The following is a conversation with Rick Beato, legendary music educator, interviewer, producer, songwriter, and a true multi-instrument musician playing guitar, bass, cello, and piano. Rick, with his incredible YouTube channel, celebrates great musicians and musical ideas, and helps millions of people, including me, fall in love with great music all over again. This is Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description, where you can also find links to contact me, ask questions, give feedback, and so on. And now, dear friends, here's Rick Beato. You had, I think, 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 you connected to spiritually, musically, where you're like, 'Wow, there's magic in this?'
Well, the first solo that I learned was Hey Joe. It was actually a good beginner song, you know, when I first started playing the guitar, because it has pretty simple chords, right? So it's like E, C, G, D, A. And I learned the solo, and I figured out this, like, I'll say it's this pentatonic scale, E minor pentatonic scale though. I didn't know that's what it was called, but learned this thing, and it's like, 'Whoa, he's just in this one shape here.' Now, there was no... You couldn't go look anything up. You just, if you could figure out the notes, you noticed that there was a little pattern to it. And then I got so obsessed with it, and I showed my younger brother John, who started playing guitar right at the same time I did. So I was 14, he was 11. And I would play rhythm for him for five minutes while he would solo over Hey Joe. And then as soon as I'd start soloing, he'd throw the guitar down, then we'd get in a fight. And so my mom eventually was like, 'What is going on here?' And I was like, 'John won't play rhythm... John won't play rhythm for me.' She's like, 'Okay, I'll play rhythm for you. What, what are the chords?'
And she, and I was like, 'Okay, it's like E, C, G, D, A.' And so my mom would literally play rhythm for 20 minutes while I'd play.
It feels so free. And fun like swing, and then at least you said pre-bebop. So bebop was a kind of jazz that was also influential on you in your own life journey. And it's this complicated, legendary kind of jazz that was very influential on the music that followed. So what, what was bebop?
Well, after the big bands were happening in the, you know, from the '20s through the '40s, small, people would go out and play in small groups that they would tour with. And Charlie Parker, who's really kind of the, one of the main figures of early bebop, really developed the language of it. Usually, the music that they're playing over are standard chord progressions that they would use as vehicles to improvise over. A lot of them were AABA form. And Charlie Parker created this language of improvisation that was far more sophisticated than the swing players of the big band era. You know, think of people like Benny Goodman of that era. They would have really fast tempo songs, angular lines, chromaticism, things like that, chromatic notes.
Chromatic notes are just notes next to each other...
Next to each other, yeah.
I like to think of it as connecting notes.
Connecting. You're putting in more notes than are supposed to be there and so doing, creating some interesting texture.
Yeah, so that is one of the most difficult styles to master, because all these things are a language. Blues playing, they're all just languages, right? It's like, just like you'd learn any type of language. My dad loved bebop. Now, when I was a little kid and he's listening to these bebop records, whether it's Charlie Parker or Dizzy Gillespie or Oscar Peterson, Joe Pass, great jazz guitar player, I'm just hearing this stuff. I don't know any different. My dad was not a musician, but for some reason, he liked incredibly sophisticated... music that was very technical. And, um, I just heard it and just was like, 'Oh, yeah, okay, cool.' And not realizing that it was developing my ear, because I really, bebop is one of the hardest to improvise in that style, in that language of bebop. It's very difficult to do. And hearing it as a kid is one of the things that I think enables you, just like languages, enables you to learn it as opposed to somebody that's never been exposed to it and tries to learn it as a teenager. So I think it's very similar to learning languages, which kinda is like my theory on perfect pitch, that every child is born with perfect pitch. And they start to lose the ability around nine months... when people become culturally bound listeners, when babies do. They start out as citizens of the world, you know? They can, they have the neural pathways to hear the sounds, the phonemes of all 6,500 languages spoken on Earth. But then around nine months, they begin to lose that ability and they, when they become these culturally bound listeners, there's a great YouTube video with this woman, Patricia Kuhl. She's a language researcher. And I watched this, The Linguistic Genius of Babies. I saw this in 2010, this lecture that she did, like a TED Talk, and she talks about this, that kids, they did an experiment. They exposed kids to Mandarin three times a week for 25-minute sessions, just a person speaking Mandarin to these babies. And they were able to recognize the sounds, the phonemes of that language even later on. And when I realized that my son Dylan had perfect pitch, I thought, 'Why does Dylan have perfect pitch but no one in my family had ever had perfect pitch?' And I thought, 'Well, it must be because of the things I exposed to him prenatally and then in the first nine months of his life.' 'Cause that's the only way I could explain it.
We're gonna return to Joe Pass. We gotta go to Dylan. You mentioned Dylan. I guess that's in part one of the origin stories of you putting out videos into the world, is the early videos you did with Dylan, a set of videos on his perfect pitch. And 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. So you can play, it doesn't matter how quickly they are, that they can, a person with perfect pitch can hear a note and immediately identify it. Or a collection of notes.
And taking a tangent upon a tangent, you also have a course on ear training.
Yes, but my course is for 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...
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 you hear another note after it, you can recognize, let's say, it's a minor third interval. So if you're on the note A, the next note would be C. So once you're given a reference note, you can use relative pitch to identify the relative nature from one pitch to another.
And of course, intervals make up scales, and intervals make up chords...
... and so that if you develop it, to any degree relative pitch, you can understand, you can hear the music better.
Uh, so what does it take since we're taking a tangent on a tangent, what's what does it take to train your ear? What's a TLDR on the course before people go out and sign up?
It's just practice basically. You start with intervals. Typically, with small intervals like minor second, major second, so minor second would be a half step, major second would be a whole step.
Are you listening to the tone one after the other or two of them together?
Both. So played separately it's called melodic intervals, right, like a melody. And harmonic intervals are played like a harmony, together. So you have to be able to identify them both, both ways.
What's an early journey? Like, we'll give people a preview of what they should... like, what does that look like? What does practice look like?
Well, my course, it will play you an interval and then you identify it by clicking on whether it's... you know, a major third or minor third, or major sixth or minor sixth, or perfect fifth or tritone, whatever it is, and it will teach you gradually, 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, how quickly does the ear learn the different intervals? Is it a week, two weeks, a month, two months, five years?
I think you'd do it pretty quickly. Within, you know, if you practice, within a couple of months you can really make a lot of progress on it, if you practice daily.
What benefit does it have to you as a musician in general?
Well, it's great if you wanna hear a chord progression if you're trying to figure out a song. And you can say, 'Oh, that's going from the six minor chord to the four major, to the five major, to the one major.' And you can just identify it immediately, and then you figure out what the first chord is, then you know what the rest of the chords are 'cause they're in relation to whatever that first chord is. And for learning solos, for example, or learning melodies, being able to sound something out.
Now, do you recommend people couple that with music theory in terms of education, the 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. So as you're doing that, and then, you... once you learn the intervals, the 12 intervals in an octave, then you, and you learn them both melodically and harmonically, so played together and separate, then you learn chords. And so then you learn to identify major, minor, diminished, augmented, suspended chords, things like that. Well, you're basically learning music theory at the same time with that. Because learning... Music theory is just the name of things in music.
So there's the sound of things. There's the name of things, and then there's the haptic, like, playing the thing...
... probably. So playing chords, playing scales, you have, I believe, a course on scales and on chords? Okay. Since we're doing the tangent, let's go. How do you recommend people... There's a bunch of people listening to this that are curious about how they can start in playing guitar, maybe even playing piano and maybe playing 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?
Well, if you're a beginner getting a good beginner guitar course and learning, 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, maybe not new modern songs necessarily.
So learning a few chords and with an eye towards maybe playing a song?
Yeah. With an eye towards... You learn the chord shapes and you learn how to strum basic patterns to begin with. I think the first thing for learning guitar is actually how to position your fingers so that you don't mute strings that you don't want to mute. That's the hardest thing for people to do, basically, is to get 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 the open E string ringing there. And it's hard for people to make those micro, micro-adjustments. You take it for granted, like, you've been playing guitar... for, I don't know how many years. Forever, right?
And you don't even think about stuff like that when you're playing a guitar solo. Every little thing that you do if you're playing your Comfortably Numb guitar solo... you have to, out of mid-air, strike the string that your finger's on to play the note. And these are all fine adjustments that you're doing.
I'm just a hobbyist recreational player, but it... Wow, you're taking me all the way back. You're right, it's the haptic, the 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. Now, that's both when you're playing fast, you want it to be super precise, but when you play slow, when you have one note and you're holding it and you're bending it... it better be really clean.
And for that, it's... I guess you have to really place the finger in the right place, plus there's the... Well, there's the calluses, so it doesn't hurt. And then the positioning of the string on the curvature of the finger... where does it fall, like, how much do you bend the finger?
You have to have enough of flesh on it to actually raise the raise the string in pitch.
Yeah, 'cause you're lifting it with part of the flesh. And of course, you have to decide, depends on how OCD you are, do you wanna be, like, the perfect, the proper musician, or do you wanna do a Hendrix or the thumb over the top?
And so, like, you... If you have a fretboard here, I think the more, like, classical guitarists, the very proper, perfect perpendicular alignment of the fingertips to the fretboard, versus, like, Hendrix is like, 'Fuck it. You nerds. I'm gonna do it.' With the messiness is part of the magic. Of course, like B.B. King is also kind of messy looking in terms of his positioning of the fingers, but his tone is incredibly clean.
So, like, that teaches you that maybe any position can converge towards 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...
... if you're wearing it lower, then you can't get your fingers on top of it like that. And the thumb acts as a way to mute the lower strings from ringing if you're playing through a loud amplifier. So there's so many other micro adjustments when you're playing leads, 'cause you have to kind of mute the other strings that are... so they don't ring out... if you're playing the first note in Comfortably Numb in the solo at the end, and you're at the ninth fret of the G string and you bend that... if you bend that G string and you accidentally hit the B string under it... you don't want that ringing. So you have to kind of angle your index finger so it...
... to mute that. So 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 to learn instruments.
Yeah, of course, you have to solve that puzzle. It must be really frustrating in the beginning, like holding a chord. Like all of 'em, and it hurts too, right?
If you're doing acoustic guitar.
Not for that long though. For, like, a week.
I don't wanna discourage anyone, you know. It's actually pretty easy to learn basic stuff.
Right, but the pain is temporary, I guess, is the point I'm trying to make.
Uh, so what else? So the physical component, play a few chords. Where does the journey continue if you're learning guitar?
Well, then it's like if you play electric guitar, then you get into single note playing and stuff like that. That's where it gets, to me, where it gets really fun. You know, you have single note playing with riffs, if you think of Back in Black, right, that has a riff embedded in the actual melody. Or many songs that have riffs, the Hendrix stuff that has chordal riffs, and you're moving up the neck and involving all the fingers and things like that. So there's... it really depends on what you wanna, what styles you wanna play.
So you're thinking about song learning. So different components of song learning. So riffs in songs, lead in songs.
And then you have finger picking if you have Stairway to Heaven, songs like that. How 'bout wanting to learn that, that involves finger picking because the, you have to isolate certain notes of the chord and play two together, you know, and multiple times.
There's a few crossroads where you get to select things. Uh, so I guess you're speaking to the fact there's the... if you're righty, there's a right hand that you can use your fingers or you can use a pick.
And that's a choice you make.
And sometimes you use both, 'cause in Stairway to Heaven, you're using the fingers at the beginning, or fingers and pick, hybrid, they call it hybrid picking, and then 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, like, the theory of it?
Uh, 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 wanna keep people motivated.
So you get them to, like, fall in love with music and playing? All right. And that takes a couple months, three months?
Depends on how motivated they are.
So you recommend practicing, what, every day?
Every day. My son Dylan, when he started learning the guitar a couple years ago, I said, 'It's better to practice 10 minutes a day, seven days a week than to practice one day for an hour...'
... which is roughly the same amount of time.
Yeah, but it usually turns into something longer. But otherwise, like, if you're a busy life, you know, taking a day off, that day 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, 'Okay, I'll just pick it up for a second,' and then that second turns into 10 minutes, and an hour, two hours.
All right, we gotta talk about this Dylan video. So this might be one of the earliest...
That's the first video on the channel.
It was actually before the channel, because this actually blew up on Facebook...
... and then I put it on YouTube after.
Okay, Dylan, we're gonna do the hardest ear training test of all time. Are you ready?
Oh. Now, I... just a quick backstory on this. I made this for my friend Shane's wife who wanted to see... 'cause Shane was a friend that I was producing, and he was there. And Dylan had come down the day, in the day, and I said, 'Oh, check this out,' and I played this stuff. He's like, 'That's amazing. Can you make a video so I can show my wife?' And I was on the way to a school board meeting, 'cause I was on the school board at Dylan's school... and I said, 'Hey, Dylan, come downstairs. I wanna make this video. It'll take one minute, just need to do this thing for my friend, Shane.' And he's like, 'I don't want to.' And I said, 'Come on, this'll take one minute.' 'I don't want to.' So I said to my wife, I'm like, 'Nia, would you tell Dylan to come downstairs? I wanna do this video. It'll take one minute.' She's like, 'Ye- Dylan, go downstairs.' And he had, he has a mouthful of candy there... 'cause he was eating candy. So 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, like a... I don't know, 80 million views. Something like, it had like 250,000 comments. Something like that. Insane.
Eight years old? Can you actually give some more backstory about, like, how you discovered that Dylan has perfect pitch?
So when Dylan was about two, he... I was doing a FaceTime with my brother Jon, and I was like, 'Check this out, Jon.' And I played the Stone in Love, Neal Schon's solo from Journey, and I was like, 'Check this out.' And Dylan would sing along and my brother Jon was like, 'Wow, Dylan can sing all the notes.' And I was like, 'Yeah.' Then I played Black Dog, Zeppelin... and Dylan would sing that. And it's like, 'Dylan's got a good ear.' Then Jon and I were like, 'Well, we have good ears, too.' So maybe we could've done that when we were that age. So a couple year- more years goes by. Well, he was about three and a half, and I'm in the car. I was like, 'Dylan, sing the Star Wars theme.' And he sings it, and I'm like, 'That's in the right key.' And I checked. I play it on my phone. I was like, 'Oh my gosh.' Then I ask him, 'Play- sing the Superman theme.' 'Cause we'd been listening to John Williams soundtracks the week before, and he sings that. And that was in the right key. And I ask him another song. So I turn the car around, I go back to the studio. I go to the piano, I hit the note B flat, and Dylan says, 'Star Wars.' Star Wars starts on a big B flat major chord... but the note B flat is the main one that you hear. And then I played the note G and he goes, 'Superman.' And that's the first note in the trumpet part of the... of the Superman theme. And then I realized that he had perfect pitch, and then in five minutes, I taught him the name of the 12 notes. Which he already knew, but he just didn't know the names.
Oh, so you just associate the names... to the thing he knows. What do you think is this in his mind, 'cause it's not just individual notes. He can, like, 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. 'Cause it really is a... He just learned the language.
Yeah, the language. It's like...
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 gonna start with single notes and we're gonna do some intervals, then chords. Okay, here we go.
A, C sharp, B flat, C, D, A flat.
Okay, good. Two notes at once, here we go.
Correct. Okay. He's annoyed. He's annoyed. The part of this, when I play these next chords, that's really I think why the video went so viral. The next part of this... where I play these super complex polychords. Okay, I'm gonna do some polychords for ya. These are really gonna be hard. You ready? What's this?
C augmented over D-flat augmented.
Okay, sing a B-flat. Very good. What's this chord?
Oh, A-flat major over A major.
Great, sing an F-sharp. Excellent. What's this chord?
A minor over D-flat major.
Great. What's this chord?
Excellent. E add 9 over F major, so I had to look at my hand to make sure that that's what it was. 'Cause they're all in inversions. So, I think the reason that this went so viral is that the more that someone knew about music, the more that they shared the video. Because these polychords... So the people that were the best musicians looked at it and was like, 'Oh my God.' You know, it's C augmented over D-flat augmented. Um, and the second chord was A-flat major over A major, but they were both in inversion, right? So it was like a first inversion A-flat major chord, first inversion A major chord. And then, uh, A minor over D-flat major and then E add 9 over F major. And for an eight-year-old, I mean for anyone... plus they're all close-voiced. They're all just right next to each other. It's not like, you know, where you can hear them clear. It's all in the mid-range of the piano, so you have to really listen and you have to... he has to dissect each one. Like what are the notes being played there, and, and what is... Like, what's the theory? 'Cause he's actually using music theory... to dissect them.
It must be in his brain, those components of the chords all sound different. Like...
... very clearly different.
It's truly incredible. The human mind's incredible. So you're saying like 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, Well-Tempered Clavier, fugues, yeah, and... anything Bach. And I would play the Well-Tempered Clavier and I would play... I have a a friend who- Turkish pianist who's one of the greatest improvisers I've ever heard, his name's Aydın Esen. And I would play Aydın's improvisations for Dylan. It had very sophisticated harmony and linear things in it. And Keith Jarrett and mainly jazz, classical, and modern classical music. And then we would play, listen to rock music once he was born. I'm talking on my wife's stomach before Dylan was born... starting at 15 weeks, for 30 minutes a night. And then 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 this for them to, uh- hear these phonemes apparently and develop this language, or get the... The language acquisition has to involve the social brain. So, when kids look at you, you're... When a baby's looking at you, they're looking at your mouth and they're getting social cues from that. And this is also another component of saying 'This is where this word stops or starts and stops. These are how this, the phonemes are separated from one another. These are how they're connected.' So I believe that all kids are born with perfect pitch and then around nine months they begin to lose it. If you don't engage their social brain, making these pitches know... 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 and played with him.
And that applies maybe even more generally to high information language.
And it starts before they're born. I think I saw some of these incredible scientists that work on the neuroscience, the neurobiology, psychology of language in early life. I think a big part is in the mother's stomach, you're listening to the mother speak.
So, like that's, that's how, on the language side, you're picking up the language already.
That's right. And you're picking up the music, musical language. So, native music fluency, you could call it.
So if the mother's sitting back and listening to Bach and some bebop jazz, you have a pretty good chance.
Okay. All right. So that, as we unwind our way back, Joe Pass and bebop, you were were funny enough talking about what is bebop jazz and that would be people like Joe Pass. And in your own life, your dad was somehow listening to that kind of incredibly complex and sophisticated music...
Which was very weird. I- we never... My... I have six siblings and we could never figure out why dad liked really sophisticated jazz.
We just took it for granted at that time.
Yeah, just took it for granted. And 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. He'd- we'd put on a record, I'd sit on one side of the room, he'd sit on the other and not say a word. Listen through the whole side A. I'd go flip it over, listen to side B, never say a word. And then get up and go do stuff. And we did that all the time.
And so, the first time you impressed your dad was the Joe Pass song, right? And by the way, we'll have to go to this song 'cause people must have forgot 'cause right? People just think you're a like a good communicator or something. They, they don't realize how good you are at guitar, how good you are at actually a lot of instruments, but guitar especially. And 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. So he made a record that this is off of called Virtuoso in 1973 that my dad gave me for Christmas when I was in 10th grade. And he said, and this is not like my dad. My dad worked for the railroad. He was very, you know, few words spoken. Born in 1919. He said, 'If you ever learn to play guitar like this, you've accomplished something with your life.' And I was like, 'What?' So, this record stay, was unopened until about March after Christmas. And one day I was like, 'Okay, I'll open it up.' And I put it on, I start listening to it. And I was like, 'Whoa, this is kind of cool.' And so I said, 'I think I can figure out some of this stuff.' So I figured out this thing.
Yeah, just by ear. I didn't know any of the chords or anything.
If you can listen to a little bit here.
If you go back to that Brother to Brother, Gino Vannelli thing with Carlos Rios playing, that stuff is incredibly hard. This, I'm starting, I don't know any of these chords. So I start out... I don't even know what that chord is, but I figured it out. I I just... It was... And it's weird. I mean, look at that weird bar.
So you're just finding like playing around with the, putting your fingers...
... on the various positions.
Right, but trying every combination of fingers. I had never played that chord. It's a weird looking chord. And, but I kept... I moved my fingers around till I heard to where it sounded like, 'Oh, that's it, definitely.' And I just looked at my hands like, 'What is that?' Had no idea what it was.
So you were connected to the music? The... And so that, that's why you can hear... It's not necessarily... Did you even... You didn't have perfect pitch.
You, and not even relative pitch.
No, I did not. No, I didn't know anything about intervals. I didn't know anything about music theory, anything. This is all just...
Yeah. You're just like playing around...
... with different shapes. That's amazing.
That's right. I mean, look at that weird bar there. But then you get into these things... So that stuff there, I could figure out... And then this. That stuff I could figure out. And then these things here. Those are just inversions of an... But I didn't know that. I had heard Joe play that on the record. This is the last song on there. I'd listened to it a bunch of times and I started...
So you just replay over and over and over and over, and you're like, trying to replicate it?
Yes. And 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 on a really complicated song?
Yeah, but there's so many YouTube videos that you can go and just learn it without having to... Yes. Yeah, I would recommend.
I feel like the struggle...
The struggle is where it's at.
... this is true for education in general. People... Like, there's all these educators that try to make learning easier and more fun, and all that kind of stuff. Great, wonderful, but part of the thing is the struggle.
I heard licks like that all over this, so I knew that that was and then these licks here, 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. So if I could play that, then it's just figuring out the single notes, okay? So... Okay, so if you just take this first part here, when he goes. So this intro part is...
You make it sound so simple when you break it down. And, and by the way, Joe Pass, incredible guitar player. Like, this is obvious.
And he improvised all this. He could've played it like this.
But, you know, the first 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 just incredible.
This is just taking the needle, moving it there, then going back a little, oh, there. And then by the end, the record was so scratched. It was, but it was worth it. When I played it... for my dad... he couldn't... I mean, 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 Flea. People should go listen to that. Was a great conversation. One of the things that surprised me is just how many musical genres influenced Flea. And the guy showed up in a Miles Davis...
Miles Davis played with Charlie Parker... when he was 18 years old. And that's... He was... Charlie Parker was really his mentor.
Can you explain to me why, with many of the folks you've interviewed and in general out there, in the world of jazz, all roads lead to Miles Davis? Why he's 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. I mean, he started as a bebop player, and then he had records like the Birth of the Cool, and modal jazz, and hard bop, and records like Bitches Brew, where he started to, I guess you would call fusion. You start to get these records. You had two main groups of Miles Davis. You had the Miles Davis '50s quintet and the Miles Davis '60s quintet. Now, Miles made records with many people, but the '50s quintet had John Coltrane in it. Had, I mean, had different piano players. Could... Wynton Kelly, but Paul Chambers on the bass, Philly Joe Jones on the drums. And that particular group made just incredibly important records. And then he had his '60s group, which was Herbie Hancock on the piano, Ron Carter on the bass, Tony Williams on the drums, and Wayne Shorter on the saxophone. And they made all these incredibly important records.
I forget who said it in an interview with you, but they talked about like, Miles Davis's music feeling like, I think toes hanging over the cliff or something like this. Meaning, like, there's always a risk, there's a danger that you're willing to make, to fuck it all up live. And that feeling is what creates the aliveness of the music. Like, can you speak to that? Just the, 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.
Well, when I interviewed Ron Carter that played in, in Miles's '60s quintet, I asked Ron, 'cause Ron did records, he played bass on 2,200 recording, famous records. And I said, 'Did you guys ever rehearse with Miles?' 'No, never.' I said, 'So, you, what, 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.' And I said, 'Would you listen to it after?' 'No.' And I said, 'Well, what about your, what about the live records that you did at, when you'd record at clubs and things like that?' He goes, 'We never knew that we were recording.' He goes, 'Maybe I'd see a microphone, a different kind of microphone in my bass amp.' He goes, 'Then months later, a record would come out and I'd see it, and I was on it, and I would take it down to the union and say, I played on this record, so you get paid for it.' But he said, 'We didn't even know we were recording.' So Miles was always about, you know, don't think about it, just play.
That's crazy. That was on purpose. That was done on purpose. Not to, not to do the rehearsals. None of that.
Yeah, he wanted people to just feel it, play it. Thought is the enemy of flow, as Vinnie Colaiuta told me.
Thought is the enemy of flow. How do you make sense that Flea, the bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, is influenced by bebop jazz?
So his stepfather was a jazz bass player. And his... When his parents got divorced, his... He was born in Australia, and then they moved to New York. Then his parents got divorced, and his mom married his stepfather, who was a jazz musician. And then they used to have jam sessions at their place, and Flea loved it. It was kind of like my upbringing with my dad, playing jazz all the time. Once it gets inside you, it's just there. And so he is heavily influenced by jazz musicians.
Yeah, his impression was just hilarious. I mean, he's a character. His whole physical way of being is a character. And his impression of just upright bass is just fun to watch. His whole...
His intensity when he picked up his bass during the interview, it... He's an intense guy and funny, and you know, really emotional. And, And he picks up his bass, and there's a fierceness that you immediately feel. And he starts, he talks about how he practices. And then when he starts doing the slapping stuff, he gets, he's so into it. And I'm just sitting there going, 'Whoa.' Like, 'Wow.'
Yeah, he talked about his practicing routine with you. And one of the things, he's like, 'I have to practice the slap.' And... you know, there's differences in the structure of the different bands. But usually, like, 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 that, when you play a bad note, everybody notices. I started on the bass... as a kid.
But you also played drums. You also played...
Yeah, but my first instrument was the cello in third grade. And then I switched to the bass in sixth grade. And my, I majored, my undergrad degree is in classical bass. So I always think of myself as a bass player first. And I always think the bass is the most important instrument because...
Because as much as I love to play the guitar, and I love to play the guitar more than anything, I think, but the bass really defines what the quality of the chord is. 'Cause 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 our, 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 on 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?
Right. Now the day later, I would have said, 'It's the second solo.'
But I did the first solo because nobody talks about that solo. And that solo is equally great. And when David Gilmour... When I played it for him, and we talked about it in my interview with him, it was... Just to watch his face when he listened to it was incredible. I mean, I'm thinking to myself, it's like, I'm sitting with David Gilmour, and he's listening to Comfortably Numb. And he's hearing it. 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 why David Gilmour will never be on the channel. And 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 is very good at understanding tempo and the value of silence. Uh, and I think David Gilmour doesn't always play fast. But he does a lot with less. And then 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 when I went to his studio. And I said to him, 'So, David, is there anything I'm not supposed to see here?' I mean, 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 that... And I, and I asked his tech, Phil, I said, 'These are the same ones you used on the records?' He's like, 'Yeah.' This tech has been with him for, like, 50 years. And, I mean, the exact ones? Yes. It's just, it's hard to... It's hard to imagine that those things still... Of course, though. They... He's just kept it. Yeah, this is his, his Binson Echorec that he played through, and this is this. You know, these are all the same effects pedals. And the... Wait, is this the same Hiwatt amp? Yeah. Is this the same... Yes. Yeah, you get some new stuff. But but they keep all their own gear, and that's, uh... I mean, he does sell his guitars for charity. But, like, he has a black Strat that is a, it's a signature version. It's like an exact copy of his old one. So to him, it sounds exactly the same, plays the same.
Well, of course, they converge towards that kind of f-... hardware. But there's so many tiny details over the years. You see the final result of it, but there's a, there's a journey there, of, of exploring. And of course, he's not... I guess he's not doing any soft... Like, no emulation, no amp?
He does do emulation, actually. He does. He has this thing... this is... I asked him in the first interview about this. There's a little rack thing that I had heard that 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, that Zoom 9030, is that a real thing?' 'Cause I've read about it. He's like, 'Yeah.' And he talks about how, when he's sitting there recording on his own... And he runs Pro Tools himself, and so he'll be sitting there. 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 like a kind of '90s modeling, early modeling thing. And 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. So people always talk about, 'Oh, well, he couldn't have used that. He's recording through an amp,' and... 'Cause it sounds great. And 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, you know, 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 just pull a...
And I can think of 100 questions to ask David Gilmour, and... But I always ask my questions based on what they say to me. So, but I do make a playlist of songs that I wanna talk about. So, that kind of guides me, is that... 'Cause I wanna make sure that I... There's specific things that I need to play to, so that you can jog his memory. 'Cause anytime you play something that somebody recorded even 50 years ago, they'll remember. If they don't remember the exact specifics, they... That brings it to life to them again.
And they can, they can kind of piece together some aspects about it, and they can really talk. He can talk about the phrasing and the, you know, the kind of melodic direction of things like that.
So, there's a lot of tiny details that go into a particular song, whether it's in the production or how it's played or how it was composed, all that kind of stuff. And you don't know what those are ahead of time.
You just know the song, and you just are looking to jog their memory, and maybe your own curiosity of like, "How did you do this?" Or, "How do, what, this sound or that?" 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.
That's, that's what it is. It's that I can remember when records came out, who produced them, where they recorded them, who was the engineer, what the songs are on it. And not only that, but the people I'm interviewing know that I can play all the parts of all the instruments, 'cause I've done breakdowns of their songs, which is why I get the interviews with them in the first place, really.
But the actual, like, the skill of the interview, the thing you're not saying, the preparation, is the you young listening to bebop. That's the... it's the background knowledge, it's the soul carrying with you, being able to radiate the love of the soul of music.
I will say this, Lex, is that the other thing is that most of these people have a really good sense of humor. When I was, when... 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. And so he said, "You're interviewing David Gilmour? Oh, I'm coming." I was like, "All right. Come on. Come on down." So, my brother John's standing about five feet away, and John is a sales guy, but he... Great guitar player. So John's like... I was like, "This is John... This is... David, this is my brother, John." "David, great to meet you, buddy." And you know, it sounds like it's so... He's a sales guy. And so during the interview, I said, I was like, "Hey, John, what was I gonna ask David? Oh, ask him about the Gilmour effect." "Oh, yeah, that's right." And the Gilmour effect is my thing that I say in the comment section when people say... Anytime anybody plays anything technical, "Oh, yeah, that's great, but I much prefer David Gilmour." And so I always call it the Gilmour effect. Anytime I have, like, Yngwie Malmsteen, anybody that played, that has chops that I interview, the negative comments are always, "Well, I prefer David Gilmour."
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, 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. So, I don't necessarily do these by... I do those in kind of how important they are to me and my development. So, there's always a biographical component to these lists. Number three was Kid Charlemagne, a Steely Dan song, Larry Carlton. Amazing solo, extremely difficult to figure out. Probably, there's two solos on the list that are just about, are very... That one I can play. But there's a few solos that are very hard to play. Stone in Love by Journey, by Neal Schon, is very hard to play some licks. Um, the, um- There's a song... 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 very hard to play and figure out. And that people don't know the solos. I put it on my list 'cause I knew that a lot of people were gonna watch it and they're gonna know what this solo is.
For me, the sentimental one, my first solo is Mr. Crowley, 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. And also, there's like a legendary nature to the, the brief time we had Randy Rhoads. It's probably one of the greatest guitarists ever.
'56 to '82, I think. Terrible. Um, he was um, absolute brilliant guitarist, had his own style.
We should say he's the guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne, the band.
Yeah. And that Mr. Crowley solo is a, is a great solo, great solo. And, He's incredibly influential as a guitar player too, for metal guitar players and, um, I love Randy Rhoads.
Another guy... So, one of my favorites is Mark Knopfler.
Yes. And 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 'cause it's one of the early ones. 'Cause I wanted people to be like, "Okay. Oh, this is a serious list." So, Rick's gonna talk about serious stuff. So, um- And Rick's gonna 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 one day to do 20 solos. I think I played 19 of them, but the Heart solo that I had on there- Nancy Wilson, I played the video of. And I tried to get a couple of my friends to play the Ice Cream Man, Van Halen solo.
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." And 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 let me play Ice Cream Man?" The opening lick of Ice Cream Man that he plays is very hard to play 'cause it's an incredibly long stretch. And it hurt my fingers to do, and Eddie would turn his guitar up like this to play. And plus, it's a tricky... It just... It's a tricky rhythm, and, 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. The top 20.
There's so many Van Halen. My God, it could be... There... I could pick 25 different Van Halen solos.
But to me, I mean, there really is nobody like Mark Knopfler. I mean, he is a unique guitarist. There's something about his tone. Speaking of Gilmour, there's just the tone, the care, the timing of the notes. His improvisation, like the live performances of Sultans of Swing that's been actually going like somewhat viral around recently. His pretty old live performance of Sultans of Swing. For me, Brothers in Arms, these kind of soulful, mournful type of solos, he does really, really well. Also, the interesting instrumentation of Romeo and Juliet. Just so, so many... Just... Truly one of the greats.
Now, obviously the intro to Money for Nothing is one of the greatest. Almost impossible to recreate that because of the sound is so unique and his... It's just improvised. It's so cool.
Yeah. There's certain songs like Europa by Santana. Santana can have that tone too. That Mark Knopfler makes me real- just how clean it is. I think he beats B.B. King in my book on in terms of the cleanness of just pure beauty of a single note. It's like a 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?
When I hear Brian May, I can immediately recognize it's Brian May. incredibly melodic, the tone that he has. Gil Moore, Hendrix, everyone that we're talking about, Van Halen. It's just, they have that one note. It's like, "Oh, I know who that is." And that's why we're talking about him.
That'd be funny. That'd be a good video-
B.B. King. You hear one note
... as a test of like how quickly can you recognize just a solo starts playing-
That's a great... I'm gonna make that video-
... tomorrow. Lex, you'll-
The day after tomorrow, you'll see it.
I would love to see that.
Can you say, "Can you recognize these players by one note?"
By one note. I think it's... I think we're being a little too aggressive with that. I think you need like two or three or four-
I guarantee you. So I was gonna do a video last week where I was gonna play songs in reverse, okay? See if you can recognize these songs in reverse. And I had my two assistants come in. It's like, "Do you know what song that is?" They're like, "Oh, that's Adele." Like, "What?" And then they're like, "Oh, that's Nirvana." Instantly, they could recognize. Like, "Well, that's not worth me..." It's yeah, it's so obvious. You hear the tone of the voice backwards, forwards, it doesn't matter. You know who it is.
Oh, interesting. Okay. So it's about the tone. How could you possibly know the... from a single note? I guess Van Halen, you can.
One note of B.B. King's vibrato, you could know. I'm gonna... What I'll do is I would separate the guitars. I can actually separate the tracks, and I'll just play one note.
You think you could, from a single vibrato, you can know it's B.B. King?
Put it on record, I'm skeptical.
I'm gonna do- I'll do twenty of them, "Can you recognize these guitarists from a single note?"
Could you recognize Stevie Ray Vaughan-
... versus Eric Clapton? All right. You might be right. You might be right. Quick 30-second thank you to our sponsors. Check them out in the description. It really is the best way to support this podcast. Go to lexfridman.com/sponsors. We've got UPLIFT Desk, for my favorite office desks, BetterHelp for mental health, LMNT for electrolytes, Fin for customer service AI agents, Shopify for selling stuff online, and Perplexity for curiosity-driven knowledge exploration. Choose wisely, my friends. And now, back to my conversation with Rick Beato. 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 meaning of the song, 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.
And I, as I was like listening to it, just doing a whole personal journey introspection, knowing that I'm gonna talk to Rick Beato, I was listening to just a bunch of songs, and I learned, it's embarrassing that I didn't know the stories behind the music, but I learned that Eric Clapton was married for a decade to the same woman that George Harrison was married to. And that this woman was the muse, the inspiration for, like, so many of the legendary songs of rock, including Wonderful Tonight, including Layla, and including George Harrison's Something. Legendary song also. The same woman. Is she the greatest muse in rock history?
This is great. So in your interviews of musicians and producers, I think the thing you're ultimately fascinated by is their whole, the process, the recording, the production, the songwriting, the different elements of the process. So, Are there examples of different things that stand out to you from the, all the interviews you've done? And all by the way, all the recording and production you've done yourself. So on the recording front, on the production front, on the songwriting process front, just things that, pop into memory.
When I've interviewed the guys that are the producers, like Rick Rubin, Daniel Lanois, Brendan O'Brien, Butch Vig, the thing about producers as opposed to people that are musicians, if you're a mu- in a musician, even if you're David Gilmour, you do a record, and then you tour, and then you do another record, maybe years go by, but producers are working on multiple records, you know, sometimes at a time. Rick Rubin could be working on multiple records, and the variety of things that they do, you can talk to. I mean, 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's just so many interesting stories that, I mean, these interviews could go on for days with Rick and the variety of records that he worked on. And and 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's so few studios nowadays, where there used to be a mentorship thing, where you'd go and you'd work as an assistant engineer. And you'd work your way up. I interviewed a guy named Ken Scott that worked with the Beatles. I interviewed him at Abbey Road Studios, it's just two months ago, and he started as a tape op when he was 16. He started on the Hard Day's Night record with the Beatles, and he worked his way up, and he said the first time he ever recorded an orchestra was he recorded I Am the Walrus, the orchestra part. He set up the mics, and I asked him, I said, "So where was the band?", "Standing right behind me." The Beatles, right behind him. The guy I'm interviewing at Abbey Road recorded I Am the Walrus there. I mean, he recorded many Beatles songs, and, and he was 18 years old, and the, I mean, I just can't, I can't even fathom that. We, they have a little cafe 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." And I remember when they got two microwaves that like the first microwaves in 1965, and they were amazed by them. And it's hard to imagine that I'm talking to people that worked on these historic records, but, you know, they all start with a blank tape or an empty hard drive, and then you've eventually filled them up with this music that you can't, you can never imagine it not existing, like Stairway to Heaven, or whatever it is.
Yeah. It's funny, like looking back, even probably for them, just to realize they've created that magic is hard to believe. 'Cause you're looking at a blank thing and then magic comes out, and you don't even, you don't even understand. You don't understand, probably a lot of these artists 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 this was, if we talked about it on camera or not, but we talked about Bohemian Rhapsody, and 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. And there's always something about these songs that bothers people. Even these songs that he-
These little things, yeah.
Right. There's always little things-
... and they sit and they hear it, and they're like, "Oh, man. I wish I'd been up a little higher on that," or whatever.
I mean, that, that... there's certain moments in songs that are just unlike anything else. In Bohemian Rhapsody, when Freddie Mercury is, "Sometimes wish I'd never been born at all." And then guitar comes in. I mean, there's just nothing like that. That was ... That ... I don't even know. I mean, that whole thing, you've done videos on it. It's an incredibly complicated composition. It's crazy that a popular song, popular rock song could be this operatic, 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.
What is that? I can't... I don't understand how you can create that. What is that? Why is that so magical? Why is it so singular inside a particular song and in rock history period? Like, these moments, I don't know, musically, I don't understand how you create them 'cause it might be bigger than musical. It might be cultural, a bunch of different elements, and plus, it's him filled with... Like, I've seen live performances. He has, like, a headset. He does something. He's like a telemarketer or something. Like, his whole vibe and look to him, he's doesn't look like a rockstar, but he is.
Those are hooks when you think about it, right? It's like, it's as much of a hook as any, 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, and 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 gonna 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. And he said he thought that the bridge is therapy. It's like a chance for you to reflect, I guess, on the verse before the chorus comes in.
It changed my view of the bridge, I suppose, is the therapeutic nature of it, at least lyrically. You think he's onto something? 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... He would have some kind of biting lyrics, like "We can work it out." So McCartney writes the, you know, "Try to see it my way. Do I have to keep on going until I can't go on?" And then, 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." I mean, it's very, you know, very Lennon-esque. This is, that was really a kind of a real collaboration between the two of those.
This is where different parts of the band can clash in interesting ways. I mean, the Beatles are the epitome of that. Such ... Like, 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 have never been able to figure that out, but I have a theory that- ... because PA-
... because PA systems were so bad back then- ... and the Beatles, people screamed so loudly that the Beatles thought, "Okay. We don't, we don't need... We can't tour anymore 'cause we can't even hear ourselves, so we're just gonna be a studio band." And maybe because of... We have all these great late Beatles records that are from 1966 on just because they had bad PA systems. And they had no monitors. You know, they're in Shea Stadium. People are screaming so loudly. They can't hear themselves. They're like, "Okay. Forget this. We can't tour. We'll just make studio records." So that's what they did, and in that one year, like, from August 6th, 1965, they put out Help. Then in December 3rd, they put out Rubber Soul, of '65. Then August 5th, they put out Revolver. So within 365 days, they put out three 14, I think, 14-song records. So they wrote and recorded three incredibly important records. They were in the studio. It's like working out. They're practicing their craft every day, writing songs, trying to outdo the other ones, and so you had the perfect thing of four supremely talented musicians, songwriters, singers, and then the best producer you could possibly have, George Martin, and it was just a perfect storm. I think that when I would talk to friends that would just play in local clubs, and they'd play four-hour sets five nights a week, and they never lost their voices because they're always working those muscles. And same with the Beatles. They were always in the studio singing every single day, doing takes, and I think that that was part of it, at least.
But you also have this theory- that you know, that the greatest productivity that musicians have is before they turn 30. The greatest, sort of, 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. They... You have this fluid intelligence versus crystallized intelligence. Fluid intelligence up until you're about, you know, in your late 20s, 30 years old, and then crystallized, so you're using... The crystallized is you're using your life experience to write things, so you'll find that composers: Bach, Beethoven, Mozart wrote their most important works at the end of their lives. Beethoven, the late string quartets, the Ninth Symphony, things like that. So, they have a whole lifetime of experience that lead up to this and there's not... They're not improvising, but things for improvising, writing pop songs and that I think when your mind is really most active and your brain processing speed is at its pinnacle, that... This is just my theory- that people can come up with those kind of ideas. Same with improvising. I think that most jazz improvisers, not all, but most, do their best improvising before the age of 30.
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, of course. A big part of music history is linked to drug history. LSD, coke, heroin, weed.
I think about this a lot. If you go back and you watch videos, The Beatles, any of their movies, they're smoking all the time. The Get Back documentary, they're smoking constantly. Go watch any of the MTV Unpluggeds, 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 Dillon, "Dillon, does anybody smoke" at his high school. He's like, "Smoke? Nobody smokes." He's... It was an absurd question, and that was part of culture.
Yeah, it was for everybody. I mean, that was, that was a big transformation over the past 20 years and just everybody stopped smoking. But I don't think smoking has the kind of hard negative effect that we're talking about. I mean, I almost would rather have them smoke than some of the other hard drugs. Maybe smoking distracts them from the hard... I mean, heroin and coke, I mean, those things really... And alcohol, unfortunately, can be easily abused, I think. It seems like it's a... The, the life of a musician, this dopamine thing of getting on stage and being... Being adored by tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, the high of that, and then the comedown after is really hard life, for just even neurobiologically, of like how do you deal with that? You have to be able to control the rollercoaster of your mind, and of course drugs will be a part of that. And you think everything is allowed and everything is possible, and then there's also a culture depending on who you hang out with that certain kinds of categories of drugs are good for your creativity. And so, naturally, you start to abuse those drugs. I don't know. I think the, 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, you know, advocate people doing things like that to boost their creativity?
Well, I wouldn't, but just like smoking, which I think improved people's voices- I mean really, the raspiness of it-
