Jack White

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Today, we have friend of the show, Jack White,
back on the program, along with a very special visit
from one of my favorite artists of all time. If
you missed our last conversation with Jack, Brennan Benson and
the rest of the Rack and Tours, I highly recommend
going back to listen. This conversation, like the one before,

(00:38):
is full of fascinating ideas, asides in musical history that
lets you know just how deep a cat Jack White
really is. It's as if he's tapped into some sort
of endless creative energy and inspiration, and some of that
inspiration he tells Rick in this conversation is still emanating
from his youth. Jack also has a work ethic and

(00:59):
a business ethos Unlike most his labeled Third Man Records
has a rich roster of artists, with three retail stores
in Detroit, Nashville, and London. They also own one of
the few fully operational vinyl pressing plants in the US,
which has been working overtime lately to keep up with
the surging demand for vinyl. Jack also released two full
length albums this year that perfectly document his present creative life,

(01:23):
and he's on a worldwide tour promoting those records. After
a recent two nights stand in La, Jack stopped by
Shangar Law to speak with Rick Rubin about the early
garage rock scene in Detroit that helped shape him, what
makes the Seven Nation Army Guitar Riff one of the
greatest earworms of all time? And then Jack treats Rick
and a legendary surprise guest to an acoustic performance of

(01:46):
his new song A Tip from You to Me, And
to cap it all off, we'll hear exclusive details about
an exciting new project Rick's been working on that'll be
out soon. This is broken record liner notes for the
Digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Rick Rubin and Jack
White from Shangar La. Are you on the road now? Yeah?

(02:09):
We just did uh these last two nights we played
in town and then uh day off today. So yeah,
so you said, hey, so it would be a good
time because I've been wanting to having excuse to come
out here again. And what's the current band situation? So
three guys with me drums, bass and keys, and guys
who've played with before. Yes, Dominic Davis who's on bass,

(02:30):
and we've been playing together since we're like thirteen, we
go way back to Detroit and Dary Jones on drums
and who's probably I think, really think the most unique
drummer around today really, and then Quincy McCrary plays keys
and sings harmonies too. I debated going on as a
three piece. I always wanted to do that, and I

(02:51):
got to try that out on when we did Saturday
Night Live year and a half ago or whatever it was.
It um that was a good moment because we weren't
pushing anything or anything. So we did that, and I felt, oh, well,
that would be nice tour as a trio. But but
then there's a whole like bank of like forty songs
that have keyboards that we wouldn't really be able to
perform and that we have to just kind of cross

(03:14):
that off. Those feels an obligation to have keyboards in
a keyboard song, though, do you basically do a three
piece band cover of Yes, I would love that. My
my worry was that, you know, I even worried about
that in the Noise Chris, which was breaking things up
and sometimes playing keys or synth on a song or
acoustic on the song. So it wasn't the same. You're
not hearing the same tones over and over and over again.

(03:35):
That's always my concern, and I don't want things to
sound whimpy either, you know. So sometimes I love an
acoustic track, but playing it live, you're in that room
and it's you just got done playing three very fast
rock and roll songs, and you feel like, I'm you
can't tell if you're losing them the audience, or or
if they're actually just if they're actually listening, paying attention

(03:56):
more or something, you know. So it's hard to know,
but I like that because it keeps me on edge
the whole time. Yeah, what's two relationship to rocking materials
versus non rocking material in general? Yeah, I sometimes think
that the things that I like more are not as
appealing to other people. Like, for example, a great example

(04:18):
is I really can would just like to be a drummer,
you know, but I know that my drumming is just
you know, it doesn't capture people and capture their attention
and make them go wow, wait a minute, you know,
or you know, or like, I play piano, but no
one considers me a piano player by any means. I
definitely wouldn't claim that either, but it for some reason.

(04:39):
When I play guitar, it connects with people and they
come back with feedback, and they give me feedback and
want to push me to keep doing that. Where that's
the one instrument for the I like that. The last
one I would pick was guitar, you know. I mean,
just like everybody plays guitar. It's been done a million times,
and how do you have your own voice and uniqueness
to it? And maybe because of my sort of carelessness

(05:02):
about that, maybe by accident there's some uniqueness ended up
happening because of me sort of thinking, oh whatever, I
guess interesting. It's like if you want to or if
you wrote a poem and you could read it out
loud and you maybe you could get a few people
to pay attention and get something out of it and
connect with some other people. If you put it to
melody and sing those words are reading, then all of

(05:23):
a sudden you get more people paying attention. Possibly, And
then if you put music behind it and then a
rhythm behind who knows, you could go to a billion
people could be interested in. I think that's kind of
the way I feel like, Okay, this is the window
to if I can tell the story to if I
need to use this instrument to do it. Okay, if
that's what you want, Okay, yeah, let's do that. Can
you imagine with your love of drums, could you imagine

(05:45):
playing drums for a band that already connected with people
on a different level where it wasn't on you to
be the connector, but you could just be the drummer.
It'd be great. It'd be great. Yeah. I played drums
in my band, The Dead Weather on the drummer in
that band, but it's a darker band. It's more esoteric
and darker. So it's not really we never intended to
have it at hoping it had a large popular reach
or anything like that. It sounds like a cynical hipster

(06:08):
thing to say, like an on purpose trying not to
you know whatever. But it really wasn't that way. I'm
saying that because I didn't wasn't expecting. Oh great, the
heat's off me. Yeah I can just drump, but um, yeah,
I'll be wonderful, you know, it would be wonderful to
be that. Tell me about your relationship to success in
terms of when you're writing, do you ever think who's

(06:31):
going to like this, or what's the right presentation to
make somebody respond. I early on, coming on the sort
of the de garage rock scene in Detroit, it was
a lot of people who were talented, who were keeping
themselves down on purpose or boxing themselves in a weird
way of not wanting to succeed in any way or

(06:52):
to grow in any bigger way. I always thought that's
a really strange thing. It's almost like a painter who
never puts his paintings up on the wall or puts
them in a gallery. I mean, if you're not sharing
with other people, I guess what's the point. You know,
you're just doing it. You're by yourself. Maybe you should
just stay at home or something that's just a hobbying.
But if you're going up on stage and you're putting

(07:12):
on a record with your name on it or whatever,
it feels like you're already in that world anyway, You're
already sharing with other people. I guess people always say
something like, doesn't it make you mad that they play
your seven Nation Army song at sports stadium? So why
would that make me mad? I mean, I think krik
Combing sort of brought a little bit more of that
to the to the surface of punk rock guilt. Where

(07:34):
you're he may have felt felt guilty about the attention
from what I hear or from it's always gathered about him,
And I felt like that was definitely as a vibe
in that sort of the hipster garage rock world that
we came out of, was that you're almost supposed to
be ashamed if something worked out. Well, it's odd and
add it's an odd way of thinking about it. I

(07:54):
think there's some belief and I do not. I do
not subscribe to this belief that if something successful, it
can't be good, right, And I don't think that's right.
I really don't think that's right. I think a lot
of the stuff that's successful I might not like. Yeah,
but things do breakthrough that are amazing. Yeah, and those
are the revolutionary things. Yes. I mean there'll be times,

(08:17):
so there'll be a pop song where you might instantly
hear it and be cynical about it and say, oh God,
give me a break, you know, or a cliche or
it's a pretensists or something like that. And then what
what I'll do is I'll realize, you know, that's hard, man,
that's really hard. If you want to sit down and
write a hit, that's gonna be number one on the

(08:38):
charts or whatever, especially nowadays, that's no easy task, and
so then you have to give credit for that, Like, hey,
even if you don't like it, you gotta give someone credit.
They actually made it work. I figured it out. Even
if they wanted to do it every single time, they
couldn't do it. So you start thinking about that way,
and then maybe sometimes like time passes and you start realizing, wow,
that was really an important, beautiful thing that happened when

(09:01):
that song became pub even novelty songs, yes, Like I
think of songs in the eighties that I thought were
just you know, these novelty, goofy things that were on
the radio. Then now when I look back, I'm like, wow,
damn you know take on me by Aha, incredible. Wow.
Think about the structure of the melody of that vocal alone,
let alone the production of it. And if you would

(09:22):
ask me when I was whatever, ten, twelve, I've one whatever.
But now I have immense respect for certain things like that,
And it's it's funny that those things click with you
at times, but I guess it's part of the craft.
When you get yourself involved in the craft and you
care about it and you're open minded. Yeah, I feel
like maybe everyone has a choice psyche as they age,

(09:43):
you have a choice to go down this darker road
where you become more and more close minded and more
cynical and more hateful of anything that's different and and
and scarier or imposing or you you you stay down
this road where you get more and more open minded,
more and more enlightened as you go, because you want
to keep experiencing and you want to meet new people

(10:04):
and hear new things. It's almost enough some kind of
unconscious choice. Yeah. I used to think when I was younger, Hey,
you know some old timer musicians coming to town and
they're playing this club and we go see you and say, hey,
come and talk to us after the show, and they
wouldn't want to. And I was like, God, that would
be terrible. I wonder why they're so grumpy and grouchy.

(10:25):
Well now I can see you're grouchy. Well I can
see that. It's like there's been moments in my life
where I could definitely have gone down that road, Like
why I finished my show at getting a car and
go to the hotel and not talk to anybody. I
could see someone making that choice and why they would
make that choice. But you have to sort of shake
that off and like, yeah, but you miss so much

(10:47):
And in a way, it's like a giving up for
selfish you know, for selfishness. You know. Also it is
a grueling I imagine it's grueling on the road, just
like having to do it all the time. Yeah, and
there's only so much energy, and you want the show
to be good every night, so it seems like everything
other than the show might suffer for the show to

(11:08):
be all but it could be. Yeah. When I see
acts that are sort of maybe doing the same set
every night and they have the pyrotechniques go off in
song three and all that, I get a little jealous
because I don't have a set list in my set.
So when I see that, I'm like, oh man, it
would be so easy, and it would be so now
you just go up there, or say someone who stands
still and sort of just can sing, like Willie Nelson

(11:30):
doesn't really need to do anything, and you didn't do
acrobatics or anything. That voice is it. He's got it.
It doesn't even probably require too much energy to push
it out of himself. And it's amazing every time you
know I don't have that. You know, I don't have
a singer's voice. I'm not a singer and I'm not
even that kind of the character vocalist of like a Wheelie.
I feel like to make something nice a Wednesday night

(11:52):
in Poughkeepsie and you want this show to be great
as it was, you know, Saturday night in New York City,
And well, what am I gonna do? And first you
have to care, you know, And there's another fork in
the road where you find these moments where like, wow,
you can see easily how quickly you'd want to give
up and just go stay in the tour buss. I

(12:13):
remember someone telling me that they were like, yeah, I
used to look at the shows like, you know, two
more songs and I get to go watch TV on
the tour bus and one more song and wow, get
out of here. I'm like, please, God, don't want that
happen to me. Yeah, you know that would be I
would just I know what I would do. I just
wouldn't do her any Yeah, and I can't imagine the
shows are very good. If that's the attitude of the performer,

(12:34):
campy I get, you know, or say, if what's popular
now Vegas residencies are popular now and I can get
the repeal of that, you know, like maybe there's artists
like they get paid already no matter who shows up,
it's the same dressing room every night. You get to
take a private jet home to LA every night if
you want to, or all these benefits and niceties and stuff.

(12:54):
So I could see all that, but then I think,
I don't know if it would work for me. I
would feel like I gave up, like for my own
personal music. No judgment on that. Some people that makes
If you're Tom Jones, that's it, man, That's that's the
way to go for what he's doing it out. He's
he's got the pipes for that. And maybe it would
work for a Willy Nelson and in a way in

(13:16):
the write environment or something. But maybe for me, I
would think, a man, how would how could I do
that and not give up and make it a different
show every night and have energy to it? That would
almost be It's o unchallenging and sounds really fun, like
that could be fun. It could be interesting way to
do it. Have you ever seen Willie Live? Yes? Yeah, yeah,
it's incredible, it's great, It's incredible. Yeah, it's it's not

(13:38):
what I expected before, before I'd ever seen him. Yeah,
I assumed it was going to be more like a
country concert, and it was more like a Ramons concert
other than the fact that he the songs that he's singing.
But yes, it was song on top of song to
a song onto a Yeah, it was relentless and then yeah,
they do this like you do, like a little build
up that you think would be like that. It's almost

(14:00):
like whimpy for a second and it's like no, no,
no, no no, no no, no time well scaring Ramon, don't
run drop and you're like, damn that that took. He
didn't even really he raised his voice, but all of
a sudden the energy went bammed like maybe with one
little snare hit. Yeah, and so much to learn from
that and him as a guitar player, so punk rock,

(14:21):
so punk. I mean that guy his guitar solos. If
you haven't listened to a Willie Nelson guitar solo, you know, anybody,
I always say, god man, just type in Willie Nelson
guitar solo on the Internet and listen to what he does.
You won't believe it at first, You'll wait what you know,
and it is so punk and so carefree and such

(14:43):
a rebellious thing that I just kind of can't believe
he got away with that, even even in the different
environments he's worked in all the time. It's like, damn,
that's a real rebellious, outsider way to attack the guitar.
And in the instrument he plays, the strange acoustic electric
hybrid deck has a matching amp built by like Worltzer

(15:04):
or something. I forget what company made it, but it's
a bizarre instrument that he shows that nobody else has
as well, So very unique. I wouldn't have thought to
ask us before, but you talked about a song that
plays in soccer stadiums. Have you ever tried to analyze
what it is about Seven Nation Army that has transcended

(15:26):
not only the rest of your work, but the rest
of any rock artist's work of you know, it's like
it's it's it has had a really unusual life, bizarre, Yeah,
anything that you've noticed, maybe from playing it live, anything
in you know, being a someone who studies music, you know,

(15:47):
we we we are passion has study music, we love
trying to understand why it does what it does. You
have any thoughts. I've heard lots of opinions about it
over the years, you know, some being really positive and
feeling it's groundbreaking. Other people trying to sort of like
take it away from me, or or I say I
copied something that are on the negative side, and other

(16:07):
people thinking that it's possibly you know, I don't know
what the word is, but you know, something like when
music is a related to a heartbeat, or that it's
it has an organicness to it that we that maybe
just got accidentally unearthed in that scenario. But I did
read an article once about why do we like music
at all? From a scientists point of view, and it was,

(16:30):
you know, really scientific and methodical, and it was an
interesting thing. The theory in this article was the brain
is trying to make patterns and make sense of patterns,
and that we find a thrill and when we can
complete the melody pattern in our head or guess what
it's going to be. You know, you can guess if
you go, I know the last two notes are going

(16:53):
to be you know, maybe that's a pleasantness to that.
And then when you don't do that, waiting so we
resolve it and then maybe that gets into like why
horror films are appealing to be like it shouldn't on
paper and be like, well, why would you want to
be scared? That doesn't make any sense, But we like it.

(17:14):
We find it a thrill and maybe that seven Nation
Army with the melodies. There seems to be two moments
in there if I were to analyze it, and I'm
just taking guys, I have no idea, but this is
you know that sounds like you're gonna go up like

(17:35):
or something like that, but you go up and then
you quickly change direction. No, no, no no, now I'm going
back down. That gets you to pay attention. Yeah, so wait,
what's how's it gonna resolve? Why did it change direction? Exactly?
Why did it change direction? So then you got and
then this next one is sort of why I think
is maybe like the horror movie thing. Then like whoa, okay,

(17:59):
I guess I agree to that. You know it's not
an actual full result, so like, yeah, I can, I can.
I can deal with that. Your brain can maybe say yeah,
I can do with it. I don't know, it's just
a y that maybe maybe those two little moments or
what is it? The riff? Would you say the song
is the riff. Yes, yeah, okay. The funny thing was
that I was at the time. I remember saying, to

(18:20):
make this will be great. I want to The challenge
for me right now is I want to write a
song with no chorus and make it something people like
that doesn't have any chorus. So that was at that
moment the challenge in the studio. Very briefly, we didn't
We didn't spend much time on that song, you know,
and uh, but I remember that being like, oh, this
will be great. I won't write a chorus for this
doesn't need one. We'll just keep hammering this and then

(18:41):
we'll play off the loud quietness of Maybe the grung
era can be part of that. And there's also slide
guitar and a two and it's also sort of like
a bass, but I'm not really playing bass. I'm playing
a D tune guitar. So there was like, yeah, that's
enough for the things that I think are interesting, so interesting?
Did you play guitar barely like punk rock? You know,
like rudimentary guitar who it plays guitar on like the

(19:05):
Beastie Boys of I know that the first album. That's okay,
I didn't know that. I really I thought you were
going to mention, say some studio guys and Gray, what
guitar did you use for that? I had an SG
Junior fifty six s G Junior nice and that was
that was my main guitar. And then I remember I

(19:27):
saw a Slayer and I was really impressed with Slayer
and um and I met them and carry King got
me a carry King guitar, like really like a real
metal guitar. Yeah, and I think I might have played
one solo on that. I can't I can't remember exactly,
but I remember I had that and then I ended
up sending the guitar back after using it on me

(19:48):
acause I didn't really like it, but just like, oh
this is fun for this kind of a thing. Yeah yeah,
yeah yeah, but why didn't add Rock play? Why did
you play guitar that? I don't really know? Yeah, I
don't really know. It wasn't also the concept of the
Beastie Boys as rappers, maybe they just did it had
no instrumentation. It wasn't supposed to be that because when

(20:08):
they played it was more like what the BC Boys
the band sounded like, and we were doing something really
different than that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I always had
a sneaking suspicion, Like when I was like eighteen or another.
He was like, I get the feeling after I heard
their punk records. I get the feeling like they did
this rap thing because they thought it was funny, yeah first,
and then it just actually worked, so they stuck with it,

(20:28):
and people really does. I think what happened, honestly for
all of us was we were all into punk rock, yeah,
and then hip hop happened, and it's like hip hop
really took over for punk rock for us in real
like as fans. Sure, yeah, so it just became more.
It seemed disingenuous to keep making punk rock when all

(20:50):
we did was listened to and love hip hop, right,
And that was the new thing, was the punk rock? Yeah,
And you know it was for me, it was heavy
metal before before, like I loved heavy metal music or
what I call heavy metal music, which is really rock
card rock music. You know. I liked AC DC and Aerosmith, Nugent,
those guys. Yeah, and then when I heard I guess

(21:13):
the Ramones and then the Sex Pistols and then the
Clash and then really Black Flag and the Germs, and
I listened to much less hard rock once that started.
Do you think um like Walk This Way would have
worked with and this isn't a god I wish you
would have tried. I'm just throwing out a hypothetically. Do

(21:35):
you think that that song would have worked with any
other band? Like if you had tried that with led
Zeppein or A Deep Purple or any other track. So
the reason that Walk This Way worked had mostly to
do with the vocal phrasing. That was the key. There
were two pieces actually, so the one key was the
inspiration for that was. I went to dinner in Los
Angeles with a head of a record company who was

(21:59):
trying to sign you know, sign me. Yeah, And so
he couldn't have been more like on good behavior and
friendly yeah, And he said, you know, why why do
you think people like this rap stuff? Is? I mean,
after it's not music? Now he's saying this to me
as like, right, yeah, yeah, just completely oblivious. This is
not Why would anybody like this thing that's not music? Right? Yeah?

(22:22):
And I thought there's some way to bridge the gap,
There's some way so that that guy would understand what
this is, sure, right, And I just started listening to
records and think about, Okay, is there a record that's
a familiar record that vocally is not so different from
a rap record. Yeah, And the phrasing was and it's

(22:43):
not melodic sea, it's really the phrase. It's the phrasing. Yeah.
So it could have been, um, what's the Dylan song
Subterranean Homes? Yeah, it could have been that. That would
have worked too much monkey business? Ye, that could have worked. Yeah,
so whi there was something based on the phrasing. And
then the extra added benefit for Walk This Way is

(23:06):
that the drum break the intro to the record was
a drum break that you might hear in a hip
hop club in real life. Exact, it was already considered
in the hip hop cannon, not because of the song,
but only because of the beat, right, So it was
this magical combination of a hip hop friendly beat with

(23:26):
hip hop friendly phrasing. Yeah, And it really was just
to demonstrate, oh look, it's not that different. You know,
this is not foreign, right exactly. Yeah, it's funny. Yeah,
and whenever were never there's a new style. A lot
of the time, as you look back through music history,
it seems like the main gripe from the majority of

(23:47):
people is this is a lower ring of the bar.
This is a Lawrence's punk. All these guys are not
how to play their guitars, you know, but something rock
and roll compared to the the big band before. I thought
that's something they're asked Quincy Jones what the jazz guys
thought of the Beatles when they first got to America
all that was, and he says something like, those were
some no playing motherfuckers, we thought, And everyone got kind

(24:10):
of offended when you said, then, I thought I shouldn't
be offended by that, because I mean, stop for a
second and think about the incomplex chord changes and structures
those jazz guys were doing and free flowing off of
that and everything. And to hear guys come and play
three chords, four chords and sing and everyone's going ape

(24:31):
and selling millions of records, it might make you a
little bit like, geez, that's not you know, wait a minute,
but it's all. It's like that kind of thing where
people can walk into a museum and say, oh, I
could paint that, Well, no, you couldn't. You got to
come up with that idea, and then you got to construct,
constructed and the actual painting of at Jackson Park doesn't

(24:51):
really matter that the dripping part whatever. It's the same
thing with punk rocks, doesn't really matter about the notes
of who is the attitude behind it? You had to
construct that attitude or or coerci it out of you
from nothing, and that becomes more important than a proficiency
of the music and all that. But that's usually the

(25:12):
same thing, and the same thing with hip hop. We
came along and he's not even playing instruments anymore. There'sn't
even instruments. The funny thing now is like I kind
of feel, like, you know, modern sort of hip pop
production and hip hop production. I'm taken back to the eighties.
My feeling when I was ten, twelve years old. My
feelings then were it bummed me out that my friends

(25:33):
didn't know that was led Zeppelin being sampled on the
Best Boys album. Yeah, and it pissed me off. And
I knew that, and they didn't know that. And then
when I tried to educate them about that and play
them a led Zeppelin song, they just shrugged their shoulders
like I don't care. And I was like, just as
a young kid, I was like, if you like it,
that's what's cool about it? It's because it's our we
already know that riff, and it's it's they're not even

(25:56):
real performing me, they're actually sampling it. So that was
frustrating to me as a kid that other people didn't
or would be like what was like EPMD, I shot
the sheriff for now, that's Eric Clapton covering Bob Marley
and it's no but he else knew that in my
neighborhood and they didn't care. And I struggled with that
a lot. Like that bummed me out. I think now,

(26:16):
I think it'd be safe to say if you played
one hundred teenagers the top ten songs right now and
ask them all, what is making this sound at this
part of the song? Who is performing this part of
the Where does this sound you're hearing coming from? I
would I would venture to guess, and no discs on them,
because why would they know that They wouldn't know what's

(26:38):
making the sound and what is that like? That's sort
of like, you know, I guess you could call it.
Some people would call gate keeping where you'd say like
you must enjoy this the way I enjoy this, or
something like that. But I always feel like, oh god,
it would be it would be frustrating to come up
in the age right now as a teenager as a

(26:58):
musician who wants to play music and not know how
to make the sound of that moment of this Kanye
West song or something like that. But then the plus
side of the positive side of it is they can
easily look it up on the Internet and find out
if they're really resourceful and maybe crecreated themselves. Whereas in

(27:19):
our day we would have had to go to the library,
go to the music store, ask somebody, hey, what makes
an echo? Do this kind of echo? And then you
would have to do a lot of work to figure something. Absolutely,
that's a dead beautiful right now you can find out
really fast for the question that you asked of, like
what's in the you know, what's the instrument playing in
these you know this sound in the top ten? Chances

(27:41):
are the answer to all of that is it's the
computer exactly. Yeah. But I know when Reading Against Machine
came out, when that was why I embraced that instantly
was because I couldn't believe that guitar player was making
his guitar sound like that. I even didn't believe it.
There's no way he could make the guitar. How is
he's making it that sound. It's very rare when you

(28:01):
when you hear an instrumentation where you don't know and
you know it's not some trick. You knew he's actually
playing that at that time ninety two or something. Those
are the moments you save or you want, These moments
I wish I had once a week, Like the bass
is so much of like what we think of the
guitar riff is the bass. Yeah, it's like deep purple.

(28:24):
We think of these huge guitar riffs that are really
organic base exactly. Yeah, it tricks you because, yeah, the
sound your ear goes to the sound on top. Yeah,
but sometimes the reason it has that scale and the
reason you're impressed with it is because you think, yeah,
the underneath, the growl underneath. That frustrates me. Now when
I listened to earlier recordings I've done, is that I

(28:46):
wanted to get that underneath deep growl, and even in
a two piece of mount like a white stripes, double
tracking or adding something else didn't happen. And I didn't
really know about subwaffer a double octave, you know, overdubbing
and all these kind of things that now, these tricks
I've learned over the years to bring those tones to fruition.
But sometimes I think that at that time I was

(29:09):
emulating maybe a deep purple sound that was coming from
the growl of the Hammond organ and not from the
guitar itself. You know, it takes a while to learn
us absolutely, and you might find a new sound. You know,
you're you're trying to get the deep purple sound, yeah,
and you end up creating something new. Right. They were
trying to copy Vanilla Fudge and sound like them, and

(29:30):
they came up with their own big sound, gigantic sound,
which I think sometimes is overshadowed by Led Zeppelin because
I underappreciated what some of the suff deep purple did.
We'll be right back with more from Rick Rubin and
Jack White. We're back with more from Rick Rubin's conversation

(29:52):
with Jack White. Tell me about the world of music
that you were born into. I don't know much about
the scene in Detroit when you were a kid. What's it.
Tell me the story. Well, we had um big family,
and my brothers liked a lot of rock and roll,
and you know Johnny kab and who and Pink Floyd
and things like that, a lot of the progressive rock

(30:13):
and rock, classic rock and all those stuff. They were
really big on all that, and parents were big music
lovers of big band music and Nat King Cole and
Glenn Miller and Jen Krupa. Yeah, and I was growing
up in the inner city Detroit eighties, so that was
hip hop and the def Jam early records were all
being played as we were playing four Squares, Ella Cool

(30:34):
Jay and That's Outside and Mexican music. At the next
houseover and the neighbors next door, they all listened to
all the boys and their family all listen to, like
the punky side of things, that MC five studges and
that kind of stuff. Our family didn't really listen to
that much. I didn't get into that till I was
a teenager bolder. So yeah, that was kind of a
lots of different kinds of music going up. But my
friends at school didn't listen to any of that stuff.

(30:57):
It was only house music and rap and Top forty
or whatever. When did you first When did your love
of music start? I think pretty early on when I
started playing dramas ons five, But my brothers had a
drum kit up in the attic, so it was easy
to go up there and mess around. And they didn't
have a drum. I had a guitar player, bass player
and a keyboard player as my brothers already that those

(31:20):
instruts were already taken, so you know, drums were obvious
for me to play around with. So I did that.
In my whole childhood. I only wanted to play drums
scoring up. That was it. I used to practice in
high school under the desk with my feet, you know,
do parododiles with my feet and tips of my fingers
on my lap during classes, and yeah, it was. It

(31:40):
was something I kind of considered that it would be
a lifelong obsession along with whatever job I had, it
would be drums and drumming. Yeah. And then what was
your first music that was your music, not your family's music,
or what was coming from surrounding you? Great question. I
think there were these these trickles of things in high school,
which was there was a punk you know, got into

(32:02):
things like the Cramps and stuff, and it led to
this band of flat duo Jets. Was a really eye
opened everything. I went to a concert and I he
really was like a modern Geen Vincent and that kind
of felt like that was my own and then U.
But it was also at the same time there was
Rage against the Machine was happening, and I felt like
that was new, that something my brothers were, you know,

(32:23):
maybe it a little bit older and wouldn't have caught
onto that and whatever. It was nineteen ninety two or something,
so there was things like that. They weren't all the
same genre, they were different spots. But I think that
was kind of nice about when I came up, you know,
I could be very much into Bob Dylan and the
band and at the same time being into Rage Against
the Machine and the Cramps. What was the first Cramps

(32:43):
record you heard? Do you remember? Oh? It was a
Human Fly, the song Human Fly from Gravest Tits I think, yeah,
Gravest Tits. Yeah, that was a good one. Yes, I
mean I still think that might be one of the
top ten recordings ever made. That's unbelievable, unbelievable. That was
the first punk rock show I went to was the
Cramps at Irving Plaza. Oh, wow. When I was in

(33:03):
must have been high school, but it might have been
junior high school. Wow. And it was mind blowing life
who else was on with the original with the original
band with with Nick Nick knocks the original crew and
uh Brian Gregory, original guitar player. Wow, yeah, fantastic. I
don't remember who was I don't even know if there
was anyone else on the build. It was definitely a

(33:25):
Cramps gig. There may have been an opening act, yeah, yeah, yeah,
but it wasn't like a bunch of bands, right right. Yeah.
My first punk show was Fugazi. That was another That
was another band that I would one was kind of mine.
It was a great nation of ulysses warmed up and
wait to see him play. Is a Majestic theater which
I ended up playing in a couple of years later

(33:45):
a few years later with the White Stripes, And there's
a bowling alley there and uh, there's a pool hall upstairs.
We played the pool hall called the Magic Stick and
then the Majestic Theater as well. So yeah, it was
a cool little hub there, all in the cast court
or And now you know, it's great as a block away.
We've built our Third Man Records pressing plant from that zone.
It's great to still be in that neighborhood creating. You

(34:06):
gotta be good if you're playing in a place where
there's a bowling alley, because forget it, I'll just go bowling.
This is no good. I'm bowling if everybody likes the bowl. Yeah,
and the music really has to be good to take
you away from bowling. It's that you know you're making
the perfect point because upstairs as well the magic stick,
there was a whole The whole right side was all
pool tables. The left side was the people watching the show.

(34:29):
And you could tell by if you were doing something
interesting or not about how many people were playing pool, Yeah,
and how empty the tables were. And yeah, by the
time the White Stripes had to get going, it was
the tables started to empty out. And then we sold
enough tickets where they were filling up with people standing there,
not playing, watching us, and that felt like yeah, it
was So you're making an interesting point. Yeah, So when

(34:50):
you started playing out in clubs, was there a scene
of Was there a garage rock scene in Detroit at
that time? Yeah? There was, and I was learning slowly
about it. It was a band, or the most important
band from then was called the Glories. There were a
three piece female drummer named Peg who would only had
two times, no skin on the kick trump. She put

(35:11):
her foot in the kick trump to hold it steady.
Two tom's and a tambourine duct taped to the kick trump.
That's it. That was the drums and two guitar players,
no bass, very cool, black black male singer, white female drummer,
white male guitar player, no bass, no kick trum, no bass,
no kick trump, and such a unique sound. And they

(35:34):
are the kings of the Detroit garage rock scene still are.
When you were a kid, did you see them play live?
I just had stopped performing when I was old enough
to go to shows. I just missed them. And they
splintered into these other groups called the Dirt Bombs and
a Rocket for fifty five, and I saw those bands
and I ended up playing with those bands a couple
of years later. How old were you at this time

(35:56):
when you just started playing? This is like memory. I'm
like fifteen sixteen starting, just just starting to learn about
playing guitar. And I only did that because the guy
worked in a pulstry shop with He was a drummer too.
We were both drummers, so in order for us to
jam together, I had to play guitar so that we
could play together. So we would move the furniture aside
and bring out the drum set and get at the
end of the day. Sometimes it's pretty amazing experienced to

(36:20):
being an apprentice and also get to play music. I
was like, wow, this is great and then getting into
this kind of music too. And this was another band
that was my own, you know. That felt like I
owned this band, you know. And then you know, then
we like actually got to meet them. We saw that.
I remember seeing a Dan Crow in a coffee shop
and oh my god, that's Dan from the Glories. It's uh,

(36:42):
it's Will because yeah, so you had that whole scene
there with that. And then when by the time I
come out with the doing the white stripes in that scene,
I was a little bit shocked. They embraced us so
quickly and things happened. We made a lot of friends.
Pretty fat I didn't have any friends, neither did Meg,
and we we uh, all of a sudden, wait, wait

(37:04):
a minute, this guy likes the same music we do.
I never had this, you see, like I had a
one friend in high school who plays bass with me
still this day. He liked, you know, the deep purples
and the Holland Wolf records and stuff that I liked.
There was another kid I knew in the next pocket.
He liked BC Boys and we bonded a little bit
on that. But mostly everybody around me I went all
Mexican grade school, all black high school. They didn't like

(37:27):
any of the same music as me. So I wasn't
used to like being in a group of lots of people,
dozens of people all like iggy pop and all like
you know stuff. Growing up. Same for me, Yeah, I
was the only punk rocker in my school. It was lonely. Yeah,
it's wild as well. It makes you question it at times,
but I was always like, well, I like this, and
I kind of almost feel like you should have just

(37:49):
loosened up a little bit or made some more friends,
you know, if you've just been a little bit more.
I just said such strong beliefs about what turned me on,
you know, musically, artistically and all that stuff. Do you
think because of the glories, the idea of having a
two person group felt acceptable. Yes, the goryes in the
flat to a jets both the made acceptable idea that

(38:12):
the white stripes could be a thing interesting. And then
I had come from playing with the Supholsters group, the
two of us playing, and that was just guitar and drums,
no bass yeh, which was you know, say to like
my brother's world of music. That was like, whoa, that's
weird to have a band with no bass. But there
was already two bands, yeah, the Goories and the Flat
just both didn't have a bass player, Like the Doors
didn't have a bass player, but they still had four

(38:32):
people and they had yeah exactly, and yeah sell four
people only still had that. And when I think of
two person groups before the White Stripes, I think of Suicide,
I think of depeche Mode. Yeah, it's always electronic, it's
never it's never worth Yeah, those are all the ones
that come to mind, all those yes. Yeah. I thought,
though what was different about what we were doing was

(38:54):
I had become so immersed and in love with the
blues at that point that this would be a great
way and obfuscation for me to be able to play
that music and get inside of it and obfuscate with
the red, white and black color ski and the male
female thing and they're no bass player and all that
other stuff, which I liked all of that, and I

(39:16):
loved all of it. And got a lot out of it,
and maybe the blend of that with the blues was
what we were at the moment. I was like, this
is my way of sneakily not getting called white boy blues, tragic, stratic,
hester nonsense, which was super uncool in that zone of
that garage rock world at that time. Talk a little
bit about the colors. When did the idea of the black, red,
and white become part of the vision of the band. Yeah,

(39:42):
the my polstry shop was yellow, black and white. All
the colors came from my tools and my power saws
and my hand tool poster, hand tools. And then I
had bought a yellow van I was abandoned, like or
an old US Detroit Fire Department van, and that's what
I was going to do the deliveries from the furniture with.
And I started to dress and yellow and black to

(40:02):
do the deliveries and then do the bills and crayon
and yellow and black crayon, and the artistic side of
it took Quote was taking over him. Did you own
that company or were you an employee? I didn't know
that you owned the company. Yeah. When I was twenty one,
I had a mortgage, I had my own business. I
was in three bands. Wow. I sometimes wonder like people
must have thought I was really maybe crazy or insane

(40:26):
or something, because now if you saw, like if you know,
if you had a twenty one year old son that
was doing all that, Wow, oh my god, how can
I help you? Can? I you know, blah blah, we're
pat on the back or I never heard anything like
that from adults saying, Oh that's great, you're doing that.
That's amazing. You're never heard anything like that, and they
just paying attention or what do you think? I think

(40:48):
maybe they're just kind of falling. He's weird and it
means he or he thinks he has a company or
something and he probably doesn't really or I don't know,
I don't know what they were thinking. Strange. Most upholstery
companies don't have colors associated with those that either. What
do you think triggered that idea? If I had to
pick one moment, there was a moment of I watched

(41:12):
this special encounterfeiting, and they talked about this Dutch designer
and I don't know how to pronounce his name, it's
like oat j Oxenar. But he had designed this currency
that the five and the ten and the twenty dollar bills.
I don't know the name of the currency there, but
it was you know, this was purple was the five,
and blue was the ten, and red was the twenty,

(41:32):
and you knew exactly what you had in your hands
just by looking at it without looking at the number.
And I just really that was really inspiring to me, like, oh, instantly,
to know what something is instantaneously without having to have
it written on the screen or written across a T shirt.
So everything I did do with Third Man Upholstery was
going to be yellow, black and white, and sent her

(41:53):
around the number three as well. The third Man was
the name of the upholstery company, a third Man Upholstery.
Where did that name come from? Originally for the upholstery company.
That's a long answer, but it's it's a I was
actually the third upholsterer on my street. There was an
old guy named Clump, and then the guy next tour
to me, ri, I'm all done, and I was the
third one. Also the street was called Ferdinand Streets Ferdinand

(42:16):
third Man, and I'm also obsessed with the number three.
And also orson Wells was my biggest title at that
moment especially, so all of this came around. Yeah the
third Man, Yeah, your furniture is not dead was on
my business card, was the slogan, which now with Third
Man Records, it's your Turntable's not dead and so yeah,
so you basically keep retreading the same old, tired ideas

(42:38):
from child. Oh yeah, oh yeah, it never goes away.
That's great. Yeah, so that got transferred over to the
white stripes, which was instead of yellow black, and when
it was red black and white, And how did that
decision get made? How did it become red black? Oh?
Meg said something about peppermint candies. I love I love
peppermint candies. And we were at the drug stripes. And
now you know that we've been playing this music that
should be on your bass drum. That that peppermint you

(42:59):
just painted. I said, I'll paint it when we get home.
I'll paint the peppermint and bassed trum. That'll be funny.
And then once we did that, and the drum set
was white, and I thought, and she had black hair
and I had black hair, I'm like, oh wow, then
I think maybe this is the three colors instead of
I have a third Man with yellow black and white.
WIST would be red, black and white. Yeah, for some reason,
people missed the black part of it a lot. People

(43:20):
we should say, oh, everything I do is red and white,
red and white or whatever. I don't care. But but
it was actually supposed to be three colors. Yeah. Actually
it was thought of it as black and white with red. Yeah,
just because black and white it always felt it felt monochromatic. Yes,
and now every all of my solo albums are all blue, white,
and black, and you know, white's all colors, and black

(43:40):
is the absence of color, and so he's really is
only one color for each of these things, red or blue, yellow.
The third man, when did you decide to start the label?
That was sort of an accident. When our manager Ian
Montone had gotten us. We were getting like this bidding
war had started with the band, probably because we stupidly

(44:00):
didn't take the first offers that came to us, which
were really generous, and we probably should have just yes
right right away, sir, we're coming up with an album
right away, and we didn't. I thought, Ah, I kept thinking,
nobody's gonna like this band in the mainstream. Six months
from now, this will sign with these guys they'll put
out one record and they'll drop us next year, and
then we might have been right, Yeah, that that actually

(44:22):
might have been right. It might have been Yeah. So
that was my each either very smart or very ignorant
way of looking at at the time, which led to
a bidding warm and then at that point was sort
of we could almost ask for whatever we wanted at
that second, which it was very strange because I, well,
what do you want? I don't, I don't know. I knew.
I didn't want to owe anybody anything, so I didn't

(44:42):
take any big advances. I just say, well, I want
us to get paid for the records we sold. Yes,
so it's on up and up. I don't anybody in
favors or anything like that. I still feel that way today,
and it worked. It worked out, and Ian got us
our own label to sort of protect me and protect us.
You know this imprint label name of what are you

(45:03):
gonna call? I say, oh, well, third Man Records, and
that became we we licensed these people record from my label,
third Man Record. So that was Ian's idea at the
time as a protective insurance thing. How did Ian see you, guys, first?
How did Ian see this? We would talk to somebody
at sub Subpop named Craig Aaronson. I think he's no
longer with us. I think he started asking questions which

(45:26):
every label probably would or should you guys are thinking
about getting a bass player and stuff like that, and
we thought, see, here we go. You know, this is
what we've always heard. They're gonna they're gonna try to
change us into a regular band or something. And we
didn't get mad or anything. We just thought, maybe it's
not for us. And then we would sit there next
day and think, oh god, are we so spoiled that

(45:48):
we're gonna have an attitude about a really nice opportunity, Like,
so maybe we should get a bass player if it
means we get to make records and not have day
jobs anymore. I don't know. So he would go back
and do you like the sound that? Like, did you
already know the sound of the two person group that
you guys had what you were making felt special to you?

(46:10):
It definitely felt special and felt right. It felt good.
If someone comes in the room and says, well, we're
going to try to take this to the mainstream, yeah,
I would have said that's not going to work, right,
I know, I'm not going to pretend like I know
everything about music or the music business, but my vote
would be I wouldn't bet on that. And it still

(46:30):
shocks me that that connected with people. I mean, I
mean coming home and watching my nieces and nephews watching
our video of ours on MTV in the living room
and thinking this is not making any sense. It doesn't
add up. It's like it's almost like, let's we kind
of started justifying by saying, you know what, Maybe it's
like why The Simpsons is so good but it's also
really popular. Maybe it's like that, Like no, it couldn't

(46:54):
be you know or what you know what I mean,
Sometimes you just assume when you get into like especially
in the Hip Hisstory world that get into really amazing
deep records that nobody's ever heard of, you start assuming
good things are ignored and and things that aren't very
good are popular. You start getting into a rut, which
is not really true, but you get into that rut,
especially when you're younger. So it was confusing for us

(47:15):
because we thought, does this mean we're not any good?
If we're if we're getting well known, maybe that means
we're no good or what we thought was special is
not special? Also interesting that that not only would there
really no known two person rock bands in the world
at that time, Yeah, there weren't even that many three men,
you know, other than it was especially after Jimmy Hendrix.

(47:38):
Like Jimmy Hendrix, you'd think broke open the world and
cream Yeah, and then after that maybe the police that's maybe, yeah,
there's not very money. It's funny, it's bizarre. It should
be hundreds, you'd think, yeah, and that and then we
saw that was maybe what started to bring us around.
And then in the subsequent couple of years after all

(47:59):
White Blood Cells came out, there were several two piece
bands that could become signed to major labels and the
Kills and Fiery Furnaces or YadA, YadA, YadA all donline.
And we kept seeing that, Oh, I say, okay, so
this is now. I guess we prove we prove something
to somebody. We weren't trying to pay really, but it
maybe it's it's proved something to somebody that maybe this

(48:19):
is a path we could explore some more. It was
great because a lot of great music and do you
know if any of those bands existed before they heard
the White stripes. I'm I'm gonna bet they did. I
don't know what they all did, yeah, I mean, yeah,
but I'm gonna bet they did. Because there's there's something
interesting that happens when when there's a movement which you're

(48:40):
part of a movement, that it doesn't just happen one like,
it's not one leader and everybody follows. It's like the
time is right for this for some reason. Yeah, there's
other people in other bedrooms and garages doing similar stuff,
and and and now they have a chance to have
some attention paid to them and brought out, brought out
into the daylight. And if something new that comes out

(49:02):
that's novel, you will see maybe maybe people will rush
to find other things like it that are also legit,
and they might be, and then there definitely will be
a second wave of copycat. And sometimes that copycat second
wave is ten times more successful than the first wave. Often, yeah, often,
and sometimes you see a little bit of copycat happen,

(49:24):
and then that copycat morphed into something else. I mean,
when I first saw the Arctic Monkeys come on, I thought, wow,
that guy is moving around like at the guitar player
in the strokes, like he's walking around, he holding his
guitar high, the stratig like like Albert and the Strokes
as I, well, that's great. I mean they're those kids,
you know, they were like, I don't know what they were,
nineteen or something. I was like that, that's fine. And
then look that Arctic Monkeys morphed into their own thing,

(49:44):
you know, very quickly, and their lyrics were so unique
on their own. And there's nothing wrong to have that
folk process of being inspired and taking it, trying to
take it to another level and emulating people. You everyone
goes through that of like it's the if to start
somewhere to end up finding your own voice. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
any way in it's good. Yeah yeah, I think so

(50:06):
if you can get in at all. Yeah. Yeah. It
seems like if you're inspired to make music, you're inspired
to make it by someone. Yeah. And the first method
when you're a kid is well, I'm going to play
it like that, Like that seems obvious. That's the starting yeah,
and then it turns into whatever it's good to turn into.
If you were Dylan coming up and you liked rock

(50:29):
and roll in the fifties and the folk movement happened
and that inspired you, and he got it, seems to
get really engrossed in that and abandons the more rock
and roll side of him and embraces the folk side
of him and gets very into these deep older Blind
and Lemon Jefferson songs and all this kind of stuff,
and becomes the new king of folk and changes the world. Subsequently,
he doesn't lose that love of rock and roll. It's

(50:50):
still in there, and it does eventually come back around
a few years later. I don't think you could ever
suppress something like that. If that kid was inside of you.
That's the first taste of something. The first things I
really liked, the Deep Purples and led Zeppelin's are going
to be with me forever. Doesn't matter how whatever bizarre
punk band or strange thing I get into, that's still
gonna be down in there somewhere. And sometimes people will say, oh,

(51:13):
I can hear that. That sounds like a smoke on
the water or sounds like a you know, I was
like that. I don't doubt it, you know, I don't
doubt it. I don't run to try to copy that stuff,
but I don't run away from it either and try
to pretend that I don't like it or it's not
part of me. But I've never sat down and tried
to copy someone else's thing on purpose. I'm gonna do

(51:36):
that because that worked for them, So I'm going to
copy that and steal that. Yeah, I've never had that
devious mustache twiddling thought in my mind of that. I
was like, No, there's things I like, and I'll do
my own thing. I'll try to do my own thing.
And there's going to be moments where people say, oh,
that sounds like that, and it sounds like that. I'm like, Okay, well,
you can't live in a vacuum anyway. You're already playing
an instrument in singing with your own vocal cords. I

(51:57):
mean something, say you sound like something, So don't worry
about that. Let's just try to dive forward. What were
the blues things? He said at the beginning of the band,
you were really deeply into the blues. Yeah, what was
the blues at the time? That was really speaking Son
House and Robert Johnson and Holland Wolf and Charlie Patton.
I was just getting into Charlie Patton brief slightly into it,
but it was hard for me understand it. And uh,

(52:20):
but I felt like that was something that felt real,
It wasn't polished. And that's the same old story I
suppose people have always said about the blues when they
sort of discover it. But then you what's kind of
interesting about my time period of embracing that is I
got to instantly say, oh, okay, that's why I led
Zeppe and then the Yardbirds and then Yardbirds and Jeff

(52:40):
Beck and those guys were feeding off that record and
them with Van Morrison, they were listening to that blues record. Okay,
so these guys resold the blues back to America from England,
got it. And then Jimmy Hendrix comes over to England
from America black and also plays blues and sells that
back to America, and you just start making all that
all this compation's like, okay, great, Yeah, well, I guess
I'm in good company then, because I feel the exact

(53:02):
same way. Maybe thirty years has passed, but I feel
like I'm almost doing yeah exactly. I think maybe it was, yeah,
it was time for it to be reevaluated or rediscovered
in a way when you guys were first exploding. I'll say,
what were the other things that would have been on
the radio at the same time that you were on
the radio. Oh so, like sorry, what was like an

(53:24):
alternative radio? What would have been played before you and
after you? I remember now. I think it was the
like the Limb Biscuits and the New Metals, corn and things.
I think that's what's happening late late nineties, early two thousands.
I think that's what was going on. Well. I had
listened to alternative radio in the early nineties when I

(53:45):
was in high school. The Yeah so that was yeah,
Nirvana and Pearl Jam and all that stuff in Ragime's machine.
So I had all those records and listened to all
that stuff. I almost never mentioned that when I talk
like this either, which is it's kind of funny. I
mean that was actually a big part of my high
school was those bands, and I sat listening to those albums.
If you like music, you're going to yeah, you have
to do. If you're a kid, that would be the

(54:07):
rock music of the day when you're growing up. Exactly. Yeah,
it seemed like in nineteen ninety. If you said the
Beatles did something in nineteen sixtent that seemed like it
was fifty years ago. It was only twenty years. It's unbelievable.
That's like talking us for talking about now about the
records in two thousand and one. I know that seemed
like it was five years ago. I don't know why

(54:28):
time is so different seeming. I think as you get older,
time speeds up. Yeah, and when we're kids, if you know,
a year seems like an eternity. Yeah, and now the
years just fly by, right right, Yeah, they just fly by.
We have a visitor. We didn't know he was sitting down. Yeah,

(54:52):
what's going on? Man? Great? You look great. Soon let
me come back. We'll have more from Rick Rubin, Jack White,
and Neil Ya, plus a special rendition of Jack's new
song A Tip from You to Me. We're back with

(55:17):
the rest of Rick Rubin's conversation with Jack White and
their surprise visit for Neil Young at Shangra La. How
cool to see you here. Well, I heard you were here,
sit in the middle. Sitting in the middle. Rick told
me you were here, and we are cool. That's great.
You've been looking around there, haven't been here kind of

(55:41):
doing some stuff, you know. Excellent. How has it been
going here? It's great? Yeah? We finished, uh what we
took us three weeks something like that. I saw the
trailer for The Crazy Horse barn Ye that looks really cool. Yeah,
it's great. Daryl made a movie about it. It's fun,

(56:02):
just great. I mean shit, yeah, the youngest guy in
the band is seventy. Fantastic. Well, had a great times.
You know, I've been putting on an album, Recince. Everyone
keeps asking, you know, these these questions about like, well,
so you know where things going to be for you? You
You know when you're you know, sixty years old and

(56:22):
eighty years old. I just keep saying, like, it's really nice.
It's a nice position to be in to have. You know,
Bob and Neil and Tom Waits have already proven there's
these things that can happen and can continue because I remember,
you know, when I was twelve and the Rolling Stones
were forty and everyone's like, oh my god, yeah, and

(56:47):
it's it's so nice that you guys are able to
sort of prove that to what do you think, Rick,
what's your opinion about like hip hop guys when when
they're eighty, you know, you never know what you people
like hearing the songs, you know exactly you're doing something. Yeah,
you know, if they got to spirit something exactly. Yeah.
You know, what else can we do with it? Right

(57:07):
down to it? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, there's really nothing. Everything
else fun little relief here and there, But the real
deal is to make the music, and you know, whether
you know however, you make it. Absolutely. We had a
good time. We were in here, had a great time
for three weeks. Oh that's great, man, that's great. Yeah,
I feel good about it. Did you play acoustic electric both?

(57:28):
Or was like I played a little electric? I played
electric on one on two songs, oh great? And everything
else I played unheard of combinations of instruments. Oh great. Yes,
you know has become a kind of a funk pipe
pump organ, Oh yeah, pump pump organ, yes, yes, or
pump funk. That's what they'll be doing, pump funk. And

(57:55):
combine that with a marine band, you know, through an
octave divider into a roll bollox. Oh, and combine that
with a pump pump funk thing happened? What's cool? We
can play stuff this year here if you'd like to
hear it, I'd love Yeah, you're then won't we capture
you like that? You know you got you got a
commitment to Yeah, yeah, it's up to you. It's up

(58:19):
to you. But if you want to hear it, you
can hear. Yeah. It's fresh. It was a fun experience
and and different than certainly for me, different than any
than any that I've ever been involved in. Nice. Nice. Yeah.
And it's a good vibe here too. Yeah, it's great.
Just started off with I was taking a walk in
the woods up in Colorado, you know, wintertime, and I

(58:43):
was walking along whistling and I heard this. I said,
that's the same song I was whistling yesterday. I don't
know what it is, you know, So I've got out
my flip phone and recorded it. Yeah. Once I've done that,
the next day I walked out whistling a whole new song.
Oh my god. And I did it like day after
day after day. So I had like ten different validies

(59:05):
with no instruments. Just yeah, that's great, so cool, don't
see the trees and singing into this old you know whatever,
what was black thing? Yeah, And and then I put
it on my computer and I category I listened to
them all and said, well, that's that melody, this is
that melody, this is that day and everybody. Because I

(59:25):
didn't organize it, yeah, So I got it in there,
and then I put them all and I listened to him.
I said, ship might be something here, Yeah, you're all
here the melodies. Where did this ship come from? I'm
telling you, man, that's antenna's. It's like antennas and and
and if you're lucky to have a little, tight, little
silver antenna for a minute in your life, to just

(59:47):
pick up a frequent magic, you know, all we have
to do is be there. Yeah. Yeah, you can't ever
ignore it for a second. Yeah, you're there. That's your boss.
That's true. And it goes fast. Yes, if you don't
catch it, it's gone. And it's gone. Yeah. There's you know,
so many times where you woke up in the middle

(01:00:08):
of the night and and played something and I'll remember,
go back and safe, I'll remember that and never happens. Oh,
you gotta jot, you do something, you know, some kind
of sound. Yes, So I did that and I wrote
I had this combination and stuff, and I was listening
to it on the computer and it was like not
this last moon, but the moon before that. Right on

(01:00:29):
the moon, I wrote eight songs in two days. Oh great, crazy,
And it was cool. And I ended up looking at
them on the computer, which I after I spell corrected everything,
which is a mass. Yeah, I did it and then
and I haven't changed a fucking word, great punctuation mark
or greg like direct shot. It just came. That's a

(01:00:53):
good sign already. Yeah, without hearing any of it, that's
a good sign. Yeah. I was gonna send you this
track the other day. I just got the mixed one recently.
This song I thought my maybe you would like it's
going to be on this record I'm putting out. Can
I play you a an urder? Yeah? Ask yourself if
you are happy and then you cease to be. That's

(01:01:18):
a tip from you to me. And it's worked for sure.
I don't ask myself for nothing anymore. My piece is
freedom from the masses, because the masses cannot see. That's

(01:01:44):
a tip from them to me. And now I know
for sure I don't need nobody's help now anymore. Oh

(01:02:07):
will I be alone on the night? Oh? I don't know. Oh, well,
lovely me alone tonight? Oh, I don't know. Everywhere he

(01:02:32):
goes someone seems to know the truth about the things
he used to do. And that's hard for you. It's
so hard to be the one who knows it's true.

(01:02:56):
Walking through the park, my fingers clenchingside. Then I noticed
that I'm all alone tonight, and it's hard to tell
for sure if I even need to think now anymore?

(01:03:25):
Oh will I be alone to night? Oh? I don't know. Oh,
we'll love let me alone to night. Oh, I don't know. Cool.

(01:03:49):
How'd you write it? Thanice? How did it? How did
it come to pass? This was um uh as a
quote so often um John Stuart mill I said, ask
yourself if you're happy, and then you cease to be.
Side just said said that, you know, ask yourself if
you are happy, and then you'll cease to be, you know,

(01:04:09):
just staying there and then I just ask yourself if
you are happy, and then you will cease to be.
That's when those moments come where you're like, oh, thanks
that happened, Thank you, thank God that happened, and now
you can the rest is easier, like school, great man
in mind with me some of your things in the

(01:04:30):
past too. So I thought I was gonna send that
to you. I'll send to you and get home. You're
gonna get back. I love you, know, I love of yours. Um.
Besides the record we just did in the boosts. Yeah,
there was a mess and that was the best. That
was the best. Fund oh man. Yeah, and uh in
Jack's booth where you you know, you go and being

(01:04:51):
a fair or something, you put ten cents in or
something and in a record or whatever and record a record.
Yeah for your girlfriends. Yeah yeah, whatever you Yeah, it's
direct to Vinyl, direct to vinyl in the boostyla you
can mail it to them. It's funny. We had somebody
in the Third Man shop a few weeks back and

(01:05:12):
they were saying, and we were showing them the booth.
You're like, yeah, so you can record a record in
this booth, and goes, oh wow, that's cool. You know
what now to think of it? I saw Neil Young
messing around with one of these on TV one. This
is the booth. Yeah funny, Yeah, it was great. Oh
but what I was gonna say was is that the

(01:05:32):
track you did the Oh Susanna, the version of Oh
Susannah you did? I love that man. It really was something.
It's got a whole vibe, ton't you. Oginally was the Thorns?
Oh really? No Rose okay, yeah, tim Rose. Yeah, so
the group that he was from. It was called the Thorns. Okay,

(01:05:55):
it was just part of the Thorns, okay, and the
Thorns just folk rock things. So they took classics like
that and they did that arrangement. I heard that and
I was wow, I check that out now. Yeah, yeah,
the Thorns check them out a lot, you know, and
then idea, come are on the mountain when she comes
actually yeah, yeah, it's a great idea. Yeah. Yeah. There

(01:06:22):
was those wild moments in those sixties of folk bands
of the Fairport conventions and the you know, all the
different ones that were trying to like final little zone
um to uh. But sometimes they were doing this novelty
like old uh you know, John Brown would hit the
hammer and the blah blah blah and then whatever hammer

(01:06:43):
in the morning and all that stuff and working into
like a rock pop song or whatever. But then there's
novelty of songs, and then there's ones that actually cracked
through that while they actually stumbled out on something amazing. Right,
they're like synthesizing two different genres that must have been wild,
like when you because you you were there with that
with Buffalo Springfield and those early moments of people embracing

(01:07:07):
country and rock and roll and blending them together. Yeh.
Was it clear that the folk revival was a revival
at the time. No, it was just folk music. It
was just folk revival because folk music never really goes anywhere.
It is. It's not here and then gone and back.
It's just always here. Just depends on if you want

(01:07:27):
to go there. Everybody kind of went there. And then
the rock saying was happening. Folk and rock, and it
was at a happening time. You could do a lot
of stuff. It was cool, cool, be able to you know,
I would go and play a little club. And then
I read about how it was cliche ridden. Yeah, didn't

(01:07:53):
know about his band that he was in with the
Rick James for a minute. Incredible, incredible, amazing an apartment
and h on the street just off the Young Street
in Toronto. Amazing character. We had a great time. That's
what I'm referring to earlier. That's those are those moments

(01:08:15):
where like people are trying to put something together that
maybe has like a whole false, fake idea or shitty
producer behind it, or some guys like a money guy
or something, but there's these amazing moments that that could
have turned into the greatest band of all time? Who
knows who knows right? And we you know, we tried
what we could. We got busted for Jett was a

(01:08:37):
draft and uh then our manager odeed. He was on
harow and he odeed. So what happened next? How how
long was that period after that finished where we were like,
didn't know what to do next? Months or so were springfield?
You know, we thought Bruce Palmer and I from the
Minor Birds went to went south, still going south. Minor

(01:09:02):
Birds flew south? Yeah? Shit, should we play? Oh man?
But yeah, let's play. Are you up for an entire experience?
Of course, let's play? You man? Wow? For real? For real? Congrats?

(01:09:24):
Great great songs and great tones. And the vibe is great,
and it's it's different. It's like it sounds it sounds
obviously like him. But yeah, the songs are different. Yeah,
but I think it's just the way they were written. Yeah.
It has that, um, it has a feeling like you
had a melody like you're talking about. If you hadn't
said that, I would say maybe you had melodies first

(01:09:44):
and then added added later to So it makes sense.
What a trip. It must be nice to have a
band of guys like that. You just keep coming around
so much. Yeah, you know, they're they're lucky. That's really
great time. I know, I know, I don't know if
I caught myself very lucky. It's crazy yours awesome, you know,
Ralph and Melody and Nails, it's great, awesome. They really

(01:10:09):
he can't help but sound like themselves, you know, like
it's it's completely their trip. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're great.
They are great. It's amazing stuff. What is that echo
on the guitar? Is it also every once in a
while analog MXR analog delay? Yeah? Mostly the echo plax

(01:10:34):
I got four different settings for it. How much echo?
The sliding bar? It's a quick thing. Oh wait wait yeah,
it's the it's the volume of the effects that I
have four levels on. It's just a lot of how
much how love goes? Yeah? Yeah, I have a lot
of fun with that. Ye yeah, oh baby nice? How

(01:10:58):
long is that last track? That's a that's a that's
the album closer yea or something like that, something like that. Yeah,
you guys continue on cool vibe? No, no, yeah, I
think so. Yeah, it's really nice. It's um, it's it's
just I'm just devastated. Like how how clean and clear
his voice is yea, and how you know at times

(01:11:22):
I wish, I mean, I feel like I can't get
as clean as I was when I was in my
twenties at times, and trying to. I had that. I
worked with Tom Jones on one Little forty five once
and he had gave me that same vibe, which is, like, man,
it's almost like there's like a water farcet in the
back of your throat cleaning off these vote. Jones's voice
is unbelievable, creamy, it's easy. Yeah, people take it for granted.

(01:11:46):
I think it's it's it's it's pretty impressive, especially in person. Absolutely,
that's how he sounds like he's twenty five years old there. Yeah,
I'm vocally on that, you know, so clean, and I've
been trying to get into that lately more often too,
like finding some songs where I can hold notes longer
and exemplify them more. I always feel like I'm not

(01:12:07):
a singer like just a vote yeah, yeah, okay, yeah,
just go go yeah, because it's got to be a
new area, right right, Who knows what's at the other
end of the note, right right right? You could definitely
go there. There's also something cool about when you're pushing

(01:12:29):
the boundaries of your ability that sounds really interesting, like
when you can, like when you're sing something that you
can't really sing, you can you yeah, and you don't
really make it, but there's a there's a honesty in that. Yeah,
that just feels I think that's why I like the band.
The bands back background vocals. They seem like you always

(01:12:50):
be reaching for notes that they can't really hit, and
it's yeah, it's great. It's just great the attempt. You
can hear the attempt and you and you and you
give it a grace. You you allow it. You know,
you don't really need it to actually succeed successfully hit
that note, and maybe they go past it, like Neil said,
but the yeah, there's a beauty to it, right. And
if we listen, you know, to the old records that

(01:13:10):
we love, there's a lot of stuff that's out of
tune and at a time, all the time, oh god,
all the time. Yes. Well, my favorite Neil vocal is
you know tonight's tonight, that that tone and then you
know he's tired to be asking you know what Mike
and he used and what was going on when when
we're working before together and it's you know, whatever circumstances

(01:13:31):
around that, the recording in the room, whatever, there's there's
there's mistakes, there's feedback, there's all that. Who cares, nobody cares. Yeah,
the feelings in there and since, well, it's great to
see you Jack, I take off so great to see
you too. Great surprise, great woke up this morning. I
didn't think I'm gonna be seeing you. How good is
this great? Good walk man? Thank you see you late

(01:13:54):
us there have fun I've probably see him in a
couple of days. Yeah, yeah, see was he good man?
Sounding good? Thank you all right? I mean that was
a nice street. Yeah, those are the It's something funny.

(01:14:15):
There's something funny about like I think people said, you know,
when you're uh, like when you can afford it, all
of a sudden they start giving your free jeans and
stuff like that, when when you you know, they didn't
give it to you when you couldn't afford it. That's
when you needed the free jeans. It's something funny about that.
Like when you get into like um to make it short,
like show business or something, you know, anything, I's gonna

(01:14:39):
see you or Neel today, I woke up, Yeah, and
here you are. And the other day I was in
Vegas and next door to my room, Bill Burrow, the comedian,
is next door. If I was just a regular jish,
I was still doing a pholster. Bill Burro wouldn't be
next to me in the hotel room. You know what
I mean? Something about you manifest to the universe and
somehow it just kind of makes out. You bump into

(01:14:59):
somebody out of a crowd of fifty thousand people, you
bump into the one person you were supposed to bump into,
and you're like, how could that happen? So cool, it's amazing.
It's like the thing to really hold on to, like
to stay positive about it, you know, because I also
think that we've manifest our fears. You know, we put
out what we're afraid of, and they happen. We make
them happen because we stress on them so much. Our

(01:15:22):
thoughts really have tremendous power. Yeah, it was great, man.
I'm glad you guys played that for me. That's that's
a nice treat. Yeah. Tell me about how you're approach
to making music from the beginning to now. How has
it changed over the course of your life. Some of
the stuff is, Um, I'm still making it as hard
on myself as possible as I've always done, you know,

(01:15:44):
trying to not take the easy way out, and you know,
sitting in there, when I start feeling like it's going well,
either I'll either consciously or subconsciously, I'll throw a monkey
wrench in the works and make it more difficult. I'm
playing a bass part. Oh I've never played fretless bass.
Let's try that. That'll that'll be harder, and it is harder,

(01:16:04):
and then you know, you try it, and then now
I'm in a place now I'm if it's good, I
can be proud of it because I know that it
was a more difficult challenge than it was to take
the easier way out. So I still do that all
the time. And some stuff you realize, like these records
I just made recently, and that you get in there like,

(01:16:25):
oh wow, okay, I knew how to get that kickdrum sound,
and we did it, and I bought that microphone and
I owned the studio and we made it. And then
I bought the studio and bought that microphone so I
could make that sound. Yeah, and there I did it. Wow,
I actually did it. That whole thing worked. Yeah, And
it's because I learned that mic works, and when nineteen
ninety eight, and then in twenty twelve, I learned that

(01:16:46):
compressor work. And thankfully those things you can hold onto
those and you remember them, and they actually can work
on a functional level. Like a carpenter would say, yeah,
that's the right saw chop, sawtware, the two by four
table sawtware, the applywood whatever, these perfunctory things, and that
applies to yeah, compression and EQ and these kind of things.
Stuff I could care less about. In the nineties and

(01:17:08):
early I didn't care about any I don't want to
know the name of that microphone. I don't even want
I like the shape of it, don't even tell me
the name. I used to be very much about that,
but luckily over time I've held on it those and
they actually do work. So if you're okay, that's good.
At least, at least if the songs are is there
a moment where there's no songs there, or I'm trying
and there's nothing's coming out, at least I have some

(01:17:29):
sort of workman like hardware store, workman like things that
I can accomplish to put to set the table anything
different more philosophically or conceptually. That's different than when you
were young. Philosophically, um, well, the sad part of the
one sad negative thing I don't like about sort of

(01:17:50):
having writing songs when you're more well known to people
rather than when you're just by yourself in an attic
or garage is that I at times will give up
on a line or a title because I don't want
to have to talk about it. I don't want to
have to answer questions about it. I don't want to
have it. Oh they're gonna assume I'm talking about myself,
or they're gonna assume I'm talking about my girlfriend or

(01:18:11):
my ex wife or something like that. And it's like,
even though I'm not writing like that, they might think that, well,
it's not even worth it. Just scratch it off and
write something else. And that's a shame because I shouldn't
do that and I shouldn't have to do that. But
it's just picking your battles. So that's different from when
I was younger. That's interesting since it's a shame. Yeah,

(01:18:33):
we're gonna will right now. We have this opportunity. I
am going to give you permission going forward that anything
that you write that you like, you can say it
without ever worrying about having to talk about it. Than
you give you that permission. Thank you. Yeah, and you
can do it. Problem solved exactly. It's amazing because it

(01:18:58):
really is. It's like these things, these boundaries we put
up for ourselves, they really aren't mindsets, you know. Yeah,
society goes through different phases too. There's things people are
sensitive about right now that they were not sensitive about
ten years ago, and things five years from now that
we don't know are going to happen. And as we
all know, but you if you're lucky enough to be

(01:19:19):
sharing with enough people that it's a topic of possible
conversation to interpret the new Neo Young Record and how
it relates to Earth and how what way he might
be saying, what message he's trying to say. If you're
lucky enough that people find irrelevance in what you're doing,
part of you owes it to to to be able
to stand behind what you're trying to put out in

(01:19:42):
the world. And you know, I was never I've never
been a big fan of people who are like, yeah,
I don't know what that means. Whatever, Yeah, I don't care.
That's a little too easy, like for me not I'm
not saying that good art doesn't come from writing abstract things.
You know, do you know what it means? I always hope,
I always have hopes. I think, I think I can
see where I was thinking of this character and what

(01:20:04):
I was attempting to him to try to figure out
or him or her. And then I have hopes that
this word can be taken three different ways, and I
hope maybe people will take multiple paths with it, and
multiple different people take different paths with it. Never been
excited about. This is what it means, and this is
what I want you to think it means. And that's
why I'm not the biggest fan of like sort of

(01:20:25):
a lot of modern singer songwriters. This is about me
and my boyfriend breaking up, or me and my girlfriend
breaking up, and I want you to know about it.
And when you sing it, think of me breaking up
with my boyfriend. I mean, why would I want to
put you through that? You know, well, why should you
relive my thing? It's better for me. It's better to

(01:20:46):
find some kind of neutral zone where these are characters
that people can multiple people can get multiple ideas from
rather than one thing edged in stone? Were lyrics important
too from the beginning, Yes, yeah, even as a fan
before you, before you made music, the lyrics as well
as the music always from the beginning, Yes, And you know,

(01:21:06):
I remember even being a young kid and getting you know,
sometimes you would be um hopeful that something had deeper
meaning and thoughts they grew up thinking all that that
has such a deeper meaning and then finding out an
article later like oh no, that was just a little
Richard song we copied or something like that, and you're like, oh, well, okay,
I still got some meaning on of it. And maybe

(01:21:26):
that's kind of what I'm just saying right now, like
your your hope is that people will get deeper meaning
on their own if they can, you know, if it
succeeds in some way, I feel like there's there's a
and tell me this is right. There's always a traditional
theme running through your work where it's like feels like
it always has historical roots. Is that would you say that?

(01:21:48):
That's first of all, is it accurate from your perspective?
And if so, is it on purpose or is it
just by loving so much music over the course of
your life. Then it happens that way. It's like it's
a that's a compliment, you know, that you just gave
me in It's a compliment, even if it wasn't true.
I think it's a compliment to feel that way. That's
how I hear it. I hear it as there's always them.

(01:22:09):
It's it's got roots and I love roots music where
it comes from. Well there there's an interesting thing about that.
I mean, a lot of the you know, coming up
in different rock and rolls, and you talk to other
contemporaries and stuff they're working on, and a lot of
them artists and writers and guitar players and drummers and stuff.

(01:22:30):
They don't have much depth in their history or love
of music or anything, and so what who cares? And
then there's people that do. And then there's guys who
are like, you know, super nerdy and obscure and way
go way too deep, you know, And I have lost
the beauty of music because through the minutia of it,
you know, I've always try to keep you know, one

(01:22:53):
foot in and out of that world if I can.
I like to know a little bit about amplifiers, but
not how to fix them. I like to know a
little bit about this genre of music, but not enough
where it swallows me up and I become obsessed with
only that. And so it gets me the ability to
do this and that, even engineering and production and stuff.
I try not to really get two hands on because

(01:23:14):
I know how I am. I could get in there
and become a knob jockey guy who all he does
is worry about the levels of compression and stuff, rather
than keeping half of my brain in the world being
able to create in songs and write and perform them
and all that stuff. And it's been a pretty good balance.
I've I've kept a pretty good balance over the years
of trying not to get too involved in one aspect

(01:23:37):
of it. I get jealous at times where you see
being like, oh, wow, he's just a guitar player. That
would be nice, or that's just a producer, or just
a singer, even though word just a sounds like it's
an insult, but it's not. To me. It's like I'm
jealous of it because it's like, Wow, it'd be great.
You could just concentrate on that one thing. You could
get really really good at that. Yeah, you know, if
that's your Yeah, if you did one thing. But um,

(01:23:58):
at the end of the day, I'm lucky that my
brain wants to be active in these different spots and
so I'm happy about it, feel good about it. When
did you buy the pressing plant or the Yeah, I
started building that in length I think twenty fifteen and
then I think it opened in twenty and sixteen. And
it's uh, it's wild, it's great. And there was times

(01:24:19):
where I've been like, ah, I shouldn't have done that.
There's a lot of work and a lot of like
boring economic and you know, making widgets at a factory
work and having lots of employees and insurance and all
those things that are not that interesting. To tell me
about the space. The space and you have how many
machines do you have? Um, yeah, I don't know the
square footage, but it's pretty giant. It used to be

(01:24:41):
like a parking structure. It used to be where they
they made Willie's Jeeps. It was Willie's Jeeps kind of
a little assembly place. And we have eight manual machines
and I think now coming up on six automatic presses,
and we can do about between five and eight thousand
records a day, which is great, Yeah, incredible. And the

(01:25:04):
weight period now is you know, eight to ten months
for vinyl in the vinyl industry. Yeah, so you know,
third Man had a lot to do with this vinal resurgence,
making this come to this fruition like this, and right
now we're in the mode of, you know, sort of
this year has been this last couple of years are
like the Taylor Swifts and Paul McCartney's, you know, putting
out multiple variants of a record and it's just amazing

(01:25:27):
because it's it's just great. It's it's turning on and
yet another generation of kids and teenagers onto this physical format.
Are the machines old machines? Um No, they're all brand
new and they still they're still being made. When we
opened the plant, there were no companies making new vinyl presses.
And the first year we opened and started and we
were about to start, a couple of companies started up

(01:25:50):
around the world, in Europe and in Canada, and now
there are several Now there's five, I think making presses.
We're all of the old machines. Do they get scrapped?
That was the problem, Like we were about to open
a plant and then then the only way you can
put presses in was to buy old presses from somebody else,
and they're hard to come buy, like hounds teeth, like

(01:26:11):
I need a Usually other giant plants would buy them
up if they came available, because you know you're not
going to see it again. Yeah, so was it similar
to like buying an old mixing desk? Not as peaceful
as the mixing desk where you could actually find a
few guys to really know how to fix it. It's
such a small group of people that know how to
work on them. But you know, there's machinists who can

(01:26:32):
work on any kind of machine and stuff. There's those guys.
But there was a time when there were many, many
of these machines. Oh my god, yes, yeah, so what
happened to those? Great question? I think they were junked.
You know, it's so wild because you can never get
a good square answer about this stuff. I was talking
to Martin Scorsese recently about the Technicolor machines. Yeah, well,

(01:26:53):
what happened all those Technicolor machines and heats? Said that
they got sold to China and they weren't being used
anymore anywhere else, but they were still being used in
the film industry in China, so a lot of them
went there, but I think a lot of them just
get junked. We had talked with Martin mill who runs
Beggar's Banquet label in Europe, and he uh was telling
me it's interesting thing because we're saying, yeah, we have

(01:27:15):
to wait, you know, eight months now if we want
to even at my own plants, I gotta get in line,
which is crazy. And he said, yeah, Well, what we'd
have in Britain is, you know, we put out a
single and by Tuesday we would get that chart number
and if it was in the top twenty. If you
had a song in the top twenty like he had
with Gary Newman and cars and our friends electric and stuff,

(01:27:36):
then you could get on top of the pomps. But
that meant you had to have you They would call
in an order of twenty five thousand and seven inches
that had to be in the stores by Friday morning
for the weekend sales. So in two days time they
could press twenty five thousand records and have them in
stores with record sleeves. Unimaginable at this moment in time,

(01:27:56):
even if there was not a humongous demand that would
be very hard to pull off. But they had so
many presses and so many plants back then, and are like,
it's the vinyl usually available. The pellets, is what it is?
I know nothing about it. Tell me it's PBC plastic,
the same as in a PBC pipe. Wow. So yeah,
so easy to get the materials. It's just the machines,

(01:28:17):
just the machines and the manpower and knowledge to run
those machines efficiently. You know, you could turn to a
press on and have some guy who knows what he's
doing pressing, and that press could break down in six hours.
You know something's going wrong. You're using steam and pressure
and who knows, there's a bunch of moving parts that
can go wrong. Machine it's about the size of a refrigerator,

(01:28:39):
the manual refrigerator laying down, standing up, standing up. Yes,
it's an upright machine. Yes. And then they automated are
sort of like a giant like car, sized almost wide
and tall because they have spaces where the when when
the records down pressing, it goes and rests in a yeah,
you know, so knowing about supplying demand, we see there's

(01:29:01):
tremendous demand to have these things made yeah, yeah, why
have not all the companies who are making all these things,
why have they not retooled? And I think it comes
down to probably people might guess will be people who
are on the boards of those major labels, which I've
been pleading to them to be rebuild their pressing plants. Again,
I think they really need to do it. It's in

(01:29:22):
their best interest. I think they will make a lot
of money doing it and help. There are artists in
lots of big ways, But I think what it is
it's a little bit in their mind. Like if you
were in a board meeting and you want to be
the guy to champion this idea we should build a
pressing plant, you're taking a big risk of being on
a losing team that year if it doesn't work out,
and you will lose your job. So I think that's
what that's probably the number one problem with corporations is

(01:29:44):
people don't want to be on a losing team and
get their evaluation at the end of the year showing
you were on team loser and you're gone. So a
lot of risks don't get taken luckily, like in a
place like third Man, where it's sort of like a
sole proprietorship. Yes, we do nothing but take risks all
day long. Everything we do is a bad business move,
and in the end of the day, somehow it all
makes sense and we pay the bills with it somehow

(01:30:06):
based on that bad business move and based on working now,
is there no feeling that you can expand drastically and
open up pressing plants all over the country and you
do what they're not doing. I'm in a debate about that.
I mean, right now, at the pace that we're at,
with twelve presses that I have, I'm looking at right

(01:30:28):
now probably another eight years before I get all my
money back that I put into this place. So every
time you get a dollar, you kind of want to
put that dollar back into the plant and buy another press.
But then it just keeps extending this time period of
actually breaking even which I guess who cares on one
side of my brand, who cares another side? Kind of

(01:30:48):
feels negative. But I think what a lot of people
do is not what I'm doing, where I use my
own money to fund all this stuff. They would really
just get a lot of other investors and I would
just own ten percent of the company or something, and
they would all get the profits or something like that.
But I don't think it's not that kind of a
profitable business, you know, where we're selling pizza or T
shirts or something, whereas it easy to sell to some. Yeah,

(01:31:09):
this is something that you're an advocate for. It's different.
It's like it's got it's not it's not the beauty
is it's not pizza, you know what I'm saying. It's
like it's pretty. It's an interesting possibility. Yeah. Interesting. I
mean I would and I would like it, and I've
I've thought about other things about maybe there's a secondary
thing where I I do that with investors and build

(01:31:31):
those plants under and a different company or a different
wing of third managements. My first hope would be right now,
the people who have a billion dollars where it's just
nothing to them to build a plant. I mean, they
should just do it. So, but who knows, we'll see
super cool nice. Yeah, it's super cool. I'm so glad
to did it. Well. It was great man, Rick, thanks
for talking my pleasure. Thank you for doing this. This

(01:31:52):
is great. Thanks to Jack White for coming to Schangulad
to hang with Rick, and to Neil Young for stopping
by as well. You can hear Jack White's latest album,
Entering Heaven Alive, along with all of our favorite songs
from him, The White Stripes, and a sampling of his
many side projects at broken Record podcast dot com. Also

(01:32:13):
be on the lookout for details on Neil Young's new
album with Crazyhorse, produced by Rick Rubin very soon. Be
sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot
com slash Broken Record Podcast, where we can find all
of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter
at broken Record. Broken Record is produced help from Lea Rose,
Jason Gambrel, Ventaliday, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering

(01:32:36):
help from Nick Chaffin. Our executive producer is Mia Lobell.
Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you
like this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to
Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers
bonus content and uninterrupted ad free listening for four ninety
nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions,

(01:32:59):
and if you like the show, please remember to share, rate,
and review us on your podcast app Our theme musics
by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond,

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