Rick Beato: Greatest Guitarists of All Time, History & Future of Music | Lex Fridman Podcast #492

You had an incredibly fun and diverse beginning to your music journey. I heard somewhere that one of the things that made you fall in love with music was listening to guitar solos—some epic guitar solos. What's an early guitar solo that you remember connecting to spiritually or musically, where you thought, "Wow, there's magic in this"?

The first solo that I learned was "Hey Joe." It was actually a good beginner song when I first started playing guitar because it has pretty simple chords. It's E, C, G, D, A. I learned the solo, and I figured out this pentatonic scale—the E minor pentatonic scale. I didn't know that's what it was called, but I learned this thing and thought, "Whoa, he's just in this one shape here."

There was no way to look anything up. If you could figure out the notes, you noticed that there was a little pattern to it. I got so obsessed with it, and I showed my younger brother John, who started playing guitar right at the same time I did. I was 14, and he was 11. I would play rhythm for him for 5 minutes while he would solo over "Hey Joe." As soon as I'd start soloing, he'd throw the guitar down, and then we'd get in a fight.

My mom eventually said, "What is going on here?" I said, "John won't play rhythm for me." She said, "Okay, I'll play rhythm for you. What are the chords?" I said, "It's E, C, G, D, A." My mom would literally play rhythm for 20 minutes while I'd play.

That's awesome.

Hashtag parenting.

That's amazing. When I look back on it now, my mom's been gone for 10 years now. When I look back on it, it's like, "My God, my parents were so cool."

We should mention that "Hey Joe," and Hendrix in general, is kind of known for the rhythm not being simple rhythm, just the chords that you mentioned. It's what you do with those chords. It's almost improvisation, the rhythm side.

He did all those really cool chord fragments, riffs, and things like that, that's just part of his... That's the Hendrix style.

What do you think? I mean, many people put Hendrix as the greatest guitarist of all time. What do you think is part of that?

You know, I make lists.

You do. If you somehow don't know who Rick Beato is, go on YouTube right now and watch your excellent interviews with musicians, your breakdown analyses of different songs, and your top-20 lists, where you're very opinionated and sometimes openly critical about certain kinds of songs. It's fun. Opinions are fun.

But they do change, Lex, from day to day.

Yeah, exactly.

Whenever I do a list, if I do 20, I like to do 20 because that gives me some leeway. I have to throw in something that is so weird that people won't know it, just to have it on there. I can at least introduce somebody. I'll put somebody like Allan Holdsworth, who's a famous fusion guitar player. I'll throw in one of his solos or something—some oddball solo in there—so that people, as they're listening down the list, will get exposed to something they wouldn't necessarily get exposed to.

Yeah, a lot of variety. But Hendrix—did you show up here today, Rick, to try to tell me that Hendrix is not up there? I'm just getting that vibe right now.

No, I'm not. But I don't want to say "greatest." There are people who inspired Jimi Hendrix—older guitar players. Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt were the first two really big ones, and probably Andrés Segovia as well. They were three of the giants of the 20th century as far as guitar influences for most of the players who followed.

So, going to Perplexity, Django Reinhardt was, of course, a jazz guitarist and composer, active mainly in France, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest guitarists in jazz history.

Django was part of a huge movement right now, Gypsy Jazz, as they call it, that is built around the style of music he played back in the early 20th century. One of the things about Django is that he was in a fire, and 2 of his fingers—his third and fourth fingers, his ring finger and pinky—were essentially melted together. He had no use of them, although he could use them while he was chording. But in a lot of these incredibly fast lines, he's just playing with 2 fingers. It's amazing.

What is that? That's Gypsy Jazz?

That's Gypsy Jazz, yeah. Stéphane Grappelli was a violinist who played with him a lot.

How much of this is improvisation?

Everything he's doing there is improvised.

It feels so free and fun, like swing. You said it was pre-bebop. Bebop was a kind of jazz that was also influential on you in your own life journey. It's this complicated, legendary kind of jazz that was very influential on the music that followed. So what was bebop?

After the big bands were happening from the '20s through the '40s, people would go out and play in small groups that they would tour with. Charlie Parker, who's really one of the main figures of early bebop, developed the language of it.

Usually, the music they were playing over consisted of standard chord progressions that they would use as vehicles to improvise over. A lot of them were in an AABA form. Charlie Parker created a language of improvisation that was far more sophisticated than the swing players of the big-band era. Think of people like Benny Goodman from that era. They would have really fast-tempo songs, angular lines, chromaticism, and things like that—chromatic notes.

Chromatic notes are just notes next to each other on the keyboard.

Next to each other, yeah.

I like to think of them as connecting notes. You're putting in more notes than are supposed to be there and, in doing so, creating some interesting texture.

Yeah. It's one of the most difficult styles to master because all these things are languages. Blues playing—they're all just languages, right? It's like learning any type of language.

My dad loved bebop. When I was a little kid and he was listening to these bebop records—whether it was Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson, or Joe Pass, the great jazz guitar player—I was just hearing this stuff. I didn't know any different. My dad was not a musician, but for some reason he liked incredibly sophisticated, very technical music. I just heard it and thought, "Oh, yeah, okay, cool."

I didn't realize that it was developing my ear. Bebop is one of the hardest styles and languages to improvise in. It's very difficult to do. Hearing it as a kid is one of the things that I think enables you to learn it, just like languages, as opposed to somebody who's never been exposed to it and tries to learn it as a teenager.

I think it's very similar to learning languages, which is also my theory on perfect pitch: Every child is born with perfect pitch. They start to lose the ability around 9 months, when babies become culture-bound listeners. They start out as citizens of the world. They have the neural pathways to hear the sounds—the phonemes—of all 6,500 languages spoken on Earth. But around 9 months, they begin to lose that ability and become culture-bound listeners.

There's a great YouTube video with a woman named Patricia Kuhl. She's a language researcher. I watched this lecture that she did, "The Linguistic Genius of Babies," in 2010. It was like a TED Talk, and she talked about this experiment. They exposed children to Mandarin 3 times a week for 25-minute sessions, just having a person speak Mandarin to these babies. The babies were able to recognize the sounds, the phonemes of that language, even later on.

When I realized that my son Dylan had perfect pitch, I thought, "Why does Dylan have perfect pitch when no one in my family had ever had perfect pitch?" I thought, "It must be because of the things I exposed him to prenatally and then in the first 9 months of his life." That's the only way I could explain it.

We're going to return to Joe Pass, but we have to go to Dylan. You mentioned Dylan. I guess that's in part one of the origin stories of you putting videos out into the world—the early videos you did with Dylan, a set of videos on his perfect pitch. For people who don't know, maybe you can speak to what perfect pitch means.

It's the ability to identify any note without a reference tone. You can play a note, and it doesn't matter how quickly they are. A person with perfect pitch can hear a note and immediately identify it—or a collection of notes.

Taking a tangent upon a tangent, you also have a course on ear training.

Yes, but my course is for relative pitch.

Relative pitch.

Not to be confused with perfect pitch.

Is it fair to say that relative pitch, as far as the thing you would learn, is more useful—

Yes.

—for musicians?

Yes.

Can you explain the difference between the two?

Relative pitch is basically learning how to identify pitches relative to a stated tonic or something that you've heard, or just relative to each other.

If you hear a note and then hear another note after it, you can recognize, let’s say, that it’s a minor third interval. So if you’re on the note A, the next note would be C. Once you’re given a reference note, you can use relative pitch to identify the relationship from one pitch to another.

And, of course, intervals make up scales, and intervals make up chords—

Chords, yup.

—and so, if you develop relative pitch to any degree, you can understand and hear the music better.

Yes.

What does it take—since we’re taking a tangent on a tangent—what’s the TL;DR on the course before people go out and sign up?

It’s just practice, basically. You start with intervals, typically with small intervals like a minor second and a major second. A minor second would be a half-step, and a major second would be a whole step.

Are you listening to the tones one after the other, or two of them together?

Both. Played separately, they’re called melodic intervals, like a melody. Harmonic intervals are played together, like a harmony. You have to be able to identify them both ways.

What’s an ear training journey? Give people a preview of what they should expect. What does practice look like?

My course will play you an interval, and then you identify it by clicking on whether it’s a major third, minor third, major sixth, minor sixth, perfect fifth, tritone, or whatever it is. It will gradually teach you, over time, how to recognize all the intervals.

So you listen to a melodic interval or a harmonic interval. How quickly does the ear, in the various age groups that we humans are in, learn the different intervals? Is it a week, 2 weeks, a month, 2 months, or 5 years?

I think you can do it pretty quickly. Within a couple of months, if you practice daily, you can make a lot of progress.

What benefit does it have to you as a musician in general?

It’s great if you want to hear a chord progression when you’re trying to figure out a song. You can say, “Oh, that’s going from the 6 minor chord, or the 4 major, to the 5 major, to the 1 major.” You can identify it immediately. Then you figure out what the first chord is, and you know what the rest of the chords are because they’re in relation to that first chord.

It’s also useful for learning solos or melodies, and for being able to sound something out.

Do you recommend people couple that with music theory in terms of their education journey?

They have to be taught together because these terms are really music theory, right? Those intervals—major second, minor second, major third, minor third, perfect fourth—are music theory. As you’re doing that, once you learn the 12 intervals in an octave, you learn them both melodically and harmonically, played separately and together.

Then you learn chords, so you learn to identify major, minor, diminished, augmented, suspended, and other chords. You’re basically learning music theory at the same time because music theory is just the names of things in music.

So there’s the sound of things, there’s the name of things, and then there’s the haptic component—playing the thing, probably. Playing chords, playing scales. You have courses on scales and chords?

Right.

Okay. Since we’re doing the tangent, let’s go. There are a bunch of people listening to this who are curious about how they can start playing guitar, maybe even piano, and maybe other instruments. Although guitar, of course, is the greatest instrument of all time. What are the early steps of that journey? What do you recommend people do in general?

If you’re a beginner, get a good beginner guitar course and learn, first of all, the open chords in first position. A lot of songs can be played that way. A lot of old songs can be played that way, although maybe not necessarily new, modern songs.

So you learn a few chords with an eye toward maybe playing a song?

Yeah. You learn the chord shapes, and you learn how to strum basic patterns to begin with. I think the first thing when learning guitar is actually learning how to position your fingers so that you don’t mute strings that you don’t want to mute. That’s basically the hardest thing for people to do: getting their fingers arched to where they... If you're playing a C major chord, your index finger's on the first fret of the B string, and you have to have that open E string ringing there. And it's hard for people to make those microadjustments.

You take it for granted, like you’ve been playing guitar for—I don’t know how many years. Forever, right?

Forever, yeah.

And you don’t even think about stuff like that when you’re playing a guitar solo.

Every little thing that you do when you’re playing your “Comfortably Numb” guitar solo, you have to strike the string that your finger is on to play the note. These are all fine adjustments that you’re making.

I’m just a hobbyist, recreational player, but wow, you’re taking me all the way back. You’re right—the haptic, physical aspect of it is really tricky. “Comfortably Numb” is a good example, but if you do lead, you have to get a super-clean sound. When you’re playing fast, you want it to be super precise, but when you play slowly, with one note that you’re holding and bending, it better be really clean.

I guess you have to place the finger in the right place. There are also the calluses, so it doesn’t hurt, and the positioning of the string on the curvature of the finger. Where does it fall? How much do you bend the finger?

You have to have enough flesh on it to actually raise the string and raise the pitch. Otherwise—

Yeah, because you’re lifting it with part of the flesh. Of course, you also have to decide, depending on how OCD you are, whether you want to be the perfect, proper musician, or whether you want to do a Hendrix—put your thumb over the top.

Way over the top, yes.

If you have a fretboard here, the more classical guitarists have a very proper, perfect, perpendicular alignment of the fingertips to the fretboard, versus Hendrix saying, “Fuck it, you nerds. I’m going to do it.” The messiness is part of the magic.

B.B. King is also kind of messy-looking in terms of his finger positioning, but his tone is incredibly clean.

Yes, super clean.

That teaches you that maybe any position can converge toward a super-clean tone. You just have to figure it out.

I think a lot of it has to do with how they wear their guitars. If you wear your guitar low—if you’re Hendrix and you’re wearing your guitar lower—then you can’t get your fingers on top of it like that. The thumb acts as a way to mute the lower strings from ringing if you’re playing through a loud amplifier.

There are so many other micro-adjustments when you’re playing leads because you have to mute the other strings so they don’t ring out.

That’s true.

If you’re playing the first note in the “Comfortably Numb” solo at the end, and you’re at the ninth fret of the G string, and you bend that G string, you don’t want to accidentally hit the B string under it and have that ring. You have to angle your index finger to—

To mute.

—to mute that. All these micro-adjustments that you don’t even think about—I mean, you’re not thinking about that, Lex, when you’re playing it. You’ve done it so many times that these things are just part of your brain. That’s why this is such a great brain developer for kids learning instruments.

Yeah, of course. You have to solve that puzzle. It must be really frustrating in the beginning, holding a chord. All of them. It hurts, too, right?

It does hurt.

If you’re playing acoustic guitar.

Not for that long, though. For about a week.

A couple of weeks, yeah.

A couple of weeks.

A couple.

I don’t want to discourage anyone. It’s actually pretty easy to learn the basic stuff.

Right, but the pain is temporary, I guess, is the point I’m trying to make.

It is.

So what else? You have the physical component and play a few chords. Where does the journey continue if you’re learning guitar?

If you play electric guitar, then you get into single-note playing and things like that. That’s where it gets really fun to me. You have single-note playing with riffs. If you think of “Back in Black,” it has a riff embedded in the actual melody.

Many songs have riffs. The Hendrix stuff has chordal riffs, and you’re moving up the neck, involving all the fingers and things like that. It really depends on what styles you want to play.

So you’re thinking about learning songs and the different components of song learning: riffs in songs, lead in songs—

Then you have fingerpicking. If you have “Stairway to Heaven,” songs like that, wanting to learn it involves fingerpicking because you have to isolate certain notes of the chord and play 2 together, multiple times.

There are a few crossroads where you get to select things. I guess you’re speaking to the fact that, if you’re right-handed, there’s a right hand where you can use your fingers or a pick.

Correct.

And that’s a choice you make.

Sometimes you use both because in “Stairway to Heaven,” you’re using your fingers at the beginning—or fingers and a pick. That’s called hybrid picking. Later on, you’re using the pick to flat-pick the picking patterns.

On the music theory front, do you recommend people learn scales and chords and the theory of it?

Later on, I would say. I wouldn't say necessarily right off the bat. I think learning songs is the first thing that you should do because you want to keep people motivated.

So you get them to fall in love with music and playing?

Yes.

All right. And that takes a couple of months, 3 months?

Depends on how motivated they are.

So you recommend practicing every day?

Every day. My son, Dylan, when he started learning the guitar a couple of years ago, I said, "It's better to practice 10 minutes a day, 7 days a week than to practice 1 day for an hour, which is roughly the same amount of time."

Yeah, but it usually turns into something longer. Otherwise, if you're living a busy life, taking a day off turns into a week, and then a week turns into a month, and all of a sudden you haven't touched the instrument for months. Which is why I leave my guitar on a stand all the time, so that if I walk by it, I'm like, "Oh, okay, I'll just pick it up for a second." Then that second turns into 10 minutes, and an hour, and 2 hours.

All right, we have to talk about this Dylan video. So this might be one of the earliest—

That's the first one.

That's the first video on the channel.

It was actually before the channel, because this blew up on Facebook—

Facebook.

—and then I put it on YouTube afterward.

So, if it's okay?

Yeah. Okay, Dylan, we're going to do the hardest ear training test of all time. Are you ready?

Dylan Beato

Ready.

Oh. Now, just a quick backstory on this. I made this for my friend Shane's wife, who wanted to see it, because Shane was a friend I was producing. He was there, and Dylan had come down that day, and I said, "Oh, check this out." I played this stuff, and he said, "That's amazing. Can you make a video so I can show my wife?"

I was on my way to a school board meeting, because I was on the school board at Dylan's school, and I said, "Hey, Dylan, come downstairs. I want to make this video. It'll take 1 minute. I just need to do this thing for my friend Shane." He said, "I don't want to." I said, "Come on, this'll take 1 minute." He said, "I don't want to."

So I said to my wife, "Nina, would you tell Dylan to come downstairs? I want to do this video. It'll take 1 minute." She's like, "Dylan, go downstairs." He has a mouthful of candy there because he was eating candy. If you look at him, he literally has a mouthful of candy while he's doing this.

And we should say, on Facebook it went quite viral.

Yeah, it got—I don't know—80 million views. Something like that. It had around 250,000 comments. Something like that. Insane.

How old is Dylan here?

He's 8.

8 years old?

Yeah.

Can you give some more backstory about how you discovered that Dylan has perfect pitch?

When Dylan was about 2, I was FaceTiming with my brother Jon, and I said, "Check this out, Jon." I played Neal Schon's solo in "Stone in Love" by Journey, and Dylan would sing along. My brother Jon said, "Wow, Dylan can sing all the notes," and I said, "Yeah."

Then I played "Black Dog" by Zeppelin, and Dylan would sing that. I thought, "Dylan's got a good ear." Then Jon and I thought, "Well, we have good ears, too." So it was probably—maybe we could have done that when we were that age.

A couple more years went by. He was about 3 and a half, and I was in the car. I said, "Dylan, sing the Star Wars theme." He sings it, and I'm like, "That's in the right key." I checked—I played it on my phone—and I was like, "Oh my gosh."

Then I asked him, "Sing the Superman theme," because we'd been listening to John Williams soundtracks the week before. He sings that, and it was in the right key. I asked him for another song.

So I turned the car around and went back to the studio. I went to the piano, hit the note B-flat, and Dylan said, "Star Wars." "Star Wars" starts on a big B-flat major chord, but the note B-flat is the main one that you hear.

Then I played the note G, and he said, "Superman." That's the first note in the trumpet part of the Superman theme. Then I realized that he had perfect pitch, and in 5 minutes I taught him the names of the 12 notes, which he already knew—he just didn't know the names.

Oh, so you just associate the names with the thing he knows.

Yeah.

What do you think this is in his mind? Because it's not just individual notes. He can hear everything. What is that?

He doesn't see colors. He just says every note sounds completely different.

Wow. Like you said, maybe it's a language thing, because it really is a—

Yeah, the language. It's like perfect—it's like native music fluency, if you think of it like that.

So let's listen to some of this.

Turn around. Here we go. As fast as you can, we're going to start with single notes, then we're going to do some intervals, then chords. Okay, here we go.

Dylan Beato

A. C-sharp. B-flat. C. D. A-flat.

Okay, good. Two notes at once. Here we go.

Dylan Beato

C-flat.

Great. How about this?

Dylan Beato

B-flat, A.

Great. What about this?

Dylan Beato

B-flat, A-flat.

This is incredible.

Great. How about this?

Dylan Beato

C, B-flat.

And then how about this?

Dylan Beato

E-flat.

What is it?

Dylan Beato

E, E-flat.

Correct. Okay. He's annoyed. He's annoyed. The part of this when I play these next chords is really, I think, why the video went so viral. I'm going to do some polychords for you. These are really going to be hard. You ready? What's this? C augmented over D-flat augmented.

Dylan Beato

Sing a B-flat.

Very good. What's this chord?

Dylan Beato

A-flat—

Oh, A-flat major over A major. Great. Sing an F-sharp.

Dylan Beato

Mm.

Excellent. What's this chord?

Dylan Beato

A minor over D-flat major.

Great. What's this chord?

Dylan Beato

E add 9 over F major.

Excellent. E add 9 over F major. I had to look at my hand to make sure that was what it was because they're all in inversions.

I think the reason that this went so viral is that the more someone knew about music, the more they shared the video. The people who were the best musicians looked at it and were like, "Oh my God. It's C augmented over D-flat augmented." The second chord was A-flat major over A major, but they were both in inversion, right? It was a first-inversion A-flat major chord and a first-inversion A major chord. Then an A minor over D-flat major, and then E add 9 over F major.

For an 8-year-old—I mean, for anyone—plus, they're all close-voiced. They're all right next to each other. It's not like they're spread out, where you can hear them clearly. It's all in the mid-range of the piano, so you have to really listen, and you have to dissect each one. What are the notes being played there, and what is the theory? Because he's actually using music theory to dissect them.

It must be in his brain: those components of the chords all sound very clearly different.

Yes.

It's truly incredible. The human mind is incredible. So you're saying some part of that is the things you hear in the first few months of life?

I did a thing where I played what I call high-information music. High-information music would be Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, fugues—anything Bach. I would play The Well-Tempered Clavier, and I would play a friend of mine's improvisations. He's a Turkish pianist who's one of the greatest improvisers I've ever heard. His name is Aydin Esen.

I would play Aydin's improvisations for Dylan. They had very sophisticated harmony and linear things in them. I played Keith Jarrett, mainly jazz, classical, and modern classical music. Then we would listen to rock music once he was born.

I was talking to him through my wife's stomach before Dylan was born, starting at 15 weeks, for 30 minutes a night. When Dylan was born, I would sit with him for an hour every morning and listen to music, and I would look at him.

In order for them to hear these phonemes and develop this language, language acquisition has to involve the social brain. When kids look at you, when a baby is looking at you, they're looking at your mouth and getting social cues from that. This is also another component of saying, "This is where this word starts and stops. This is how the phonemes are separated from one another. This is how they're connected."

I believe that all kids are born with perfect pitch, and then around 9 months they begin to lose it. I never played pitches for Dylan and said, "This is a C. This is a B-flat. This is a G." I just played complex, high-information music for him and played with him.

And that applies maybe even more generally to high-information language.

Yes.

And it starts before they're born. I think I saw some of these incredible scientists who work on the neuroscience, neurobiology, and psychology of language in early life. I think a big part is that, in the mother's stomach, you're listening to the mother speak.

Yes. That's right.

So, like, that's how on the language side you're picking up the language already.

That's right. And you're picking up the musical language. So, native music fluency, you could call it.

So if the mother is sitting back and listening to Bach and some bebop jazz, you have a pretty good chance.

Much better chance.

Okay. All right. So, as we unwind our way back to Joe Pass and bebop, you were talking about what bebop jazz is, and that would be people like Joe Pass. In your own life, your dad was somehow listening to that kind of incredibly complex and sophisticated music—

But he wasn't a musician.

Wasn't a musician.

Which was very weird. We had 6 siblings, and we could never figure out why Dad liked really sophisticated jazz.

We just took it for granted at that time.

Yeah, we just took it for granted. My dad passed away in 2004, and we never really talked about that. But he and I used to listen to music together all the time. We'd put on a record, I'd sit on one side of the room, he'd sit on the other, and we wouldn't say a word. We'd listen through the whole side A, then I'd go flip it over, listen to side B, never say a word, and then get up and go do stuff. We did that all the time.

And so the first time you impressed your dad was with the Joe Pass song, right? By the way, we'll have to go to this song, because people must have forgotten, right? People just think you're a good communicator or something. They don't realize how good you are at guitar, how good you are at a lot of instruments, but especially guitar. There's this video: the greatest guitar solo, period. Can you give me some context for this particular intricate, complicated solo? Who's Joe Pass?

Joe Pass was a guitarist. He lived from 1929 to 1994, and he was one of the greatest bebop players and solo guitar players. He made a record called Virtuoso in 1973, which this is off of, and my dad gave it to me for Christmas when I was in 10th grade.

He said—and this was not like my dad—my dad worked for the railroad and was a man of very few words. He was born in 1919. He said, “If you ever learn to play guitar like this, you've accomplished something with your life.” I was like, “What?”

This record stayed unopened until about March after Christmas. One day I was like, “Okay, I'll open it up.” I put it on and started listening to it, and I was like, “Whoa, this is cool.” I said, “I think I can figure out some of this stuff.” So I figured out this thing.

Is it by ear mostly?

Yeah, just by ear. I didn't know any of the chords or anything.

Can you listen to a little bit here?

If you go back to that “Brother to Brother,” the Gino Vannelli song with Carlos Rios playing, that stuff is incredibly hard. This, I was starting—I didn't know any of these chords. I didn't even know what that chord was, but I figured it out. It's weird. Look at that weird bar.

So you're just finding and playing around with putting your fingers on the various positions?

Yes. Right, but trying every combination of fingers. I had never played that chord. That's a weird-looking chord. I kept moving my fingers around until I heard it and thought, “Oh, that's it, definitely.” I just looked at my hands like, “What is that?” I had no idea what it was.

So you were connected to the music. That's why you can hear it. It's not necessarily—did you even have perfect pitch?

No.

Not even relative pitch?

No, I didn't. I didn't know anything about intervals. I didn't know anything about music theory. This was all just by ear.

Yeah, you're just playing—

By ear.

—around with different shapes. That's amazing.

That's right. Look at that weird bar there. Then you get into these things. That stuff there, I could figure out. And then these things here—those are just inversions, but I didn't know that. I had heard Joe Pass play that on the record. This was the last song on there. I'd listened to it a bunch of times and started trying to—

So you just replay it over and over and over and over, and you're trying to replicate it?

Yes. I'm memorizing every different chord shape, all the chord shapes that I had never played before.

Would you recommend people do something like that with a really complicated song?

Yeah, but there are so many YouTube videos where you can just learn it without having to—

I feel like the struggle—

The struggle is where it's at.

This is true for education in general. There are all these educators who try to make learning easier and more fun, and all that kind of stuff. Great, wonderful, but part of the thing is the struggle.

Absolutely.

But let's—you're nuts.

I heard licks like that all over this, so I knew what that was. He plays a lot of ideas like that. That's basically a C9 chord in the top notes of it, so all these are just inversions of the same chord. If I could play that, then it was just figuring out the single notes.

So if you just take this first part here, when he goes—this intro part is—

You make it sound so simple when you break it down. And, by the way, Joe Pass was an incredible guitar player. That's obvious.

He improvised all this. He could have played it like this.

But the first part was the individual notes. Look at that.

Ooh, that's hard. Maybe just play it like that. That sounds more realistic.

The amount of different genres that you're able to replicate is incredible.

This is just taking the needle, moving it there, then going back a little—oh, there. By the end, the record was so scratched, but it was worth it. When I played it for my dad, he couldn't believe it. He didn't say, “That's amazing.” He was just like, “Hmm, pretty good.”

So what was the role of bebop jazz in the history of music? It seems like it was influential in your life. Another guy you had an incredible interview with was Flea. People should go listen to that. It was a great conversation. One of the things that surprised me is just how many musical genres influenced Flea. The guy showed up in a Miles Davis T-shirt.

Bebop. Miles Davis played with Charlie Parker when he was 18 years old, and Charlie Parker was really his mentor.

Can you explain to me why, with many of the folks you've interviewed and in general in the world of jazz, all roads lead to Miles Davis? Why is he such an influential figure?

Because he was the greatest innovator in the history of jazz. He was at the forefront of all these different styles of jazz. He started as a bebop player, and then he had records like The Birth of the Cool, modal jazz, and hard bop, and records like Bitches Brew, where he started to—I guess you would call it fusion. You start to get these records.

You had 2 main groups of Miles Davis: the Miles Davis ’50s quintet and the Miles Davis ’60s quintet. Miles made records with many people, but the ’50s quintet had John Coltrane in it. It had different piano players, including Wynton Kelly, with Paul Chambers on bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums. That particular group made incredibly important records.

Then he had his ’60s group, which was Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, Tony Williams on drums, and Wayne Shorter on saxophone. They made all these incredibly important records.

I forget who said it in an interview with you, but they talked about Miles Davis's music feeling like toes hanging over the cliff or something like this. There's always a risk, a danger that you're willing to make, to fuck it all up live. That feeling is what creates the aliveness of the music. Can you speak to that? Just the creating in the music, the feeling like you're on the edge, like you're challenging the possibilities of what can happen, and it all can go to shit—and because of that, it feels alive.

When I interviewed Ron Carter, who played in Miles's ’60s quintet, I asked Ron—because Ron had made records and played bass on 2,200 famous recordings—“Did you guys ever rehearse with Miles?”

“No, never.”

I said, “So what would you do?”

He goes, “We'd just show up at the studio, and he'd have the charts, put them on the stand, and we would just roll.”

I said, “Would you listen to it afterward?”

“No.”

I said, “What about the live records that you did, when you'd record at clubs and things like that?”

He goes, “We never knew that we were recording.” Maybe he'd see a microphone, a different kind of microphone, in his bass amp. Then months later, a record would come out and he'd see it, and he was on it. He'd take it down to the union and say, “I played on this record,” so he could get paid for it.

But he said, “We didn't even know we were recording.” Miles was always about, “Don't think about it, just play.”

That's crazy. That was on purpose. That was done on purpose—not to do the rehearsals. None of that.

Yeah, he wanted people to just feel it and play it. Thought is the enemy of flow, as Vinnie Colaiuta told me.

Thought is the enemy of flow. How do you make sense of the fact that Flea, the bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, is influenced by bebop jazz?

His stepfather was a jazz bass player. He was born in Australia, and then they moved to New York. When his parents got divorced, his mom married his stepfather, who was a jazz musician. They used to have jam sessions at their place, and Flea loved it. It was like my upbringing with my dad, playing jazz all the time. Once it gets inside you, it's just there. He's heavily influenced by jazz musicians.

Yeah, his impression was hilarious. He's a character. His whole physical way of being is a character. His impression of upright bass is fun to watch.

His intensity when he picked up his bass during the interview—it was immediate. He's an intense, funny, really emotional guy. He picks up his bass, and there's a fierceness that you immediately feel. He starts talking about how he practices, and when he starts doing the slapping stuff, he gets so into it.

And I'm just sitting there going, “Whoa. Wow.”

Yeah, he talked about his practicing routine with you. One of the things he said was, “I have to practice the slap.” And there are differences in the structure of the different bands, but usually the bassist has a vibe to them. I don't know if we can put words to exactly what that is. There's a kind of energy that drives the band.

To me, the bass is one of the only instruments where, when you play a bad note, everybody notices. I started on the bass as a kid.

Oh, interesting. But you also played drums.

Yeah, but my first instrument was the cello in 3rd grade.

Oh.

Then I switched to the bass in 6th grade. My undergraduate degree is in classical bass, so I always think of myself as a bass player first. I always think the bass is the most important instrument because—

Strong words.

Because as much as I love to play the guitar—and I love to play the guitar more than anything, I think—the bass really defines what the quality of the chord is. You can put the root in there. You can put the third of the chord in the bass. You can put the fifth in there. You can play a lot of notes, and whatever you play in the bass kind of defines what kind of chord it is. So the bass player has a lot of power.

I have to go back to the beginning of our conversation. What do you think are some of the great solos of all time? Can we put a few into consideration? You have a great list of the top 20 rock guitar solos of all time.

Yeah, so I put “Comfortably Numb” as my favorite, as my top one.

Yeah, on that day, right?

On that day. Right. A day later, I would have said, “It's the second solo.”

Okay.

But I did the first solo because nobody talks about that solo. And that solo is equally great. When I played it for David Gilmour and we talked about it in my interview with him, it was incredible. Just to watch his face when he listened to it was incredible.

I'm thinking to myself, “I'm sitting with David Gilmour, and he's listening to ‘Comfortably Numb.’” He's played it a million times live, but how many times has he gone back and listened to it on the record? Probably not for a long time. And then he's hearing it, and he's like, “Ooh.”

Maybe you just don't look back. When you do great things, you don't look back.

Miles never looked back. He never wanted to hear the old stuff. He always moved on.

There was this funny moment where you made a video about why David Gilmour will never be on the channel. Then you ended up, of course, interviewing him twice. He's one of the greatest guitar players of all time. What do you think is at the core of his genius?

He has just an incredible melodic sense. He knows how phrases should be put together. There's a flow to his ideas that I think is just incredible. It's the same with Hendrix: this flow, how one idea leads to the next, how there's space between them. It's just like speaking.

That's what I read about Miles Davis: he's very good at understanding tempo and the value of silence. And I think David Gilmour doesn't always play fast, but he does a lot with less. Some of that is also on the more technical side, probably the tone of the... I mean, he's one of the most uniquely recognizable tones in all of music. What do you understand about what it takes to shape the tone that is David Gilmour?

He has a very sophisticated setup for his tone, and that was one of the things I noticed when I went to his studio. I said to him, “So, David, is there anything I'm not supposed to see here?” He never sits down and shows people his gear, and he laughed about it. But there I am, sitting there right next to all these pedals.

I asked his tech, Phil, “Are these the same ones you used on the records?” He's like, “Yeah.” His tech has been with him for 50 years. And I mean, the exact ones? Yes. It's hard to imagine that those things still work. Of course, though. He's just kept them.

This is his Binson Echorec that he played through, and this is this. These are all the same effects pedals. And then, “Wait, is this the same Hiwatt amp?” “Yeah.” “Is this the same...?” “Yes.”

Yeah, you get some new stuff, but they keep all their own gear. He does sell his guitars for charity, but he has a black Strat that's a signature version. It's an exact copy of his old one, so to him it sounds exactly the same and plays the same.

Well, of course, they converge toward that kind of hardware. But there are so many tiny details over the years. You see the final result of it, but there's a journey there of exploring. And, of course, he's not doing any software—no emulation, no amp?

He does do emulation, actually. He does. He has this thing. I asked him in the first interview about it. There's a little rack thing that I had heard he used, but I asked him for sure. It's called the Zoom 9030.

I put out a short where he talks about it. I said, “So that Zoom 9030, is that a real thing?” because I'd read about it. He's like, “Yeah.” And he talks about how, when he's sitting there recording on his own, he runs Pro Tools himself. He'll be sitting there, and there's no one there to help him. He's like, “I'll just plug into this thing, and then I'll play a solo with this model.”

It's a kind of ’90s modeling, early modeling thing. He'll play a solo, and then after a while, you hear the solo, and it's like, “Well, I'm not gonna replay that. That sounds great.” You get used to the sound of it, and that's what it is.

People always talked about, “Oh, well, he couldn't have used that. He's recording through an amp,” because it sounds great. And then he's like, “Yeah, yeah, so that's what I use.” And then I have the video of it right there, and it says his presets, DG1 and DG2, and whatever.

What's your process for preparing for interviews like that? You've done a few legendary people.

I never prepare for interviews because I ask people things that I'm interested in knowing.

So just letting your curiosity pull you forward?

Yes.

I can think of 100 questions to ask David Gilmour, but I always ask my questions based on what they say to me. I do make a playlist of songs that I want to talk about. That kind of guides me, because I want to make sure that there are specific things that I need to play so that you can jog his memory.

Anytime you play something that somebody recorded, even 50 years ago, they'll remember. If they don't remember the exact specifics, that brings it to life to them again. They can piece together some aspects about it, and they can really talk. He can talk about the phrasing and the melodic direction of things like that.

So there are a lot of tiny details that go into a particular song, whether it's in the production, how it's played, or how it was composed—all that kind of stuff. You don't know what those are ahead of time.

No.

You just know the song, and you're looking to jog their memory, and maybe your own curiosity: “How did you do this?” Or “What is this sound?”

You make it look easy, but you have to have a depth of knowledge. You're saying you don't prepare.

I have an incredibly good memory.

Exactly.

That's what it is. I can remember when records came out, who produced them, where they recorded them, who was the engineer, and what songs are on them. And not only that, but the people I'm interviewing know that I can play all the parts of all the instruments because I've done breakdowns of their songs, which is why I get the interviews with them in the first place, really.

But the actual skill of the interview, the thing you're not saying—the preparation—is the young you listening to bebop. It's the background knowledge, the soul you carry with you, being able to radiate the love of the soul of music.

That's right.

I will say this, Lex, is that the other thing is that most of these people have a really good sense of humor. The first time I interviewed David in New York, my brother John came along, and he is a massive David Gilmour fan. That's his biggest influence as a guitar player.

So he said, “You're interviewing David Gilmour? Oh, I'm coming.” I was like, “All right. Come on down.” My brother John was standing about 5 feet away. John is a sales guy, but he's a great guitar player.

I said, “This is John. David, this is my brother, John.” John said, “David, great to meet you, buddy.” He's a sales guy.

During the interview, I said, “Hey, John, what was I going to ask David? Oh, ask him about the Gilmour effect.” “Oh, yeah, that's right.”

The Gilmour effect is my thing that I say in the comments section when people say, anytime anybody plays anything technical, “Oh, yeah, that's great, but I much prefer David Gilmour.” I always call it the Gilmour effect. Anytime I have anybody like Yngwie Malmsteen, or anybody who has chops that I interview, the negative comments are always, “Well, I prefer David Gilmour.”

Mm, yeah.

And I said that—I told David that. He's like, “Well, maybe they should keep their opinions to themselves.”

Yeah, a lot of these folks have really wonderful personalities, with a trusted person to be able to reveal that personality. So “Comfortably Numb” at the top on that day. What else is up there?

“Stairway to Heaven.” “Hey Joe.”

But in that list, your top Hendrix solo is “Hey Joe”?

It's the first guitar solo I ever learned, so I had to put it on there. I do those based on how important they are to me and my development.

So, there’s always a biographical component to these lists. Number 3 was “Kid Charlemagne,” a Steely Dan solo by Larry Carlton. Amazing solo, extremely difficult to figure out. There are probably 2 solos on the list that are very hard to play. That one I can play, but there are a few solos that are very hard to play.

“Stone in Love” by Journey, by Neal Schon, is very hard to play. Some of the licks are very difficult. There’s a solo by a guitarist, Carlos Rios, that people don’t know. It’s “Brother to Brother,” a Gino Vannelli song, but it’s extremely hard to play and figure out. People don’t know those solos. I put it on my list because I knew that a lot of people were going to watch it and know what this solo is.

For me, the sentimental one—my first solo—is “Mr. Crowley” by Randy Rhoads. I like the musicality of “Mr. Crowley,” that there is a melodic component to it. You’re playing really fast, but there’s a melody to it. Also, there’s a legendary nature to the brief time we had Randy Rhoads.

Yes.

He’s probably one of the greatest guitarists ever.

1956 to 1982, I think. Terrible. He was an absolutely brilliant guitarist and had his own style.

We should say he’s the guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne’s band.

Yeah. That “Mr. Crowley” solo is a great solo, a great solo. He’s incredibly influential as a guitar player, too, for metal guitar players. I love Randy Rhoads.

Another guy—one of my favorites—is Mark Knopfler.

Yes. I did have Mark Knopfler on my list: “Sultans of Swing.”

That’s right, you did have—

Now, I had it high on the list, and I’ll tell you why. I would’ve had it lower because it’s one of the early ones, but I wanted people to be like, “Okay, oh, this is a serious list.” So Rick’s going to talk about serious stuff.

And Rick’s going to play along with all these things.

So I wanted to kind of state that at the beginning of the video. I mean, I made the video in 1 day to do 20 solos. I think I played 19 of them, but for the Heart solo that I had on there, I played a video of Nancy Wilson. And I tried to get a couple of my friends to play the “Ice Cream Man” Van Halen solo.

Yeah, it was just—

So I called Dweezil Zappa, and I was like, “Dweezil, can you play the ‘Ice Cream Man’ solo? I’m making a video about it.” He’s like, “Oh, I’d have to practice that.” Then I called my friend Phil X, who’s an amazing guitar player, and he’s like, “No, I’d have to practice that.” I was like, “Come on, man. Can’t you let me play ‘Ice Cream Man’?”

The opening lick of “Ice Cream Man” that he plays is very hard to play because it’s an incredibly long stretch. It hurt my fingers to do, and Eddie would turn his guitar up like this to play. Plus, it’s a tricky rhythm, and it’s such a big stretch. It’s like, “Man, I can’t. That hurts my hand.”

I just love that that’s the Van Halen solo you have in the top 20.

See, I have to do some—

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There are so many Van Halen solos. My God, I could pick 25 different Van Halen solos.

But to me, there really is nobody like Mark Knopfler. He has a unique guitar sound. There’s something about his tone. Speaking of Gilmour, there’s the tone, the care, and the timing of the notes. His improvisation—the live performances of “Sultans of Swing,” including the pretty old live performance that’s been going somewhat viral recently.

For me, “Brothers in Arms”—these kinds of soulful, mournful solos—he does really, really well. Also, the interesting instrumentation of “Romeo and Juliet.” There are just so many. Truly one of the greats.

Great.

Now, obviously, the intro to “Money for Nothing” is one of the greatest. It’s almost impossible to recreate because the sound is so unique, and his— It’s just improvised. It’s so cool.

Yeah.

There are certain songs, like “Europa” by Santana. Santana can have that tone, too. Mark Knopfler makes me realize just how clean it is. I think he beats B.B. King, in my book, in terms of the cleanness and just pure beauty of a single note. It’s like the power of a single note. I don’t know anybody who beats Mark Knopfler.

Well, that thing about being able to recognize somebody from a note, you know?

Yeah, that’s—

When I hear Brian May, I can immediately recognize it’s Brian May. He’s incredibly melodic, the tone that he has. Gilmour, Hendrix, everyone that we’re talking about, Van Halen—they have that one note. It’s like, “Oh, I know who that is.” That’s why we’re talking about them.

That’d be funny. That’d be a good video—

With B.B. King, you hear 1 note.

As a test of how quickly you can recognize a player when a solo starts playing—

I’m going to make that video—

One note—

Tomorrow. Lex, you’ll—

I don’t know.

The day after tomorrow, you’ll see it.

I would love to see that.

Can you recognize these players by 1 note?

By 1 note. I think we’re being a little too aggressive with that. I think you need 2 or 3 or 4—

No, no, no, no—

—or 5 notes.

I guarantee you. I was going to do a video last week where I was going to play songs in reverse. I was going to see if you could recognize these songs in reverse. I had my 2 assistants come in and asked, “Do you know what song that is?” They’re like, “Oh, that’s Adele.” I was like, “What?” Then they’re like, “Oh, that’s Nirvana.” Instantly, they could recognize it. I thought, “Well, that’s not worth me doing.” It’s so obvious. You hear the tone of the voice backward or forward; it doesn’t matter. You know who it is.

Oh, interesting. Okay, so it’s about the tone. How could you possibly know from a single note? I guess with Van Halen, you can.

With 1 note of B.B. King’s vibrato, you could know. What I’ll do is separate the guitars. I can actually separate the tracks, and I’ll just play 1 note.

You think you could know from a single vibrato that it’s B.B. King?

Yes. We’ll see.

Put it on record: I’m skeptical.

What do you think is the best Eric Clapton song? One of the things we haven’t mentioned so far is the importance of lyrics and maybe the meaning of the song and what it represents. So, in that sense, “Tears in Heaven.”

Well, the story behind that is heartbreaking.

And then I personally really love the sound of “Wonderful Tonight.”

That’s a great song. That’s one of my favorite Clapton songs.

As I was listening to it, doing a whole personal journey of introspection, knowing that I was going to talk to Rick Beato and listening to a bunch of songs, I learned—it’s embarrassing that I didn’t know the stories behind the music—that Eric Clapton was married for a decade to the same woman that George Harrison was married to. This woman was the muse, the inspiration, for so many of the legendary songs of rock, including “Wonderful Tonight,” including “Layla,” and including George Harrison’s “Something,” another legendary song. The same woman. Is she the greatest muse in rock history?

Probably, yes.

This is great. In your interviews with musicians and producers, I think the thing you’re ultimately fascinated by is the whole process: the recording, the production, the songwriting, and the different elements of the process. Are there examples of different things that stand out to you from all the interviews you’ve done? And, by the way, all the recording and production you’ve done yourself. On the recording front, the production front, and the songwriting-process front, what are some things that pop into memory?

When I’ve interviewed guys who are producers, like Rick Rubin, Daniel Lanois, Brendan O’Brien, and Butch Vig, the thing about producers, as opposed to people who are musicians, is that if you’re a musician—even if you’re David Gilmour—you do a record, then you tour, and then you do another record. Maybe years go by. But producers are working on multiple records, sometimes at a time.

Rick Rubin could be working on multiple records, and because of the variety of things that he does, you can talk to him about so many different things. I can talk to Rick about the Chili Peppers. I can talk to him about Johnny Cash. I can talk to him about Tom Petty and all these records that I love, and there are just so many interesting stories. These interviews could go on for days with Rick, given the variety of records that he worked on.

There’s so much knowledge to be gained, for me at least, and I think that the craft of production and recording engineering is something that is not well-documented, especially since there are so few studios nowadays. There used to be a mentorship thing where you’d go and work as an assistant engineer, and you’d work your way up.

I interviewed a guy named Ken Scott who worked with the Beatles. I interviewed him at Abbey Road Studios just 2 months ago, and he started as a tape op when he was 16. He started on the “A Hard Day’s Night” record with the Beatles, and he worked his way up. He said the first time he ever recorded an orchestra was when he recorded “I Am the Walrus”—the orchestra part.

He set up the mics, and I asked him, “So where was the band?”

“Standing right behind me.”

The Beatles, right behind him. The guy I was interviewing at Abbey Road recorded “I Am the Walrus” there.

He recorded many Beatles songs, and he was 18 years old. I just can’t even fathom that. They have a little café in the basement of Abbey Road, and I said, “Did the Beatles come in here?” He goes, “Oh, yeah, they come in here and get coffee.”

I remember when they got 2 microwaves, like the first microwaves in 1965, and they were amazed by them. It’s hard to imagine that I’m talking to people who worked on these historic records. But they all start with a blank tape or an empty hard drive, and then you eventually fill them up with this music that you can never imagine not existing, like “Stairway to Heaven,” or whatever it is.

It’s funny looking back. Even for them, probably, just to realize they’ve created that magic is hard to believe. You’re looking at a blank thing, and then magic comes out, and you don’t even understand. A lot of these artists probably don’t understand where that came from. They’re channeling some deeper thing.

When I interviewed Brian May, he told me—I can’t even remember if we talked about this on camera or not—but we talked about “Bohemian Rhapsody.” At the very end, there was a thing where he was depressing his whammy bar a little bit, and it sounds like the piano is out of tune. I never noticed it before. He mentioned this to me, and he said it always bothered him.

There’s always something about these songs that bothers people, even these songs that he—

These old things, yeah.

Right. There are always little things—

They sit and hear it, and they’re like, “Oh, man. I wish I’d been up a little higher on that,” or whatever.

I mean, there are certain moments in songs that are just unlike anything else. In “Bohemian Rhapsody,” when Freddie Mercury sings, “Sometimes wish I’d never been born at all,” and then the guitar comes in, there’s just nothing like that. That was—I don’t even know. That whole thing, you’ve done videos on it. It’s an incredibly complicated composition. It’s crazy that a popular rock song could be this operatic and so complicated.

The other thing akin to that moment is Phil Collins with “In the Air Tonight”—the drum bridge. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Yeah. What is that? I don’t understand how you can create that. Why is that so magical? Why is that so singular inside a particular song and in rock history, period?

These moments—I don’t understand musically how you create them, because it might be bigger than music. It might be cultural, a bunch of different elements. I’ve seen live performances. He has a headset and does something. He’s like a telemarketer or something. His whole vibe and look—he doesn’t look like a rock star, but he is.

Those are hooks, when you think about it, right? It’s as much of a hook as the chorus of the song, or any song. That drum thing is something that people wait for, and they air-drum to it. Everybody air-drums to it, and it is a hook. Those are hard to create.

Those moments are really hard to create, and usually they’re done by accident.

Yes, it’s hard. If you chase it, you’re not going to get it. In your conversation with Sting, he said something about how modern music is simpler, more minimalistic, and “the bridge is gone,” I think he said. He said he thought that “the bridge is therapy.” It’s a chance for you to reflect, I guess, on the verse before the chorus comes in.

That’s right.

It changed my view of the bridge, I suppose—the therapeutic nature of it, at least lyrically. Do you think he’s onto something? What’s the value of the bridge?

The bridge is a place, I think, where you can kind of change the frame of reference of a song.

You could probably do anything, I guess.

Lennon used to have some kind of biting lyrics, like “We Can Work It Out.” So McCartney writes, “Try to see it my way. Do I have to keep on going until I can't go on?” But the bridge is very Lennon: “Life is very short, and there’s no time for fussing and fighting, my friend. I have always thought that it’s a crime, so I’ll ask you once again.”

It’s very Lennon-esque. That was really a real collaboration between the 2 of them.

This is where different parts of the band can clash in interesting ways. The Beatles are the epitome of that. Each individual Beatle is a great talent in their own right. How were the Beatles able to create some of the greatest songs of all time, all before they turned 30 years old?

I’ve never been able to figure that out, but I have a theory that—

I have a theory.

Because PA systems were so bad back then, and people screamed so loudly that the Beatles thought, “Okay. We don’t—we can’t tour anymore because we can’t even hear ourselves, so we’re just going to be a studio band.”

Maybe because of that, we have all these great late Beatles records. They’re from 1966 on, just because they had bad PA systems. And they had no monitors. They were in Shea Stadium, and people were screaming so loudly that they couldn’t hear themselves. They were like, “Okay, forget this. We can’t tour. We’ll just make studio records.” So that’s what they did.

In that 1 year, from August 6, 1965, they put out “Help!” Then, on December 3, they put out “Rubber Soul” in 1965. Then, on August 5, they put out “Revolver.” So within 365 days, they put out 3 14-song records, I think.

They wrote and recorded 3 incredibly important records. They were in the studio. It’s like working out: they were practicing their craft every day, writing songs, trying to outdo the other ones. So you had the perfect thing: 4 supremely talented musicians, songwriters, singers, and then the best producer you could possibly have, George Martin. It was just a perfect storm.

I think that when I would talk to friends who would just play in local clubs, and they’d play 4-hour sets 5 nights a week, they never lost their voices because they were always working those muscles. The same with the Beatles. They were always in the studio singing every single day, doing takes, and I think that was part of it, at least.

But you also have this theory that the greatest productivity musicians have is before they turn 30. The greatest creative genius that can come out of the human mind musically is before the age of 30.

Well, I think it’s the same in mathematics, as well. You have fluid intelligence versus crystallized intelligence. Fluid intelligence is up until you’re in your late 20s, around 30 years old, and then crystallized intelligence takes over, so you’re using your life experience to write things.

You’ll find that composers—Bach, Beethoven, Mozart—wrote their most important works at the end of their lives. Beethoven’s late string quartets, the Ninth Symphony, things like that. So they have a whole lifetime of experience that leads up to this, and they’re not improvising.

But for things like improvising and writing pop songs, I think when your mind is really most active and your brain processing speed is at its pinnacle, that’s when people can come up with those kinds of ideas. This is just my theory. Same with improvising: I think that most jazz improvisers—not all, but most—do their best improvising before the age of 30.

Creating something new.

Yes.

Truly novel—that requires youth. It’s just a theory, though, but it seems to apply. What do you think about the 27 Club? A bunch of the music greats died at 27: Hendrix, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse.

Kurt Cobain.

Kurt Cobain, of course. A big part of music history is linked to drug history: LSD, coke, heroin, weed.

Smoking.

I think about this a lot. If you go back and watch videos of the Beatles—any of their movies—they’re smoking all the time. The “Get Back” documentary, they’re smoking constantly. Go watch any of “MTV Unplugged: Nirvana”—Kurt Cobain is smoking every second that he’s not playing; he’s smoking. Every singer smoked. Every musician smoked.

Nowadays, I asked my son, Dylan, “Dylan, does anybody smoke at your high school?” He’s like, “Smoke? Nobody smokes.” It was an absurd question. And that was part of the culture.

It was for everybody. That was a big transformation over the past 20 years: everybody stopped smoking. But I don’t think smoking has the hard negative effect that we’re talking about. I almost would rather have them smoke than some of the other hard drugs. Maybe smoking distracts them from the hard drugs.

I mean, heroin and coke—those things, really—and alcohol, unfortunately, can be easily abused, I think. It seems like the life of a musician, this dopamine thing of getting onstage and being adored by tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, the high of that, and then the comedown afterward, is a really hard life, even just neurobiologically.

How do you deal with that? You have to be able to control the roller coaster of your mind, and of course drugs will be a part of that. You think everything is allowed and everything is possible. Then there’s also culture, depending on who you hang out with, where certain categories of drugs are good for your creativity. Naturally, you start to abuse those drugs.

I think it’s really interesting, the role that drugs have played in the history of music. They have certainly been extremely destructive, but they have also certainly been productive muses, inspirations for some of these folks.

Oh, absolutely. Now, would we want to advocate people doing things like that to boost their creativity?

No.

Well, I wouldn't, but just like smoking, which I think improved people's voices—I mean, really, the raspiness of it—this is the reason that so many of these, virtually every famous singer, no matter what genre of music—jazz, soul, rock—they all smoked.

Yeah, yeah.

Nat King Cole.

Miles Davis too?

Miles smoked. Everybody smoked. Miles did—well, Miles was a heroin addict too. I mean—

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So many jazz musicians.

Well, Miles had a sound to him. You're right. I mean, smoking must play a gigantic role in that, adding some complexity to the voice.

Yes.

Yeah, some richness to the voice.

Nat King Cole smoked, I think, 4 packs a day. He died of lung cancer. A lot of heavy smokers, though, as singers. Frank Sinatra was a heavy smoker. McCartney was a heavy smoker. Lennon—all those guys smoked.

Yeah, it's hard to know—chicken or the egg. But I certainly wouldn't recommend doing drugs as a way to get better at music. It does seem to go hand in hand. Some of it has to do with the period, with the time period, with the place, because sometimes it's part of the culture.

The drug is, like you're saying, smoking. If you were smoking now, that's going to be a very different experience than smoking 10 years ago, 20 years ago, or 50 years ago. There's a different vibe. So sometimes the drug is a deeply integrated part of the culture versus an actual chemical substance. The '60s, right? They were on everything in the '60s.

Yeah, it has to account for something, Lex.

On the songwriting front, you mentioned a story about Elton John recording. He's one of the legendary songwriters. You've met him, and you know something about his process.

Yeah, because he was recording in a studio in Atlanta where I was working with a band that I was producing. He was in Studio A, and I was in Studio B. The band I was working with was called Jump, Little Children.

His assistant came in and asked, "Hey, is this—are you guys Jump, Little Children?" "Yeah, yeah, yeah." Then all of a sudden, I couldn't see out into the live room. Elton walked into the room, and we were getting ready to track. I'm pressing the button: "Yo, where are you guys? What's up? I thought we were going to start this." No one was responding. I could hear talking. I thought, "What is going on? Where are they?"

Then all of a sudden, they came back into the studio, and they were stunned. I said, "Where were you guys?" They said, "Elton John just walked into our session. He said he's a big fan. He said to come over when we're done and hang out in Studio A."

So we did, and he was there with Bernie Taupin. They were working on a song. We talked there for an hour, and he was talking about recording 2 records a year. Then they'd go on tour, and they'd write and record the whole record in 2 weeks.

Bernie would give him lyrics. Elton would go out and spend 15 minutes writing all the melody. He'd look at his lyrics, and he was doing that that day. Bernie was there, and they had a lyric sheet up on the piano. Elton would go on, and they'd just say, "Okay, just record this." Elton would sit there and play and come up with the song in 15 minutes or so.

Yeah, that's crazy.

There's a great version of, I think, "Tiny Dancer," where Elton is coming up with it. It's on YouTube. He's just coming up with the music right there. Then the band says, "Okay, here's how it goes," and they record it right then. Then they move on to the next song. I see this, and it's really incredible.

That's it. Yeah, true. There's one there that I did the other day with "Tiny Dancer," which is about Bernie's girlfriend. I just ran it through and put 2 verses together, then a middle, then a chorus, and then back to the verse sort of thing. It happens very quickly. It sounds long, but it sort of starts off—

"Blue jean baby, LA lady, seamstress for the band. Pirates man, pretty eye, you marry"

Okay. I mean, it's really amazing that he just—

Yeah, he's looking at just the lyrics.

Yeah, and he's one of the very few people that has the lyrics first and writes the music to them, which to me is far more difficult. 99% of songwriters write the music first, and then they put the melody and lyrics to the finished backing track.

Yes.

And maybe they write lyrics—they write nonsense words, kind of—

Yes.

—then they figure it out from there. Yeah, I don't know what skill that is exactly, but that's incredible. In that process, he makes it his own.

Yes.

Okay. You had an amazing interview with Kirk Hammett. I'm a huge Metallica fan.

Same here.

There is a lot of interesting stuff that came out of that conversation. One is the distinction between heavy metal and hard rock.

Yes.

Which is very interesting. Of course, Metallica went through its own evolution. They had many periods. They've been around 40 years.

Over 40 years, yeah. Crazy.

The other thing is the downpicking, which was interesting and creates that really distinct sound.

James and Kirk's downpicking—I used to be able to do that. I just can't do that anymore. It hurts my thumb to do it. I thought a lot about it. Why does it hurt so much? Why is it so hard? It's from swiping with your thumb on phones. I think it affects that basal joint there. No, I'm serious.

I love your theories.

Well, I think that's actually right, because I'm thinking, "Why does that hurt so much to do that? All the downstrokes and stuff." It's got to be something. It's like, yeah, it's from swiping with the phone.

The other thing that came through is that he's an improviser at heart. That clashes with this kind of rigid structure that metal is. There's a real soulful, melodic aspect to him. He gave a lot of props to James Hetfield for just being a great composer, a great musician, and a great writer of riffs and rhythm.

The improvisation part of it—you don't think of it because you have the finished songs that you listen to. But those songs are born out of improvisations, jams, and little fragments of ideas. Then they craft them into these masterpieces.

You also mentioned something that I didn't know: Hendrix used different gauges of strings.

Yeah, he was the one that talked about that, wasn't he? That was really interesting. These are the things that I like to learn from these interviews with these people. I was like, "What? Why have I never heard of that?"

It's one of the ways you can find uniqueness of sound: by trying different things that are not the ways you're supposed to do them. I guess Apple was really good at this, right? Completely breaking out of what you're supposed to do and doing it completely differently.

You often ask musicians what their perfect song is. First of all, that's an interesting question.

What is a perfect song?

One surprise is that Hans Zimmer said "God Only Knows" by the Beach Boys.

I was surprised by that too, but I thought, "Yeah, okay, that's a perfect song for sure." The first interview I ever did was with Peter Frampton in 2018, and I asked him in that interview, "What's the perfect song?" He said "A Whiter Shade of Pale." I was like, "Ooh, that's a great song." Then I thought, "I'm going to ask that to people, just to see what they say." Now people are prepared if I ask that.

But they're willing to go out on a limb and say it. If you ask me, I don't even know. I guess you just say it, whatever, right? What would I even say? What's a perfect song? Yeah, I would go—see, I feel the pressure.

Right?

The problem is, the reality is, it changes day by day, minute by minute. I would probably—I'm sorry, but I would have to go with Mark Knopfler. Is it really cheesy to say the obvious thing? I would go with "Sultans of Swing," even though I'm tempted to say "Europa."

"Sultans of Swing" hits on so many levels because it's got a great melody, great lyrics, and multiple great guitar solos. It has such a unique sound to it. The other thing is that it sounds very different from other Dire Straits songs. This is early Dire Straits Strat tone.

Then you think of "Money for Nothing," which is a Les Paul, and it's a totally different kind of vibe from him playing it on "Sultans of Swing." But that song's amazing.

Plus, it's about music, so there's a meta aspect to it. But then there's also—we're talking about this guitar stuff—Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." I mean, Leonard Cohen in general. These songwriters go super simple on guitar. It's just—what's that called? Singer-songwriter type.

I told you one of my dream music guests is Tom Waits. I've wanted to talk to Tom Waits for a very long time. You've met me at a point in my life where I've given up on it a little bit.

That's when it's going to happen.

Okay.

Once you give up on it, it's going to happen.

Yeah, yeah.

Why Tom Waits won't be on your podcast.

Exactly. Exactly, dude. This is my moment.

Tom, come here. Let's do it. I want to see it.

I'm such a fan of the zany artistry on the musical front that Tom Waits has, but I'm a sucker for great lyrics. Lyrics, to me, are such a big part of great songs. He's another example. He has a song called "Martha." It's about a love story that didn't work out, and it's an older man calling the woman that he was in love with and basically reminiscing about what would have happened if it worked out—that kind of thing.

And then I loved that song for a long time, and at some point I found out that he wrote that when he was in his early 20s.

And you realize, it's similar with the Beatles. These guys somehow were able to capture the human condition so masterfully, and they're kids. I don't get it. I don't understand it.

I can't speak for Tom Waits, but in the Beatles' case, they went to Hamburg, they spent time on their own, they played cover gigs that were 8 hours long, and they lived—

Yeah, they've lived—

They lived life. It's not like kids today.

Now you're on a porch. You also had an amazing interview with Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins. He is definitively one of my favorite musicians.

I love Billy.

You asked him an interesting question about how he creates this melancholy feeling that permeates a lot of his songs, and he jokingly said that the secret is all about the seventh and the ninth. Musically, chord-wise, what do you think about that? Do you think he's onto something?

He's talking a little music theory there: the seventh and ninth over the chord that he's playing. So if you're playing a C chord, he's singing a B, which would be the seventh; D would be the ninth. And he does use a lot of those notes.

But all these people that we're talking about—no, all these people that we're talking about use these notes, and this is why their songs work. When I interviewed Sting, I called them “surprise tones,” and Sting was like, “I like the way you use the word ‘surprise.’” They're notes that are outside the chord, that are dissonant with the chords that they're playing, but that creates emotion. Dissonance equals emotion. That's what I like. I want music to depress me.

Yeah. What is that? I don't know. Melancholy—and I think you articulate it in areas—is not actually that depressing. There's something about that melancholy feeling that is somehow the other side of the coin of happiness. It's a kind of longing, or there's a hopefulness to it. There's that aloneness that you feel.

I think one of the intimate connections you have with music is when you're alone. There's a social way of listening to music, maybe at a concert and so on, but there's nothing like being alone in a car, driving and listening to whatever it is—Bruce Springsteen. I think Louis C.K. has a bit about that. Was it Bruce Springsteen? Sometimes he has to pull over to the side of the road and just weep, or something like this. There's something about that. Sometimes a song just connects with you.

Nothing like a melancholy song could do that. You think about things you regret, or how life could have worked out. Sometimes it's not even about anything real; it just connects with something in the soul—the uneasiness that we all feel, maybe the loneliness we all feel that underpins so much of the human condition. It just connects with that. I don't know what that is.

There's a Kurt Cobain lyric on the In Utero record, from the song “Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle.” The chorus is, “I miss the comfort of being sad.” I was like, “Yes. That's it right there.”

In terms of love songs, I somehow find that kind of desperation powerful. I've always connected with Pearl Jam's “Black.”

Oh, amazing.

A friend of mine was going through a breakup, so I was listening to Pearl Jam, and he was the one who introduced me to them during that whole period when Pearl Jam was huge with Ten. That line is, “Someday—”

“Someday you'll have a beautiful life. You know, someday you'll be a star in somebody else's sky. Why, why, why can't it be mine?” Oh my God, that blows me away. That's an amazing line.

Well, yeah, I mean—

The delivery is incredible on it too.

Yeah. Eddie Vedder, one of the great frontmen of all time.

Yes.

And that whole period, that whole moment in history of Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder—that captured the '90s. That was one side of the '90s that just captured this singular moment in history. Who do you think are the great frontmen in the history of music?

Freddie Mercury, Robert Plant.

Freddie Mercury, number one, probably.

Steven Tyler.

Jim Morrison.

Jim Morrison?

Yeah. Roger Daltrey.

We have to say James Hetfield.

James Hetfield?

I mean, there's nothing—

I have to talk to you about this. I think it's the greatest concert of all time: Metallica's historic performance in Moscow in September 1991. This was shortly before the Soviet Union collapsed. Plus, we should mention that AC/DC and Pantera were there too, and about 1.6 million people were there.

By the way, there are reports that there were half a million people, 500,000 people. I've seen statements like that. That's a ridiculously inaccurate statement. It was a free concert, so any official counts don't count. It was definitely over a million. It's very likely to have been 1.5 or 1.6 million people.

This was a moment in history that I think they channeled. Great music—Metallica was firing on all cylinders, at the very top of their game—met this moment in history and this place in history. A defining part of the 20th century was collapsing, and you had these people who, for a moment through music, were able to escape the fear, the anger they felt, all of it.

There was also a political, social, and cultural moment meeting the musical moment. I was listening to the set list several times over the past few days, just taking myself back into that moment in time. Listen to this set list: “Enter Sandman,” “Creeping Death,” “Harvester of Sorrow,” “Fade to Black,” “Sad but True,” “Master of Puppets,” “Seek & Destroy,” “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” “One,” and “Whiplash.” Look at that. How is that?

That's my kind of set.

Get the fuck out of here. This is amazing.

That's my kind of set right there.

I don't know if you can think of anything that could beat that.

I think the guys in the band would say that too. They were really at their peak. The Black Album had just come out then, and that must have been so exciting.

I mean, Woodstock was big. There are certain moments in time that really, really meet the moment. Are you a fan of big live performances?

I used to be, but at this point I can't. I'd much rather see people play in small clubs, or go to the studio. I'd like to listen in the studio. Go to the studio, even.

I generally almost entirely agree with you. I just think that there are these historic moments, but you don't know which are going to be which. When you're making the concert free, and you get Pantera and AC/DC, all of it adds up.

The other legitimate thing you mentioned as one of the greatest concerts of all time is Beethoven's world premiere of the Ninth Symphony. I didn't really know the personal side of Beethoven until I saw this movie called Immortal Beloved.

Gary Oldman.

It's a masterful celebration of Beethoven in an interesting kind of way, through the perspective of a love letter that he had written. Then I realized—this was a couple of decades ago—that he went deaf before he even started writing the Ninth Symphony, which is why they consider it to be one of the greatest compositions of all time, one of the greatest symphonies of all time.

He went deaf and couldn't hear anything before he even started writing it. There's that famous story of him at the world premiere having to be turned around because he couldn't hear people applauding. He had to be turned around to see that people were actually clapping. There's this whole tragic element.

Plus, the meaning of the symphony, which ends in the beautiful “Ode to Joy.” The symphony itself is a kind of journey: it starts with chaos and conflict and ends with this celebration of peace and brotherly unity—a call for that, a reaching for that peace.

There's a tragic element to it again, connected to history. It was post-Napoleonic Wars and before the American Civil War. You're in this middle respite from war, calling for peace, not knowing that truly horrific wars are coming. You have the American Civil War and, of course, the 2 World Wars coming.

All of it together—and the fact that he was conducting while deaf, and that he wrote this whole thing deaf—is incredible. I was reading a lot about his process, and he just edited and edited and edited and edited. The fact that he had to edit in his head is insane.

Beethoven was sick all the time too. A lot of people were sick all the time; it was very common. What would motivate you to write music—this beautiful music that you can never actually hear except for in your head? Why? The amount of time it takes to write a 35- or 40-minute piece, all the parts—you have to hear all the orchestration in your head. You're editing, you're doing all these things. Where do you get the motivation when you can't hear the actual finished work?

People would say, “Well, he hears it in his head.” But what kind of enjoyment is it? You want to hear the orchestra. It's really profound that he was inspired to do this.

There's a thing called the Heiligenstadt Testament that he wrote. It was a letter to his brothers from 1802. I think they found it in his desk after Beethoven died, and he felt a sense of shame and humiliation because of his hearing loss. He said that he was afflicted with this thing where, of all people, someone standing next to him could hear a flute that he could not hear, or a shepherd singing in the field that…

And he could not hear this. Of all the people, why him, when hearing played such an important part? Another person would have had to have had perfect pitch, because you could never do this if you didn't have perfect pitch—which I think all of these great composers, for the most part, had. Brahms didn't, from what I know, but all the rest of them, for sure, had perfect pitch. So they could hear these things in their head, and that's how they composed.

I mean, you love sound and music. What do you think it was like gradually losing your hearing for Beethoven?

It must have been terrible. I've heard things where he would have a stick in his mouth and put it on the soundboard of the piano, and you could feel the vibrations in his skull and things like that.

But also, what's amazing is that he's able to write one of the greatest symphonies ever while deaf. So there's something about that. We mentioned the darkness, the torment that he's going through, and ultimately, "Ode to Joy"—not a cynical thing, but a call for the positive.

Yeah. I've devoted many, many hours thinking about that.

And plus, Napoleon broke his heart because he was a supporter of Napoleon. Napoleon was supposed to represent the French Revolution, this hopeful future of no more kings, no more monarchs, no more authoritarian regimes. Napoleon ended up becoming, essentially, king—becoming an authoritarian. Beethoven was famously critical of that.

Nevertheless, I think he maintained a fascination with Napoleon throughout his life, but with a more sophisticated, complex view of human nature and human civilization. He became more cynical, seeing more clearly that the world disappoints you, that dreams get shattered. Through that, he was still able to make this call for a hopeful future.

All right, Beethoven, one of the greats, for sure. Basically everybody I know knows how to play the first movement of "Moonlight Sonata," but I always avoided the third movement because I was like, "I'll never be good enough."

Never say never, Lex.

One of these days, maybe. You know what would be great? If Tom Waits writes me an email that says, "I only talk to people that can play..."

The third movement.

Play the third movement.

That'd be a dream come true.

There you go. I'd be like, "For this—"

That's motivation.

"That's my dragon," or whatever you do. You have to have a prince and rescue the princess. My dragon is the third movement of "Moonlight Sonata."

Okay. You often highlight the importance of Bach. In fact, so many of your guests...

Every famous songwriter is influenced by Bach. They are. Bach is the greatest composer of all time, the greatest musician of all time.

Even Sting and Dominic Miller said they go to Bach even for practice.

Every day. People talk about how Bach was not known outside the places he lived: Eisenach, where he was born, and Leipzig, where he spent many years. But Bach was known to great musicians.

It was difficult to find manuscripts, but there was a premiere of the "St. Matthew Passion" that Mendelssohn had done in 1829. It was on March 11, I believe. He had a manuscript because his father and mother collected manuscripts. He got a manuscript of this piece, and he—I think he was 20 years old—and they had a performance of it in Berlin. Beethoven and Mozart studied the 2 books of "The Well-Tempered Clavier."

But Bach wrote profoundly beautiful music, and some of the most complex contrapuntal music that I don't think anyone has ever done like that. He was an extremely bright guy. He had 20 kids; only 10 of them survived to adulthood. He lost both his parents when he was 9, within 9 months of each other, and went to live with an older brother.

And extremely productive, also. I think from all the music teachers I've ever had, I understood the importance of studying Bach.

He didn't write "Master of Puppets," but he wrote some great, powerful music.

Well put. I tried to educate the aforementioned music teachers about the brilliance of "Master of Puppets." Sometimes a good riff is greater than any musical composition.

I agree. I go back and play "Master of Puppets" every time I'm trying out a new amplifier. That's my go-to. I'll play "Master of Puppets." I have to play some heavy riff, and so usually it'll default to some Metallica or something like that. Or I'll play Alice in Chains, or a lot of times I'll go and do some drop-D something or play Tool.

I usually do some kind of drop-tuning thing. It's always got to be some type of metal that I'll test to see if the bottom end's tight on the amp and stuff. So, yes.

All right. We have to talk about this a little bit. You made a bunch of videos about it. There was a moment in time—it still goes on—but there was a moment when people were really freaking out about the use of AI in music.

There are these, I would say, incredible apps like Suno and Udio. ElevenLabs Music is also great. They can generate basically a full song from a text prompt. A lot of people started freaking out based on how good it is. You immediately start to imagine how this is going to transform music, and you're going to replace musicians and all that kind of stuff.

It is legitimately nerve-wracking because these are early versions, so you don't know where it goes. But your intuition now—you've been thinking about this, and you've made a bunch of videos—is, "Okay, everybody chill. Calm down."

So if you write a prompt in Suno and it spits out a song—which I've done; I've made a bunch of videos on this—I made up a fake artist, Eli Mercer, in a video. Then I did a thing for CBS News, where I made up this fake artist, Sadie Winters, and came up with this song, "Walking Away." Well, the computer, the program, came up with it.

There is some creativity in the process. In this particular thing, the process is that you generate an image.

I did it in ChatGPT—the image. Then I went to Claude and wrote the lyrics, because Claude's way better at lyrics than Suno is. Suno's bad at lyrics, at least right now. So I created the lyrics in Claude, then imported them into Suno, and I had great results with the songs that I came up with. I always have to qualify that.

But then I started thinking about this. People freak out about this: "Oh, this is bad, this is bad." And then I thought, "No. Who are going to be the ones that are going to benefit from AI?" Well, the people who are already great songwriters, because you have to be able to recognize when it spits out something good versus when it spits out something that's not that good. I've probably created 130 song ideas, out of which there are 3 good ones.

There's a thing happening where people's ears are very quickly becoming attuned to AI slop. That's actually quite fascinating. For example, there's this viral clip going around of an AI-based soul-jazz remix of songs like 50 Cent's "Many Men," and I think it is super impressive. There's a different pipeline, actually.

Yes.

It's a tricky pipeline for how you pull that off, and I think a lot of the creativity in that, even that kind of remixing, is in the pipeline of how you actually do that, because there's actually a lot of manual stuff in that pipeline. But I think, ironically, it's very cool at first, but when you listen to it for a while, you understand that this is AI slop.

Yes.

For a soul remix, it actually lacks soul. But it made me think: when I listen to soul or blues, I really want, in that case, to know... I don't want an AI B.B. King; I want the real B.B. King. And if I know any AI is involved in the B.B. King process, I'm tuning out.

Yes.

I don't think I'm being a curmudgeonly old dude in that. I think we humans want authenticity.

When I first started making these AI videos, it started back in 2023. I made my first one, and I would take my phone, come up in the kitchen, and play a song. My youngest, Layla, and my oldest, Dylan, would say as soon as I played it, "Why are you listening to AI?" I have 3 kids, and it's like, "Oh, my God—instantly." I was like, "How do you know?" They said, "It has this ringing sound in it."

So it took me probably about 4 or 5 days to figure out, "Okay, what are they hearing that I'm not hearing?" I separated all the parts, and what they were hearing was the artifacts that are in the vocal reverb. Those sounds made it sound incomplete. It just couldn't do the ambiances correctly, right?

A lot of these AI programs are trained on very low-bitrate MP3s. They feed all this stuff in there, so they're getting really inferior information in the training process. Whereas now, when they make these deals with the major labels, they'll get the multitracks and high-quality WAV files to train from, right? Whoever opts in, they get the solo vocal tracks. If Ed Sheeran wants to do it, or Drake, or whoever wants to give their voice to it, let it do its thing, and then get the royalties from it. I'm not saying that any of them are doing it. I'm just giving an example.

Every time that I would do it, I could be down the hall and play something on my phone just to see if they'd be like, "Why are you listening to AI?" They can instantly tell. Then it eventually started getting better. Then it'd be like, "Is this AI?"

I'd be in the car with Layla, coming back from taekwondo practice, and she'd say, "Is this AI?" I'd say, "Why? Does it sound like AI?" She'd say, "Sounds like it could be AI." I'd be like, "Yeah, it's AI." She'd say, "Oh, it's getting better." And then I did this song for...

It was an NPR interview, and I created a song with a fake artist. The song was called “Neon Ghosts,” and I played it for Layla in the car. She said, “Can you separate the tracks?” I said, “Yeah, I have them separated back home.” She said, “Okay, I want to go down and hear it.”

We went down to the studio, and I played it for her. She listened to the soloed vocal and said, “Wow, this is really realistic. This is very hard to tell, even with the soloed vocal.”

I think the room for creativity right now for humans is lyrics.

Yes.

The lyrics that are being generated lack soul somehow. I don’t know the right words. They can be incredibly sophisticated, but there’s something missing. The edge is not there—some kind of edge that we want in our lyrics. Some kind of surprise, but not cringe or cliché. Something truly novel in the lyrics.

But if that’s the case, it’s kind of sad that’s where the creativity has to come from, but not from the music. If we can create very realistic music that sounds really damn good, where’s the role of the musician there?

I think the role of the musician is in using AI to assist them in coming up with ideas, as a creation tool. Some of the stuff is just not high quality sonically, so the musician goes in and redoes things, changes things, adds parts, and actually does the music production. Maybe they re-sing the parts and change things. Then it’s basically an idea generator, and I think that’s a great use of AI.

But see, if you do that, does it make you sad that you don’t necessarily need to learn instruments? You can think of it as a different kind of instrument, but you can write lyrics, hum the melody, and hum parts. Then you can do an A/B kind of thing, just rhythm this kind of thing, stitch them together, and never actually have your fingers on a guitar or on a drumstick.

That’s why I’m not going to use AI, Lex: for that reason, because to me, it’s just boring.

Yeah, it is.

When I use it, it’s just like, “Eh.” But I used it for about a month because I was making videos and trying to see how it was advancing. Every 3 or 4 months, I’ll sit down and see whatever new versions they have. I’ll write some songs, prompt some songs, see what they come up with, and see if they’re improving on things. But ultimately, I don’t find it interesting to use.

I hear you. You’re a bit old school.

I’m old school.

As am I. I’m trying to think about the future, and I think it’s still going to be boring, even in the future. There’s something fundamentally boring about it, and I’ve been trying to figure it out.

For example, I use it more and more for programming, for building stuff. There, it’s not about the code. The final output is not the code; the output is what the code creates. It’s extremely useful there. It doesn’t matter if it’s boring or not—it’s useful.

But when the final output is the thing that AI creates, which it would be in music, there’s something about us that just knows. There is something boring about it.

Yes.

We want to celebrate and see the thing that’s hard to create. If AI can just generate a song—“Generate a top-10 hit”—we’ll quickly lose value for that, I think. We’ll want something raw, whatever shape that raw takes. I want to say raw talent, but that raw talent can be of any kind.

Perhaps the new kind of raw talent that civilization is asking for is how to make great TikToks. Maybe that’s what raw talent looks like. It makes me a little bit sad because I’m a huge fan of long-form, but creating TikToks is also a talent.

It is a talent. Absolutely. When I see anything that’s AI-generated, I instantly recognize it. Any video—I’m like, “Ugh, boring, boring, boring.” My kids do the same thing. They have no interest in engaging with it. As soon as they recognize it, and they can spot it a mile away, they’re just like, “Boring, boring, boring, boring, boring.”

Then they don’t even want to engage with the social media platforms, which is a danger. I think they need to crack down on the AI slop. YouTube has done a pretty good job, but it’s hard to stay on top of this. It gets flooded with so much of this stuff because it’s so easy to create and put up there. You’re just in the whack-a-mole game, trying to get rid of it all.

Yeah, it’s fundamentally boring. I think “boring” is a really good word for it.

Yes, boring.

It’s annoying to have to flip through the AI slop, but I think, actually, as a civilization, it’s inspiring us to value authenticity because you want to be real. One of the things I like about podcasts is people just shooting the shit and being themselves in long-form, versus being overproduced. I think AI is making people realize that AI is good at being overproduced. So there'll be more.

Let’s get that covered.

Yeah. Even artists—because you’re saying they’ll use it as a tool—part of me thinks, not really. I think this process of generating a bunch of different options and choosing the one you like the most is a really frustrating process for artists.

I think AI will definitely be used extremely effectively as a very fine-grained tool in the image domain—not for macro editing, but for very specific kinds of editing that Photoshop is increasingly integrating. I’ll mention to you offline the whole iZotope RX group of software, which does a lot of denoising, removing wind, and so on. They integrate machine learning extremely effectively for working with audio in different ways.

There are a bunch of other programs that do that. Maybe for B-roll footage, and the same thing with audio: if you just need a little audio to create a feeling for a scene, AI might be used in that kind of way. But truly original stuff? Eh.

I’ve saved videos where I’m speaking over music, for example, in an interview. Somebody’s playing, and we have 2 people speaking in lavs, but there’s so much bleed coming from the person playing that you can’t hear what we’re saying. Then we’ll split out the 2 voices for that section and separate them, and then take the music and separate that stuff out. So it’s really helpful for things like that.

So you have this video breaking down Sabrina Carpenter’s song “Manchild,” and you use that as an example of building up people’s intuition about the music business and how the music production for these popular songs is being done these days—who’s doing the songwriting, how it’s being done, and all that kind of stuff. I was wondering if you could speak to that.

In that particular song, Jack Antonoff, who is one of the writers, and Amy Allen and Sabrina Carpenter said in some awards thing that there’s an old guy on YouTube who says Sabrina had very little to do with the song. And so he said in this clip—

You being the old guy.

Me being the old guy. Well, Sabrina really was the one. She’s amazing, and she’s the one who wrote everything in the song. My response is, “Well, why are you guys even included in the songwriting, then?”

So one of the things you highlight is that a lot of people are included on the list of songwriters.

Yeah, 10 people—11 people. Why does Song of the Year have songs that are interpolations, meaning that they have melodies from other songs in their interpolation? They used to call it stealing.

Then you have songs that use samples for the whole thing, like the Doechii song that’s out right now. I said, “Look, she took a Gotye song, basically took off his melody, and created her own melody over it.” It saves time for her. You don’t have to actually create a track; you can just sing over someone else’s song that was already successful.

Yeah, you pointing that out—the song “Anxiety”—it broke my brain.

I mean, it’s so absurd.

It just feels unfair. It’s a good song, but it was also a good song before, and before that, it was also a good song.

Right, in 2011, or Luiz Bonfá in 1967. Why is that considered to be among the top songs of the year? You can’t find another song that’s not based on that? That’s ridiculous. Doechii has some really good songs on her record.

Yeah, but why are these the ones that are coming to the top?

Well, you know.

This is interesting. That might be just a criticism of the machinery of the business that drives them.

Absolutely.

It’s not necessarily a criticism of the artists themselves. A lot of these people are really good musicians. First of all, I think a lot of the actual songs they make at the top are good. I’m a big fan of Bruno Mars. He’s a great songwriter and a great musician all around. He’s a reincarnated Michael Jackson.

I mean, he’s—

Super, super talented guy.

Incredible, right?

Yes.

You mentioned Billie Eilish and her brother write a lot of the songs.

So good. Yeah, super talented.

Taylor Swift is unlike anything. She’s a historic figure in music, but she’s fundamentally, at least originally, a singer-songwriter.

Yes.

That’s the kind of music that Rick Beato gives props to. She carries the flame forward.

She works on her own songs, absolutely, and she never has more than 2 co-writers on things.

Want to take a quick bathroom break? Okay. I have to ask you about this complexity that you’re facing on a basically daily basis. I think it’s a challenge a lot of YouTube folks experience, but you’re just so viscerally experiencing it because a lot of what you do on your channel is celebrate music broadly.

As part of that process, you sometimes have to show clips of music, and I think all of that falls under fair use, quite obviously. So you get all these YouTube copyright claims. For folks who don’t know, if you get 3 of those, each one can be a strike against the channel and could take down your channel. You get some insane number. You said 13. You’ve been in a constant battle with WMG, UMG, all the three-letter-name record labels, right? The music business people—what’s the story there?

This has been going on since the beginning of my channel, and I’ve made videos about it periodically. When I first started, it was just instant blocks, so you never knew. I started—it’ll be 10 years in June. When I’d play music in a video, YouTubers weren’t playing music in videos because they didn’t want to deal with the Content ID claims and the takedowns.

I would play music and just see what happened. Then you’d get a Content ID claim, or you’d realize that people were, quote-unquote, “blockers.” I came up with that term because they would block your video and take down your video. At first, it was anything by Guns N’ Roses, which is still the case—Guns N’ Roses, AC/DC, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, and many other bands.

Then something happened. There was a guy on a skateboard on TikTok who had the Ocean Spray thing, and he was listening to “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac. That blew up and became a number-one song again. The labels realized—because I’d made many videos about why this was wrong and should be fair use—“Ooh, maybe we should rethink this.” Then they just started demonetizing videos.

Demonetized means they get all the money that you make.

They get all the money. In a 1-hour video, if you use 20 seconds of a clip, they get all the money.

So I finally hired a lawyer after the Rick Rubin video because I thought it was ridiculous. I went over to Tuscany, interviewed Rick at his house, and hired a lawyer to fight this. I’m going to have him on my channel. I don’t want to say who it is, but he’s another YouTuber. He had approached me a couple of years ago, and it’s not cheap to do.

You’re going to do a public interview with him?

I’m going to do an interview with him, yes.

Awesome. I can’t wait. That’ll be great.

I talked to him today about it, actually. He said, “You should fight these, because every single one of them is fair use.” He went through my entire catalog. I have 2,100 videos, and he’s fought 4,000 Content ID claims and won every single one of them. 4,000.

That’s a lot. When I do “Top 20 Guitar Solos,” there are 20 Content ID claims.

It can be either from the sound recording, if I use that, or from the publisher if I just play it.

That’s amazing. So it’s still work; he’s still a lawyer. Is there something hopeful you can say about the future of—

Yeah

Fight these Content ID claims. If it’s fair use, if you’re not just playing the song and listening to it—because a lot of reaction videos where they play the whole song are not fair use—I’m using these things while I’m talking. A lot of the time, it’s in interviews, or I’m breaking down a solo, and there’s a—

Yeah. See, that’s an obvious one, but even reaction videos, right? Where those—

Yeah. Even reaction videos, yes, absolutely.

Those are more borderline. But I don’t know. I love those videos.

Absolutely.

When a person is just sitting there and listening to it—like a voice teacher listening to a vocal performance—

Yeah, but those are breakdowns.

Yeah, those are breakdowns.

I think the Content ID stuff that was happening with these major labels involved them hiring third parties that would go out and use AI. Anytime they detected anything, they would go to the biggest channels first to get the most views, which makes sense.

They would claim everything they could, and historically, YouTubers never fought back. They were like, “Oh, this is easy money.” YouTubers never fought back against these things because they were afraid to have their channels taken down.

Right. You’ve got to say, “Hold my beer.”

There you go.

It’s important. So you—

It took me years, though, Lex. I've been doing this for 1 year now, and I'm 9 years—almost 10 years—into my channel. It took me that long.

Hopefully, there’s a ripple effect, too. It’s not just your situation. Hopefully, you don’t have to deal with this for much longer.

How has Spotify changed music? Sometimes we highlight the fact that it changed the nature of music, and the scarcity isn’t there. But every kind of music is available so quickly and easily. It’s easy to explore.

It’s a commodity. It’s like turning on a water faucet.

Do you think that, once you get going, there’s some good to it? There’s a lot of good to that, right? Have you gone through that whole process? I still remember when I had to basically throw away the albums.

I never did that. You mean after you uploaded them into your computer?

Yeah. There’s that 2-step process. First, there are the physical albums—CDs, for me. Then you upload them into your computer and save them. And then, allegedly, a friend of yours pirates some extra songs and puts them on the computer, so you have your stash on the computer.

You’re like, “This is my finely selected stash of greatness.” Sometimes it’s organized by album, sometimes it’s not. The big moment for me that was really difficult—really difficult—was throwing away that stash and switching to Spotify, switching to streaming, and basically rebuilding the stash of playlists and all that kind of stuff.

It was heartbreaking because so much love and effort went into that: the CDs, the MP3s on the computer, and then Spotify, where it just seems effortless. But Spotify helped me discover all kinds of artists I never would have discovered otherwise. I used Pandora a lot, too. Pandora prioritized discovery over organization, and that was really wonderful.

One of the things I like about Spotify—I’ll start with a positive—is that it shows view counts and play counts. Whether they’re real or not is another question, but it shows how many plays songs have, and that’s how the charts are based.

Does it give you a signal that something has been listened to 1 billion times? Does that mean something to you?

Yeah. It means that it’s a popular song. That’s a massive hit. There are very few songs that have 1 billion plays.

The downside of Spotify is the way that they pay their artists. Now they’ve lumped podcasts in with music, and podcasts are getting a cut of this streaming. There are benefits to algorithms and negative things about algorithms. Algorithms often pigeonhole people into listening to the same genre of music all the time instead of expanding their discovery of new music.

Whereas back in the day, you might hear something on the radio. Program directors would play things that they liked, and you might hear something and ask, “What is that?” “Oh, that’s a new Soundgarden record.” You’d think, “I like that. I’m going to go check that out.” You might hear something you wouldn’t have heard otherwise, something odd.

One thing I really love doing on Spotify is the radio feature. You have a few songs, and it’s similar to Pandora. When I work out, I’ll usually listen to something like Rage Against the Machine radio. I’m sorry—I need motivation.

What else would you listen to?

Classical music? I don’t know. But it’s pretty good because it recommends a bunch of other stuff I wouldn’t even know. Some of it I know, obviously, but it recommends a bunch of artists with a similar Rage Against the Machine–type sound. Then it’s like, “Oh, holy shit, that’s awesome.” That discovery works really well.

Some of it is the technology, but that experience was fundamentally more vibrant than what I had previously with my stash. I would just keep a stash and listen to the same record over and over and over.

But yeah, what's lost is—I’m sure you love this—but listening through the Led Zeppelin records, just driving in a car and listening to the whole thing all the way through.

Yeah, that's lost.

So, I have my old iTunes libraries from 2005 that I saved—the CDs that I uploaded into my computer.

Oh, nice.

Anytime I play songs on my... When I'm doing an interview, I always play WAV files, I put them in. It's funny that when I interviewed this mixing engineer, Andy Wallace, people comment, "Wow, that song sounded amazing." And you go, "Well, not only are they great mixes that he did, but I'm using WAV files in there." People notice the... And these are WAV files from, from, you know, original encoding. Not remastered things that Spotify keeps doing and adding a bunch more top end and things like that. These are actually the original WAV files from off the CD that I ripped 20 years ago.

What's your current stack? What are the tools you use? What's your DAW? What's the audio interface? What are the mics?

I use Pro Tools.

Pro Tools stuff.

For the most part, but I also use Logic and Ableton. I've got all those.

So you're mostly on a Mac?

I'm only on a Mac.

Only on a Mac. I'm totally the opposite. Although we have multiple PCs because my kids use PCs.

Yeah, just to rebel.

They do it for gaming. They like to game. But in terms of editing, I hate how good Mac is at just integrating the hardware and the software.

If I didn't have a Mac, honestly, I wouldn't be talking to you right now. The only good thing that a major label did for me is, when my band was on UMG, they bought me a G3, an SM7, and Pro Tools Digi 001—the first prosumer Pro Tools thing. I learned how to use Pro Tools, and that allowed me to learn how to edit video and become a record producer. So I have to give it to Mac for that.

So Pro Tools, I mean, that's still the standard.

That's kind of the industry standard, yeah.

I gotta ask you, because I've never used Pro Tools. Again, I'm a caveman. I've used REAPER, I've used Studio One—that's the most recent one that I've used—and for the most part I've used Ableton Live. I feel like I'm using 1% of the power of the tool. Ableton Live makes me feel like I'm literally just pressing the record button.

Ableton's amazing. It really is.

It is. But I feel like it's designed for people who are doing all kinds of MIDI stuff, looping, and the—what is it? The Push buttons with the beats. I sound really out of touch, but the power is incredible. It's not just for recording; it's also for live performances. This is why Studio One has been a little bit nicer for me, because it's simpler and made more for recording.

Any DAW that you get used to, Lex—

Just use anything.

Using it, yeah. And you have to become a master at it. If you want to be a recording engineer or producer, you become an expert. Finneas and Billie Eilish, I think they use Logic; that's the DAW they like to use. A lot of pros use Logic. I fire up Logic every couple of days and use it for things. I have it on my laptop here, and I have Pro Tools and Logic on my laptop. I use both. I use Pro Tools mostly, though.

But Pro Tools, that's where you feel at home?

Oh, yeah. I'm an expert in Pro Tools.

Are you using any emulation? Any amp sims, or is it all real amps?

No, I use amp sims. On my laptop here, when I travel and things like that, I use Neural DSP, which I just did a video at their headquarters in Helsinki. Their CEO, Doug Castro, is a friend of mine. I actually talked to him today, as a matter of fact.

I have a Kemper amp sim, a modeler. I have an Axe-Fx, I've got a Helix—I pretty much have all these things. But for me, I have 100 amps in my studio, and I have mics set up all the time, with cabinets and stuff.

Oh, what do you mean?

I have 100 amplifiers. Real amplifiers.

Real? Wait, sorry, 100?

I have 100, yeah. About 100, maybe 95.

How does one get to that level?

Collecting and being—I'll be 64 in April, so—

So you just don't let go?

I don't let go, no.

Why would you get to 100? Is it tone difference?

Yes, everything does one thing really well. I have this modded Marshall JCM800 that does this one thing. It's got great mids, and it's good for this kind of a tune, so I'll pull that out. Then it's like, no, I need more of a scooped metal sound, more like Metallica or Dream Theater, so I'm going to pull out my Mesa/Boogie.

Or I need something chimey, more like Brian May or The Edge, so I'm going to pull out my Vox AC30. That's why I have so many amps: every amp I have does one thing really well. If it doesn't do it well, I get rid of it. And I'm down to 100.

Down to 100. It's only 100.

I can get by with probably 75.

Come on, but then you're really running the risk of not having just the right amp. But you're using emulation, so that's great. And there's the other side of it, which is the guitar. I told you offline, I think having multiple guitars is cheating, but whatever. Nobody agrees with me on this. I only have one main guitar. I do have some side pieces, but one main guitar.

The Strat? What do you play?

The Strat, yeah. I said I would never do this, but I was in a guitar store. I live next to a guitar store in Cambridge, and one day—I would always stop by, just to look at the guitars. I don't really know why, exactly, just to be in the aura of these great instruments.

They brought in this American Strat that had these different shades of color. It was like a silver. I've never had this feeling. They talk about love at first sight. I just fell in love with the guitar. Can you speak to the kinds of guitars you have and love?

I mainly have old-school guitars. I have Gibsons, Fenders, and PRS guitars. I have 2 Gibson acoustics. I have a 1957 Country Western that I've had for probably 30-some-odd years. It's a great guitar. I have a J-45 Gibson, and I have a Martin D-28, so I only have 3 nice acoustics.

I have a Guild 12-string, and I have a Guild Nashville-tuned guitar. The low strings are up an octave, so the E, A, D, and G are up an octave. That's Nashville tuning—six-string, though. It's basically what David Gilmour plays on "Comfortably Numb" in my video. He plays a Nashville tuning, but with one variation: the low E is up 2 octaves.

This is how he wrote "Comfortably Numb." The chorus part of it was with this particular guitar that he's playing in the video.

What can you say about the different feels that the guitars—the acoustics—have? How do you know which one to pull out?

It depends on the kind of part that I'm playing. If I want something with really tight midrange that doesn't have a lot of low bass, this particular old Gibson I have, the '57, I'll pull that out. It's got very balanced strings and midrange. It doesn't have a booming bottom end, a booming low E string, or anything, or A string. So it depends on what kind of sound I'm looking for.

So it's more about sound versus feel?

Yeah. All my guitars play equally well. I have them all set up so that they play well. I have a signature Gibson guitar that I've had for 5 years now.

When you say Gibson, a Gibson Les Paul?

Gibson. It's a double-cut Les Paul Special, with P-90 pickups.

I don't know what double-cut means, but it sounds impressive.

That means 2 cuts, as opposed to a Les Paul that has 1 cut. It's a Les Paul Special that has 2. I have it over there—my signature guitar.

All right, nice.

Yeah. When you play this, you're going to be like, "Oh my God, this is butter."

Again, I said it's cheating.

And what amp do you play through? Do you play through an amp sim, or do you have a real amp?

This is going to be embarrassing. Yeah, I use BIAS FX. I'm sorry.

Lex, I use amp sims too, so don't worry about it. I just got the new John Mayer Neural DSP plug-in today that I have not tried out. He did a modeling of all his amplifiers that Neural DSP did, and it sounds great. John played it; it sounds just like his amps.

Yeah, John is incredible.

John's great.

I've been fortunate enough to have dinner with him 2 times. Outside of being an incredible musician, he's also great conversationally.

I've known John since he lived in Atlanta, when he got signed. I knew John from way back then, right in the early 2000s.

I think he doesn't get enough credit. He's one of the greatest living guitarists in the world.

He's a fantastic guitar player.

Absolutely. And a celebrator, if that's a word, of great guitar playing.

Absolutely.

By way of advice, you started your YouTube channel in your mid-50s and found incredible success. You've had essentially multiple careers. Is there some wisdom you can extract from that?

My theory is that somebody's got to be successful, so why can't it be you? That was my theory. When I started my channel, it started by accident with the Dylan video.

And really, so many people reached out to me. I started it six months after that viral video. So many people wrote to me, “Can you teach me this?” Pro musicians—well-known ones that you would know—asked, “Can you teach me this?” I can’t teach you what Dylan did, but I can teach you relative pitch and develop your ear that way.

I had conservatories writing to me about this stuff from all over the world. “How did you teach Dylan this?” We made about 4 different videos, and they got more and more sophisticated. So I thought, “Okay, I’ll make some YouTube videos and explain this stuff.” That’s really why I started: I couldn’t answer the emails. There were so many of them, so I just started making videos on how to train your ear and music theory.

That’s really how I started my channel. My wife was like, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m making YouTube videos.” “Why?” “So I don’t have to keep telling people how I did this stuff.” Then, all of a sudden, I had 4,000 subscribers the first month, another 4,000 after that. I hit 100,000 after a year, and then 6 months later, 200,000, and 3 months later, 300,000.

I think there’s one thing that should be said: in modern culture, a lot of young people see YouTube and TikTok and Instagram, and they want to be famous. They want to get the clicks and the views and so on. That’s the thing they chase and optimize.

I think the thing you’re leaving unstated, perhaps, is that you spent many years pursuing the mastery of a craft. There’s a lot of value to getting good at something offline. You can reveal your journey online, but the thing you’re chasing is not fame. It’s getting good at something.

I think what happens is, even if the thing you get good at is not the thing that you become famous for, it’s still getting good at one thing that somehow relates to getting good at another thing. Somehow, that leads you to get better at getting better at the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing. But if you’re just chasing fame and trying to figure out, “How do I do the viral thing?” it just seems like you might actually get there, but it’ll be unfulfilling and not long-lasting.

My theory of my channel has always been: make videos on things I’m interested in. At first, I thought, “Oh, nobody’s going to watch an old, white-haired guy on YouTube.” That was kind of my thing. Well, that was not correct.

It just so happens that other people are interested in the same things I’m interested in. Keep learning. When I produced bands, I never let them take my picture, ever. I never let them record me in the studio. There are virtually no pictures of any band I ever produced.

So from 1999 to December 2015, when that Dylan video came out, no one took my picture. There were no pictures of me on the internet.

You’re a fully behind-the-camera kind of guy—

Yes.

Meaning, like, no pictures?

No. No pictures with people. “Hey, can we take a picture?” I’d say, “No. No pictures with people.”

And now you’re the talent. You’re the face. No, I mean, but again, the thing you’re leaving unstated is that you spent a lot of years teaching music, really exploring music, trying a music career—trying to create, trying to produce, trying to be a musician, and all of that. Not just trying, but being extremely good at it.

I just think in modern culture there’s a sense that you want to skip that part. “I want to be famous. I want to…” You know this. That’s not going to be effective, in most cases, as the primary thing to chase.

I have an undergrad degree in classical bass. I have a master’s from New England Conservatory in jazz guitar. Then I taught college for 5 years. I taught jazz studies from 1987 to 1992. Then I got a publishing deal, my first publishing deal, in 1992 with PolyGram Publishing.

Then I became a producer when I was 37. Having no idea how to engineer, I taught myself engineering. Then YouTube—I taught myself how to edit videos.

And then you taught yourself how to interview.

And I taught myself how to interview. I’d never done an interview before. I was never like, “An interviewer? What?”

You haven’t just done that. You’ve taught yourself not just how to do YouTube, but YouTube Shorts. A different—

Totally different thing.

A totally different thing.

Totally different skill.

And then, not just YouTube, but how to be a YouTuber, because you’re both a YouTuber and a musician who posts stuff on YouTube. Being a YouTuber means you’re thinking about things like thumbnails and—

I make my own thumbnails. I’ve always made my own thumbnails.

By the way, before I forget, I think I speak for the entirety of the internet in thanking you for how you introduce your videos and how you close them. This is a big part of YouTube, where people have a 30-minute introduction to a 5-minute video. You just go straight in. That’s really wonderful—I mean, on all fronts.

I suppose that has to do with the production skills that you have, understanding how to cut the fluff.

To make a song.

Yep. Cutting the fluff, cutting the bullshit. I’ll just get straight to the core of the thing.

I’ve heard you talk about maintaining friendships for a long time. You said, “Never waste a friendship.” Can you elaborate on that?

That’s one of my things: I really value the time I’ve spent with people, friendships, and keeping in touch with people. I talk to each one of my siblings multiple times a week. I talk to my sisters probably every night—my 2 sisters.

I have friends from college, friends from growing up, friends from both colleges I went to. I have friends from all different eras in my life that I keep in touch with and visit whenever I can.

You must have met some incredible humans, and incredibly weird and interesting humans, throughout your life. So it’s worth the effort to connect and reconnect.

I mean, it’s pretty much everything in life. Nothing means anything more than the friendships that you make and your family.

Yeah. What’s the point of this whole thing, right?

That’s right.

What’s the role of music in the human experience?

Well, hopefully to enlighten people and to create the soundtrack of their life.

It is, right? Music does something. Sometimes when I’m alone, I’ll listen to a song, and there’s nothing quite like a song that makes me truly feel—feel alive. Whatever that is: sadness, hope, or excitement. When I’m working out, listening to Rage Against the Machine, I feel protest.

Or, as I was listening to Metallica, I was relistening to the set that they played in Moscow. I was just hyped—truly hyped. I was pacing, listening to it. There’s nothing like that.

I’ve never found anything.

I don’t know what that is in the human psyche, but I’m so glad we found it. We humans created instruments that can vibrate strings and, together, create harmonies and melodies—ones that reverberate through generations and carry that.

It’s one of the greatest things that humans ever did: creating music.

All of that led up to you, some guy being listened to by millions of people on the internet. This is all a simulation, Rick. I’ve been a fan of yours for a long time, like I told you. This is crazy to meet you.

Same, Lex.

Thank you for everything you do for the world, for celebrating music, and for helping us discover and rediscover some of the incredible musicians and songs that have been created over the decades, over the centuries. Thank you for being who you are, and thank you for talking to me.

Thanks. I appreciate it.