Rocker Jack White - Serious Jibber-Jabber with Conan O'Brien | Team Coco

welcome to serious jibber-jabber I'm here with my friend Jack White who's phenomenal solo album blunderbuss is his first number-one record it's been nominated for three Grammy Awards Jack nice to have you here nice to have me here yeah it's very good to be seen with you and to have you in this strange chamber I like this chamber you've built yeah I built this yourself - I did I was up yeah it took me four days to build this it's made of pure asbestos um you'll be dead in a year uh welcome to the show thanks for have you could even call this a show I was thinking about today I got a lot of people that ask me this about the time we met and I thought it was probably a good place to start yeah uh beginning the beginning I was all I remember is I think it's the late 90s I fly to Detroit to shoot a crazy video with Ted Nugent I think at his farm where we shot guns and rode around on three-wheeled vehicles and then at the end of the shoot I come back to the hotel and we all go play we see a bowling alley yeah we go bowling and that's where you and Meg came over and how long had the White Stripes been around at that point we were just probably just starting at that point I mean we were just kind of fumbling around it was a thought that wadis this really this band could really work and I don't think Milly Meg was convinced at the moment cuz it was so simple it's the sort of thing you might think all people might think this is foolish or something but we were trying to be childish on purpose so I think we just started kicking around at the beginning then kicking around and you're in Detroit yeah and you had been an upholsterer yes and you take a pull string very seriously I apologize because you offered to upholster the chair for the Conan show this show that offers still standing and I didn't take you seriously I didn't I thought you were kidding no I mean it and then later on it I thought you were serious I'll do it I'll still do it all right let's doing what we do a whole new chair all right a pollster my chair for me I like that I'll do it um what about upholstering has helped you in your musical career the most important part about it was it was a moment when I was a Prentice upholsterer how old were you at the time I was about 15 I think 15 or 16 and there was a mid-century modern couch with like a vladimir Kagan piece I think I know I had pink fabric with silver threads in it and I it was tempted in the back it was three staples in the back just to keep it in place while the poster was working in front of it and I just kept staring at this over and over again I was cleaning up sweeping up and working on it and I skip steering it that's the minimum amount of staples to hold that piece of fabric down that's now we can call that upholstered you know what would be the minimum you couldn't do it with two you could do on the ends the middle would be right now I just thought my brain is the middle a table can only it could have three legs and still stand but two it'll fall so that sort of image has been burned into my brain I think about that probably once a week that image of that those three staples and it's affected everything I I forced myself to do anything that I create artistically music-wise whatever it is I force it through the funnel of that idea you know and I have three lines or three concepts in a song or I wrap it around storytelling and melody and rhythm the white stripes the whole band was based on the number three yeah so it's really about it's about simplicity and not it's almost like it's almost like a concept of minimalism right when you say in some way like not anything more than you absolutely need well you have to be careful when you do things like that because there's there's this element of pretension that I think other people there's two ways about it one way was that it can be pretentious if you take it too seriously if you become whatever pedantic about it but I looked at it as a way of limiting myself so that I could create more things create more songs because I'm so boxed in my brain is forced to work with the tools that are at hand I think I I can't let some engineers fix it or let the three other members in the band cover it up with what they're playing whatever I am in this box by myself for me and megger in this box so I'm not we have to work and I still do this no matter what I do even if I have a song you know there's seven people backing me up or something I'm still thinking about that for myself where my head lays in the music or in the piece to keep myself boxed in any time I give myself free rein all the time all the money whatever everything in front of me I I it is not good for me and it makes me disinterested I remember I was a people asking like when you when you write songs I didn't I don't I write songs when there's a task to do when there's a job we have a studio time books tomorrow and you know now what I do is I have my own studio so I'll have people coming like you know maybe next week are the peacocks the gals are becoming a record so the night before or maybe I will force myself to write songs because they're coming tomorrow I have no choice I have nothing for them to record I have to write songs now if I said well I'll write some songs and when I'm done with them I'll call you guys and show up it won't happen I just it was one there's a famous saying that Samuel Johnson wrote the dictionary cuz he needed to pay his rent right he had it was the rents due in a week he'd be like all right I'll give you a dictionary and there is something to that comfort kills can kill an artistic impulse you have to I mean yeah what what good can come from comfort I mean it's not gonna be art you know I mean I think there's a there's a false ideal out there to some people maybe in younger people they might think you know I could be an artist and I don't have to work and but I think like calling yourself an artist you you have to work three times as hard is someone with a punch clock job because if you punch in you have a responsibility at your job but you have to you can also do what you're told and and and work the machine whatever you're doing and do what's there already there for you do what you're told to do it was expected of you have that job but if you're an artist and you have to create something from nothing you know there's nothing on this canvas nothing on this tape we have to create something that didn't exist before that's that's ultra responsibility super responsibility is not so here's the question it's not 1998 anymore you're not in Detroit facing a choice between making it music or upholstering for the rest of your life you're now at a stage where you could be seen as comfortable how do you create the situation where you're not comfortable how do you create the situation where you are up against it now it's really up to me there's really up to me to push myself and be harder on myself it's not up to me now to say oh you know I'm gonna record on Pro Tools and let someone else fix it if there's mistakes and I go I fix it with a mouse and use some program to tune it or whatever I really got to push myself to not take it easy and not take any kind of creature comforts of that scenario especially now as you know it was being in the White Stripes half the half the trouble was out there there was only me and Meg there was so little a little amount of components involved a half the work was done to keep it simple but now I'm if you have a bit I have two bands now and two with me how said keeping my brain in that box is a lot more work but I like that it's not you know that's a far cry from having writer's block or not knowing to do with myself I I know there's a lot of work on the table for me to do whenever I feel like it and I always feel like it because I want to I want to create something every day every day when I wake up that's what I want to do it's not busy work it's not anal retentive behavior and it's like I cannot wait to catch up to this idea I had three weeks ago that I haven't gotten to do yet and I got adducing I will say the selfish part of it is that in music you can do that and like in film if you're an actor or director you're at the mercy of bigger teams you know studio paying for it they could set it up scheduling all that I can go out and record in the studio and if it doesn't turn out well I don't have to put it out and I can throw it away and start over again so there is a selfishness to that world where I can I can create every day because I because I want to not to answer to anybody and I don't don't take that lightly I take that I respect that is there anything about this because you grew up very Catholic I mean a very very Catholic very Catholic family big family and there is sometimes I sense and maybe it's spent a little bit of guilt I was chained you know what it is it's a you got to work for it it's that feeling that you always need to earn it you always need to end it is ingrained in Catholicism that that you don't you dismiss praise it's just stuff it syndicates in your bone marrow people say congratulations thanks let's put that aside you've got to get to work in it and that that's always yeah the sense do you feel like that's something that probably got in your DNA a little bit I guess we have a job you know if you if you're raised in any kind of faith or beliefs or even political beliefs you know you get to a point when you're an adult and you have to assess how much of that you want to let still exist in your brain and dictate how you live your life and religion is the toughest of all those because if you really have questions that reach outside the bounds of the religion you were raised and you you've really got problems you know and and but as you're talking about like the things on the side of it like saying just even from being a big Catholic family if you have that many people in the house or that many people older than you you've got to determine what as you're older what what of those guilt trips that you were given or those lessons you were taught and anything that you learned it was beautiful or terrible which of it do you listen to whichever do you keep going in your life what do I do with my kids now we're not I'm trying to teach them something and and I catch myself doing you know giving my kid a guilt trip or something it's the ultra Catholic wave of you know raising somebody and and sometimes I'm I'm you know it's a good thing though I mean that actually works or there's times where actually makes sense you know I don't have didn't dismiss it completely hundred percent I never useful it's funny because it's there for a reason there was a reason that that some of these rules were put in place I think it's very mid late twentieth century to debunk it all yeah and you think actually the the thing that I happiest for that I think I got maybe from my parents maybe from Catholicism or whichever way that I was raised for being from a large family as I got this idea this were Catholic I like to work really hard and I believe in hard work and I think that's the hardest thing I believe in talent yeah and clearly you're someone who's got talent but I think talent is overrated I think I think talents important but the real accelerant the real coefficient that's the mystery number that makes the whole thing work is hard hard yeah freaking work any of any of your ideals and I'm guessing in that and any of my idols and you look back and you and you see the things they've done the footage and the recordings or the writings or whatever it is you'll see these people hard at work and even if they have things where they have an obsession or they have some kind of mental problem whatever what's happening is them working consistently and over and over again and we were talked about Johnny Carson oh yeah I mean nobody he was so well read he read every book I mean how do you have time to read that many books with a busy schedule as you have you know and because you're you're just obsessed with pushing yourself pushing yourself forward I'm reading a Steve Martin's autobiography right now yeah and this is thing been going on lately and it's a you know playing live shows around the world and there's a sting going on with audiences now and it's happening in Australia in Europe in America and these crowds are just like finishing songs and nobody's clapping it's it's very strange it's sort of like oh you know what's going on here and I don't use a set list and I'm very off-the-cuff onstage so I've always felt about myself that I'm I'm like a stand-up comedian shì I treat the scenario exactly like they do every time I hear a stand-up comedian talk about his craft what he's doing like oh that comedian was ripping off my jokes and they were taking my material or I did this joke and it bombed I took it out of the set the next joke I told murdered that's exactly how I play music on stage you know and if the song if I if no one claps I could they're too cool to clap they say if you're in a scenario where some hipster thing where they're not too cool to clap we don't yeah love the show but they're not gonna you know they're lying to me do you mean like a community if you tell us a great joke it's be people aren't like too cool to like let you can't help you so if you laugh right so but people can you decide if they want to clap or not and so if they're lying to me like they they like this song but they didn't clap for I have no idea what to do with the next song I know no my next move is a comedian knows what his next move is immediately you know well you think I think they don't understand that that that you're that you need them they exactly and the thing is yes you if people go and see Jack white they're in control they have but they don't know that they have no idea that you're getting anything I hand out pamphlets before every show I just have gotten those pamphlets please please enjoy me it's exactly one talking it's really the saddest pamphlet I've ever read a rock show um but I tell you a rose reading the Steve Martin biography the autobiography and and I think in the foreword he says the on stage when I was a stand-up comedian there was no time for enjoyment there's no time you need to enjoy myself I'm too busy thinking about the next move and I think that's exactly how I feel all the time I never on stage sit and like yes this is great and I feel the whole song for the whole time I'm loving this and then a minute like I passed three seconds of that feeling I it just just starts to dissipate and disappear for me I have to like shake it off and push forward and move or even if the song is fraught with mistakes or problems if I know in my brain I'm pushing forward and not sitting there laughing having a blast I know I'm getting somewhere somehow somewhere well there's a you know I don't think about the way the instruments you choose you go out of your way to play instruments that are hard to play that are hard to keep in tune yeah uh have you ever wanted to give in and say I just want to go get myself a killer amazing the callings that just plays like butter you know what I mean the temptation comes up all the time and it's a tough it's a tough thing to know and see your peers doing those things and nobody cares the musicians don't really care that much then the crowd definitely doesn't really even notice or know what's going on but I know you know and that becomes a big question about art if you do something that's important and extremely involved in pushing yourself and making something beautiful happen but no one will know it should you do it or should you cheat because no one will know that you're cheating either the tough decision have to be be hard on yourself to really make and I do that all the time and sometimes yes like you mean you know I tell people about it almost cuz maybe sometimes I feel like you know it's if I'm gonna go through all this trouble now I would kinda want people to know that how much trouble will go if it's guys stupid I was like it it becomes a different battle yeah but how do you want to say this is a plastic guitar from the Sears & Roebuck catalog or whatever in 1965 and the strings are 4 inches from the fretboard and it is a monster to play and but that is you like the struggle yeah you like yeah I mean I heard I think it was in your documentary great white north we talked about you the great rock cliche or visual cliche as all the pics taped to the stands that you can just grab one right pic breaks or you lose it you just grab another one you keep the pics back so you literally have to walk back and get another pic and then I heard you say that I thought that seems Catholic okay yeah flagellation she just in between chords flagellate yourself it's in the back and then a few more but that's the sense I got it is man I don't I don't know but I know it feels uh uh I'm feels like I'm getting somewhere I know that was tough move to do I was watching uh when my daughter she's like six years old scarlet out the other day and she's starting getting there WC Fields now I'm watching my probably my one of my favorites really maybe maybe maybe my favorite next to it's like Marx Brothers WC Fields but WC Fields fantastic well short of that the one with the Carla Fong you know then in a bed and then she's explaining why it why does he keep saying Carla Fong and spelling the whole thing I think it's funny that you know he's making such a big deal to spill this name out and talk about this damn name over and over again yeah you know and you know trying to know at the age of six just been planning this an idea and bred that there's in her brain that uh that you know there's seeds to things in the future she'll understand that that uh why think how things are constructed but you know she was she was watching this one where he's doing jugni oh he did a routine he's juggling no cigar boxes right you know taking the middle and flipping it and that and I flashed back for a second of my dad showed me that when I was a kid too and we were watching and he was laughing and at the end he just looked over me and said try it sometime Wow and I thought he's right it looks really easy but that took a lot of work and then took a lot of determination to care enough to think that I mean you gotta hand it to those guys juggler the street performers I mean those guys work really hard and what they're doing in their complices dealers and all the books all movies and documentaries and all the stuff that are made about the people that we are interested in or we think that accomplished something amazing you know who wants to hear that they took the easy way out all right who wants to hear that they're just that cheated nobody wants to hear that you know and we were talking about you know as told you I was watching these Larry Bird clips like 4:00 in the morning couple weeks ago first God knows whatever reason but I didn't I just didn't know much about him um and they how how hard on himself he was you know everyone else like I think McHale or something set on the team you know at the end of the night hey me and I go home I got a life you know he's going back out and popping three-pointers in the empty arena by himself he would do it in the off season yeah French Lick he had a he had a hoop yeah he would just shoot over and over and over again in his spare time and it's funny because I'm just listening to the people you reference across the spectrum you know whether it's in music whether it's in comedy like a WC Fields or a Steve Martin Johnny Carson there's a common thread which is they all prepared it's all preparation yeah and I you know you can sound like an old man but it's not fun to tell I tell when young people ask me I'd like to do what you're doing or I'm interested in what you how do I do that it's not fun but I have to tell them you have to work really hard and you always have to prepare and you have to have your together and really have it locked down it's not a fun and then go into a situation and when you've done that then that gives you the freedom to throw it out the window and play but it's not a fun message and in there and it's going to get worse because the technology that's available now is is all about as technology has always been making things less labor-intensive and removing the labor from the from this whatever thing it is whatever idea it is so as technology gets more and more down the line of you don't need to sing in tune we can sing in tune for you press this button and it will tune you I mean it's going to get worse and worse and it's up to every I have a big chip on my shoulder about responsibility for technology you know when the telephone first came out people learn telephone etiquette you know when people actually said Hawaii Hawaii boy boy yeah Hoya no I stay you know there was telephone etiquette it was a politeness a new kind of politeness not just taking politeness from the parlor and put it on to this device it was a new kind of politeness because you couldn't see the other person and I think there were for a long time technology went even victrolas you know how how that was done there was a manners and politeness that were attached to it responsibility for the new technology but I think nowadays I think the new technologies here give me the toy and I you know I don't give a damn anything to do with anything rules no rules about the toy at all just give me the toy meaning we're out to dinner right now and I could spend the whole time with this Blackberry doing this and going huh-huh-huh and not paying any attention to you but the whole concept of going out to dinner and having a social you know it's when the restaurant was first invented you think about that you just imagine that restaurants always exist yeah but apparently restaurants someone invented the idea of what's going to eat and you can have dinner I mean people had gone to taverns before but a restaurant and when people first went to restaurants it was thought to be very rude to have other people seeing you eat that was thought of his rude something we don't think at all about anymore but that was thought of his rude strangers shouldn't see you putting food in your mouth so they had to separate people and have them in both behind curtains and things a road things a road and now you can imagine a McDonald's where there's curtains they can get you big men we don't behind a curtain but we don't see a we don't hear any talk at all about it only like as jokes of people being rude with it but whatever that's just how things go nowadays you're not going to stop the monster you know the snowball they're rolling down but it I'm believer that new technology means new responsibility in art forms too if you are photographer I mean you have Photoshop now I mean now if you're gonna call yourself refer and be one and dedicate your life to that you have a big monster hanging out in front of you that can make you cheat on everything contrast lighting aperture everything you can cheat on everything and it's your duty to decide how much you're gonna let yourself fall down that well because now if I show you a great photograph it's beautiful you know whenever thirty forty years ago it was who took that photo how did that happen how did he capture that moment right and now it's it's probably fake it's probably altered to look that probably an Ansel Adams app take something of your iPhone and push it and then it's just every bit as good some people will say who would care so what the image is great it's two-dimensional anyways what does it matter how it was created but to be a photographer and dedicate yourself to that you have to really be able to live with yourself that you know that just taking the easy way out like that through technologies is not always fulfilling either you you mentioned image and it's funny because it's a quote that you have in a scene that really struck me in a documentary we may go through Canada and at one point you said one of your reviews that you liked the most and you'll you remembered better than I do is I think someone said you know white stripes and we're simultaneously the most real and most fake bed in the most yeah and I think you said fake first real second most faith and most and and because of that most real band in the world and I thought that as a fascinating statement you know obviously you've you play with image you play with how things look it's very important to you and yet mostly what we've talked about here for a long time is stripping things of ornamentation when you actually do the work oh we crazy contract I love I'd loves it to fix you know extrapolate would you call it there's no extrapolating here I love dix-huit we don't have the equipment for very expensive it's like spelunking yeah that is a beautiful point of how when we start the white shows for example I still do it now and we did when we were on your shoulder today you know there's for me the easy way out is to go up in jeans in a t-shirt and and but what's what comes along with that is a generation for last you know 20 30 or however years since Punk that that type of dress was considered real you were real you weren't the the you know soul review you weren't the you know the Beatles dressed up on its Elvin whatever you were real because you were in jeans and t-shirt and that choice was also the same choice that tons of other people are making they're all making that choice when they walk on stage you make it you have to make it choice you can go into what you slept in last night or you can dress up in a suit or something like that but the idea that that became authenticity that that gives you a license of authenticity always bugged me and when Megan I were starting we're playing blues music and you know this is the music that is closest to our hearts and I started rapping on these other ideas that you know the best way to show how real this is this music is is to give them an artifice a presentation that's all the aesthetic is all red white and black and it's presented to them that if someone went walk into that bar and say this is look at this oh this is a real blues band the brother and sister she's in pigtails yet peppermints paint on everything I mean this is but whatever but that was are the same people you I don't want to connect with I don't want to share with them because they can't see past that and that's like the ultimate test you know if you couldn't see past that and realize that this music is actually ultra real and full of mistakes messed up you know and at least attempting to try to get down to something dirty you know and I I don't want I don't want to use the word authentic because I think authenticity is a trap and I think I think it think it's a waste of time everybody's time and authenticity in music has been something that everyone's chased you know for a long time there's these different periods of music you know where you know the big band periods or Eva coup stick music periods into big band periods country music soo ultra produce things now computerized music digital music where you know people of all so yeah but that's not the real deal you I like this person yeah but he's not the real deal this guy is the real deal and you have to decide for yourself what that means you know what's like it you know in whatever in 19 I'm gonna say 68 69 in music everything's gotten psychedelic everything started to and then the band comes along yeah and everyone decides now we've got all you know get back to what's real but people but then people realize things drift again and who's to say what's real so there are everyone's trying to get back to what they think is the real roots music what music what music is your favorite music what's type what genre or kind of you know it's funny cuz I I was imagine that it's rockabilly as you're famous right right yeah rockabilly was wet grabbed me completely I don't come from a musical family at all and I wasn't particularly I was really interested in music but resisted anyone trying to teach me anything and then I was in college I'm going to this Ivy League college and I'm I'm it hit me I son session Elvis Presley got rereleased which and then I was started listening to Jerry Lee Lewis I got the the poster in my room in college was Jerry Lee Lewis on the flatbed from High School Confidential and I got hit hard and I didn't know what the hell I was doing but just started seeing it I had been a bad drummer like a pretty mediocre drummer but I was passionate about drumming at a really crappy set I bought the cheapest that I could gags I didn't have a lot of money I got a court and I've asked people all over the world have you ever heard of a courtly no one's heard of it but I still have it it's what they made like three of them and then said we're not a drum company sort of meeting radiators or something but and then I when I got out to LA it was just in me and I went and got a $90 guitar at freedom guitar and got the Mel Bay chord book nice and just sat there for a long time and when I was a young comedy writer and single and had no girlfriend I just used to go home every night from whatever show I was working on and I would sit there with the TV on and for six hours straight teach myself chords but what really grabbed me was rockabilly and it's so visceral yeah and just like the original train kept a-rollin it was just it's borderline unpleasant that's what I thought but I'm I've always been I don't know it's some kind of intensity to it yeah and I wish and I never really got much beyond that I mean I always try to get more sophisticated about my playing and it always just snaps back and I have my my real outlet I mean the thing that you do finds you more than you find it I love I loved that very much and I was in high school I I got into surf music and rockabilly music and I was going to see any of those kind of bands I could and after a while a little bit of me started to lose the attention for um you know the the the stylistic people who were trying to be like retro and recreate a moment in time it's gone and dressed that way yeah it's like it's kind of nice for a party or Halloween or something like that but to dedicate your lifestyle to this one moment in the me right culture history this one year is it's nifty in one way but another way I thought well it's a dead end I mean you can't explore that music in a bigger way as a songwriter you know I got a guy listen to Gene Vincent to this day and I'll listen to the day I die I love him yeah um and I play his music and I've covered his songs and stuff and but uh it's like everything in e yeah everything is in E that's what I liked Izzy's great and but he and he had one of the great guitar players the homie on a cliff galloping cliff gallop you it's funny cuz you always talk about how your maybe your favorite song is by son house yeah written in your face yeah I was always surprised by that because I appreciate it but it's almost like that was your a religious light that hit you when you heard grinning in your face but that's when you listen to it it's so primal it's very simple yeah handclaps you know yeah well you know there's the message that's in it too besides how how it was recorded and how it sounded from him now his handclaps are often I'm even with his there's no music behind it it's several things at once its blues it's like a work song it's a religious song it's it's a song that's from one person against the world one person against his own friends and family which is sort of the you know I bet you know a hallmark of the Blues you know but I think even the message more stuff was probably something that has always bugged me when out since I was a kid and probably will always bug me later on is how much do you care what other people think I mean like the comedian on stage you tell the joke and nobody laughs um you have to take another step a new step you can cower and fall down and die from it you can you can let it affect you that way or you can let it push you to do something new and move forward to something positive which I think God is also curses that we can't really enjoy the good moment to after that at times which is a shame but yeah I don't know what I've learned is I'm very good at hating the bad moment and terrible and enjoying the good news yeah I can have nine good news oh and I have the bad moment and I savor it I like ladle myself like it's like I'm its gravy and I'm poor and I spent a long time making everyone around me suffer and I suffer and and then they say like you just had nine great shows why are you focusing on this one and I think I don't know cuz it feels good to hate myself [Laughter] it's not fair though I was also like when you there was something good does happen and you try to enjoy it in a way if you enjoy it too much you fall in the traps of being egotistical or something like that or people around you just being turned off by your own love of something good that happened to you and so there's this extremely narrow window when you create things and make things that didn't exist that you have to live in which is very hard to do because to create a balance you know to know it that wasn't that wasn't working that was in the bad world that worked that was in the good world and how much you let other people around you your friends and family see of how much that affects you what people thought of that what people thought of that and how all you can do is to let it push you forward and just take everything like even-keel like that was bad that was good that my brother was gone okay so here's a trap because you've had a lot of critical acclaim yeah you are at times in well I would say fairly consistently you know I mean you probably can search out the negative because that's that but from my point of view you more than most everybody I know in in your field has had a lot of musical has a lot of has had a great deal of critical acclaim and then the danger becomes I like it I like people liking me for sure we've all been there it's really nice to be liked and then when you do something that isn't so popular it doesn't you can tell yourself I need to endure people not liking me to do the good work yeah but it feels really good as it is it's a dangerous zone yeah stages and it's it's not fair that it's dangerous it should be climbing up the mountain and you're at the top of the mountain of whatever and okay you you you you did what it took you didn't you didn't cheat and take a helicopter to the top of mountain you really climbed up the top of the mountain but when you get up there doesn't matter if you took the helicopters and mad if you climbed and got all bloody from it the rewards up there are fleeting and they don't really have legs they they're just they're fleeting and you can't hold onto them right all the people won't let you hold on to them really III it's it's it's I mean try to do it I mean try to talk about yourself and a good thing that happened to you for more than ten seconds I heard a run I had a really funny story about um Arthur Miller I don't know if it's true but I think let's pretend it's true okay because this is for the internet it doesn't matter um but I think Arthur Miller once said that when he first wrote Death of a Salesman everyone said oh my god you're a genius he wrote Death of a Salesman and then everything else he wrote people said it's good but it's no Death of a Salesman and then at the end of his career they said you know does the salesmen wasn't that great it's like no I if you're I don't know if you're looking for that II ever written what do you think is sadder story a Death of a Salesman or Lord of the Flies mmm I gotta go with Laurel if I just have a real when people taunt a heavy person I'm serious it I can't watch a movie where a heavy person is taunted and I don't know why I'm how about the actors they hired to play the person to get anything I I audition go that seems really awkward I get like I I can't do it I can't watch Gilbert Grape I can't I won't watch Gilbert great for that reason right um have you seen the movie the documentary the fog of war yes Robert McNamara yep yeah I'm in transferred I think I've watched that six times now what is it about the fog of war that someone just said you should check this out and I turned it on and on I don't even know I never I knew nothing about Robert McNamara and I never see even seen a picture of him and I thought I know pretty fair amount of your history and stuff but I just didn't know any bottom you know um and then he was president of Ford Motor Company and then he became Secretary of Defense I think the idea at the time and Camelot was we can hire incredibly smart young people and they'll solve all the world's problems yeah so and you think about when you're from Detroit's you understand if you if you think about an auto executive in 1960 how they were gods you know right so and he was this brilliant guy and so he comes into the Kennedy administration and they bring him in you know he continues Lyndon Johnson begs everyone to stay so he stays with Johnson and then he ends up running this war which is a colossal mistake and he eventually realizes that and so it's yeah that that documentary is really poignant because if brilliant but he's also like a dad it's almost like you took someone's dad on a 50s block and put him in these most powerful positions in the world I mean he was so heavily involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis which really we came so close to the world ending at that point and also Ford Motor Company and safety and introducing safety ideas to cars which Tucker had tried to do it failed and and it's these people like that that are so important to world history that not that many people even know their names or saw the pictures like I didn't know that his name so how did you get I mean was it you're watching are you watching The History Channel like when you're trying to just yeah relax what are you watching I really do enjoy documentaries I could read encyclopedia all day long I prefer books that are about things that really happen yes yeah you know I'm always my wife uh loves fiction she's very smart and she's constantly and she's reading great fiction my wife is repot earns well the really good Harry Potter yeah yeah the Sorcerer's Stone but she's the classics you know not this whatever yeah later stuff that I think really perverted Harry's nature but she my wife is a I think she's really brilliant and she's constantly reading like I'll you know be getting ready for bed and she's in bed reading she shouldn't check off you know she's famous great stuff and she'll be saying you know you should read this and I'll say you know what I life is too short and I want to know what happened so I almost exclusively read you said she has ever you said that and I said that I said I want to know what yeah yeah yeah I want to know what happened I want to know and and so I'm constantly getting you know there's a picture of me someone took in the 90s where I finally went on a vacay and I'm sitting on the teach and and it's like beautiful like Anguilla or something I'm sitting on the beach and I'm course I'm wearing like 900 sunblock but I'm sitting on the beach and it's beautiful and it's his color photograph and I'm reading the rise and fall of the Third Reich a swastika on it and it's this thick and I'm like ah vacation you know I'm reading about you know the failed Russian offensive I just asthma what do you think of a Lincoln movie I really love the Lincoln movie and since this is the zone to be incredibly honest I love the Lincoln movie I thought it was fantastic I love Daniel day-lewis because he portrayed the real Lincoln down to every single actors ever portrayed Lincoln has done him with his deep baritone was gone yeah Lincoln had a high-pitched voice and I thought he just made me love I love Lincoln know way too much about Lincoln and I thought he was brilliant yeah there were a couple things I wish the movie had ended I don't want they had to kill the Lincoln character off at the end they didn't you know that was the same thing I thought there's a part in the movie where Lincoln says he's got to go to the theater and he has this line he says well gentlemen I'd like to stay no he said I have to go though I'd like to stay and then there's a long walk off so if the movie had ended there I'd have cried for seven days I didn't need to then like we know what happened and I thought that would have been more beautiful and I have calls into Spielberg and he's not as good it was cool that they showed a performance in a theater and Lincoln's son to make you even think that that might have been I mean I guess I mean at least I didn't show bloody like yeah but uh but I say I agree with what you're saying I thought that would have been a nice way to end it and I was literally in the lobby telling people that like why is Conan O'Brien but you got a trailer threw me off I thought that when I saw the Lincoln trail like oh man I thought this was gonna be great and I saw the trailer I just thought damn it it ain't like it's too like they got all the components they got the great costume designers or the set directors and all that stuff and everything's there but it's not gonna be what I thought it was gonna be but the trailer was wrong I went in and then you know 20 minutes I thought this is really good all right well this brings up a good area you are an opinionated guy you like having control as do I is it hard for you to watch things and step back and enjoy them and experience them without editing them in your mind and moving them around like you're you know you've seen a movie and you're thinking no that's not what I would do or you're listening to a band or you're yeah what happens well I know I like something when I don't notice how it was made if I see the scene yeah if I hear a song and I don't like oh they turned to reverb on on that part of the song or they added a digital delay on his voice or something or they kind of borrowed that lick yeah when I heard them when I when I hear them what their conversation was making it bugs me then I kind of I can't enjoy it so much when it goes by the scene goes by or the painting or the the song goes by and you don't even notice anything about how it was made at then I think that's a really good mark of something good that's hard to get to that point too I mean sorry to create something like that let's talk about if you don't mind this I went to Third Man Records and got to make a record with you which is still one of my the tour and then that experience one of my favorite experiences in my life that allows treasure people later on ask me what's it like a third man records and I thought this is tough and I I said you know jack is incomplete I've never met anyone and I mean this is a compliment who has completely invented his environment you've you've created an environment out of whole cloth for yourself and at first I was thinking it's kind of like an Andy Warhol thing where you've created you know the factory and you've created this aesthetic and this group of people and this look and this tribal you know happening and then I thought you know what it's really a Batman villain like you've you know whenever you're like whether it's mr. freeze or the Riddler or the Joker what I always loved about Batman the TV classic TV show is he always got his people to wear musical notes or did the Riddler hired guys he went and found common criminals and he got them to wear turtlenecks that have a question mark on them and he also got them to buy into the Riddler's aesthetic and it was beat it was beautiful and I thought like this let's talk about that I got it to me that is a great achievement well thank you and I feel good I feel proud that you're saying that to me because I I know that third man it came the way a lot of lot of times the way I make things which is it's sort of they're these happy accidents I stumble into it and I and it gets pushed in these baby steps and something in the end says oh wow that thing exists now and that building I bought was just a place to store my gear I didn't have a I was renting all these storage units for all the tour gear when come open to her after all this drums and amps and stuff somewhere I was like empty nice to just have a building where it was all there and was on racks and I could get that keyboard or that guitar and take it a studio not buried away in some storage and we need a padlock and it's nighttime in the flashlights are you gonna keep yeah somewhere it's available that's all I want to do that building and then I thought well you know it'd be nice I got the White Stripes vinyl rights back that's the years at the time period been used up and now I can print them and they were out of print so I don't like records being out of print I think it's kind of ridiculous I think record should always be in print of it was like if Columbia Records put out some record by any artist you should always have a stack of them on a shelf somewhere even if there's 10 of them you know right and get so I thought well you know I want to put the white straight old vinyl records in print and keep them in print forever neither hired a couple these guys the bends to do that so that was it was gonna be it and I said oh you know let's put a store in the front is a little room in front let's put a little store there and people can bit ring the buzzer maybe once a week someone come by and well we'll come up and we'll sell em a 45 you know that'll happen like once a week antha and then baby 7 and then we're here to put a photo studio back so it'd be nice to be able to rehearse for tour here for lighting and monitors to put a stage there and as you know you ended up playing a live show at that stage that became a live venue and now we have a lathe cutting studio behind that stage where we cut this the shows direct to acetate which is the only place in live venue in the world that's doing that it goes directly to vinyl when the crowd can see through the window what's happening and they're completely involved and they feel they know what's happened you're making a record here it's almost like a TV show now making this live record so this is all just from place I wanted to get my gear so it was like letting things natch happen you know this feels like the story of your whole process because to go way back to the caveman days the caveman days when you discovered fire with your friend dog nothing good good good really good guy really pay that you had to crush his skull the handmade stone to know what what um you know I remembered I don't know if I read somewhere you told me somewhere when you were just starting out and you're playing with Meg you were thinking hey if we could just get up on stage and play in front of people yeah so that would be cool and what happens is it's a constant upping of the ante yeah which is I you know if I could just get on stage and play and we could get a few people to come see us I'd be happy if we could just have a couple more songs if we could have a few more gigs if we could make a record if we could tour if we could okay now we've got one smash record if we could have another one if we could you know the Grammys if we could tour the world if we could make a documentary it's a never-ending upping of the ante and now you're talking about you know if we could have a space where we're making the records I mean you've taken it to that extreme and a lot of musicians though though you say a band like that will do that like we'll be good if we had a band if you're great if it got on stage what if we wrote our own songs they get to that point not to get someone to say yeah you know I got to go back to my day job and we got to do that thing and we'll play another gig next month and then you know then gone they they lose the either the ability or the desire to push themselves over and over and over and over again and that's the only thing you can really do you can also you can get lucky you could have some lucky break or something and it catapults you to some level and then you have some decisions to make up there but in the natural way of things if you if you you you basically have moments where you can stop and say like we said about McHale and Larry Bird really like you know hey I have a life man I mean you can say that at any moment say hey yeah I like music but you know I'm not gonna spend 24 hours a day thinking about it but you know that that's what comes from that if you if there's no pushing I think you know we were saying earlier that all the idols that we've had people we are interested in from the past I think they're all seem to be people who push and push and push and I can imagine even if you were home they had no talented anything and no ability to bring anything to life not funny not what interesting or whatever even if you pushed yourself at work constantly at it something would happen I mean how could it not and something eventually would click yeah no I you know you didn't doubt where you're supposed to be or what what zone you're supposed to be and you know maybe I'm not supposed to be acting maybe is supposed to be a community I'm not supposed to you're musician must be a painter at some point something would click I think pushing yourself that much here's the good news and the bad news I can look at a guy like David Letterman and say well why isn't he happy because he really achieved everything but I know that there are some people who were 20 years younger than me who are like what's you know why would he be unhappy because he you know and you think nobody feels that way nobody feels like they have their done nobody feels like they're done nobody I mean there's like a mixture of never arrived I don't think you ever around ever arrived and also I don't know like I want to bring up uh-huh anger or sometimes people say to me like you seem like I can get cranky I can get angry and I say yeah I just think that's part of this spice that keeps me going i if I was completely contented that would be it but anger seems to anger and frustration seems to be necessary components I think the minute you don't have those yeah if you're eliminate all these other emotions you're sort of like I mean it's sort of in a way it's sort of easy to be a nice guy and be like happy-go-lucky and say hey yeah you know and but maybe that kind of attitude it's harder for it to get things done and get things accomplished and get things to happen and push yourself if you don't eat a lot all those other emotions to exist I I haven't think that the society is missing out on something right now to think that anger and hostility are things that are in the violent realm of emotions that they're all completely 100% bad and should be avoided at all costs I don't think that's true at all I mean that those emotions are very much relevant and say blues music they're very much relevant in painting you know and rock-and-roll punk rock all that I mean those are if they'd ignored those emotions and not thought about them and express them and they wouldn't have they wouldn't be able to explore those ideas and again I almost happy-go-lucky 'no siz sort of like I was saying icon stage you can be like I'm enjoying this song feels great this feels good you know it's a smile on my face um this is a blast okay that's kind of easy to do I survived having a party you know you can be like a heavy metal band and they'll be partying and you know and then I don't know if that's art or music it's just maybe something else it's another name there's got to be something inside you that's churning it up there has to be that's got to be part of the creative process it's there self-inflicted wounds you know I mean you're that's the responsibility that comes with freedom you know freedom of to be an artist that's it that's a huge freedom and at the same time has to be a huge responsibility or there nothing will be accomplished and it's not fair to other people you know it's like the lazy so and so whatever we're just sitting around in the other people his roommates or keeping them alive and keep giving him shelter and all that stuff you know like you can get away with that for a minute but after a while you know everyone else is like hey man you know we're not all here to just take care of you you know you have to take care of yourself and um I think those those those are really heightened in in the world of art and creativity you you have to think about all those things I sometimes I think too much about that about the temptations to take there's easy ways that out all the time because I see other people doing out there oh damn I mean even to show other people other musician of my studio and say we did this song and this is how we did it and this is the Machine we did it on these are tools we did it with and have another musician look at and say okay well yeah well we know we just recorded our album and we did it totally the easy way and we didn't record our Pro Tools and I had these four engineers do it and they fixed everything on and it's coming out next week like there's a first thing like damn man I guess I could do that I could do that and no one would even know and one would even know I did it that way and I could did I can't be can't do it thank you I hate to beat a dead horse but I swear to god there's like a religious was I Catholic component too I would know yeah yeah you know to me I feel that way about comedy you can when you cheat you know it and it doesn't it feels horrible and if something's good happens you want it to be it was created under circumstances you can be proud of it's not uh you know something that was like someone else did the work or a computer did the work or something like that the photographer I was talking about earlier if someone's at all amazing photo you tip well we photoshopped the whole thing yeah can you be proud of that I can't I guess you can but I wouldn't be proud of it um you I think more than anybody I can think of your music off the top of my head you work so well with women Meg hmm Alison Mosshart Amy current band phenomenal jr. yeah Dame Judi Dench the music that you cut with her in that erotic film you made you guys what it what do I find women so attractive is all you're trying to ask me yeah cuz I don't get it I like men I like in me and I wasn't even like a naked male body sometimes the the sunsets that we spend together in a parked car on top of a hill sometimes wonder if that's how you're me when I try and hold your hand yeah then pretend I'm reaching for the gear shoes yeah awesome I wonder um I'm fine yeah but you've you working with women here so you're you just it comes so naturally to you and I think it's it you don't I don't see other musicians and artists making that connection as easily as you I don't know if you've never given it any thought like how is it that I I communicate so well with women it's a it's an interesting question in my in my mind like when asked Cole you know it feels like I don't discriminate in any way you know age race gender at all I just work with people that are cooking and they're making them pushing themselves you've never worked with a baby I've not yet not hey baby I hate I hate you very very it they're so lazy but uh consummate just say themselves but that's my biggest complaint with you is your anti baby ism right but you're here so you're say you're not thinking about it well that's what I would add that something answer in my head that seems pretty clean an answer but then I know there's other things too that when I am working with women I do feel that there's this sense something's gone out the window there's some there's a lot of that's been thrown away and now we're getting down to the real creativity in the real work and maybe working with men no matter how clean it's going on there's always maybe some kind of competition or ego or other qualities in the room that you can't put your finger on which everything has to be filtered through so for some reason the females I go with Loretta Lynn or you know at least your keys or something they didn't actually want a Jackson date it seems like that just goes out the window and we we get down to the work faster so I do I definitely think there's is an appeal to it for me and we become very equal very fast and on the same page very fast someone tell me one time like it was some goofy thing I had too much I wasn't something I read an article about it must have been some computing about dating or guys being getting women interested in them and it was something like you know women women like to be shown things so they women like to be taught things excuse me we like to be taught new things I thought that's this interesting thing is to single out females that they like to be taught new things don't we all like to be look don't we all like to learn new things I think about this all the time I don't know that's actually something that's do you think do you find anything about that statement I don't know no I mean I'm still and I'm the word completely mystified by women to this day and I have been obsessed with them since I was like six and and took you how long it took me till six yeah I was I was bye till I was six um but I but I was uh yeah I don't I know that there's a completely different dynamic when you're working with women which can be fantastic and comedy gets this reputation for being completely sexist which is I think well-earned and then over the years and then I whenever I've worked with Tina Fey or an Amy Poehler or Sarah Silverman their sex has you don't even think about it mm-hm do you not I mean right if you're thinking about it there's something else at play yeah when you're working there's so many brilliant women comics and writers out there and it just doesn't come into play you just admire them let's like that's great they're they're great and you want to try and impress them yeah you know with maybe I could be as funny as you it's also a new era that may be the first in history maybe in a way that men and women can work together in a way that is totally acceptable to accomplish the task at hand you know maybe it wasn't a hundred years ago to a man and a woman to be in a room together working on something by themselves would have been what he were what were you doing you are working alone with this is quite improper yeah you know or even taking it all the way back in some other biological way of you know the that I wonder what that was like you know thousands of years ago but um but you what you said earlier was I reminded me that it is something let's say I would work with Loretta Lynn and things would be working in cooking and beautiful things are happening and then later on it's a lot you know she's not only a woman she's an older woman you know been twice my age with whatever it is and why is it working so easily we've come from two different worlds completely but for some reason in the room it's making complete sense and there's something I've learned a lot about that about just relationships outside of that between me and women that that there's a lot to be learned from that that relationships in a or marriage and they there's something to be learned from that we're always working together I really enjoy you're always working with the other person to get somewhere I think people have an ideal that maybe getting a marriage or getting a Russian ship or marriages you know having a wedding or something and then it flat it stays flat and stays peaceful for the rest of your life you find a comfort zone it's just peaceful but it's not true it's constant work again you have to keep throwing fuel on the fire to keep it alive and keep it you know I'm Albert Einstein said that marriage is an attempt at making something lasting out of an incident and I think he's right I think you know all's I hated that saying she hated that it's like it's this the crappiest Hallmark card you ever said oh I always mess it up yeah it's you know this brings up another area which is just idols like you working with a Loretta Lynn or wanted Jackson working these people and it's something I've confronted where I really love it when you forget that they're your idols and I know I you were nice enough to have me over to your house once and we're sitting on your front porch and you were talking about Bob Dylan then it felt like you had gotten past the point of oh my god it's Bob Dylan yeah do you know what I mean in a good way you obviously it's Bob Dylan but you're not doing that artist a favor yeah when you when you put someone on that kind of pedestal you're killing them you put an artist up there you're killing them so they don't like to talk to them and meet them and yeah let me feel like you have that ability to I don't know even mean I'm you were telling me oh yeah Bob Dylan wants to do the welding on my fence yeah welding now I was yeah you know and I was just like well that's great you broke through the so what was it like to record tangled up and be like you broke through that yeah and got to I think I can fix your game yeah yeah well he's a mahine and he knows I mean he's you know I've said it before and he's like he's it is it like my dad meaning musically uh in my own mind and the heritage that I feel like I jumped in this running river already I just jumped in you know that you know he's like he's like a father to me so much so that he I couldn't read his book his autobiography I couldn't read it I would I kept picking it up and I would read ten pages and I had to put it down like it was just too close and it sounds crazy but it just it was too close to me I couldn't take it it was like reading a letter my own father had written to me you know and I found it in his closet after he died or something like that and I took me I really like three or four tries before I could actually get through and read the book it meant too much all the words because it was like advice with the hand around your shoulder advice that I knew when I was reading them it was different for people who are music fans or Dillon fans or other musicians or something like that it just was totally different for me and to read those words they feel like they're right there directly pointed at me and and I started to get obsessed with the fact that people are misunderstanding the style that this is written and they're misunderstanding the point that's being made in this paragraph and he does that a lot to me like anything that he's doing you know and it's a it's it's it's hard for you to feel like that when you feel like there isn't there is you know always an al Bernard scent alive right now that Bob Dylan's alive right now and that you know that you that I can be that close to him and that far apart from him at the same time simultaneously you never can you know in a lot of ways get super close to somebody like that that you don't have that much history with you know probably it's not just you though do you think anybody can get that close I mean he's a notorious well for to him - everybody out Burt and even for anybody for any of your idols you know I'm sure like you could maybe have had a conversation with Johnny Carson and learned a lot in 30 seconds and or even hung out and stayed for a week with him somewhere and and and but how close can you get to Johnny Carson and I don't know I mean I'm assuming that it might be hard to break through that but but you just take whatever you can get because it's all it's a I arrived the several conversations I had with Johnny Carson in my life are embedded in there are little diamonds in my brain and I know I can remember the flashing light on the phone when they said oh yeah he's on that line and you know I remember the light flashing and but you're right at the same time I'll be the first to say I knew him I didn't know him at all so and it's funny cuz there's someone like there's someone like Dylan who's constantly you know you look at rock and roll and I've had this thought before which is there's only so many chords there's a few chords there's a few and you feel like there's got to be a limit to but people like you can take this it really is restricted I mean in a way you know I mean there's not that many you can take that palette and keep coming up with new stuff I've had periods of my life where I thought maybe rock and roll is done maybe we've done everything with e e a b7 maybe an occasionally minor a my you know I mean like maybe we've done it all yeah Bob Dylan uh I don't know every you just think of the simplicity of it nobody Holly yeah I really know managed to get off fun because I thought yeah oh my god he really is just using three chords occasionally a fourth chord but it's the okay it's the pattern that he's putting it down yeah it just it's so simple and it's not - yeah he's he's he's like he's sideswiping you you know you used to throwing sand in your face and then coming around from the back and poking patting you on the back it it's unbelievable about it Buddy Holly accomplishes its song by song I mean you know it's obviously I saw it's too bad these people died and knowing we never got to you know they would they have done if they moved on but him especially man they just it's something peculiar about him there's certain people like Michael Jackson or buddy Howell you're Hank Williams that are just they're like aliens they weren't they weren't really supposed to be here or something you know that how do you born that way and how do things connect with your brain and come out your fingers in that way and and if you catch a glimpse of it if you if you're ever part of something that's created that connects with another human being or connects with many human beings it's a very humbling experience to even think that it's possible you know that you can connect with you know if you're going on to your show and there's how many millions of people watching that or will watch it on the internet or something like that and that means something I mean something and it's it's unexplainable you can't explain to it why it works or why it happens you can you can try to explain it but it's really hated I don't know what other word but magical or something like that but words to that effect that that are it's what my point is when you live inside of a new create every day and I want to create every day that you don't get to know why it works really you don't really get to know you see it working and you know it worked but you don't really get to know why it worked and I think maybe that's sometimes I'm fascinated with certain science scientific things because I think as much as statements are made and papers are printed and reported it and we a lot of science they'll never know you know we don't know why the Red Spot on Jupiter really is being doing that that storm you know why is it lasting for hundreds even triol II know we can tell you certain aspects about it but that's pretty compatible to a lot of things you like John knowing I like not knowing it's beautiful bum me out when I was a kid my brother Neal and I were obsessed with the Titanic amazing shift it like sailed off and then it disappeared and no one ever saw it again and people survived some people survived and talked about what happened but no one had he had conflicting stories and I loved that and then they found it and then they not only found it but they mapped every quarter of an inch of it yeah and I remember thinking oh and then they told you in a computer-generated way exactly how it came apart and exactly what happened yeah and I was disappointed because there was something about sailing off into the fog and there's something about music that I like about you know I don't know the magic of the old blues musician who died young and was poisoned there's only one there's two photographs of them in existence and we don't know much I don't want to know more than that I think there's something beautiful about that the romance of that is is it's unbelievable and and you know a lot of times I find myself whining and complaining about the the generation that I'm part of now because it's so much tougher I mean if you imagine that something amazing right now was it a Leonardo da Vinci existed right now he would be just inundated with people just trying to exploit him on levels that he would never have been bothered with a few centuries ago right and and all things that would be detrimental to him you know in his genius and all that like what about this too which is that you had a period of time where you're in Detroit which is an overlooked City mm-hmm no there's not a lot of media there yeah so you could cook for a while yeah and what I have always said is people ask me my complaint or not my complaint cuz you live in the area you live in but if the Beatles were around today we'd be sick of them before they ever got out of the cavern club if it'd be a million YouTube video you don't I mean there'd be no discovery and we had to discover things that people you know it's the but you can't teach you can't you won't we won't be able to really teach the masses in that way it's like teaching everyone to recycle or something like teaching everybody to understand the importance of letting something beautiful be right now watch a show instead of pulling this up and using proof and using some other thing to your friends to prove something or Twitter it or whatever it is right like couldn't something beautiful just be like that and that's that's the danger of where we are right now and where we're headed it's it's I hate to be always be thinking about that but when you do when you when you consume when you're sitting there and you're entertained or you're enjoying our music and books and films you can have different opinion when you're inside of and you want to make it exist and you're trying to help it exist and be an antenna and make this thing stuff come out you're more concerned with the fact that the way people are getting it the mediums and formats from which they're getting it is diluting their romance of it right you know and it's an exhausting battle to fight off that nowadays well there's too much data yeah we have Terra's you know i BAM like Stooges in the 1970 would have had three photographs of them taken right and now there's thousands of every band without their or musician of their thousands of photos you know you did not know what he knew where the Stooges lived or where what they were they did all day long or anything like that and you know and now sure Robert Johnson nobody know who is do you know what that's that's where you get myth yeah the thing that fuels myth is lack of information I have a question here Kelly Mraz from Facebook asked what kind of music do your kids listen to you try to influence their musical tastes I I don't I uh I don't ever force stuff on them I just at times exposed them to things and sometimes they don't like it sometimes they do and I'm always shocked at the things they like that you know my daughter likes Charlie Chaplin so much it's just shocking to me they had heard some Beatles songs started liking them and I was driving from Detroit to Nashville a few weeks ago and I said well listen this record it was Sergeant Pepper and I put it on in the car and I handed them whatever it was the and they could see the album cover and you know they just looked at it so much and they had so many questions about the album government it was so beautiful to just be on this Drive and to think about Sergeant Pepper again which I don't haven't thought about in whatever I was a teenager and to talk about all the faces on there how that was made why they were making it when kids ask you those questions you get to relive those moments which is really beautiful you know and so that yeah they listened to a lots of things like that The Ramones The Beatles that's great there's something for me yeah they like that and um but they also like which I like even more importantly these novelty songs I like things like crazy frog and those songs because I think you know our Monster Mash those those tracks are really culturally important yeah yeah Monster Mash is now fantastic and and if a kid likes it it's a good it's it's a cut-through they are lying and they know I wish we could talk for about four more years I think that would be detrimental to both our careers so I gotta end it thanks for thanks for talking me like the dishes the fresh air this has been the fantastic I mean I thoroughly enjoyed every second of our chat and the drinking helped that'll do it for this episode of serious jibber jabber to say I thank Jack white would be the understatement of the century you've always been such a good friend to me and such oh it's but such a pure spirit too and so likewise really appreciate that congratulations on all your success I wish you happiness but I know that's detrimental to your art but I won't see all the other episodes of serious jibber jabber go to team koco.com slash serious or go to Conan's house and he'll reenact them hi well you're all invited to my home and I will reenact these with little cutouts on popsicle sticks for $20 a pop if you ever need me to do the soundtrack for any of that stuff just let me know really yeah so we really opposed to my furniture yes you heard it here you look into that back camera now looking at this one huh uh-huh there's nothing shifty than guys looking at different cameras

Channel: Team Coco

Views: 2,632,813

Keywords: Conan O'Brien, Jack White, Serious Jibber-Jabber, Team Coco, andy richter, best moments of conan, celebrity interview, coco, comedy sketches, conan, conan funny moments, conan obrien interview, conan obrien podcast, funny, humor, late night show, official, sketch, stand-up comedy, teamcoco, triumph the insult comic dog

Id: AJgY9FtDLbs

Length: 74min 30sec (4470 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 15 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/etan_causale]

Because of this video, I finally understand why Mr. Burns answers phones with ahoy-hoy.

[u/jonathan881]

tl;dw is talent in physical ability?

[u/xhaereticusx]

Talent doesn't really have anything to do music. Music isn't good because it's hard to play. It's good because it's interesting to listen to, or it's unique in some way.

If someone can take a computer and make it produce songs that sound good that's equally valid to someone who practiced for years to make their music.

[u/mrtest001]

Yes - ever since they electrified the guitar

[u/firemummy]

How do you cheat aperture? I mean for exposure, sure. But depth of field?

[u/[deleted]]

I think an interesting related topic to this, as far as art from the perspective of the audience, is how important is the process behind the end product in relation to the end project itself?

You can certainly appreciate the work behind something and I guess it ads something but like his example with photography does it really diminish a great picture to know that it was heavily edited in photoshop after being taken? Isn't the purpose to look at great pictures that move you, impress you or make you think?

[u/BigAndDelicious]

Fuck this shit never being available in my country. This is shit.

[u/philtomato]

Jack White looks like Egoraptor.

[u/desipride1991]

Technology might do us good here. It could bring down the ridiculously high salaries and increase the number of people that can sustain themselves on music. This could introduce greater variability in music, and thereby spurring innovation