#57 – Rick Rubin, legendary music producer: collaborating with sensitive psyche of greatest living musicians, and his personal story of weight loss and spiritual quest

Foreign. Hey everyone. Welcome to the Peter Attia Drive. I'm your host, Peter Attia. The Drive is a result of my hunger for optimizing performance, health, longevity, critical thinking, along with a few other obsessions along the way. I've spent the last several years working with some of the most successful, top performing individuals in the world, and this podcast is my attempt to synthesize what I've learned along the way to help you live a higher quality, more fulfilling life. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find more information on today's episode and other topics@peterattiamd.com. Hey everybody. Welcome to this week's episode of the Drive. I'd like to take a couple of minutes to talk about why we don't run ads on this podcast and why instead we've chosen to rely entirely on listener support. If you're listening to this, you probably already know, but the two things I care most about professionally are how to live longer and how to live better. I have a complete fascination and obsession with this topic. I practice it professionally, and I've seen firsthand how access to information is basically all people need to make better decisions and improve the quality of their lives. Curating and sharing this knowledge is not easy, and even before starting the podcast, that became clear to me. The sheer volume of material published in this space is overwhelming. I'm fortunate to have a great team that helps me continue learning and sharing this information with you. To take one example, our show notes are in a league of their own. In fact, we now have a full time person that is dedicated to producing those and the feedback has mirrored this. So all of this raises a natural question. How will we continue to fund the work necessary to support this? As you probably know, the tried and true way to do this is to sell ads. But after a lot of contemplation, that model just doesn't feel right to me for a few reasons. Now the first and most important of these is trust. I'm not sure how you could trust me if I'm telling you about something when you know I'm being paid by the company that makes it to tell you about it. Another reason selling ads doesn't feel right to me is because I just know myself. I have a really hard time advocating for something that I'm not absolutely nuts for. So if I don't feel that way about something, I don't know how I can talk about it enthusiastically. So instead of selling ads, I've chosen to do what a handful of others have proved can work over time and that is to create a subscriber support model for my audience. This keeps my relationship with you both simple and honest. If you value what I'm doing, you can become a member and support us at whatever level works for you. In exchange, you'll get the benefits above and beyond what's available for free. It's that simple. It's my goal to ensure that no matter what level you choose to support us at, you will get back more than you give. So, for example, members will receive full access to the exclusive show Notes, including other things that we plan to build upon, such as the downloadable transcripts for each episode. These are useful beyond just the podcast, especially given the technical nature of many of our shows. Members also get exclusive access to listen to and participate in the regular Ask Me Anything episodes. That means asking questions directly into the AMA portal and also getting to hear these podcasts when they come out. Lastly, and this is something I'm really excited about, I want my supporters to get the best deals possible on the products that I love. And as I said, we're not taking ad dollars from anyone. But instead, what I'd like to do is work with companies who make the products that I already love and would already talk about for free and have them pass savings on to you. Again, the podcast will remain free to all, but my hope is that many of you will find enough value in 1 the podcast itself and 2 the additional content exclusive for members to support us at a level that makes sense for you. I want to thank you for taking a moment to listen to this. If you learn from and find value in the content I produce, please consider supporting us directly by signing up for a monthly subscription. My guest this week is my friend and legend Rick Rubin. Rick is a Grammy Award winning recording producer. He's the co founder of Def Jam Records, which if any of you grew up in the era I grew up in. You're intimately familiar with the incredible breadth of hip hop that spun out of that the Beastie Boys, LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Run dmc, Ghetto Boys, et cetera. In thinking about doing an introduction for Rick, I almost wonder if it's easier to mention the artists he has not produced or worked with. But rather than that, I'll rattle off, I don't know, a small fraction of those that he has acdc, Adele, Aerosmith, Eminem, Jay Z, Johnny Cash, which we.

Talk quite a bit about.

Justin Timberlake, Kanye, Kid Rock, Lady Gaga, Linkin Park, Soundgarden, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage against the Machine, Tom Petty, Smashing Pumpkins, Kind of you Name it. And he's worked with them. MTV referred to Rick as, quote, the most important producer of the last 20 years. And in 2007, he appeared on Time's 100 Most Influential People in the World. This is one of those episodes where, honestly, we could have just spent the entire time talking about music. And at some point, I had to extract myself from the discussion on music, which was probably about the first half of this interview. We also did this interview in his legendary recording studio in Malibu. So I think a lot of my interviews feel sort of personal because I do almost all of them in person. This one, I would say even more so because we basically did this in a recording studio, sitting on couches with boom mics down in front of us, so that you're barely even thinking about this as an interview. And it was kind of just Rick and I talking, like we would have been talking at his place or my place. And I think that that allows us to get into some of the more intimate stuff about not just the music, but the pain that sometimes drives music, the cycle of addiction. Rick is certainly no stranger to seeing the downside of the creative genius phenotype that produces some of the most incredible music that all of us love and listen to. We also get into his health. Many people know Rick has lost a lot of weight, and he was at one point morbidly obese. And so we talk about that, which he's talked about a little bit before, this incredible transformation. But we also talk about a really significant health scare that Rick had less than a year ago. And for me, this was actually very powerful because I lived this health scare with him as a friend. But I don't think as it was unfolding, I fully understood what he was going through because Rick is such a sort of happy go, lucky guy. I didn't appreciate at the time the challenges that he was dealing with. And I think being able to relive it through this discussion was helpful for me. And I think it's going to be helpful for many other people to understand the challenges that people are going through when they're confronting something that's quite frightening, which it was. We could have spent, honestly, another five hours talking, but we had to get back to his place for dinner. And I'm convinced that most people will really, even if you're not a huge music fan, you will really enjoy this episode. So without any further delay, here's my really fun discussion with Rick Rubin. Well, Rick, this is a huge honor, man. Not only do I get to talk with you, but we get to do so in a kind of legendary place, huh?

Yes, sir.

Can you tell me a little bit about where we are? I mean, Eric gave me a tour that blew my mind. And I don't think that a listener could appreciate the physical beauty of what we're talking about. But this is some.

I wouldn't.

When you said, let's meet at the studio, I didn't have this in mind.

Yes.

How did this place get to be the band?

And Bob Dylan built it in 1974, and the house was already here. They put the studio in. Before that, they had been living in Woodstock in a place called Big Pink. They made a famous album called Big Pink. And then they all decided to move to California. And this was the place, and they built the studio. And if you watch the Last Waltz, all of the scenes that are not the concert happen here, and all the rehearsals happened here, and all the interviews happened here. And it's been rocking ever since 1974.

The trailer out there was Bob Dylan's. Huh? That was his. They used to tour in that trailer.

In theory. That's one of the. It's one of the stories associated with the studio. So much of it is, you know, there's so much myth, I don't know where the line is, of what's real and what's not.

There's probably no average to this. But how long does it take a band to actually produce a record in a place like this, assuming that they're not distracted by other things or obligations? But if a band says, look, Rick, we want to come and we want to work with you, and we want to produce an album and we've written the music, but it's still a little rough. Is that something that a typical band would be able to do in a month? In two months? I mean, I don't even have a sense of that scale.

It could be a couple of weeks, and it could be a couple of years, it really is dependent on the project. Everyone has its own flow. It creates its own rhythm.

So let's kind of go back to the beginning a little bit. So you grew up in New York, right?

Yes. Long Island. Long Beach. Long Island.

Did you always love music?

Always loved music.

And you went to nyu, if I recall. What were you studying there?

I started as a philosophy major, and then after two years, I switched to film and television.

And when did you first start producing music, and what did that look like?

I was in a punk rock band and recorded a couple of things with my band. That was my first experience of Recording and I enjoyed it. And then hip hop was just starting in New York City and it was a small underground form of music. This is early 80s, mid-80s, 80, I'm going to say 85, something like that. I'm not sure exactly, but mid-80s. And I would go to these clubs and hear this music. And at the time there was very little recorded rap. There would be maybe if you went to the stores where DJs would shop, which would have 12 inch vinyl singles in those days, that'd be the only place you'd find any, anything rap related. And it would be a 12 inch single. And that's all there was, were these 12 inch singles. And maybe every week one or two 12 inch singles would come out and that was all there was in rap music. And I would go to the DJ store every week and listen to all the new music coming out and the energy. When I went to a, a hip hop club, what I felt there was very different than what I was hearing on the records. The records were more. They were less like hip hop records and more like other kinds of records musically, other than they may have somebody rapping on them, but musically it could have been an R and B record.

So at the time, where were the best clubs in New York for hip hop?

The only. When I started listening to hip hop, the only place you could hear hip hop downtown, where I was going to school, there was a reggae club on. It was either on First Avenue or second Avenue, down a flight of stairs, a small little club called Negril. And I think it was Tuesday nights at Negril, they would invite the hip hop DJs from the Bronx and Queens to come. There were some from Harlem as well, and that would be the only place you could get that experience. And then as I got deeper into the scene, I would have to go to clubs in the Bronx or in Brooklyn or in Queens or in Harlem.

By mid-80s, by 84, I mean, run DMC was already pretty well known, I'm trying to remember.

Yes and no. They were well known in New York. In 84, they were well known in New York.

But then what year did Crush Groove come out?

I don't know. We were already successful. I mean, they made a film about us, so we were already successful at that time.

Okay, so prior to that. So I'm trying to think, like, when would Run DMC and LL Cool J first have popped up on my radar? Which was before the Beastie Boys, if I recall, but maybe not. But I mean, I wouldn't have heard of them until their albums came out, presumably. Right?

Yeah. Well, Run DMC's first album came out before I ever met them.

I think that's the last I'm doing.

Rundmc's first album came out.

Did they self produce that? Like, how did they actually do that?

A guy named Larry Smith was the main producer and Russell Simmons was the co producer. There were things on that album that were really revolutionary in terms of the first time we ever heard anything that truly sounded like hip hop was on that album. Even though there had already been other records. The other records, again, were more like an R and B record with somebody rapping on it. But the run DMC's first record had a couple of glimpses of what was to come.

So LL came from what part of New York?

LL was from? Hollis, Queens.

Got it.

He sent a demo tape to the dorm room where Def Jam was located. In my dorm room.

Who did you found Def Jam with?

Russell.

Was you and Russell?

Yeah. I actually started. The first couple of releases were before I'd met Russell. Like, the punk rock records I put out were on Def Jam of my band. And then the first single that I did in hip hop was on Def Jam. And that's how I met Russell, was because he heard that record and he loved it. And he was. Again, I was a kid in college. He was already a big fish in this small pond of hip hop. Pretty much anyone who was doing hip hop was managed by Russell.

So LL sends a demo.

Yes. And Adrok from the Beastie Boys found that he would listen to all the demos that came in.

So you already knew Adrock and Mike and those guys? Yes. Okay.

Yes. Adrock found the demo, played it for me. We both really liked it.

What song was on the demo?

Can't even remember. No.

What was it about LL that struck you as distinctive at the time?

Lyrical ability. He really had a great vocabulary and a great, great command of language and believable in his presentation.

And how old was he at that time?

Like, 18, 16? Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

So what were the next steps? So how do you take this kid with all this raw talent and say, okay, like, I mean, how much money.

Does one need to take? He was 16. I was. I was maybe 20.

Right, right. Yeah, yeah. So. So how much money did it take at that time to turn what he had in his head into an album that you could now put out in a record store that was more than a single?

Very little. But we started with. We started with a single first. I think we maybe even did Two singles. We did two singles before we ever did an album. And the singles would have been. I would program the beats in my dorm room, then we would go to the studio, bring the drum machine. Nll. Oh, he would bring all of his books of lyrics. I would go through the lyrics and kind of pick the stuff that I liked. And then we would talk about how to form it into a song. Because in those days, in the early days of hip hop, it was less about songwriting and more just about the, the vocal style. So typically at that time it wouldn't be unusual in those 12 inch single days for a song to be 10 minutes long and be more like what we would think of as a dance remix of a song as opposed to the single version you'd hear on the radio. There was no hip hop on the radio. That was not a thing. This was more something that would be played in a club. So one of the things that. Because I grew up listening to the Beatles, I had this affinity for traditional song structure. So many rap records you'd hear before, the ones that we made might just be a guy rapping for 10 minutes without any song structure at all. It might just be a long, like a long monologue.

No chorus?

No, no chorus.

So you wanted to impose a bit of that structure.

Yes. Just because that's the music I grew up on and liked it and thought it would, I would like it better. So we started doing that and we would chop up these long raps into a 16 bar and then create a hook. So the first singles we made probably cost, I'm gonna guess, in the three to five hundred dollar range to record them and make them.

That's. That's unbelievable.

Yeah.

And how many would you typically make in a first print?

It depended on a lot of things, but I'll just.

It could be like just a hundred.

Or so or it'd be like a thousand. Between a thousand and five thousand.

Got it. Because I was so young at the time and I wasn't really thinking about anything beyond listening to the music, it's hard for me to think about the logistics of it. But you only had how many record stores in New York that could sell these or that had the people that would walk in that would know what.

To do with three or four.

So basically you're physically taking these records in stacks to these guys and the people who own the record stores like the music and they basically have the clientele that are going to appreciate this.

Yes.

There weren't really dedicated hip hop radio stations at the time, so how were you getting this on the radio and how were you?

You weren't.

You weren't.

You'd bring it to Negril and then later the Roxy, which is. As the scene at Negril grew big on those Tuesday nights, it eventually moved over to a roller rink called the Roxy. And it went to the Roxy on the first night that it opened for hip hop. And it was this giant roller rink with maybe 50 people in it. And watched it slowly, over the weeks and months, become the hottest place in New York. So my only goal was to get them to play it at the Roxy on the Grill. That was the only place that we would think about.

So at that moment, like, if you could put yourself back in where you were at the age of 20, making, you know, a thousand copies of LL's first single, did you have a sense of the fact that you were a part of a new type of music?

Not really.

A new genre of music?

Not really. We didn't think about that at all. And there was no expectation that anything was going to happen. The whole goal would be to sell enough records to be able to make another record. That was the whole purpose. It was not a. Nobody thought about this as a profitable venture at any point.

So you're still going to school while you're doing this?

Yeah.

Was the stuff you were learning at school applicable in some way?

No.

No. So you were basically learning how to do this stuff?

Absolutely. Absolutely. The best thing about school was that it was just the location was that it happened to be in New York and that happened to be where hip hop was happening. So had I gone to University of Chicago, my life would have been very different. And that was a choice I almost made. So.

Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it, to think about these things? So you go to University of Chicago. I can't imagine there was an underground hip hop scene.

There was an arrival.

What was going on in New York. No. So Run DMC were basically the act of the. Of that era when you were starting, Correct?

Yes, they were probably. Maybe before them, it would have been Curtis Blow. He was the first big, big rapper who Russell managed. And then Run dmc, who Run was Russell's brother. And that was the next big band and eventually eclipsed Curtis.

Yeah, it's amazing. And then, of course, by 86, license to ill came out, which you produced as well, didn't you?

Yeah, that's the second album that I ever made. LL Cool J's first album was the first album I ever made. And License to Ill was the second.

Album I ever made, I had to have two copies of each of those. That's how much I wore both of those albums out. And both of them were. There were like a handful of times in music when I can think about a huge step function in what I was hearing. NWA was another big one in 89.

For me as well. Exactly the same.

Couldn't stop listening to it. What am I hearing? Yes, this is. Yeah. The only way I describe it is to think it's a step function. It was nothing incremental.

Absolutely.

But License to Ill probably even slightly more. So what was LL's first album?

Was it just Self Radio.

Radio, that's right. I mean, they were both. You couldn't stop listening to them. Like, I mean, I literally remember carrying around a boombox with the cassettes and it was like such a big deal. 13, 12, 13. And so it was a really big deal when I could finally save up enough money to get a boombox that had two cassettes with one in Dolby that I could start making mixtapes. Like, that was like a huge step forward in my evolution of being able to take my favorite of all the songs. Because then there was like also Run DMC at that point, I think had two albums now, if I can.

Yeah, I played guitar and a couple of songs on the second album, but I didn't produce them until the third album.

And to be able to make mix hiccup hip hop tapes then I had one of my best friends in eighth grade, Mark Sillis was his name. And I probably haven't seen him in a thousand years. And I hope someone listening to this knows him and can. But mark was a DJ, so he had these techniques, 1200 turntables in his basement and he had a heavy bag. And at the time I was boxing, right. So boxing is my life. And so we would go and I would just hit the heavy bag and the speed bag and he would take these albums and he was then making mixes of these and we were creating tapes out of these things and it was pure. I mean, that was heaven.

Yeah. So much fun.

Yeah. License to Ill was perhaps the single most, I don't know, important slash influential piece of music I listened to as a kid.

Amazing.

And it's really exciting because my daughter now, I mean, knows most of those songs. I mean, I remember the first time she heard no Sleep Till Brooklyn. Like, and watching the video and it's like. And now I look back at the videos and they seem more comical, like, at the time, they seem very serious to Me like, wow, this is. But now I look back and I'm like, oh, my God, they're kids. But they weren't kids. To me, when I'm 13 and they.

Were older than you.

Yeah, they look like grownups. And now I'm like, look at Mike D and Ad Rock mc. They really look young.

They are. They were in high school.

So how did you meet these guys?

Just hanging out in punk rock circles.

Yeah. So what was their influence? Like, what? Because they also sort of. They were really hip hop. Punk I thought of as, like, to me, LL was the pure embodiment of hip hop. And the Beastie Boys had this sort of punk feel to them and rock.

The Beastie Boys came from a punk rock background. The band started as a purely punk rock band. They put out at least two punk rock only releases before I ever met them. And then they made a song called Kookypuss before I met them, that was the first sort of DJ based song. And it was great. And to perform that live, they needed a dj, and they didn't have a DJ in the group because they were a band. And I was invited to be their dj. And that's how we started working together.

How did you learn that skill? Because I remember, like, going to Mark's, my friend Mark's house, and sitting there with. I mean, I could barely remember what I'm talking about now, but you had the two turntables on either side. You had this, like, crossfader in the middle. You've got the. I remember you'd always have one ear to be listening to this. And I mean, I was a Luddite. Like, I could not do it. Like, he would try to teach me how to make my own tapes, but they sucked. So I have enormous respect for what a DJ is doing. Again, is that the sort of thing where you just had a natural affinity for it?

I think so. I think it comes pretty naturally. It's like there's a lot that you can learn and then there's also parts like you can learn to be a very good boxer. But to be the best boxer, there probably has to be more to it than just the practice.

Yeah, for sure.

There's, you know, there's the best.

Has both elements.

Exactly.

Natural affinity and the capacity to practice relentlessly.

Yes. So everybody can get better at anything they're interested in. I didn't know that until Laird Hamilton really changed my life because I lived my whole life with no physicality at all. So for me, everything was music. That was how I.

So you're mixing for these guys now. You're the dj?

Yes.

How did Licensed Ale come about? In other words, how many of those songs did they show up with? How did you guys even think about stringing those songs together?

We wrote them. Almost all of them. We wrote all together, just hanging out. Like, we would go out to Danceteria every night, which was a big nightclub, just listening to the music, watching the people dancing, looking at the people and trying to make each other laugh. And we would write rhymes with the idea of, you know, I would often, me and Adrock would be together and I would say something, try to make him laugh, and then he would say something, try to make me laugh. And if it was good, we would write them down. So we would collect all of these phrases and then eventually figured out how to put them together into things. And then we. One of the secrets of that record is that we probably started it two years. Two years before. And at that time, people were making music in a shorter period of time, especially in hip hop. Might be, you know, a month or two to make an album, but we did. We would only do a song when there was a song to do. So. So it wasn't like we built up this big catalog of material and then went in to record it. It was like we would stew on a song idea for a while, and then when it was written, then we'd go in and do that one song, and then we would start from scratch again and just go to the club and make each other laugh and eventually do another song over a long period of time.

So your day job at the time was still going to school. What were the Beastie Boys doing on the side? Or what was their. What was their. Were they same age as you?

Or they were a year, a year younger and maybe two years younger? I think Adam Yauck was one year younger. I think Mike and Adam might have been two years younger.

So they were out of high school, obviously, at this point.

I don't even know if that's true. I think they might have been going to high school. I'm not sure.

So did your parents, like, think this was awesome? Were they so happy to see how passionate you were about something? Or were they sort of like, look, you know, whatever, this is just another thing that you're doing on the side?

My parents were pretty supportive in general of whatever I did that said there was no hope that this would be any. Anything more than this fun hobby. That's what it. That's really what it was. It was a fun hobby. My Plan was to go to law school. And if I went to law school, the plan was to have a job and to be able to make music as my hobby. I never thought it would.

You didn't even think, I'm going to go to law school so I could manage musicians.

I might have thought, maybe there's a way to be involved in the entertainment business as a lawyer, because that's. I want to be involved in this world, but I don't. I don't know anything about this world and I don't know any of the jobs or. It just didn't seem like a realistic thing to aspire to do. So I had a more grounded plan and then life took over and dictated the rest of it.

So when. When radio came out, which I think was 85, does that sound about right?

It sounds about right.

What allowed that to become such a hit? Or am I applying a bit of revisionist history to it? And it. Did it become a hit after the fact? Like, did it immediately take off or did it take off only after Crush Groove?

No, it took off, right?

It did. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah.

So what. How do you. How does that happen when there's no radio stations that are organically playing this? And if you're not in New York in that club scene, like, how is it that a kid in Toronto could become.

It was. Well, the music was starting to spread virally already. It was good, it was new and it was already starting to spread. Most of the music up until that time had been put out by independent labels who didn't have so much of a reach.

They didn't have the distribution.

No. And the first 712 inches we put out, we put out as an independent label where, again, we didn't have so much of a reach. We found independent distributors. I think there were 12 of them around the country that we would work with. So we would ship records to Texas and ship records to LA and ship records to Seattle. There were a few hubs, but it was still very baby underground business. But those 712 inches were created enough interest in the industry that Columbia Records came to us and offered to become our partners. And they were the biggest record company in the world. So the first release through our relationship with Columbia was Radio LLC.

So you're 20? 21.

20, yeah.

So how are you negotiating a deal with the big. You're a minnow and the shark comes along to negotiate a deal.

Yes.

How did you not get squashed?

We got squashed.

Did you? Did you?

Absolutely.

What kind of legal counsel do you need to Help you even.

Well, my partner was five years older than me and experienced in the business, so he pretty much.

You mean Russell?

Russell. He handled most of the negotiations, but then as time went on, our vision sort of parted ways. This is a couple of years later now. And then as our visions parted, I started getting a little more involved in some business stuff and then decided it was better for us to just go our separate ways.

And.

And I asked. I remember going out to lunch with him. I remember the restaurant, I remember where it was. And I said, I don't think we should do this together anymore. Do you want to leave the company? And he said, no. I said, okay, I guess I'll leave. And that was how we parted.

And is that more because you and Russell were seeing things differently or you and Columbia were seeing things differently?

It was both. There were two things going on. It's like I went to the label with a list of concerns on behalf of our artists. Really? Russell and I had did our first trip to the UK because Russell managed other acts that were not on Def Jam. We got to meet with people at all different record companies in England. And all these different people were so excited by the stuff we were doing. They just said, you know, any opportunity to work with any of your artists, anything we can do, we want to be in business with you.

And your deal with Columbia was a worldwide, was worldwide exclusive.

Yes.

Okay.

So then we went to. Our last meeting was with Columbia, who owned our work. I remember the guy's name. I won't say it here, but sitting in his office and I don't remember anything, but I remember this. We're sitting in this dark little office and the guy said, you were signed by the New York company. And we view the New York company, Columbia, as an albatross.

So you're in LA having this discussion.

This is in London.

Oh, in London.

Our first trip to London, meeting the guy who controls our destiny in London, which is the gateway to the rest of the world.

Yeah.

After having all these meetings of people who are desperate to be involved in any way in a positive way, the person who's in control of our stuff said, we look at Columbia Records in New York as an albatross. And this is nothing against you personally, but because you come from them, we're just not interested. And I just like, my eyes got wide. It's like, okay, now I know what I need.

Perfect.

I need to just go back. But the beauty of it was I went back, met with the people in New York and I said, we have A problem. And it's not our problem, it's your problem. But there's a way we can fix it. We met with all these labels. Everybody wants our stuff. Columbia's not interested. Why don't we together. I'm not saying let's take it away from you, New York. Let's together find the best home for each of these artists around the world and share everything as if you were putting it out. But let's do what's right for the artist. And I was told that Colombia has a policy that they would rather see the works die than have someone else have success with them. Wonderful policy to a 20 or 21 year old kid. That's not a reasonable. I mean, it wouldn't be reasonable to me now, but then it seems so far fetched and so counterproductive when there was an opportunity to be had that they could participate in, to turn that off because of a corporate policy. That was one of my first experiences of that.

So Russell, he didn't want to rock that boat.

Well, they wrote a check to the company which satisfied Russell, but didn't satisfy me because I was not concerned with. I wasn't concerned with the check, I was concerned with the. What happened to these. This music?

This is what year this is?

Late 80s, maybe 80, probably 88. Either 88 or 89.

Okay, so now you're sort of. You've experienced pretty amazing success for a 22 year old.

It was unbelievable.

And I still want to come back to actually understanding how this music blew up when I get a little bit more on that.

But we can talk about that more first if you want.

Yeah, well, I'll forget this question. I guess my point is you. You basically risk giving everything up. Because in theory, I mean, you could argue you had the artists, the artists cared about you because they saw your honesty and they saw that your heart was with the music and not the money as evidenced by what you just did.

Yeah, but they didn't necessarily see that. But yes, nobody really knew what was happening, so I can't say that they saw that or knew that got it.

So were you scared when you made that decision? Did you think, did you second guess it?

No. It may not have been the best decision, but it felt very natural to me and it felt like I'm making things that I really feel good about and I know that I'm gonna keep doing this. And if I have a partnership with this big company that doesn't want to do what we want to do, I need to find a different way to do this.

And did Russell understand that by taking the check but you leaving, that the artists were more likely to go with you than stay with Def Jam?

No, and they didn't. That wasn't even an option because we had contracts.

Ah, so you were walking away from everything.

Absolutely. Which I did. Yeah.

Okay, so we'll come back to that in a second. But I want to come back to this point of. What is it that lit up License to Ill?

Well, one thing. It's crazy that this is the case, but it's the case. It's a little bit. Why Elvis is Elvis. Even though Chuck Berry and Little Richard came before him, the Beastie Boys were white, and this was an underground black music. And in terms of maybe in the city, it didn't matter, but in terms of deeply penetrating into the rest of the country, the fact that the Beastie Boys were white played a huge difference. I didn't see it so much then, but now, in retrospect, it's clear.

By 87, I mean, the Beastie Boys are one of the most popular acts in hip hop.

Yes.

How many copies did license ale sell?

10 million, something like that.

And I. I can never keep these things straight. The colors that go with numbers, and I hear multi platinum. I forget what all that stuff means. So a platinum album means what, 1,500,000.

Is gold, 1,000,000 is platinum. It doesn't happen often, but the 10,000,000 mark called diamonds, there are not so many of them.

So this was a diamond, I guess, or close to it.

It was, but I don't even know if they counted diamonds. Then. It's like it's so. It was such a random event there. There are very few things that sold that many.

How did the success of that album change your life, and how did it change theirs in the immediate aftermath of that? Because that's really. That success is happening in the course of, like, 12 months, right?

Yes. It drove a wedge in our relationship in not a great way. And what it had to do with was I usually presented a pretty clear vision of the things that I thought that we could accomplish. And in success, a lot of people started surrounding the artists who were more concerned with placating the artist than doing what was best for the artist. And I would always fight for what was best. And when there are other voices who are saying whatever you. You know, whatever you want, then it's easier to tune out the voice of the person who's not going along with everything, because it wasn't always good.

So you're only a couple years Older than these guys. Is there a manager also in the mix at this point, or were you sort of acting as a de facto manager?

No, Russell really was their manager. And then Lior Cohn came in to work with Russell as their manager.

Got it. So their next album was Paul's Boutique.

Yes.

And I know you did not produce that. No.

And they left Def Jam.

They left Russell as well.

They left Russell? Well, I was already gone, I think, when they left.

Yeah.

I'm not sure if that's right. I can't really remember. But either way, we left similar times.

Yeah. Yeah. So what do you do the morning after you wake up and you've walked away from Def Jam, the label you've co founded, you left all the money behind, and you left behind artists who had already been signed with an organization that you now know didn't even really care that much about them. Did you think at that point, you know what, maybe I'm just gonna go back, go to law school and just make music on the side? Or did you. What was the internal dialogue to sort of make the next decision?

I thought that it was the Def Jam experiment had worked, so I thought I could continue doing what I was doing. Just that the framework that was set up was not the best framework. So the goal was to start a new framework, which I did immediately.

And what was that called?

At first it was called Deaf American, and then it became American, which is what it's called to this day.

And at that point, what were the most important lessons you learned from Def Jam that you instituted and kept in place? I mean, was it basically, we're not going to partner with another major record label or.

No, it was, we have to partner with a major record company who's going to support what we want to do? Because again, the reason you knew about these artists living in Toronto was because of the reach of the major labels, a combination of how good the music was.

If this had still stayed independent, I probably would have never heard of. Heard of it.

Yeah.

Walk me through the economics of a record in a moment. So you've got again, it's so hard today. Let's answer this question through the lens of 1990.

I honestly don't even know if I'm going to be able to answer the question, because I never really look at that.

It's like I'm trying to think about how rent gets split, right? Like when I went into a record store and I paid $10 for a cassette or a record album. I'm guessing that Columbia is getting like, seven of those $10, maybe half. Half. Okay. And the artists, when everybody else gets paid, the artists are getting what, two or three.

Typically in those days, a record deal would be. The artists would get in the, let's say a 12% royalty of the retail price. So whatever that would be would be not unusual. That would be typical. A bigger artist, it would be a bigger number. Like maybe Michael Jackson might get 20%, but 20% of the retail, not of the wholesale.

Yep, yep.

And also the retail number was a little fictitious because it would. Let's say it would be 14.99 list. But then you might be able to buy it in the store for $11.

And they're getting it off the $14.99.

Whatever the list price.

The true list price. Yeah. Not the sale price. Yeah. And that's of course changed. And I'd love to understand better how the world works today, because. Me too, because when you think about the big disruptions, I mean, it's sort of weird to think. I don't know. The last time I went into a record store.

No, there are not so many to go into.

Well, I still pass. Like in New York, you still see them and every once in a while you'll go in and you'll find a place that's just got this incredible vinyl.

Yeah.

But the funny thing is I don't have a place to even play it anymore. Like I probably still have a turntable at my parents house.

Techniques, you're the norm. That's not unusual.

So who was the next artist or who was the first next artist that you discovered when you went out on your own?

Probably Danzig. Slayer and Danzig were the next two. Both of whom I think I signed when I was still at Def Jam. But I signed them and when I left, they did come with me because they hadn't put out any music yet. Anyone would put out music.

Was kind of obligated to stay.

Yeah.

So now we're in the late 80s, you're still in New York. When did you come out to California?

Probably maybe 1990, around the 89 90s, something like that.

So as far as other huge seismic or tectonic shifts in music, I think Nirvana would have to be viewed as another one. How much was that on your radar? It wasn't the music you were producing, but what were you thinking about it at the time?

I wasn't thinking about it so much. When the grunge movement happened, the people who were excited by was newer to them than it was to me. It felt more like a Continuation of Aerosmith and Black Sabbath and the heavy metal I grew up on. So it didn't feel as revolutionary as it ended up feeling to others. So I didn't get as excited about it as other people did. And of all the bands, the band that most spoke to me from that world was Soundgarden.

You worked with Chris? You worked with Soundgarden?

Yeah, I worked with Chris in Audioslave.

Uh huh. Yeah. Cause it was sort of like, that's one of those things where at the time I feel like Metallica and Guns N Roses were the biggest bands in rock and roll.

Yes.

And then overnight Nirvana showed up in this album. I think Smells Like Teen Spirit was the first one, if I recall.

I don't know if it was the first one, but that's the one that changed everything.

Okay. Yeah, yeah. And then Pearl Jam right on the heels of that.

Yeah. They put out records on Sub Pop before that was their first major label.

Yeah.

Album.

It's just so interesting to contemplate all these things. So you come out to LA for what reason, besides the weather?

I never really thought I would live in la. I thought I would live in New York my whole life. I came out here to work on a soundtrack for a movie. And I was out here for eight or nine months. Eventually I got tired of living in a hotel, which I was living on the Mon. At the Mondrian on Sunset. And I would always drive through the Hollywood Hills looking at houses because where I come from, everything is flat. So seeing these houses built into mountains was unbelievable. So every weekend or late nights, I had a friend who lived locally and we would drive the hills together. And eventually I found a little house that I liked. So I bought this house thinking, okay, when I come to la, this will be the place I stay instead of staying in the hotel. And then ended up never really going back to New York. Maybe five years later, I eventually took the things out of my apartment because I realized I wasn't going back. But it was never like a decision to move here. Same thing happened moving to Malibu. I got a place to come on weekends. I came the first weekend, never went back.

I can see why you weren't interested in taking me up on my offer to come and live with me in my guest house. You're like, I. I don't do San Diego. But maybe on some deep down level you were like, there's at least a 1% chance I might get stuck there. So when did you first connect with the Red Hot Chili Peppers?

They had asked me to Produce an album, maybe their third album, which is called maybe Uplift Mofo Party, I think.

Yeah. So this would have been like 93.

No, no. I first met them probably 89. 90.

Mother's milk was their first album, right?

It was. No, no, that Mother's Milk might have been there. Fourth.

Really?

Yeah, at least third. Maybe fourth. We have to check.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Because Mother's Milk, I feel like that's the. That's the first album that I.

That was like, first. That was their first breakthrough.

89.

Yeah. But they had. I. I want to say three, maybe two maybe, but possibly three before that.

You know, we're going to talk about exercise in a moment, but I do Tabata workouts once a week, and they're really, really miserable. But it's like this four minutes once a week where you're going to go as close as you could go to dying doing an exercise. And so the musical selection for that four minutes really matters. Like, I put a lot of time into what song am I going to be listening to at a 97 decibels when I go to the point of puking. So for Monday's workout, it was from Mother's Milk. It was. Knocked me down.

Oh, great. It's a good song.

Amazing song. And as I was laying on the floor afterwards trying not to vomit, which is generally, like, most of my effort is going into not puking after I'm on the ground, like, listening to this song being about, you know, knocking me down, and I'm like, this is perfect. It's like, really a great. It's actually a great song. I posted something on Instagram about it, like, a couple months ago because it's one of those songs, like, where I don't listen to it that often anymore, but it's on shuffle, like, if I. It'll come up through my itunes. And it actually means much more to me today than it did when I was 17 or 16 or whatever age I was when it first came out, when I first listened to, really speaks to me more as, like, a struggle of, like, the grandiosity that we experience as we get older and experience success more. And it's like I was really moved by it, actually, in a way that. And I guess maybe that's something about music in general that's just very special.

Absolutely.

It can mean totally different things, not just to different people, which is, I think, a bit more obvious, but to the same individual at different points in their life.

Absolutely. Absolutely. It's the poetic nature of it that allows it's like, if you. It's harder for that to happen when you see a movie. A movie is more face value.

That's right. It takes. It takes some of the imagination away.

Whereas books and music, the. The reader or the listener is making the. The mental images that you associate with it. You may be nudged in a direction by the artist, but the story that you make up is your story.

Yep.

And that can change over time.

I've become more cognizant of this in the past year, especially when I hear a song that I haven't heard in five years, 10 years. I'm on a huge Chili Peppers kick right now. I mean, I keep forwarding you songs. I'm like, dude, this is unbelievable. Like, I remember once I sent Judy mail, and I was like, what is the world record for most times listening to this song? I don't remember which song it was, but it was on. It was on. I don't remember which album it was. It was on Californication. But you were like, dude, how many times did you listen to that song? I'm like, I think I've done 53 straight without stopping. Fourteen years later, it means something a little different.

Yeah.

Or a lot different.

Yeah, it's great. So the first time I met them, I went with Adam Harvitz from the Beastie Boys. We went to a rehearsal. I remember it was on Sunset. They were signed to EMI at the time. It was in a place on the south side of Sunset Boulevard. I think it was like an EMI rehearsal studio. And the vibe was not good. And it didn't have anything to do with the music. It was just the energy between the guys in the band was something I didn't understand. And it just felt like I don't really want to be in this room. It was like a dark energy. And I ended up not working with them. And then I didn't end up working with them until two albums later when I met with them again. It was like they were different people. And it turns out, was this part of.

Through their addiction cycle.

Yeah. So the first time I met them, there were a lot of drugs involved. Now I not done drugs, and I hadn't really been around a lot of people who do a lot of drugs. So I didn't really know even what. What it was, but you could feel this sort of lack of trust in the room between the members that didn't feel. It didn't feel healthy. Again, not knowing what it was. It just felt like, whatever is happening here is not for me. And then Again, I met them maybe four or five years later, and it was different. Everything was different. And then we made Blood Sugar Sex Magic. It was the first album we made together.

Okay, so that was 91. I remember that pretty well.

That had to be 91. Yeah. So then I probably met them in 88. I'll guess before that.

So. Yeah, so that makes sense. So Mother's Milk would have come out just after you guys met.

I think I met with them for the album before Mother's Milk, I think.

Yeah.

And then. Then Mother's Milk and then. Which could be three years, 18 months.

18 months. What's your favorite Chili Peppers album?

No idea. I never listen back, so I don't know.

Really?

Yeah.

Because it's funny. A lot of times I'll text you and I'll be like, dude, this song. And it's a song you produced. And you're like, which one is that again?

Yeah, I don't know songs by title.

That's awesome.

And it's the effort that goes into making these things is so grueling. And in the process of making it, I might hear this song a thousand times, and by the time it's done and signed off, I'm good. It's like, I've had my fill of that song, so I don't feel the need to go back. And there's so much music to listen to. I'd rather listen to something that doesn't make me think of the process of making it, but just feels like you listen to music and you have this wonderful. I like that experience, too, and I don't have that for the things I worked on.

Yeah, yeah. So you like to eat the sausage, but you certainly don't want to see the sausage. You don't want to eat the sausage you made?

Not often. I mean, I think it's great sausage. I mean, I love the music we make. I don't feel the need to listen to it. If I go to a coffee shop and a song that I produce comes on, it's a good feeling.

And I wonder, does time heal that? Not heal is the wrong word. It makes it sound like there's some problem there. But does time change that? For example, if you go back and listen to Something you produced 30 years ago? No.

If there was a reason to listen to it, I'll listen to it. But I wouldn't choose. I wouldn't. Out of the vast catalog of music available to me, I can't imagine choosing something that I worked on to listen to for fun.

Which artist of the last 20 years that you've had no formal relationship with, are you most impressed by or artists?

First thing that comes to mind is there's a d' Angelo album called Vudu that is pretty much of a perfect album for me. Usually when I listen to an album, even when I like it, I think about what I would do differently. And that's an album when I hear and I just wish I was in the room to watch because it's so beautiful.

Tell me why.

It goes against so many of the things we come to expect in music. For one, d' Angelo's really great singer with a beautiful voice, so you'd expect that voice to be. And he's a solo artist, so you expect his voice to be front and center and the star of the show. Whereas instead his voice is almost buried and his performance is so understated that it almost sounds like he's dreaming it as opposed to performing it. The first thing about it's interesting is it doesn't work the way other R and B records work. That's the first one. The next one is usually records sound. I'll say perfect. Everything is played as good as it could be played and put together in a way that is seamless. Whereas this album purposely always sounds like it's on the verge of falling apart and it makes it thrilling. And I hadn't really heard music like that before. Like it almost sounds like musicians who aren't really playing together, but somehow it manages to hang together. So it's just interesting. It doesn't sound like anything else. That's the first one that comes to mind.

Now, before we leave that example, who.

Produced that, I think it might have been d' Angelo himself. I'm not sure whose credit is the producer, but Questlove was involved. Questlove was the drummer on the project and I'm sure had a hand in it.

Have you talked to anybody involved in that about how deliberate that decision was and how they did it?

A little bit. A little bit. And I hope to do more, actually. I started doing this podcast with Malcolm Gladwell called Broken Record. And one of the episodes I want to do, which we have not yet recorded, is a deep dive into the Vudu album, talking to as many of the people who were involved and understand the story of it. Again, anytime there's an album that stands alone, it's interesting to me. There's another album where we did record. I've recorded three interviews so far relating to an album by a group called Love called Forever Changes, which is one of My favorite albums. And it's another album where it doesn't sound like any of Love's other albums. And no other album sound like it by anybody else. It's a real moment in time. So that's exciting to me.

So you're still basically a student. I mean, everything about you is all about learning.

Have to be a funny line that. I love pro wrestling. And there's a funny line that a pro wrestler once said that you can't call yourself a professor unless you too are a student. And he was talking about wrestling. But it applies to everything. Yes.

Yeah. For sure. So you're about to say something else. There's another album you were going to refer to or artist.

I think the question was music that.

You have not produced, that you are enamored with.

Yes. A more recent one would have been James Blake's first album. Beautiful. Doesn't sound like anything else. Very original. Really touches me.

That's how many. God, I'm blanking on the time. Is that like 10 years ago or less?

Probably less. Maybe eight.

Yeah.

I'm not sure. I'm not good with time. I'm not good with time.

Yeah. So let's go back to the Chili Peppers for a moment. Just because it was the foray into this. But drugs are forever a huge part of rock and roll. Right. It's sort of like. I don't know that anybody's ever done the actuarial analysis on it, but when I was in high school and I really liked all kinds of music. And so as much as I loved what was happening currently, you know, Beastie Boys, etc. I mean, I loved Hendrix, I loved the Doors.

Yeah.

And I remember at the time maybe naively thinking, like, why do these guys keep dying? Like I couldn't understand the self harm that was going on. I just didn't have enough of a sense. And I don't know that I have a sense today. Although it makes you wonder, right? Is there a pain that's leading to this incredible creativity that's along. There's the collateral damage along the way. Is the soothing that's coming from the drug use? Or do you think it's less about that and more about the culture of I'm a rock star, I'm supposed to be doing this.

It's the first. It's self medicating. People who make music tend to be very sensitive. If you think of Kurt Cobain as a raw nerve, he's going through this world feeling things that other people who have the same experiences don't feel. Mm. It's painful. He can put it into the music. It's why he is who he is. But it makes it hard to survive in life. No one around him is savvy enough to understand what's happening because people don't look at that stuff. And this goes for most musicians, but it's always a case of the musician just trying to find a way to exist in a world where they feel like they don't really fit.

I don't think that's something I appreciated until kind of recently. I remember with my daughter about a year ago, maybe two years ago, watching, and I can't believe I'm even blanking on the name of it, but it was the documentary about Michael Jackson's preparation for his last tour.

Yes.

You know what I'm talking about.

I've never seen it, but I know what you're talking about.

Yeah. So I'm blank on the name, but we'll link to it in the show notes. I'm sure many folks have seen it. So you're watching this documentary, and it's really funny. When I was growing up, although Michael Jackson, Madonna, you know, Beastie Boys were epic, for whatever reason, I didn't gravitate towards Michael Jackson. So even the hit songs like Beat It, Thriller, Billie Jean, like, I didn't dislike them, but I kind of think I owned those albums, put it that way. Like, it just wasn't on my radar for some reason. So I think Michael Jackson is not someone I paid any attention to. And even when all of the, you know, the scandals were going on and all of the, oh, how many times is he gonna have plastic surgery and he's changing his skin color? And then, of course, all of the sexual abuse stuff, like, it just, you know, it just wasn't something I was reading about or particularly paying attention to. And I think I knew most of the facts. Like, I knew that, you know, he was part of a band when he was a boy and all these other things. But something struck me when watching that documentary, which is like, what a fragile soul. And given what I understand now about pharmacology, to imagine that this is a guy who all he wanted to numb and soothe was, like, to have this doctor come to his house and give him a general anesthetic. I mean, propofol is not. I mean, that is not really what we would think of even the mainstream of recreational drugs. Again, notwithstanding all of his faults. Right. Which are numerous enough that we could spend a whole day talking about them. But I also sort of Realized, wow, talk about a traumatized kid.

Yeah.

Like, here's a boy who never stopped being traumatized by something.

Yes.

And ultimately that trauma, he passed that on to other kids.

Yes.

And again, you talk about the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Flea has been pretty open about his struggles and Anthony and stuff. I mean, these guys make unbelievable music. But you get the sense that there's, like. There's something tormenting these people. It almost makes you feel as a. Like someone like me who's just a consumer of music. Right. Like, there's nothing I do at all to contribute to the world of music other than consume it. You feel a little bit guilty in the sense that I'm profiting, for lack of a better word, at the expense of someone's pain. Now, of course, they're profiting, too. Everybody's getting something in this transition transaction. I'm not even talking about money, of course. You seem to have picked up on this sooner. I mean, I remember reading something a long time ago. It was actually before Mac Miller died that you really tried to help him when he relapsed. I'm guessing that's not the first artist you had to try to help.

No, it's as much of the. Part of the job as the music part is helping a sensitive soul work through this life and this business, where there are. There are a lot of voices who, again, are more concerned with getting the next record out and cashing in and less concerned with the health of the artist.

A mutual friend of ours who shall remain nameless until we're having dinner tonight and then I can rat him out. He said something to me once about you that I thought was really interesting. He said, you know, Rick has a superpower, and I don't know where he got it from, but he has the ability to take really creative people and somehow disarm them enough to. I'm paraphrasing. He said it much more eloquently, but disarm them enough to do their best work creatively, but still do it within the confines of a business structure that allows a product to be made. There's a balance between the business and the art, and you've managed to sort of create this environment that fosters both.

Optimally and it's not exactly true. My feeling has always been that if you get the art right, the commerce side of it works itself out. So maybe in that, I can help an artist to refocus, to just pay attention to the art instead of overthinking what comes next and what other people are gonna say about it, or what their manager is gonna think, or what the label's gonna think, or what a radio station might think, or what's gonna be the first single, or any of those thoughts which tend to lower the vibration of the entire project. So we try to get to this pure art place, and in doing so, it benefits them in all areas. But there's very little thought of the business side.

I think what he meant, and I'm probably not articulating it, is exactly that. But what you're doing ultimately, though, it's not your primary aim, happens to be in service of also making something amazing commercially. Like, it's almost like it happens. Yeah, it happens as a. You haven't diluted that. You haven't reduced the ability to be successful.

No, but it happens more through the purity of it instead of through aiming at it.

Yeah, I can totally imagine that.

Right.

It's sort of like meditation. If you're. If you're meditating with the goal of becoming the best meditator, it's very hard to. If you're meditating with the objective of.

I'm gonna sit here for the next 30 minutes and that's all I'm gonna do.

Yeah.

At the end of that 30 minutes, you've succeeded.

Yeah.

There is no more to it than that.

So hip hop in New York seemed just like a different vibe from the hip hop that came out of la. And I don't know if part of it was that they were just temporally offset. But is it a surprise to you that gangster rap came out of LA and not New York?

Not really, because there's more of a gang culture in LA in real life. So the gangster rap sprung out of the gang culture that really exists. There's some gang culture in New York, but it was less, and I never really ran into it in my New York time.

So were you here in LA when NWA's first album came out in that summer of 91?

Yeah, I went to visit them in the studio while they were making Straight Out Compton.

Yeah. And what was your impression of not just the music, but what was feeding this beast and where was this gonna go and how is this going to change the industry?

I never think about any of those things. I knew that, like, when you said it felt like a tectonic shift in music, that was my experience. Just like, as a fan, it got me excited about hip hop again. By that time, after doing the stuff that we had done at Def Jam and having left hip hop was not so exciting to me for that window between after Public Enemy and before NWA There was this window of rap where I wasn't really paying so much attention. NWA Got me excited about hip hop again.

That's so interesting, because through your lens, you see, I never consider there to be a window between Public Enemy and NWA like, when I think about. I just think Public Enemy just, like, ran into the back of NWA There.

Were a few years in between there.

See, for me, it was just like Public Enemy was everything at that point.

Yeah.

Where's Chuck D from?

He's from Long Island.

I mean, he strikes me as, like, lyrically one of the most cerebral, gifted hip hop artists of all time.

Brilliant guy. Yeah.

I can't imagine. And how much of an act is Flavor Flav? Like, what is he like when the mic is off or.

Same.

He's the same.

Exactly the same. He is a living cartoon character.

That is comical. Yeah. See, that's the other thing about music.

It's fun to be around.

Well, I was just gonna say that's the thing about music that's sort of interesting is these personalities have to coexist. Sometimes. It's a miracle to me that bands can actually stay together as long as they can.

Many don't. You know?

Yeah. There's a survivor bias that we.

Well, absolutely imagine. Think of how often marriages work, and that's between two people. Now you have a marriage between four people, often younger, with substance abuse problems. It's hard for that to maintain.

Yeah. I was joking with my wife the other day. We were watching this movie on Motley Crue.

And how is it, by the way? I haven't seen it yet.

I mean, it's okay. It depends. Like, for me, it's awesome because I loved Motley Crue. And so even though the acting is not that great or anything like that, it's like. And they're lip syncing all the songs like it was. I really enjoyed it because it's. Again, it's taking me back to my childhood. Like, I'm. These were the songs that I was listening to in my basement doing the workouts that defined my existence as an adolescent. Right. And for my wife, like, you know, Motley Crue was not even on the radar. Maybe recognized a couple of songs off Dr. Feelgood, but nothing before that. And so we're watching this, and I'm already knowing what's happening.

Right.

Like, so I know in 84, you know, like, the accident. And I know all of the details. And at the end of the movie, she asks kind of a logical question, which Is like, how are these guys alive? Like, how do they not just die? 17 lives earlier, to which I said, my guess is there's just a strong selection bias in this. The only reason we know about Motley Crue is that they didn't die. And there are probably 20 bands that could have been Motley Crue, but they just. They died physically and. Or blew up relationship wise along the way. And so you're sort of seeing the one, the one survivor is the one that sticks around. It's sort of like in football. Right. Like half of being Tom Brady is not just being the greatest quarterback. It's like not getting injured for that many years is sort of what allows you the. You know, you earn the right to play the game. So when did you fully internalize that your role was not about making music as much as it was about curating a person's soul and helping them express this? Because I think the analogy you gave with Kurt Cobain is great. Right. That is a beautiful image of a totally raw nerve that he's seeing the world in 4K color to what everybody else is seeing in black and white.

Yes.

And there's good to that, but there's also bad to that.

Absolutely.

Did you realize that even when you were 20 years old?

No. For me, it started when I was 33. I got very depressed. And I would say that I tend on the depressed side anyway, which is part of where the sensitivity comes from to do what I do musically. But at 33, it was crippling. Wasn't able to get out of bed. It took about two years for that to change. And I had a much greater understanding of the artist's pain after that experience.

Do you know what precipitated that?

Yes, it was a phone call with the person who took over the company that I was partnered with the major label. So I'd been in a good relationship with this company. The person who I had made the deal with was politically forced out of the company after, you know, years. And this new person came in and we had a phone call and he said several things that just sort of. To anyone else, this phone call would have been non controversial. Okay, see you back in LA and we'll talk about it then.

So you got wounded not because someone threw a spear deliberately at you?

No, no, no, not at all. I got wounded because I was so vulnerable, having never really dealt with any controversy other than the one that I told you about earlier with the. The guy in the UK who was not supporting our artists.

Yeah.

So this was another Situation like that. Except this one was personally to me instead of about the artist. This was just.

And was this person saying something to you, like sort of off the cuff?

Like off the cuff.

You know, Rick, the way you did such. And do you remember what it even was?

Yeah, I do, but it wouldn't help to. Yeah, it wouldn't help.

So it was something relatively minor that was critical.

It had nothing to do with me. He said, I, this is the guy. So the person just became the chairman of the most loved record company in the world. It would be considered the top job in the music business. And he calls me and he said, I just looked at your deal and I'm jealous. I don't really like it when you come back, we should talk about it. That was the whole call. So help me understand what sent me into a tailspin.

It was the first time because you were worried that now there's this business thing that you don't want to have to think about and you have to go back and negotiate a deal or something like that.

Well, my parents, as I said earlier, were always very supportive of me. Then while still going to college, we have this tremendous success with Def Jam. So there's maybe been a. If I'm 33, there's been a 12 year run of nothing but success. I mean there's all kinds of little, little issues along the way, natural, regular stuff. But for the most part I have led pretty much a charmed life until I'm 33. And now this phone call, it just like felt like a pin that burst the balloon. And honestly, truthfully, I'm still not the person I was before that phone call. That's how radical it affect. How radically it affected me. And I can tell you that it was. I know that it was a tiny thing. I know that anyone else would have not even. It would have not even registered. And this thing that was catastrophic in my world then led to a much better situation that would not have happened had that not happened. So everything about it in retrospect was it only everything worked out for the best. Yet still the person who I was before was different. And it just somehow triggered some vulnerability in me that I'd never felt before.

It's so interesting. I didn't know this about you, actually. This is amazing that this has never come up before. This is a. This is profound. And what's interesting to me in trying to imagine what possibly could have triggered that, the first thing is, well, was there economic insecurity? But that strikes me as highly improbable because one, you'd already been successful and two, you were never even motivated by the economics of it.

It was the feeling of the rug being pulled out from under me.

Is it because you'd already been through something with Columbia where you had seen that a big corporation can change their mind and that can jeopardize your music? Hmm.

I think it was more. I always had the trust of the people I worked with, even if they didn't like the choices I made. I always felt like these people have my back, they get me. And it was a sense of like, not being seen. That's what it felt like.

So you said for the next two years you had a hard time getting out of bed.

Yes.

So what did you do during that period of time?

I went to. I probably had two therapeutic treatments a day of different kinds. I would go to see psychiatrists, I would go to see psychologists, I would do acupuncture, I would do herbal remedies, I would do massage. I changed my diet to be one that would better support my brain chemicals. I did everything that I could do short of taking drugs because I was a non drug taker. Until eventually I found a woman who was a psychiatrist who wrote prescriptions, but who was also a psychic. And I thought, well, if she's a psychic, I'll go see her because I don't like doctors and I don't trust doctors, but a psychic, I could get behind that. And I had another friend in the music business who had started taking Prozac. And he told me the wonders of Prozac as it related to him, he.

Said, meaning the good or that it blunted him.

For him, he said, I will never not take this drug for the rest of my life. It changed my life. Everything is better. Which it still didn't feel like this is right for me, but I'm really suffering. I'm doing everything I possibly can to feel better. Nothing's working. I was doing. At that point I was only doing guided meditations because I wasn't able to do a self directed meditation. But if I was being instructed, I could do that and I would still show up to work.

Oh, so you were still able to sort of get through work at this time?

Windows. I remember engineers would come and bring me mixes and I'd be laying in bed and they would play the music for me and I would say what I would hear.

So what broke that cycle?

Well, the psychic woman prescribed Paxil and I took it. The first night I did exactly what she said. I took it the first night, and it was the worst night of my life because she said, well, you'll take this. You're not going to feel anything. It takes about six, six weeks to two months before you'll feel anything. But it has to build up in your system. We'll see what happens. I took it the first night I went to sleep. I woke up an hour later and it fell. Felt like there was a race going on in my body. Like I felt tremendous energy rushing through my body, and it felt terrible. And I remember just wanting to be able to make it to 8am to be able to call her. But I just hang on and suffer through this feeling until 8am and then I called and eventually got her, and she said, okay, don't take that anymore. So that was good, good advice. But then eventually started on this journey of looking for the right antidepressant. And I tried many, and it took a long time. And every one of them made me sick in different ways. Usually more often had to do with nauseousness. That first experience was different than the others. All the others would just make me sick, sick, nauseous. Until I finally found the magic drug, which was called Remeron. And I took Remeron. And again. So each of these drugs I'm taking, knowing they don't start working for six weeks. And the first night I took Remeron, I could remember the room. I could remember what was going on. I took the Remeron, and a half hour later, it felt like all the light in the room turned to candlelight, and I felt like I was being cradled.

Like Remron has some really great sleep properties. Yeah. That's interesting.

Yeah. And then what I didn't know, I've always had a weight problem my whole life.

Yeah.

What I found quickly was that on Remaron, I ended up gaining.

Yeah. It drives your appetite.

£60 in three months, something like that. A tremendous amount of weight, but it helped me get through that period.

So you sort of had to break that cycle.

Yes.

And part of that, I think, is, at the risk of stating the obvious, it's psychological. Like, you have to get through the cycle to know you can get through the cycle, to know that you're okay.

Yes. And the idea of getting off the drug, which I always wanted to do, was really scary because now I'm finally feeling okay. How am I gonna ever stop taking this drug? But then I did stop taking the drug and was able to manage.

And you're still impacted by this. You still look back and see a different guy 33 before that phone call.

Absolutely.

What's better about Rick today than that? Rick?

More empathic.

You don't strike me as one who would have ever lacked empathy.

It's different than it was then. I would say before that I felt more like Superman, and I've never felt like Superman since. Hmm.

Interesting.

I can't say that that Superman feeling before was rational or correct.

Sure.

But that's what it felt like.

Huh. You've worked with many artists who have died. Which one do you feel? I don't want to say the saddest about because it's hard. I don't think you can compare in that way. But is there one artist where a piece of you died with them? Or you felt like, how could this have happened? Or where you were most caught off guard? Or was there. Is there anything that just stood out? Because, I mean, as I look through the list of all the artists you've worked with, there are some tombstones there.

Yeah. I would say every one of them had a jarring effect in a different way in the moment. Obviously, the younger the artist is, the more surreal it feels like. The most recent one was Mac Miller.

That wasn't even a year ago. That was, like, last fall, wasn't it?

Yeah. And it just. It seemed, like, impossible. It seemed impossible. And I can remember when Chris Cornell passed. I couldn't. Couldn't believe it. Could not believe it.

When was the last time you spoke with Chris before he died? How?

Probably within a year, I would say.

Did you work with Chester as well?

Yeah. Produced three or four albums of Linkin.

Park, so I can't even keep track. Like, at this point, it's easier for me to think of artists you haven't produced, but I couldn't believe it when. I don't know why I would have any reason to believe or not believe. I don't know any of these people. But, like, when Chester died, like, that was really heartbreaking in a way that. Even in a way that I didn't feel heartbroken with Chris or with Kurt Cobain, even though that was such a big deal. But I don't know why that one just like that was.

And I think also from a personal level, I remember being really rocked when Johnny Cash died, which doesn't make sense because he'd been sick for a long time.

Right. He's the one guy who dies of some chronic disease like the rest of us schleps.

It really shocked me.

Why? Why do you think that was?

Well, I was talking to him on the phone. Every day. And he had been getting better and better.

There's.

There's a. You know who Phil Maffetone is?

Of course.

Okay. So I sent Phil Maffetone to live with Johnny for a while.

And Phil helped you?

Phil helped me a lot.

Yeah.

And after he helped me, I sent him to see Johnny. And when Phil showed up at Johnny's house, Johnny was in a wheelchair and blind. And Phil got him to walk and to see, miraculously. So I got to see that happen. So I saw Johnny going from very sick to only getting better and better and better. There was the setback when June died. That was terrible. And he really.

Because June died pretty close to his death. He didn't live much longer.

Yeah, I want to say it was within the year.

Yeah, I want to say I'm pretty sure it was within a year, but.

But we continued. He started recording every day after June died because that was his reason to be alive. He wanted to. He said to me. He said, you have to keep me very busy, because if you don't, I can't do this. I can't. I can't continue.

The movie Walk the Line with Joaquin Phoenix in it. I love that movie. And again, I don't know how accurate it is. And you always run the risk when you fall in love with these Hollywood movies that you're sort of. But there are parts of that that you just know are true factually, just based on what you've read, including the loss of his brother and the sort of jarring effect that had on him. And there's yet another example of, we love this guy. Like, we love his music.

Yes.

And to me, it only got better as he got older.

Right.

Like, his. The gospel stuff's not nearly as interesting to me as the pain stuff. And, of course, that's why we love it. Right. Like, we love that this person can articulate something that is so deep inside of us that we don't want to think about or talk about. And yet he can create a scaffolding upon which we can write our own narrative and feel understood. But it comes back to this thing of, like, if only he couldn't have suffered so much. Like, I can't help but wonder how much of the pain of his childhood and the loss of his brother and the shame with his father and, like, did any of that get fixed as he got older? You know, I just.

No, it sort of makes me sad. Well, some of it got. His relationship to. It changed through his spirituality. He was a very devout Christian, and he found great Solace in his religion. But then, like, from the time I met him.

What year did you meet him?

I don't know. Years.

Roughly. Like 10 years.

Yeah, the last 10 years of his life. We worked together.

What was the last time?

Probably met him? Probably. So 12. 12 years before he died. We probably met.

Was the last song he did. He did the COVID for Nine Inch Nails. That was. Yeah. Like, is that. That's gotta be one of the last songs.

No, that was on the fourth album. We made six. Although, you know what? Literally five and six, I think, came out after he died. But we had been working on those.

Maybe that's why I feel like that was the last album or one of the last albums he did, but that.

Might have been the last one that came out while he was live.

I feel like I remember reading at some point, like, he didn't even talk to Trent about this, Right? He just. No, and that always amazes me. Like, when I hear of one megastar doing a cover of another megastar, like, I've always assumed, like, there's this, hey, you call the guy up and, hey, I love your song. Do you mind if I do a cover? No. And I remember you telling me once, because I think I asked you like this last year, and you said, no, any artist can do anything for any artist, as long as they don't. And then you said something that amazed me, which was. The key is they can't change the words. Like, if they produce it, if they. If they sing it exactly as the original artist did it, they'll pay a royalty, presumably. But they. They're allowed to do it whether the second artist rises. And I can't remember if you told me this or I read this, but originally, Trent was not psyched on it, right?

Correct.

And this changed when he heard it.

It changed when he saw the video. When he heard it. He wasn't that psyched.

He wasn't. Okay.

No. But when he saw the video, he got it.

I would put that in the. If I were going to have sort of a top 10 songs that speak to life, I think that has to be. I don't know how. That's not in it. Right?

Yeah, it's. It's a beautiful song. It's a beautiful song.

Where did you guys do that? Did you guys do it here?

We recorded it at my house in. In town.

Did you realize what was happening when you were making that? Like, what. Did he come to you and share? Like, I want to do this and here's why. Or how did it evolve that one.

We would pitch each other songs. I would send him CDs filled with possible songs to try. And I remember putting it at the top of the list. It was the first one on the 1st. On one of the CDs I sent. And when he called, he reacted to several other songs, but he didn't react to that one. And then I remember on the next compilation I sent him, I sent it again with the note, I really think this first song could be special. And he listened to it. I think part of it also is I can't remember what I was sending him. If I was sending him the. The Nine Inch Nails version, it would have been hard for him to hear that and know what it could be. Do you know what I'm saying? It's like, if you know the Nine Inch Nails version, it doesn't sound very much like the Johnny Cash version.

And the funny thing is, I loved the Nine Inch Nails version.

Loved it great.

But I like his more. Yeah. And that, I think, again, speaks to aging.

Well, it's context also. It's like when you're in your 20s and you're singing about regret, it has a certain weight to it. If you're 70 and you're singing about a life filled with regret, by 70, you're supposed to have figured it out. Looking back with regret is a young man's game. So hearing Johnny sing these words is shocking. And there's a reality to it that's different or a gravity to it that's different than when Trent sang it. Just due to his age has nothing to do with the individual pain they were feeling. It just has to do with the age. Really does change the way you understand these words.

Do you remember when he called you after listening to it and finally saying, like, I got it, or I'm willing to give it a try? Like, what was it that spoke to him about that? Or what did he hear in there?

He just agreed that if it was important to me, he was willing to try it.

I see.

But he wasn't really attached to that.

So when it was all said and done, though, he loved it. Yeah. Do you have a sense of what song he was most proud of or what two or three songs he was most proud of over his career?

I don't know over his career. But I know of the stuff that we worked together, there were a handful that he would remark that really meant a lot to him. One was there's a Nick Cave song called the Mercy Seat, and that was on one of the albums we did. And I remember him thinking, that was very special, and it is very special. But that was one that really resonated with him. There was a Sheryl Crow song on one of the albums called Redemption Day.

Yep, yep.

And he said, I forgot about that. I remember him saying, I would give up all of the other songs just for this song.

When it was all said and done. What is Cheryl? What do. Trent. What do they think of this once he has put his. His hand on it? Are they moved by that? Are they?

Cheryl was definitely moved. Bono was moved by Johnny's version of one. I think Don Henley really liked Johnny's Desperado. Most of the ones where I've talked to the artist, they liked it.

You know, I have a huge picture of Johnny Cash in my office. I should have to send you a picture of it. I don't know if it's Folsom and it's a sketch. So it's like. It's a sketch off the very famous photo when he's on the stage and he's given the finger down. But it's like this beautiful sketch that I was able to find. I remember saying to my wife, I'm like, I gotta get this on a T shirt. And she's like, don't be an idiot. Why do you want that on a T shirt? And I was like, I don't know.

It's just so awesome.

Rationalize all the reasons. Why don't you understand what he was saying? And, you know, this is why he was in prison, and this is what he was fighting. And it's like, she just didn't want to hear it. She's like, all right, settle down over there.

I actually don't know if any of the things that you just said were actually true, because what he was thinking was, this photographer is a pain in the ass. Oh, that's really what he was.

I'm totally sure. Like, I'm applying my own ridiculous filter of all of this.

But that's how. What we all do all the time.

To your point. Point, Right. That's music. I think you know this, but do you know my son thinks I'm Tom Morello?

You told me.

It's really funny. So the reason this all came up because there is an awesome video of Bruce Springsteen and Tom Morello doing the ghost of Tom Joad circa 2009, Madison Square Garden. So midst of the recession, or, you know, like, beginning of the recession, I guess, in some ways. And I feel like Tom Morello is in, like, a blue shirt or blue hat or something. And I like with my daughter. And we're, like, sitting there, and we're watching this, and we're just watching it over and over again because, you know, my daughter's so musical, and I love her getting to see these things. And my son, who's like 4 at the time, comes in, and he's like, daddy, I didn't know you could play the guitar. And I was like, what is he talking about? I can't. You know, Reese, I can't play anything. He's like, no, no, no, that's. You're playing the guitar. And I was like, oh, no, no, that's not me. That's a. His name's Tom Morello. You know, I started trying to explain to him he's not having any of it. He's really, like, perplexed by the fact that, like, all these years, Olivia's been playing the drums and you play the guitar, and you've never played the guitar for us. And I'm like, okay, Rhys, sit on my lap. We're gonna watch this. He looks a little like me, but we're really different. But for whatever reason, on that night on that stage, he really does. I really do look like him. And this took, like, a month of me having to show him this video to realize, like, that's actually not Daddy. And it was so awesome.

Amazing.

Yeah. Rage is another one of those bands. Like, how. How did they do that? And how did you see your role in. Curating is the wrong word. Like fostering or providing the creative space to do what they're doing. I mean, talk about hyper intelligence, anger, all of these things. I mean, when you first came into contact with them, and I don't even know enough about the history of the band, like Zach and Tom were. What were they doing before? How did they merge?

Tom was in a band that was signed to Geffen that had. I think they put out a record that kind of came and went.

Mm.

So of the guys in the band, Tom was the most experienced, and Timmy and Zach grew up together. I can't remember exactly how they found each other, but the four Magic guys ended up finding each other. And.

And when did you get involved? Because they. They sort of.

I got involved later. I mean, I knew them. I went to see them. I went to see them play at the place called Coconut Teaser on Sunset Boulevard before their first album came out.

So this is late 80s at this point, maybe early 90s, I don't know.

And there were maybe 40 people there. That was the first time I saw.

And did you at the time think this is.

I thought it was good, but it was not a great way to see them. It was not a good place to see a show. It was hard to hear it. It was hard to hear what the music was actually doing. It just seemed kind of like a din. And Perry Farrell from Jane's Addiction was the person who recommended I go see them. He loved them, and I went see them. And it was. Again, it was not the greatest show, that show that I saw. It probably was, but there's so many things that go into what makes something work. And it could have even had to do with my own emotional state at the time. There's so much goes into it. I'm really careful with the way I. When people send me new music to listen to, it can take me a long time to listen to it because I have to be in the right frame of mind to be able to be present and open and feeling well enough to not let what's going on inside of me affect the music that I'm listening to. It's not like I could just turn it on all the time.

Yeah.

So it may have been me. It may have been the fact that the sound was bad in the room, but my first experience of it was. It was interesting, but I didn't really understand what it was. And then they made either two or three albums, and then they asked me to make. They wanted to do an album of covers. They wanted to do a live album and an album of covers. And we did both of those things we did live from the Olympic Auditorium. And the album of covers, which has the COVID says R A G E. Kind of like the Gary, Indiana love poster, except says Rage.

Yeah, yeah.

Robert, Indiana.

I'm sorry.

Gary, Indiana's place.

One of the things that happens when you start to digitalize your music collection is I've started to forget what album covers look like. And it sounds crazy, but one of the artifacts of being a kid making mixtapes is you knew the name of every single song all the time because you were writing them out. And back then you had albums and you had lyric jackets, and so you knew the words to every song and the name of every song in the album, and you knew the COVID and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, these days, it's actually the exception when I can remember, like, again, going back to the Beastie Boys, like, I remember exactly what the COVID of Paul's Boutique looked like. I remember everything about the jacket. Remember, it was that crazy, colorful, like, out of control. Like, I Don't know how they packed it all into that cd. Right. And, and of course, I mean the picture I used to sketch, I would sit there in 8th grade sketching out the airplane unlicensed ill and getting in trouble for not paying attention in class. Like, I just, you know, and I feel bad that we don't do that anymore. Like, I don't know, maybe I shouldn't care that kids don't get that experience anymore. But there really is something so cool about the anticipation of a new album and physically going there, taking your lawn, cutting money to buy said album, to bring it home to listen. And yeah, I mean, now I just sound like an old guy, like lamenting the past or something.

But it's a give and take. I mean it's definitely the experience of getting new music is less special than it was. But now you can listen to anything you want, anytime you want. There's no friction between you and the music. Which as a fan of music, that's really great too.

Is it different today? So I keep trying to, you know, like with my daughter again, we listen to so much music and we, I love to talk about this stuff with her and. But I also realized that, for example, like Zeppelin is something that we are really, really obsessed with. And her drum teacher, who's an awesome guy, huge fan of John Bonham and you know, we're talking about like, you know, what parts of this could she start to learn to play and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I, I don't know why, but it only occurred to me a couple of years ago that, you know, is that were only around for 10 years, like, whereas when I was a kid.

Yes.

Like they were around forever. Yes. Because by the time I got into them they were already, you know, Bonham had already died in 1980, so I wasn't following them when they were alive. But that was my first first CD. When I first. I remember in 19, the summer of 91, when I bought a CD player, I bought the Zeppelin box set, which was a five disc set. It cost 100 bucks, like staggering sum of money.

It's really good though.

Oh my God. So first CD I buy is this 5 disc Zeppelin box set. The next one I buy is Rush Chronicles. I mean like only going with the best of the best. Is it a survivor bias again? When we look back at the 70s and think of the great music of the 70s or the great music of the 80s or the 90s for that matter. Whereas today I just think like, I can't tell the noise from the like, I don't know. What is it that my daughter listens to today that will mean as much to her in her mid-40s as the music we're talking about does today? Like, is it going to be the same, or has this frictionless system that you've described changed the way she will listen? Like, will she look at Taylor Swift in 35 years the way I look at the Beastie Boys?

She might. It's hard to know. It's impossible to know. And there is an argument that the music in the 60s and 70s was probably the best music ever made because.

Of the barriers to make it and get it, too. Like, you just concentrated more.

Combination of all those things and the fact that the technology was such that unless you were really good, you didn't even get to make a record?

Yeah, yeah. Just a pure selection bias.

So now it's much easier to make.

Anybody can make a record.

Anybody can make anything now, which is great.

But you just lowered the signal to noise ratio.

Exactly.

That is my intuition as well. The signal to noise ratio has changed. The barrier to listening has gone away. I love her telling me stuff that she's hearing that I would have never heard otherwise and trying to think like, will this song be relevant in five years, let alone 35 years?

Yeah, yeah. It's hard to know. It's hard to know. Even if we look back at music from the 60s or 70s, and if you look at the things that really were popular then, then some of them we still talk about, and others that were equally popular then we don't talk about anymore. So it really does. There's. So there's so much to it. It's hard to know why or impossible to predict why.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. You know, earlier you talked about the impact that Laird has had on you in terms of introducing a new dimension to your life, which is the dimension of physicality. So we go back to this period of your life when you were in the throes of depression. Remoron comes along and gives you some hope. In the process, you gained 60 pounds. Remind me, at your peak, what was your weight?

The heaviest I got was 318 pounds.

And if I recall, it was really Phil Maffetone. Or was it Barry Sears or Phil Maffetone? One of those guys was kind of the first guy that got you to make dietary changes and exercise changes. That began the process of.

Well, Phil was the first to do that. But I will say, my whole life fighting weight issues was part of my world. And I would do everything I Could to try to lose weight. From the time I was a child, my mom was obese. So she had a stigma against weight issues because she had it. And it's so funny how there are some people who are overweight and they think, oh, everybody who's overweight is beautiful. And there are some people who are overweight and they think, I don't like fat people because it's just their experience of the world. So my mom was one of the people who did not like fat people who was fat.

So how did that impact you if you were chubby as a kid?

Well, I always felt sort of ashamed of my weight. And her mom, my grandmother, was very hard on my mom about her weight. So it was sort of this generational shame. Generational shame.

In college, were you trying different diets? What were you doing to.

Yeah, even before college, I can remember as a kid going to Weight Watchers as a little kid. So I tried many different things over the years, and for whatever reason, nothing really worked. And then at the time that I became my heaviest, I was vegan. I was vegan for 20 something years, thinking I was eating the healthiest diet I possibly could, and I just kept gaining weight.

Was your foray into veganism, like, was it an ethical issue as well with killing meat or with killing animals? Or was it mostly through the lens of this will be the best way to manage my weight?

Mostly with the eyes of health, Although there's the compassion side too. But I would say the primary goal was to take care of myself and be healthy.

How old were you roughly when you reached? Nearly £320?

In my 40s. Somewhere in my 40s.

And it's sort of one of those things, right, where you think to a lesser extent. But I certainly remember when I was finally, like, at my absolute heaviest, and I look back at pictures and things like that. It's not like there's a day that you wake up and you're at that weight. I mean, it's been going on incrementally. Incrementally, incrementally. And I look at pictures over this span of probably 5, 6 years, and I'm like, I wonder what I was thinking at that moment. Like, clearly I realized I was much heavier than I ought to have been. What was your aha moment? Which was like, I have to do something different?

Well, I was always looking for something different to do. And my first aha moment was Phil Maffetone. I read there was a book by a guy named Stu middleman who ran 1,000 miles in 11 days. And I'm thinking, I don't know how someone can run a thousand miles in 11 days when I can't walk to the corner without feeling like I'm going to pass out. How is this? It just seemed like so, so unrealistic. It's like, what does he know that I don't know? And I read his book and somewhere in the middle of the book he talks about. And then I met this guy, Phil Maffetone, and he changed my life. And I started do training the way that Phil recommended. So I researched. And this was early days of online for me. I don't even think I had a computer yet. It might have been web tv, something like that. But I somehow found a contact for Phil Maffetone and I sent him an email.

And where was he at this time? Like Arizona, Florida.

And I asked if I could become a patient. And he said he was giving up his medical practice and wasn't taking any new patients. And he's stopping being a doctor. He didn't know who I was at all. And he mentioned in the email that he was giving up his medical practice to become a songwriter.

And you couldn't make that up.

Yeah, it's unbelievable. And I sent a message and I.

Said, well, I got a deal for you.

Yeah, I'm involved with songwriters and maybe you can help me with my health and I can help you with the songwriting as best I can. And he was open to that. So the first time we met was in New York City. He was going to be in New York something else, and I was going to New York for something else. And we happened to work out the timing where we could meet. And he treated me in a hotel room and we became friends. I started doing. He would recommend programs for me to do and eventually.

And how much of it was nutrition related and exercise related?

Both. It was both of those.

And what were sort of those first steps that were being made, do you recall?

Well, I was still a vegan at the time, and it was hard and he was frustrated, clearly by me maintaining my veganism. But he had me cut out all carbs.

Carbohydrate restriction is very challenging with vegans. It's not as challenging if you're a vegetarian.

Absolutely.

When you're vegan, it becomes a lot of soy. Well. And you just have to sort of like embrace a lot of plant fats, which are by themselves not. I mean, no fat by itself is particularly palatable. But so you're going through this. And when was the first kind of glimmer you also had me get a.

Heart rate monitor and had me start walking at my target heart rate for maybe the first 10 minutes and working my way up to eventually an hour.

And do you remember at the time what your maximum heart rate was or at what heart rate you would begin to feel gassed?

Well, my heart rate would immediately go over my target immediately.

Yeah. Just walk into the bathroom.

So it's. It took time to kind of train myself down, even just to be able to go for a long walk in those days on a treadmill because the place I lived was not so great to walk outside. I would do walk on the treadmill, and at first it was snail's pace walk. And then it was able to get faster and faster and faster and still be in that target zone. Eventually, Phil ended up coming and living in my house with me for a couple of years.

He came out here to la.

Yeah. Then he started having me doing stairs. And I lived in a house that had one, two, three. It was a three flight. You could put together three flights. And he would have me walk up the three flights and walk down three flights, but always watching the heart rate. So that.

And what was your target zone back then? I mean, Phil is a pretty big proponent of who's what it was Long, slow, zone two. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's probably. I want to say it was 156 maybe was the target originally. Oh, that high? Yeah.

Interesting. Okay.

Based on my age, that's what it was.

When did you start to include animal products in your diet?

Well, he convinced me to add fish and eggs, which were two things that I never ate. Even when I was a meat eater, I never ate fish and I never ate eggs. Never liked them. And he said those would be the best things for you to start on. And don't think of them as food, think of it as medicine. And you need this medicine. We find ways to mask it. So we do like a blueberry shake with three whole eggs in it. And I eventually was able to find, you know, one or two maybe sea bass and halibut were the only, you know, mildest white fish. To this day, those are the only fish that. And even now, I don't even know if I'll eat sea bass anymore. Pretty much just eat halibut just because it's.

So you don't eat salmon?

No, it's too fishy.

I'm gonna make you a salmon that you'll eat. I promise you. I take pride in making salmon that most people don't even recognize who don't like fish. So that my highest point, my highest accomplishment of my life, certainly top three, is getting my sister to not just eat the salmon that I made, but love it.

Wow. That's.

And my sister is. She's always been a picky eater as a kid and, like, just would. Wouldn't eat fish if her life depended on it. And a couple years ago, her and her husband and kids were over at our place, and I was making salmon, and I was making something else for her because I knew she wasn't gonna eat the salmon. She tried it, and she was like, this is unbelievable. And I couldn't believe it. The irony of it. Of course, I learned how to do this from my dad, so she grew up with my dad making that salmon, but she would never try it.

Amazing.

If I thought of this, I would have brought some salmon up tonight and made it.

Tonight. We're going to have a feast tonight. Moodyl's cheese.

There's a reason I didn't have lunch today.

Oh, my God. Me either. And that's unusual for me. I usually. I mean, I. Intermittent fast, but.

Yeah, yeah. You don't. You skip the first meal. So you introduce the eggs, you introduce the fish. You're now doing the exercise. What is the pace with which that weight is coming off?

It's not. I would say over the two years of doing everything Phil said, with him watching me do it.

Yeah, Yeah.

I maybe lost five pounds.

Interesting.

Yes. And he was befuddled, and he said, I see what you're doing. I watch it every day. I watch everything. You eat 99 out of 100 people who are doing what you're doing, all the weight would fall off. Something else is going on.

I would love to go back in time and look at your blood work from that era. I have a hypothesis about patients in your situation. I've seen four or five people where that has been the case. So that's probably more than 1%, by the way, in my experience. It's so interesting because I think I didn't have the luxury of being able to watch those patients as closely as Phil is watching you. But I tell you, I was 100% convinced that they were also doing everything. Like, it didn't even cross my mind that they're not doing it or they're lying to me. Like, I knew that they were doing it, and I.

And I know. And I would trust anyone by what they say, because I know I'm a disciplined person. I just had bad information, and now I finally had good information. From Phil, But I wasn't willing to fully embrace it because I'm. In my head, I'm a vegan. I'm eating fish and eggs as a. As medicine.

But you hadn't really honestly eat carbohydrates.

And I'm still a vegan. No, but I gave up carbohydrates.

So what do you think? I mean, that's pretty amazing, by the way, that you could stick to something for two years, losing five pounds. I mean, you've gone from 318 to 313.

Well, it was easy because Phil was there, so it was like, you must.

Have been feeling better, though.

I felt a million times better, and it changed my whole life. He also changed my circadian rhythm. I used to work all night and sleep all day. He got me to change to normal hours. He changed a lot of stuff. And my vitality changed. I definitely got healthier, felt better. I was just still big.

Yeah. So what was the next step?

The next step. Then he started having me add more animal protein through other masked ways. Like, the first one was we would make this vegetarian chili, which didn't have beans, but we would try to grind turkey and mix it in. So it would still be like vegan chili, but it would sneak in the protein that I was. That he wanted.

And at this point, like, I was vegan for six months, I did an experiment, and in just six months of giving up all animal product, when I went back to eating, and this was a planned six months, so I was like, I'm gonna do this from January 1st to June 30th. And I remember on July 1st, when I went to the steakhouse to get the biggest steak I could eat. One, I couldn't finish it, and two, it tasted disgusting to me. I had really, in just six months, lost my taste for meat. I assume for you it was even more profound.

It was impossible. Impossible. Again, it was always these masked foods for a while. And then it was. I think red meat was the last thing to go back in, which was. It was my birthday, and me and Muriel had gone out to a restaurant that makes great steak, although that was not something that I would usually go there and eat fish. And we both ordered fish. She was vegetarian. And the plan was we would go and we would order our normal dinner, but we would also order a steak.

So that if you want, you could have one piece of it. Yeah.

Which is what we do. We ate one bite, and it was. It felt like we were eating human flesh. It was disgusting. And we did that every maybe Two weeks for. I would say it would have ended up being maybe four times where we would get through a couple of bites of meat. And then by around the fifth time back, we just ordered steak. It took adding a little more, Adding a little more, Adding a little.

It's a bit of a tangent, but two nights ago, I made a venison stew. And this is, you know, from venison that I had had shot with my bow and arrow hunting, which I've become obsessed with, by the way. So we'll have to talk about this over dinner tonight. I'm gonna get you onto this incredible wild venison that is like nothing I've ever consumed, but whatever. Two days ago, and I'm making the stew. I'm. I just happened to, like, I can't. Like, I've got so much meat in the freezer that I brought back, but I can't always tell what's in the bag. So they're in these huge Ziploc bags. So I'll just take one bag out and thaw it, and that becomes the stew. Well, I didn't do a great job of packaging this, or I didn't do a great job of thinking about it because it had, like, three hearts in there and kidneys, which is fine, because I'm going to eat the organs. But I was like, oh, I didn't want to eat them all at once. So, you know, I thawed these things out. So I'm preparing it, and I'm like, my first thought is, oh, I'm going to wait till, like, the kids get home so I can show them how to dissect the heart. Because the deer's heart looks just like a human heart. Like, it is the organ that is identical. Like, their kidneys are much smaller. Their livers look a little bit. Their livers are similar, Spleen's a bit bigger. But their heart is a human heart. Like, it's indistinguishable. So then I like, yeah, maybe that's not a good idea. I don't know. That might be one. That might be one bit too far. Far. So. So I'm just going through the heart and chopping it up to put it in the stew. And it kind of like, it comes over me. I'm like, God, this is, like. This is a little weird, because the other times I'd eaten deer heart, it was in the field where it was fresh. And this reminded me much more of an anatomy class because it had come out of the freezer. And even though it didn't Sweeten smell like the chlorophyll laden hearts that you dissected in anatomy class. It was firm in a way that wasn't natural. And so I made the stew and I didn't tell anybody what was in it. I didn't tell. I told my wife. I said, just so you know, you're eating a bunch of heart and kidneys and stuff tonight. Everybody loved it. They were like, dad, this is better than any stew you've ever made because I always make venison stew, but I'm usually using like more muscle meat. So they loved it. It was a huge hit. And it occurred to me, like, it sort of made me think, like, it's upsetting to me to think that I could have eaten that on some level. Because doesn't this mean I could eat a human? Like, if I was a cannibal, that could have been a human heart that I would have dissected. Like, it just weirded me out in a way that I don't really know what to think about actually. But I was thinking about it today for some reason because I don't know why I was carrying like trash out. And something made me think, like, it must have been some leftovers or something. I was like, God, that is so weird that I just, like my family just ate three hearts and three kidneys in the last couple of days. And of course, on the one hand you realize, like, that's actually the healthiest meat in the animal is the organs. And that's, you know, when you look at our carnivorous ancestors, they were only eating those meats. They were actually giving the muscle meat to their dogs and to things like that. They were going for these nutrient dense organs, organs that were incredible. But everything becomes acquired. And even this is my first time putting a heart into a stew because other times I'd fried it, but you're taking different cuts to it. And I was like, the val. I don't want to eat the valve. You know, I got to cut that part out and stuff like that. And the atria are not particularly interesting. I mean, it's all about the ventricles. So I can only imagine. And I'm someone who's pretty used to eating meat, so I. It's. Yeah, it's amazing to think what you would have thought.

Yes.

Eating a piece of steak and how disgusting that must have been.

Yeah, unbelievable. Unbelievable. Seemed like, how does anybody eat this stuff? Because even smelling meat cooking would have made me nauseous.

So you're feeling a lot better. But obviously on some Level, you're sort of thinking, gosh, I. I'd still love to lose £100 here. I mean, if for no other reason than just the difficulty on your joints and stuff.

I was so happy with the change in the way I was feeling, that even though my main purpose was to lose weight, the change that I got was not that, but it was great, and I loved it. And I assumed that maybe it's just a genetic thing and, you know, because my mom. And it'll always be. It'll always be an issue, but at least I feel healthy now. And then I was having lunch with Mo Austin, who's a guy who ran Warner brothers records for 35 years. He worked for Frank Sinatra. He signed Jimi Hendrix, he signed Sex Pistols, he signed Black Sabbath. He was an unbelievable guy. I went out to lunch with him one day. We would see each other probably once every two months. And he said, you know, Rick, you're really getting big, and I'm really worried about you. And I know that you, you know, I know you walk every day, and I know that you're strict about what you eat, but something's wrong. And I'm going to get a nutritionist for you. And I want you to go to see my nutritionist, and I want you to do everything he says. And I said, okay. And I knew it wouldn't work, but. But I was happy to do it. It's like, I have nothing to lose. I'll do it. But I've done everything and nothing has worked my whole life. So I don't know why that would change now. But I love this person, and he cares about me. And if he's got an idea, I'm open and I go to see. His name is Dr. Heber at UCLA. And he hooked me up to a machine like a body fat impedance.

Yeah.

And he told me how many calories I burn every day. And he told me, what are the foods that I was allowed to eat and not allowed to eat? And said, you know, you. You burn 20, 300 calories a day. I'm going to put you on a 1400 calorie a day diet, and you'll lose. And he said, you'll lose this many pounds over this period of time. Just like science. He's like, no, like 100. This is how this will work. And I didn't believe it at all. And he also had me shift my diet to be based around protein shakes. So he wanted me to have six or seven protein shakes a day every two hours. And then I could have dinner at night, which would be fish, soup, salad, like a light dinner, a low calorie dinner with no carbs. So it was basically.

I was just amazed you could have that many shakes and that low and still eat a dinner and be under 1400 calories.

Yeah, because the shakes were 120 calories each. Because all it was was J. Rob egg, protein powder and water.

Yeah.

There's nothing else in. Wasn't so bad. It wasn't so bad. First three days, I felt a little dizzy doing this, and after three days, it was no problem.

And how was your appetite after three days?

Fine, because the protein in the shakes was so satisfying. And I had had them. I had one as soon as I woke up in the morning, and then every two hours, I never really had a chance to get hungry. And then I would have, again, this light dinner, and I would spread out my dinner through the night. So I would have. First I would have the fish and some cooked vegetables, and then an hour later, I would have a vegetable broth or a chicken broth. And then an hour later, I would have the salad, giant salad, but with just a little bit of oil, a little bit of lemon, maybe. And I did that. I was eating one piece of fruit at that time, too, because it seemed really restrictive. And I remember saying to him, can I have, like, an apple a day? And he said, it'll slow things down, but you can. And I had an apple a day and really savored the apple.

So then the weight starts coming off.

Yeah. And then in 14 months, I lost 135 pounds.

Now, that's also a testament, I think, to your being able to stick to it. How did you manage, you know, the social side of things, going out for dinners? I mean, certainly it was fine.

It was fine.

You would just order appropriately when you would go.

Absolutely. Yeah. It was. It was pretty easy to do.

Are you a disciplined person?

Yes.

Like with everything, are there any things where you like? I. I don't consider myself a very disciplined person. Person, even though I get accused of being one all the time, because.

I would say in some ways very much so, and in other ways, less so.

But with food, I'm quite disciplined.

I would say I'm diligent, so I don't like to settle. I'll continue. I have. On the unhealthy side, I can be a perfectionist, and that can really slow things down.

So you lose some unbelievable amount of wage. You're down to. You're below 200 at this point.

I met Laird when I had lost £90. And there was a friend of ours named Don Wildman who was at that time in his 70s, super fit, bicycle racer. Unbelievable, Unbelievable guy. And jacked. To give you an idea, he was. I think he was. Maybe when he was 80, he did 23 pull ups on the beach at 80 years old.

Wow.

And looked like a bodybuilder until he passed recently. Maybe between a year and two years he passed away. But anyway, he was with Laird and he was. He owned Bally's Fitness and built Bally's Fitness. He was very impressed with the weight loss. He just said, you know, it's being in the gym business. He said, this doesn't happen often. This is really remarkable. And you might want to start training.

With us because at this period of time. Is Phil still living with you at this point?

Phil's not living with me. And all I'm doing is walking for an hour a day. Oh. Now I'm up to sort of jogging now. I can. On and off.

You can jog and stay mostly at your target.

Stay at my target heart rate.

Yeah. Yes. But you haven't started to lift weights yet or do anything. So you're also kind of probably. You've lost a lot of weight, but you probably haven't. You've lost muscle as well as fat.

Oh, absolutely. Although that was one of the things that Dr. Heber said about the key to the diet is you want to have. And he told me what the grams were. I can't remember now. He's like, you want to have 200 grams of protein? Oh, I can remember. He said, your target weight. The first time he tested me, he said, your Target weight is 235, coming from the 1 to 318. And each time I'd see him, the target number would go down because he's.

Making progress faster than he'd anticipated.

Or the stats changed.

Yeah.

Based on the stats, where he wanted to see my. It kept moving. So at first it was 235. And so it was 230 or so grams of protein.

So he was targeting you at 1 gram per pound of target body weight.

And he said, if you do that, you're going to lose mostly fat and much less muscle.

Diets like that have gotten people into a lot of trouble. And unfortunately that created an enormous backlash against carbohydrate restriction. Because carbohydrate restriction is a pretty vague and broad concept. Right. It can be anything from a ketogenic diet, which is say a four to one ketogenic diet. Which is what you would give kids that have epilepsy, where they're pretty much just eating fat. I mean, there's virtually no protein and certainly no carbohydrate in their diet. And at the other end of the spectrum, a low carbohydrate diet could be what you were consuming, which is very high protein. And, you know, there were some patients that got into trouble with these high liquid protein diets. And like with anything, you know, you get. You see one or two complications because the wrong person is consuming this when their kidney function can't handle or something. And all of a sudden it, you know, the world isn't smart enough to appreciate nuance. So it turns into anytime you restrict carbohydrates, you're going to kill yourself. So when did you start reintroducing food? Because at some point, let me say.

There'S another piece of this, it's really important, which is, had I not done the work that I do with Phil, the diet wouldn't worked. It was the combination of Phil getting. Getting my body working again. And then actually the high protein and calorie restriction really changed everything for me. Because in the. Phil was a believer in you don't count calories, you don't think about that. So I might eat half a jar of almond butter every day. Almond butter was healthy. But half a jar of almond butter might be 2000 calories just in almond butter, forgetting all the rest of the food I was eating.

Yeah. Yeah. My guess is if we could have gone back in time and looked at you, I would suspect that Phil fixed a lot of your fuel partitioning issues. So when you probably met Phil, my hunch is you were glycogen overloaded, hyperinsulinemic, glucose dependent.

I definitely was. Because I would get frantic if I didn't eat. Like really crazed. Yeah, desperate.

I think what you're saying makes a ton of sense, actually. I would suspect that Phil fixed your fuel partitioning.

Yes.

And probably fixed a lot of the hyperinsulinemia.

Yes.

But to take it to the next level, you just had to restrict calories, because when you restrict those calories, you're going to deplete glycogen levels. And you have to basically get. You have to. You have to take glycogen off the table to. I'm actually convinced now. I don't think I was convinced of this even two years ago or a year ago. I don't think one can lose weight when the liver and the muscles are full of glycogen. That has to be depleted. And the two quickest things that you can do to deplete glycogen in the liver and the muscle are to exercise and to restrict calories above all else. But within the calories, carbohydrates are probably the most important to restrict. So. So when did the doc at ucla, when did you guys decide, okay, you're at a goal, it's now it's time to start reintroducing.

When I came to see him one time, he's just like, you're. You're at your target, which was, you know, as I say, I got down like 187, I think.

But you were already training at this point now because you'd already met.

Started. Yeah, when I'd lost £90, so probably I had another 50, 50 ish pounds to lose. But I started training at that point and I can remember showing up at Laird's house the first day and I could not do one push up. And. And he said, no, don't say you can't do it. Say you haven't done it yet. And then he would and.

Did you know a lot about Laird before you guys met?

Not much other than like, you just.

Knew he was some star surfer, but you.

Yeah. And I'd seen Riding Giants, which is a movie that he's the third piece of. Yeah. And he just seemed like the most incredible person in the world. And he is, you know, he's a really. He lives up to the hype. You know, he is that guy. So I didn't go there to exercise with the idea of wanting to exercise. I went there with the idea of. I just. It's interesting to be around people who are really good at what they do. And him and the group of athletes that would train there were so different than anyone I'd ever met in my life that it was interesting. And where I would think of exercise as this sort of tuning out grunt work, what I learned with him was that it was as mentally challenging as it was physically challenging. Because everything was like doing two exercises at the same time while you're balancing. It was very focus intensive, which suited my same thing I do with music. So it didn't feel like, oh, now I'm giving up my focus to goof off in the gym.

Right, right.

This was a cerebral. With certain things, the first thing to give out was the concentration. Concentration or the. I could only balance for so long, long before I would lose the ability to do the exercise. So different things started coming into play that were fascinating and fun and with him it was. Every day would be, you do an entirely different thing. And sometimes it would be weight training, sometimes it would be, we're going to do a hundred of each of these moves. Some days it was, we're gonna do one rep of every exercise super slow. Or we're gonna just hold the weights in this position for as long as we can, or we're gonna get into a horse pose and hold it for five minutes. Or just all different kinds of things, different machines, different. And then, then the pool training started happening and I watched that evolve through.

Yeah. What was the exercise I remember you telling me about that you would do underwater with a dumbbell?

There's a whole. It started originally when he started, was carrying heavy weights from the shallow end of the pool into the deep end.

This is the one.

And then coming back, you know, doing a circle underwater in the pool. And that's how it started. That was the only exercise.

And were you comfortable enough in the water to do that?

Because for some people, yes. I love being in the water. I felt best in the water. And I was, I really politicked to get to where we started doing pool training as a regular thing, because they would do it sometimes for fun.

And when you say they, who else was there? Was it mostly professional surfers?

No, it's all different kinds of athletes. Might be.

So this like Laird's running a boot camp at his house. House.

He's running a boot camp. But it's just friends coming to exercise because every. That's all anybody wants to do. So you, you'll see a football player and a basketball player and a hockey player, and just some guys from around town who were jacked and like to lift weights. So it started, it was Monday, Wednesday and Friday was weightlifting. And then on occasion we would do this pool workout. And then we started making the pool workout a regular Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. So Monday, Wednesday and Friday was weights. Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday was pool. And I remember the day, one day, it was the time for the pool workout and Laird came down, he said, I had a dream last night. And he said another part of the exercise was. So let's say you have 40 pound dumbbells, 50 pound dumbbells. So the first exercise was the walk. Then you would go to the deep end of the pool, you would leave the 50s, you would swim up, you would catch your breath, and then when you felt strong, you would swim down and do as many curls as you could underwater, holding your breath. And then you would swim up, get a breath, go down and do Another set, and then you do as many shoulder presses as you could. A lot of things are interesting about it. You're in cold water. It's not freezing cold, but it's still cold enough to change things. There's no lactic acid buildup at all. Your whole body's under tremendous pressure because you're deep underwater.

How deep was this pool?

It's like 14ft deep. Oh, wow.

That's deep.

So you feel very safe lifting weights. That would feel scarier to lift on.

Land.

Because there was so much support from the water.

And also Archimedes principle. I mean, you're technically moving less relative weight because the water is lifting part of it. Yeah, yeah.

We were lifting the heavy weights and swimming up to get air, and you could only do so many reps and even so many sets because you just got fried really fast doing that.

Yeah.

And then he had this dream, and he said, I had a dream last night. If we use lighter weight, it would be heavy enough to hold us down, but light enough where we could get up and get air.

Holding the weight.

Holding the weight. So then we started with 10 pound dumbbells doing jumps, like. And it would be one breath per move because it was. So it started taking on this yoga, like, practice. And then one day he's like, let's try doing backflips. So you come up, get a breath, and do a backflip, and then land. And then the next one was like, now we're gonna. And it became into. There are, like 50 different exercises now.

What is the period of time from which your first workout at Laird's house until you're doing back floor flips underwater with dumbbells? Is that a year?

Maybe two.

Maybe two.

And it might have been two more, because those exercises didn't exist two years earlier with him. It's always a. Finding a new challenge and then learning to do it.

I don't know what's a more remarkable transformation. The losing £140. Pounds, which is remarkable, or the physicality, as you put it, of going from a guy who, you know, has a hard time walking to his car or walking up a flight of stairs to a guy who's hanging out with pro athletes, doing pretty hard stuff. I mean, I don't know that I could do any of this stuff you're describing now, actually.

I don't know if you could do it the first time, but you could definitely learn to do it. It's complicated. You know, it's. But that's kind of what makes it fun. And it feels good. It's not a. I wouldn't say it's grueling, it's fun. Being in a pool is fun. I mean, if you're not just swimming laps, do you know what I'm saying? It's like the variety involved and the potential for new ideas. It's really fun, super fun.

And I even find it fun to just swim laps.

Really? Yeah, I get, I get, I guess I get in a good mood doing it. But the first half, and for me, my goal would be to swim a mile and the first half of it would be pretty grueling, but then the second half would be kind of like the downhill.

When I was training for a swim in Hawaii at the time I lived in San Francisco, I had to do the swim in June. That was sort of my window to do it. So, you know, you know what the water's like in June and Hawaii, it's pretty warm, it's about 80 degrees. So I couldn't do my long, long swims in the ocean, in the bay because it was, it's reverse acclimating. I actually had to learn to do long swims in the heat.

Yeah, very different.

Yeah, totally different. You know, there's a sweet spot, like 70 degrees is perfect or you know, sort of 66 to 72 is really the right temperature for marathon swimming. So if you're, you know, if you're doing a swim in the 60s, you actually have to train in the 60s. And this was just the reverse. It was training in the 80s. So I had to do all these long swims in a pool. And that was one of the tougher swims to train for because in the ocean it's, it's completely different. Yeah, it's just, well, it's just nothing.

To do with each other.

Yeah, it's mentally a lot easier to swim 10 miles in the ocean than to swim 10 miles in a 25 yard pool. And you know, so swimming a marathon is no different from running a marathon. You have a very similar periodization of training where, you know, you'll. I forget. I think I was on, I was on a three week cycle. So each three weeks I was taking a step forward of, you know, 20% additional volume. And then you would cycle up, down, up, down with these three week peaks or two weeks, I can't even remember. But I do remember the day very clearly when I had to do my longest pool swimming, which was not going to be my longest swim. I was going to do one ocean swim in cold water just to get the really long swim in, but it had to be, I want to say, like, 28,000 yards in the pool without stopping, which was about as long as the pool was open on this particular Saturday afternoon. And the thing that I had learned doing these long swims is there's two. Two options. One, you're going to get in the water and actually feel good. You're going to just be having a good day, and you'll know 1500 yards into this, like, it's going to be a good day. And the good news is, if that's the case, at least you're not going to suffer for the next eight hours. The bad news is you didn't build the mental toughness that you actually want for the real swim when it hurts. Conversely, you're going to get in some days, and that first 1500 is going to feel horrible, and it's only going to get worse, and you're going to. It's going to be the worst eight hours of your life, relatively speaking. When you finish, it'll be incredible because you'll have know you persevered through it, and you didn't know which of those two you wanted in the short term. You sort of wanted the good day, of course. So on this one day, when I had to do my, you know, 28,000 yards or whatever, I mean, 500 yards into that swim, I couldn't believe how much pain I was in.

Wow.

And then a thousand. I'm like, oh, my God, this is.

Going to be bad.

And by the only way you can keep track of those swims is on the splits on your watch. So I basically knew exactly how many strokes I would take per length, and I knew to the second how long each lap was taking. And I was struggling to hold that pace even at 1500 yards, whereas the first 16,000 yards, generally, you could turn your brain off and do it. And so, sure enough, that ended up being one of the most difficult swims of my life, from a training perspective, in the pool, swimming, the lapse, in the heat. But when it was done, I was like, all right, well, you got through it. So the benefit is on the other side of that. So that was one of the few times when swimming laps was unbearable. But I can see what you're saying. There's an athleticism that Laird, who I don't know, by the way, but just he writes a column in a men's magazine that I love, and you can tell, like, there's this interface between play and work and functionality, and he's very creative, right like, he seems to be one of the most creative athletes I've ever read about.

Yes.

And it's not just in his sport, but it's also in how he sort of revolutionized the way he trains.

It's the reason he does what he does in his sport is because the way he thinks, he's very out of the box problem solving. He sees something that no one's ever done before for and thinks about, okay, how do we do this? It's very different than we know how it's done and we're going to just grind it out.

Yep.

He's not. He's not the grind it out. He'll. He'll grind it out if that's the job. But what excites him the most from my perspective, seems like, is no one's ever done this before. Let's figure out the problem and then let's train to be able to do this thing.

That's amazing. So this journey you've just described sounds like it took about five, six years to go from the guy who can't walk to his car to the guy who's, you know, frankly, I remember even seeing the magazine, I don't know, story six, seven years ago with you and Laird working out. And it was, I mean, a total transformation.

Total transformation. Like I said, the first day I went there, I couldn't do one push up. I got to the point where I could do 100 consecutive push ups, which was, you know, crazy for me. That seemed insane.

How did this impact your work? So to think for a moment that you're doing this incredible work with physical limitations, I mean, at some point, not having the energy to walk to your car must be impacting the energy you could bring to a studio or the duration with which you could be in a studio.

I'm not sure. I. I don't know that that's the case.

Interesting.

I think it's almost like a different. If anything, I was just in a better mood. I feel like I came alive through that process in a different way now. I was already alive in the studio, but maybe that was the only place I was alive before. But through the exercise, I became alive more in life.

So let's fast forward to last summer.

Okay.

So we're sitting down to have a coffee in New York, and you had stopped off on the way home from Italy. The story just makes me laugh to this day because I can't believe it. Right. You had called me and said, hey, I was once told I might have aortic stenosis. The Ask was like, what do you think? Or something like that. And I think I just basically said, you know, Rick, echocardiogram, you know, is pretty good. But really, cardiac MRI is really the, the way we want to do this. And I'm sure there's a great place to do it in la, but I know the best place to get it in New York. And since you're in Italy, why don't you just stop by and we'll do it? So great. So you stop by, you get the cardiac mri. And then we met for coffee around the corner. And my phone is ringing, right? And it's like I look down and it's Bob Peters, who's the radiologist. And I'm like, I wonder why Bob's calling me. It can't be that important. I don't even think to put the two and two together that he's calling because he's looking at the scan you had.

And if I remember correctly, he called like 10 times.

He called 10 times. And at which point, like, you know, my spidey sense goes off. And I'm like, rick, sorry to be rude. Let me just go see what this guy wants.

Yeah.

And I call him and he goes, are you nearby? And I was like, yeah, dude, I'm like 100ft away from. He goes, are you with Rick? I said, yeah. He goes, can you, can you guys come by? And I was like, okay, sure. Now, I told you, hey, Rick, this is Bob calling for us to come and look at this. What did you think at that moment?

No, I had no preconceived idea.

Okay, so it didn't seem odd to you? Because this is just.

Well, it seemed odd, but I didn't know what to expect. I can give you another odd, just a little odd piece that happened before this, which was when I did the last echo out here, after I was in Hawaii and before I was in Italy. The reason that I had to do this, this new test. I do the test, everything's fine, I'm leaving the test. And the woman who does the test says, how are you feeling? I'm feeling pretty good. And she's like, that's good. Like, all things considered. Something like that. Like, like. Or in your condition. Like, okay, like, I have no idea what she's talking about.

And was there a follow up to that discussion with her?

No, I leave, you leave, everything's fine.

So you're in Italy, and so it's two months.

And I'm doing at this, at that point in time, Olympic deadlifts and Squatting with as heavy weight as possible in this new experience of, like, the last 18 months had been devoted to just deadlifts and squats. Heavy.

Oh, and that's the other part of the story that makes me laugh. While Bob is ringing me off the hook, we are discussing a new deadlift protocol.

Yes.

And I'm like, all right, I'll come up to LA and we'll do. I want to really fix your deadlift. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. So now, three minutes later, we're sitting inside and Bob pulls up this scan. And again, it's. I'm more interested in your point of view, because I don't need him to say anything because I've looked at a million scans so I can see it. But of course, if you haven't looked at one of these MRIs, like, what would you know? What? You means nothing to me. What was your first recollection that something was wrong?

Just the conversation the two of you were having. I was just sort of watching. You guys were comparing notes on what you were seeing.

Right. But we were also probably not even making an effort, either deliberately or not to communicate with you. I think we were just talking in the normal shorthand. We would have spoken if you weren't there. Again, I don't really remember much about what was said, but it's like nothing I'd ever seen before, and it's nothing Bob had ever seen before.

Yeah. But I remember the conversation where you guys together said, you're gonna need open heart surgery as soon as possible. And I remember saying, as soon as possible in the next year. And you're like, no. And I said, in the next six months. And you're like, no, as soon as possible. But not emergency, because we want to find the right doctor.

Right. And I remember as you and I walked out of there, I said, oh, by the way, Rick, all that stuff I was saying about the deadlifting. Scratch that. You are not lifting a heavy weight until we get this resolved. And you are very good, I think, at not demonstrating, or maybe you don't even experience it. But you never seemed stressed or panicked. And sometimes you would just have to tell me that you were stressed, but you never discovered. Right. Like so. So in some ways, I don't think I understood what you were going through at that time.

I'm not sure that I did either. And. And I don't know that I was planning on acting on the information that we had gathered.

And I guess just for the listener, I should explain what's happening, since you've already. I mean, I had asked you before this, so just so the listener understands this, I would not have brought this up if Rick hadn't been willing to. To talk about it. So, Rick, you have something called congenital bicuspid aortic valve.

I was born.

You were born. That's right. So the aortic valve normally has three leaflets, and this is embryo. This is from the way you're born. And a small subset of people are born with two leaflets, and hence the term bicuspid, as opposed to tricuspid. And one of the real problems of a bicuspid aortic valve. And I have two patients with bicuspid aortic valves who we just follow, you know, because we know at some point they're probably going to need surgery. In fact, I think Arnold Schwarzenegger had a bicuspid aortic valve, and that's ultimately why he needed to have a similar operation. But one of the drawbacks is it is more prone to calcification. So it basically, the valve starts to act like a piece of bone, and it models itself like bone. And the problem with that is it becomes harder and harder to open, and that is known as stenosis. So people with a bicuspid aortic valve are much, much more likely to develop something called aortic stenosis. And the aortic valve is what empties the biggest, most powerful chamber in the heart called the left ventricle. And so several things are happening. One is, as the heart is pumping, the ventricle is pumping. It's pumping against a greater and greater force of resistance. And for transient periods, that's wonderful. It's great for the heart to have resistance, but the heart, being the most important muscle in the body, has great adaptation. And one of the adaptations is it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and more muscular and more muscular as it goes against that. So among the things that really stood out to me, looking at your cardiac mri, was how thick the muscles of your left ventricle and. And your septum, which is the muscle wall that separates the left and right ventricle. They were, without exaggeration, twice the normal thickness of a man your size. And that in and of itself, becomes problematic for reasons that I won't bore you with. But you can get an outflow obstruction. In other words, the wall of the heart itself can begin to impede outflow. So that's one problem. The second problem is you're now having a harder and harder time getting blood out past the aortic valve. So you can actually have sudden death with something called critical aortic stenosis, which you have. And there's a threshold we use to define that based on the gradient and the pressure across the valve and the size of what's left. So the amount of room in an area, we say how many square centimeters of opening is there. And once you're below a certain level, it's called critical. And once you reach that, the probability of sudden death goes up significantly. But there was a third problem that was probably even more frightening on the mra, which is the portion of the study that looks at the vasculature, which was the size of your aortic root was very dilated. And this also tends to go hand in hand with aortic stenosis. And it turns out it's not entirely clear why one thought is the higher pressure gradient going across just stretches it out. But I actually think the literature is pointing to the fact that whatever congenital factors lead to the remodeling or the defective valve leaflets and the remodeling also speak to not having the right collagen mixture or matrix within the ascending aorta, because it goes up like an arch. If the normal aortic diameter there is about three, three and a half centimeters. And there are adjustments you can do based on a person's size. If you were even twice your size, the allowance would be about 3.9 centimeters. I think you were like 6.6 or 6.7 centimeters. I mean, it was, again, one of those things where we have these nomograms that predict the risk of a sudden dissection. So a dissection would mean that that thing tears. And unfortunately, that comes with a mortality of, I want to say, 2 to 4% per hour that it's untreated, which for many people means if it dissects, you die. And so we left and we went back. And you were going to fly back the next day, and I was going to fly back the next day to California. And then the plan was, we're going to find you, you know, who is really the best surgeon to do this today? Because the last time I had looked into who's going to be the best surgeon to do this, it had been a couple of years, and, you know, you want to go with the best person. So what did you go home and talk about that night, like, again? I guess I feel like I wasn't being very sensitive to what that news must have been like to you. I was sort of in business mode.

From leaving that meeting with you until the Moment the surgery happened, those were the most difficult, probably six weeks of my life. Terrified. And my nature is not to intervene in medical, certainly not in a surgical way and not even in a drug way. My instinct is always to follow nature, not to do an intervention. And I think I told you that 20 or so years ago my appendix burst and I never had it removed.

Right.

And I remember I had a second version of an appendicitis, maybe less than two years. Less than two years after the first one. My doctor called the pharmacy to get the same prescription antibiotics that I took the first time that it happened. And the pharmacist said, well, he had appendicitis two years ago. He had his appendix out. And the doctor said, no, he didn't have it out. And the pharmacist said, well, if he didn't have it out, he'd be dead. And you're probably not a real doctor and I'm not going to prescribe, I won't give him the drugs.

By the way, it's so untrue. In fact, actually, I may even told you this, it's actually come around full circle today. So we learned about the non surgical management of appendicitis through the days of when sailors were going back and forth, because appendicitis does have a very high mortality if left untreated. But they learned that if you put a person on their right side with the pelvis down, you could contain the rupture because the appendix is on the right.

Nobody told me that. No, no, no.

And so you put somebody in that position, they can abscess it off and it doesn't, you know, as long as it forms an abscess, you're okay. It's like when it becomes systemic. And nowadays the approach to appendicitis is much less surgical. It is a much more aggressive antibiotic routine. But that said, you are still very fortunate to have survived because absolutely the odds are not in your favor.

No. And the only way I was able to do it was my osteopath, who's really my main doctor, said, I did a CT scan. I think the guy who did the CT scan said, okay, you're going to leave here, you're going to go straight to Cedars, I'm going to call them and you're going to get an emergency appendectomy. And I said, well, what are my options? And he said, you have no options. And I said, well, what else can I do? And he said, if you were my son, I would say you leave here right now. Go to Cedars and get an emergency appendectomy. That's what you have to do. And then my osteopath's office was right around the corner. I went to see him, I showed him the pictures, and he's like, looks like you need surgery. And I say, no way around it. He's like, I don't think so. He says, too bad we're not in Europe. I said, what are you talking about? He said, in Europe, they probably would give you a bunch of antibiotics and tell you to go home. And I said, well, I want to do it the European style. And he said, well, I'll help you do this, but I want you to see a surgeon and I want you to do it under his supervision. And we did that, and I ended up never having it.

And what do you think was your aversion to surgery? I mean, it's obviously frightening under any sort of.

I even have a knee needle. I won't. I have a needle phobia. So any. Anything in any intervention like that, and it all stems back. It's funny, you talked about the. The heart dissection earlier. I can remember in fifth grade doing a frog dissection in biology class. And it was one of the worst experiences of my life.

I see.

So I've always been. And I was afraid to go to the doctor as a kid. I was always. I've always had a. Never felt right to me.

Yeah, I remember you saying that even just getting the mri, if they had to use a needle, even to give contrast, it was going to be.

Yeah, I'm happy to do any non invasive anything, whatever it takes. And I can be very strict. I just don't want it to have needles. Although I'm getting better at it now after this, after what I've been through.

Yeah. Well, we ended up finding Joseph Wu, who's the head of cardiovascular surgery at Stanford. And, you know, in the process, it was really great for me to get to know him. And a good friend of mine, Randy Green, who's a cardiac surgeon and was one of my mentors, connected us with. And he did the heavy lifting. He was like, look, because I was like, well, it's really this guy or this guy. And he said, you know, those guys were the man five years ago, ten years ago, you want the guy who's the man today? And it's, you know, with aortic surgery, it's really about the reps. Like, you want someone who's doing that operation constantly, and he's doing that operation three times. A week. The average cardiac surgeon might be doing that operation five times a year.

Yeah.

And I remember when you went up because you went to Stanford, you went to. You went to a bunch of places, but I think you came back also realizing that it's not just the surgeon that makes it, it's what is. What does the anesthesia team look like? What do the nurses look like? What does the ICU look like? What does the step down unit look like? You have to have perfection across the entire spectrum.

Yes.

Now, here's funny. I'm going to eat some crow. The next six weeks were not only you going through what you were going through, which again, I don't think I realized until the day, probably three or four days before the surgery did I realize how anxious you were? Because you mask it quite well. And I was in New York and I was flying to San Francisco to see you the day after the surgery. And it was a couple days before that that you called me. But prior to that, you are sending me emails and texts every day with cockamamie ideas to avoid doing this.

Yes.

And I couldn't, honestly. At some point I was like, I don't know if he's serious.

I was dead serious. I was dead serious and I had something happen. This was. I don't think I ever got to tell you about this. I got a call saying this is maybe three days before I'm supposed to go to Stanford.

And this is after you've gone up for your pre op catheterization and everything that was.

I did that either the day of or the day before.

Yeah. Okay.

Same day.

Yeah.

I've only met the doctor, but I haven't done anything at the hospital yet. But I'm going in three days to do the surgery and I have a dinner plan with friends at the same restaurant where I had meat the first time. And a friend of mine calls me and he said, I finally have found a cardiologist who might be able to help you. He's not like the other cardiologists. He speaks more your language. And his name is Dr. Junger or younger Junger. He wrote the book Clean. He's known more now for cleanses and nutrition, but he's a trained heart surgeon and he also has an aortic stenosis. Personally, I've pretty much given up hope at this point. Meaning I'm gonna have.

You've accepted the fact that you're gonna have this. Likely.

I'm still thinking even the morning of the surgery was still 50 50. But I'm I'm more on the train of doing it than not. I'd also seen a. There was a Chinese healer who came to the house and did these ceremonies, and she told me not to get the surgery. And Muriel, who's was very pro surgery, she's like, well, maybe, you know, maybe you don't have to do it. You know, the healer says, you're going to be okay. Even then I was like, I feel like I have to do it now. I feel like I'm past. I'd lost hope at this point. I call the doctor. He's like, I send him all the reports, everything, history and current. He looks at everything. And he calls me back and he's like, I think I have great news for you. Can you come see me? It's like, absolutely. It's like the clouds have parted and there's a rain.

God is speaking to you direct.

There's a miracle, right? And I say, great, I have a dinner in Santa Monica. I'll cancel the dinner. I'll come. And he said, no, no, it's fine. Go to your dinner. And then after dinner, come and see me. I'll be awake. He was close by. So I go to the dinner and I remember it was the greatest dinner of my life. It was like the last supper. I was. No, I was off the hook.

It's like, ah, yes. The weight of the world is off.

It's like, yeah, unbelievable. It was like the one moment of joy in my life was that dinner.

After these six weeks of. After six weeks was terror, horror, anticipation.

Of yes and second guessing. Because I still don't want to do it.

Yeah.

And the guy has good news for me. I go to see the guy and he said, I looked at everything. He had a heart model on his. And he takes it apart. He starts explaining everything to me, what's going on? He's like, this is great. It's so lucky that they caught it. They caught it in time. And you're. It's so great that they found this and that you can do this surgery. Like, you're like. He's like, it's. He said the fact that they caught this is the greatest news in the world. If you would have just gone on doing your deadlifts without knowing this is going on, there's a very good chance that you would not live long.

You know, I look back at that and I'm sort of glad I didn't realize again. I assumed you were definitely having the surgery, but you were just sort of tweaking me by sending Me text messages every day of funny ideas to avoid it.

Yeah.

And I was like, this is cute, but he can't be serious. And I don't know, I feel like at some point I kind of read you the riot act about your son. Right. At some point I said, look, you're being a little selfish right now. You have a wife, you have a son, and you're way too young to die, so you can't. You have to. I think I was trying to say, like, you have to do something that is really hard for you, for them. I feel like once you sort of got to that point, it turned into, okay, how do I now hack the system and start doing things? And I remember one of the ideas you had was, I want to take methylene blue. I want to have the anesthesiologist inject me with methylene blue. And I know you know why, but for the listener, the reason that this was of interest to you was you have to undergo what's called circulatory arrest. So this is such a big operation. This is a much bigger operation than even doing bypassing of the heart, because you actually have to do a special type of cannulation to create another type of blood flow to the brain to make up for the fact that even the vessels on the top of the aorta are not supplying the brain anymore. And this is a real reason why. Once I got to meet and talk with Joseph Wu, I was really comfortable that this was the. The man. Because this is an area of surgery where speed is everything. The human brain can only go so long without its natural profusion from the heart. And the difference between Joseph doing this operation and somebody else was night and day. And when he called me after, by the way, and we. He read me all the stats, I was blown away at how quick, quickly, he was able to do this. It was literally in half the time I expected it would take at every step of the way. So what the cross clamp time was, what the cannulation time was, all these things. Your question was, methylene blue can protect the brain. I'm going to have the anesthesiologist, I'm going to talk to him about doing this. And it's funny, I was really dismissive of this. I was sort of like, Rick, you know, yeah, yeah, I know. Methylene blue in theory could kind of work, but don't rock the boat. They're not even. Don't even ask them. They're not going to say yes, blah, blah, blah. Well, you ended up asking them, and they Said, no, but it was amazing. It was two months later. So the operation happens, everything. Two months later, I'm doing research for a podcast with a guy named Francesco Gonzalez Lima on Alzheimer's disease. In the process of doing this, I realize all of the work that he and his lab have done with methylene blue. And I start going through all the studies, and I'm like, oh, man, I was really a jerk to be so dismissive of this to Rick. I didn't realize how much research was here and how much data existed on the neuroprotective benefits of methylene blue. And I would say to this day, I'm actually. One, I feel bad that I was dismissive of that. But two, I'm like, I hope some anesthesiologists out there are paying attention to this literature, because I think there is actually an opportunity to reduce the morbidity and potentially mortality of these really, really dangerous, big, big operations where it's unavoidable that you have to alter the profusion of the brain.

Yes. And that idea came from Dr. Jack Cruz, who's a neurosurgeon. And he said. Well, he also said, talk to your surgeon about this. You don't want to piss off your surgeon. You have to do what the surgeon says. But as someone who's more focused on the brain than the heart while they're doing the heart surgery, I would really like you to have methylene blue in your brain. Yep.

And again, I do. I hope somebody out there listening to this who's a cardiac anesthesiologist or cardiac surgeon would consider doing a clinical trial on this. Be. And again, it's possible. It's been done, and I wasn't looking at that literature, but it was. I think it was actually a great idea.

And I remember I sent you a list. I talked to all of my biohackers.

You sent me, like, I sent you.

A long list of 50 things that I could do to sort of hack the system. And I remember you said, if you show this to Dr. Wu, he will not operate on you. Don't even show him this list. You cannot do these things.

Well, some of the things made sense, right? Which were like, I'll eat a certain way going into it. If I showed up with more ketones in my blood, would that be protective? And I was like, yes, sure, but you don't have to explain that to him. Right.

But the two things that I fought for, which he said no to, were the methylene blue and to not use opiates post surgery.

No, no. That made a lot of sense, but they said no. They said, well, they said, we're not going to manage it.

They said no. But then he, the anesthesiologist, well, if.

You can handle the pain, he can do it. That's right.

But his initial reaction was, no, I will not do that.

Right. And the reason, in their defense, that they would say that is if a patient is in tremendous pain post operatively, they are less likely to move, they're less likely to take deep breaths. Their risks of infections are going to go through the roof and complications. But it turns out, and this is a whole other issue, postoperative pain management is a very poorly handled area. And there are lots of things that you can manage pain with using a very. You had a good epidural. You know, a good epidural is the beginning of all great pain management following surgery and Liberal use of NSAIDs and Tylenol and things like that. And you can get away with minimal opiate use, if not any. In your case. You know, you had as big an operation as people get, and to be able to get away with it is huge. There was one other thing that you were proposing that I thought in theory made sense, but I just thought there was no way they're going to go for it, which is just using exogenous ketones as well, throughout. Oh, and the other thing that you wanted, which I again, completely agreed with.

Iv.

Exactly. No dextrose.

Instead of dextrose.

No dextrose. And I was like.

Also because it would be such a shock to my system because I'm already a no carb person for, you know, two years, and now I'm under the same stress, and now they're jamming a bunch of sugar into me. That can't be good.

And I agreed with Jack on this that, you know, lactated ringers would have been the perfect intravenous solution and you could happily go days without glucose. But in the end, they were like, look, don't tell us how to do it.

Dr. Wu said in his defense was, he said, the reason you came to me is because of my success rate. And the reason my success rate is what it is is because we do everything exactly the same way. If we change any aspect of it, I can't guarantee you the same results that you're coming here for.

So I forget. I think it was either the second day after your operation, your operation was a Wednesday, and I got there on a Friday. Now I remember this.

I remember September 12th. That's all I remember.

Yeah. I think that was a Wednesday. So I feel like I got there two days post op, and I thought you looked amazing. But I could also see how frustrated you were, that, okay, I did everything I was supposed to do. I had this stupid operation. But I think it was setting in that this was not. You weren't going to be better in a week.

No. And I think I even told you that so much of my frustration about it wasn't necessarily fear of dying. Although that. That's. That's a small part of it. It was more. This is just gonna suck for a long time. Yeah, this is gonna be really uncomfortable for a really long time. And it was.

Yeah. You know, you developed atrial fibrillation post.

Op, which I didn't sleep.

20% of patients, three weeks, you know.

Just couldn't get into a position comfortable enough to sleep.

When you look back at that and look at where you are today, where do you think you are in terms of percent recovery?

I would say 90%.

So Dr. Wu was pretty on the money, right? Six months to recover. 80 to 90%, yes.

That said, I've not picked up anything more than £5 since the day we had lunch and went to see those pictures.

I do remember also, when you got back to Malibu after the surgery, I remember one day I called you and I was like, how was your walk today? And you were like, I didn't walk. And I said, how come? And you said, it was too windy. I was like, what? And you were like, yeah, it was just too windy. I didn't want to go for a walk. I was like, rick, you gotta go for a walk, man. And you were like, no, no, it's really windy. And you sent me a video showing me how windy it was. And I was like, all right, that was pretty windy, I'll give you that. But I also sensed. I mean, did you struggle during that first month coming home? Like, even though you're back home and your pain is okay, thank God that.

The house didn't burn down until six weeks after the surgery. Because had it burned down two weeks after the surgery, I don't know how I would have been able to handle it. I mean, as uncomfortable and terrible as the experience was, at least the comfort of home got me through those first six weeks. The first night after the surgery where I stayed in San Francisco, that was my first night of not sleeping. And I attributed it more to I need the comfort of home. And then when I got home, I still couldn't sleep, but I was definitely more comfortable. Comfortable being home.

And I remember you would send me the screenshots of your aura ring, and it was. It was pretty bad for a while. Yeah, it really was. And I got to tell you, this is one of those things that I think in medicine we don't get training on. Maybe it's changing today, but certainly I don't remember ever once spending a moment, not one second thinking about how is a patient going to sleep when they get home. And someone who's young and healthy like you, they get over it. But when you start operating on patients who are older or patients who already have even the slightest amount of cognitive impairment, that sleep deprivation, I've seen it on several occasions. It precipitates a spiral that they never get out of.

Yes.

Looking back at that, what is the most profound thing you learned about yourself?

I won't say this about myself, but I'll say it about being a human. That as humans, we can really handle much more than we think.

It's interesting that the surgery would be something to point that out to you. I would have thought that you figured that out just based on what you'd learned through your, you know, going from 0 push ups to 100 push ups to me would be an even more remarkable example.

But different that. That made me think you can train to do anything, which I do believe, but it's different than you can't train to do a surgery that's just. You just have to show up.

Yeah.

It's again, it's like something to overcome. It's different.

Your disposition makes it, I think, somewhat easier, I think as an outsider looking in at you as a friend to go through these things. But at the same time, I guess it also. The challenge is people don't always know what you're going through. When you think back on that two years of depression, were the people you were working with aware of what you were going through, or were you able to do your job well enough that people weren't necessarily aware of that?

I could usually hold it together enough where people might not notice.

What are you most interested in passing on to your son and maybe assuming you have other kids, but in terms of lessons you've learned in life experiences, both positive and negative, I feel like one of the beauties of having kids. I was talking with Eric before when we were just walking around and he was giving me a tour of the studio. And there's that beautiful tree. Well, there's a tree that's been cut.

Down with a tree that just fell.

Yeah, yeah.

Like a week ago.

Yeah, yeah. And I had to take a picture of it because the cross section of that tree is so beautiful. And only because my middle son has become obsessed with counting the rings of trees did I even notice it. And we went up and we were, like, talking, and I was like, oh, my God, like, look at this year versus this year versus this year. You know, we were agreeing that because he's got a young child as well, that one of the cool things about having kids is you get to re discover things that you once knew about that you've since forgotten about, and now you get re reminded of it. I also think another part of having kids that anyone listening to this who has kids appreciates is there's this desire to protect them from the things that hurt us. So when you reflect on all of these things, the successes, the failures, the fear, the pain, knowing that your son has to find his own way in this world, what do you want to impart on him?

To try to have as much fun as possible, to be prepared to work hard for the thing that you're interested in doing, whatever it is. Knowing that anything that's worth doing is going to take a commitment and you have to work hard and it. And it feels good that it's not work isn't something to be avoided. It's to be embraced. But balanced with that idea of having fun, which I did not have, I had more of a workaholic side. And I think so much of it has less to do with what we wish to impart and more to do with what we will really impart, which is just based on how we live our lives. So it's not about what I can tell him. It's about what you can show him. Living a loving relationship, living in a loving household where we care about each other, and making sure he always knows how much we love him and are there for him through demonstration.

Rick, it's been awesome to sit down and have this discussion in what I'm willing to say is the greatest place I will ever sit down to record a podcast. I'm willing to predict that already I will never again get to record a podcast in an environment so beautiful.

Until our next one.

Yes, there you go. And above all else, I want to say I was, like, partially worried that we were going to do this in a sauna, like you did with Tim. And I remember after I heard that, because that was years ago. Right? Right.

Yeah, yeah.

I was like, tim, how did you not electrocute yourself, like, with the recording device getting just sweating all over the thing and he's like, yeah, it was tough.

And the real issue was that we were holding the microphones, which were burning hot. Yeah, that was. That became the problem.

This was your idea. There's no way this was Tim's idea.

No, it was my idea.

Yeah. Thank you for not subjecting me to that. As much as I do enjoy Sana, I don't think I could.

It was kind of a one time thing and it, it really was a case of having done a lot of saunas at that period of time. I realized that the conversations that happen in the sauna are really good. So it helps to turn off a part of your brain that's maybe more guarded. You're preoccupied in the sauna with survival.

Yeah.

Same is true. It's like with an ice bath. You've done many ice baths.

Yeah.

And you're experimenting with meditation now. I know the best meditations you've had in your life. I guarantee you were in the ice bath whether you knew it or not. Because it's a one pointed activity where the other problems of the world don't come with you into the ice.

That's a great point. Point. I, I don't. It's.

It's a forced meditation. You don't have to do anything but survive. But because of that, you are very present and in the moment.

I look forward to giving that a try. Deliberately.

Brian.

All right. Is it time for that awesome dinner I've been waiting for all day?

Let's do it.

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