#2438 - John Mellencamp

John Mellencamp is a Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter, musician, painter, and a 2008 inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He has released more than two dozen albums over his career, including 2023’s “Orpheus Descending.” Mellencamp will embark on a landmark tour this summer, “Dancing Words Tour — The Greatest Hits,” which will take place across 19 U. S. cities. www.mellencamp.com/tourwww.youtube.com/@JohnMellencamp Perplexity: Download the app or ask Perplexity anything at https://pplx.ai/rogan. Don’t miss out on all the action this week at DraftKings! Download the DraftKings app today! Sign-up using https://dkng.co/rogan or through my promo code ROGAN. GAMBLING PROBLEM? CALL 1-800-GAMBLER, (800) 327-5050 or visit gamblinghelplinema.org (MA). Call 877-8-HOPENY/text HOPENY (467369) (NY). Please Gamble Responsibly. 888-789-7777/visit ccpg.org (CT), or visit www.mdgamblinghelp.org (MD). 21+ and present in most states. (18+ DC/KY/NH/WY). Void in ONT/OR/NH. Eligibility restrictions apply. On behalf of Boot Hill Casino & Resort (KS). Pass-thru of per wager tax may apply in IL. 1 per new customer. Must register new account to receive reward Token. Must select Token BEFORE placing min. $5 bet to receive $300 in Bonus Bets if your bet wins. Min. -500 odds req. Token and Bonus Bets are single-use and non-withdrawable. Token expires 2/1/26. Bonus Bets expire in 7 days (168 hours). Stake removed from payout. Terms: sportsbook.draftkings.com/promos. Ends 1/25/26 at 11:59 PM ET. Sponsored by DK. This video is sponsored by BetterHelp. Visit https://BetterHelp.com/JRE 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.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  The Joe Rogan Experience.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Training by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

• 0:11Joe Rogan?

  Okay, cool. Why would I hate my tattoos?

• 0:15Speaker 03

  Because you get older and they get all smudgy and...

• 0:19Joe Rogan?

  Mine are getting kinda smudgy.

• 0:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, look at this one.

• 0:23Joe Rogan?

  It's pretty smudgy.

• 0:25Speaker 03

  Pretty fucking smudgy. I owned a tattoo parlor in, I don't know what year it was, mid eighties, and they were illegal in Indiana, but because it was me, they said, "Okay, leave him alone."

• 0:41Joe Rogan?

  Really?

• 0:42Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 0:43Joe Rogan?

  I remember when they were illegal in New York. I used to, I went to Connecticut to get my first tattoo.

• 0:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, uh, I didn't know it was illegal, but I met this guy in LA and, uh, he worked at Sunset, you know, where the Hyatt House is, and there was a tattoo parlor right across the street. Anyway, he was there. And, uh, so I brought him to Bloomington because he wanted to get out of LA. And guess why? They closed me down.

• 1:13Joe Rogan?

  Why?

• 1:14Speaker 03

  Fucking guy was a heroin addict.

• 1:15Joe Rogan?

  I know.

• 1:19Speaker 03

  And he did this tattoo one time and I went over, I just went over to the shop, I said, "Hey, let's do this little..." And he was all fucked up. And it was just like, "What's wrong with it?" You know? Because I didn't know. I don't know anything about heroin addicts, so...

• 1:35Joe Rogan?

  There wasn't a lot of heroin addicts back then. That was a rare thing. Now, we think about how many people are, because of the Sackler family, think of how many people are hooked on opiates today. I mean, it's gotta be.

• 1:47Speaker 03

  Lots.

• 1:48Joe Rogan?

  It's off the charts in comparison to what it was like in, you know, the 1980s. There's, I mean, I knew one guy that, uh, had a friend who did heroin. That's it.

• 2:00Speaker 03

  Well, I was at a, the first time I saw somebody do heroin was, uh...

• 2:06Speaker 03

  I was in college and there was a place called Bull Island that tried to imitate Woodstock. And me and my then-wife and my kid, my little girl, and and my roommate who lived with us, we're just walking down and we see this guy shooting up. So we just thought, well, we'll watch. Cause he was just sitting right there. I mean, there was like 200,000 people there. And he shot and he went out. And I looked at the guy I was with and go, we won't be doing this.

• 2:49Speaker 03

  We're not gonna do this.

• 2:52Joe Rogan?

  I had a friend who was a longshoreman and he worked with this guy that every lunchtime, he would go and score and sit in his truck and shoot up. And that's what he did every lunch. He was a functional heroin addict. And he would show up for work every day and he did his job. But during lunchtime, during his hour, he would do heroin and just fucking find his happy place and then an hour later go back to work.

• 3:23Speaker 03

  And the one shot, but it lasted all day?

• 3:26Joe Rogan?

  I don't know. I don't know if he did heroin. I didn't ask if he did heroin after that as well. I'm assuming he probably did. But he was a functional heroin addict. Like guy kept a full job. He was in the union. And everybody knew. This guy would go on his break, shoot up.

• 3:46Speaker 03

  Last time I did drugs was 1973.

• 3:53Joe Rogan?

  What was the reason you stopped?

• 3:55Speaker 03

  My ear?

• 3:56Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:58Speaker 03

  Well, I used to like to smoke and drink whiskey.

• 4:06Speaker 03

  And then I liked to fight. Oh, that's a problem. I couldn't whip anybody.

• 4:13Speaker 03

  I couldn't.

• 4:16Speaker 03

  But I loved the contact and the rush of like, you know, starting the fight. But so anyway, I was in college and my roommate and I went to this downtown bar, which we'd never been to. And I sat at the bar and I would start these fights. You know, just a prick. And I was sitting next to this big guy and for whatever reason, I thought it was a good idea if I spit on him. Oh. One of those guys, you know, you know, those guys that get drunk. Oh, yeah. Yeah, well, that was me.

• 5:00Speaker 03

  So I did and we went out back and he left me in the alley like a wet rag. I mean, he beat the shit out of me. Beat the shit out of me and I was a hippie. I had hair done to here. And they, the guy, my roommate was driving me home into No Pinto. And I was leaning on the door like this. I was so fucked up from getting beat up. I mean, the oars around my face were this big. And I was leaning on the door and all of a sudden he went over a railroad track and I fell out of the car.

• 5:42Speaker 03

  Got my hair wrapped around the jig of a flop that holds the car. And the guy that I'm with drunk, driving, he didn't even know I fell out of the car. And I'm going, stop the car, stop. He didn't even, oh.

• 5:59Speaker 03

  And so I got up the next morning and I looked at myself.

• 6:07Speaker 03

  And I was unrecognizable. I had road rash on my arms. My knees were all fucked up. My face was beat up from the. And I just said, you know, this drug and alcohol thing is not working for you. And so I, I went and got all my hair cut off, not as short as yours, but not much longer. And, uh, that was it.

• 6:31Joe Rogan?

  Well, you found your rock bottom.

• 6:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:34Joe Rogan?

  That's what they say. They say you need to find rock bottom. I would never imagine that you would be the type of guy that would fuck with people at a bar and spit on somebody and start a fight. It just, you just don't seem like that at all.

• 6:47Speaker 03

  Well, I grew up in a small town and, uh, there was not much to do in a small town. Uh, you know, you would either, uh, find a girl or, or fight.

• 7:00Speaker 03

  Just.

• 7:00Joe Rogan?

  I figured you for the find the girl type of guy.

• 7:03Speaker 03

  Well, you know, I, I, I was, uh, I did okay with that, but it didn't always work. So, yeah. Yeah. It was like, uh, don't forget Joe, it was like nineteen sixty seven, sixty six. You weren't, you weren't even born yet.

• 7:21Joe Rogan?

  I was born sixty seven.

• 7:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. So this is like nineteen sixty seven.

• 7:24Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 7:25Speaker 03

  So, you know.

• 7:28Speaker 03

  So from that time on until I turned twenty one, I was twenty one when I quit using drugs and quit smoking, quit drinking.

• 7:37Joe Rogan?

  Wow. And nothing since then?

• 7:39Speaker 03

  Not a drop.

• 7:40Joe Rogan?

  That's impressive.

• 7:41Speaker 03

  Not a drop. Well, you know, I think I've thought about, and I, I think that I didn't really like it that much. You know, as much as I thought I did.

• 7:50Joe Rogan?

  Well, you certainly didn't like the results, right? One bad result will.

• 7:55Speaker 03

  Will do you.

• 7:56Joe Rogan?

  Set you straight.

• 7:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, will do you and, yeah.

• 7:59Joe Rogan?

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• 8:42Speaker 04

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• 9:02Joe Rogan?

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• 9:44Joe Rogan?

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• 10:21Joe Rogan?

  You were a big part of my high school experience. It was interesting because you, your songs sort of introduced the idea of nostalgia to me.

• 10:34Speaker 03

  I don't know what that means.

• 10:35Joe Rogan?

  Well, when you were singing songs like Jack and Diane, it's like I was kind of realizing as I was a very young guy, listening to those great songs, that there's, there's gonna be, like, this is a weird time in life, and there's gonna be a time where you're gonna look back on this, and it's probably one of the best times of your life, but even though it doesn't feel like it. It felt, you know, it felt confusing and weird. And I remember thinking at the time, like, my god, like, is this as good as it gets? You know, some people look back on this weird, confusing time of adolescence as the happiest moments of their life. I'm like, I can't wait to get the fuck out of this time of my life.

• 11:20Joe Rogan?

  And it's like, you know, you were singing from a position of, like, an everyman position of, you know, you were, you were singing nostalgia. They were great fucking songs. They had heart and it was, it was soul to them, but it was like, it was a lot of sadness, you know? A lot, "Oh yeah, life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone." And I was like, oh, Jesus Christ, life's gonna go, this is it.

• 11:52Speaker 03

  This is it.

• 11:53Joe Rogan?

  This is it?

• 11:54Speaker 03

  This is it. Well, I, listen, I struggled with that, probably like you did, or he did.

• 12:03Speaker 03

  You know, there's a point in a man's life where he feels like, there's gotta be more to life than this. I mean, I had huge hit records and, you know, very, very, very, very, very lucky, very lucky. You know, everything was, you know, it was just, I was just lucky. And I would go home and I would think,

• 12:31Speaker 03

  I'm not happy. There's gotta be more to life than this. And then guess what happened? I got a little bit older and I found out there's not. And I'm good at it. I'm good at it. So, you know, we're only on this earth for a few fucking minutes. Quit feeling sorry for yourself and quit being confused and accept your responsibilities and, and try to, you know, maintain some humility, which was a million miles away from me spitting on people.

• 13:06Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  In a bar.

• 13:08Joe Rogan?

  What didn't you enjoy about being this enormous rock star in the early days of MTV? I mean, you were a rock star when it became a totally different thing because it was like this visual thing that was in everyone's household now. It wasn't as simple as, no, you were on The Tonight Show and you would sing this musical segment and people would have to go see you live, to go see you perform.

• 13:30Speaker 03

  And all you got to see of guys in rock bands were their album covers.

• 13:34Joe Rogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  You know, you would, you would go to a record store and, and file through the records and if you liked the way a band looked, you would buy the record.

• 13:43Joe Rogan?

  Yep.

• 13:44Speaker 03

  At least I would.

• 13:45Joe Rogan?

  I would too, yeah.

• 13:46Speaker 03

  And, and so, um, I forgot the question.

• 13:50Joe Rogan?

  Well, I was just saying, like, what was it, what was not good about that? I mean, what, what was that experience like being this enormous rock star that left you feeling like you wanted more, that you weren't happy?

• 14:04Speaker 03

  Uh, I think that, uh, for me, I think, I, I think when, when that happens, it's the age you're at. And I think it's a chemical imbalance in our brain. And as we grow older, it kind of finds its way. And like I said, I just woke up one day and just went, hey, this is all there is, accept it. And try to show some humility and, and try to be good at it. And it, I never thought about it again.

• 14:39Joe Rogan?

  That's interesting. Well, you're a, you're a snap out of it type of guy, right? You snapped out of drugs and alcohol. You snapped out of feeling sorry for yourself.

• 14:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:48Joe Rogan?

  That's a good trait to have.

• 14:50Speaker 03

  Well, I'm very lucky that, that I'm, listen Joe, you're looking at the luckiest fucking guy you, you've ever interviewed. I don't give a shit who you've interviewed. I'm the luckiest guy you know. I was born with spina bifida. Do you know what that is?

• 15:05Joe Rogan?

  I don't.

• 15:07Speaker 03

  That's where you have a hole in your spine. And

• 15:13Speaker 03

  the fluid and all of the, your nerve endings, like on me.

• 15:25Joe Rogan?

  Oh, wow. Oh, that's crazy. Yeah.

• 15:31Joe Rogan?

  That scar is huge.

• 15:32Speaker 03

  That's nineteen fifty-one.

• 15:34Joe Rogan?

  In nineteen fifty-one, you got that operation?

• 15:37Speaker 03

  I was born with, you're born with spina bifida.

• 15:41Joe Rogan?

  So what do they do to, what, what was that operation exactly?

• 15:46Speaker 03

  Well, they had to, uh, well, here's the story. I was, my parents are only twenty years older than me. So I was born deformed.

• 16:00Speaker 03

  And my parents didn't know what the fuck to do. You know, what are we gonna do with this kid? So they just went like that to my grandmother, here, you take him. And, uh, so I was in the hospital and there were four other kids. And there was a young doctor named Heinberger, who was just a young neurosurgeon. Don't forget, neurosurgery in nineteen fifty-one was in its... So he just said, well, we've got to try to do something with these kids. And, uh,

• 16:36Speaker 03

  so he operated on all of us.

• 16:40Speaker 03

  I was the only one that lived. Oh, boy.

• 16:45Speaker 03

  You know, the fact that... And he charged my parents a dollar. For the... yeah, because it was an experiment. I was like a guinea pig. And these other poor kids who had the same thing I did.

• 17:00Speaker 03

  They all died within, you know, six months. I remember seeing one girl that made it till she was fourteen and she was in a wheelchair. I would see her at basketball games and my parents would go, "That's the other little girl that had the same operation you did." And then she died. So, my whole life has been full of luck. I mean, uh, I'm not supposed to be.

• 17:30Joe Rogan?

  What did they do during the operation? What is the procedure?

• 17:35Speaker 03

  Well, they have to cut your head off, for starters. You know, they had to cut my head and lay it open to get to my spine. And then they would push each individual nerve ending back down into my spine, drain the fluid off, sew it back up, and make sure that everything was working. And, uh, they told my parents, you know, "Look, uh, here he is. He's probably going to die, get encephalitis, and his head's gonna fill up with water. We don't anticipate him living much more than six or seven months."

• 18:21Speaker 03

  And I was, fuck, I think I was in fifth grade. I didn't even know I'd had the operation. And some kid in my class said, "Hey, Malin Camp, what's that big scar on the back of your neck?" Don't forget, now we're talking, you know, nineteen fifty-seven, fifty-eight, sixty, maybe.

• 18:42Speaker 03

  I didn't even know there was a scar back there. You know.

• 18:45Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 18:46Speaker 03

  It wasn't like I was going. And my parents never told me. So I came home and I asked my old man, I said, Dad, what's with the scar in the back of my neck? And he goes, oh, don't worry about it. You had an operation when you were born. So I did it. I played football. I ran track. I fought. You know, I did everything that every other kid did without a thought of that. Not until I got older. And I had started having panic disorder that I thought.

• 19:19Speaker 03

  I thought maybe that the panic disorder was from.

• 19:24Speaker 03

  From that operation.

• 19:25Joe Rogan?

  How old when you started having panic disorder?

• 19:28Speaker 03

  Uh, I was just out of college. I couldn't leave the house. I became what they call, uh, what's that called? Agoraphobia?

• 19:36Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 19:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I had agoraphobia for about a year and a half. And then I got a record deal. And I had to leave the house. I mean, I was married in high school. I got married in high school. And the girl I was married to was five years older than me, you know?

• 19:52Joe Rogan?

  How old were you?

• 19:54Speaker 03

  Eighteen.

• 19:55Joe Rogan?

  Eighteen?

• 19:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:57Joe Rogan?

  You had a kid, right? You had a kid real young?

• 19:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, she's fifty something now.

• 20:02Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 20:03Speaker 03

  I, I have three girls and two boys.

• 20:06Joe Rogan?

  Weren't you a grandfather when you were in your thirties?

• 20:09Speaker 03

  Maybe.

• 20:10Joe Rogan?

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• 20:51Joe Rogan?

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• 21:07Speaker 04

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• 21:37Speaker 03

  Because that oldest daughter of mine got married when she was like 19.

• 21:42Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 21:43Speaker 03

  Not much to do in a small town, man.

• 21:45Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 21:46Speaker 03

  Not much to do. So, that's the spina bifida.

• 21:53Joe Rogan?

  But it never bothered you again, other than the panic? Were you performing when you were having the panic stuff?

• 22:00Speaker 03

  Oh, man, I have been on stage in front of like 20,000 people and had a panic attack.

• 22:06Joe Rogan?

  Oy.

• 22:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's like, have you ever had one?

• 22:09Joe Rogan?

  No.

• 22:10Speaker 03

  You're lucky. Because you feel like, I can't breathe.

• 22:17Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 22:19Speaker 03

  My chest hurts. And...

• 22:23Joe Rogan?

  I've seen it. I've seen people have them. It's horrific. You can't do anything for them. You're like, are you okay? You think they're having a heart attack. You think they're dying.

• 22:31Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, I've been on stage and I remember having to plant my feet and just power through, you know, in front of 20,000 people. And it was awful.

• 22:42Joe Rogan?

  Did it pass while you were on stage?

• 22:44Speaker 03

  Uh, I don't know if it did. I just remember it happening numerous times. And then guess what happened? I had a fucking real heart attack on stage at Jones Beach like 30 years later.

• 22:57Joe Rogan?

  Oh, Jesus.

• 22:58Speaker 03

  I know. So...

• 23:00Speaker 03

  But you know what that heart attack led to? I was, I just married Elaine Irwin and we had two little boys and I got to stay home. Cause I said, fuck that, I'm gonna die. I didn't know about heart disease. I'm gonna die, so I wanna spend the last couple of years of my life with my boys, who were little teeny guys, which I wanna tell you a story about them and you. And so I got to actually kinda not be in the music business, which pleased me.

• 23:39Joe Rogan?

  How old were you when you had your heart attack?

• 23:42Speaker 03

  Forty-two.

• 23:42Joe Rogan?

  Oh geez.

• 23:44Speaker 03

  And so I got to stay home. I stayed home for three and a half years. Elaine didn't model and we just, you know, we had TV shows we watched, which is unheard of in my life. You know, like, hey, it's Thursday night, let's watch, let's watch this, you know? Which is where you come in. So the boys were little and they loved your show. They loved your fucking show. And I was kinda like, I don't know if the kids should be watching this, you know?

• 24:17Joe Rogan?

  You talking about Fear Factor?

• 24:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:19Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 24:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't know if the kids should be watching. So I made a deal with them. All right, you guys, you can watch this show, but you have to watch Sixty Minutes Two. So if you're gonna watch this, then you gotta watch Sixty Minutes. And they obliged, which surprised the hell out of me. But it was like, Dad, Sixty Minutes on. Dad, Fear Factor's on. I know. So we would watch it together. I mean, how lucky is that?

• 24:48Joe Rogan?

  That, well, it sounds like it was a blessing in disguise.

• 24:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:52Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. It gave you pause.

• 24:54Speaker 03

  You know what luck is?

• 24:56Joe Rogan?

  What?

• 24:56Speaker 03

  Thinking you're lucky.

• 24:58Joe Rogan?

  Mmm.

• 24:59Speaker 03

  Thinking you're lucky.

• 25:00Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 25:01Speaker 03

  What you think about yourself, all comes true. I wrote it in a song once. What you think about yourself will come true.

• 25:08Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 25:09Speaker 03

  So if you call yourself a dumb ass, guess what? You do it enough and you start, your brain starts believing it.

• 25:17Joe Rogan?

  What caused your heart attack at such a young age?

• 25:22Speaker 03

  Me being stupid.

• 25:25Speaker 03

  I would go in and to get a physical and they'd go, John, your cholesterol is off the charts. It's at four hundred. And I would go, am I all right now? And they'd go, well, yeah, you're all right now. Good. Thought I didn't want to get on medicine. You know, and statin drugs had just become, you know, were just were invented.

• 25:49Speaker 03

  You know, at that time, people started using the statins and I didn't want to take them. I didn't know what they were.

• 25:57Speaker 03

  But I know all about heart disease now.

• 25:58Joe Rogan?

  Did you have plaque? Did you have arterial plaque?

• 26:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:01Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 26:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. And it runs in my family. I have a sister that has, or she used to, I don't think she does anymore, but her cholesterol is at five hundred. Imagine? That's like, it's crazy.

• 26:18Joe Rogan?

  Cholesterol is a very controversial subject now because people are starting to try to sort out what is the actual cause of heart disease? And there's a lot of people that don't believe it is cholesterol. They think it's arterial plaque. And what is that stuff called? Natto kinasease? I don't know how to pronounce it. But there's a supplement, like an over the counter supplement that's supposed to be able to eliminate arterial plaque in a very profound way that they're just starting to realize.

• 26:51Speaker 03

  I don't know, but.

• 26:51Joe Rogan?

  It's clogging of it.

• 26:54Speaker 03

  Listen, I was in New York once with a girl and I went to the doctor with her. She's an actress. And she was getting a physical and she wanted me to go, so I went with her. And she went to the best doctor in New York City. And I found myself along with that doctor and I said, so.

• 27:22Speaker 03

  The doctor in Bloomington just put me on metformin. What's the side effects for metformin? And this guy, Joe, was the guy. He went longevity. And he said, if it was up to me, I'd put the entire United States on metformin and a statin. Because the fucking food we eat is terrible.

• 27:46Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 27:47Speaker 03

  It's processed, it's this and that, you know, and he just said, you know, the, the human body was not meant to eat this crap.

• 27:55Joe Rogan?

  That's a fact.

• 27:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:57Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I think the solution is probably eating food that you're meant to eat, but metformin is one of those drugs that longevity doctors recommend. I've never been on it, but I know quite a few people that have. I, I think, isn't it a diabetes drug initially?

• 28:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I'm, uh, my mom died of diabetes, so, uh, I was always borderline, and I'm still borderline, and this was...

• 28:22Joe Rogan?

  She'd get type one or type two?

• 28:23Speaker 03

  Well, she started out with two. And then she paid no attention to it, wouldn't take her medicine. We'd drive by Krispy Kreme and she'd go, "Don't tell your dad." Okay. And she'd get a half a dozen, you know, Krispy Kremes and eat them and it's just like, hmm.

• 28:40Joe Rogan?

  That's where it's at, it's, it's the food. It's a horrible thing that we've done to this country. You know, there's, I mean, this is the most controversial thing about RFK Junior, I guess. Or one of the most controversial things is the elimination of all the stuff that's already eliminated in a lot of European countries. He's...

• 28:59Speaker 03

  I, I had a friend come here from Europe who had not ever been the United States and got sick.

• 29:05Joe Rogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:06Speaker 03

  Just from eating.

• 29:07Joe Rogan?

  Just eating our food.

• 29:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:09Joe Rogan?

  It's crazy, just our bread. What is that, that supplement?

• 29:13Speaker 01

  You had it right.

• 29:14Joe Rogan?

  How do I say it?

• 29:17Joe Rogan?

  Can you find out what it's supposed to do? Like what, because there's a recent study. There it is, okay. So, Natoc... Yeah, that's it. Natocainase supplementation can significantly reduce the size of existing arterial plaques and slow the progression of arteriosclerosis. I never say that word. Atheriosclerosis. Ath... No. Atherosclerosis? Whatever. Particularly at higher doses. Natocainase and arterial plaque reduction. Multiple clinical trials provide evidence that Natocainase, an enzyme derived from fermented Japanese food, Nato, has a positive effect on arteriosclerosis,

• 30:00Joe Rogan?

  hardening and narrowing of the arteries due to plaque buildup. Yeah, so, folks, go take that stuff. High-dose supplement shrinks arterial plaque by 36%. Very interesting stuff.

• 30:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:12Joe Rogan?

  And it's a very common supplement. It's an easy-to-get supplement and, you know, comes from fermented food.

• 30:18Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm. Well, you know, if you... If, you know, I've watched a lot of things about the food that we eat. And...

• 30:28Joe Rogan?

  Terrible.

• 30:28Speaker 03

  Terrible.

• 30:29Joe Rogan?

  Well, a bunch of monsters decided to make more money. And the way they make more money is to throw a bunch of preservatives and bullshit and stuff in the food so it keeps their shelf life as long as possible.

• 30:40Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. You've heard those stories about taking a hamburger that you would buy at a very popular store and just putting it in a box and leaving it for five years. And you... Five years later, it's...

• 30:54Joe Rogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:55Speaker 03

  I... My... My... Some of my grandkids were at my house in... on Dufuski. And they had an ice cream sandwich.

• 31:07Speaker 03

  And they only ate half of it.

• 31:10Speaker 03

  And it sat there for three hours and did not melt.

• 31:14Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I've seen those. Yeah, that's not ice cream.

• 31:17Speaker 03

  That's not ice cream.

• 31:18Joe Rogan?

  I don't know what the fuck's in there, but it's not regular ice cream. The Burger King or the McDonald's hamburger thing is nuts. Cause what is the longest that that guy, there's one guy that's had one on a shelf at his house for, God, I wanna say it's close to 20 years or something crazy like that. It's just sitting there and you would think that he got it five hours ago.

• 31:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:43Joe Rogan?

  And we're supposed to be eating that.

• 31:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:45Joe Rogan?

  And for a lot of people, that's a big portion of their diet is fast food, which is just crazy. You're just sucking down all these chemicals and preservatives. Cause if something cannot rot, can sit there and not rot.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  Quarter pound if it's 30 years old.

• 31:59Joe Rogan?

  It's a quarter pound if it's 30 years old. Wow, that is insane.

• 32:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:06Joe Rogan?

  That's insane.

• 32:08Speaker 03

  That's craziness.

• 32:09Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 32:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, our, our, our food source and, and I don't know about RFK Junior. I, you know, I don't follow what he says or listen to. I try not to listen to much politics.

• 32:23Joe Rogan?

  Good for you. That's another good way to not have a heart attack.

• 32:26Speaker 03

  Well, you know why? Cause it's all, you know, I was a hippie. And I grew up thinking, you know, that anybody over 30 was the enemy.

• 32:36Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 32:37Speaker 03

  And, you know, it's kinda like, I remember when Kennedy was shot, I asked my dad. I go, do you, I was like a kid. I go, do you really think one guy did it? And he just looked at me and went, what do you think? And that was the whole, his whole answer.

• 32:58Joe Rogan?

  Wow, well, he knew it back then. That's interesting. Cause it took a long, it took until Dick Gregory brought the Zapruder film on the Geraldo Rivera show, which was, I think it was 12 years after Kennedy's assassination, that people realized that he probably had gotten shot from the front.

• 33:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:18Joe Rogan?

  Cause his head went back into the left.

• 33:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, and, and, and I've seen that and.

• 33:25Speaker 03

  I remember, my dad was a young Democrat, you know, and, and so he, he was involved a lot with the Democratic Party back then. And I'd ask him questions and he never would really give me answers. He would just give me looks.

• 33:48Joe Rogan?

  Uh.

• 33:49Speaker 03

  It's kind of like, and he knew the look. It was just like, uh, what do you think, John? You really think somebody did that? You know, figure it out for yourself.

• 34:05Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, not much has changed.

• 34:07Speaker 03

  And, and that's why I don't watch, I don't, you know, I used to be very politically minded and, and cared about what politicians said. I don't give a fuck what they say. I don't trust any of them. I don't like any of them. Not that I don't like them.

• 34:26Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 34:27Speaker 03

  It's just that I don't, I, I, you know, it's just hard to believe anything that anybody says because everybody's spinning everything in such a way that it's just like for their purposes, you know, so, you know.

• 34:42Joe Rogan?

  And unfortunately, we're more aware of it now than ever before. There's less trust in politics now than there's ever been. And then there's more people talking about politics than there's ever been. There's more polarization. I mean, I don't know what it was like when you were a kid, but when, when I was a kid, there, there wasn't this polarization between people that were conservative and people that were liberal. Like you could hang out and talk to each other. You didn't, they didn't hate each other. They just thought the other person was a fool for having a different opinion than them. But there wasn't hate like there is today.

• 35:15Speaker 03

  Well.

• 35:17Speaker 03

  Here's the way you gotta look at this is that when you used to vote, you would go inside a place and they would shut the curtains and you would vote and that was your fucking business.

• 35:30Joe Rogan?

  Yep.

• 35:31Speaker 03

  It's nobody else's business. So like, you know, it's like, you know, I'm for anybody that's doing good. If you're doing good and you're not hurting somebody, go man. But, you know, I'm not for cheating and, you know, how about a little morality and integrity in what you're saying and doing?

• 35:57Joe Rogan?

  That would be nice. It would be nice.

• 36:01Speaker 03

  Well, it's never been that way.

• 36:02Joe Rogan?

  No, never.

• 36:03Speaker 03

  It's never been that way. I mean, in the, in the sixties, when I was a hippie, I mean, people think that this is like really bad. No, it was really bad when fucking Russia had, had missiles in Cuba and it was really bad when kids with long hair were getting shot at Kent State. I mean, it was really, the separation of, of, of adults and, and, and kids, you know, there was a change that was happening. And, uh, of course, the change happened and all my generation did was get to wear blue

• 36:48Speaker 03

  jeans to work.

• 36:49Joe Rogan?

  It's football season and Uber Eats is delivering deals every game day. This week, buy a four-piece signature chicken from Popeyes and get another one free on Uber Eats. When your watch party gets hungry, order in and keep everyone's attention where it matters on the game. Order a four-piece signature chicken from Popeyes and get another one free. No matter who scores big tonight, you'll score great deals on Uber Eats all season long because it's not football without food. Popeyes offer valid through November 1st. Add eligible menu item to order prior To checkout, taxes, fees, and terms apply. Product availability varies by region. Exclusions may apply.

• 37:34Joe Rogan?

  See app for details. This episode is brought to you by the Apple Sports App. Guys, this is the ultimate best time of the year to be a sports fan. Football, baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer. The calendar is stacked, but it can also be hard to keep track of it all. And that is where the Apple Sports App comes into play. It is the fastest and easiest way to stay on top of all the action. With scores and play by play automatically showing up on your iPhone when the teams you follow are playing. That means you don't have to figure out when the games are on and how your team is doing, which is especially nice when you're following a bunch of teams and your friends are constantly blowing up the group chat.

• 38:18Joe Rogan?

  The Apple Sports App gives you all the important game details for your favorite sports teams, fast and simple. Download Apple Sports for free on the App Store or find it on your new iPhone. That's about all we accomplished. Well, the change was because it was the first generation that realized that the war that they were being sold was bullshit. Yeah. You know, the people that were involved in World War I and World War II, they thought they were stopping the world from an evil dictator taking over and just ruining the world. That's what we were in World War II. United States was fighting Hitler.

• 38:57Joe Rogan?

  You can't get a more evil person that's leading an army that you want to fight against than that guy, right? So everybody felt like that was a just war. Came back from that war victorious. America had national pride. We did it. We're the good guys. And then all of a sudden, we're in Vietnam. Like, what the fuck are we doing in Vietnam? Didn't make any sense.

• 39:19Speaker 03

  Back up, Joe. What do you think the Civil War was fought about?

• 39:24Joe Rogan?

  The Civil War?

• 39:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:26Joe Rogan?

  Well, slavery was a big one.

• 39:28Speaker 03

  No.

• 39:29Joe Rogan?

  No?

• 39:30Speaker 03

  Ports.

• 39:31Joe Rogan?

  Ports.

• 39:32Speaker 03

  They fought, it was fought over ports. The port in Savannah, Georgia was the biggest port in America. And the ports in Boston, New York were struggling. And the North said, hey, why don't you guys send some of that our way? You guys got more than you can handle. And they said, fuck you, no.

• 39:55Speaker 03

  No, we're not, we're not sending you any of our stuff. And they just kinda went, "Well, then fuck you, we're gonna come down and take it."

• 40:04Speaker 03

  But how are we gonna get the American people to get behind that? Slaves. We'll say it's to free the slaves.

• 40:14Joe Rogan?

  Really?

• 40:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, I li- I, I have a house in the South. And, and, uh, that's what it was about. It was about the ports. Slavery was just an excuse, because nobody cared about black people. North or South.

• 40:31Joe Rogan?

  Wow, so you think that if they had just spread the wealth a little bit, that that would not have happened and slavery would have still continued? Don't you think that, I mean, there was already a distaste of slavery, because it wasn't, it wasn't ubiquitous in the North.

• 40:46Speaker 03

  But it, but it was.

• 40:48Joe Rogan?

  In the North it was?

• 40:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I mean, Lincoln had slaves.

• 40:52Joe Rogan?

  Right, back then, but not in, not in the 1860s, when they were fighting the Civil War.

• 41:00Speaker 03

  He was president.

• 41:02Joe Rogan?

  Really? He had slaves when he was fighting in the war?

• 41:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:06Joe Rogan?

  I wasn't aware of that.

• 41:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, a lot of people in the North, so, you know, they weren't at, they, they hadn't spun it to be so cruel as the South was, apparently.

• 41:19Joe Rogan?

  Well, there was more in the South, right, because of plantations and...

• 41:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:24Joe Rogan?

  So here it is, Abraham Lincoln never personally owned slaves. This is according to perplexity, which is our AI sponsor, which is always very accurate. Either before, during his presidency, according to mainstream historical scholarship, claims that he had slaves through inheritance or marriage come from fringe or highly disputed sources and are not accepted by most professional historians.

• 41:48Speaker 03

  That's me.

• 41:51Joe Rogan?

  Lincoln was born in Kentucky, raised in Indiana and Illinois, all as a non-slave owner, working as a laborer, a lawyer and a politician. He was a really good wrestler, too. Being related to slaveholders did not legally make those enslaved people his property. And the best documented homes Lincoln himself maintained in Illinois and Washington, employed free servants, not slaves.

• 42:17Joe Rogan?

  Okay, where the idea come from?

• 42:18Speaker 03

  Let me stop for a second. You can call it what you want.

• 42:21Joe Rogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:22Speaker 03

  Free servants, call it what you want.

• 42:25Joe Rogan?

  Well, they were free and they were getting paid, is like, means like you said you had a housekeeper.

• 42:30Speaker 03

  It was still a minstrel show, no matter how you got it.

• 42:33Joe Rogan?

  Okay. Some modern writers and websites argue Lincoln inherited or ordered, this is where the idea, Lincoln had slaves came from, websites argued Lincoln inherited or ordered the sale of slaves via the Todd Estate, but these claims hinge on a small number of contested documents and are rejected by most specialists in Lincoln studies.

• 42:55Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 42:56Joe Rogan?

  Well, it's interesting that the...

• 42:59Speaker 03

  The fact that we're even talking about it?

• 43:01Joe Rogan?

  Mm-hmm. Well, it's kind of crazy how recent it was. That's what's really crazy.

• 43:05Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, it wasn't that long ago.

• 43:07Joe Rogan?

  Two people ago, you know? People lived to be a hundred.

• 43:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:10Joe Rogan?

  1865 is roughly two people ago.

• 43:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:13Joe Rogan?

  That's fucking crazy.

• 43:14Speaker 03

  Well, I know. I bet you when you were in school, you thought World War II was ancient history.

• 43:19Joe Rogan?

  Oh, yeah, which is nuts, because I was in high school in the 80s, right? So, World War II ended in 45, which is nuts, like...

• 43:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. I thought it was ancient history. I remember sitting in history class in 8th grade going, "What do I need to know this shit for?", you know? And I was born in 51, so it was only like 3 or 4 years and the war had just ended.

• 43:42Joe Rogan?

  That's nuts.

• 43:43Speaker 03

  But to me, it was ancient history.

• 43:46Joe Rogan?

  Isn't that crazy? Because essentially what we're talking about now is like the 1980s.

• 43:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:53Joe Rogan?

  Well, that that to us, the nineteen eighties, like to kids today, that must be like, oh, my god, fucking dinosaur days.

• 43:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:00Joe Rogan?

  No internet, fucking big old tube TVs. It was a giant box.

• 44:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:05Joe Rogan?

  A big one was fourteen inches.

• 44:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:08Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 44:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, I I uh, I remember being at home once. And I told my dad, I said, hey, dad, the people down the street have got like a changer. And it's got a cord on it. And he goes, I got a changer too. Change it to channel four. I was the changer.

• 44:30Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I remember we used to have a pliers because the thing got stripped. So you had to change the channel with the plier. You didn't know what channel it was until like, oh, it's CBS. Alright, so we're on five. Go like this, then you're on ABC, go like that, you're on NBC.

• 44:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:45Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. I remember the day cable came out. I was like, this is fucking bananas.

• 44:51Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 44:51Joe Rogan?

  Look at all these channels.

• 44:53Speaker 03

  Well, I I I remember seeing a a home box office.

• 44:57Joe Rogan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:58Speaker 03

  It was like, what on earth? I even remember what movie it was. It was some. The Miracle Man or something. And I thought, what is this? It's past eleven o'clock and this movie's just starting.

• 45:12Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. Do you remember in the old days when the TV would sign off and the American flag would wave? And it would just play music and then it would just go.

• 45:23Speaker 03

  And then, well, the Indians would always show up.

• 45:25Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 45:25Speaker 03

  An Indian would always show up and it had like this.

• 45:31Joe Rogan?

  Yep. And then it would go to nothing. They would stop broadcasting at night.

• 45:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, eleven.

• 45:36Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 45:36Speaker 03

  Eleven.

• 45:37Joe Rogan?

  Those were wild times. Cable changed everything. Home box office changed everything because when HBO came around, all of a sudden you got to see stand up comedy uncensored. I remember the first time I watched Sam Kinison on HBO, I was like, this is fucking crazy.

• 45:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:55Joe Rogan?

  Like, I'd never seen anything like that before, like wild, raw comedy on TV. No, I never met him.

• 46:03Speaker 03

  I did.

• 46:03Joe Rogan?

  What was he like?

• 46:04Speaker 03

  Wild.

• 46:05Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I would imagine.

• 46:07Speaker 03

  He was very unpredictable, very, uh.

• 46:11Speaker 03

  You know, he was Sam Kinison.

• 46:14Joe Rogan?

  You know his story, how he became that way?

• 46:16Speaker 03

  No.

• 46:17Joe Rogan?

  Got hit by a truck when he was a little kid. He was real normal, like a normal kid. His brother Bill wrote about it. His brother Bill wrote a great book called My Brother Sam. And um, he said that Sam was just a normal kid, got hit by a truck, got really fucked up, bad brain injury. And then from then on, wild and reckless, just like impossible to control, just a maniac.

• 46:41Speaker 03

  Well, you could imagine. I mean, you know, that's, I don't know about you, but if you grew up in the eighties, you know. Our parents used to just tell us, go outside.

• 46:53Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, yep.

• 46:54Speaker 03

  Go outside and we'll see you at dark.

• 46:56Joe Rogan?

  Yep.

• 46:57Speaker 03

  And, you know, I could go, I was, I don't know, ten, nine, riding my bike all over Seymour.

• 47:06Joe Rogan?

  Yep.

• 47:06Speaker 03

  Which is where I grew up and just, no- nobody kept an eye on us.

• 47:11Joe Rogan?

  No.

• 47:12Speaker 03

  Nobody, you know.

• 47:13Joe Rogan?

  And nobody had any idea of knowing where you are either. It was just your responsibility to come home. There was no way to find you.

• 47:20Speaker 03

  It was funny, they had to remind us that uh, remind our parents that you have kids. There was a thing that said, it's ten o'clock, do you know where your children are?

• 47:32Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, cause a lot of people didn't.

• 47:34Speaker 03

  Well, they didn't.

• 47:35Joe Rogan?

  And people would yell, they would open up the window and yell their kid's name. Billy! You would just hear it in the neighborhood, someone like rolling down their window, rolling up their window and just screaming out the kid's name to tell him to come home. And hoping the kid was in earshot.

• 47:49Speaker 03

  I remember uh, uh, somebody in my neighborhood, I would hear every night at dark, Henry Earl!

• 47:59Speaker 03

  And I'd hear it and go, I better go home.

• 48:03Speaker 03

  It's time for Henry Earl to go home, I better get home.

• 48:06Joe Rogan?

  What was it like when MTV rolled around?

• 48:10Speaker 03

  Uh, I didn't, I mean, I liked it and uh.

• 48:14Joe Rogan?

  How long had you been performing by then?

• 48:17Speaker 03

  Oh, I was in my first band when I was eleven.

• 48:21Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 48:22Speaker 03

  Uh, you know, a little garage band with a bunch of kids, playing along with records and then I was in a band called The Creep Soul.

• 48:33Speaker 03

  Think about this, Joe. I was fourteen years old playing in bars.

• 48:39Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 48:40Speaker 03

  And my parents were cool with it.

• 48:44Speaker 03

  It's like, where's John? He's playing tonight. Playing what? He's in the crepe hole. Oh. And it was me and this black kid named Fred Booker. And we shared the vocals. And we would do, you know, we would do songs like, uh, "Pull strings and I'll kiss your lips. I'm your puppet. I'm your puppet." And we had, you know, navy jackets on and I was cute back then. And, and so, you know, it was great for me. I would have done it for free because I was fourteen years old making out with eighteen, nineteen year old girls.

• 49:25Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 49:26Speaker 03

  I know, it was great. Are you kidding me? And then, uh, we played at every fraternity, every sorority. And I came home with maybe, you know, over the weekend, I might make sixty bucks. I was the best dressed kid in school.

• 49:44Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 49:44Speaker 03

  That Mellencamp kid is just a dressed up hood. That's all he is.

• 49:50Joe Rogan?

  So, did you know back then that you were gonna be a professional musician? Or were you doing it for fun? Did you think it was gonna be a career?

• 49:57Speaker 03

  I thought, here's what I thought. I'm either gonna be a professional football player, a professional boxer, or a singer. That was my choices.

• 50:07Joe Rogan?

  You boxed?

• 50:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:09Joe Rogan?

  Yeah?

• 50:10Speaker 03

  I'll whip your ass right now.

• 50:15Speaker 03

  At seventy-four.

• 50:17Joe Rogan?

  Is that why you were getting in so many fights?

• 50:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, I liked it.

• 50:20Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 50:21Speaker 03

  I liked it. I, I liked the contact. Didn't like getting whipped every goddamn night, but, you know, it happens.

• 50:28Joe Rogan?

  Did you have any, any professional boxing matches?

• 50:32Speaker 03

  No, but my son, I'm gonna brag on my son, uh, was national golden gloves champ twice.

• 50:38Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 50:39Speaker 03

  And, uh, then he played football for Duke. And, uh, he was, you don't wanna mess with Hood. Don't wanna mess with Hood.

• 50:49Joe Rogan?

  And so...

• 50:50Speaker 03

  He's thirty-one now.

• 50:51Joe Rogan?

  When did the music thing really start taking off for you?

• 50:56Speaker 03

  Well, I went to college and I got a degree in broadcasting technology, which at that time was pretty. And I would, they would have dances at college and bands play. And I would sit there in the audience and go, "I can do this better than that. I know I can." And so as soon as I got out of college, I got into a band called The Mason Brothers, which I have, I have so many funny stories. Like I said, I'm so lucky. I got into a band called The Mason Brothers and we played every weekend. And I was a barroom singer.

• 51:41Speaker 03

  You know, I never wrote any songs or anything like that. You wanna hear a funny story about The Mason Brothers? How The Mason Brothers ended?

• 51:49Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 51:51Speaker 03

  This is good. The guy that ran the band, I was just the singer. And the guy that ran the band was a guy named Dave. And Dave talked to the booker. And we had a gig on a riverboat, up and down the Ohio River. And it was a fraternity show. And we had an old Plymouth and a U-Haul on the back. And we get there and the guys in the fraternity show are so fucking mad at us. Dave failed to realize that there was a time change between Seymour and Cincinnati, which is on the Ohio River.

• 52:35Speaker 03

  So they, all these fraternity guys are going, "Where the hell have you guys been? You're an hour late." So it really pissed me off. I go, "Dave, goddamn it, if you're gonna run the band, you gotta like, keep track of this shit." He said, "Oh, don't worry about it." And as time went on, and, and, so, as, and you had to do four sets back then. You know, four forty-five minute sets, which was plenty of time for Dave to get drunk. And he would drink, and he was the bass player.

• 53:17Speaker 03

  And the fraternity guys already hated us, you know, because we weren't really any good anyway. So, Dave's playing and he's going along really good. And he was putting on a show and he leaned back and, "Man overboard!" He fucking fell off the ship. And they had to stop him fishing.

• 53:37Joe Rogan?

  Oh, my god.

• 53:39Speaker 03

  So, I got so fucking mad at him that he said, uh, I said, "Dave, I'm gonna quit. This is, this is it for me. I'm, I'm done with, with this crap." And then Dave said, "No, John, give us one more chance." And then the drummer quit because he went to, uh, he went to medical school. And then the guitar player was still in high school.

• 54:02Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 54:03Speaker 03

  And he was my mom and dad's paper boys. And, uh, so, uh, Dave said, "John, let me put the band back together. I'll get some new guys." And I'd call him up and I'd go, "Dave, how's the band going?" And he'd go, "Oh, it's going great, man. It's going really great." I said, "Good." I said, "Who are these new guys?" He goes, "You'll see when you get there. Don't worry about it. I got it covered." I said, "Oh, you mean like you did with the time change?" And he goes, "No, no, no. This, these guys are good." So, I show up for this gig. I haven't even rehearsed with these guys. Not even rehearsed with them.

• 54:46Speaker 03

  But it was the same shit, you know, because we, we, we were just a cover band and I was just a barroom singer. So, you know, if you want to see taking care of business, I'm your guy, you know? And, uh, "Take a care of business." You know, who can't do that? So, I show up. Dave has recruited two sophomores in high school who couldn't play their instruments at all. The drummer was like, "Buh, buh, buh, buh." It's like... Boom, boom, crack asshole. Boom, boom, crack. That's all you gotta do. And he was the whole fucking time. And, and, and so the show was about half over. I just said, I looked

• 55:30Speaker 03

  at Dave and I go, you're the lead singer. And I just left because it was just too embarrassing. And then, uh, I got, uh, I went, I went to New York and, uh, I was afraid. Joe, I was afraid. I mean, I'm from a fucking town of 18,000 people and I'd been to Chicago once, never been on an airplane. And so I flew to New York because I came into some money. That's another funny story. I came into some money and I went there and I was afraid to come out of my hotel room for the first two days because New York in the early seventies

• 56:15Speaker 03

  was broke and there were prostitutes and pimps and everything everywhere, you know, and homeless people, which reminds me, you guys got a lot of homeless guys here.

• 56:28Joe Rogan?

  There's a few. It's not as bad as LA.

• 56:31Speaker 03

  Well, that isn't, you can say that about anything, Joe.

• 56:34Joe Rogan?

  That's true. Yeah. Um, it's a lot better than it was during the pandemic. During the pandemic, they allowed them to do the camping on the street thing. So you'd go down like Caesar Chavez and you'd see like 15, 20 tents where people were just hanging out and people were trying to jog and ride their bikes past them. It was, it was pretty bad, but, uh, former, former mayor, uh, cleaned it up. And they have pretty good programs here to get people into housing.

• 57:02Speaker 03

  Well, everybody here, everybody here must love, uh, I'm not putting Austin down. I'm just, I had, you know, I was, I played here about three years ago. Uh, but everybody must love graffiti here.

• 57:19Speaker 03

  And that's the thing about graffiti. I don't mind if you want to destroy somebody else's property, but at least do something original.

• 57:30Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 57:30Speaker 03

  Because it all looks the same. You know, it's big letters and outlined in, it's done in black and outlined in yellow and it's, it's the same fucking shit you see in New York or Los Angeles, it's the same.

• 57:42Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 57:43Speaker 03

  If you're gonna, if you're gonna be a, an artist, be an artist.

• 57:47Joe Rogan?

  Well, a lot of these guys are just tagging. They're just like sister gang affiliation or whatever it is, I guess.

• 57:55Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 57:56Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 57:56Speaker 03

  But it wasn't that way first time I came to Austin.

• 57:59Joe Rogan?

  No. It's, well, I think all cities have deteriorated, but I think Austin's deteriorated quite a bit less. We found out recently that Skid Row in LA is fifty blocks, five zero.

• 58:12Speaker 03

  Right now?

• 58:12Joe Rogan?

  Right now. Fifty blocks.

• 58:15Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 58:15Joe Rogan?

  Of homeless people, just living on the streets. And like, almost impassable. Like, if you've ever been down Skid Row, it's fucking, I went there once accidentally. And this was in the two thousands. We were filming Fear Factor downtown in LA and I took a wrong turn and wound up in Skid Row and I was like, I couldn't believe it was real. I, it was like a zombie movie. And that's, I mean, it's a fraction.

• 58:41Speaker 03

  So you decided on Fear Factor. You go stay in here for three days and you win.

• 58:47Joe Rogan?

  Three days and do no coke. Yeah, you could do three days with no meth and you win.

• 58:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:53Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. It was, uh, it was sobering. And then, then we looked up the history of, uh, Skid Row. And the reason why it's like that is they would take people out of Hollywood and Beverly Hills and homeless people then, and they would put them in Skid Row and force them to stay there. And they, they sort of built it as a place where they could deposit vagrants and homeless people.

• 59:17Speaker 03

  Well, there is a law in this country called vagrancy.

• 59:21Joe Rogan?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

• 59:23Joe Rogan?

  Not very enforced.

• 59:24Speaker 03

  Well, it would be, let me tell you something, if you grew up in Seymour, Indiana, it's enforceable.

• 59:31Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 59:31Speaker 03

  Cause if you stand uptown too long, which is all kids did back then.

• 59:36Joe Rogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:37Speaker 03

  The cops come up and go, hey, you've been here for three hours, we've been timing you.

• 59:41Joe Rogan?

  This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. New Year's resolutions are great and all, but sometimes I don't want to upend my entire life to create a new and improved me. If you're feeling the same way, I've got a tip for you to let go of those big New Year's expectations and start small. Focus on one thing that's been weighing you down lately. Maybe you want to stress less about what you can't control, or put less pressure on yourself at work, or reconnect with an old friend. Whatever goal you have, BetterHelp can help you get there. Therapy in general is a great way to discover more about yourself from an unbiased outside perspective. It can really help take a weight off your shoulders. BetterHelp makes connecting with a therapist straightforward and simple.

• 1:00:22Joe Rogan?

  And with a network of thousands of fully licensed therapists, they can connect you with the right one, like they have for millions across the globe. According to those same people, BetterHelp works great too. Their live sessions have an average of 4.9 out of 5 rating, so do yourself a favor and try BetterHelp. BetterHelp makes it easy to get matched online with a qualified therapist. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com/jre. That's better H-E-L-P dot com slash J-R-E. Yeah.

• 1:00:57Speaker 03

  Move on.

• 1:00:57Joe Rogan?

  You want to keep a nice clean town, that's how you do it.

• 1:01:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:00Joe Rogan?

  But if you let it go long enough, it will be like Skid Row. I mean, and I think that what we're saying, like the documentary, what was the hotel again, that one? The Hotel Cecil. The documentary was about the Hotel Cecil, which was a beautiful hotel in downtown LA that's now a fucking disaster area. But it's in that whole area and they just, they couldn't figure out a way to deal with the homeless problem, but they didn't want it messing up the beauty and glamour of Hollywood. So every time they would find homeless people, they would just ship them to downtown. Downtown LA is really the only downtown of any major city that I've ever been to where nobody wants to go.

• 1:01:40Joe Rogan?

  Downtown New York is fucking downtown. Like, holy shit, we're downtown. Look at all the restaurants, look at all the shops.

• 1:01:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, but it wasn't that way in the 70s.

• 1:01:47Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:01:48Speaker 03

  The first time I went there, it was just like.

• 1:01:51Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:51Speaker 03

  You went to Times Square, it was frightening.

• 1:01:53Joe Rogan?

  The first time I went to uh New York was to fight. I was fighting in a martial arts tournament in nineteen eighty. Oh, it had to be, I guess it was eighty-five or eighty-six. And uh it was bad. We went through through Times Square. And I was like, oh my god, I couldn't believe people lived like this. I remember the first time driving through it, I couldn't believe how big it was. I was like, this is crazy. It was so, because Boston, where I was from, was, you know, the big city, I thought. It was nothing compared to New York. I'm like, this is nuts. I couldn't believe how many streets there were and how many buildings there were and how tall they were. But the uh just the seediness of it was so strange to me.

• 1:02:36Joe Rogan?

  You know, the peep shows and all the weird people. And I was a kid back then, I was probably, you know, eighteen. It was very strange.

• 1:02:43Speaker 03

  It was frightening.

• 1:02:44Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, like like I was, I don't know, I probably got sidetracked, but the first time I went there, I I didn't leave my hotel room. I had a I was in a Holiday Inn on Fifty-seventh Street. And I just kind of peeked through the curtains. And looked and I thought, I can't go out there. I mean, I I was, you know, coming off uh agoraphobia.

• 1:03:07Speaker 03

  And here I'm in New York, cause I have a meeting with some record company people and, you know, they like to demo and.

• 1:03:15Joe Rogan?

  So let's go back to that. So you were um, your fucked up drunk friend, you quit him. How do you get back on to music after that?

• 1:03:24Speaker 03

  Oh, Dave?

• 1:03:24Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:25Speaker 03

  No, I I got my first record deal, the first guy I called was Dave.

• 1:03:33Speaker 03

  No, he was, he was a great bass player. He was a great bass.

• 1:03:36Joe Rogan?

  Did he get his shit together before then?

• 1:03:37Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:03:38Joe Rogan?

  Nope, still not?

• 1:03:39Speaker 03

  No, no. I got funny stories about Dave and Max's Kansas.

• 1:03:43Joe Rogan?

  Is he still around?

• 1:03:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's a professor now. He found God and all this stuff.

• 1:03:48Joe Rogan?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:03:48Speaker 03

  He's a professor at Vincent University and he teaches.

• 1:03:51Joe Rogan?

  He's a professor? Wow, what's he teach?

• 1:03:54Speaker 03

  Music.

• 1:03:55Joe Rogan?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:03:56Speaker 03

  And uh no, he was really handsome. Really good bass player, really, really, really, really good, but he just, you know.

• 1:04:08Speaker 03

  You know, Dave and we were twenty years old, twenty-two years old, you know. The fuck did we know about anything?

• 1:04:18Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:18Speaker 03

  Nothing, nothing.

• 1:04:21Joe Rogan?

  So when you left Dave and you left that band, what, what happened next? What was like the big break for you?

• 1:04:29Speaker 03

  I never really had a big break.

• 1:04:31Joe Rogan?

  Well, something must have happened.

• 1:04:34Speaker 03

  It was a slow climb.

• 1:04:36Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:36Speaker 03

  It was a very slow climb. Yeah, I, uh, I got a record deal. And of course, being me at that age, at twenty-two, uh, I went out to California and I met with a guy named Mike Maitland, who hated my new record, but said I had great possibilities. And I told him. I just stood up and I said, "Motherfucker, you're an old man. What do you know about rock music?" He must have been forty. And of course, I got dropped immediately.

• 1:05:20Speaker 03

  I was on MCA and I got dropped immediately. But there were a couple of people at MCA who believed in what I was doing. And so they helped me along. And then I got introduced to, uh, Rod Stewart's manager. And I moved to England for two years. Made a record and, and, you know, lived with the whole band on Chelsea, in Chelsea. And punk was just starting, and just starting. I mean, you know, The Clash and, and The Sex Pistols. I mean, they were brand new bands.

• 1:06:02Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:06:03Speaker 03

  And there I am with an acoustic guitar going, "I need a lover that won't drive me insane."

• 1:06:11Speaker 03

  However, that song became number one in Australia. And, uh, so Australia was ahead of us with televising rock bands. And they had a whole bunch of rock shows. And I had the number one record, album and single in Australia and couldn't fill up a bar in Bloomington. Wow. Couldn't, nobody'd come to see me. So, anyway, I went to Australia and then a girl covered I Need a Lover and she had a big hit with it. I mean, my, mine was like, went to like thirty or something like that, but hers went

• 1:06:55Speaker 03

  to like two of that song. And that's how it all started for me. That was the very first thing. Wow. Was some girl covering one of my songs. And you were living in England? I lived in England for, uh, two years. And, uh, and they had the National Front there at the time. I don't know if you know what that is. The National Front was, if you're not English, get out of our country. Oh. And a couple of my, a couple of guys in my band got beat up because they heard, you know, some of the National Front guys heard, uh, their accent and it wasn't English.

• 1:07:39Speaker 03

  So it was like dangerous to even go to the movies. Really? Keep your fucking mouth shut and your head down. What year was this around? Seventies? Seventy-seven, seventy-six, seventy-seven. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, the National Front was, you know, they were like all a bunch of skinhead guys and violent and didn't, did not want any foreigners in their country at all. And even Americans, you know? So, yeah, you had to keep your, I, you know, I learned real quick to keep your head down and your mouth shut. Wow.

• 1:08:19Joe Rogan?

  And so you got out of there because of that?

• 1:08:21Speaker 03

  No, I got out of there because I got mad at the, I know it's hard to believe that I got mad at somebody, but

• 1:08:28Speaker 03

  I got mad at the manager because I could never could get the cocksucker on the phone, you know? And then I came back to the United States and he had a, he had a record deal based on the number one record in Australia. And I used to go, "Well, we have a number one record in Australia." And they would look at me and go, "Not many Australians in the United States, John."

• 1:08:54Speaker 03

  So, you know, and then it's just kinda...

• 1:08:58Speaker 03

  But see what happened? And I don't mean to sound arrogant,

• 1:09:06Speaker 03

  but I didn't give a fuck.

• 1:09:09Speaker 03

  I got to the point where it was like, "I don't give a fuck." You know, do what the fuck you want. Because I, I didn't want to be Johnny Cougar, which is how they made me start.

• 1:09:20Joe Rogan?

  Whose idea was that, to turn you into John Cougar?

• 1:09:23Speaker 03

  It was Johnny to start off with.

• 1:09:25Joe Rogan?

  Johnny Cougar.

• 1:09:25Speaker 03

  Tony DeFries managed me, David Bowie, Lou Reed, uh, Motha Hoopla. You remember all these bands?

• 1:09:34Joe Rogan?

  Oh, Lou Reed for sure, yeah.

• 1:09:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, anyway.

• 1:09:36Joe Rogan?

  David Bowie, obviously.

• 1:09:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:38Joe Rogan?

  Rod Stewart, obviously.

• 1:09:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:39Joe Rogan?

  Same guy.

• 1:09:40Speaker 03

  No, Rod Stewart was different.

• 1:09:42Joe Rogan?

  Different manager.

• 1:09:43Speaker 03

  Different manager. But he was English too. So, uh...

• 1:09:48Joe Rogan?

  It's hard to argue with someone that's got that kind of talent, right?

• 1:09:51Speaker 03

  Well, it's hard to argue, uh, when you're 22 years old with a 45-year-old man who has had success.

• 1:09:59Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:10:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, like I signed away my publishing and stuff. This is an old story. But, I mean, an old story from everybody, from the Rolling Stones to, you know, you name it.

• 1:10:11Joe Rogan?

  Prints?

• 1:10:13Speaker 03

  If you were black, you know, it was like, "Here's a new car and a, and a shiny ring and some money."

• 1:10:20Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:21Speaker 03

  And, uh, so I remember the, I was in, getting ready, getting ready to leave England and I heard that Daff had,

• 1:10:35Speaker 03

  had good news for me in America. So that's the reason I went home. And the good news was, is that he just got a deal for me for, on Mercury Records.

• 1:10:49Speaker 03

  And then, uh, so I can't, I went back to the United States and, uh,

• 1:10:56Speaker 03

  we started, you know, started making records and just kept plowing away and the critics hated me, you know, they fucking hated me because of Johnny Cougar and Main Man came up with that name Johnny Cougar and he, his excuse was, his name was David Jones and I called him David Bowie and look how well that worked out. And that was, and I'm 22 and I'm going, but I don't like this name. And they go, well, you don't have to, you don't have to,

• 1:11:28Speaker 03

  participate. You can go back to Indiana if you want. It was like, well, fuck you then I will. And then I walked outside and thought for a minute, thought, hmm, I guess I'm Johnny Cougar.

• 1:11:42Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:11:44Speaker 03

  I hated it. And, and they compared me to James Dean and Bruce. And, you know, so the critics just hated that. It was like, you know, he's so American, he's so American. You know, yeah, I was a fucking hillbilly.

• 1:12:00Joe Rogan?

  Fucking critics. They're always gonna be a problem.

• 1:12:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, but you

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

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• 1:12:41Speaker 00

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• 1:13:02Speaker 05

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• 1:13:28Speaker 00

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• 1:13:34Joe Rogan?

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• 1:14:17Joe Rogan?

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• 1:14:33Speaker 03

  For what?

• 1:14:36Speaker 03

  I learned stuff from some of the critics that were good. Like what? Well, one of my best friends was a guy named Tim White, who was the editor of Rolling Stone and the editor of Billboard magazine. And he died a few years ago. And...

• 1:14:57Speaker 03

  You want to hear some inside baseball? Sure.

• 1:15:01Speaker 03

  Tim and I talked every day. And Tim is as different as me, as you. Tim wore a bowtie, white bucks, you know, blue jeans, suit jacket, every day. And he was the editor of Rolling Stone for a long time. And then he became editor of Billboard. And he called me up and he said,

• 1:15:30Speaker 03

  "I'm gonna have to sign a deal with Soundscan." I said, "So?" I didn't know what that was.

• 1:15:40Speaker 03

  He goes, "John, you don't understand the ramifications of signing a deal with Soundscan." I said, "Well, what are they?" He goes, "You'll be out of business." I go, "Why do you say that?" He goes, "Because now, the way the Billboard charts work..." Is this getting too inside baseball? No, not at all, no. The way that the charts work is that if you get played in Indianapolis and you get played in New York, it counts as one play. New York counts as one play. Indianapolis counts as one play. A play's a play. When Soundscan came in, they changed it so it's like the number one record of the week.

• 1:16:26Speaker 03

  So, if you got a play in New York, that was worth five points. If you got a play in Indianapolis, that was worth a half a point. Oh. So, what does that mean? That means that people who grew up in St. Louis and where rock took place,

• 1:16:45Speaker 03

  all of a sudden, you know, where I got played all the time, the points didn't amount to shit. But what did? Urban stations. Urban stations played what?

• 1:17:01Speaker 03

  Rap.

• 1:17:03Speaker 03

  So, do you remember when all of a sudden rap music took over? Mm-hmm. It was becau-- it wasn't because these guys were so great, and I'm not saying they were bad. I'm just saying that it was because of Soundscan. And my friend Tim knew this was going to happen. As soon as I signed this deal with Soundscan, and there was a magazine called Radio and Records at the time, who was rivaling Billboard. And, uh, if Tim hadn't have bought Soundscan, Radio and Records would have bought them.

• 1:17:44Speaker 03

  Which would have made them the premier record company, because they were the most modern. And, so, Soundscan changed everything. So, I'm sure that you remember that there was a time when you knew every song that was number one. Then all of a sudden, you woke up one day and you didn't know, what the f-- what's-- how does this song become number one? But the way that it was before Soundscan, each song had to work its way up the charts.

• 1:18:15Speaker 03

  So, if you had like, you know, let's say, twenty plays, I'm just throwing out low numbers. But if you had twenty plays, uh, that got added to the twenty plays that you got the next week. So now you have forty plays. So you might move up from thirty-six to thirty-one. But Joe Rogan, in Boston, was hearing the fucking songs as they move up. "Oh, I heard this new song." You talk to your friend. And they said, "Yeah, I heard that song." And then all of a sudden, the song would build and build and build and build and build and build. And Michael Jackson would be number one, or whoever. Mm-hmm. And, once Soundscan took over, if you were in a rock band,

• 1:19:01Speaker 03

  the record companies said, "Well, fuck this. We're not even gonna advertise in Indianapolis anymore." Uh... The biggest, the biggest, uh, uh...

• 1:19:14Speaker 03

  Numbers are R and B stations and they're playing rap. And that's what we're gonna, we're gonna service those people. Cause back then, you know, there was payola and all that stuff going on.

• 1:19:29Joe Rogan?

  Hmm, of course.

• 1:19:30Speaker 03

  So there was like no money coming into Indianapolis all of a sudden, where there used to be. It was all going to New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, to all these R and B stations. And then, uh, what was that thing called? When you could like download records for nothing?

• 1:19:52Joe Rogan?

  Napster?

• 1:19:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:53Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:53Speaker 03

  And then that started. And then that really put us out of, put all rock guys in, out of business. If you check the Billboard charts right now, I bet you, you'd be hard pressed to find two rock bands in the top one hundred.

• 1:20:06Joe Rogan?

  Rock bands right now, just in general, are almost nonexistent in terms of like new bands. It's really weird. There used to be so many rock bands and rock and roll is still a very popular form of music. When you listen to the older stuff.

• 1:20:23Speaker 03

  That's why, that's why I've decided, I don't mean to plug myself, but I, they have been asking me for, cause I got tired of going on tour and being a cheerleader, which is what I was. Let's do a rounding hit of Small Town. I was born, you know, and everybody'd stand up singing. I was playing to twenty thousand people and everybody was drunk. And I was just kind of the cheerleader, you know, the human.

• 1:20:55Joe Rogan?

  For people's good time.

• 1:20:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, giving them the opportunity. I just thought, you know, I'm here to be a musician. This is not being a musician, this is being a fucking clown. I don't wanna be a clown, so I started playing in theaters, which pissed everybody off. I said, and, you know, when you come to one of my shows, and this has been for the last twenty years I've been doing this, you come to one of my shows in a theater, it says, please, recognize.

• 1:21:23Joe Rogan?

  Back then, pull that sucker up close to your face.

• 1:21:26Speaker 03

  What?

• 1:21:26Joe Rogan?

  The microphone.

• 1:21:27Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:21:27Joe Rogan?

  Otherwise, we're barely here, you're very soft spoken already.

• 1:21:30Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 1:21:30Joe Rogan?

  There we go.

• 1:21:31Speaker 03

  I am?

• 1:21:32Joe Rogan?

  Um, what's that? And?

• 1:21:34Speaker 03

  I am soft spoken.

• 1:21:36Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, a little bit, yeah.

• 1:21:37Speaker 03

  You know why?

• 1:21:38Joe Rogan?

  Why?

• 1:21:39Speaker 03

  Cause I'm deaf.

• 1:21:40Joe Rogan?

  Are you really, oh, from all the singing?

• 1:21:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:21:42Joe Rogan?

  All the music?

• 1:21:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:21:43Joe Rogan?

  Oh, every rock star's deaf, yeah?

• 1:21:44Speaker 03

  I'm deaf.

• 1:21:45Joe Rogan?

  No one knew shit about hearing protection back then.

• 1:21:47Speaker 03

  No, I'm deaf, I can't hear.

• 1:21:50Joe Rogan?

  All my friends in bands, and all my friends that are hunters, deaf.

• 1:21:55Speaker 03

  Can't hear.

• 1:21:57Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, guns and loud music.

• 1:21:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, uh, my kids would love it, because they could walk up and say shit behind my back.

• 1:22:03Joe Rogan?

  (laughing)

• 1:22:04Speaker 03

  Like, I heard that.

• 1:22:06Joe Rogan?

  (laughing)

• 1:22:07Speaker 03

  I got three girls and two boys, and, how many kids you got?

• 1:22:13Joe Rogan?

  Uh, three, three girls.

• 1:22:17Speaker 03

  Uh, girls are, at about twelve, you lose them, and then about twenty-one, they come back.

• 1:22:26Joe Rogan?

  I haven't lost them.

• 1:22:27Speaker 03

  You haven't?

• 1:22:28Joe Rogan?

  Fortunately, no, no, I'm real close, yeah.

• 1:22:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, I kinda, I kinda, I kinda, I kinda lost mine, you know, it was like, and, but now, it's kinda like, but I do have a daughter that's really sick. She's not fucking fine.

• 1:22:45Joe Rogan?

  Oh, that sucks, I'm sorry to hear that.

• 1:22:46Speaker 03

  She's got, uh, she's got cancer in the brain.

• 1:22:52Joe Rogan?

  Oh, Jesus.

• 1:22:53Speaker 03

  And, uh, she's suffering right now.

• 1:22:58Speaker 03

  But that kid used to call me up and I'd go, Teddy, you can have a thought without asking me if it's, you know, figure it out yourself. You don't have to ask me everything, you know. But I love having kids.

• 1:23:15Joe Rogan?

  I do too. It has made me a much nicer person, that's for sure.

• 1:23:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, me too.

• 1:23:20Joe Rogan?

  But I've stayed close with them, even through the teenage years, luckily. But, you know, I worked hard at it.

• 1:23:27Speaker 03

  I was on tour all the time.

• 1:23:29Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, well, that's one of the things that I did when we moved to Texas, almost six years ago now, is that I decided to be home a lot more. In the beginning, when here, I was still touring a lot. I would do, you know, weekends, I'd go do shows, but now I hardly ever. Now I have my own comedy club, so I'm in town all the time.

• 1:23:51Speaker 03

  What do you think of stand-up now?

• 1:23:53Joe Rogan?

  I love it. It's a great time for stand-up.

• 1:23:55Speaker 03

  You think?

• 1:23:56Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:23:57Speaker 03

  You don't have to, like, worry about crossing the line?

• 1:24:02Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, you do. Yeah, yeah, you do. You'll cross the line, but not with the people that you care about, you know? You cross the line for people that are looking to be offended.

• 1:24:11Speaker 03

  Well, which is a lot of people.

• 1:24:13Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, so they're gonna be mad. Let them be mad.

• 1:24:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:24:17Joe Rogan?

  You just can't pay attention. That's the thing. It's like, I tell all the comics, like, stay out of the comments, don't read anything about yourself, and you'll be all right. Just, the audience is what matters. Is the audience laughing?

• 1:24:29Speaker 03

  I've never Googled myself-

• 1:24:31Joe Rogan?

  Good for you.

• 1:24:32Speaker 03

  -in my life.

• 1:24:33Joe Rogan?

  Good.

• 1:24:34Speaker 03

  I've never Googled myself, ever, because I don't give a fuck.

• 1:24:39Joe Rogan?

  Well, that's a good, that's a good practice to keep. Where were we? So we were talking about how they stuck you with the Johnny Cougar name, you're in New York City, that's kind of where we left it off. I was trying to figure out, like, what was the MTV days like? And when did it, like, really start cracking? Pull that microphone close up to you. When did it really start cracking?

• 1:25:03Speaker 03

  Well, do you know John Sykes?

• 1:25:07Joe Rogan?

  No.

• 1:25:08Speaker 03

  He was one of the guys who started MTV.

• 1:25:11Joe Rogan?

  Okay.

• 1:25:12Speaker 03

  And-

• 1:25:17Speaker 03

  I remember calling him up and I didn't know him. This was like nineteen eighty-one, eighty-two. And like I said, you know, it was, it was like, uh, all you really saw of guys in rock bands were the album covers and, you know, maybe on Midnight Special or something like that. Yep. Or Don Kirshner's Rock Concert or something like that. But then with MTV going all the time and not very many people made videos. But see, I was making videos because I had a hit in Australia. And like I said, Australia was way ahead of us. So it was the video that I just made in a club in London

• 1:26:01Speaker 03

  that was shown that made that record number one. Wow. In Australia. And, uh, so when MTV started, there wouldn't be that many people making videos, but I was. So they had to be content. Ah. So they played me all the fucking time. Just because nobody else had videos yet. Right. People hadn't caught up yet. Right. And I remember sitting with, I can't remember the guy, some English guy. And I said, do you, what is this MTV thing? He goes, I don't know. The record company told me.

• 1:26:46Speaker 03

  I can't remember the guy's name. He was really a good songwriter. But you don't hear of him much anymore. Anyway, I had a conversation. Neither, neither one of us knew what was going on. And then I met John and, uh, I was, I was the first, and John and I got along great. I was the first promotion that MTV did. And we gave away a pink house. Oh, wow. You know, uh, and you had to register and do all this stuff. And, and there's a funny story that goes with that. So Sykes and somebody else came to Indiana to find a house in, in Bloomington

• 1:27:31Speaker 03

  that they were gonna buy and then they were gonna do a show. And I did an ad where I went, And you can win a house and we're gonna paint the mother pink, you know? And that's what they did. Except, the house they bought, Joe, was on a chemical dump.

• 1:27:52Joe Rogan?

  Oh, no.

• 1:27:54Speaker 03

  But I didn't know it, and they didn't know, because they're from New York. And so, when I found out, I, I called them up, I said, "Guys, we can't give away this house. It's on a fucking chemical dump." Because RCA was dumping chemicals out in this field that was right next to the house.

• 1:28:15Joe Rogan?

  Oh, jeez.

• 1:28:16Speaker 03

  That we bought, you know, and back then, in the, in the early eighties, there wasn't much legislation about where you could dump that kind of stuff.

• 1:28:25Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:28:27Speaker 03

  So they had to buy another house, which they weren't happy about. So they had to buy two houses. Couldn't sell the other one, gave it away. And Sykes, to this day, I'll tease him about it, and he'll go, "Oh, we took that off the books years ago."

• 1:28:42Joe Rogan?

  Cheers.

• 1:28:43Speaker 03

  But it, it, it, it went from walking down the street

• 1:28:51Speaker 03

  to, "Nobody know who the fuck you are," to walking down the street and everybody knew who you were. Everybody. I mean, he got the, uh, at the height of MTV, you couldn't go, I couldn't go anyplace.

• 1:29:07Joe Rogan?

  Did you get the agoraphobia before that?

• 1:29:10Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:29:11Joe Rogan?

  Oh, boy. So that probably just made it way worse, right?

• 1:29:15Speaker 03

  No, actually, again, Joe, lucky. It helped me get over it.

• 1:29:22Speaker 03

  It helped me, and, you know, like, I, I believe that all growth takes place in the chemicals inside our body. So, I was growing still, because I, I grew up in public.

• 1:29:35Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:29:36Speaker 03

  You know, I grew, I mean, I literally grew up, but when I got my first record deal, Joe, I had never written a song.

• 1:29:43Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:29:44Speaker 03

  Never written a song. They, they, they asked me, "Well, play some of the songs you've written, it's like..." I don't write no fucking songs. I'm a, I'm a barroom singer. I sing other people's songs. What do you want us to, what do you want me to write for? Dylan's writing great songs.

• 1:29:59Joe Rogan?

  You hadn't written anything?

• 1:30:02Speaker 03

  Nothing.

• 1:30:02Joe Rogan?

  Wow. So when did you start writing? After you got a record deal?

• 1:30:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:30:07Joe Rogan?

  Wow. But it turns out you're a great writer. That's crazy.

• 1:30:11Speaker 03

  And I have dyslexia. Which means I can't read. You should see my songwriting books. It's, they're, it's, it's absolutely terrible. It looks like, you know, I have to have somebody now, after I write a song, I have to give it to somebody right away and let them copy it and I'll read it to them so that we can read with the fucking, you know, what I wrote. Because songwriting is not what people think it is. But anyway, back to MTV. It just blew up and you couldn't go anywhere. I couldn't.

• 1:30:50Speaker 03

  I, I would walk down the street and all I did was sign autographs and shake hands and I didn't like it at all.

• 1:31:00Joe Rogan?

  Well, that'd be very weird.

• 1:31:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it, it, it was like, you know, you've been in rock bands since you were 13. Nobody gave a shit. And then all of a sudden, they did. And, you know, it was the baby boomers coming of age and, you know, I was very fortunate, but unappreciative.

• 1:31:24Joe Rogan?

  So when you first started writing songs, what was, what was your process? When you knew you had to write songs?

• 1:31:32Joe Rogan?

  How did you, uh?

• 1:31:34Speaker 03

  Well,

• 1:31:38Speaker 03

  I figured out, because don't forget, the critics hated me.

• 1:31:42Joe Rogan?

  Already?

• 1:31:42Speaker 03

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. They hated Johnny Cooper. Fucking hated him. And I didn't like him much either.

• 1:31:52Speaker 03

  Because, you know, we weren't any good, you know? We just weren't. We did not write songs. We did not do anything.

• 1:32:03Speaker 03

  So, I figured, how do you reach a lot of people? By being on the radio. So, keep it simple, stupid. So, I would write, like, I had a song called "Hurt So Good." Do you remember that song?

• 1:32:23Joe Rogan?

  Sure.

• 1:32:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, "Hurt So Good." I wrote that in the shower. And I came out real quick and I wrote it down and then I had somebody write it down and I remembered the melody and I sang it to a tape machine. And, uh, I got so many funny stories. Uh, I was down in Criteria, which was in Florida, in Miami. And, uh, you know, it was the early eighties and...

• 1:33:03Speaker 03

  So, we had this, and Criteria had five or six studios and, you know, there were like, I don't know, all kind of bands. The Bee Gees were over here and this band was over here and, you know. And, uh, we had, we had the studio blocked out. But we wouldn't show up. We had other things to do. There was a place called Scaramouche. They had the prettiest girls you ever saw in your life. So, it was like, we did not have time to go to the studio because we had been up till daybreak at Scaramouche.

• 1:33:47Speaker 03

  You know, and, uh, so I was spending a lot of fucking money by now. And it was like, maybe, you know, at the time, a half a million dollars and I had three songs done. Whoa. That's exactly right. Whoa. And I'd had a couple of hits. I had "I Need Lover," "Ain't Even Done With The Night." And, uh, "This Time," I think, I remember. And so those songs were like, got into the top twenty. Anyway, the record company came down and said, "Mellencamp, what the fuck? You know, you're spending all this money and, and if you..."

• 1:34:30Speaker 03

  Don't get on with it, we're gonna drop you from the label. And I went, "You can't drop me from the fucking label. Are you kidding me? I'm just starting." Well, we wanna come down and hear what you've done. I said, "Well, come on down." I played them three songs, the three I had done, in six weeks. Anyway, I played them the three songs. They hated him.

• 1:34:59Joe Rogan?

  Which songs were they?

• 1:35:01Speaker 03

  "Jack and Diane."

• 1:35:02Joe Rogan?

  Oh, God.

• 1:35:02Speaker 03

  "Hurt So Good."

• 1:35:04Joe Rogan?

  Oh, God.

• 1:35:05Speaker 03

  And "Hand to Hold On To."

• 1:35:06Joe Rogan?

  Oh, my God. They hated those?

• 1:35:09Speaker 03

  Oh, they hated them.

• 1:35:10Joe Rogan?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:35:12Speaker 03

  They said, "John, this is, they're too rough, they're too raw. And what is this sound in 'Jack and Diane'? This [makes a sound]. It's not even, what is that sound?" Well, the sound was, I would walk by the Bee Gees' studio, and they had just invented drum machines. And the Bee Gees were using it to keep time. 'Cause, you know, most drummers, they speed up. You know, they start the song at this tempo, and all of a sudden, they're like, by the end of the song, it's like, "I can't keep up with you, goddammit. Slow down." So, uh, the Bee Gees were using it to keep time.

• 1:35:56Speaker 03

  And I heard this sound, and so I knew the engineer, his name was Albie Gluton, and Al, and I said, "Albie, can I borrow that machine?" And he goes, "Yeah, 'cause we're not gonna be in the studio for a week." So, we were doing a song called "Jack and Diane" that just was not working out because the drummer kept speeding up. And when you're trying to keep it simple, stupid, simple is hard. 'Cause if you make a little mistake, it's a big mistake now. Because there's not a bunch of shit covering up your mistake.

• 1:36:34Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:36:36Speaker 03

  So...

• 1:36:38Speaker 03

  I called up Mick Ronson. He was the guitar player for David Bowie. You remember Mick? No, I don't. Joe! God damn it! Sorry. Uh, anyway, Mick was a great guy. He was Bowie's guitar player when Bowie was great. When he had Ziggy Stardust and all that stuff. And Ronson was an English guy and he'd call me Johnny all the time and, you know, and, uh... He said, "Johnny, maybe you should put those baby rattles on there." And I go, "What?" He goes, "You know, that drum machine thing that makes that noise, just to keep time." And I said, "Okay, we'll try it."

• 1:37:23Speaker 03

  So we put on this doo-dun, doo-doo-doo.

• 1:37:31Speaker 03

  And it was perfect timing. Perfect. So the idea was is that we'll take that drum machine out when we get everything. We'll take it out. And now the drummer had to play in time because that machine did not budge. That machine was perfect. And it was a prototype of a drum machine. That's how new it was. It was a prototype. And it was the only one. They gave him the VGs to try it out, see how they liked it. And, uh... So we got it all together and we took the drum machine out.

• 1:38:13Speaker 03

  Sounded like shit. But it sounded great with the drum machine. So I said, "Fuck it, we'll just leave the drum machine in."

• 1:38:23Joe Rogan?

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• 1:39:07Joe Rogan?

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• 1:39:51Joe Rogan?

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• 1:40:33Speaker 03

  And it worked because nobody had ever heard that sound.

• 1:40:37Joe Rogan?

  And the record company didn't like that?

• 1:40:39Speaker 03

  Oh, they hated it. They hated, they hated that fucking sound.

• 1:40:42Joe Rogan?

  But that song was so good.

• 1:40:44Speaker 03

  Well, you know, and it's surprising to me that to this day, how many, how many people still love that song?

• 1:40:53Joe Rogan?

  It's a fucking great song.

• 1:40:55Speaker 03

  You know, and every time-

• 1:40:57Joe Rogan?

  What year was that?

• 1:40:58Speaker 03

  1981.

• 1:40:59Joe Rogan?

  Wow. I was 14.

• 1:41:02Speaker 03

  So how old were you in 1981?

• 1:41:03Joe Rogan?

  14. Yeah, high school.

• 1:41:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, you were there.

• 1:41:07Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:08Speaker 03

  That's great. See, that's great. And I, I love hearing-

• 1:41:14Speaker 03

  You know, guys your age talk about it because it's just like, I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. And the fact that that song today, I had somebody tell me, one of the nicest things anybody said to me was is that, John, there was Romeo and Juliet, there was Frankie and Johnny, and now there's Jack and Diane.

• 1:41:37Joe Rogan?

  Ah.

• 1:41:38Speaker 03

  And you've joined, those two kids have joined those people of importance in American culture.

• 1:41:46Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:47Speaker 03

  And think about it. Now, who would have fucking thought that some dumbass like me would write a fucking song as a child, when I first started writing songs, and create those two characters that made such an impression on everybody?

• 1:42:06Joe Rogan?

  The only other one I think about is Brenda and Eddie from Billy Joel, Scenes from an Italian Restaurant?

• 1:42:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:42:14Joe Rogan?

  That's another one. Yeah. Jack and Diane was fucking huge when I was in high school. I can't believe the record company didn't like that. They didn't like Hand to Hold On To?

• 1:42:25Speaker 03

  Mm-mm.

• 1:42:26Joe Rogan?

  God!

• 1:42:27Speaker 03

  And they, and they didn't like me.

• 1:42:30Joe Rogan?

  God.

• 1:42:31Speaker 03

  And they didn't like me.

• 1:42:33Joe Rogan?

  Oh, how could you be more wrong than Jack and Diane? Jack and Diane was fucking huge.

• 1:42:39Speaker 03

  Joe, look at, I don't know that much about your career, but look at your career and look at, at what suits have said to you and how wrong they were.

• 1:42:49Joe Rogan?

  Well, the most successful thing that I've ever done, nobody had any input on at all, which is this.

• 1:42:55Speaker 03

  Well, there you, well, there you go.

• 1:42:57Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, there would, there was not a chance in hell anybody would have said, yeah, have unfiltered conversations for three hours with random people. And, you know, millions of people will listen and watch. No one would have believed it, but when we did it, we didn't do it for anybody else.

• 1:43:14Speaker 03

  But you were an actor before.

• 1:43:16Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. Well, I was a comic first, and then, uh, because I got a development deal, they gave me some money to be on a sitcom. So I did that. That sitcom got canceled. Then I did another sitcom that was kind of successful called News Radio. That got canceled, and then I wound up being on Fear Factor. Yeah, it's just a bunch of weird circumstances, that a lot of luck, a lot of weird stuff happened. Lot of luck, yeah.

• 1:43:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, see, and you know what? I, I walk in my house sometimes and I look around and think, I get to fucking live here.

• 1:43:53Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:54Speaker 03

  I get to fucking live here.

• 1:43:56Joe Rogan?

  I think that all the time, yeah.

• 1:43:58Speaker 03

  I get to live here and, and how lucky I, I am to have, had that kind of success from such a horrible beginning as Johnny Cougar. And, you know, to be able to, you know, do, I've done what I wanted to do ever since I decided, fuck you guys.

• 1:44:23Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:24Speaker 03

  After, after American Fool came out and those songs became hits, nobody has ever said shit to me about anything.

• 1:44:33Joe Rogan?

  Well, they realized they were wrong.

• 1:44:35Speaker 03

  Well, well, those guys, I'm sure are out of business. And I have to kind of smile about the rock critics because it got to the point where I had such, so many songs on the radio that they couldn't ignore them anymore.

• 1:44:53Joe Rogan?

  Right, you were undeniable, yeah.

• 1:44:55Speaker 03

  And that's, and you know what, that's the word I used to say.

• 1:44:58Joe Rogan?

  That's the key to success.

• 1:45:00Speaker 03

  That's, that's the word I used to say to the guys in the band, we have to make the song undeniable.

• 1:45:05Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:06Speaker 03

  Because if you give them an inch, they'll find a fucking reason not to do it.

• 1:45:09Joe Rogan?

  They definitely will, and it's, there's good in that, too. There's good in those people that hate, that they're valuable. They, they can fuel you to greatness, they can fuel you to be better. Because if you know that there's people out there that are just gonna fucking hate on you no matter what you do, and you just gotta come up with something that, listen, this will be undeniable, and they, they'll still hate it. Look, I was watching a fucking interview yesterday where this lady was talking shit about the Beatles. She was talking about how she thinks the Beatles are terrible, and this lady was not... Particularly articulate, she wasn't interesting or compelling. She didn't seem very intelligent. But she was speaking with such authority about how she thought the Beatles were terrible.

• 1:45:54Joe Rogan?

  I was like, well, you're fucking wrong. You're, you couldn't be more wrong. You couldn't be more wrong. They are one of the greatest bands in the history of the fucking known world.

• 1:46:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:46:06Joe Rogan?

  Fact. But this lady was just going, which shows you, you cannot make everybody happy because some people don't wanna be happy. They don't wanna see good.

• 1:46:17Speaker 03

  You had four really talented people in that band. And it showed because some of the songs. Hear me out, some of the songs, it was good for my generation because we went from cartoons to rock and roll.

• 1:46:33Joe Rogan?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:46:34Speaker 03

  So in a town where I was born.

• 1:46:37Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:37Speaker 03

  Lived a man who sailed the seas.

• 1:46:41Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:41Speaker 03

  And he, you know, it was a cartoon.

• 1:46:44Joe Rogan?

  Right, right.

• 1:46:45Speaker 03

  And the guy that produced, Martin, the guy that produced the, um, the Beatles. Up until that point, he made comedy records.

• 1:46:57Joe Rogan?

  Ah.

• 1:46:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, he made comedy records and cartoons. And so that's, at least that's my understanding. And, uh, he brought that to them, you know, and, uh, and, uh,

• 1:47:13Speaker 03

  you know, you have four guys writing songs. It's a lot better than John Mellencamp writing songs.

• 1:47:23Speaker 03

  You know, so.

• 1:47:23Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. But my point is, it's like, you can't make everybody happy because everybody's not happy.

• 1:47:29Speaker 03

  Well.

• 1:47:30Joe Rogan?

  And they don't wanna be happy.

• 1:47:32Speaker 03

  I have said for years, I'm not for anybody, I'm not for anybody anymore.

• 1:47:38Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:47:40Speaker 03

  If you're coming to my show, and this is when I started playing theaters. If you're coming to my show to hear all these hits, you're not going to. But that's why I'm, after twenty years, I'm gonna go back out and I'm gonna play nothing but hits for two and a half hours. That's how many hit records I've had.

• 1:47:59Joe Rogan?

  That's incredible.

• 1:48:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's gonna be, you know, and I'm, and now, I'm looking forward to it.

• 1:48:05Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:05Speaker 03

  Because I have not played I Need a Lover in twenty-five years on stage. I'm not.

• 1:48:11Joe Rogan?

  So it's fresh.

• 1:48:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a brand-new song.

• 1:48:13Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:14Speaker 03

  I'm gonna be playing it in a way that nobody's ever imagined. Wait till, if you come, if you come and see me, wait till you hear Jack and Diane. I have jammed it up and it's a soul song now.

• 1:48:27Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:48:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, I, there's a term for it, smash, a smash.

• 1:48:32Joe Rogan?

  Mmm.

• 1:48:33Speaker 03

  What do they call it, smash something? Anyway, we turned it into a soul song. I mean, what would it be like if Jack and Diane was a soul song? So you leave the melody the same, but you put the instruments around them differently.

• 1:48:48Joe Rogan?

  Mmm.

• 1:48:49Speaker 03

  You know?

• 1:48:50Joe Rogan?

  To make it interesting for you.

• 1:48:52Speaker 03

  Well, and, and to the audience, 'cause when the chorus comes in, they're gonna be singing that chorus.

• 1:48:57Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:48:57Speaker 03

  'Cause if I play it now.

• 1:49:00Joe Rogan?

  He's trying to push that thing up to your face.

• 1:49:02Speaker 03

  If I play it now, you know, it's just usually me and acoustic guitar and, and it's good because a little ditty, and I don't have to sing anymore.

• 1:49:14Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:49:15Speaker 03

  They sing the whole song.

• 1:49:16Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:49:17Speaker 03

  And I might go, "Oh, yeah," and that's it. And then the, the audience sings it, which is great, which is great.

• 1:49:25Joe Rogan?

  It's gotta be really cool. I gotta come see you live. Are you in Texas at all?

• 1:49:32Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 1:49:33Joe Rogan?

  You don't know?

• 1:49:38Joe Rogan?

  When, when did you drop the Cougar? Because at first, you were John Cougar Mellencamp, and I remember that, I was like, what is going on? Like, why does he have another name? Like, it was confusing to me.

• 1:49:50Speaker 03

  Well, I was trying to, and I think I did it successfully.

• 1:49:54Joe Rogan?

  It was a good transition.

• 1:49:55Speaker 03

  I, I didn't, you know, I could call up somebody and go, hey, it's John Mellencamp, they wouldn't take my call. I could call back two seconds later and go, it's John Cougar, and then they would take my call. So, I figured it, this'll have to be a slow change. Elvis Costello tried to do the same thing and didn't work.

• 1:50:13Joe Rogan?

  What was his real name?

• 1:50:14Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't remember.

• 1:50:15Joe Rogan?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:50:16Speaker 03

  But that's not his real name.

• 1:50:19Speaker 03

  But, you know, he was tired of being Elvis Costello, and he, he went back to his real name, and

• 1:50:25Speaker 03

  people just wouldn't accept it. But with me, it was such a slow burn thing to get over. So, you know, it, it, it, again, what, lucky.

• 1:50:40Joe Rogan?

  It was the first time that I'd recognized that artists were forced to change their name, was you. I didn't know.

• 1:50:46Speaker 03

  Really?

• 1:50:46Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I had no idea.

• 1:50:48Speaker 03

  Do you know that?

• 1:50:49Joe Rogan?

  I was a kid.

• 1:50:49Speaker 03

  Do you know that every fucking movie star that we ended up watching on those black and white things, that's not any of their real names? They're all changed. They're all changed.

• 1:51:01Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:01Speaker 03

  You think Rock Hudson was his real name?

• 1:51:04Joe Rogan?

  Sounds good.

• 1:51:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, it sounds great.

• 1:51:06Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. No, yeah, somebody decided they wanted to come up with a catchier name, which is interesting for a guy like Arnold Schwarzenegger. They'd kept his real name, as bizarre as it was and hard to pronounce.

• 1:51:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. What, and I just saw him smashing, uh, the president.

• 1:51:26Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, he's always smashing somebody. I think he's bored.

• 1:51:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, he needs to get back and run, run.

• 1:51:34Joe Rogan?

  He was a great governor. He really was. He did a really good job with California. California's a fucking mess now. When you, um, transitioned to John Cougar Mellencamp, and then eventually, like, how long did, were you John Cougar Mellencamp before you became John Mellencamp again?

• 1:51:54Speaker 03

  I think the last John Mell- John Cougar Mellencamp record...

• 1:52:02Speaker 03

  Was

• 1:52:05Speaker 03

  a record, I could, it was called Scarecrow. And it had Small Town on it.

• 1:52:13Speaker 03

  It had Small Town on it, it had five hit, can you imagine? It had five fucking hit records off that one album.

• 1:52:21Joe Rogan?

  Pretty amazing.

• 1:52:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. Lucky. And don't forget, I had never written a fucking song.

• 1:52:29Joe Rogan?

  That's what's crazy.

• 1:52:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. Never written a song, so I, I grew up in public. And if you listen to my songs now, so much more mature than, than those young. I, I, I got so sick of it that I wrote a song called Pop Singer in like ninety, ninety-one. Never wanted to be no pop singer, never wanted to sing no pop song.

• 1:52:53Joe Rogan?

  I remember that.

• 1:52:54Speaker 03

  Never wanted to, uh, you know, uh, have a manager hang out after the show. I, I, I just, you know, it was, I wanted to be a musician and not a clown, which, you know,

• 1:53:14Speaker 03

  if you remember Back Joe, and I'm putting anybody down, but there were a lot of clownish guys.

• 1:53:19Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:20Speaker 03

  From MTV.

• 1:53:21Joe Rogan?

  Sure.

• 1:53:22Speaker 03

  You know, that were like, what?

• 1:53:24Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:26Speaker 03

  You know? And a lot of sexism and stuff from MTV and no black people for a while. You know, they didn't play any black people, they might play Michael Jackson, but other than that.

• 1:53:37Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:53:38Speaker 03

  But they, but they just didn't. And, and I remember talking to Sykes about it. Sykes, me, Don Henley, and somebody else went and did, they were gonna drop MTV off a whole bunch of stations and we got on a plane and went there, went to all these different stations that were gonna drop MTV and talked to them why they couldn't do it, and it worked.

• 1:54:05Joe Rogan?

  Why were they dropping MTV?

• 1:54:07Speaker 03

  Uh, too lewd, too.

• 1:54:12Speaker 03

  I wanna tell you something else, young man. I wanna tell you something else.

• 1:54:19Speaker 03

  I showed that by accident in a video. And MTV wasn't gonna play. Wasn't gonna play the video.

• 1:54:32Joe Rogan?

  Cause you had a tattoo?

• 1:54:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:54:34Joe Rogan?

  That's hilarious.

• 1:54:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, because I, you know, I had a tattoo.

• 1:54:38Joe Rogan?

  That's hilarious.

• 1:54:39Speaker 03

  I know.

• 1:54:40Joe Rogan?

  Oh, my god. It's so funny when you think about what music is like now. And then especially like in the late eighties. When hip hop really took off and then gangsta rap took off.

• 1:54:55Speaker 03

  Well, and, and, and now you know why because, uh, you know, what we talk, we're talking about, about sound scan and stuff. That's how, that's how all that happened. And my deceased friend, Tim White, who I love dearly, told me it was going to happen. So, and, and I just sat back and went, I can't, I can't believe that this is right.

• 1:55:14Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:55:15Speaker 03

  I can't believe that that can happen. We're, you know, rock is too, too important to the culture, too important, you know? And there's a lot better songwriters than me and we all got it. Eighty six. I mean, like the fucking Rolling Stones just put out a new album and I never heard it. You never heard it?

• 1:55:34Joe Rogan?

  No. I saw them live a couple of years ago here. They played at the Circuit of the Americas. It was fucking incredible. It was like having an out of body experience. It's like I couldn't believe they were really there.

• 1:55:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:55:47Joe Rogan?

  I remember watching Mick Jagger on stage and my friend was talking to me and I was watching him and he's like, isn't this fucking incredible? I was like, I can't, I can't believe it's really him. It's like, they're so iconic and here he is in his fucking eighties, just jamming. The guy brings two trailers, two whole trailers that are just gym equipment.

• 1:56:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:56:13Joe Rogan?

  Everywhere he goes, works out every day.

• 1:56:15Speaker 03

  Every year, uh, we, we, we, we started Farm Aid in nineteen eighty five. And every year, cause you have a, at Farm Aid, you have a, uh, press conference in the beginning. And then I don't go on until like nine o'clock. So I got all day. You know what I do half the day? Neil, can I use your fucking gym equipment? Cause he's got a, a trailer, like, you know, you would haul.

• 1:56:48Speaker 03

  Groceries and couches and shit.

• 1:56:51Joe Rogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:56:51Speaker 03

  And it's full of gym equipment.

• 1:56:53Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 1:56:54Speaker 03

  Can I use your, so I, I use his, his, not his weights so much, but, uh, but his, uh, you know, his, what do you call it? I call it the lazy machine. Where you can be lazy.

• 1:57:06Joe Rogan?

  Elliptical?

• 1:57:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, elliptical cross trainer.

• 1:57:08Joe Rogan?

  Hey, listen, it's better than nothing.

• 1:57:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:57:10Joe Rogan?

  But, I mean, watching Mick in his eighties, dancing around on stage and doing a, you know, two hour concert with full energy, it's so impressive. It's so inspirational that this guy still loves it that much. I mean, he wasn't phoning nothing in, you know? I mean, it was fucking him dancing, button your leg, baby. I mean, it was full on. I was like, wow, it was amazing.

• 1:57:37Speaker 03

  And, and what I find amazing, and I don't know why I find it amazing, but I find it amazing that people relate to music in that fashion. Cause I didn't know that as a kid. I just thought, you know, I thought I'd make two records and that'd be done. That's why I stayed in Bloomington. I had a little bit of money. I didn't know how much more I'd have, you know, how much longer I was gonna last. So, let's try to like buy a little house and. I talked to, I'm good friends with Bruce and him and I both kinda just look at each other and go, can you fucking believe it?

• 1:58:19Speaker 03

  Cause he's from a real little shitty town in New Jersey. And we both just look at each other and go, fuck, can you believe it? It's unbelievable.

• 1:58:32Joe Rogan?

  Well, gratitude's an important thing. It's kinda co-opted today with a lot of like this spiritual movement, you know? People say it and it kinda sounds hollow and fake, but real gratitude, real thankfulness for a life that you've been so lucky to have and I've been so lucky to have. It's, it's, it's very important. It's an amazing thing. I mean, how could you not look back at your life and not think, can you fucking believe it?

• 1:58:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, and, and you know, the thing of it is, is that I sometimes ask my audience, I go, where are you right now? And most of you probably say, "I am at a John Mellencamp concert in Austin, Texas." And my answer is, yes, but also where you really are, you're on a fucking rock that's going around the fucking sun, that has been here for millions of fucking years. And so, we are only here for a blink of an eye.

• 1:59:36Speaker 03

  So, stop worrying about everything so fucking much. It doesn't fucking matter. Don't beep your horn because the fucking guy in front of you didn't take off right when the light turned red. It's not that important. Don't take yourself so fucking seriously. And try to have some humility. You know, that's what I hate about politics today. There's no fucking humility. How about some humility? I don't care what party you're with, I don't give a fuck. But show some humility, have some, you know, respect for each other, which they just don't.

• 2:00:13Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 2:00:14Speaker 03

  They just don't. It's terrible.

• 2:00:16Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, there's a lot of that. If we could get more people to recognize how brief and fleeting this moment alive is.

• 2:00:25Speaker 03

  It's, it's, it's so, well, I got it tattooed right here on my arm. And my grandmother told me this, when she lived to be 100. And I would go around, lay in bed with her, when she was like 99, 98. And one day, she said to me, she goes, "You know, John, if you don't stop this cussing and wild living, you're not gonna get into heaven." And I went, "Ah, Grandma." She goes, "Yes, you, you know, you need to change your ways a little bit." And I said, "Yeah, well, you'll get me into heaven, don't worry about it."

• 2:01:10Speaker 03

  And she said, "No." She said, "You're gonna find out, real soon." Now, listen, life is short, even in its longest days.

• 2:01:24Joe Rogan?

  It certainly feels short when you look back, right?

• 2:01:26Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. But just think, just think about those words.

• 2:01:30Joe Rogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:01:30Speaker 03

  Coming from a hundred-year-old woman.

• 2:01:32Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:33Speaker 03

  You know, "Life is short, even in its longest days." Really, the opposite end of the spectrum. "Oh, yeah, life goes on."

• 2:01:43Joe Rogan?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 2:01:44Speaker 03

  So I wrote a song called "Life is Short," and, and, uh, and I love playing it. I love playing it, uh, because it, it really hits the nail on the head of, of, you know, getting, how old did you say you were?

• 2:01:59Joe Rogan?

  Fifty-eight.

• 2:02:00Speaker 03

  Fifty-eight years old. You're still a kid.

• 2:02:03Joe Rogan?

  Ha-ha.

• 2:02:04Speaker 03

  You're still a kid.

• 2:02:05Joe Rogan?

  How old are you now?

• 2:02:06Speaker 03

  Seventy-four.

• 2:02:07Joe Rogan?

  Wow. Well, you look great.

• 2:02:09Speaker 03

  Thanks. Maybe we can go on a date tomorrow.

• 2:02:12Joe Rogan?

  (laughing). Does, is singing and performing, is it different now? Do you, do you appreciate it more now than when you were younger?

• 2:02:24Speaker 03

  Uh...

• 2:02:27Joe Rogan?

  Is it a different feeling? Because like you've done so much and it's...

• 2:02:31Speaker 03

  Uh...

• 2:02:32Joe Rogan?

  The scope of it is so big now, in retrospect?

• 2:02:37Speaker 03

  Well, like I said, I'm really looking forward to going out and doing a greatest hits tour. I've never done one. I, I, I can't even imagine, thinking back to when I was like thirty-five, that idea would be like, "Shut the fuck up, I'm not doing that."

• 2:02:53Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 2:02:53Speaker 03

  But now, at my age, it's kinda like, and I, I was, I did a thing with Sean Penn, and Sean and I were talking, and he goes, "John, just go do it." 'Cause I was on the fence about doing it. He goes, "What's wrong with you? Yes, go do it." "Don't you think that if I could, like, show the best parts of my movies to people, that I would do it?" And I go, "I don't know." He goes, "Yeah, 'cause it, it's, it, it's, you're, you're really sharing something."

• 2:03:24Joe Rogan?

  Well, it's also not a whole lot of people have ever done it before, right? Not a whole lot of people have ever had the kind of hits that you've had. So the opportunity to go out there and do two and a half hours of fucking hits...

• 2:03:38Speaker 03

  I know.

• 2:03:38Joe Rogan?

  Is amazing.

• 2:03:39Speaker 03

  And I, uh, I have to, like I said, I walk in my house and I go, "I can't believe I get to live here." And you know, I feel good about, you know, I'm the only father in the world that does not encourage their kids to work. It's like, what do you want to go to work for? You know, my son graduated from Duke and it's just like, eh, fuck that work stuff. Do what you want to do. You're thirty-one years old. You're handsome. You're thirty-one years old. You could beat anybody up in the room. You know.

• 2:04:15Speaker 03

  Why do you want to? But I think he's getting to the age where he wants to get a job and I don't want him to leave because he still lives in my, on my property. And it's nice. I love having him in there. I love having Hud live with me. Uh, he doesn't live with me. He lives in a different house, a different building. And I, but I love having him there because I know that I can pick up Thorn and go, hey Hud. And he's there. And I'm telling you, having kids was one of the best things I ever did.

• 2:04:46Joe Rogan?

  It's interesting too, because having a kid when you're in high school, a lot of people think is like a death sentence for your career. You know?

• 2:04:54Speaker 03

  Well, it was a death sentence for my kid.

• 2:04:58Speaker 03

  You know, I was eighteen years old. I was on drugs. You know, my idea of raising a kid back then when I was in college was throwing water balloons at her. That's all I knew. It was like, this is fun. You know, but it turned out, you know, but uh, yeah. I, I, I, uh, I, uh, really enjoy my kids and my dad told me that. He told me, have as many kids as you can because when you get older. Cause see, I had, I don't know about you, but I had seven of my best friends die in eighteen months.

• 2:05:39Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:05:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, because they couldn't get off the party.

• 2:05:44Speaker 03

  They just couldn't get off the party because they were drunk all the time. I mean, if you drank Crown Royal every fucking day.

• 2:05:51Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:52Speaker 03

  It's gonna fuck up your liver and.

• 2:05:54Joe Rogan?

  One hundred percent. Yeah.

• 2:05:57Speaker 03

  And that's what they did. I mean, you know. Except Tim, Tim had a heart attack. Tim White, the guy I was telling you about.

• 2:06:07Speaker 03

  He died on an elevator ride from in New York, from the ground floor to his office. And by the time he got up there, he was dead.

• 2:06:15Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:06:16Speaker 03

  But he would call me up every day and go, man, my chest really hurts. My back really hurts.

• 2:06:21Joe Rogan?

  Ugh.

• 2:06:22Speaker 03

  You know, and I would go, Tim, your dad died of at like forty nine from heart disease. Don't you think you better go to the doctor? I don't wanna go. And that's what that's what most guys do. They don't wanna go to the fucking doctor.

• 2:06:36Joe Rogan?

  Yep. Yeah.

• 2:06:38Speaker 03

  You know. But I do.

• 2:06:41Joe Rogan?

  Does the doctor tell you to stop smoking?

• 2:06:45Speaker 03

  All the all the time. But see, here's. Here's the thing about cigarettes. Find something you love.

• 2:06:56Speaker 03

  And let it kill you.

• 2:07:04Speaker 03

  Find something you love and let it kill you.

• 2:07:08Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. I don't know.

• 2:07:12Joe Rogan?

  It's not killing you yet. I mean.

• 2:07:14Speaker 03

  And I just had a. I just had a.

• 2:07:21Speaker 03

  A heart mammogram and all that stuff.

• 2:07:25Speaker 03

  And the doctors go. Cause the heart is shaped like this. You know, like that. And then what happens is is that as you longer you smoke. It flattens out and that way it's full of crap.

• 2:07:40Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 2:07:41Speaker 03

  Mine's still like this. And he said last it was two years ago. He said, well, I'd like to tell you, you need to quit smoking. But if you've been smoking as long as I know you have.

• 2:07:56Speaker 03

  The only thing that's really happened is is that your heart looks like a teenager's and your voice sounds black, so.

• 2:08:05Joe Rogan?

  Do you think it's because you smoke American Spirits? I talked to a doctor that said that to me. And she Suzanne Humphrey, she was like, I think that one of the things that's killing people is cigarettes with all the additives in it, all the different chemicals that they put.

• 2:08:18Speaker 03

  A hundred and twenty chemicals.

• 2:08:20Joe Rogan?

  Crazy.

• 2:08:21Speaker 03

  I, my girlfriend hates that I fucking smoke. Of course, she knew I was smoking when she met me. But now that we've been together for three years. And my wife of 20 years, Elaine, never smoked a cigarette in her life till she met me. And then she starts smoking. She, on one hand, just said, well, fuck it. If you can't beat them, join them. So she started smoking. But Kristen hates cigarettes. And I, I don't know what to tell her. Cause you know, I don't do much good, but I'm really a good smoker.

• 2:09:02Speaker 03

  Really good ad.

• 2:09:03Joe Rogan?

  What is it they love about cigarettes so much?

• 2:09:08Speaker 03

  They're part of me.

• 2:09:11Speaker 03

  I don't know how to put it. I mean, I smoked my first cigarette at 10.

• 2:09:16Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:09:18Speaker 03

  10.

• 2:09:19Joe Rogan?

  64 years of smoking.

• 2:09:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:09:21Joe Rogan?

  That's crazy. And you're okay.

• 2:09:24Speaker 03

  I was addicted in high school.

• 2:09:27Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:09:27Speaker 03

  I used to wake up in the morning and my parents had a great big house. And I would go down in the basement, go into the fucking storm cellar and smoke, not knowing that I came out of that little area smelling like a cigarette ashtray.

• 2:09:42Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 2:09:44Speaker 03

  And my parents, you know, it's like, have you been smoking downstairs? Yeah. But they never said anything.

• 2:09:51Joe Rogan?

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• 2:10:14Joe Rogan?

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• 2:10:59Joe Rogan?

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• 2:11:43Joe Rogan?

  Don't have insurance or live outside of the United States? You can still get 10% off your first month. Visit betterhelp.com to explore your payment options. That's better, H-E-L-P, dot com. Well, maybe it's better than having the stress of not smoking. One of the things about smoking, and I'm not an advocate, I'm not telling people they should smoke, but maybe one of the things about it is that at least it relaxes you. I think one of the worst things for people is just stress. I was talking about a friend of mine who's going through something pretty heavy right now. And he's had a couple of heart attacks and there's nothing wrong with him. He's had heart attacks just from stress.

• 2:12:26Joe Rogan?

  Where his fucking arteries just lock up, his whole body's just locked up just from anxiety and stress. And he's had heart attacks because that, doesn't smoke, doesn't drink, takes care of himself. And just the, the problems in his life are so overwhelming. There's gotta be, there's a benefit, there's gotta be a benefit to just relaxing. Just enjoying something and relaxing and not having that overwhelming stress.

• 2:12:52Speaker 03

  Well, it's amazing how much cigarettes take you away from, because you've got to, you know, nowadays if you're a cigarette smoker, you, you know. I'm lucky to be here with you that I could smoke in your area. But most people would go.

• 2:13:07Joe Rogan?

  Go outside, yeah, yeah.

• 2:13:11Speaker 03

  But I'll tell you a funny story about Johnny Cash and me.

• 2:13:17Speaker 03

  John, John, I, John and I knew each other and I would go down and, and I would see him in Jamaica and then he got really sick. But John quit smoking and John and I did, um.

• 2:13:34Speaker 03

  Did something for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and it's another funny story.

• 2:13:43Speaker 03

  We were standing around doing, getting ready to do sound checking and there was a whole bunch of people playing. A whole bunch of people. And the Eagles were on sound checking. And they were taking, taking forever because Don Henley is a perfectionist. Everything's out of beat, it's right. And I was standing with John in June and John was getting irritated. Cause we were like forty minutes, you know, we'd been standing there ready to sound check for forty minutes. So while we're standing there, I was smoking and John goes, "You're going to have to quit that smoking, John. It's going to catch up with you someday." I said, "Well, you fucking smoke."

• 2:14:28Speaker 03

  And he goes, "Well, I used to, but I saw this guy from London and he, he got me to quit smoking." I go, "Maybe I should see that guy." He goes, "Okay, yeah, I will." "Oh, you will." Anyway, so, so anyway, we finally get on to sound check and John sound checked without me, uh, because I just sang one song with him. I, and then when it came time to sound check, I went, "You know, John," you know, because I keep was irritated. Yeah, I don't know if you knew Johnny Cash or not. No. He had a fucking temper. You know, you didn't fuck with John Cash. You just didn't.

• 2:15:13Speaker 03

  Anyway, I said, "You know, John, uh, you know, I got this song." And we were doing Ring of Fire. I said, "I know that song." "It's easy." He said, "You sure?" And I said, "Yeah, yeah, I got it. I got it." He goes, "Okay, well, thanks, because you know, I'm sick of fucking being here." So the next night, we get up there and John, and then he introduces me to my friend, John Mellencamp. He started the song. "I fell into..."

• 2:15:54Speaker 03

  I didn't realize that he had changed the fucking key from him smoking to a lower key. So I couldn't hit the note because it was "I fell into..." "To..." "I fell..." I couldn't find a fucking note because it was not the note the song was written in. I could sing right along with the song. And I look over there and there's Chuck Berry going.

• 2:16:24Speaker 03

  And I look over there and there's Springsteen going. And all these people on the side of the stage, right, and they're all giving me a look like, "You're fucking up, man." It was like, "Yeah, I know it." And so, anyway. As soon as the song was over, I ran offstage. I was totally humiliated, right? So I ran offstage and got to my trailer. I just get back there and all of a sudden,

• 2:16:47Speaker 03

  knock on the door. And I answer and it's John. And he says, "Can I come in?" And I go, "I don't know why you'd want to, but yeah, come on in." He goes,

• 2:16:57Speaker 03

  "I told you we should have sounded jacked."

• 2:17:04Speaker 03

  Anyway, so that conversation led on to, "I know this guy,

• 2:17:10Speaker 03

  who will get you to quit smoking." And so, he gives me all the information. And me and two other guys fly this guy over from London.

• 2:17:20Speaker 03

  And, Joe here was his solution for not smoking. He gave me a good talking, too.

• 2:17:30Joe Rogan?

  That's it?

• 2:17:31Speaker 03

  That was it. I was smoking on the way back to Indiana.

• 2:17:37Joe Rogan?

  My friend Ron White's been smoking his whole life and he just stopped. And he went to a hypnotist. Same hypnotist. He quit drinking a few years back. Went to a hypnotist, quit drinking easy. He said it was so easy. And then, uh, just recently, like within the last three or four weeks, quit smoking. And he's almost seventy. Just said the hypnotist got him and said now he doesn't have to desire. He goes, "Sometimes he goes after sex. He goes after a meal. Sometimes I have like for a brief second."

• 2:18:06Speaker 03

  I don't have to worry about that. I'm too old for sex.

• 2:18:10Speaker 03

  I don't have to worry about that anymore.

• 2:18:12Joe Rogan?

  Well, I guess Ron still gets after it. Cause after, uh, he said it's just a brief second and then it goes away.

• 2:18:19Speaker 03

  Well, I'll tell you, uh...

• 2:18:24Speaker 03

  I was friends with the Newman family. And Paul quit smoking and died.

• 2:18:32Joe Rogan?

  Right afterwards? Was the smoking contributing to his health problems? Yeah.

• 2:18:39Speaker 03

  And it was just like he was older, it was like, you know, I mean, he was like eighties, I don't know. Can you see how old he was when he died? Uh, anyway, so, you know.

• 2:18:52Speaker 03

  I just kinda went.

• 2:18:54Joe Rogan?

  Find what you love and let it kill you.

• 2:18:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. Find what you love and let it kill you.

• 2:19:00Joe Rogan?

  Eighty-three?

• 2:19:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:19:02Joe Rogan?

  I fucking loved that guy. Hustler, one of my favorite movies of all time.

• 2:19:06Speaker 03

  Well, I'm really good friends with Joanne, who now is.

• 2:19:12Speaker 03

  I love Joanne and, uh, once Paul died, I became her boyfriend.

• 2:19:19Speaker 03

  And, uh, she and I would talk all the time on the phone and whenever I was in New York or or the town she lives in, north of New York. I'd, I'd take her to plays and we'd go to plays and we'd do, uh, do stuff and I'd pinch her on the ass and she'd, you know, she'd look at me like.

• 2:19:43Speaker 03

  But then, when she started call, when I would call her and she started calling me Paul, I would have to go, "Joanne, it's not Paul, I'm John." And now she, now I still go see her all the time, not all the time, not as much as I should. But she, I can't remember the fucking town she lives in.

• 2:20:05Speaker 03

  Anyway, she's, she can't talk. She can't, you know, she has, uh, what do you call it?

• 2:20:12Joe Rogan?

  Dementia.

• 2:20:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:20:14Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:14Speaker 03

  And she can't talk and she, she can, you know, I take my guitar and I'll play and sing for her. She'll.

• 2:20:24Joe Rogan?

  God, that's sad.

• 2:20:27Speaker 03

  But, you know, she's always happy to see me. I think she realizes that it's me.

• 2:20:33Speaker 03

  Though I love her, I mean, uh, she was just. She was just great. She was a great woman. How I met her was at a Democratic thing for, who was the guy that ran for president, John?

• 2:20:47Joe Rogan?

  John Kerry.

• 2:20:49Speaker 03

  John Kerry. And it was at Radio City. And I have a son named Hud, and Paul Newman starred in the movie Hud. And so Newman walked in to my dressing room and goes, "I'm looking for Hud Mellencamp." And he was with me, but he was running around Radio City somewhere. Have you been to Radio City?

• 2:21:12Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 2:21:13Speaker 03

  Have you been backstage?

• 2:21:14Joe Rogan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:21:15Speaker 03

  There's all kind of shit going on.

• 2:21:17Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:21:18Speaker 03

  You can go anywhere in that place. Anyway, so Hud was running around there and I just let him go wherever he wants. And I'm sitting there talking to Paul and I'm like, "This is pretty cool." And then Joanne walked in and was like, "All right Newman, uh, hey." Because she was beautiful. I mean, Jo, you cannot, she must have been in her late 50s, something like that. She was gorgeous. It's like one of the prettiest women I'd ever seen. And so I just kind of like, "Well, it's nice meeting you, Paul. Hey, Joanne." And that's how we became friends. And even before he died, her and I were talking on the phone.

• 2:22:00Speaker 03

  And I love Joanne. I hope she lives forever, but I, you know, I know the people take care of her. It's sad.

• 2:22:09Joe Rogan?

  It's just hard to see someone in a deteriorated state like that as they get older.

• 2:22:14Speaker 03

  Well, you know, have you ever seen the movie, uh, God, I can't think, The Fugitive Kind?

• 2:22:22Joe Rogan?

  What is it?

• 2:22:22Speaker 03

  The Fugitive Kind?

• 2:22:24Joe Rogan?

  I don't think so.

• 2:22:26Speaker 03

  Rogan, you gotta watch it.

• 2:22:27Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:27Speaker 03

  It's great. You'll love it. It's called The Fugitive Kind. It stars Brando and Joanne Woodward. And it's just such a, it's written by Tennessee Williams.

• 2:22:40Joe Rogan?

  Oh.

• 2:22:41Speaker 03

  It's really, really good. Really good. It's one of my favorite movies ever made, The Fugitive Kind.

• 2:22:48Joe Rogan?

  I'll check it out.

• 2:22:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And I, I know a lot about old movies because I don't watch new movies. If it's not in black and white, I'm not watching.

• 2:22:59Joe Rogan?

  Really?

• 2:23:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:23:00Joe Rogan?

  Has it always been the case or is that a new thing?

• 2:23:02Speaker 03

  No, it's always been the.

• 2:23:04Joe Rogan?

  Really?

• 2:23:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:23:07Speaker 03

  My girlfriend Kristen will talk to me, you know that actor? And I'll go, no.

• 2:23:13Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't know anybody in the, in the entertainment business anymore, except guys my age.

• 2:23:20Joe Rogan?

  That's probably a good thing.

• 2:23:22Speaker 03

  But I don't know any of them. You know, I know Sean, you know, but I, I've known Sean since he was a kid before Ridgemont High.

• 2:23:31Joe Rogan?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:23:32Speaker 03

  That's how long I've known that guy.

• 2:23:34Joe Rogan?

  Wow, that was a fucking great movie.

• 2:23:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was.

• 2:23:37Joe Rogan?

  They can't make a comedy like that anymore.

• 2:23:39Speaker 03

  Oh, no, they couldn't even get it. They, they, they wouldn't make it again.

• 2:23:42Joe Rogan?

  Not a chance.

• 2:23:42Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:23:43Joe Rogan?

  Not a chance in hell. That's the thing with political correctness and then the woke movement. That's the thing that really died was the great comedy movies, the inappropriate.

• 2:23:53Speaker 03

  Well, you answer me this question.

• 2:23:54Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:55Speaker 03

  Why did anybody give a shit anyway? I mean, you know, eighty-six and what was the senator? The guy, the comedian that wrote for Saturday Night Live?

• 2:24:07Joe Rogan?

  Al Franken?

• 2:24:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:24:09Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:10Speaker 03

  I had to say fuck you guys.

• 2:24:11Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, should have. Yeah.

• 2:24:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, why, why did he let some others?

• 2:24:16Joe Rogan?

  The climate got crazy. People lost their fucking minds and I think it's kind of turned around and people are kind of recognizing that it was a massive overcorrection.

• 2:24:25Speaker 03

  It was.

• 2:24:25Joe Rogan?

  But, uh, the problem is the comedy films, like if you go back and watch, you know, like Tropical Thunder or any of those kind of crazy movies that were like really outrageous and funny, like, you know, you can't make them today. Nobody wants to fund them and finance them. Nobody wants the heat. Nobody wants to deal with the criticism. They, they essentially killed comedy mus- movies.

• 2:24:49Speaker 03

  Well, and that's what I was asking you, how is, how is doing stand-up?

• 2:24:53Joe Rogan?

  You can't kill stand-up. The problem is stand-up is like people will come to see you and that's all that matters. People come to see you and they laugh. That's all that matters. They're like, the critics don't matter.

• 2:25:03Speaker 03

  Well, who, who, who's your favorite stand-up comedian now?

• 2:25:06Joe Rogan?

  Alive? Uh, there's so many good ones right now. I mean, Chappelle's probably the greatest, if, one of the greatest of all time and we're lucky we have him alive now. But, uh, you know, Bill Burr's great, Shane Gillis, there's, it, it's an amazing time for stand-up. David Tell is probably like the most unheralded great comic that's alive today. There's so many great comedy, so many great comedians now.

• 2:25:30Speaker 03

  What about Jim Jefferies?

• 2:25:32Joe Rogan?

  Jim Jefferies is funny. There's, I mean, the Australian guy. There's, um, you know, more comics now that are huge than I think have ever been alive in the history of comedy because of YouTube and Instagram and definitely Netflix. Because there's just more comedy to see. There's more comedy to go watch. There's more comics right now are selling out arenas than ever in the history of stand-up comedy.

• 2:26:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've seen it on television.

• 2:26:04Joe Rogan?

  You just can't worry about what the haters think. You can't worry about that. You've just gotta just do what you think is funny and what you think the audience is gonna think is funny and work real hard at it. That's all you have to do. And just don't pay attention to the criticism. If you do, it'll kill you.

• 2:26:19Speaker 03

  The best stand-up comedian movie I ever saw was the first Richard Pryor.

• 2:26:28Joe Rogan?

  Oh, Live on the Sunset Strip changed my life.

• 2:26:31Speaker 03

  Well, that.

• 2:26:31Joe Rogan?

  Changed my life.

• 2:26:32Speaker 03

  That was the third one.

• 2:26:33Joe Rogan?

  Was it?

• 2:26:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:26:35Joe Rogan?

  So Wanted was before that, right?

• 2:26:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, and that took place in New Orleans.

• 2:26:39Joe Rogan?

  Okay, there was one he filmed in Long Beach.

• 2:26:42Speaker 03

  That is the one I'm talking about.

• 2:26:44Joe Rogan?

  Phenomenal, phenomenal.

• 2:26:45Speaker 03

  Unbelievable.

• 2:26:46Joe Rogan?

  Phenomenal, yeah.

• 2:26:47Speaker 03

  Unbelievable.

• 2:26:48Joe Rogan?

  And while he's getting on stage, people are still coming in and sitting down.

• 2:26:51Speaker 03

  I know.

• 2:26:52Joe Rogan?

  He's fucking with people as they're coming in and sitting down. I don't think he had an opening act. I think he just came right out.

• 2:26:56Speaker 03

  No, he did. He had, yeah, he had, what's the woman's name, the singer, uh...

• 2:27:02Joe Rogan?

  Oh, he had a musical opening act?

• 2:27:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:27:05Joe Rogan?

  Interesting.

• 2:27:06Speaker 03

  Um, I can't remember who it was, but he thanked him. He thanked her.

• 2:27:11Joe Rogan?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:27:12Speaker 03

  But I saw that in like nineteen, whatever year it was, seventy-nine when it came out, and I was in Florida. And I had to go into the black part of Miami to see it. And I took a couple of guys in my band with me. And this one guy named Ferd in my band was just an idiot. We walk in there and there's nothing but black people. So I'm okay. Except Ferd walks in like this.

• 2:27:49Speaker 03

  And I go, "What the fuck are you doing?

• 2:27:53Speaker 03

  What the fuck?"

• 2:27:53Joe Rogan?

  He walked in grabbing his dick?

• 2:27:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:27:59Speaker 03

  Cause he wanted to show them that he was.

• 2:28:01Joe Rogan?

  Uh, Patty LaBelle.

• 2:28:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's who opened up.

• 2:28:04Joe Rogan?

  There it is. Nice.

• 2:28:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, so anyway, he's grabbing his dick, walking in, and I'm looking, I'm going, "Are you, how do you fucking mind? Stop, stop doing that."

• 2:28:15Joe Rogan?

  My parents took me to see Live in the Sunset Strip when I was a kid, I was in high school. And I guess I was like fifteen at the time, something like that. And, uh, I remember looking around at all the people laughing, and I couldn't believe how funny it was. I couldn't believe how funny it was, I couldn't believe that this guy could just be on stage talking, and it would be that funny. But I'd seen all these comedy movies that were really funny, but nothing ever made me laugh as hard as this one man on stage talking. I'll never forget it, I was little, I was like looking around the crowd, and people were just falling out of their seats, laughing, slapping each other. Couldn't, couldn't believe how funny it was.

• 2:28:55Speaker 03

  Well, you know the backstory on that, on that?

• 2:28:58Joe Rogan?

  What's the backstory?

• 2:29:00Speaker 03

  The backstory was, that was take two.

• 2:29:02Joe Rogan?

  Oh, yeah, he bombed the first one, yeah.

• 2:29:05Speaker 03

  Well, he, for whatever reason.

• 2:29:07Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I did hear that.

• 2:29:08Speaker 03

  He decided to do the show backwards.

• 2:29:12Joe Rogan?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:29:13Speaker 03

  So he started with, you know, how he ended, and was gonna work his way forward. And I don't know why he did that, but apparently people that, that knew him told me that he would always do shit like that.

• 2:29:27Joe Rogan?

  Well, he was creative. I had heard that he was working it out at the Comedy Store, and they would come in on a Monday night, and it was bombing. And then by Friday night, he was destroying with the same material. He just figured out a way to tweak it. You know, that was back when he was working with Paul Mooney, Paul Mooney was one of his writers, who was a guy that I knew really well, I worked with him at the Comedy Store. And so Mooney and him would just figure out what the beats were and.

• 2:29:48Speaker 03

  So did you play the Comedy Store a lot?

• 2:29:50Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was my home club in LA.

• 2:29:55Speaker 03

  And how did you go down?

• 2:29:56Joe Rogan?

  I got in, I auditioned in nineteen ninety-four. You know, I came from LA, I came from New York, rather, to LA to do a sitcom. And I didn't really give a shit about the sitcom. That wasn't really that important to me. I was only doing it for money. But while I was there, I was like, God, I gotta go to the Comedy Store. Because that, when I lived in Boston, when I first started stand-up in eighty-eight, they would talk about the Comedy Store like it was a religious experience. It was like Mecca. Because this was after Sam Kinison had made it. Of course, Richard Pryor had come from there. Bill Hicks had come from there. David Letterman, so many people had come from there. Robin Williams. And so they just talked about it with like hushed tones, like, man, you gotta get to the Comedy Store. It was like a pilgrimage, like you had to get there.

• 2:30:38Joe Rogan?

  And I got there in ninety-four and never left, you know, until the pandemic.

• 2:30:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was friends with Letterman, because he's from Indianapolis. And his mom used to come down to my house in Bloomington. And we'd have his mom and his stepdad would come down and have dinner with me at my house. And so, Letterman, I did a couple of things on Letterman where I cooked a cake with his mom in Indianapolis and brought the cake to David for his birthday. And I like, I like Letterman. He was, he's always been nice to me. And his mom told me a story, I don't know if it's true or not.

• 2:31:23Speaker 03

  But I had just released my first album and David was still doing the weather locally in Indianapolis.

• 2:31:33Joe Rogan?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:31:34Speaker 03

  And he said to his mom, if that kid can go out and do it, I can too.

• 2:31:41Joe Rogan?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:31:43Speaker 03

  That's what his mom said. I don't know if that's true or not. His mom told me that. I never asked Dave about it.

• 2:31:48Joe Rogan?

  You shouldn't even ask. Let it live in legend.

• 2:31:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, I like the story.

• 2:31:53Joe Rogan?

  John, thank you so much, man. This was a lot of fun. It was a real pleasure meeting you. I really enjoyed it, man. And I've been a big fan of yours for years. So this was a, it was a real treat for me.

• 2:32:01Speaker 03

  Great, I'm glad, I'm glad to be here and. I hope you come and see me play.

• 2:32:06Joe Rogan?

  I would love to. I definitely will.

• 2:32:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:32:08Joe Rogan?

  Is your tours on your website? Is it?

• 2:32:11Speaker 03

  I don't.

• 2:32:12Joe Rogan?

  JohnMellencamp.com or something like that?

• 2:32:13Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 2:32:15Joe Rogan?

  People will find it. We'll find it.

• 2:32:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't, I don't know.

• 2:32:17Joe Rogan?

  We'll find it. Thank you. Thank you very much. It was really fun. Thank you. All right.

• 2:32:21Speaker 03

  And you're gonna hate those fucking tattoos.

• 2:32:23Joe Rogan?

  Nope. I don't think so. I like them.

• 2:32:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, I thought I liked mine too.

• 2:32:31Speaker 03

  I thought I liked mine too.

• 2:32:32Joe Rogan?

  Bye, everybody.

• 2:32:47Joe Rogan?

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