Gavin Rossdale | Club Random with Bill Maher

Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale drops by Club Random to chat with Bill Maher about his new album “I Beat Loneliness,” the craft of songwriting, touring life, dad duties, aging like a rock star, mental health, religion, AI paranoia - and yes, a little life advice from David Bowie himself. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you're listening or by using this link: ⁠https://bit.ly/ClubRandom⁠ Watch Club Random on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/ClubRandomYouTube Follow Club Random on IG: @ClubRandomPodcast Follow Bill on IG: @BillMaherWe have Merch! Get it here: https://www.clubrandom.com For AD free extended episodes go to https://billmaher.substack.com Please support our sponsors: Try ZipRecruiter for free at https://www.ziprecruiter.com/random Take advantage of Ridge’s once-a-year Father’s Day Sale and get UP TO 40% Off right now by going to https://www.ridge.com/random #Ridgepod #ad Get 15% off OneSkin with the code RANDOM at https://www.oneskin.co/ #oneskinpod #ad Go to ⁠https://www.ffrf.us/freedom⁠ or text "CLUB" to 511511 and become a member today Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  At Humana, our Medicare Advantage plans are easy to understand and easy on your wallet. Like offering more benefits than you'd get from original Medicare alone. And including dental, vision, and hearing coverage in every plan. And the best part is, every plan has a $0 or low monthly plan premium, which makes it easier to save, too. So this Medicare planning season, plan well with Humana. Learn more at gethumana.com. Humana is a Medicare Advantage, HMO and PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 0:31Bill Maher?

  So the dinner ended when Madonna decided the dinner ended.

• 0:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 0:36Bill Maher?

  Because that's what I would get.

• 0:41Bill Maher?

  Musical quiz question. What?

• 0:44Speaker 02

  Sex Pistols.

• 0:51Bill Maher?

  Is there a guest?

• 0:52Speaker 02

  There is. I'm here.

• 0:54Bill Maher?

  In the room?

• 0:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 0:56Bill Maher?

  Hey, how are you? Pleasure to meet you after all these years.

• 1:00Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 1:01Bill Maher?

  I've seen you around. I've seen you in the clubs, as they say. You still go to clubs, Kevin?

• 1:08Speaker 02

  No, not much.

• 1:09Bill Maher?

  What was the last year?

• 1:10Speaker 02

  I was saying, this is really fun.

• 1:12Bill Maher?

  Oh, this is a great club, yeah.

• 1:13Speaker 02

  I hope I didn't screw, I don't want to screw it up to the point where, because I want to come back when it's full of people. I was like this.

• 1:18Bill Maher?

  I would love to have you, yes. I mean, this was the party house for years before we made it the podcast house. I really want to get it back to that because I'm here so much doing this that I kind of forget about it that way. You're right. All right, I'll throw a party for you. You live around here?

• 1:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I live down the road. And what's weird is that actually I heard this was Ben Affleck's game room.

• 1:39Bill Maher?

  Yes, it was.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  And I like your use of it better.

• 1:43Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 1:43Speaker 02

  I like your use of it better.

• 1:44Bill Maher?

  First of all, it was full of, he was never here, you know, movie stars. They always say they're either on location or on vacation. So that's why he was, it was like a bachelor pad thing for him. And this room, everyone told me to tear it down because it was full of termites and mold. It was just hard. This room was full of like video games, all on. All that electricity.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  You see, cause weird is that I lived in a house up the road.

• 2:14Bill Maher?

  Oh, really?

• 2:14Speaker 02

  That Ben and J Lo had lived at.

• 2:17Bill Maher?

  Oh, wow. They have a lot of houses.

• 2:20Speaker 02

  And so what was the funny part was when I moved in and they had, you know, there's all the big phones, all the different labels on the names for the rooms, all that.

• 2:30Bill Maher?

  The what?

• 2:31Speaker 02

  You know, you have a phone and next to the phone, there's all the different buttons for the rooms, master bed, guest bed, blah, blah.

• 2:36Bill Maher?

  Fancy people. I don't have that.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  Well, but the best part was it had that and it had Ben. And then we flipped to get off and Mark,

• 2:45Speaker 02

  Mark Antony, when he was there.

• 2:49Bill Maher?

  Are you serious?

• 2:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:50Bill Maher?

  How do you know that?

• 2:51Speaker 02

  Cause it would have been my house. So I saw it and I was like, this is.

• 2:55Bill Maher?

  Wow. That's like having his and her towels and marrying somebody else. You know, we have the same initials on the towel. I always thought a funny movie would be, I mean, this is when I used to do more drugs than I do now, although I do some now.

• 3:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:13Bill Maher?

  Here's the premise. A girl gets a tattoo. She's like, you know, seventeen or in love with some guy named Tony, right? So she gets a tattoo right above her pussy that says Tony's little baby. And then she breaks up with Tony, cause you know, she, it always happens. And now she goes to, so I gotta get this lasered off. And they say, you have a rare skin, you cannot laser this off. And then the rest of the movie, she has to fall in love with a guy named Tony. She has to find a guy named Tony and have him not see her pussy until she meets him. Now, how do you, how would you end that movie? You're an actor too.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  Well, Wyman, yeah, I would make it Johnny Depp, having Winona, and then he changed it to Wyman when they broke up.

• 4:01Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:03Bill Maher?

  No, that would ruin the movie.

• 4:05Speaker 02

  That would ruin the movie. Well, I would, I would, I would, I would, I'd find two of them. So there has to be some sort of cliffhanger and a sequel, because everything is about sequels. Nothing works unless you can do it seven times, right?

• 4:20Bill Maher?

  I mean, you could, if you really wanted to take this premise seriously, and why would you? But you could make the case that, you know, love is kind of arbitrary. It's like when people think, oh, I found the one true person. Oh, shut the fuck up. Like, everybody, not everybody, but lots of people, get divorced, you've been divorced, okay. It's like, and then they, or horribly, sometimes somebody dies. Life goes on. We need to live in the present. And so we find some other one true person in the world, you know what I mean? And so, like, could you actually find just among the Tonys? I think you could.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's definitely more than two.

• 5:01Bill Maher?

  But you'd need AI to single them out.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  I mean, I think another way of looking at it is that also people have a hard time accepting that some people or some relationships have a time.

• 5:10Bill Maher?

  Correct.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  And they get so upset when they think that they're, you know, so that's what.

• 5:16Bill Maher?

  Because we ourselves go through passages in life.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:20Bill Maher?

  So your 20 self, it's not really your 40 self. Now, sometimes the person you're married to, like two dragonflies who fly in tandem.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Like a miracle, yeah.

• 5:32Bill Maher?

  You think that's a miracle?

• 5:35Speaker 02

  It's fucking odd.

• 5:36Bill Maher?

  I would say it's somewhat more of a rarity than the opposite.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:42Bill Maher?

  Even though people do stay together. But being miserable and together doesn't count to me.

• 5:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a drag. That's a drag.

• 5:50Bill Maher?

  You know.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  How's the, what's the longest you've been in a relationship?

• 5:53Bill Maher?

  What's today? I was in a relationship for five years when I was 20, 32 to 37, like, right at the time you should get married.

• 6:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:09Bill Maher?

  But I just wasn't ready, you know? And, you know, with someone who would have been a perfect wife, there was like nothing wrong with her. Like, really, I know people say that, but that's true.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:26Bill Maher?

  And much, much later in life, I somehow found someone very, in the same way I say, I don't, I don't see any prob, you know, I always say to her, I have no notes.

• 6:37Bill Maher?

  I have no notes, you know. If I had, I would give them to you. But your performance is perfect. It's been going on for years. Must be real. You know. How would you answer that?

• 6:53Speaker 02

  What's my longest? Well, there was a time I was with someone, as they say, married for a long time. It's been a bit more.

• 6:59Bill Maher?

  Yeah, another rock star, which makes it even harder.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:04Bill Maher?

  No.

• 7:05Speaker 02

  I think in the 10 year anniversary, I said it's been the best six years of my life.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  You know, yeah, since then, I definitely have bounced a bit. I have had a girlfriend for two years now. It's been kind of fun, interesting, great girl. So that's been a vibe and something that it's not easy. You know, there's something, you know.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  Yes. It is, there's things that go on that you just, it's hard to feel settled. You know, especially if you're always doing stuff and, you know, going for things. It's just, sometimes it can be hard.

• 7:42Bill Maher?

  Well.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  And you have loads of kids, I have loads of kids. That's the other thing.

• 7:45Bill Maher?

  Loads.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  We have three, three boys here.

• 7:47Bill Maher?

  That's a load, yeah. But we think somewhere in our minds that as we get into these upper ages that we're gonna, I mean, at least I thought when I was twenties, thirties, life would be and I would be very different. I'm in 69. I'm like, oh.

• 8:07Bill Maher?

  It's just not like it, the, the things you think are going to recede and going away. Maybe they do a little bit, you know. Your, your yen for, you know, strange, as they call it, you know, it's a, it's a thing built into male DNA. It doesn't really ever go away completely. Maybe it does for some people.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  You know, my favorite thing that goes away is the need to ever convince other people of something. Do you know what I mean? As you go on, what's the point? I mean, you've done an incredible job to illuminate amazing things through the years. Your show has been really incredible.

• 8:42Bill Maher?

  I appreciate that a lot from you.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  Really incredible. So that is something so powerful, but man.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  It is such a wild time to be alive. In some ways, it's the wildest time we've ever lived. There's more uncertainty.

• 9:00Bill Maher?

  True.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  But there's more joy and there's more pain.

• 9:04Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  It's just.

• 9:05Bill Maher?

  I say the same thing often. It's a very odd cognitive dissonance in your mind. I get this all the time when I'm out and people come up to me and they're like, you know, we're in a beautiful restaurant and they've just had an amazing dinner and they thought nothing of paying a thousand dollars for four people to have dinner. And, you know, like, Bill, what are we gonna do? I'm like, I don't know, look around. Is it that bad for you? Because I get what you mean. Like, part of your brain is like, oh, my God. You know, if you like democracy, remember to like and subscribe. Because we may not be hanging around the, you know, really existential.

• 9:49Bill Maher?

  And also AI, I mean, things like that. Plastics that are, we can't seem to stop getting into our body. I mean, there are things.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  We've been lied to for so long, it's incredible. That's what's insane because.

• 10:02Bill Maher?

  Well, that's always gone on, but plastics and AI haven't.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:06Bill Maher?

  And Trump hasn't. I mean, his anti-democratic ways, okay? Those things are all new. Lies are not new, but those things are. And if you want to like, spend your life fretting, you could. It's legitimate. I don't have a problem with it. You have to like, just choose to go, yeah, but look at the dinner I just had.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, no.

• 10:28Bill Maher?

  And look at the restaurant.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Otherwise, you go crazy. I mean, there's no sense. But it is a very strange time. And for me, you know, as a father, having my kids just now coming into manhood, nineteen year old on Monday, a seventeen year old. It's just like, just seeing what the future holds for them. It's kind of, you know, all these reports look like in 2035, AI, you know, people will be scared of AI robots. You know, people will have to hide from. It's just, it's a lot, right?

• 11:04Bill Maher?

  I was saying on my show last week that I used to curse at my car. Because, and I have not liked cars generally. I've had some good ones. I have a good one now. I had a Tesla a few years ago and did not get rid of it because of Elon. I just, there was a car, Mercedes made a electric luxury car that was better than the Tesla. And, you know, it cost twice as much. It should be. Very similar. Tesla is still a beautiful, wonderful car. But like the Tesla, this one is just, it's just way too much in my business. Way too much, you know, nagging me. It's like if I wanted-

• 11:46Speaker 02

  It knows what you're gonna eat on the way home.

• 11:47Bill Maher?

  It, it, it, it yells at me for the stupidest fucking shit. Oh, doesn't yours?

• 11:53Speaker 02

  No.

• 11:54Bill Maher?

  Your car, what do you have? An old car?

• 11:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess.

• 11:57Bill Maher?

  You must.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:59Bill Maher?

  This thing, oh, please. Like, if I'm at the end of my driveway, if I'm driving out of my house, right? And the, you know, the street is there in front of me, perpendicular to me. And if a car, I'm at the end of driveway, I can see. I look. I've been driving since I was seventeen. I can see if a car is coming across and I'm not gonna plow out while the car is passing me. But the car, I know. I see it. I'm a human.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  Can't you grade it? Can't you like, you know, I mean, sort of give a beginner advanced and longtime driver?

• 12:32Bill Maher?

  And then have a second, like iPhone in the car because I use it as an iPod for music, right? So when I get out of the car, the car thinks I left my phone there. So it says, "You left your phone." And I used to be like, and I'm not proud, I don't talk like this in real life. I R L, no.

• 12:53Bill Maher?

  But I'd be like, "Shut the fuck up, you stupid cunt." I, you know, because it does it every time. And now I'm afraid to call my car a cunt. Because I know the robots are listening and I know they're gonna remember that. And in five years or ten, it's gonna be, "Who's a cunt now, Bill?"

• 13:12Speaker 02

  They might kick you and you'll come.

• 13:15Bill Maher?

  No, I know for you British cunt is not a bad word.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a compliment.

• 13:20Bill Maher?

  But here it is. So when I call the car a cunt, you know I'm being serious.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  It's not a good one.

• 13:26Bill Maher?

  Because we don't do that. I don't certainly never did that in real life. I mean, but a car, you should be able to vent your things at the at the inanimate objects. And I'm just afraid to do that. So there is a lot to be worried about. Now, your kids are going to be fine. They're nuppo babies. Are they?

• 13:48Speaker 02

  Well, I suppose. I mean, I think by definition.

• 13:50Bill Maher?

  Are they in the business? Well, ready?

• 13:54Speaker 02

  Are they streaming?

• 13:56Bill Maher?

  Well, everyone's streaming.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  They are. They. I got two of them are really, really, really into music, which I. Yeah, I mean.

• 14:05Bill Maher?

  But they got that through the genes.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've never really. It's. I mean, I, for me, it's really about letting them be individual and do what they want. And so they're very talented, but I feel terrified. Well, a little bit terrified for them.

• 14:18Bill Maher?

  Are they true fans of Bush or?

• 14:21Speaker 02

  I think they understand the.

• 14:23Bill Maher?

  What did they think? I mean, because.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  Well, this is the main thing, you know, ever since I had kids, when I first had kids, have you written any songs about the kids? Of course, I fucking haven't. But I said, but what I do have is like, they're so opinionated that whenever I make a record, I want them to like it because I don't want to go to school and have their friends at school be like, you're the dad's music.

• 14:40Bill Maher?

  Well, you want the generation in general to like it, too.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  I think they they just know that they know that it's quality, I hope. They know that it's like legit.

• 14:50Bill Maher?

  By the way, I will say that to you, like, there are bands, no one is going to be like they were the first decade because it's just a thing for you. It's young people's domain. You just, nobody does it. But there are bands that people think fall off or get corny. They don't think that of your band, and they're right. It's and actually, people think even though it doesn't, hasn't, you know, your last record probably didn't sell what the first two did, but the fans actually think it's better.

• 15:23Bill Maher?

  You know, they think the musicianship has, you know, stayed, you know, because your fanbase is getting older, so they're getting more discerning. So they want a kind of a top-quality nutritious serving of music. And I think they feel like you give it to them.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  Thank you. It's weird you say that because I think in that way. I think in that way of it being, you know, to be surprising, just do good, good, good stuff, you know, and really like mine some, we have a new, whole new record coming that I think is really good. And it's a great time because, um, yeah, you can spend your time worrying. I spend a lot of my time worrying or fretting, as you said. And then you just think of the pure, simple joy of just making something that connects to people. It's such an ancient concept, even though I use mad technology to make it. Intrinsicly, it just starts with an idea. It's a blank, it's a blank screen.

• 16:20Bill Maher?

  You're talking about a song?

• 16:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, so making a song, you know, it's like improving that silence, you know, like silence is one of the, is almost the best sound ever. So they're having the, you know, the kind of audacity to like, say, no, I need you to listen to this. It's, it's an amazing job and I just have so much fun mining these, uh, the almost experience I make in making songs just to get better at music. And I think that's what our hope comes through.

• 16:48Bill Maher?

  Yeah, it does. Well, it does because like I say, um, nobody can be like at that frenzy height in music. You know, comedy is sort of the opposite. It goes slowly up if you do it right. Where music is like, it just, it's a skyrocket. And of course, it fucks a lot of people up because of that. Um, but, so you can't be there forever, but it's, it's, it's a good trick that people who even aren't like that big a fan, nobody thinks your band is lame. You know, where they think that of a lot of people from the past, you know. Nobody thinks Pearl Jam is lame. Maybe you don't listen to them, but you know, they never sold out like your band, you know, they, they, you know,

• 17:31Bill Maher?

  they do stuff that does not, it's not pandering for sure, you know. There's no commercial like, oh, we're gonna do this one.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  They've been supporting your boy Bruce and his stuff going on. They've been doing Pearl Jam, been throwing some Springsteen covers just as a point.

• 17:48Bill Maher?

  Really? Why is he my boy Bruce?

• 17:50Speaker 02

  No, I mean.

• 17:51Bill Maher?

  Because we're both American? I've never even met him.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  No.

• 17:56Bill Maher?

  I mean, I'm a fan, like everybody, it's the law.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  It's the law, it is.

• 18:03Bill Maher?

  No, I am, I mean, I think he's one of the artists who is, was around when I was young. And again, like I have stuff from, you know, he put out two years ago, or whenever the last one was.

• 18:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:19Bill Maher?

  That I feel like fits nicely along with earlier stuff. Like if you play them back to back, it's not like, oh, that's later when they started to start. Yeah, that's a good trick.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  I like your early funny stuff.

• 18:34Bill Maher?

  Yeah, like Woody Allen.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  He, yeah, what I like about him is that, what inspired me about him the most, slightly fucked me up as a songwriter is that I heard he always has four or five songs ready to go to make a record. So you never run the tank dry. You always to write enough so that you have, like for you, material, like, you know, I don't know how often you write or how it works to get material going, but you know, it's nice creatively just to have that stuff in. Before I went on the greatest hits tour that we just did last summer, I went in the studio and I just thought about Bruce now, but I was like, I'm going on greatest hits tour, but I've got to do something creative now. So I wrote a bunch of songs when I came to finish this record now, this last few months.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  It was a nice process because I'd already done the Springsteen trick of having a nice few songs in the bank.

• 19:21Bill Maher?

  Writers have said.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  Took the pressure off.

• 19:23Bill Maher?

  Writers have said that too, you know, like, of course, this is the old day when they were using typewriters, but leave half a page in the typewriter.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:32Bill Maher?

  So that when you start the next day, it's not that daunting.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:36Bill Maher?

  You know, you were in the middle of something and you're just going back. Yeah, I've never worked that way, but you know.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  How do you write?

• 19:44Bill Maher?

  Well, I mean, my, my, I mean, most of my life I did stand up as well as my show. Stand up, well, first of all, I just never purposely wrote, that's just not how, some comics feel that that's the way to do it. Like purposely get up in the morning and get a yellow legal pad and blah, blah, blah. Nah, I preferred to get high. Whenever funny came out, try to remember it. Like, we're sitting around like doing this.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:09Bill Maher?

  You know, and like, I don't know what we've said tonight, but I'm sure there was one thing that would have been a great bit already.

• 20:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 20:15Bill Maher?

  You know, and in the old days, I would like have made an effort to remember that. My, there was a time when I, I think I saved them. Oh, I did. Like, all these, what I would call cocktail napkins, because a lot of them were literally cocktail napkins. This is before cell phones. And if I was out having fun and something funny, I would write it down on the cocktail napkin. Of course, half the time you get home and you're like, what is that?

• 20:38Speaker 02

  Thera?

• 20:40Bill Maher?

  Yeah, that too. Or just something like, you know, wolves should pole dance. I'm like, what was I, I don't remember what the bit was, you know?

• 20:50Speaker 00

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• 21:34Speaker 00

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• 21:51Bill Maher?

  But, so that's your process? You purposely, you force yourself to sit down, or you just like it?

• 21:58Speaker 02

  Well, my friend's dad, back in the day when we began, and we were kids and we thought we'd completely emancipated from life and responsibility by deciding to be in a band, and the end of all work, all effort, all focus. We'll be in a band and it's all gonna happen. And then he sat us down and he said, listen, It's all very well and good, you two wanna, you know, now you're gonna be in this band to make it happen. But just don't forget, Tim Pan Alley, five days a week, nine to five, people go and write. So if you wanna be serious, you have to do it like that.

• 22:31Bill Maher?

  The Brill Building, you know what that is?

• 22:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, the old songwriters, exactly, that's what I mean.

• 22:35Bill Maher?

  New York, like where Carole King.

• 22:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, and what they.

• 22:38Bill Maher?

  Neil Sedaka, and, you know, people like that, same thing with the Motown Factory.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 22:44Bill Maher?

  Holland, Dozier Holland, that writing team that just churned out, like so many hits. Smokey Robinson wrote a lot, you know, he was more than just the band, you know, recording artist. He wrote for other artists and they would just, yeah, they would, I mean, Berry Gordy was not like, you know, when the muse sits on your shoulder, let me know and we'll put out the record. He was like, okay, we're putting out a record Tuesday.

• 23:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:11Bill Maher?

  So I, you know.

• 23:12Speaker 02

  Think of something.

• 23:13Bill Maher?

  And it's, there's something to be said for that.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  Well, it's been the mainstay of my, of everything I've ever done, when it's that time to write, you just go do that. And the best thing about it is like not being precious, just to write and write and write.

• 23:26Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  And just let it be and, you know, I mean, one thing I think that as you, you know, as we get older, I have got better editing, so I don't, I'm not like so, like I'm not so sketchy. It's gonna be quite specific, but it was really good to stockpile that material.

• 23:46Bill Maher?

  Editing, I'm not gonna say it's everything, of course it's not.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  It's most.

• 23:50Bill Maher?

  It's a lot.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:52Bill Maher?

  It's more than you think when you're younger, at least that's what I've found in what I.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  I read this great thing that Alan de Botton, who's this English psychotherapist, said. So then he says, if you're not embarrassed of who you were last year, you're not working on yourself.

• 24:07Bill Maher?

  That's great. Who said that?

• 24:09Speaker 02

  Alan de Botton.

• 24:10Bill Maher?

  Never heard of him, he sounds like.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  He's amazing. He has a school of, school of life, which is this sort of, I don't know, psycho, psychotherapy, sort of center for wellness. It's really, you'll love him, he's really funny.

• 24:27Bill Maher?

  Well, that kind of stuff.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  You'll love him, cause he said stuff like, whatever you do, don't tell anyone everything about yourself. Nobody deserves that. Things like that. He's just brilliant. He's just brilliant. And he's saying, you know, this whole thing is that everybody is, is, is um very, very broken and everybody is slightly mental. Everybody has their issues. And everybody has their prisms of reasoning that are not always logical.

• 24:55Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  There's lots of conflict and the fact that two people can uh cohabitate, can, can connect is a miracle of sorts. Because it's so precarious.

• 25:06Bill Maher?

  There's one thing I'm always like on my own case about, what I'm always testing myself about is, am I seeing this clearly?

• 25:16Bill Maher?

  You know, like you have to be, you have to first of all care. Lots of people absolutely don't care about their biases. You know, you can confront them and say, well, you watch Fox News all day or you watch MSNBC all day. You, you don't even hear the other side. Yeah, and I don't want to. They're not even trying to hide it. I just want to hear what I already think. And I don't want to let any new information upset that. Or, you know, and of course, I'm trying to do the exact opposite, which immediately alienates some people on both sides of that divide. But in Enam is a, a nice portion who, who also appreciate that.

• 25:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:54Bill Maher?

  But it, it does take actual effort. It, those um extremes are always encroaching on you and trying to get you to just come over to one of those sides completely. It's so much easier and safer. You have a team. And so it's like, you know, it, it takes some effort to elbow them all. Get the fuck away from me, both of you. I'm just gonna do it my way here in the middle.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  That's the genius of what you've done over the years.

• 26:25Bill Maher?

  Oh, finish your thought, Gavin.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  But it is, but it is, but it is that, that's the whole point. This is sort of. I I enjoy, I love going through, uh, popping between them all. Because sometimes, I mean, I love watching Fox sometimes, just to sort of be like, wow. Okay, that's what, wow, you know, you just get this sense.

• 26:44Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  And then you switch, then, and MSNBC is sort of feels a bit anodyne in in comparison sometimes. And then, uh, then they go into CNN, I like going through them all and seeing what's up with that. Uh, AI is now much easier for, I actually asked ChatGPT what's going on. That's what's pretty crazy.

• 27:02Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but you do know that about one out of twenty times, it does what they call in the business hallucinating. You're familiar with this term? That, well, ChatGPT, all AI, just, they don't know why, but obviously something with the programming, but. Uh, yeah, one out of twenty things, it will not just be wrong, but it'll be wildly wrong. That Chat just G P D just decided to tell you. With all the authoritarian-ness that has for every other thing that it's talking about, as if it is this god, it is not a god. Although we're treating it like that. So just know, like, one out of twenty times, it's gonna tell you the exact wrong thing. You're gonna say.

• 27:46Bill Maher?

  Do you take aspirin for a stroke? And it's gonna say, absolutely, and the answer is just completely the opposite. I mean, that's an extreme example, I'm just making up, but.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  And then you die.

• 27:57Bill Maher?

  A- and then you die. But just, just the fact that it can be wrong that much tells me, we haven't really improved on humans.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:06Bill Maher?

  We just put it in a different box and it's more dangerous.

• 28:10Speaker 02

  I mean, honestly, it just assimilates all the information that's been put into it. There's no, no new thoughts, it's just every thought. Um, the funny thing is, you just wish that somehow in this incredible advanced world, technology. The, the, the sort of, the scope is so incredible, and yet the wisdom is so lacking, because people can't, still can't get along. It's just, wisdom is in short supply. Knowledge is everywhere, but wisdom is really hard to find.

• 28:36Bill Maher?

  And also, we have this twenty first century. Revolution in epistemology, really, that's what AI is. I mean, it's just a completely different way of knowing things and being exposed to knowledge. And yet, it's not like it came along, well, after we got rid of like religion. You know, that would make sense. But we still, we have this foot in the future, way in the future with the robots and they know everything. And then, most of the world, one foot in, oh no. It's mostly important who God is. And my God has a bigger dick than your God. And that's very important to me. It's so important to me, I might have to kill you.

• 29:19Bill Maher?

  Because you don't think my God is the God. I know we all pretend, some of these religions, I'm not gonna name anybody.

• 29:25Speaker 02

  You are the 99ers, shit. There's a thousand gods, right? There's a thousand gods out there.

• 29:31Bill Maher?

  Well, no, there used to be. That's Richard Dawkins' great definition of atheism, you know, the great Englishman. I was, I was, I was, visited him at his home once. When I was making Religulous.

• 29:42Speaker 02

  God's theory, was it?

• 29:43Bill Maher?

  Yeah, walked around him, his yard, I was very excited. I still love him, he's sat here. But, you know, he says, back in the days of mythology, yes, there were hundreds and hundreds of gods. And then slowly, we, you know, got that down to one. And he says, I just take it one further. You know, first we believed in Zeus and Athena and Artemis. And then it was just Yahweh, or Jesus, or Maher, you know, Allah. And I'm just, I just took it one step further. Maybe, why not none?

• 30:20Speaker 02

  Christopher Hitchens was my hero. He was incredible, you must have loved him.

• 30:23Bill Maher?

  Oh, loved him.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  One of the greatest men ever.

• 30:26Bill Maher?

  Once gave the audience the finger, they're right on, real time, just right. Not that I haven't done it too. But.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  He just, growing up in England, just he was always on TV, just in his like khaki suit with the white shirt. And just like spewing brilliance and just putting people in their place.

• 30:44Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  And just.

• 30:45Bill Maher?

  And not caring. He, I once booked him on the show with, here's the panel. Salman Rushdie.

• 30:54Bill Maher?

  Christopher Hitchens, who are huge buddies, you know, and most deaf.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 31:01Bill Maher?

  And they were, I mean, I love most deaf much more than they did. They, I mean, and Mr. Deaf does have some, you know, he did have some theories I don't agree with either. But like, like Christopher was not having him at all.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 31:17Bill Maher?

  There was no political correctness in, well, you have a different point of view. He was just like, you know, he just, and Sal was trying to be more cordial, but, you know, it was, the network, I remember, hated that show, but I loved it.

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• 32:04Bill Maher?

  Yes. Do you, have you raised your kids with a religion? Your wife was Catholic, right?

• 32:10Speaker 02

  My wife is extremely born again. It's very, very, very serious on that stuff.

• 32:16Bill Maher?

  Was that an issue?

• 32:17Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, actually, at the end of our, no, I was,

• 32:23Speaker 02

  listen, I found it, when I was a kid, I had to go to, I had to go to school, and we'd do prayers in the morning, have to go to class. Before you go to class, you sing hymns.

• 32:34Bill Maher?

  What religion is it?

• 32:35Speaker 02

  This is Christian, Christianity, just Church of England.

• 32:38Bill Maher?

  Church of England, well, okay, that's.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  So it's the one where you can get married, remarried, because that was what he did. It was rewritten from the Catholic.

• 32:45Bill Maher?

  Is this the bishop of, what's he called?

• 32:48Speaker 02

  Well, it just was changed, wasn't it?

• 32:49Bill Maher?

  Who's the head of the church, of the church? What's he called? The, isn't there Archbishop Canterbury?

• 32:55Speaker 02

  Archbishop, yeah.

• 32:55Bill Maher?

  Is that who the head of the church is?

• 32:58Speaker 02

  I suppose, but my, what I'm saying was that when I would be in there and in the churches, I just, I never connected to, I was like, come on.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  It's not, we're not all really, we just, we all know, don't we? We don't know, we do know.

• 33:14Bill Maher?

  How old were you when you knew that?

• 33:16Speaker 02

  I just, I just knew.

• 33:19Bill Maher?

  It's something even a ten year old can get.

• 33:21Speaker 02

  Well, I just thought, are we all, it was like, are we all, we're all in this together, right?

• 33:25Bill Maher?

  Yeah, no.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  And I felt very disconnected from that. So it was always very, I was never disrespectful to it, and I love churches. I love hymns, and I think weirdly, ironically for me.

• 33:36Bill Maher?

  Music.

• 33:37Speaker 02

  Was is that, um, even though I'm not remotely religious, I think the Bible has, has some incredible writing, and I find myself using lots of biblical references. And I sort of like it, because I'm like, so what, they're just words? So I get, so, but it's not my, I, I don't connect to it. I think it's, it's not, yeah.

• 33:58Bill Maher?

  Musical quiz question. What awesome.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  Sex Pistols.

• 34:04Bill Maher?

  What awesome nineteen sixties number one hit record, uh, was, uh, the lyrics were straight out of the Bible.

• 34:16Bill Maher?

  Book of Ecclesiastes. To everything turn, turn, turn. You don't know that song?

• 34:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do, I know the song.

• 34:23Bill Maher?

  There is a season, turn, turn, turn, and a time, you know.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  Beautiful song.

• 34:29Bill Maher?

  Beautiful, and they just took the lyrics right out of the Bible.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:32Bill Maher?

  I mean, that was sort of the.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  So no, what was interesting is that I don't agree at all.

• 34:36Bill Maher?

  Apparently not that.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I like it. You know, it's, it's beautiful song. But yeah.

• 34:42Bill Maher?

  You do, you know the sixties?

• 34:44Speaker 02

  Were you always the same? Were you always the, you always had the same feeling?

• 34:47Bill Maher?

  No, of course, I was, I was scared shitless. I was a young Catholic boy who went to, had, you know, forced us to go to catechism and go to fucking confession, and, and like I was sinning at seven. Like what fucking sin could I have been commit?

• 35:05Bill Maher?

  Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, I embezzled, uh, I, I committed adultery, I cheated on my seven year old girlfriend. You know, it just was, I was so scared, so scared, that I just didn't question anything.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  That's awful.

• 35:21Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but I mean, that's what they normally do, and, and, I mean Catholic, I mean, catechism was just lump in the throat, because it was once a week before mass, I went to a regular. You know, a public school, so. And this was so different. Public school, I had enough anxiety, but I could get through that. This was like different. These were kids from other schools. There was like sixty in the classroom. That it was taught by nuns. They didn't know who I fucking was. Like they gave us things to memorize, like a hundred questions about religion. You look, who is God? Where is God? Like, like all these questions, you had to know. They were, that's what catechism means. They're teaching you the religion of, of. So you have to memorize, oh, God is everywhere. And like, I was just a nervous wreck. They were gonna say, question sixty-eight, you know.

• 36:06Bill Maher?

  What did, what happened to Jesus's foreskin when he was? When ascended to heaven, did it go with him? Uh, you know, and I would just be a nervous wreck. So I don't remember, it wasn't a matter of questioning it, it was a matter of just. I don't want them to punish me. Or, you know, be mad at me because here on earth it sounds bad and also I'll go to hell. You know, I believed in hell. I believe in Santa Claus. So you're tortured, this is. Well, I mean, five years, three years earlier, I believed in Santa Claus. I mean, we're talking about very young minds here. And what, what was the transition? When did you like, when did you like? Well, when, when my mother told me about Santa Claus, I should have made the connection and went, oh. Well, if you.

• 36:49Bill Maher?

  Anything else to tell me? Anything else to tell me, ma? This Jesus guy sounds a lot like it. He's, he's like, he has superpowers and, you know, he'd do all these things. Um, but I, I just was a ball of fear. So it wasn't until I was a young teenager where I started to actually think about it. And then luckily, my father stopped going to church when I was thirteen. So then I was sort of like, I didn't have to have the fear and I could think about it more. I still didn't become an atheist right away. Not at all. I just didn't, I just thought the religion part, more and more, I thought, okay, well, this is bullshit, but. And then at some point, I just thought, oh, you know what? In for a penny, in for a pound. I mean.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  Stephen Fry is the other English. You have like Richard Dawkins, Hitchens, Stephen Fry, who the three kind of most. I mean, I suppose Ricky Gervais is incredible about.

• 37:41Bill Maher?

  Oh, so funny.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  And his whole breakdown and analysis of being atheist is pretty incredible. So those guys, so it seems, yeah.

• 37:51Bill Maher?

  And Russell Brand, I think, was, but of course he has his own problems now.

• 37:55Speaker 02

  He's busy.

• 37:56Bill Maher?

  He sounds like he would have been one of your mates.

• 37:59Speaker 02

  You know, the funny thing is, is that when he first came to LA, I went up to him and I was somewhere out somewhere. And I did try and say hello to him and sort of welcome him to LA, but he seemed very

• 38:10Speaker 02

  busy. It wasn't, it didn't, it was sort of, it didn't, it didn't, didn't, didn't didn't connect to hanging out with him. I was like, listen, you're here and you're new. If you ever want to hang out, whatever you're doing. Uh, but he was on a trajectory at that point. He was like, he'd just done getting to the Greek. He'd been known here. The MTV Awards, remember they fated him. They had his brand and it was just like this sort of superstar presenter style and.

• 38:35Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but I'm, I'm, okay, maybe all that was true, but I, I would also say you have to be really full of yourself to think it wouldn't be cool to hang out with you.

• 38:45Speaker 02

  Thank you. He was busy. He was busy. He was on his, he's on a trajectory. So, but.

• 38:49Bill Maher?

  Well, his trajectory took him to jail, didn't it? I mean, I mean, he's not in jail, but he's certainly threatened with going to jail. And he sat here and like, I don't know if I've ever enjoyed one of these more. I mean, he is so funny and he's so erudite.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:07Bill Maher?

  You know?

• 39:08Speaker 02

  He's incredible.

• 39:09Bill Maher?

  Yeah. So, I mean, it was just like this mental ping pong game. I felt like, wow, I am really, someone's really hitting them all back over the net. And, you know, look, I love everybody who's here, but people like you who are British, always going to be smarter, close to my age. I'm sorry, we've just lived longer. We just have had more interesting experiences. I know that makes us the bad guy. We know things more just because we've lived more days. It's just more interesting. I mean.

• 39:37Speaker 02

  It's a lot of fun.

• 39:39Bill Maher?

  Yeah, it's a lot of fun being older.

• 39:41Speaker 02

  I think it is. I like that David Bowie quote. He said like, uh, what's strange about getting old is you become the person you should have been all along.

• 39:48Bill Maher?

  What is it? You've become the person you-

• 39:50Speaker 02

  You should have been all along.

• 39:52Bill Maher?

  Oh, that's so true. Yes.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  And you sort of, but that's-

• 39:57Bill Maher?

  That's so true. He said that?

• 39:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:59Bill Maher?

  That in a song?

• 40:00Speaker 02

  No, it's a quote. But I, you know, the thing about it is, is the, it's also, uh, there's also something, uh, that, that clarity, um, is, it'd be,

• 40:13Speaker 02

  you know, youth is enough. Come on, youth is enough. There's like, like, give us something, give us some, one edge. Give us one edge left. It's the final edge is the experience.

• 40:24Bill Maher?

  Yes. And well, it's a little more than that because you're actually happier because you're more-

• 40:31Speaker 02

  Can I try something?

• 40:31Bill Maher?

  Yeah, please. Because you're more comfortable in your own skin.

• 40:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 40:35Bill Maher?

  And like you were talking about something before-

• 40:38Speaker 02

  Worry less about what people, about convincing people something. You don't need to convince people.

• 40:43Bill Maher?

  I know people have bucket lists, right? But an even better, that's a thing, those are things you want to do that you haven't done yet. My list that I treasure is the things I used to do that I don't do anymore. That's the great list. Because I used to do so many things that were tedious or I didn't really want it, especially when I was really young. Of course, you have to work any job they offer you. You can't even eat the food you want to because it's too expensive if you're poor. You know, that's, and as you get older, you just eliminate so many things that you used to do that, no, I'm not doing Christmas at all. How about that? No gifts, no parties, no showing up anywhere. Just,

• 41:28Bill Maher?

  just another day because that's how I really feel about it. That's awesome. That to me is better, there's really nothing on my bucket list.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't have a bucket list. I find that's a weird, weird concept, a bucket list. Because then I think it's so sad when, when you've done something, then, I don't, yeah, I just don't get it. Sometimes people come and see my show and they say, this is my bucket list moment.

• 41:47Bill Maher?

  Right. Oh, yeah.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  We're going, anyway, come back next year, I've got another record. What are you talking about? This is ongoing, darling.

• 41:56Speaker 02

  I need regular sushi.

• 41:59Bill Maher?

  But that's for them. They're thinking about you. They're thinking about.

• 42:04Speaker 02

  And the other funny thing is, is that I'm really proud of where we began. I'm proud of being from the nineties. But it's the funniest thing when people go, when, you know, because it's this mixed thing. It's obviously it's really amazing, right? But when people come into the show and they say, oh, my God, it's so great. It's like being back in the nineties thing. Hang on. Fuck am I like a relic? It's like I'm not like.

• 42:24Bill Maher?

  No, but you know, I always.

• 42:26Speaker 02

  I understand it. I don't mind it, but it's just, it always makes me laugh.

• 42:28Bill Maher?

  There is something about the nineties. And of course, I was my thirties. So like that's what the nineties. A lot of people, it's their more formative years. But I always thought of your band as sort of like the British answer to grunge, which was the prevailing wind over here for at least the last middle, the middle part of the nineties, you know, the Seattle sound. And I felt like you put the British spin on that and.

• 43:00Speaker 02

  I do.

• 43:01Bill Maher?

  Really? Were you influenced by it?

• 43:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think there's a really exciting music, you know, at the time in England, there was what we call Britpop, which is the bands that, you know.

• 43:13Bill Maher?

  Wham?

• 43:14Speaker 02

  Not, no, after Wham, more Blur, Oasis.

• 43:17Bill Maher?

  Oh, Blur. I remember them. Oh, Oasis. Oh, yeah. More Beatles.

• 43:22Speaker 02

  Well, just the Britpop sound. It was like swayed and they're very proud of it. And I didn't mind. I liked it. But what I didn't like about it for me, I prefer the Americans, it didn't allow for a big performance. Like I like, I grew up like the Sex Pistols, like post punk. So I like a little bit of wham with my, with the guitars, with music. And so those bands didn't have that. So I just, I like Jane's Addiction. I like Soundgarden. You know, I like all the, it was so exciting to me. And what they did as well is that at that time, rock music for me was, I didn't know Judas Priest, Iron Maiden growing up. I knew these big bands, but I didn't know them.

• 44:03Bill Maher?

  Well, those are heavy metal bands, aren't they?

• 44:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it was like.

• 44:08Speaker 02

  It was Guns N' Roses and so all these screaming bands. So I, so there's only one I heard, The Pixies. The Pixies were the band that really kind of woke, slapped me in the face to where I could fit in the landscape of music, to where I was to do, you know, off kilter lyrics, uh, quiet loud music, you know, quiet bit, loud bit, and just, uh, talk about how you feel and your complaints and therefore go against that whole Sunset Strip, Poison, Motley Crue, that style of sort of that, mine was more sort of more Calde culture, Ginsberg.

• 44:45Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I certainly don't think of you anything like those bands.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  No, no, but that's what I mean is that, is that that those, you asked me those, those American bands, they um, sort of liberated me to see, they, they sort of were so inspiring as to how you could make rock music without screaming and being spandex and with like hairspray. Do you know what I mean? When, when again, not if you want hairspray, I, again, I'm really permissive, I'm from London, so you can do anything you like. We're, we're, we're, we're very open for reference. If you wanna wear spandex and uh, do your hair, how about it?

• 45:17Bill Maher?

  No, I feel like the, the zeitgeist of the middle, late nineties was angst. I could, and I'm not sure why.

• 45:26Speaker 02

  Well, you know what?

• 45:27Bill Maher?

  What they were, but I mean like.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  Don't you think there's been some cause, one thing that has really connected to me is that, uh, that it's, it's funny cause like angst on its own, um, without sort of some kind of qualification can be seen as like navel gazing or something like that. But if it's angst, if it's existential, you were talking about it earlier, there is an ennui that goes with people and with existence and with trying to get things right and how to get people right, get your job right. It's really hard and I've found that, um, the, when people talk about grunge music, it was really more so much about the lyrics. It was always about the lyrics and about that approach of like being more sensitive, more open and now it's, it, it almost has come full circle where, you know, mental

• 46:10Speaker 02

  health is being discussed, uh, suicide rates are astronomical, uh, servicemen and women ass, suicide rates astronomical, uh, gun problems, drug problems, uh, geopolitical issues. It's just as you know, better than anyone. And so it's great to have, um, music that you can get lost to and someone can, you know, that I made the record, uh, I Be Loneliness, it's called. Um, and it's this thing that people. I think a bit struggling and it's just great to provide um something that people can listen to and get lost in and is a form of armor because I see music as sort of armor and weaponry and sort of make you feel good and lift you up, elevate you, you know, when you listen to it right and sort of understand you.

• 46:53Bill Maher?

  Yeah, it's it's very rare to find a person who doesn't have music of some sort in their life. We all have different bands.

• 47:01Speaker 02

  Of course, as we should.

• 47:03Bill Maher?

  But it's very rare to like a human who like, no, I don't listen to any music, right? I mean, I mean, it's always, it's something. It's almost like a need. It's not obviously like to live, like food and air, but like there is something very primal about, I mean, poets, you know, part of it is lyrics, you know, do I have a lot of poems memorized in my life? No, even though I had a old enough to have a traditional good education where we learned certain poems and Shakespeare and so forth, but that doesn't stick in my mind. But it's a thousand pop songs where I could sing along every line because I've heard it hundreds of times.

• 47:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:47Bill Maher?

  You know, and obviously, now I can like a song if the lyrics suck, if the song is great. I can't. I can't do it in reverse. If the song isn't good, no amount of great lyrics.

• 47:59Speaker 02

  None.

• 48:00Bill Maher?

  You agree with that?

• 48:01Speaker 02

  None, fuck yeah.

• 48:02Bill Maher?

  Right. You gotta like the song.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  It's gotta be, everything's gotta be on song.

• 48:04Bill Maher?

  Yeah. And, you know, there are umpteen number of songs that where they just are not even trying with the lyrics. I mean, I love the Beatles as we all do them more than any, but I mean, they would, I'm sure be the first to admit, some of it is just gobbledegook. I've said it before.

• 48:23Speaker 02

  It got better and better though, for me.

• 48:25Bill Maher?

  It did. No, no, at the beginning, it wasn't gobbledegook. It was just um what teenagers in nineteen sixty-four were interested in. Love me do and I love you and you know, I'll be true. And they were, you're very young and those were the songs and they were.

• 48:38Speaker 02

  Where's Tupac singing I Wanna Hold Your Hand?

• 48:40Bill Maher?

  What?

• 48:41Speaker 02

  Where's Tupac singing I Wanna Hold Your Hand? It sort of feels a bit twee if you think of it.

• 48:45Bill Maher?

  Wanna hold your pussy.

• 48:46Speaker 02

  Where is your hand?

• 48:48Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 48:49Speaker 02

  By the way, whose hand is that?

• 48:50Bill Maher?

  Uh, your hand is on my twat. I mean, I mean, why don't you go to wet ass pussy?

• 48:56Speaker 02

  That was crazy, wasn't it? And like.

• 48:59Bill Maher?

  You can't, you know, it's how, how much further can you take it?

• 49:03Speaker 02

  Well, none. There's nowhere else to go.

• 49:05Bill Maher?

  No.

• 49:07Bill Maher?

  It's so funny because...

• 49:08Speaker 02

  But wasn't that incredible that it became an anthem?

• 49:14Speaker 02

  For women and younger women.

• 49:17Bill Maher?

  And Gavin, how do you interpret the message of What Ass Pussy? If you had to put it in layman's terms? I mean, it's a poetic, of course, work of art. But What Ass Pussy, what is she saying about What Ass Pussy?

• 49:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's very...

• 49:34Bill Maher?

  That we should aspire to it? Or that...

• 49:38Speaker 02

  I think it's the greatest haiku ever.

• 49:41Speaker 02

  Or the third greatest haiku ever.

• 49:43Bill Maher?

  Well, it would need 14 more syllables. Isn't the haiku seven?

• 49:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's the shortest haiku ever.

• 49:50Bill Maher?

  Haiku, I know, I'm not an expert on haiku, but I know it has a lot of rules.

• 49:56Bill Maher?

  Haiku has a lot of rules. Like, some, you know, sometimes there are, people will say things just in their... Crump does it sometimes. And it is a haiku. It's like a short thing, and it doesn't have to make sense, but it just sounds like a haiku. Somebody turned the whole book of somebody's sayings into haiku. Maybe it was Yogi Berra, somebody like that. But, "So you're drinking? Good." Sometimes, rock stars, their later years become so evangelical about the opposite because they have had the experience of being around and doing it too much.

• 50:37Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I don't remember...

• 50:38Speaker 02

  I'm a lot of fun.

• 50:39Bill Maher?

  I don't remember you...

• 50:39Speaker 02

  I'm a lot of fun all the time.

• 50:41Bill Maher?

  I don't remember ever reading anything about you and drugs, but maybe I missed it. Like, I never, you never seemed to like go overboard with the drug thing like so many musicians do.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  There is a connection, I'm trying to find, the joke between me and Freddie Mercury, but we both are very clear with our band names.

• 51:04Bill Maher?

  I always thought that was what I meant, but I, you know, I didn't want to be a belied.

• 51:09Bill Maher?

  That was the era when you, of course, had to like sneak in, you know, your, if you wanted to tell a dirty joke. I mean, the Beatles did it with, you know, in Penny Lane, there's some line there for a fish and finger pie. And I'm not sure what it means, but I know it's dirty. And in Girl, the song Girl, it's on Rubber Soul. They, the background, you know, the backing vocal, the harmonizing vocal, they're singing tit, tit, tit, tit, tit. It just sounds like one of those things you sing when you're in the chorus, but they're saying tit, tit, tit. And then they did a

• 51:50Bill Maher?

  sound effect of smoking a joint. But, you know, it had to, you have to really be clever to fly under the radar of the censors. Now you're just like, my new single's called Wet Ass Pussy, deal with it.

• 52:03Speaker 02

  They had me, um, there's a, um, what's the, what's the line? There's a, on our new single, the song that's coming out, um, it's, there's two lines. It goes, I see, I see stars when I fuck the system. I see stars when I fuck, right? And

• 52:20Bill Maher?

  That's great.

• 52:21Speaker 02

  And then they go, thank you, and they go, um, so we better do a safe, we need to do a radio version. I was like, what are you talking about? And they said, uh, someone suggested, um, what about, uh,

• 52:35Speaker 02

  what about, um, I see stars when I, when I, when I make the system, flick. I see stars when I change the system. I was like, so the man, the line about the man, we're gonna change to suit the man. No, it makes no sense. We'd have beeps, like really good loud beeps if they take, but who cares? They're not gonna, there used to be a time where you can have come on the radio, you know? I like that word, come, it's a really great word.

• 53:03Bill Maher?

  C U M.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  Well, absolutely, but I also like the C O M E. I'm English, I told you.

• 53:09Bill Maher?

  Come, of course.

• 53:10Speaker 02

  Of course. Come on, you can.

• 53:12Bill Maher?

  Yeah, come is a great word.

• 53:14Speaker 02

  And, and, but they don't allow that on, on the radio, they don't like it when you're singing that. Which is really puritanical and it's really strange. And also more reflective of the person who's saying it's a bad word. It can be, there are many, uh, Explanations for come.

• 53:29Bill Maher?

  Would it make you think less of me if I admitted that there are times when I have texted someone, "Come over" and spelled it C U M? What would that make you hate me? I couldn't blame you.

• 53:40Speaker 02

  I would make, I think that's being direct, isn't it?

• 53:46Bill Maher?

  I think it's being clever.

• 53:48Speaker 02

  Well, it's definitely like.

• 53:49Bill Maher?

  In fact, it probably went over their head, dumb bitch.

• 53:51Speaker 02

  You should have just sent it with a wet ass pussy soundtrack, then that would have been really good. A meme with that.

• 53:59Bill Maher?

  Oh, my God. What do you think about Kanye?

• 54:04Bill Maher?

  What do you think that there's a guy? I mean, if wet ass pussy is, as far as you can take it sexually, I gotta think that I'm a Nazi? I mean, there's punk and then there's just like, wow. And still, they let him get away with it. I mean, even I'm a Nazi and a T-shirt with the swastika on it is, that's how powerful music is. It's like, yeah, but I still like his old records.

• 54:38Bill Maher?

  You know, Michael Jackson, I just, I mean, once Oprah came out on the side of, "These kids aren't lying", I just thought things would change. No, he's got a show on Broadway. It's just like, I like those records. And you know what? I'm the first one to say, I can separate the two. I play R. Kelly. I'll play anybody. The record didn't rape anybody, you know?

• 55:05Speaker 02

  Well, I wouldn't have played them in the first place, actually.

• 55:07Bill Maher?

  R. Kelly?

• 55:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:08Bill Maher?

  He has some great.

• 55:09Speaker 02

  R and B is very hard for me. I know people love it and I'm like very, I don't mean that that's a correct opinion, just what it does to me is.

• 55:20Speaker 02

  I just find it really hard in the same way that if I played someone who loves R and B, if I played them my record, they'd be like, they'd run.

• 55:27Bill Maher?

  Well, I know, most of, most.

• 55:29Speaker 02

  It's just that, you know, music goes into two categories for me. Either it, it, you're magnetized by it and can't get to it, or it's just watered in a, down a sieve, you just, oh.

• 55:39Bill Maher?

  Right, it's complete personal opinion. That's why I think record reviews are the stupidest thing in the world. Because it's like, you cannot put something in writing that will affect how I feel about this record. I, I can only.

• 55:55Speaker 02

  Where were you in the nineties?

• 55:56Bill Maher?

  I have to, it still goes on. I still have, I just have to hear it. No amount of writing will change my opinion that much. I either like it or I don't. And I'll pretty much know that the first time I hear it.

• 56:09Speaker 02

  I used to read the newspapers in England, the Melody Maker NME, growing up. And sometimes I'd read reviews of bands or descriptions of bands that were so esoteric and removed from, I couldn't even remember.

• 56:21Bill Maher?

  Always.

• 56:22Speaker 02

  And then I'd be like, I've got to hear this, I hear it, be like, wow, I don't know how you got from that to that.

• 56:28Bill Maher?

  Undeniably, uh, always works way to have a horrible record collection is to do it by what you read in a record review. You will have all the most, the records that are like important. This is, I don't want important records. I'm just a young man in the twenty second row. I just wanna like.

• 56:49Speaker 02

  Sounds like a library, you don't read a book, you know, library of unread books.

• 56:52Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 56:55Bill Maher?

  No, I just, I just, I just want what I like and it's, it's like important to me. And if that's, I mean, look,

• 57:05Bill Maher?

  the R. Kelly thing, he does have like some great.

• 57:11Bill Maher?

  The lyrics were always comically awful, but that almost makes the song better. But he does have some really great sort of like, um, yeah, R and B songs like of that era. And then a slew of shit. And then I Believe I Can Fly, which doesn't really sound like any of the other songs he's ever done. But that's probably his biggest hit and it's like such a crossover hit. I mean, it should have been done by Michael Jackson or somebody like that. It's so, I believe.

• 57:37Speaker 02

  What is it you think as a man, like as women, you know, women, that's like these guys that blow their lives up to this. We're seeing right now when Diddy trial, we got Yay, uh, having a lot of problems, uh, finding himself all the right things to say.

• 57:54Bill Maher?

  No, he's having a great time.

• 57:57Speaker 02

  You think he's having a great time?

• 57:58Bill Maher?

  Of course, I just think, I think it's ridiculous that, um, look, you know.

• 58:05Speaker 02

  He's sorry now, though.

• 58:06Bill Maher?

  No, I'm just saying you can get away with certain things if you're, if, you know, certain parameters in life. Um, one is being a musician. Um, I'll also just say in passing, I think if say, I don't know, Michael Buble put out a T-shirt that said, I'm a Nazi. And had paraded his wife naked on the red carpet. I feel like there would be more feedback, blowback rather. I just, and both, I mean, I just think, uh, you know, some people, it's just like so arbitrary. Who, who gets to get away with what? I mean, I've said it before, I don't mean to pick on him, but Charlie Sheen has done like so many more cancelable things, like super cancelable.

• 58:48Bill Maher?

  Like AIDS and like beating up hookers and hookers and, you know, and yet he's just a scamp. And other people have done really not that bad.

• 58:58Speaker 02

  California rolls at a stop sign.

• 59:00Bill Maher?

  Basically, yeah. You know, masturbating and, you know, I see there's a special coming out, a movie, I guess, about Pee Wee Herman. Do you remember Pee Wee Herman? And I remember when, I mean, I didn't know him, but he would come into the improv when I was working there. And it was, oh, a big star came in and, um, I, you know, he was always in character. So there were, I had zero relationship. He seemed like a nice guy and like the career just wouldn't, of course, he did a kid show, I get it, but. The career just went, just completely disappeared him. I mean, like disappeared, like Trump disappears people, just like over masturbating in a porn, this is the days when people went to the theater.

• 59:44Bill Maher?

  The theater, a movie theater and was jerking off in a movie theater. That was his big offense. He was caught doing that. And just gone, never to be heard from.

• 59:57Speaker 02

  Well, Louis CK said that everyone has their thing. Everyone has their thing.

• 1:00:02Bill Maher?

  Another, you know, masturbator who like overpaid for, okay, by his own admission, it wasn't cool. And although, you know, comics, it's different. It's a little complicated and they made it like, no, not complicated. I mean, this Me Too thing was a great.

• 1:00:22Speaker 02

  He's one of our greatest comics we've ever had.

• 1:00:24Bill Maher?

  He's fantastic. I love him.

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  One of the greatest.

• 1:00:25Bill Maher?

  Yeah, he's finally gonna do my show and I think he's got something coming out in October, but, you know, I mean, and he fought his way back to like certainly having a very, very, here's the successful touring career.

• 1:00:39Speaker 02

  I buy his shows intentionally.

• 1:00:41Bill Maher?

  But yeah, but he still has to like do everything like without the aid of a studio or something like he's so toxic from the masturbating that like we can't go near this guy.

• 1:00:50Speaker 02

  Cause no one else masturbates.

• 1:00:51Bill Maher?

  Speaking of come, there's still, there's still come, there might be come on the contract. We can't sign a contract with this guy. I mean, it's just so ridiculous. And, and to his great credit, he's like, well, you know what? I don't need the middleman. And maybe, and that's of course more and more the way it's going in show business. I mean, haven't recording artists put out songs like directly through Starbucks and isn't that a way to do it? Like you can sell your thing without.

• 1:01:17Speaker 02

  Microplastics. Yeah. Yeah, I, I, you know.

• 1:01:23Bill Maher?

  But you still have a label.

• 1:01:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, just, you know what I mean? It's like we.

• 1:01:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, we do have a label. We have a great label. But our label is now based in Germany. It's complicated. I mean, it's just, the funny part is, it never stops being a fistfight. Never stops being, I don't know what it's like for you, but for me, I'm like medium, really good, working musician, successful. It's still a fight.

• 1:01:50Bill Maher?

  Of course.

• 1:01:50Speaker 02

  Fight. It never stops being a fight. There's no, it's always.

• 1:01:53Bill Maher?

  Who told you it ever would?

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  I don't know, but I just was thinking that one day it was being stopped less, you know. I was like, Coldplay don't have to go through this shit, do they? Chris Martin.

• 1:02:03Bill Maher?

  Yeah, sometimes, some, a lot of it. I mean, it varies.

• 1:02:08Speaker 02

  I mean, it's a healthy thing, right? We like the fact that, um. You, it's fucking grit and determination, this sort of unseen, necessary, quotient, like, outside. Wherever you're with stand-up comics, musicians, actors, you need a, you know, steel. You need to be kind of made of steel to just, to sustain, right?

• 1:02:30Bill Maher?

  Yeah, including about what you're just talking about. I mean, I, I can relate to that. Because, you know, again, I just stopped touring, but I did it for like forty years. And, you know, the last twenty-five were all in nice theaters, you know, this wasn't the comedy clubs anymore. You know, I was selling a good number of tickets, enough to like always travel private, couldn't have been that bad, and still make a lot of money. Um, but I still, you know, it, noticed, shall we say. Oh, there are guys who are half as funny as me, who sell twice as many tickets. And that's okay, because the last thing in the world I think you want to do is have, like,

• 1:03:11Bill Maher?

  gotten ninety-nine percent of what's good in life and start bitching about the one percent. Like, yeah, you know what? There isn't absolute justice in show business. In fact, there's very little.

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:03:24Bill Maher?

  There's none. Yeah, I mean, Madonna had that great line that she said that when Kanye went up to Taylor Swift. Remember famously in Yankton Award?

• 1:03:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:35Bill Maher?

  And again, if Michael Buble did it, I'm sorry. I don't mean to drag Michael Buble into this, I'm sorry.

• 1:03:42Speaker 02

  Come on, Buble, admit it. If you did it.

• 1:03:44Bill Maher?

  I mean, I just feel like it would have been more of a cancelable event. Anyway, um, when he did that.

• 1:03:53Bill Maher?

  Oh, what were we talking, what was I gonna say?

• 1:03:55Speaker 02

  Blue Blade, Taylor Swift and Kanye on stage.

• 1:03:59Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but why, why did I?

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  Uh, what was she saying about like, Madonna said something about?

• 1:04:04Bill Maher?

  Oh Madonna, her comment after that was, um, don't go to an award show expecting justice. And I just thought, what a perfectly succinct, exact, wise thing to say. And yet from Madonna, it doesn't seem like, no, she's probably very, I mean, she's certainly a, she's certainly a genius. First of all, her, her, her record called The Immaculate Collection is not mislabeled. When Madonna made a record, it was fucking usually great. I mean, even into this century.

• 1:04:38Speaker 02

  She's incredible.

• 1:04:39Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I mean, Ray of Light was.

• 1:04:42Speaker 02

  She's incredible.

• 1:04:42Bill Maher?

  A while ago, but like, and then I think there was one after that and, I mean, there's some.

• 1:04:47Speaker 02

  I love how she just fucking lives her life, how she fucking wants and everyone else can fuck off. It's fucking great. The only thing.

• 1:04:54Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I, I do, but I also think she's that typical, what I think of as rock star for so long, that like, what's really in that noodle of hers is just a lot of nonsense. I mean, there's some stuff that, that isn't, but just, just when you're that insulated from having to deal with reality, there's a lot of nonsense in her head. I mean, I'm, I'm sorry, I just think there is. And, and also, um, you know.

• 1:05:20Speaker 02

  But she looks so fun, she's always having fun.

• 1:05:22Bill Maher?

  She does not look fun.

• 1:05:24Speaker 02

  She doesn't look fun.

• 1:05:25Bill Maher?

  I, I feel like.

• 1:05:25Speaker 02

  I think she looks like she's having fun. You don't think she looks like she's having fun?

• 1:05:28Bill Maher?

  She may be, I don't know about the people around her. She does not.

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  They're all dancers and like, everyone's laughing and dancers are great because they dance and then they laugh about it. They dance and they laugh about it.

• 1:05:38Bill Maher?

  I don't know if she really can like, let go of who she is enough to like, just be one of the, one of the people. And, and that's okay, I mean, she's a, she enjoys being a diva and she earned it. And, but there's a, a price to pay for that, I think, which is you don't get to like, sort of be down and dirty with a bunch of people. And, you know, everybody's always gonna be walking on eggshells and like. Should I kid her? Well, I guess I should, but if it goes wrong, you know.

• 1:06:05Speaker 02

  You're out.

• 1:06:06Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I'll be thrown into the sea where they put Bin Laden, you know. They really want something where people can like make a martyr out of me. I'll just disappear, you know. I mean, that's my impression of her. I don't know, but she just looks cold as ice. I just never thought, I thought she was very pretty, but not sexy. Like, I never got the sexy vibe of her. Because I just felt like she'd be like directing me to do something.

• 1:06:33Speaker 02

  Bill, get it right.

• 1:06:35Bill Maher?

  Exactly, Bill.

• 1:06:38Speaker 02

  That is not, this is not working.

• 1:06:40Bill Maher?

  Yeah. But I could be all wrong. This is, these are just surmises. Uh, I don't know. Maybe you know her. I don't know her.

• 1:06:49Speaker 02

  I've only met her a couple of times. I've had a fu- a couple of funny, a couple of funny dinners with her.

• 1:06:55Speaker 02

  Couple of times that were, that were just.

• 1:06:57Bill Maher?

  Was she nicer to you than fuckface? Brandon Russell, Russell.

• 1:07:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, well, she, I actually went for dinner with her. It was like, it was crazy. It was like me, Guy Ritchie and Gwen. And the four of us having dinner together.

• 1:07:12Bill Maher?

  Oh, that makes sense.

• 1:07:13Speaker 02

  It was really funny and like, I really love being around people that.

• 1:07:20Speaker 02

  Like, it was really fun to be disarming and be funny and make jokes. Because I, I didn't get the sense that that was happening a lot.

• 1:07:28Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:07:29Speaker 02

  So for me.

• 1:07:30Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:07:30Speaker 02

  It was, I was like, and I remember, I remember like, you know, they weren't really drinking much. But I was, I was like, yeah, bring wine. And so I was having the wine. And I just, I just remember at the end, um. Madonna's standing, I think, behind me, uh, towards the end of the dinner. So I was like thinking, I was like, I think that's the end of dinner.

• 1:07:53Speaker 02

  I think that's the end.

• 1:07:57Speaker 02

  The signal. So I wasn't giving off a dancer vibes. If I was a dancer and I could have like done a moonwalk, I would probably have lasted longer. But I was out.

• 1:08:08Bill Maher?

  Not making any judgments, just but so the dinner ended when Madonna decided the dinner ended.

• 1:08:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:15Bill Maher?

  That's because that's what I would get. And then again, that doesn't make her a bad person. I'm just saying that's who I would guess was gonna call the evening at whenever.

• 1:08:23Speaker 02

  You know, the funny story about it is is that I ended up nicking her housekeeper. Her housekeeper was working the other night. She ended up working for us for seventeen years. And then when I got divorced, that then said housekeeper came with me where I went.

• 1:08:37Bill Maher?

  So it was Madonna's housekeeper. How did you do that?

• 1:08:39Speaker 02

  I don't know. What happened is that when we went to Madonna's house, that housekeeper was working for her. And we had the dinner. And then after that, then when we were looking for someone to help us, it was like she was in between of working at Madonna's house. And then something happened or so anyway, we inherited her and she was with us seventeen years. And then when I moved to my new more Bill Maher flavored life. I took, I took, I took, she came with me, which I always really loved. She's like, she came with me. It was so sweet because she just came with me. I didn't know what I was gonna live, lived in Bel Air, actually.

• 1:09:16Bill Maher?

  So I guess, yeah. So I guess when rich people get divorced, they have to fight over the housekeeper.

• 1:09:23Bill Maher?

  I don't think privilege about that. We're just, we're just deciding who owns this human that we shared and now.

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  I think it's a much better insight into like, it was, it was my, one of my, it was, it was, it was a beacon of light in a dark time.

• 1:09:43Bill Maher?

  Well, that's very poetic. I should put that.

• 1:09:44Speaker 02

  I am poetic.

• 1:09:45Bill Maher?

  A beacon of light in a dark time as we pour ourselves more liquor.

• 1:09:49Speaker 02

  But this is, this is a very clean liquor.

• 1:09:53Bill Maher?

  It is.

• 1:09:53Speaker 02

  What are you pouring in there? What's that little elixir you have?

• 1:09:56Bill Maher?

  This, uh, this is called C2. It's a combination of ketamine and cocaine. No. But I heard about that. That's the new drug. Did you hear that?

• 1:10:07Speaker 02

  Which one?

• 1:10:07Bill Maher?

  I think it's ketamine and, no, ketamine and, and Molly. That's like, I think they call it C2 or 2C or something.

• 1:10:16Speaker 02

  I think it's a gay weekend, isn't it?

• 1:10:17Bill Maher?

  It's, it's not just gay. Drugs are not just for gay people anymore.

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  My, my, my, my old assistant, I'm being facetious, but my old assistant, um, he used to, uh, he did a lot of ketamine through the clubs. Um, so it began with him in the gay clubs, but anyway, I digress. What is this new, this new combo?

• 1:10:37Bill Maher?

  Yeah, Cori, I mean, I think a, a, a big change in the last decade with drugs is that...

• 1:10:44Speaker 02

  Is it your Ciroc? Is it your...

• 1:10:46Bill Maher?

  No, I, I, I, I have not...

• 1:10:48Speaker 02

  You're not involved.

• 1:10:48Bill Maher?

  I have not done anything except have a few drinks a week. And, uh, really only a few joints a week. Um, I just save it for here and a few other places, but, um, no, no, I'm, those days are over. I mean, that would just scare the shit out of me to do anything like f- fentanyl or...

• 1:11:08Speaker 02

  Oh, it's over, yeah.

• 1:11:09Bill Maher?

  Ketamine, ket- even, anything. I wouldn't do anything.

• 1:11:11Speaker 02

  Ketamine's also been used for psycho- psychoactively, like psychiatric stuff as well. It's crazy, right?

• 1:11:17Bill Maher?

  I mean, LSD did. All of them came from somebody with legit...

• 1:11:20Speaker 02

  Trying to help someone.

• 1:11:22Bill Maher?

  And sometimes it does.

• 1:11:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:25Bill Maher?

  I mean, LSD helped people. You know, anytime people are sort of trapped in their mind by, you know, some of, we have a lot of mind-trapping mechanisms.

• 1:11:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:36Bill Maher?

  Um, yes, drugs can help a lot. Ayahuasca. I mean, people are often, I mean, not to mention what it did for my record collection.

• 1:11:45Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:11:45Bill Maher?

  I mean...

• 1:11:46Speaker 02

  Bill Hicks is the, the king of that, like, you know? The idea of like, you know, drugs opened up everything. If you wanted, if you wanted to like take all the people out of your recollection that weren't stunned when they made those records.

• 1:11:58Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:58Speaker 02

  You, you have achieved silence, sir. Apart from some Christian polka music.

• 1:12:04Bill Maher?

  I mean, I mean, it also can have the opposite effect. You could do, well, the drug, I mean, certainly, I know, like, the Eagles talk about how they were, when they were trying to make their last record, they were just, there was just too much cocaine.

• 1:12:20Speaker 02

  You know, the thing is that I found, like, I grew up in London where cocaine is really was like, that cocaine in London is like,

• 1:12:28Speaker 02

  you said the word cunt earlier, the people use that, cocaine is just like, like, when you walk into a restaurant in California, or in America, and they put a glass of water down, that's what it's like in England with cocaine. People are just like, especially in London, right?

• 1:12:42Bill Maher?

  Now?

• 1:12:43Speaker 02

  But yeah, still, people are crazy. So.

• 1:12:47Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 1:12:48Speaker 02

  But what I found, to me, is that it's the least creative drug I've ever experienced in my life.

• 1:12:54Bill Maher?

  The worst drug.

• 1:12:55Speaker 02

  When I read, I mean, I've probably never, most songs that I've written, I'm not, you know, usually, so.

• 1:13:03Speaker 02

  But I remember trying once, you know, because in England, you know, sometimes just out of like, out of manners, you're not doing a two-nighting cocaine with your friends, you're like, oh, okay. So you stay up for a day and a half, and I write something, and it was always the worst shit I ever wrote in my life. And you have those comments, it's just such bullshit. So I never connected to it, so I couldn't, and it makes everything sound, it's like there's Oasis records where they're really skinny, they listen to a lot of cocaine, it's really bright. You know, people just get, it's not bright enough, it's not bright enough, you know, it's too, I don't know, basically, they get this record, it's like, yes! It's terrible.

• 1:13:38Bill Maher?

  Because it's not really cocaine. That's the problem.

• 1:13:41Speaker 02

  This is horrible.

• 1:13:42Bill Maher?

  If you were doing pure coca leaf, I mean, this is what I'm told, you know.

• 1:13:48Speaker 02

  I could have had a bigger career.

• 1:13:51Bill Maher?

  You had a, you have a great career. No, but it doesn't have that speedy effect on you. It's, they've been doing it, chewing it in the Andes for centuries.

• 1:14:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:14:03Bill Maher?

  And it was just more of a, of a good high. And getting back to what I was gonna say about like in the last decade, they have found ways, of course, because there's money in it, to sort of perfect these kind of drugs for the common person. Not just the person who's like, you know, 24 and can body can handle it. They're out on the weekend and it's gonna abuse their body and somehow come back the next day like nothing happened, which you can do at 24. But what about the guy who's 40 and 50 even? Yeah, they found a way. They they just perfected like like microdosing acid, microdosing mushrooms, these things like, oh, this amount of ketamine and this amount of ecstasy.

• 1:14:48Bill Maher?

  It's not like over the top. It's not gonna last all night. You can come, you're just gonna feel fucking amazing for an hour and then maybe you do a little more. That I think that's what's going on. Now, again, I I know people will be like, oh, how do you know all this, Bill? You see, because I talk to people who do it. But I don't do it. If I was their age, I would. Trust me, I'd love to be doing this. I would love to be doing this.

• 1:15:13Speaker 02

  That's your bucket list.

• 1:15:15Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but it would put me in a bucket. That's the problem. It's my coffin list. So, you know, I mean, do I wish I was 26? Not really, because I knew what was in my head at 26. It's just so painfully stupid, I couldn't go back there. But I mean, if hypothetically say there was somebody in my life who was...

• 1:15:40Speaker 02

  Don't you feel sweet, don't you feel like protective and empathetic towards that person who was just fucking trying to figure it out against all the odds that life threw at you at 26?

• 1:15:52Bill Maher?

  Not really.

• 1:15:53Speaker 02

  You don't, you know?

• 1:15:54Bill Maher?

  I just hate myself for being so stupid for just not for like...

• 1:15:57Speaker 02

  But everyone's stupid. That's the beauty of you, that's the luxury of you. You're meant to be stupid.

• 1:16:02Bill Maher?

  I know, but I just think of how much easier so many things could have been. And how much better so many things could have been if I just wasn't stupid, that stupid, you know?

• 1:16:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:13Bill Maher?

  A lot of like not knowing about women. I mean, that's a lot of what.

• 1:16:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, if Auntie Martha Martha had balls, she'd be Auntie Arthur, you know, it's like you can't, it's Uncle Arthur.

• 1:16:22Bill Maher?

  But you probably.

• 1:16:24Speaker 02

  You know, just sort of like could have would have. I think it's beautiful. I think it's beautiful to be able to sort of have perspective on your life. That that time you were blind, but how, why should, why should you be able to see at twenty six?

• 1:16:37Bill Maher?

  You're right.

• 1:16:38Speaker 02

  Why should you be any different?

• 1:16:40Bill Maher?

  Oh, you still can't see. I mean, we just see better.

• 1:16:42Speaker 02

  Why should you be any different? Like, I think it's great. It's like the natural evolution of people and it's wonderful. I mean, you of all people, Jesus Christ, you, I, I, I can tell, you know, you have an incredible life. You set up an incredible life.

• 1:16:55Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:16:55Speaker 02

  I think you made your way through.

• 1:16:57Bill Maher?

  I'm very lucky. I mean, first of all, I love where I live, despite the fires. And despite the taxes and like, there's a lot of bad things. It's true. It's, it's sort of.

• 1:17:09Speaker 02

  About LA?

• 1:17:10Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:11Speaker 02

  Oh, it's magic, right?

• 1:17:12Bill Maher?

  But it's still the best. I mean, why do you live here? You could live anywhere in the world. You're not even from this country. But you want to live here. Everybody wants to live here.

• 1:17:20Speaker 02

  Well, what happens is.

• 1:17:21Bill Maher?

  It's amazing how everybody, you think people who don't live here, they live here. Johnny Depp lives here. I know, you think he lives someplace exotic.

• 1:17:28Speaker 02

  I did. I thought, I thought.

• 1:17:29Bill Maher?

  Angelina Jolie, I know, she's got a thousand kids all over the world, all races. She lives here, okay? They all live fucking here.

• 1:17:37Speaker 02

  Well, you know, it's the weirdest thing is that when I was a kid, I grew up in North London, in a regular little house and, and a, but when I used to think how much I didn't want to be there, I used to dream of Los Angeles. I had no reason, no rhyme.

• 1:17:51Bill Maher?

  You had a reason. This is where Hollywood is.

• 1:17:53Speaker 02

  I know, but when you're a young kid, it's like.

• 1:17:55Bill Maher?

  You know about Hollywood.

• 1:17:56Speaker 02

  Like being an atheist. It's like, I didn't know why. I just thought it was nonsense. I just thought it was nonsense. So when I thought a eulogized about LA, I didn't actually, I wasn't sophisticated enough to know that it had, I just saw it as a Mecca. It just was easy. And it sounded like everything. That was, I was in love with skateboarding. So that's one of the times I thought that Santa, Vera Cruz, San Diego, uh, and LA were all the same place. I didn't know, you know? So I was just far away. And the wildest thing is that the, um. L A, I'm like the living American dream because I came over here. I signed a deal because I was inspired by the Pixies. I signed the only deal I was offered, which was in the valley. I didn't know what the valley was. So I was in London and I signed a deal in the valley and through the radio station here, K-Rock in um in L A.

• 1:18:41Speaker 02

  Gave me life and I began and.

• 1:18:45Bill Maher?

  Oh, really? They were the ones who played your record? It's that funny bands in the.

• 1:18:48Speaker 02

  Kevin Weatherly, Kevin Weatherly. So he's the one, man, who has been huge in my life and um. And then I fell in love and we were always gonna live in London and then as soon as my then wife got pregnant. She was like, we're gonna be in L A, we're gonna be at Cedars, uh, you know, so I was like, so that was it. I moved for my kids and now since I'm divorced a long time. Uh, ten years now, uh, and in fact, I was never married now because it was annulled. Um, uh, I'm. I'm virgin again.

• 1:19:21Bill Maher?

  That's the Catholic church for you.

• 1:19:23Speaker 02

  I'm a virgin again.

• 1:19:24Bill Maher?

  I love the Catholic church. We don't believe in divorce. We believe in saying things never happened.

• 1:19:32Speaker 02

  These three kids.

• 1:19:35Speaker 02

  So, but I love it and I have this beautiful thing. I have a uh my family and everyone in London. And I'm lucky enough to get to go to London a few times a year, uh, but really I live here. Whenever I come back here. I feel this where I'm meant to be. I'm meant to be where my kids are, but I love the light. I love the space. I love everything about it. I'm I'm really, I'm in love with it and I wouldn't want to live in New York. I like passing, I prefer Brooklyn now. I don't like New York as much as I used to. It's just I prefer Brooklyn, which just feels like a gentrified New York. It's a calmer New York. I love Brooklyn.

• 1:20:06Bill Maher?

  So when you go to New York, you go to Brooklyn?

• 1:20:08Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:20:09Bill Maher?

  And what's in Brooklyn? What do you do there?

• 1:20:11Speaker 02

  Uh, just a great hotel and it's ten minutes away, William Vale, really cool hotel.

• 1:20:16Bill Maher?

  Ten minutes away from what?

• 1:20:17Speaker 02

  From the, from the city. If you have to go to work.

• 1:20:19Bill Maher?

  By subway?

• 1:20:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, no, I mean, if you.

• 1:20:21Bill Maher?

  What far across the bridge?

• 1:20:24Speaker 02

  If I go Jones Beach, that is from there.

• 1:20:26Bill Maher?

  You know what?

• 1:20:26Speaker 02

  I prefer it. I prefer it.

• 1:20:28Bill Maher?

  Jones Beach? You go to Jones Beach?

• 1:20:31Speaker 02

  Well, when I'm doing a show, if I come to New York.

• 1:20:33Bill Maher?

  Of course. I remember seeing shows at Jones Beach. I grew up in New Jersey.

• 1:20:37Speaker 02

  Right, right. So we're, yeah, we're playing the Garden this summer.

• 1:20:40Bill Maher?

  That's awesome. The Garden.

• 1:20:42Speaker 02

  August third.

• 1:20:44Bill Maher?

  That's awesome to be old like you and still play in the garden. I mean, because rock and roll.

• 1:20:50Speaker 02

  That's a lovely way of putting it.

• 1:20:51Bill Maher?

  Rock and roll.

• 1:20:52Speaker 02

  That's a lovely way of putting it, thank you.

• 1:20:53Bill Maher?

  Rock and roll was not meant to be an old person's game. I mean, I was around, not the first wave of rock and roll, but I was 12 in 1968. Okay, the Beatles were still playing. That's when I first listened to music. And no one was, I remember, no one was thinking it would go past 40.

• 1:21:13Speaker 02

  Well, you'd be dead, surely you'd be dead at 40.

• 1:21:17Bill Maher?

  You wouldn't be dead, but no one thought Mick Jagger would be doing it at 80.

• 1:21:22Speaker 02

  I don't know about, yeah, yeah, I mean, he finds so much, and he's engaged to his 39 year old with a four year old kid. Gotta love him. He knows how to live. Now, I always wonder with Mick.

• 1:21:33Bill Maher?

  We have to wonder how much Mick is ever engaged.

• 1:21:37Bill Maher?

  I mean that philosophically.

• 1:21:38Speaker 02

  Sure, but engaged enough so that he sustains the life that he wants.

• 1:21:42Bill Maher?

  He's, he's.

• 1:21:44Speaker 02

  Okay, he's figured life out. He figured it out.

• 1:21:47Bill Maher?

  He is one of none. Because, first of all, his waistline has not changed.

• 1:21:54Speaker 02

  No, size 28. We had the same stylist once, and so we found out they all have size 28 waists.

• 1:21:59Bill Maher?

  Who's all?

• 1:22:00Speaker 02

  The Stones.

• 1:22:02Bill Maher?

  No, maybe in their heyday.

• 1:22:04Speaker 02

  No, up until, I mean, everything for me is pre-COVID, having the stylists. But, yeah, they know, well, he was definitely a size 28. What's Keith?

• 1:22:14Bill Maher?

  And he's not a size 28.

• 1:22:16Speaker 02

  Well, Mick was.

• 1:22:17Bill Maher?

  I can't believe we're arguing about Rolling Stones waist sizes. Boy, this is a gay show. Okay, but no, Mick, but Mick Jagger, I mean, yes, first of all, also, they never lost their hair. Even the one who got cancer didn't lose his hair. It's amazing. They were like born rock stars, you know? So they, I always say this with the Stones, when they were young, they were skinny and ugly. And when they were old, they were skinny and ugly. And that's what worked for them, you know? They weren't the Beatles. They weren't the sweet little. They were the bad boys, which in a way is, you know, cooler, not that the Beatles aren't the coolest, but, you know? I mean, they certainly had their thing. And to think that somebody could do it at 80. And the reviews were good. Of their last, you know, they're on tour now, or they were very recently.

• 1:23:02Speaker 02

  It makes you feel, already feel like jumping to save someone when you say that, like, doing that show. And it, by the way, incredible, I saw the videos him dancing and doing it, so for me, it's, obviously for me,

• 1:23:14Bill Maher?

  It's great.

• 1:23:14Speaker 02

  My lineage.

• 1:23:15Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:23:15Speaker 02

  I'm only conveyor belt, I'm there in 12 minutes.

• 1:23:19Bill Maher?

  It'll seem like it.

• 1:23:20Speaker 02

  15 minutes, I'm there.

• 1:23:22Bill Maher?

  No, but in 20 years or something.

• 1:23:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:24Bill Maher?

  And then, but why not?

• 1:23:27Speaker 02

  No, of course, and the funny thing is, is that.

• 1:23:30Bill Maher?

  Just don't do it in a wheelchair, so like, there are people like Phil Collins, and I love him, and God bless him, or I've seen other people do it, like, they break their leg and they're out there, don't do it, just cancel the show. Do it like the kids do, like, I love the Gen Z people, like, I have a headache, canceling the show. Like, really, did you ever hear about the show must go on? They just don't give a shit. Don't tell Chaparral about the show must go on, or any of these kids, it's like, if I have a fucking hangnail, we cancel the show, and the kids deal with it, God bless them.

• 1:24:01Speaker 02

  Do you cancel shows much? Have you done?

• 1:24:03Bill Maher?

  I have never, ever, I never missed a show on either Politically Incorrect or Real Time, that's over 32 years, except the two they forced me to miss when I quote unquote had Covid, because I would have, I would have endangered the entire city. So, but I personally never missed a show, Stand Up never missed a show except two, because the plane broke, and so I couldn't get there. Never once cancelled or missed a show, because, yeah, there were times when I felt shitty. There's no business like show business.

• 1:24:38Speaker 02

  I had the last week of my last tour on, um, this is, we were on flu, had flu, that's the worst.

• 1:24:44Bill Maher?

  Well, flu.

• 1:24:45Speaker 02

  God.

• 1:24:46Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:46Speaker 02

  When you feel like shit, and you have to just.

• 1:24:48Bill Maher?

  Be hard to do shit.

• 1:24:50Speaker 02

  It took half a bottle of sake every night, just to kind of get.

• 1:24:53Bill Maher?

  Oh, so you did it with the flu?

• 1:24:55Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 1:24:55Bill Maher?

  You did?

• 1:24:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:56Bill Maher?

  God bless you.

• 1:24:57Speaker 02

  Well, there's no other way.

• 1:24:59Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 1:24:59Speaker 02

  It's no, it's no way, this is what it is, you can't fucking.

• 1:25:04Bill Maher?

  I know.

• 1:25:05Speaker 02

  No, by the way, no one cares. Be good, we paid money. Be great, these are all my memories, we're depending on you, you know, it's like. You have a responsibility, I like that, you know, you know.

• 1:25:14Bill Maher?

  Well, I mean, sometimes it's a, it's a hard call because. If you do the show sick, yes, congratulations, we appreciate you being a trooper.

• 1:25:23Speaker 02

  Didn't sound like it used to.

• 1:25:24Bill Maher?

  It's, it's.

• 1:25:25Speaker 02

  Didn't sound like it used to.

• 1:25:26Bill Maher?

  And I say this from personal experience, because in nineteen eighty-four, I was opening for Mr. Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Hold your applause to the end, but yes, I love Frankie. Uh, he was always great to me and it was a big, I was twenty-eight, it was a big feather in my cap to be opening in Las Vegas, Nevada. For Frankie, but it was a two-week gig and, you know, it's very dry in Vegas. And singers get something called Vegas throat.

• 1:25:54Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 1:25:56Bill Maher?

  And, uh, you know, Frankie had to cancel like half the shows, I remember, and he was doing everything, remember? He was taking, they, he said, they gave him one day, he said, yeah, they gave me a steroid.

• 1:26:06Speaker 02

  I.

• 1:26:06Bill Maher?

  You know, like.

• 1:26:07Speaker 02

  I had one the other day, I took a steroid, dexamethasone because of my.

• 1:26:11Bill Maher?

  And it, and it helps?

• 1:26:13Speaker 02

  It's weird, I was like, give me the Lance Armstrong, I want the cocktail, I wanna fucking, I wanna be the strongest guy in here.

• 1:26:20Bill Maher?

  You're like the pregnant woman.

• 1:26:21Speaker 02

  I wanna pick up, I wanna pick up the audience, one by one.

• 1:26:24Bill Maher?

  Woman who didn't want the epidermal and so the.

• 1:26:26Speaker 02

  And give me the epidermal now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I was, I was all about it. But it's funny, you've taken the four hours before, I was like, what's gonna happen, I was like, I thought it was like the, you know, remember the Incredible Hulk? Was Incredible, no, Six Million Dollar Man, right? Yeah.

• 1:26:45Speaker 02

  Get annoyed.

• 1:26:46Bill Maher?

  But didn't that steroid keep you up all night?

• 1:26:51Bill Maher?

  You can you sleep after?

• 1:26:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it was a little bit.

• 1:26:53Bill Maher?

  Aren't you so keyed up after?

• 1:26:54Speaker 02

  I was a lot of fun. I was a lot of fun after the show.

• 1:26:57Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 1:26:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:59Bill Maher?

  Even with the flu?

• 1:27:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, because once you got that adrenaline, it's like the next morning you wake up, you go, it's, did I get it? And you go, oh, no. And you go, you got that sort of haze around you when you're going to...

• 1:27:09Bill Maher?

  How long are you ever on the road without being at home? How many days in a row?

• 1:27:15Speaker 02

  Well, I just came back from five weeks. I'm about to do seven weeks. Then I've got two and a half months, and I've got 10 weeks. So I have a lot coming up. I'm just kind of overwhelmed by it, but it's something...

• 1:27:26Bill Maher?

  But you'll be away for 10 weeks without being home at one time?

• 1:27:29Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:27:30Bill Maher?

  That's tough.

• 1:27:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:32Bill Maher?

  I've never had that.

• 1:27:32Speaker 02

  No, it's a lot. And I'm, you know, every night is different, like, you know, same for you. Like, actors are different because they they get to go to a location.

• 1:27:39Bill Maher?

  But what do you do on the days, I mean, you can't perform every night in a row?

• 1:27:45Speaker 02

  No, I beat, I now they they have me on a show, because we do acoustic shows on the day, so we do have this VIP meeting greet, and I had this idea of, we'd be nice, people, you know, they come and they queue up, they pay a bunch of money, they line up, and they have this picture with you. They're always fumbling with what they want to say. They never get across how they feel. It's very emotional for people.

• 1:28:08Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:28:08Speaker 02

  And you have to respect that. And I say to them afterwards, I say, look, I know you didn't say what you wanted to say. It didn't come out right.

• 1:28:16Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:28:16Speaker 02

  And you were more tongue tied. Let's just have a moment. I'm gonna sing a couple of songs for you, so we have a special moment, 100 people in a room. We have a great moment with us, and this is just for you, just for now.

• 1:28:27Bill Maher?

  How many songs do you do?

• 1:28:28Speaker 02

  Just two, but it means I've got to warm up in the day at 12.

• 1:28:31Bill Maher?

  I'd rather see two like that than, you know, than a lot of bands for the whole hour.

• 1:28:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, you like it? Let me play one more.

• 1:28:40Bill Maher?

  Because that's an experience you'd never really have, otherwise.

• 1:28:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're just, they're they're one offs, they're deep cuts, we play them, and, but what happens is that, um, they just, they, my time on tour, it's not miserable. It's incredible on stage, incredible with people. The rest of it is miserable because I have to be silent.

• 1:28:59Bill Maher?

  No.

• 1:28:59Speaker 02

  Can't speak.

• 1:29:01Bill Maher?

  Save your voice.

• 1:29:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's just, like, the easiest way to say the whole...

• 1:29:04Bill Maher?

  So what do you do on the day off? That's what I'm asking. Like, the day between gigs?

• 1:29:09Speaker 02

  Uh, the day between gigs, usually we, we, we have our tour manager, Yvette, she's amazing.

• 1:29:15Bill Maher?

  I'd go home, but you don't.

• 1:29:16Speaker 02

  She, well, no, we can't, we're too far away. So she, we get always to the place we are. And really, um, I, I go off and I play tennis, I play tennis a lot. So it gets me away from there. I'm usually so out of it, I've come in, I've got like, you know, it's been on the bus for twelve hours and. So, but I go somewhere and I do something different and I sweat a bit. And I have a day off, it feels like this, remember those when you're a kid at school, even though the days are great. You have that sense of your day off is so important and then by Sunday, by the night. Like, oh my God, I'm back tomorrow, silence in the morning. So it's a really, uh, it's not, you know, I'm really grateful, but it's, it's, it just takes a, it's a lot of focus.

• 1:30:00Speaker 02

  Like the only, the way that I don't go crazy on tour is to, um. Is to just really focus so heavily on the show. That I'm like an athlete that's for the match, the game.

• 1:30:13Bill Maher?

  Of course.

• 1:30:14Speaker 02

  That's all it is. And if, because if I lose sight of that, it's just another thing, then I'm lost, ruddles.

• 1:30:20Bill Maher?

  It's the golden goose.

• 1:30:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:30:22Bill Maher?

  It pays the bills.

• 1:30:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:30:23Bill Maher?

  Makes everything else possible.

• 1:30:25Speaker 02

  Yes, so that's what my whole thing is about. What did I do yesterday? What's the all site list?

• 1:30:30Bill Maher?

  And it's what you can count on because it's you. I mean, you do, you've been in a lot of things as an actor. But you can't count on them, that somebody has to hire you. This is, this is what you control.

• 1:30:41Speaker 02

  If my kid's, um, Amazon bill was dependent on my acting career, there would be no Amazon bill. It's like, yeah, it's.

• 1:30:51Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but it's not your main thing, it's your hobby.

• 1:30:54Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:30:54Bill Maher?

  You can't like.

• 1:30:55Speaker 02

  I enjoy it. Um, I'm doing a movie coming up soon. Um.

• 1:31:01Speaker 02

  Uh, um, yeah, with a girl I worked with a little bit before Christmas, uh, before Christmas, before um, Covid, Janelle Shercliffe, and I did this film Habit, and I'm doing another movie with her coming up. So I'm excited about that. I like the process. Someone else had to think of it. The writers, they have to think of all that stuff. And it's such a, it's sort of a holiday to have someone that's thought of it something first, that they get to reinterpret, because I think it's magic how actors make words come alive off of the pages. Something super special um, that I really like. And I'd somehow, I just, I'm an adrenaline junkie, so I like that moment where the camera gonna go, okay, keep rolling and camera and action. And if you fuck up, you've got like a hundred people.

• 1:31:44Bill Maher?

  Oh, I remember.

• 1:31:45Speaker 02

  Who have to reset.

• 1:31:46Bill Maher?

  Oh, I know.

• 1:31:47Speaker 02

  So I like that thing, the responsibility of not only trying to be great for the uh, film, but not let people down. I did a, I went from a one, I did a hundred million dollar movie, I worked on a million dollar movie. I was downtown at a bank. It was called Hard Robber Bank. It didn't really end up being a great movie. Um, but it was a great process and I, I, we shot this downtown. I played a bank robber. And um, I remember this moment where there's a lot, that all the extras are lying on the floor. And now it's a marble floor, this lovely old bank, sorry. And I thought, you know, I don't like to be stuck up, you know. So it was like, there's people on the floor and I was like, oh, you know, how you, how you doing?

• 1:32:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's like laying down as a hostage. I said, how you doing? I, she goes, it's uh, are you all right now? That must be cold. She goes, oh no, it's such a pleasure to work with an actor who knows his lines. I thought, oh, poor thing, where's she been? But yeah, you know, you work on a independent movie. Uh, you have to know your lines, know your marks and not fuck up.

• 1:32:48Bill Maher?

  Well, not just an independent movie.

• 1:32:50Speaker 02

  Or any movie.

• 1:32:51Bill Maher?

  Any movie. I remember doing a.

• 1:32:54Speaker 02

  Well, some actors will show up, don't know their lines.

• 1:32:57Bill Maher?

  I remember doing a movie of the week when, in the eighties, I did, you know, it was on sitcoms and. We have some of the posters around here of my horrible movies. And I remember this actor who I was kind of like, you know, impressed to work with him because he remember had had been on some show when I was a kid, like a TV show, when I was ten years old. And now I'm twenty eight and I'm working with him. So I was like, kind of excited. And like, his day had passed. He was not on TV, right? But he was still an actor being hired. He was probably forty five now or something. And he had a scene and I was, I had done my scene. So I was just watching. And he could not get the line.

• 1:33:43Bill Maher?

  I mean, he could not remember. He either just didn't put in the time to memorize it. And it just, every time you don't do it, it gets worse. There's more tension on the set and everyone's looking at you like, you fucking loser. We could have been home by now, but you didn't learn your lines. And you're just, and you're getting mad and you're cursing and it's getting awkward because sets, as we know, are very tense places.

• 1:34:10Speaker 02

  And the, and, and, and the makeup trailer is the center of all activity. You'll find out everything is going on in a movie by going, getting your makeup done. And the best advice is to keep quiet and listen.

• 1:34:21Bill Maher?

  I bet you the makeup people know all the.

• 1:34:23Speaker 02

  Everything.

• 1:34:24Bill Maher?

  Right, because that's where they go and they're bitching, I can't believe he did that, right? And that, that kind of shit and they're hearing it.

• 1:34:30Speaker 02

  My favorite thing is the first movie I did was this film called Game of Their Lives. And it was an ensemble piece and David Anspor, amazing director, amazing guy. But the chaos and the madness of a, of a, of a

• 1:34:46Speaker 02

  a big ensemble cast. And we had this amazing soccer player, Eric Winaldo. He used to play for Bayern Munich. He was USA's top scorer. He's incredible footballer. But he had this real.

• 1:35:01Speaker 02

  He had a, you know, he was doing soccer stuff and the choreography and he was getting a little bit too comfortable in his role and and David was running a movie and Wes Bentley was the star and then Wes, who was the only one who wasn't a soccer player. The rest of us were soccer players, that's how we got the gigs. So we were all pretty proficient in soccer, but Wes, who was the star of the movie, wasn't. And Eric and Wes.

• 1:35:28Bill Maher?

  American duty, right?

• 1:35:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's an incredible actor.

• 1:35:32Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:35:32Speaker 02

  And he, this is the greatest moment, most hilarious moment, where I was just learning how on a film set, you just shut your mouth and know your lines. Was Wes had set up this um free kick that he could do. That he was comfortable with, but Eric was really upset that he had taken away the directorial reins of this piece. It was like, dude, let him take the fucking kick, who cares? But he took the kick and then they had this fight and then Eric took the ball and Wes, he threw the ball at him and he hit the star. And everyone was like, oh my god, it's like mutiny, like what is this chaos?

• 1:36:14Speaker 02

  So I learned on my first movie, just know your lines, know your positions and shut the fuck up. Just shut up, be good and go home. Cause like, and those ensemble pieces, Jerry Butler was in it, it was fun, you know, I met a lot of, he was, he was a great, he's a great, um. I always watch his movies and support him because he's a lot of fun.

• 1:36:36Bill Maher?

  You know, I gotta tell you something about English movies. I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, like, like Guy Ritchie movies.

• 1:36:44Speaker 02

  Snatch, come on.

• 1:36:45Bill Maher?

  I cannot watch it without the subtitles.

• 1:36:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:36:49Bill Maher?

  I mean, it might as well be in Chinese. I mean, can't you people learn to speak English?

• 1:36:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, you know, not really. Well, yeah, we just don't want to include you.

• 1:37:02Speaker 02

  You're not invited, I don't know.

• 1:37:03Bill Maher?

  You know, I gotta tell you something, I, I, this is true. I was in London in two thousand and seven, making the movie Religulous and I was there for New Year's Eve. And I was out on New Year's Eve and I remember I had lent a young lady my coat, so I was freezing. And I needed to get my driver. And I didn't know where I was and I had to tell him. And I got on the phone, cell phones were.

• 1:37:34Bill Maher?

  Thank God we had them by then, because otherwise I never would have gotten my driver. We haven't found my hotel that night. But he and I could not make each other understood. I had to get the girl whose coat I had given to get on the phone and translate for me. So that I could get, so that he could understand where I was and and get the car there. I don't know what that says about the world, but it just. The Savoy. Maybe that. Savoy. Maybe that we think we're more alike than we are and we're really still very far apart. Or maybe I'm just reading into it, but it was. The second.

• 1:38:17Bill Maher?

  I was like, wow, if I can't get this done in London. I am not going to Vladivostok. I'm just not, you know? I'm not a traveler, though. You you like travel. No. Can't stand it. Oh, really? Fucking. Yeah, I'm a homebody. I just. I'm a homebody. I just really. I love a homebody. I was, I tell you something, Gavin, I was on the road for forty two years. And last year was my last year. I've only been off for six months. And I mean, forty two years, you would think. And I was conflicted about stopping. Even though last year, the whole year, I was kind of counting down the gigs. I just had enough of hotels that don't know how to do shit anymore and just just getting.

• 1:39:01Bill Maher?

  What do you used to do in the day, like out of like of your, what's your day? Well, I only did weekends. So there was no day. I flew in the morning of the of the morning, the afternoon. I flew in right before the show started. The great thing about a private plane, went right to the venue. With the luggage, did the show, then went to the hotel, then went out, then woke up the next morning in that city. Yes, my dearest friend who travels with me, we'd have breakfast in the hotel the next morning. Breakfast like at one in the afternoon when I woke up. I'd have to kill a few hours, then we'd fly at the afternoon to the second city, do that show, and then fly home after that show. So I was never anywhere, I know.

• 1:39:46Speaker 02

  They said to me, how, what kind of, what do you want to do this year? Just, I want a tour so that I get a jet and it doesn't matter.

• 1:39:52Bill Maher?

  But doesn't that schedule sound good? Two cities.

• 1:39:56Speaker 02

  I would do it, I would.

• 1:39:57Bill Maher?

  Two cities, but only staying over one night.

• 1:39:59Speaker 02

  Genius.

• 1:40:00Bill Maher?

  So I, so I loved it. But even that became too much. And even though I've only been off six months, like I can't imagine right now doing it. Like I just, I wake up on Saturday, I'm like, oh, I don't have to go to Cincinnati today. And I love Cincinnati. I just don't have to go there. And it's just like joyous. I'm home, I can go feed the ducks.

• 1:40:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:40:24Bill Maher?

  Or in the pool again.

• 1:40:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:26Bill Maher?

  I tell these ducks, you can sit on the side of the pool, but you can't go in. And they take advantage of me. They know better.

• 1:40:32Speaker 02

  You had to work all those years so the ducks could have a place to be.

• 1:40:34Bill Maher?

  I have ducks and also groundhogs here that have ruined the lawn, but I left them because everyone needs to make a living.

• 1:40:42Speaker 02

  It's a great complex you have there.

• 1:40:43Bill Maher?

  What am I, a suburban dad? I want a perfect lawn to who? Impress who, my fucking teenage daughter?

• 1:40:49Speaker 02

  I'll trip on my lawn if I like.

• 1:40:50Bill Maher?

  My teenage daughter who doesn't exist? What's she gonna say? Dad, your lawn's embarrassing.

• 1:41:00Bill Maher?

  So you live close?

• 1:41:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41:02Bill Maher?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:41:04Speaker 02

  Like fifteen minutes.

• 1:41:06Bill Maher?

  And do you live with someone? Is this?

• 1:41:08Speaker 02

  No, I live with my kids.

• 1:41:09Bill Maher?

  Oh, you live with your, all three?

• 1:41:11Speaker 02

  Well, I live with my eighteen, my soon to be nineteen year old on Monday. He lives with me exclusively.

• 1:41:20Bill Maher?

  This is cool with mom?

• 1:41:23Speaker 02

  Oh, that's a whole nother podcast, but um yeah. Well, I think we're in the wrong podcast for that. But no, he he he lives with me and um I look after him. And then the other two come um on and off, so they're there now, they're they're all there now. They switch time between parents? Um, between that with me and their mom. And it's, you know, they, whatever the situat-, you know, it's it's it it.

• 1:41:48Speaker 02

  It's not ideal, but I mean, it's funny because they have such a diametrically opposed lifestyles. And I say, isn't that amazing? You know, you have, because obviously over uh you you have these views of extremely religious views, and over here you have an extremely non-religious view. Right. But isn't that beautiful that you get to make your own decisions of what that means? Right. But I do have an older one. Well, if you need a tag team partner on the religion thing, just send the kids over here because the kids love me and I'm sure your kids are amazing. You know, they are um.

• 1:42:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, we'll see how that pans out. It's they they're, you know, the most important thing for kids and nothing worse than um I know you're not into parenting, but nothing worse than a parent who forces their child uh to live vicariously through them, their inadequacies or whatever they're. It happens a lot. Oh, it's just like, let them, let them be who they are. Exactly. They're not you and, you know, that's it. So I. Yeah, and if they're, and if, I mean, it wouldn't be odd if they did have musical talent. And. But I find it, but what's, I I promise you, I tell you what's interesting. I'm a really big cook, I love cooking and um so, but I'm also don't know how to delegate and I'm not sure if I've been a good father in the sense of forcing them to do chores

• 1:43:05Speaker 02

  and forcing, I just been a bit more laid back about things. So when they're with me, I make food for them because I can't be bothered to ask someone, hey, I've got sixteen steps on this dish, help me with steps seven, eight, nine and ten, they're not interested, they do their thing, right? In the house. But what's amazing to me. Is that they all, well, the two older ones, I mean, will then go and cook at their mom's place.

• 1:43:33Bill Maher?

  What they learned at your place?

• 1:43:34Speaker 02

  What they mirrored, not even what they asked me, what they saw. And so they, so that to me is more valuable than, than hey, let's cook together. It's just that they were just like soaking up what they wanted to, and then they go off and do their thing. And that to me is, that's the great.

• 1:43:50Bill Maher?

  You're right. I've never been interested in parenting, but I always have. No, it's true. It's okay. But I've always thought that if you are a parent, one of the most important things you can do is you just have to accept that while they're children, they are not going to express the proper gratitude. It just kind of comes with being a kid. And because they're kids, you have to let that go. Now, I'm basing this on having young girlfriends, but I do think it's very true.

• 1:44:22Speaker 02

  They haven't thanked you appropriately.

• 1:44:24Bill Maher?

  I had a problem with that. But I know they love me. And I know they.

• 1:44:28Speaker 02

  They meant to thank me.

• 1:44:29Bill Maher?

  And they, I know they, you know, it's just not part of their DNA.

• 1:44:32Speaker 02

  You know what? They probably thank you in a, in a, in a sense, you know, when you're not there. You know what? Bill was so great. They, damn, that sushi was good.

• 1:44:40Bill Maher?

  When they get older, absolutely. But I really feel like that is true with kids.

• 1:44:45Speaker 02

  To me, the most important thing with my kids, and I, you know, I'm a musician, so what the fuck am I meant to talk about kids? But I ended up having a load of kids. Make them likable. Because to have an, I say to them, be funny and be polite and be funny. And life is gonna be so much easier for you, because if you're unlikable.

• 1:45:05Bill Maher?

  How about, can I add one?

• 1:45:06Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:45:07Bill Maher?

  Humble.

• 1:45:08Speaker 02

  Right. Yes.

• 1:45:09Bill Maher?

  Be fucking humble. You know, that's what is so, I feel, lacking in the obnoxious. Whether you're obnoxious of the left, obnoxious of the right, it is like a lack of humility. And I, and I say that as someone who, when I was younger, did commit sins of lack of humility.

• 1:45:29Speaker 02

  But isn't that, isn't that because that's, because that's the diametrically or, you know, intrinsically connected to the lack of knowledge you had.

• 1:45:37Bill Maher?

  Correct.

• 1:45:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:38Bill Maher?

  And, and the lack of.

• 1:45:39Speaker 02

  The more knowledge you gain.

• 1:45:40Bill Maher?

  Well, the lack of knowledge and the preponderance of insecurity.

• 1:45:45Bill Maher?

  It was, I think, more insecurity.

• 1:45:48Speaker 02

  Same as everyone.

• 1:45:49Bill Maher?

  I know, but when you're young, you, that is how you compensate.

• 1:45:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:45:53Bill Maher?

  For, like, maybe if I act like I'm a big deal, then people won't notice that I'm not, and I'm afraid I might never be. That's the big fear, that you might never be.

• 1:46:06Speaker 02

  Everyone is broken.

• 1:46:09Bill Maher?

  Everyone is broken.

• 1:46:10Speaker 02

  Everyone is broken.

• 1:46:11Bill Maher?

  You don't, you don't seem broken. You seem perfectly there.

• 1:46:16Speaker 02

  I'm perfectly present, but, but I have scars.

• 1:46:21Bill Maher?

  Oh, doesn't.

• 1:46:22Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 1:46:22Bill Maher?

  No, I went through life, but.

• 1:46:24Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:46:25Bill Maher?

  It's whether the scars are rendering you somebody who is, I mean, you don't strike me as not present, you don't strike me as crazy, you don't strike me as egomaniac, you don't strike me as anything that you could be.

• 1:46:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:46:40Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, but, but, I mean, um, yeah, for sure, thank you.

• 1:46:43Bill Maher?

  You're like a good dad.

• 1:46:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm obsessed with my kids, they're incredible, and, uh, it's really, I, you know, we all have our own things, and, um, I enjoy them a lot. Um, but I also have this incredible, um, thing between, uh, doing the band, and that takes so, so much time. I don't know, do you think about things like, is it important to have meaning in your life? Like, for me, reflecting, uh, the last few years, it has been important for me to know my place and to know my contribution to myself, and to me, making sure that, yeah, I was in the right thing, doing the right, doing the right thing all the time, and having this

• 1:47:27Speaker 02

  artisan life of devotion to music, and, uh, it really helped me to make a, what I think is a really good record, because it's just sort of full of gratitude, humility about it, like, you know, knowing this, I'm just a working musician, but like, what a gift to make songs that people could listen to.

• 1:47:44Bill Maher?

  You were saying, looking for the meaning of life, that's what inspired this record?

• 1:47:49Speaker 02

  Well, it's just the idea of like, did I get it right? Did I get it right?

• 1:47:52Bill Maher?

  Let's plug it.

• 1:47:53Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:47:54Bill Maher?

  What's, it's coming out in July?

• 1:47:56Speaker 02

  July, yeah.

• 1:47:57Bill Maher?

  What's it called?

• 1:47:57Speaker 02

  I Beat Loneliness.

• 1:47:59Bill Maher?

  I Beat Loneliness, that's a great title.

• 1:48:02Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:48:02Bill Maher?

  That came to you just while you were doing something, or you were?

• 1:48:05Speaker 02

  It's one of the first songs that I wrote, and, you know, I always wait.

• 1:48:08Bill Maher?

  Came to your head?

• 1:48:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not a very convoluted system. I get a, I get a bit of music that I like. I play it in my house. I have a studio in one of the spare bedrooms. I tricked it out a bit, so it looks like a studio, but it's really, it's a spare bedroom. And the closet is actually got a window in where I sing. Uh, so it's very modest, but it just, yeah, I just like to create these environments where I think about things and. Yeah, so things. So when I got that phrase, you know, I'm just singing along to the track that I've made. And when those things, you know, I sing these things, you just know intrinsically if they're right or not, you know? Like you might sing, uh, you know, uh, bloody blah, or you might sing I Be Loneliness. You find and it just fits.

• 1:48:54Speaker 02

  And that, uh, that almost set up the aesthetic for the record, all the intention of the record. And it's wild how it came together because it looks, uh, very complete and very thought out. Way smarter than I actually intended it to be. It's one of those funny things that the sum of the parts is way greater than the, the individual efforts that went into it. Suddenly looked this sort of journey of this record that, um, is very exciting and, uh, I think that.

• 1:49:25Bill Maher?

  I will be the first online to buy it. I'm going down to the record store, to the EMI shop on Wobol Street in London in nineteen sixty-two, and I'm gonna buy this record.

• 1:49:35Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:49:35Bill Maher?

  Um, but, uh, you know, I don't know. I, I'm anxious to hear the lyric to that song because, you know, you're a rock star, you're a good looking guy. I'm guessing you beat loneliness a long time ago, but if you're still having problems.

• 1:49:49Speaker 02

  No, no one does. I don't think anyone does.

• 1:49:50Bill Maher?

  Please come back here, will you?

• 1:49:52Speaker 02

  Yes, I, I wanna come back here.

• 1:49:54Bill Maher?

  I was very flattered that you would do this show.

• 1:49:57Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 1:49:57Bill Maher?

  It's a, uh, you know.

• 1:49:59Speaker 02

  It was mutual. I was like, I thought I'd, I was like, oh, my God, I'm in a, a.

• 1:50:02Bill Maher?

  A lot of people are scared of me. They think I'm terrible. I'm, I'm, am I terrible? I'm not terrible.

• 1:50:06Speaker 02

  I think that you're absolutely, uh, you, you're a very straight shooter, which people aren't straight shooters. So you've built a career being a straight shooter.

• 1:50:16Bill Maher?

  That scares some people. It scares some people.

• 1:50:18Speaker 02

  But that's their, that's their shortcoming. If, if people are scared of a.

• 1:50:23Bill Maher?

  Like, but this show, this show anybody can do because, you know, it's just me getting high. Real time, sometimes, you know, celebrities be like, "Well, I don't think I'm smart enough to do that show." And I don't say it, but I always want to say to them, "You're correct. You are not smart enough to do that show." This is different. This is just two people shooting the shit.

• 1:50:46Speaker 02

  Well, I did on that front, I always remember that line Christopher Hitchens that we spoke about, that we both love, who, you know, that aphorism that people talk about, they say, "Everyone has a book inside of them." And he said, "Yeah, everyone has a book inside of them, but most of the time, this work should stay." Just to bring Christopher in the ending.

• 1:51:08Bill Maher?

  All right, Gavin Rustail, that was so much fun.

• 1:51:11Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:51:12Bill Maher?

  It was a pleasure to get to know you.

• 1:51:13Speaker 02

  Thank you. It was really fun.

• 1:51:15Bill Maher?

  All right.

• 1:51:20Speaker 03

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• 1:51:29Speaker 04

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