3: little group and we got signed. We got signed on
Speaker 3: the day we are big showcase for Select Records, and
Speaker 3: Select was bad ass because Select had Chub Rock Utfo
Speaker 3: the real Rock Sana I believe you know. It was
Speaker 3: a very cool seminal hip hop label of that time.
Speaker 3: And then they signed us, and that's what that ended
Speaker 3: the label obviously. But what was funny about is the
Speaker 3: day we auditioned for the label. As we're about to
Speaker 3: audition and there's a TV at the lobby of Smash Studios,
Speaker 3: which is the rehearsal place where we we auditioned for
Speaker 3: the label, and they announced in real time that Magic
Speaker 3: has HIV. And you know, I'm rethinking every single bad
Speaker 3: decision of my life questionable move up to that point
Speaker 3: and yeah, as we all are, and then we have
Speaker 3: to get on a stage and perform and basically like
Speaker 3: the Beastie Boys on Meth you know, perfect time. Somehow
Speaker 3: we got a record deal. So we we got we
Speaker 3: got a record deal. And it was the first of
Speaker 3: many many mistakes in my career. Their track masters before
Speaker 3: they blew up doing all the stuff for Bad Boy,
Speaker 3: et cetera. They were red Het Lover Tone was signed
Speaker 3: to Select as well, and those guys were they had
Speaker 3: spoken and Fred wanted them to produce my record, and
Speaker 3: I passed Bob Power, the great Bob Power, who on
Speaker 3: this podcast.
Speaker 2: He was perhaps our I think he was the first
Speaker 2: or second person that win.
Speaker 3: Okay, so Bob Power right after this is when he
Speaker 3: had already done that. The second day he did Daylea
Speaker 3: Soul is Dead, and this is right around the time
Speaker 3: he was doing Low End Theory. He produced one of
Speaker 3: the songs, and my dumb they got me a record deal, sure,
Speaker 3: and then I didn't use them. And then I didn't
Speaker 3: use them because I had to make my own record
Speaker 3: because I was that guy. I'm awful, and so I
Speaker 3: decided I'm going to produce my own record. And what's amazing.
Speaker 3: It was great because you know, I you know, I
Speaker 3: had my first real check and I had the ability
Speaker 3: to do this, and I felt like a really you know,
Speaker 3: a twenty one year old adult. And what of course,
Speaker 3: I make the worst album ever recorded, and I commit
Speaker 3: more musical crimes. And God bless my two bandmates because
Speaker 3: they're sitting in me watching me just crash this car
Speaker 3: in real time, and they went along with it, and
Speaker 3: they were so kind that they didn't, you know, restrain
Speaker 3: me at any point and say, wow, this is mortifying.
Speaker 3: But I made a record, you know, I had a video,
Speaker 3: It came out. I was dropped by the time I
Speaker 3: was twenty two. I will tell you a true story
Speaker 3: that this a little adendum to my best selling book,
Speaker 3: Twenty Minute Wonder. Oh title this book books Ben Bella Books.
Speaker 3: But book. Yeah, it was a true story. I h
Speaker 3: it's all true. Before a reefer was legal.
Speaker 2: Okay, I work ages.
Speaker 3: I was a puffer. Yeah, And I was at my
Speaker 3: brother's apartment. He lived on twentieth and eighth, and he
Speaker 3: let me. He used to let me just sit there
Speaker 3: with my journals and write, you know, my poetry or
Speaker 3: my rap or my songs, whatever I was writing. He
Speaker 3: would let me sit out there. He would spin records.
Speaker 3: He DJ's so he'd spin record and then I would
Speaker 3: just sit stoned on his porch, staring at you know,
Speaker 3: if Avenue. And it was it was really, it was
Speaker 3: actually a wonderful time in my life. But on one
Speaker 3: given day, I thought, well, you know what, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: go buy some vinyl myself. I made that that that
Speaker 3: pilgrimage from my brother's apartment across all the way uh
Speaker 3: down down Grange av Over to sixth Down, through McDougal,
Speaker 3: through Washington Square Park to Tower Records. Okay, it's important,
Speaker 3: it's important for me, the ADHD. But I'm landing it.
Speaker 3: You stick with me.
Speaker 2: I know the exact record you're talking about. Okay, scored
Speaker 2: the documentary.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's that's look at you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just a little flex there. And by the way,
Speaker 2: that fund yourself. I love that documentary, thank you. It
Speaker 2: was one of the I.
Speaker 3: Look at you like a little differently right, thank you.
Speaker 3: All right. So I make it to Washington Square Park
Speaker 3: and I see like this weird sea of purple in
Speaker 3: front of me, and nah, it was like ten thousand princess.
Speaker 3: It was the n y U graduating class would have
Speaker 3: been my graduating class if I hadn't dropped out of college,
Speaker 3: And I can't believe i'd input it in. But you know,
Speaker 3: I know Matt Holt wants to do the sequel with me.
Speaker 3: We've already been obviously talking about it, but no true story.
Speaker 3: So I actually waltzed by High out of my mind,
Speaker 3: waltz by my college graduation of a school I dropped
Speaker 3: out of.
Speaker 2: And what would my class as.
Speaker 3: If anyone knew me? And I didn't really register their bill.
Speaker 3: But I have no idea where that came from. But
Speaker 3: you know, I will tell you one thing about that
Speaker 3: Tower Records though pivotal for me in so many ways,
Speaker 3: because you know, right up the block was the Whiz.
Speaker 3: Two blocks up was the Whiz on Broadway right there,
Speaker 3: and on Friday nights, i'side the Whiz, all the jeeps
Speaker 3: would roll up and whatever the biggest hip hop and
Speaker 3: specifically house tracks of eighty eight, eighty nine, ninety. They
Speaker 3: would just sit outside and blare them. And sometimes everyone's
Speaker 3: radio was on hot you know, on BLS or kiss
Speaker 3: or whatever. And I'll never forget. That's where I first
Speaker 3: heard Gypsy Woman by Crystal Waters, and I can still
Speaker 3: see the entire two hundred kids in the streets singing
Speaker 3: La da Dad, you know. And those are those moments
Speaker 3: that were embedded in me where I realized music as
Speaker 3: a culture was just some other shit and I, you know,
Speaker 3: you don't get that in the suburbs at the same extent.
Speaker 3: So that's when I fell in love with the city
Speaker 3: and I just wanted to be around it. And that's
Speaker 3: when I was going out every night of the week,
Speaker 3: any showcase, anything I could get into, any if I
Speaker 3: even in our unsuccessful hip hop amalgamation, when we would
Speaker 3: do shows at a lot of these venues AKA and
Speaker 3: underact me places like that, whenever we do a show,
Speaker 3: if we ever met a junior A in our person
Speaker 3: I was really big with like very junior A and
Speaker 3: our people, you know, and interns. But you know what,
Speaker 3: I was smart enough to realize that these people someday
Speaker 3: would actually be running this thing, so I would I'd
Speaker 3: befriend people who were my age and my level who
Speaker 3: were just starting out as well, and a lot of
Speaker 3: those people run things. Now. My first gig ever was
Speaker 3: boxing Records at Big Beat Records was just this little
Speaker 3: independent label and there are about seven or eight employees,
Speaker 3: and there were two interns. It was me and Adrian Bartos,
Speaker 3: who is Stretch Armstrong, but we were the two interns
Speaker 3: in the back. And they are about seven or eight
Speaker 3: of us. And it was run by Craig Callman, who
Speaker 3: is the chairman of Atlantic. Now you know at that
Speaker 3: point he was twenty three and I was probably nineteen.
Speaker 3: So it's a good story.
Speaker 2: You told a story. I'm gonna tell a story. Last night,
Speaker 2: I went to see Stereophonic, which is.
Speaker 3: The very tying to see it.
Speaker 2: You have to see it. If you worked in music,
Speaker 2: or you live in music, or you have anything to
Speaker 2: do with music, you have to go see the show.
Speaker 2: It could also be called like Fleetwood Mac making of
Speaker 2: the rumors out, That's what I've fod, that's what I've heard.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. It's like it's like
Speaker 2: really involved, the music is amazing, blah blah blah. But
Speaker 2: the take home is, in my opinion as a music person,
Speaker 2: is this is it should be called why we need
Speaker 2: producers because it's essentially like a bunch of people who
Speaker 2: are like on many substances and have many relationships and
Speaker 2: there's tons of dynamics, but no one can make a
Speaker 2: decision and there's nobody overseeing it. And then the guy
Speaker 2: who's the lead guitarist decides that he's the producer, and
Speaker 2: we all know how well that goes. So my question
Speaker 2: to you is, as I was watching this, I was
Speaker 2: thinking about, God, I'm gonna ask fucking Sammis, is like,
Speaker 2: talk to me about being a producer versus being a
Speaker 2: songwriter and why you think being a because I feel
Speaker 2: like in my life I've graduated from like a ranger
Speaker 2: orchestrator whatever the nebulous title that is, to guy who
Speaker 2: writes things from time to time. But then, like what
Speaker 2: people know me as in the last few bits has
Speaker 2: been like overseer of things, connector of things, which sounds
Speaker 2: which I try to explain to my parents and they're like,
Speaker 2: we don't know what the fuck that means, and I
Speaker 2: was like, don't worry about but like I feel like,
Speaker 2: talk to me about why producers are important and why
Speaker 2: we need them and why you're one.
Speaker 3: I just like that you used overseer Like that that's good.
Speaker 2: You can use You can put that in your next
Speaker 2: book entitled twenty two hit Wonders.
Speaker 3: We're way beyond that. We're at least twenty two point five.
Speaker 3: We can have half hits.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, look here here's the thing.
Speaker 3: I'm a pretty terrible producer overall. Wow, I can I
Speaker 3: can answer that. You know, it's funny. My breakthrough cut
Speaker 3: was a song with Jim class hero Is called cup
Speaker 3: Its choke Hold. I produced it, okay, and when I
Speaker 3: produced it, it opened up a tidal wave of opportunities.
Speaker 3: So it was a number one hit. And then I
Speaker 3: did I Pretty Shake It, I prettyce check Estuliet for
Speaker 3: Wee the Kings. And these were like big, big songs,
Speaker 3: and so I was the me and Dave Kats, who
Speaker 3: I made them with, very important. I did the Wee
Speaker 3: the Kings and the Metro Station with Dave Kats, and
Speaker 3: when we did it, we were hot Rolling Stones Hot
Speaker 3: List Producers of the Year two thousand and eight. I
Speaker 3: say that flex right now.
Speaker 2: That was like a pretty gentleman.
Speaker 3: You understand where there's is eating It's great is We
Speaker 3: would start to work with artists who'd come in the
Speaker 3: room to work with Rolling Stones Hotless producers and see
Speaker 3: this guy and then they realized we had no idea
Speaker 3: what we're doing. Now, Dave katzon knew more than I did,
Speaker 3: But you know, we were we were prone to do
Speaker 3: a lot of let's quad that anything. We just kept saying,
Speaker 3: let's quad that, yeah, you know, and for for the uninformed,
Speaker 3: that just sort of makes that's about four, right, four? Yeah,
Speaker 3: just just quadruple that whatever the part was. But we
Speaker 3: liked saying that from the back of the room to
Speaker 3: our engineer, Hey, Sean, let's quad that, yep. And you know,
Speaker 3: there are all these sad tropes that we were.
Speaker 2: I double everything leads. I don't give a shit, I
Speaker 2: double everything.
Speaker 3: I just but you know what, I had no idea
Speaker 3: what I was doing. And the reality was, I'm a
Speaker 3: songwriter with a producer mentality, And what that means is,
Speaker 3: I'm truly a writer who kind of understands the way
Speaker 3: the movie should end and hears it sort of in
Speaker 3: his head sonically, like this could be this, this could
Speaker 3: be this, could be this. But the reality is, when
Speaker 3: I go deep on something, if I'm really going deep
Speaker 3: on it, it's gonna suck.
Speaker 2: Why cause.
Speaker 3: Remember when Alex Rodriguez started doing steroids, right, you start
Speaker 3: to befuck right, you start to get really big and
Speaker 3: you're like, really like your numbers are going through the roof.
Speaker 3: But the problem is you're gonna get busted. I was
Speaker 3: the same guy. I feel like I put everything on
Speaker 3: musical steroids, and I would send my tracks to mixers
Speaker 3: like Tom Lord. Algae in Miami was mixing a ton
Speaker 3: of my stuff back then, And there was always this,
Speaker 3: you know, there were always these moments where I felt
Speaker 3: like I'm about to get totally outed as the worst
Speaker 3: producer in the world, and.
Speaker 2: I feel like this every day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just like, you know, there's imposter syndrome and
Speaker 3: there's just being a fucking impostor. And I was truly
Speaker 3: an impostor with production, and I didn't really know what
Speaker 3: I was doing. I do, you know, I do a
Speaker 3: little programming, but I just felt like, honestly, like, I'm
Speaker 3: a guy who's had a lot of joy playing around
Speaker 3: with an SP twelve sampler SP twelve hundred and you know,
Speaker 3: I'm at one point five seconds or whatever, and I
Speaker 3: made like primitive beats and that's how I kind of
Speaker 3: got started in this and that's probably the peak of
Speaker 3: my creativity as a producer. Everything else, I can get
Speaker 3: it done, and sometimes I can really hit something out
Speaker 3: of the park and I think, wow, I'm really not
Speaker 3: that bad. But I am wise enough not to believe
Speaker 3: my own hype because there are eighteen year old kids
Speaker 3: who are infinitely more sonically inclined. We're just more creative.
Speaker 3: And when I'm in a room with somebody who I
Speaker 3: deem a real producer, it's mortifying because they just they're
Speaker 3: just so beyond me. And I've learned there's no ego
Speaker 3: with this. As a writer, I'm pretty good. I stand
Speaker 3: by my work and I think I'm unique.
Speaker 2: But as a producer, best selling novels, best selling novelist,
Speaker 2: it's number on Amazon. Okay, do they still have Z shops?
Speaker 2: Is that I don't know what that is?
Speaker 3: That's like the cutout bend for always looks at Amazon?
Speaker 2: Or is it like at the strand, like it's in
Speaker 2: the pile of like five dollars a nunder.
Speaker 3: All my records started out still there. I'm very used
Speaker 3: to having an idiot set record, so.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about breaks. So we've never talked
Speaker 2: about this because I didn't know until I read your book.
Speaker 2: So when I was in my early twenties. I was
Speaker 2: making musicals and doing whatever I was doing. And a
Speaker 2: friend of mine, Chris Jackson, who later became George Washington
Speaker 2: and Hamilton and all this other shit, he was working with,
Speaker 2: who I didn't know at the time, McMurphy. And so, yeah,
Speaker 2: so I read the book and I couldn't believe this
Speaker 2: because so I'll let you talk about McMurphy, but let me.
Speaker 3: Say what I say, pour some more whiskey to.
Speaker 2: It, hashtag angels and begs. And so Chris, my friend Chris,
Speaker 2: He's like, listen, I've been working on these music with
Speaker 2: these guys, Dad, have you ever heard of the system
Speaker 2: of McMurphy. And Frankly, as a Jewish kid from Long
Speaker 2: Island who liked like Coltrane and Dave Matthews, I did
Speaker 2: not know a lot about the system of McMurphy, full disclosure.
Speaker 2: So I went and I'm sitting there with McMurphy, and
Speaker 2: he he is the nicest guy in the world.
Speaker 3: Sexy fella.
Speaker 2: He is a very sexy fella, like not but like
Speaker 2: not a person who's ever been in my life I
Speaker 2: like ever not that like his personality and his son
Speaker 2: and we like went to his house and he like
Speaker 2: still worked in Acid remember that program it wasn't you know,
Speaker 2: And like he played the guitar really well and he
Speaker 2: was lefty and I was like, who the He's like
Speaker 2: a cartoon And we collectively produced this guy, Chris Jackson's
Speaker 2: album and at the time I didn't know and so
Speaker 2: finally like this is crazy, So I googled him and
Speaker 2: like and then like he would teach me. He would
Speaker 2: just leak all kinds of things to me about how
Speaker 2: to make music and how to write good songs, and
Speaker 2: like he would his his shit was so sophisticated, but
Speaker 2: you would never know. And I loved that about like
Speaker 2: the the harmonic structures were so intense, and like the
Speaker 2: way he played the guitar, like Babyface was like so involved,
Speaker 2: but the songs were so simple and elegant, and it
Speaker 2: was really one of the anyway you can speak this,
Speaker 2: but like in your book Mick and his part David,
Speaker 2: they gave you one of your early breaks. They give
Speaker 2: you a space, right, they believed in you, and they
Speaker 2: gave you some shit. I just thought that was that
Speaker 2: was a weird moment for me reading in your book
Speaker 2: that we both had that it's those guys.
Speaker 3: So you know, I'm old as fuck. So you know,
Speaker 3: if you wanted any opportunity in this business, you would
Speaker 3: look at the back. You'd look at the back of records.
Speaker 3: You'd see labels, producers, whoever. And then you'd go to
Speaker 3: the phone book and you would try to find phone
Speaker 3: numbers and you would cold call. And that's what I did,
Speaker 3: and I cold called the Science Lab which was their
Speaker 3: production company, and those guys were coming off don't disturb
Speaker 3: this group which I danced to at my prom which
Speaker 3: was kind of rad. I mean, and it's a year
Speaker 3: later and I cold call and I just say, look,
Speaker 3: I'm an artist, and you know I'd love to send
Speaker 3: you a demo tape blah blah blah. And this lovely fellow,
Speaker 3: Todd Allen working for them, and he answered the phone
Speaker 3: and he invited me in, and you know, I think
Speaker 3: they dug me and I sign me to a production deal.
Speaker 3: And I was eighteen, and I mean, those guys were
Speaker 3: so bad ass. I mean, you know, David was playing
Speaker 3: on Shaka con records. They were I think they were
Speaker 3: writing for Shaka. They did this record Attitude, a song
Speaker 3: I think was called We Got the Juice, which was incredible.
Speaker 3: They had really some crazy They had this incredible setup.
Speaker 3: They were in the sixteen fifty Broadway and a floor
Speaker 3: below was next Plateau Wrecks, next Plateau Records, which had
Speaker 3: the beginning of Salt and Pepper, you know, and stuff
Speaker 3: like that, and then the science lab in their room.
Speaker 3: Little Louisvega was using their room, so all that early
Speaker 3: house stuff was getting made at the end of the
Speaker 3: hall as well. So I was able to absorb so
Speaker 3: much badass shit. And I was eighteen, and they were
Speaker 3: lovely guys. I ran into david a hotel in la
Speaker 3: about four months ago, and look, I owe those guys
Speaker 3: immenseally because they were the first people. You know, it's hard,
Speaker 3: especially when you drop out of school and your parents
Speaker 3: were like these, you know, massive intellectuals and very academic,
Speaker 3: and you're trying to rationalize this decision. And if somebody
Speaker 3: who actually who's succeeded and is a class act at
Speaker 3: the level of those guys, you know, is able to,
Speaker 3: you know, express interest in you and take you under
Speaker 3: their wing, it buys you a little time with your parents.
Speaker 3: And that's what it did. It brought me time, and
Speaker 3: so I owe them momentally because even though once again
Speaker 3: those guys, you know, there was only so much listening
Speaker 3: I was going to do at that age, I was
Speaker 3: still going to do my own thing. They just being
Speaker 3: around and being in their orbit. I was privy to
Speaker 3: some crazy stuff, you know. I remember drey Betts was
Speaker 3: one of the cats in the in their circle, working
Speaker 3: out of the spot, and he was doing that what's
Speaker 3: to justify my love? That's when he did justify my love?
Speaker 3: So I remember hearing that very early. That was pretty cool.
Speaker 3: What was so great about no Internet and no access
Speaker 3: is you kind of stumbled into shit And that was
Speaker 3: the New York that I miss, you know, I miss
Speaker 3: the wide eyed excitement of stumbling and stumbling in the rooms.
Speaker 3: I remember, you know, my friend Jake Miller, who I
Speaker 3: just gos, who passed away a long time ago. Jake
Speaker 3: and his band they're called Zanix twenty five, and they
Speaker 3: were doing sort of like a Progmeday kind of thing,
Speaker 3: and they were living on a loft on Second Avenue,
Speaker 3: and through Steph Skimarta, who is Warren Haynes's wife, who
Speaker 3: was doing a and RT Forth and Broadway, they meet
Speaker 3: the Jungle Brothers and next thing. You know, the Jungle
Speaker 3: Brothers are making this progressive, weird psychedelic rock sort of
Speaker 3: hip hop record in this loft with these guys, and
Speaker 3: you know, I'm the biggest Jungle Brothers fan in the world, man,
Speaker 3: and I'm like allowed to hang out every once in
Speaker 3: a while and just watch my friends like throw down
Speaker 3: with these guys making this really cool progressive shit that
Speaker 3: never saw the light of day. It was neat. It
Speaker 3: was just every day was it was just like this
Speaker 3: weird New York was like this one big reveal. Right,
Speaker 3: you just like walk through a door and if you
Speaker 3: were socially inclined and you were not, you know, I
Speaker 3: was fearless, man. I walk up to anybody and if
Speaker 3: you still do that, yeah, I mean, well you know
Speaker 3: now they run.
Speaker 2: But then I was.
Speaker 3: Young and it was a little less creepy feeling.
Speaker 2: We interviewed Chris Rock like years ago and he said
Speaker 2: the best thing. He's like, yeah, I know, I'm a
Speaker 2: comic and I do these things. He's like, but you know,
Speaker 2: my best quality is and we're like what he said,
Speaker 2: I I show up and I essentially I show up
Speaker 2: and I don't get kicked out. So I'm always there,
Speaker 2: and I feel like a lot of the anecdotes in
Speaker 2: your book are like I was just there. There's like
Speaker 2: some bitch about like Cusack, and like you were part
Speaker 2: of this like weird rat packing New York situation where
Speaker 2: it was like you and him and whoever the fuck
Speaker 2: else was and some screenwriter and you're doing all this stuff,
Speaker 2: and I just feel like you, you're around, You're always,
Speaker 2: and there's some pictures of you in that book where
Speaker 2: you're just like in the background, fucking just sam just there,
Speaker 2: like the songwriting aside, I was just there.
Speaker 3: I was like the ultimate hanger on, you know.
Speaker 2: But that's my thing too, Like seemed to be around, dude.
Speaker 3: I can close my eyes and it's you know, it's Thanksgiving,
Speaker 3: probably ninety three, and John Cusack is doing Thanksgiving with
Speaker 3: me and my grandmother and my mom and dad and
Speaker 3: my brother. I'm his wife on the Upper East Side.
Speaker 3: And then John and I go out afterwards and meet
Speaker 3: up with Jeremy Piven and Uma Thurmat.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So it's me, John Cusack, Jeremy Piven, and Uma Thurman
Speaker 3: and we're all standing on the stairs of the met
Speaker 3: and it's pouring rain and we're sort of dancing together
Speaker 3: and I'm self aware enough to know one of us
Speaker 3: doesn't belong in this, you know, And I just it
Speaker 3: was amazing because it really lit a match in me.
Speaker 3: And that's why I look, I'm forever indebted to those
Speaker 3: guys because they they saw something in me. You know.
Speaker 3: Maybe I didn't ask for anything, which was a nice skill.
Speaker 3: I definitely I wasn't a taker, which is good. But
Speaker 3: they let me hang around and just being sort of
Speaker 3: tangentially involved in all their sort of happenings and after
Speaker 3: hour stuff. What was cool is, man, I just got
Speaker 3: to see how great it is to sort of to
Speaker 3: have access and to achieve whatever pinnacle. Like. They were
Speaker 3: all very successful at that time, and it lit a
Speaker 3: match like, man, if I had a measured level success,
Speaker 3: I won't feel like an outsider in every room. I
Speaker 3: will feel like maybe I belong one step more. I
Speaker 3: didn't want to be a plus one my whole life,
Speaker 3: and I think that really fueled, like that sent me
Speaker 3: into orbit creatively because I thought, you know, if I'm
Speaker 3: able to achieve something and it resonates on any creative scale,
Speaker 3: if I'm not a plus one anymore, and I'm actually
Speaker 3: part of the group, and I've you know, I've earned
Speaker 3: my way where you think, oh, this guy just isn't
Speaker 3: another one of the hangarounds. Do you know? I told
Speaker 3: Piven not to do entourage?
Speaker 2: Really, but why is that not in the book I did?
Speaker 2: That's a good line. Had that conversation.
Speaker 3: Me and my wife and Jeremy went to uh Fred
Speaker 3: Siegel for dinner with twenty something years ago whatever it is.
Speaker 3: He told us about this thing he'd been offered. I
Speaker 3: was like, I don't know. It sounds kind of whack man.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I'm not an agent, trust me. You
Speaker 3: know you don't want me wrapping you in anything.
Speaker 2: It feels like Lynn invited me to Hamilton off Broadway
Speaker 2: and he goes, what'd you think? I was like, I
Speaker 2: don't know that, like my grandmother from like Long Island
Speaker 2: and just get it awesome and I stuck to that.
Speaker 3: You nailed that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really I feel like I'm a really really
Speaker 2: good sets for six Jesus. So I feel like this
Speaker 2: is a good spring where it's like, yes the cusacknith
Speaker 2: that's a word. So we get into two thousand and
Speaker 2: I feel like two thousand until today is like or
Speaker 2: maybe a few years ago is like Sam Holland or Heyday.
Speaker 2: And what I mean by that is like between two
Speaker 2: thousand and twenty twenty. This is the time we're talking
Speaker 2: of you as rock producer of the Year and big
Speaker 2: Dick of the West and all the shit that you
Speaker 2: accomplished in those particular years. But like, what was the
Speaker 2: first song that led off two thousands, that led that
Speaker 2: that opened the door? I know, there's there's a Clive
Speaker 2: Davis kind, there's a skipping stone.
Speaker 3: That's a lot of things. I mean, the one thing
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, there are like three
Speaker 3: or four little ten pole things that happened. But the
Speaker 3: first is Carol King because I connected with Carol King
Speaker 3: in two thousand and you know, we begin writing songs together.
Speaker 2: And I'm explain how that happened because it's a really.
Speaker 3: Good story, well you know.
Speaker 2: I and also not one that anyone would ever put
Speaker 2: on you, even in that shirt.
Speaker 3: Okay, wow strong. So what what I realized in my
Speaker 3: twenties is there are no doors open for me. I
Speaker 3: failed as an artist, and I started making beats and
Speaker 3: hawking beats around and nothing's working. I meet a guy
Speaker 3: named Joe Ricatelli who was awesome who ended up being
Speaker 3: the president of RCA, but before that he was a
Speaker 3: running promotion in Island and I met him through my
Speaker 3: friend Kimberly, and he gets me and my partner at
Speaker 3: the time was a guy named dougdan Angelis. He gets
Speaker 3: his remixes and I start building up remixes, remixes, and
Speaker 3: then it continues solo and with Dave Scholmer and different configurations.
Speaker 3: I'm doing remixes of def jam catalog stuff. He gets
Speaker 3: me in the mix and I'll tell you, these remixes
Speaker 3: are god awful and no one's ever heard them, but
Speaker 3: they were always the b sides to like a club promo,
Speaker 3: So he cared enough about me to always throw my
Speaker 3: things on. So I had a Suddenly my discography, which
Speaker 3: had nothing, had method Man DMX, the Thong Song, like
Speaker 3: all these pivotal records of that time, I had, like
Speaker 3: the techno remix. Now, no one alive was listening for
Speaker 3: the techno remix on these things, but suddenly I had credits,
Speaker 3: which was rad my only access to getting bigger stuff.
Speaker 3: I realized was going to be creating my own groups
Speaker 3: because there was no future in techno remixes and for
Speaker 3: me because I'm terrible, but also because there are probably
Speaker 3: people who are amazing at it. I just wasn't one
Speaker 3: of them. You know, if your Crystal method, you're like, hey,
Speaker 3: fuck you, Sam Holland. But you know I'm not Crystal Method.
Speaker 3: So I realized I got to put groups together because
Speaker 3: the one thing I realized as a student of the
Speaker 3: game is somewhere between you know, the Malcolm McLaren's and
Speaker 3: the stock Apeman Waterman's and a lot of these British cats.
Speaker 3: You know, if people aren't going to record your own songs,
Speaker 3: then you better find your own groups to sing them.
Speaker 3: And so I would take out ads in the Village Voice,
Speaker 3: and I started casting for groups to like cut my stuff,
Speaker 3: and I find people, take them off for coffee and
Speaker 3: just say, hey, I'll write. I have a studio. You
Speaker 3: know it's a little dump, but like you know, I'll
Speaker 3: write a song. Whatever we can collaborate and you know,
Speaker 3: I'll figure it out. And what happened was I got
Speaker 3: a bunch of people signed over a very quick amount
Speaker 3: of time. There was a there was a there was
Speaker 3: a a news source for music Hits Daily Double, which
Speaker 3: still exist, but they had something called a rumor mill
Speaker 3: and if you were in that, your phone ring off
Speaker 3: the hook. Somehow a guy named Joe Fleischer got wind
Speaker 3: of my stuff and he started touting me and my
Speaker 3: partner as like the next guys. And it was right
Speaker 3: when he had just blown up the Neptunes too, so
Speaker 3: we're like going to be the next guys, not the Neptunes,
Speaker 3: you know. And we start getting all these calls from labels,
Speaker 3: and I'm developing all these acts at the same time,
Speaker 3: and over like a two year period, I want to say,
Speaker 3: we got five or six act signed a major labels.
Speaker 3: The first was a woman named Tarsha Vega, and I
Speaker 3: believe she was an assistant in the CBS television accounting
Speaker 3: department or something like that. And she came in and
Speaker 3: she had never rapped and never sung, but perfect yeah,
Speaker 3: but you know, her personality was so great. She was
Speaker 3: super cool looking and she was just a great vibe
Speaker 3: and she was down for me just writing stuff. And
Speaker 3: I started writing these songs with my man, Dave Schomer,
Speaker 3: and we were he was doing the tracks and I
Speaker 3: was writing the lyrics and the melodies. And what happened
Speaker 3: was RCAA Records heard it. They signed her as my
Speaker 3: first act signed to like a major. I'd had a
Speaker 3: a singer name Sabrina Sang signed a Tommy Boy that
Speaker 3: didn't happen, so I'm over one. Then RCA signed Star Shavega,
Speaker 3: massive deal, all this press, and I'm once again producing
Speaker 3: a record. I mean no idea what I'm doing. And
Speaker 3: I make another terrible record and that's on me. But
Speaker 3: what's funny about it is it's time for a cameo
Speaker 3: on the record and we're looking for a cool feature.
Speaker 3: And my wife had just seen Blood Brothers on Broadway
Speaker 3: and she said Carol King is amazing and Blood Brothers
Speaker 3: and the label was thinking more along the lines of
Speaker 3: India Ri or something like that, and I was like,
Speaker 3: how about Carol King? And everyone looks at me stoneface.
Speaker 3: But Brian Maloof, who was an R on the project,
Speaker 3: had a relationship with Carol's manager, Lorna, who's very lovely,
Speaker 3: and Carol next to you know, within a week, is
Speaker 3: down at our state do you And she sits down
Speaker 3: across from me and Tarshah the artist, and she's going
Speaker 3: on and on about what's going on lyrically and the stuff,
Speaker 3: and she really digs it and to to shout out Tarsha,
Speaker 3: who is this wonderful person. Tarsia just looks and says, well,
Speaker 3: he writes the lyrics, and that's him, you know he
Speaker 3: I don't write the lyrics. And Carol looks at me
Speaker 3: like very puzzled and don't thinking what's up? This is
Speaker 3: mau kisso New York in the flesh. That's how we
Speaker 3: do represent. So immediately, me, Dave and Carol start writing
Speaker 3: together a lot, and we write a bunch of tunes
Speaker 3: just because she likes her lyrics. Yeah, I think she's
Speaker 3: just like the both of us. But I also think
Speaker 3: she liked the fact that, like you know, it was,
Speaker 3: music was changing and we were pulling lots of influences.
Speaker 3: But also we're super respectful of her catalog. We were knowledgeable.
Speaker 3: We knew like I could talk jazz man with her
Speaker 3: and other stuff. And she came in the room with
Speaker 3: us and three or four songs and we wrote Love
Speaker 3: Makes the World and that ended up being the title
Speaker 3: track and the single from the last album She Ever
Speaker 3: May and that was, you know, twenty four years ago.
Speaker 3: And that was a really cool calling card because through
Speaker 3: that she introduced us to Paul Williams. Who really became
Speaker 3: like a big brother figure to me. Throughout my entire career,
Speaker 3: I connected with Al Rodgers, you know, and I just
Speaker 3: started I felt personal. I was getting lots of respect
Speaker 3: from the old guard. I just still couldn't permeate anybody
Speaker 3: my own age. And that's when I knew I had
Speaker 3: to go even deeper into developing acts. And that's when
Speaker 3: Jonathan Daniel steps in, because we're watching what Crush Management's
Speaker 3: doing at the time, and they have all these cool
Speaker 3: young bands and they're bringing me in and I'm beginning
Speaker 3: to collaborate with them. And while we created Boys Like
Speaker 3: Girls and we found we the Kings and Metro Station,
Speaker 3: these things also created a Cobra Starship with Crush Me
Speaker 3: and Dave katz Day. We created Cobra Starship with those guys. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we did not do that one, but we did do
Speaker 3: Snakes on the Plane, which is the greatest song ever,
Speaker 3: the greatest song ever. But we did that whole first album,
Speaker 3: and you know, we just we had this incredible symbiotic
Speaker 3: relationship all of us. We shared this loft, and you know,
Speaker 3: we would just develop acts, and you know, once an
Speaker 3: act was successful, they would take the next one on
Speaker 3: the road with them as direct support, and we were
Speaker 3: working outside of the industry machine, which was awesome, and
Speaker 3: that's what sort of that was what sort of elevated
Speaker 3: my moment. I just, you know it just at thirty four,
Speaker 3: I'm making beats on kids bop records and think and
Speaker 3: thirty five I have like a number one hit, So anything,
Speaker 3: it all shifted at that age. And that's really why
Speaker 3: I wrote the book bill, to be honest with you,
Speaker 3: because you know, at the end of the day, go
Speaker 3: fuck myself, thank you very much. At the end of
Speaker 3: the day, I think what's interesting about my story is
Speaker 3: the futility in the previous fourteen years was at a
Speaker 3: level that most people will never fathom. And I thought,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm so sick of reading you know, people's
Speaker 3: tomes where they gloss over all this shit where it's
Speaker 3: literally like one hundred pages of the struggle fifty pages
Speaker 3: and then it's like victory lap, victory Lap, victory Lap.
Speaker 3: And what I wanted people to understand is the torture
Speaker 3: never ends, and I've never gotten to a place of comfort.
Speaker 3: It's like, I might be fiscally sound at this point,
Speaker 3: but I'll tell you something. I still get my ass
Speaker 3: kicked every single day creatively where I deliver something and
Speaker 3: it gets shredded or stepped on or tossed. And that's
Speaker 3: what I want people to understand is it is the
Speaker 3: greatest life in the world. I think you and I
Speaker 3: share this affinity for it, like we've been able to
Speaker 3: do things that we knit where we never dreamed were possible.
Speaker 3: And the flip side is we still get spit on
Speaker 3: every day we wake up. I tell my kid as
Speaker 3: she has, you know, as she dabbles with her interest
Speaker 3: in this, I said, look, it's a kin to get
Speaker 3: stepping outside on Broadway every morning getting hit by a
Speaker 3: cab and then yeah, and then you know, dusting yourself
Speaker 3: off and going off and writing a song because that's
Speaker 3: what it's like, because that's what my inbox looks like
Speaker 3: in the morning. It's like one like disaster after another.
Speaker 3: And then I just I do it again, and do
Speaker 3: it again, and do it again, and hope that the
Speaker 3: time it works in my favor.
Speaker 2: I was impressed, given I'd also work in this line
Speaker 2: of work that like the so many lows, Sam and
Speaker 2: so many highs, there seems it seems to be like
Speaker 2: you're always searching for some sort of middle, and there's
Speaker 2: and what you just said just says this is there
Speaker 2: is no middle. There's no middle, right, It's either like
Speaker 2: you've reached pieces of shit or you're number one smash
Speaker 2: hit right, And it's always it's always that.
Speaker 3: Well, it's also you know, I'm thankfully them at an age.
Speaker 3: Now I'm twenty eight, and I've.
Speaker 2: Aged like a twenty seven year old, just Benjamin Buden.
Speaker 3: But what's interesting at this age is I have enough
Speaker 3: perspective to look back on it and understand the waves, right,
Speaker 3: And I really, you know, I can sort of almost
Speaker 3: on a pie chart in my head. I sort of
Speaker 3: understand where the highs were, where the dips were. So
Speaker 3: I'm not it's hard to fluster me at this point
Speaker 3: because I'm ready. I'm ready for rejection, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. It's okay, and I understand that I'll still
Speaker 3: have another moment. I'll always have another moment, and I'm
Speaker 3: always going to have another disaster. And as long as
Speaker 3: I can wake up knowing that, then nothing sort of
Speaker 3: irks me.
Speaker 2: You mentioned Paul Williams and the great Paul Williams and
Speaker 2: the greatest, the greatest and there's a section in your
Speaker 2: book which I find very funny, sort of like the
Speaker 2: composers I wish I could have been, or wish I
Speaker 2: could be, or the ones I respect the most, or
Speaker 2: whatever you want to call it. And there's who's he?
Speaker 2: What's it from? Abba maybe or whatever? But my favor
Speaker 2: one which we've never discussed, is Joe Riposo and so,
Speaker 2: and I thought long and hard about this as I
Speaker 2: read it, and people ask me about him all the time,
Speaker 2: and what it's like living in that shadow, and it's
Speaker 2: a lot, and I think it's a weird. I think
Speaker 2: when someone's the first to do something and do it
Speaker 2: unbelievably well, and you're someone who like takes over that
Speaker 2: thing or like tries to carry that torch, it's a
Speaker 2: lot of pressure. And in the beginning I thought like this,
Speaker 2: and then I mean, over time, just like I'm just
Speaker 2: trying to do the best job I possibly can and
Speaker 2: I'm here for a reason and blah blah blah. Anyway,
Speaker 2: and the thing you mentioned about how how Sesme Street
Speaker 2: was major in your in like your songwriting and your
Speaker 2: childhood and everything else.
Speaker 3: And simplicity Fender Rhodes, but.
Speaker 2: It was, but it was so complex, And that's my
Speaker 2: favorite thing about Sesme Street is people are like, it's
Speaker 2: songs for children, But if you look at that stuff,
Speaker 2: it is not simple at all, and it's really ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Particularly he was a freak, but I just love the repetition.
Speaker 3: There were just ideas that even as a young sort
Speaker 3: of barely formed musical brain, you know, I did he
Speaker 3: did the three s Company theme.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a lot of like under the hood
Speaker 2: and stuff about it.
Speaker 3: But he was also Sinatra's favorite, right, Sinatra's favorite writer.
Speaker 3: It's like, I've always loved people who who are in
Speaker 3: on the joke. And that's how I look at it,
Speaker 3: Like we're all in on the joke. It's like it's music.
Speaker 3: It's the goal of what we're doing is we're trying
Speaker 3: to sort of make people feel something illicit emotions. And
Speaker 3: when I listen to Reposo stuff, you think, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's it's Sesame straight and you know it's it's it's
Speaker 3: it's this these warm, sort of tender little moments. You know.
Speaker 3: Won't to come at him, you know, but at the
Speaker 3: core of it is just the badass like man, what
Speaker 3: you know, put on those songs you know, and you
Speaker 3: get chills. It's like they're they're so broad and he
Speaker 3: was able to write really broad stuff for a genre
Speaker 3: that I think previously wasn't at that level of sophistication.
Speaker 3: And to me, he's one of those like he's one
Speaker 3: of those pillars. As a kid when I heard his stuff,
Speaker 3: and it's crazy because you know, in Cape Cod we
Speaker 3: spend a lot of time in Chatham in the summer.
Speaker 3: And it's about twenty years come. I am having a
Speaker 3: cup of coffee. I'm sitting on a bench outside the
Speaker 3: library and I turn around and it says this bench
Speaker 3: is dedicated to Joe Roposo who lived his life here.
Speaker 3: Blah blah blah blah blah, you know, and I had
Speaker 3: chills because it was the only bench. You know, I
Speaker 3: just I had coffee. Probably who sits on a bench
Speaker 3: in front a library doing But it's like, you know,
Speaker 3: it's like it's like it was just like this place
Speaker 3: that I used to go and sit, you know, I
Speaker 3: had like a routine, and I never looked at the
Speaker 3: little placard. It's like this small little placard and I
Speaker 3: was so moved by that. I thought, well, this is
Speaker 3: this is divine and you know, he set the bar
Speaker 3: for that genre. But I just love the ones. What
Speaker 3: I love about it. What I mean by the joke is,
Speaker 3: here's this guy. He's doing Sesame Street at the same
Speaker 3: time he's writing Three's Company and he's writing songs for Sinatra.
Speaker 3: He understands that's all music. And this is what I would,
Speaker 3: you know, taking it back to square from one. It's
Speaker 3: all genre lists, right, He's just writing exactly what he felt.
Speaker 3: You know what's weird is sometimes I listen to my voice.
Speaker 3: I sound like Joe Biden. It's a really right feeling.
Speaker 2: It's like a weird drink.
Speaker 3: It's a weird feeling. We're just like, fuck, man, I'm
Speaker 3: a little monotone today. What is going on? I'm sorry?
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 2: So we're Carol King's post two thousand. Right in the
Speaker 2: early two thousands, we get the Carol King. Carol King
Speaker 2: becomes the calling card of the thing.
Speaker 3: What happens next, well, you know, I start doing these
Speaker 3: fun little bands, and a lot of hits happen. And
Speaker 3: what happens is once again, because I knew that all
Speaker 3: scenes eventually die or more for something as these uh
Speaker 3: as we're making these pop punk or emo records and
Speaker 3: they're becoming big pop hits. I begin to realize there's
Speaker 3: a shelf life because we're we're repeating ourselves a lot,
Speaker 3: like a lot. I'm writing a lot of songs lyrically
Speaker 3: with escapism themes and us against the world, you know,
Speaker 3: like this is like I to we yes, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of a lot of a lot of
Speaker 3: Paul Williams tricks, et cetera. Then I'm just applying to
Speaker 3: this and I realized that I'm beginning to phone songs in.
Speaker 3: And I got to this point where I was like,
Speaker 3: you know, I can phone in a B plus a
Speaker 3: minus every time out. I know what that is. I
Speaker 3: know how to get it there. And songs were going
Speaker 3: from first singles like getting first single on everything to
Speaker 3: getting like the third single on things, you know, and
Speaker 3: songs weren't working the same way, and the talent level
Speaker 3: started to shift a little bit where starting to work
Speaker 3: with some kids who interested me less. You know, that
Speaker 3: first wave of these scene kids that we worked with,
Speaker 3: you know, the kids and you know and boys like
Speaker 3: Girls and Wee the Kings, Jim Classros, Trivy McCoy. You know,
Speaker 3: these kids were awesome. They were like little stars, you know,
Speaker 3: and I started to see kids feel less like stars
Speaker 3: to me. There's still some ones that popped, but there
Speaker 3: were kids that just felt like they were at the end,
Speaker 3: dying end of a scene. And that's when I immediately
Speaker 3: made the conscious decision to jump into what they call
Speaker 3: hot ac or whatever, but like just sort of like,
Speaker 3: you know, the equivalent of soft rock. But what happened
Speaker 3: was I would stay at La Park. Suits in La
Speaker 3: always stay at the same hotel. And when I stayed
Speaker 3: at this hotel, they would blast the stuff on the roof.
Speaker 3: It was always Matchbox twenty or Dave Matthews or you know,
Speaker 3: Uncle Cracker, Train, Sugar Ray, all this stuff.
Speaker 2: And what I'll really you then went on to work with, Yeah,
Speaker 2: what was weird.
Speaker 3: About it was? It was funny about it was I'm
Speaker 3: sitting up there and I'm realizing that they're not playing
Speaker 3: my music. My music isn't I think I'm you know,
Speaker 3: in the Zeichist at the second and these are hits,
Speaker 3: but they I don't know if they're going to be recurrent.
Speaker 3: I don't know if these songs are going to live on.
Speaker 3: And I got into music with the notion of sure
Speaker 3: I just want to write one hit, but I wanted
Speaker 3: to write a hit that lived on.
Speaker 2: It's legacy important to you, because it's another question I
Speaker 2: get asked all the time as the Sesame Street guy.
Speaker 2: It's like, like, you do you do you think about
Speaker 2: your legacy? Is that a thing that comes up to you?
Speaker 2: Because it doesn't. It's it's I do not. I'm not.
Speaker 2: Maybe I haven't reached the age or the gravity toss
Speaker 2: of my life. I don't think about that.
Speaker 3: Oh I'm psychotic. I think about every day.
Speaker 2: I know, but you're you fine, but you're not psychotic
Speaker 2: in like a psychonic way. You're a psychonic and I'm
Speaker 2: in my head kind of way, and there's anything wrong
Speaker 2: with that. I'm also ninety five, so there are one
Speaker 2: hundred years old.
Speaker 3: So but you look, it's a lot of people say
Speaker 3: that where you know, Here's what I think about legacy.
Speaker 3: I've been doing it so long and I've put so
Speaker 3: so much work into this, and I like to I
Speaker 3: would love to look back. I love people to look
Speaker 3: back and think, Wow, this guy brought some joy. You know,
Speaker 3: that's it.
Speaker 2: That's already happened.
Speaker 3: But that's it. But it's but that's what the legacy
Speaker 3: is like I hope that people someday can connect the
Speaker 3: dots and go and think, wow, the guy wrote some
Speaker 3: really uplifting ship or some stuff that made me feel something,
Speaker 3: and and there was a lot of it. There's a
Speaker 3: body of work, and it's a body of work. I
Speaker 3: know if it's a legacy, but I do take my
Speaker 3: body of work seriously. And you know, I've also committed
Speaker 3: many musical crimes, so you know they're worth mentioning as well.
Speaker 3: I've made some records that you know what you know,
Speaker 3: what's I love? You know, there's things I love about
Speaker 3: Spotify right, but Spotify with their playlist when they're written
Speaker 3: by playlist, like each one of them does one, right,
Speaker 3: Amazon does one, Apple does one and Spotify. What sucks
Speaker 3: about Spotify's is it's just every song you've ever done.
Speaker 3: They don't curate it. So just when they sent it
Speaker 3: to me, I was honored. I'm like, wow, I get
Speaker 3: like a written by page. But it's four hundred.
Speaker 2: Songs and not all of them are great.
Speaker 3: Not all were great. I mean there are some things
Speaker 3: in there there there there is one song written with
Speaker 3: some Canadian kid who were to name nameless, where I
Speaker 3: turned that thing on. I was like, holy fuck, I
Speaker 3: wrote the worst song ever written. Yeah, and I don't
Speaker 3: know what the protocol is. If I can just take like,
Speaker 3: you know, pull it into Alan Smithy, you know, and
Speaker 3: take my name off it it yeah, just you know
Speaker 3: it never has it just a pseudonym very late in.
Speaker 2: Life, but primes committed by all.
Speaker 3: Right, but he was a train train. So then I
Speaker 3: started writing with let's get it, come on, you're you're
Speaker 3: you're you're really taking.
Speaker 2: Us off course I do, but like I find I was,
Speaker 2: I have more.
Speaker 3: Okay, but here's the thing, my train. So I hook
Speaker 3: up a.
Speaker 2: Train and ask about train but find out talk about
Speaker 2: train drops. Jupiter.
Speaker 3: Let's want to I want I didn't write that, But
Speaker 3: what happens is all these bands.
Speaker 2: Let me let's talk about quest leaft. Yeah, let's just
Speaker 2: talk about questions the whole time. He'll be happy. What
Speaker 2: if he just strolled in right now? What a moment
Speaker 2: that Okay, here is this imposter nice shirt? Yes, so
Speaker 2: he will rocks some floral shit. I sat next to
Speaker 2: him at the moth Galla last year. All right, moth Galla,
Speaker 2: did you tell a story? Fuck you? First of all,
Speaker 2: By the way, I did once, Oh my God with
Speaker 2: Jeff Garland. Oh you want to go deep? You want
Speaker 2: to go deep? Go ahead, you got No.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying, like, honestly, if they didn't ask me
Speaker 3: to speak in the moth gallup, they just they just
Speaker 3: let me sit there. But Questlove is a very good
Speaker 3: looking man, and you know he gets a lot of attention.
Speaker 3: He's like a table one guy. Sure, I'm Table nine, but.
Speaker 2: Like, do you always find it funny when you meet
Speaker 2: somebody who you think is a table who should be
Speaker 2: a table one guy, but they're not cool, and you're
Speaker 2: just like, what what happened to you?
Speaker 3: That's the same thing as when you meet me and
Speaker 3: they think, no, no, did you end up at Table nine?
Speaker 2: Thinks you're cool, Like there's no expectation with him, there's
Speaker 2: like an expectation that you're going to be cool and
Speaker 2: then you are not him. But with some people and
Speaker 2: you meet and you're just like, oh, that's bummer, that's
Speaker 2: not what I thought.
Speaker 3: I find most people cooler than.
Speaker 2: Me percent but you're pretty cool. Moving on, so we're
Speaker 2: post trained, but before we in the train, I feel
Speaker 2: like there's minutia of songwriting that I want to get
Speaker 2: into I love all your accolades. Read the book. He
Speaker 2: talks about all the accolades you chuck, shut up. We
Speaker 2: talk about songwriting all the time. In fact, we write
Speaker 2: songs together, you and me Sam all the time now.
Speaker 2: So having been in a bunch of like writers composer rooms. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And so there's a section in your book about Max
Speaker 2: Martin and the whole synchronicity of Swedish pop and how
Speaker 2: that shit works. And it's another thing that I have
Speaker 2: a lot of, uh that I do, and and the
Speaker 2: way that they work and how that happens is a thing, right,
Speaker 2: and and so there's a lot there's interesting things in
Speaker 2: your book. And we have talked about this at late
Speaker 2: about like Swedish well that but like songwriters, therapist song like.
Speaker 2: So in my early days when I let's talk about
Speaker 2: me for a second, in my early days, when I
Speaker 2: had a publishing deal, they were like, go to this thing,
Speaker 2: sit in a room with someone you've never listened, you
Speaker 2: don't know anything about, and write a song about car
Speaker 2: washes or whatever the fucking was. And I remember going
Speaker 2: and I was so young and naive, and they had
Speaker 2: paid me five thousand dollars and like taking my whole
Speaker 2: life's earnings, and I was like, cool, I needed I
Speaker 2: couldn't pay rent, so great, take that for a year whatever.
Speaker 2: And I remember feeling so uncomfortable and being like this
Speaker 2: is not what I do, This is not I need
Speaker 2: like alone time, and I can't deal with it, and dada,
Speaker 2: so smash cut. Two years later when I stopped doing
Speaker 2: like the writing sessions, and then I was just like
Speaker 2: producing records or making things. And I find this idea
Speaker 2: go back to stereophonic from last night, Like the producer
Speaker 2: as therapist or psychologist is like I feel like eighty
Speaker 2: percent of the gig man like dealing with the crazy
Speaker 2: and then and then also like having the ability to
Speaker 2: tell so and so the lead singer like actually no,
Speaker 2: like it should be this or like whatever. And there's
Speaker 2: also there's a bonus cut in your thing that says,
Speaker 2: like some of the effect of whether you like it
Speaker 2: or not, the lead singer's always the person that makes
Speaker 2: the decision of the bit right whatever your person that
Speaker 2: is right, which is which is one hundred percent correct,
Speaker 2: Like the bass players not saying shit. The bass players
Speaker 2: in the back like thumping out roots and like loving
Speaker 2: his life and like who cares and he gets laid
Speaker 2: the most. Always the bass player, but like the lead
Speaker 2: singer is always the guy that makes whether he knows
Speaker 2: what he's talking about or not, that's the guy, right.
Speaker 3: Well, writers, one thing I'll say, aspiring writers, if you're
Speaker 3: out there, if you're aspiring songwriter, if you are able
Speaker 3: to permeate this beast of an industry and you get
Speaker 3: a publishing deal and they say to you, hey, you
Speaker 3: know what, we have so and so banned and we
Speaker 3: want you to write with the drummer. You don't do it.
Speaker 2: You just just veto it right away that day and
Speaker 2: they're not going to happen.
Speaker 3: And I have friends who still fall for it, which
Speaker 3: is the craziest thing. People my age you still fall
Speaker 3: for are like, oh my god, it's the drummer from
Speaker 3: blah blah blah. You know, I think I can get
Speaker 3: on the record. No, you can't.
Speaker 2: Nor do you want to look at the credits?
Speaker 3: You know, look who you know who has the keys
Speaker 3: to a project? Yes? To answer what you're saying, you know.
Speaker 2: Like, how do you approach those things? What do you
Speaker 2: have a different mind?
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, it's a speed dating. It's a
Speaker 3: date it's a speed dating. I did it for so
Speaker 3: many years, and you know, I do it less now
Speaker 3: just because I'm probably burned out of the process. But
Speaker 3: for many years I would do two hundred speed dates
Speaker 3: a year where I would get in a room with
Speaker 3: some configuration of people and it's thirty five minutes of
Speaker 3: small talking and trying to bond and you know, sort
Speaker 3: of forge your relationship. And then we have to get
Speaker 3: deep and really like expose some nerves and really figure
Speaker 3: out who we are in the room. And it's interesting
Speaker 3: because when you're writing with their artists. Some days you're
Speaker 3: writing with artists who are incredibly lyrical, which sort of
Speaker 3: falls into my domain. So then I have to shape
Speaker 3: shift immediately in the room because I do not want
Speaker 3: to suppress their thing, and I know I'm smart enough
Speaker 3: not to suppress it. But the flip side is I
Speaker 3: got to figure out how I exist in the room,
Speaker 3: because if I'm just the editor, I don't really feel
Speaker 3: that like I've earned my keep. So it's constantly. The
Speaker 3: adaptability is huge in a room. You know, you have
Speaker 3: to be able to do a lot of different skills
Speaker 3: based on you know, the artists that you're working with
Speaker 3: and many times. Most times the A and R person
Speaker 3: or the publisher whatever won't give you any exposition on
Speaker 3: the person because they don't really know what their creative
Speaker 3: process is. So you can get a room with somebody
Speaker 3: and you think, wow, they write really poetic stuff and
Speaker 3: realize that they don't have any verbal dexterity at all.
Speaker 3: They have nothing, and so you then have to become
Speaker 3: that person instantly. Other days, you know you're writing with
Speaker 3: an artist who you believe is incredibly lyrical and they're
Speaker 3: the best melodic writer you've ever seen, but maybe they
Speaker 3: don't do the things. And in other days they say, oh,
Speaker 3: they don't really have a lot to say, and you're
Speaker 3: sitting with somebody and they write the most profound shit.
Speaker 3: I wrote a song with a sixteen year old kid
Speaker 3: from London named James t w and a great writer
Speaker 3: named Nolan Sipe. It's about nine years ago. We wrote
Speaker 3: the song called what You Loved Someone, and it was
Speaker 3: written from the perspective of parents coming home and telling
Speaker 3: their child that they were getting divorced, and it's sort
Speaker 3: of all the fallout from that. This is not a
Speaker 3: fun song. I would tell you it's probably the best
Speaker 3: song I've ever written. Really yeah, and it's a huge song,
Speaker 3: like globally huge song, seven hundred million streams. I'm like,
Speaker 3: that's a big tune. But what's interesting about it is
Speaker 3: Nolan and I, who are both pros with a lot
Speaker 3: of hits, we didn't come up with that topic. The
Speaker 3: sixteen year old did.
Speaker 2: Really, he guided it.
Speaker 3: We just like then wrote the song, but it was
Speaker 3: his vision and he really guided it, and you know,
Speaker 3: and his melodies were beautiful and he had some really
Speaker 3: great lines, and also he's a great guitarist. But there
Speaker 3: was no exposition with that. No one ever said to me, Hey,
Speaker 3: when you get in the room with the sixteen year
Speaker 3: old kid, he's gonna write the most profound shit of
Speaker 3: your career. It's like, you don't know. And so the
Speaker 3: number one skill as a songwriter and an aspiring writer
Speaker 3: at any level is to read a room. And reading
Speaker 3: a room is priceless, and if you don't have that ability,
Speaker 3: it's going to be hard to be a collaborator because
Speaker 3: you have to know when at the foot on the
Speaker 3: gas and you have to know when to slam on
Speaker 3: the brakes and just get out of the way, and
Speaker 3: it changes every single day. So That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: You never get to a place of comfort with it
Speaker 3: because if you are going with the same, if you're
Speaker 3: going if you're treating it with some sort of repetition
Speaker 3: every single day, doing the same routine, it won't work.
Speaker 3: You're dealing with different especially and you're on a treadmill
Speaker 3: of sessions. And then the biggest mind fuck of all
Speaker 3: is that you can write something that you believe is
Speaker 3: absolutely game changing, but you still have that awful voice
Speaker 3: in the back of your head that says, tomorrow, this
Speaker 3: person's writing with a whole new configuration, and they're younger,
Speaker 3: and they're hot, and they are, you know, having their moment,
Speaker 3: and he's going to fall in love with that grouping
Speaker 3: because they're cooler, and they'll end up getting maybe the
Speaker 3: single or the cut that even though you really feel
Speaker 3: like you wrote the most powerful shit ever, it just
Speaker 3: messes with your head all day long.
Speaker 2: You're like a lyric first guy always, And I know
Speaker 2: for a fact that guys like Max Martin are melody
Speaker 2: first guys. So but like both of you have written
Speaker 2: hits and for totally different reasons. He's written more, sure,
Speaker 2: he has, and he's written a ton and he would
Speaker 2: if he was here, he would have something.
Speaker 3: To say about this. But whatever, Well he's better than me.
Speaker 2: No, God, why this is not a competition. It is
Speaker 2: a competition. It is a fucking competition.
Speaker 3: He's Max Martin, but like, but.
Speaker 2: Like with Max, he always talking about Melly, right, So
Speaker 2: it's Mellody, million, Mellion, Melly, and I feel like his
Speaker 2: disciples are melliy million Melldy. And you live in more
Speaker 2: of like the this is shitt example Bob Dylan lyrical world.
Speaker 2: And I think that that's so interesting because at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, a fucking hit is a hit.
Speaker 2: So like you've written a hit, he's written hit. I've
Speaker 2: been on the same charts in different places. But like,
Speaker 2: why is it that?
Speaker 3: Because like, why is it that his songs are bigger?
Speaker 3: Because because he's better, because he's why let's start there. No,
Speaker 3: but what I would say is one thing I would
Speaker 3: say is.
Speaker 2: But how can you have that different approach and still
Speaker 2: have the same outcome?
Speaker 3: I guess, well, melody is king, right, So I've been
Speaker 3: with you, it's not with me. But I think maybe
Speaker 3: I'm lucky because truthfully, at this point, melody supersedes everything.
Speaker 3: The one thing that helps me lyrically is I'm pretty conceptual,
Speaker 3: So songs like you know a check Yes, Juliet, or
Speaker 3: one of these things that sneaks through one of these
Speaker 3: like quirky hand clap, handclaps, A pretty quirky little tune,
Speaker 3: you know, might be the biggest song in my career
Speaker 3: might be And it's a it's a quirky little number,
Speaker 3: and it didn't come from a melodic place. It came
Speaker 3: from a lyrical place. I mean that was based on like,
Speaker 3: you know, that's a there's a real shape to what
Speaker 3: I wrote there, and there was a reason for it.
Speaker 3: And then fits really stepped in and with that, you know,
Speaker 3: the crazy blown out horn sample thing. And when we
Speaker 3: wrote that thing, it was obvious that it was very unique.
Speaker 3: But that's a that's that's the kind of record that
Speaker 3: I love because it's it's kind of a morphous I
Speaker 3: don't really know what hand clap is. It's not really alternative,
Speaker 3: it's not really pop, I don't know what is. It's
Speaker 3: kind of weird. And those are my favorite tunes. The
Speaker 3: quirky ones are the things that I really react to
Speaker 3: because they're a little bit off, because that's where no
Speaker 3: one can fuck with me. Like, if I'm trying to
Speaker 3: write something that's hyper melodic, there's like an entire country
Speaker 3: of Sweden that can outright me.
Speaker 2: So it's not a big country.
Speaker 3: I just so I know that lyric and concept is
Speaker 3: going to be the place that I can enter the
Speaker 3: building first and then you know, just sort of piece
Speaker 3: it together to the best of my ability. But that's
Speaker 3: my that's my greatest skill, you know. But you're right
Speaker 3: in terms of we all can end up in the
Speaker 3: same place. But what's interesting is a guy like Max
Speaker 3: and some of these writers who are so blessed melodically,
Speaker 3: they can kind of hit it every time out because
Speaker 3: they just hear things that other people don't hear. For me,
Speaker 3: it's a little harder because I have to these concepts
Speaker 3: have to be really unique to me and really and
Speaker 3: they have to sort of hit beat that I feel
Speaker 3: like are just so uniquely me that maybe it'll raise
Speaker 3: its hand. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So we've been talking for a long time and we
Speaker 2: can stop at any time. But I have two more
Speaker 2: questions that I think are important ominaries. I'm a sagittari.
Speaker 3: Okay, so is my wife? See sort of explains it all.
Speaker 2: It's all coming very cleared out, all right, So I
Speaker 2: have two questions.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 2: My first question is because people ask me this, like
Speaker 2: do you know when you have a hit? I know
Speaker 2: that's like such a generic question, but I feel like
Speaker 2: it's important because I do. Sometimes you're like, in my
Speaker 2: so's I'll talk about me for a second. Sometimes I
Speaker 2: feel like I fucking killed it, and then I'll send
Speaker 2: it to whoever sent it and they're like, this is
Speaker 2: the worst. Sometimes I'll write what I believe is the
Speaker 2: biggest piece of shit of all time and they'll be like,
Speaker 2: it's fucking genius, and I don't and and I've been
Speaker 2: doing this for not as long as you have, but
Speaker 2: long enough, and I still don't know, And like, to me,
Speaker 2: that's a little bit of the excitement that I still
Speaker 2: can't fucking figure this out. After thirty years, twenty five
Speaker 2: years of doing this, I still can't figure out. I
Speaker 2: should be able to fit, but I still can't.
Speaker 3: I definitely know, you know, one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: Okay, because I asked Max the same question and he
Speaker 2: we were talking about how great he is. He's like,
Speaker 2: everything to him is super subjective. So it's always just
Speaker 2: like I don't know. It's how I felt that day,
Speaker 2: like why'd you write this? No? No, how I felt that
Speaker 2: day like there's no I think. I think there's an
Speaker 2: idea that there's like a math and a science to it,
Speaker 2: and I think some of it is. But I think
Speaker 2: a lot of it, more so than you would think,
Speaker 2: is super subjective, where it's just like can I say something, yes, sorry,
Speaker 2: I'm talking a lot. Fuck that guy all high and
Speaker 2: low here quest Love Supreme starring Bill had said this
Speaker 2: is what this is What I would say.
Speaker 3: Is I get the you know, I get a galvanic
Speaker 3: response sort of it happens. There's certain songs where I
Speaker 3: just instantly the chills start.
Speaker 2: Like handclap. Did you know one hundred percent? You did
Speaker 2: one hundred percent? Of course you said those songs are
Speaker 2: fucking awesome, you dick? All right?
Speaker 3: You know Someone to You by Banners a song that
Speaker 3: nobody really heard. We heard, Steve Day and our guy heard.
Speaker 3: I don't even know if if Mike the artist heard,
Speaker 3: but I was convinced that Someone to You by Banners
Speaker 3: the second it left the room. I was like, man,
Speaker 3: I just think I wrote a perfect song, like as
Speaker 3: good as I can get I believed everything about the
Speaker 3: song would work. Everything was stacked against this song. It
Speaker 3: took five and a half years for it to break.
Speaker 3: It'll be at a billion streams in a year. It's
Speaker 3: a big song. And the truth is I knew it
Speaker 3: the second this kid left the room. And this is
Speaker 3: like a young artist who you know, was at the
Speaker 3: stage in his career where I don't know if he
Speaker 3: could sell out of Starbucks yet, but I knew the
Speaker 3: song was perfect. And they're just all you need to
Speaker 3: There's certain songs, you know. You know I knew check, yes, Julia,
Speaker 3: it was going to be huge. I know there's just
Speaker 3: certain ones along the way. You know, I could pinpoint
Speaker 3: you know that. I definitely wait for Superman by Docot
Speaker 3: would be a big song. They're just songs where we
Speaker 3: leave the room and I think, wow, this is a
Speaker 3: big this just works. I can see it sort of.
Speaker 2: And was it like a chill thing because that happens
Speaker 2: to me from time to time where it's like you
Speaker 2: hear something you're like, oh, I can't not trust my body.
Speaker 2: Having a completely out.
Speaker 3: Of band cloud, high Hopes, Check Ustruliat, all three of them.
Speaker 2: Yes, Yeah, I believe that absolutely.
Speaker 3: And also the Banner song, and also that James c.
Speaker 3: W ballad. I left there and I thought to myself, Okay,
Speaker 3: when you love someone, it's like a mid tempo e ballad.
Speaker 3: It doesn't really have a pulse and it's not a
Speaker 3: rhythmic record. I have no idea who's going to play
Speaker 3: this thing. And it's the best song I've ever written.
Speaker 3: It's gonna get heard, and it did. And people find things.
Speaker 3: Sometimes people find things that are pretty good. Doesn't happen
Speaker 3: a lot now there's so much content out there. It's harder.
Speaker 3: But sometimes if something actually you know, and trust me,
Speaker 3: everything I do isn't that good, But every once in
Speaker 3: a while one of them is. And I like to
Speaker 3: believe there are very few that I think people really
Speaker 3: slept on, do you know what I mean. I don't
Speaker 3: look back. I don't have that catalog full of songs
Speaker 3: where I think, oh, this should have been, should have
Speaker 3: been if they if they weren't hits, it's usually a
Speaker 3: reason they weren't.
Speaker 2: Is there one song you wish you had written?
Speaker 3: Changes daily?
Speaker 2: I love that's your answer.
Speaker 3: It really changes daily. I think the you know, I think,
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, best of my Love
Speaker 3: by the Emotions is a song. I think that's the
Speaker 3: to me, that's the most perfect record I can think of.
Speaker 3: Or September by earth Wind and Fire, both of those
Speaker 3: Alley willis earth Wind and Fire. One thing about both
Speaker 3: of those songs, is it Morey's white? Is they got
Speaker 3: feel good? Right? I like feel good records. I like
Speaker 3: music that's uplifting and feels good. You know, I've only
Speaker 3: had two ballads work in my entire life. When labels
Speaker 3: call and say, oh, this just needs a ballad for
Speaker 3: this record, I tell them to call somebody else because
Speaker 3: I'm not that good. I like feel good, and I
Speaker 3: do it because it probably I'm creating natural dopamine for
Speaker 3: all my low's. I want to make music that balance
Speaker 3: is how dark I can get.
Speaker 2: It turns out yeah, pretty dark.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's like that. That's how I that's what
Speaker 3: I need to get to to keep my sanity. And
Speaker 3: so records, those those classics that do that thing are
Speaker 3: so beyond my capability, and I do my versions of
Speaker 3: them and they're never on one hundredth is good and
Speaker 3: just that those are the records. So basically I want
Speaker 3: to be more white. I think I've just learned.
Speaker 2: I mean could be worse. All right, sorry, Uh Sam
Speaker 2: has to receive a phone call from Carol King.
Speaker 3: Uh Hi, hold on a second, Hi, please let it
Speaker 3: be Carol wrapping up. Hold on, it's my daughters.
Speaker 2: Your daughter, my daughter, she's good. Okay, No, no.
Speaker 3: Don't you know called me in the car once. That
Speaker 3: was a great flex. Ringo calls in the car. Fuck yeah,
Speaker 3: I got Ringo calls. And the one that I'd say
Speaker 3: is Ringo called in the car one day and I
Speaker 3: was driving around with it here. This is like the
Speaker 3: name drop of all name drops.
Speaker 2: Is it Ringo? Please say?
Speaker 3: Oh my god, no, it's my you know love this.
Speaker 3: This is what my life's devolved to. Is my parking.
Speaker 3: My parking expires in ten minutes in not Grisco, New York.
Speaker 3: Just important factory. But right now fun fight, definitely not.
Speaker 3: But one thing I'll tell you about Ringo is it
Speaker 3: took me like five years to even get his phone number.
Speaker 3: And we you know, we wrote a bunch of songs
Speaker 3: and finally I hit him up. I was like, Dad,
Speaker 3: you gotta give me your phone number. And he's like,
Speaker 3: I'm not giving you my fucking number. And I was like, okay,
Speaker 3: because I'll give you like the landline in our house
Speaker 3: that goes to an answer machine. Neither I'll call you
Speaker 3: back or I won't.
Speaker 2: Like Bill Murray, Yes, it was very Bill Murray, but
Speaker 2: you know, truthfully, I did it because I'm desperate.
Speaker 3: So one night I left on a message and then
Speaker 3: I flew down to Florida and I'm driving around Florida.
Speaker 3: You're gonna dig this flex. It's me, my my brother's
Speaker 3: brother in law, Peter and Bill Cower, ex coach of
Speaker 3: the Hall of Fame, coach of the Lisburgs Dealers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jesus. And we're driving home with cousin Jake. Who's
Speaker 2: fucking cousin Jake?
Speaker 3: How about this visual? So we're riding around, it's Cower
Speaker 3: and Peter and the phone rings and answer it and
Speaker 3: I hear, hey, you don't think you help him in?
Speaker 3: And I do do, and I just go right to
Speaker 3: speaker with it with no exposition. I'm like, what's up, man,
Speaker 3: what do you got? He's like, what are you doing?
Speaker 3: And I just see both of their faces sort of
Speaker 3: do that thing, and I go, hey, Ringo, say how
Speaker 3: to coach Bill and Peter. It's a true story, and
Speaker 3: Ringo definitely. I didn't. You know, I didn't go further
Speaker 3: on coach Bill or Peter.
Speaker 2: What's on your phone? Did it say Ringo?
Speaker 3: No? So the thing about it is he he's one
Speaker 3: of those people who comes with one of the block
Speaker 3: numbers or whatever. Yeah, so it says, and so I
Speaker 3: think that's either there's only three people I know who
Speaker 3: have that. It's Ringo, my friend Matt Nathanson, and another flex.
Speaker 2: Those are very different people.
Speaker 3: You've never seen them in the same room, and.
Speaker 2: Nor would you ever Why would bring gooing Matt.
Speaker 3: Nathan ever go Matt Nathanson and my brother Ben. My
Speaker 3: brother Ben calls for one of those numbers too, So
Speaker 3: how do.
Speaker 2: You answer it? FBI, He's just he's a very covert fella,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: But I would say so somewhere, So I answered it.
Speaker 3: It happened to be Ringo. And that was a great
Speaker 3: reveal for everyone in the car. Okay, that's all I got,
Speaker 3: you know, the good folks. I just want to I
Speaker 3: want to thank him here. That was honestly, thank you.
Speaker 2: I'd get so much for this. This might hey, Jake,
Speaker 2: this might be my last and only podcast.
Speaker 3: Can we just say one thing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Cop Rock cop Rock.
Speaker 3: Why is ninety Stephen Botchko one season replacement?
Speaker 2: Sam Hollander, You the king of the name dropped like Minutia.
Speaker 3: You know it was a great mid season replacement.
Speaker 2: Who what?
Speaker 3: Manimal? Google? Manimal?
Speaker 2: What was that?
Speaker 3: Y'all weren't born yet? But if you know Manimal?
Speaker 2: How old are you really?
Speaker 3: Uh? Well, we say so far? Twenty eight ninety four?
Speaker 2: Pie carry the one.
Speaker 3: You're Honestly, a lot of people would say seven.
Speaker 2: You're fifty? Your what fifty two?
Speaker 3: I don't know what that is? What is a fifty? Wow?
Speaker 2: Old are you really?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: You look like you piloted Jimmy Buffett's boat.
Speaker 3: She should look like should look like me and Jack
Speaker 3: Klugman at the racetrack, you know, ponies in nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 2: I think collectively that you and I look like Stafford
Speaker 2: and Waldorf from the fucking Muppets, and we could probably
Speaker 2: be them when we get a little bit older or
Speaker 2: for you.
Speaker 3: Not old for me, for you, just man for me
Speaker 3: growing down?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, it looks like you run a teaky bar
Speaker 2: in Marathon.
Speaker 3: Key. Look here's the thing. I'm a festive guys. I
Speaker 3: think you've noticed and I'm spirited. I'm joyous until i'm not.
Speaker 2: You look like you celebrate Hanukkah three hundred and sixties
Speaker 2: in Margarita Ville. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much
Speaker 2: for listening to me and Sam talk about songwriting and
Speaker 2: our lives and Judaism and all those things. Okay, I'll
Speaker 2: leave it this because I look, we've known each other
Speaker 2: a while. I don't read books. I read your whole
Speaker 2: fucking book, Sam, and I feel like you need to
Speaker 2: understand that that's a big deal.
Speaker 3: Let me tell you something.
Speaker 2: But hold on, No, no, you talked a lot. I'm talking,
Speaker 2: so then it is your interview. But who cares. Okay,
Speaker 2: there's a great there's a great line where you're giving
Speaker 2: with one of your bonus cut tracks, whatever the hell
Speaker 2: you call it. You wrote you write stay Wild and
Speaker 2: stay Weird, And I feel like that hit home for me.
Speaker 2: The reason is is because I think that that's important.
Speaker 2: Like if there's anything I've learned from Sam, it's like
Speaker 2: he's a true original. He doesn't succumb to any of
Speaker 2: the bullshit, and he does Sam, and I feel like that,
Speaker 2: in addition to this shirt is like really sums the
Speaker 2: whole thing up, and I think that if you want
Speaker 2: to leave anything here, personally speaking, I want to leave
Speaker 2: with that, and I think that that's a good moment.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Sam Hollander, You're a fucking legend
Speaker 2: to say whatever you want.
Speaker 3: It's a Paul Smith shirt.
Speaker 2: It costs so much money in addition to my customs,
Speaker 2: Ford Broncos and all of this in Bedford Hills.
Speaker 3: Can I say something, can say something? Yes, yes, go ahead.
Speaker 3: Here's what I would say. The most important thing I
Speaker 3: want to say about stay wild and stay weird.
Speaker 2: I thought so that should be your shirt.
Speaker 4: You know, market What I believe, I truly believe this
Speaker 4: is if you are blessed enough to do this with
Speaker 4: your life professionally, and you catch some breaks and you
Speaker 4: actually get to, you know, turn some of these weird
Speaker 4: fucking dreams and realities.
Speaker 3: It should never be lost on you how crazy it is.
Speaker 3: And don't conform. If you ever were able to permeate
Speaker 3: the system as an outsider, I was the ultimate outsider.
Speaker 3: I didn't want to play with inside the lines. I mean, honestly,
Speaker 3: I'm so unfiltered, and usually you're punished for that. But thankfully,
Speaker 3: the music business if you have any success, you're actually
Speaker 3: rewarded for it, which is crazy. And so what I've
Speaker 3: learned in all these years of doing it is I just, honestly,
Speaker 3: I trust my own weird little inner mechanisms. I chase
Speaker 3: whatever I chase, and I'm just I don't have the
Speaker 3: best time possible doing it because I still wake up
Speaker 3: every fucking day and I can't even believe that I
Speaker 3: got to do this in my life because there were
Speaker 3: not a lot of other options.
Speaker 2: Take it from us, two lawyers, Thank you, goodnight, thank you,
Speaker 2: thank you for listening to Quest Love Supreme. This podcast
Speaker 2: is hosted by Mere Quest Love Thompson, Liyah Saint, Clair Sugar,
Speaker 2: Steve Mandel, and myself unpaid Bill Schrman. The executive producers
Speaker 2: are Meir just walked into the Goddamn room, Thompson, Sean
Speaker 2: g and Brian Calhoun. Produced by Brittany Benjamin, Jake Paine
Speaker 2: and Liahs Sinclair. Edited by Alex Conroy I Know Alex Conroy.
Speaker 2: Produced for iHeart by Noel Brown.
Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Speaker 1: Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,