#2330 - Bono
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The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast.

I fucking loved the film. It was really great. You saw it? I watched it last night, yeah. It was cool, too, because I always feel special when I've got to enter in the password because I know that nobody else has seen it yet. I've got to enter in the email and the password, and I watched it, and I screen-mirrored it on the TV. It was great, man. And it was so almost like a fever dream. It was wild, the way he set it up, all black and white. Yeah, you get past the first three minutes. Even my own mates are like, oh, don't do that. LAUGHTER

It's like, wow. And it is like a fever dream. Yeah. That opening. But that really happened to me. So it was great, man. It's great. And it's also like I love the way you did it. Like you played the beginning of some songs and you talked about the origin of the songs. The thing that I have a hard time believing, though, is that you weren't a good singer when you were young.

Well, you know, punk rock, you're a bit of a shouter. You know, that's really what you do. You just get up there and shout. I'm shouting at God. I'm shouting at everyone. I'm shouting at the band. That scene when we're doing I Will Follow. Yeah. That's really true. So I'm there and we're improvising this song that becomes I Will Follow. If you walk away, walk away, walk away. I mean, it's like this while we're trying to just do something original. Yeah.

And we're really ripping off, the irony is we're really ripping off Public Image Limited. Johnny Rotten became John Lydon again for this band called Public Image Limited back in the late 70s. And I'm singing about, you know, it's a suicide note, really. And I'm singing about this, and they're saying, like, what's it about? And I said, I think it's this...

It's this guy who's going to follow somebody into the grave. I think it's about a child following their mother, missing them so much that he'll follow them into the grave. And then we realized that our rehearsal room, the little yellow house, is beside the cemetery where my mother is buried. And I've never visited her once or talked about her once before.

and we've been rehearsing there for months. And it's funny, you know, you can deny somebody in conversation, you can deny somebody to yourself, but in the songs, all that shit comes out. Wow. Wow. But thank you for watching it. I loved it. Thank you. It was such an interesting way you put it all together. I've never seen anybody do that like that. Like, you did, like...

it's like a documentation of your career but in this like very unique way with like talking about things and explaining these moments and then the music plays and it's all black and white it was really cool yeah there's a there's a sort of black and white lens it a kind of clarity I did this series of shows in the the Beacon uh theater in New York

And it was going so well, we thought we should record it. I will tell you, the night before we opened our show in New York, my Mrs. Ali said, I don't think you should do this. Just please, please do not do this to yourself in front of a New York crowd. Cancel it now. Do what most people do on a book tour. Get somebody to interview them. And just they'll come anyway. Everyone will be happy.

And I don't know, I just went for once. I didn't take her sage advice and I did it. And the difference was with an audience, it was funny.

And she was like, oh, that's the bit I didn't get in the rehearsals. It's funny. So what was she thinking? It was self-indulgent? I thought it was dull, self-indulgent, here you are. I mean, all these things are a version of... Here's another great thing about me. No. I mean, it is a... I was calling it a memoir. Me book what I wrote myself. It's the memoir. And look, there's something narcissistic and...

But it's your material. You know, that's what you get. You know, it's not just your body. Your psychology is the canvas. And, you know, I grew up John Lennon. You know, the Beatles were everything for me. And, you know, John Lennon made a sort of performance art out of his wedding to Yoko. And he did a bed in for peace. And he was ready to look ridiculous for peace. And, you know, I do ridiculous quite well.

I'm told. So that was my definition, you know, of art, really. Yeah. Was to just go out there. But the thing that being in U2, which has given me everything, took away, if it took away anything, was, you know, people don't come along to our shows for a belly laugh. You know what I mean? Right, right. So as a comedian, you understand that. You know, it's like I...

You know, I wrote this line. I came out of nowhere. I haven't put it in a song yet, I don't think. But, you know, I think it's... Laughter is the evidence of freedom. And I don't trust people to talk about freedom now. I want people to be free. If you talk... Be it then. Be it. Yeah. And so...

I wanted to be that on stage. I wanted to be loose. I wanted to be myself. I wanted to own up to the ridiculousness of my life, as I've just explained, the madness of my family. But turns out it's

family. It's a little opera. And it is a bit of a soap opera. But it's also a real opera. These are big feelings, you know. You're going after your dad. Like a young... Elk is a romantic word for it. But it's... You're just taking him on. And this poor man is just... He's lost his wife. He's trying to bring up two kids. I'm just an obnoxious kind of thing who's some...

somehow psychologically blames him for the death of my mother because as Jim Sheridan says to me it doesn't have to be actually true to be psychologically true and that kids feel all these feelings you know they don't have to be logical and and I went after my dad and I

By playing him every night in the Beacon Theatre and around the world, I actually learned to love him. I learned to like him, actually. I always loved him. I learned to like him. He made me laugh more. So I got humour. Humour was the gift of...

from that show and... And the humor was evident with the audience there. Mm. Yeah. But not evident when my mistress came, which is why she wanted to pull the plug. Well, rehearsals are hard. It's also hard when someone is too close to you. Right. They're there with you every day. Like, this is true with comedy as well. Like...

If someone sees your act too many times, like if someone's traveling with you, like if my wife went to see my shows all the time, there's parts of it she'd be like, oh, don't do that. Oh, don't do this. Like that's not – like you get too close to it. Like she's too close to you. But to see it with fresh eyes, like to see it in front of that audience, the joy that they have when the music starts playing –

when some of the songs that they love, it's amazing. Like you could feel it in the show. It's like the pure joy. Because the people that came to see it were hardcore fans. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Have you ever been shopping online and the website just gave you the ick?

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What happened was Andrew Dominic, Australian director, and he did some of the shots without any audience. Just he cleared them out on a day off. And then some of them came in, which were hardcore fans, as you say. And that was, in a way, that was the most terrifying. Because I, as a performer...

I'm drawn to spontaneous acts. That's what, when we started out as a band, I was attracted to performers who I thought might leave the stage. Right. And follow me home, mug me, or, you know, tell my fortune, or, you know, whatever. Wild people. Well, just, yeah. I mean, and I'm still attracted. Iggy Pop, when I was growing up, was the, you know, Patti Smith band.

Patti Smith used to enter the stage elbowing her way through the crowd. Myself and Larry Mullen, drummer in U2, we left stage one night when we were like 21, 20 years old, elbowing our way through the crowd to get out. Just got into a taxi in London, fucked off. And we felt a liberation. Breaking the fourth wall has been everything for our bands. Trying to...

smash it by surfing it, you know, by jumping into the crowd. I had the preposterous moment of going into a crowd in the, in Los Angeles, I forget, the Forum or somewhere like that, with a white flag, right? The non-violent white flag. The same flag that I'm still on about, the flag of surrender, right, in that show.

But back then I'm 23 or whatever and I'm going into the crowd and I see people who are, you know, pulling at me and all this. The next thing I know, I'm throwing a punch. Somebody in our own audience. That's how much nonviolence meant to me. You know, but I'm attracted to feral performers, I suppose, is a word for it. It's just, you're in it.

And you're not fully in control of it. Right. And Mark Rylance is a great one. Daniel Day-Lewis walked off stage one night, saw a ghost of his father, rumor had it, when he was playing Hamlet. But yeah, so having the crowd in who knew what was going to happen, that unnerves me a bit because how do I surprise them? Turns out by making...

I became a sit-down comic. If you're a stand-up, for a minute, a minute, I was a sit-down comedian. Well, what you were doing, and I think what you're saying that you're attracted to is something that's not contrived, something that's pure.

It could be messy. It could be, you know, Patti Smith elbowing people or you running through the crowds. It's real. And there's so much in this world that's not real. There's so much that's manufactured. There's so much that's produced and run through a focus group. And there's so much that doesn't resonate. Like you don't feel it as a piece of art. You don't feel it as like a real person pouring out their emotions and their soul and

But great music, you feel. It gets into you. It gets into your cells. No one can figure out how it works or why it works or why this does and this doesn't. Why does Johnny Cash have such a fucking cool voice? What is it? What is it? But there's something about real music.

That's just, it's like a vitamin. It's like going out in the sun when it's been raining. Like, ah. You soak it in. Yeah, it is, you know.

I mean, there's pretentious ways to describe it. And people say we first sang to each other before we spoke. You know, it's like bird song. I don't know who said that. It's probably on drugs. But it could have been a scientist. And anthropology might suggest we certainly... The goat song, you go back to Greek tragedy, you had a drum and a voice. So it's very primal. Yeah. And...

And there is, it is the language of the spirit. It, we, we, it is, it's somehow there is worship involved, whether it's God, nature, money, a extraordinary woman has just walked across the street, but it seems to be that music is where we are creatures of awe. Yes. And, and wonder. And, and, and,

You know, you mentioned Johnny Cash. I had the blessing in my life of getting to know him. And as a believer, I don't know if you know, I'm a believer, I'm just not a very good one, but he, there was not a pious bone in his body. And I learnt about the company he would choose. He didn't like, he got nervous around people who were too self-righteous and

And he had this huge spirit in him, you know, prayerful spirit. Myself and Adam Clayton were driving through America, I think around the time of the Joshua Tree. And I'd met Johnny a couple of years ago. You know, I found out where he lived. He had a zoo in Nashville. He had a house in Nashville. And we go in to meet June, his missus, and Johnny.

And he shows this table filled with plates of everything. I'm like, wow, we're coming, just the two of us. He said, no, honey, that's my cookbook. I'm just doing a photo shoot for my cookbook. We're in here, you know, we're having a... So we go into their kitchen and we sat there, myself and Adam, and Johnny goes, shall we pray? And Adam wasn't a praying type at that time, but he was like...

wow, it's Johnny Cash. So, you know, we all held hands and whatever. And Johnny Cash made this beautiful, poetic blessing. And I just thought like, wow, of course he's touched. And then he just turned to Adam and just goes, sure missed the drugs though. And Adam just fell in love with him, you know, because he couldn't be pious. Right. He just, he had to be himself. Yeah. Years later, if it's,

Years later, and we really... Oh, wow, there you go. Oh, that's so... Oh, my God. There it is. That's Adam there, yeah. Yeah. He looks like he might have had a few tequilas. And I don't know, but... Oh, wow. And I'm giving it the arty, poetic face. I am a poet, like you are. And I called... I heard he was...

I heard he was in trouble. He was very ill. Years later than this, and I called. I called up, and June answered the phone. Excuse the poor Texans, all you Texans out there, but she was like, or Nashville in her case, she was like,

Oh, Bano, wow, thank you for calling. It's so good to hear from you. How's Dublin? How's Ali? How's the Burlington? This is a hotel, right? And I was like, great. And we're talking, you know, phrases with June. She said, what's going on with this? And I said, look, eventually I said, look, June, I'm just calling because I heard John wasn't well and

I just wanted him to know that we're thinking about him. She said, oh, honey, we're in bed. He's right beside me. And he hands me the phone. Or she hands him the phone. He goes, sorry about that. I'm fine. And bless her, actually June passed away first. And Johnny called Rick Rubin.

and those american recordings were a result of a conversation he had with rick rubin where he said please will you work with me because if you don't i will die wow and that's what if you hear those american recordings amazing version of nine inch nails um hurt hurts yeah version of one also to pesh modes personal geez i mean it's just what a voice yeah

Are you a fan of Johnny Cash? Huge. I used to have a dog named Johnny Cash. Does the dog bite? No, not anymore. He's dead. He didn't bite when he was alive. He was a nice dog.

It's just I've had a habit of naming my dogs after famous singers. Wow, we have a dog called Lemmy. Oh, wow. Named after Lemmy from Motherhead. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, it's a girl, though. I think she resents it. Yeah, I had a dog named Frank Sinatra. And Marshall is named after Eminem. Oh, man. Well, they're two incredible people. I'm...

Don't get me started on Frank Sinatra. How long is this, by the way? As long as we want to go. Why? There's two questions. One of them shouldn't be Frank Sinatra because I can go on and on. I learned so much from him and I got to know him. As bizarre as that sounds, he's such a name dropper, Frank. No, but I did and...

Probably, if you're interested in singing, I could tell you one miracle that I learned from Frank Sinatra, which is a version of My Way. And the original version, you know, it's a boast. And years later, he sang it. And I have a copy of it. And Pavarotti stars in the film, as you know. I play him for a moment. But it's a version of My Way with...

Pavarotti is the greatest singer on earth, but shouldn't sing in English. Friends, I know it now. You don't want that. And so I have a version of it without the greatest singer in the history of the world, Pavarotti, on it. It's just Frank singing 20 years after he'd sung My Way as a boast. Same key, same text, same arrangement, and now it's an apology. Wow. And that's a...

That's the thing about singing, and Johnny Cash had that. I wish I aspired to the place where my voice, to try and answer your first question, when I become a singer that can do that. Sinatra, most people don't realize, had a completely different voice when he was younger.

His voice when he was younger was very high-pitched and beautiful. It had so much flexibility to it and so much tone. And then probably all the cigarettes and Jack Daniels over the years sort of hardened his voice. Skinny kid. He used to swim underwater to get his lung expanded so he could get those bigger...

Bigger, bigger. Really? Yeah. And we have his mugshot out there. He got arrested. He was like 125 pounds. Wow. Yeah. He got arrested for, what was the term? Seduction? I think it was seduction. I think he seduced a married woman. Oh, my Lord. Yeah, there he is. Oh, look at that. Well, he said, I'm the only, he said, you're the only, I don't know if he said cat. He said, I don't, certainly he didn't say dude.

He said, you're the only something who wears an earring that I'm ever going to like. You're the only cat with an earring that I'm never going to like. And I did. If we're going to talk about singers, you have to talk about Sinatra. I had extraordinary times with him. He used to send us

He sent me gifts every year. I have a gold and sapphire Cartier watch he sent me. Oh, wow. With Francis Albert on the, you know, got... Just every year he would send stuff. And because we did a duet together on his first duets album, I've got you under my skin. Although we had a management received. I hope this is not... I'm not being...

I'm in awe of Japan. So don't, please don't take this as a, as a, as a, as a cruel joke, but we did get it from a, um, it was a, it was a fax back then from Nippon EMI saying, we hear that Bono has done a duet with the Mr. Frank Sinalta called I've got you under my chicken. And that's just the great, the great surrealist anthem of all time. Um,

But yeah, for me, that was an unusual relationship. And if I ask myself why I would go after these great singers that perhaps people of my own generation had moved on from, but I hadn't, there is a part of me that wanted the blessing of the older generation and probably the male. I didn't really...

By now, the bit of age, I realize I didn't have the sense to go after the same with women. But I was looking for my father in them, you know, whether it was Willie Nelson, you know, whether, you know, Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, Pavarotti, all these people. I mean, I became their students, really. And the band would be like, yeah. And I'm going, yeah, yeah.

And there's so much for me to learn from these people, so much for all of us to learn. These are extraordinary for a reason. Sinatra had, you know, incredible sense of humor and great timing. What I learned from him was he read the text of the song like an actor. So he would learn it as an actor would learn a part.

Then he would, on the piano, he'd kind of roughly with his, you know, pianist, he'd figure out where to be in the bar and all of that. And then when he went into the orchestra to meet them, you know, Nelson Riddle or whatever, you actually hear him, you hear Frank Sinatra hearing the song in its full arrangement for the first time as he's singing it. And that's, it's fresh paint. You know, it's like...

Any painter will tell you. That's just... It's like Francis Bacon. It's just that first stroke or first touch football. The great players where the ball lands at their feet. They don't stop it and pass it. They pass it as they stop it. It's really a very high level of artistry. And he had that. I learned that from him. I learned lots of other things. I also...

tried to drink with him on a few occasions, which did not work out well for me. Was it surreal when you were a young man and you were just starting to achieve success to encounter these people that were essentially heroes and be embraced by them and hang around them? You know, a lot of people feel imposter syndrome, like they feel just it's bizarre to be around these legendary human beings.

like they're right there like i i still kind of get weirded out by it even when i met you today i'm like oh that's bono like it's still weird you know it's still weird to meet people that are like hugely famous and when you were a young man when when you two was just blowing up was it strange that the transit like to accept the fact like this is where we are we belong here buggy you you got it right the first time there is a part of you that doesn't think you belong right

And then when you're younger, you're not admitting that to yourself. And I have a few annoying, more than a few annoying aspects, depending on who you're talking to. But if I have an annoying gene, part of it is when I'm at my most vulnerable, I give it the most swagger.

So we were playing the Super Bowl. We walked on just after 9-11, big emotional moments. And we got eight minutes or whatever to switch over. And I've got my ears in because the only way I'm in touch with what's going on. And we're walking through the crowd. We've got the crowd on the pitch. I think one of the first times that was ever done.

And somebody goes, yay, and they, and I can feel my ear come out. And that will mean I'm all fair. And if you look at the film, as I've had to, of us walking up to get on stage, I am giving it so much chin. You just go, who is that obnoxious Irish fucking, what, where does he get that attitude? Here it is right here. Oh, there it is.

I think I'm singing there, so if you just go back a little bit, you'll get the real... That's the chin. No, no, just before there. But look, not a care in the world. And that's... I mean, bullshit is a word for it. Swagger is another word for it. It's a shield. It's a shield. Yeah. And as I get older, I... You know, part of the film was taking off my armor and just dropping the sword and...

dropping the shield, taking it off. And now in that moment, you wake up. It's a bit like the dream where you're naked in front of the whole school and it's really cold. And then you realize, yeah, your life as you are realizing yourself now. Oh, how did this happen to me? And how did I get to meet these extraordinary people? And so that's why I wrote the book, Surrender. That's why I did it. But

Because it was just starting to realize. When I was younger, I was like, yeah, you know. Bob Dylan once asked us, I was 24, and he says, he was recording there, I was going to interview him. And he said, do you want to go on stage or whatever and do a song? And I said, well, he said, Leopard Skin, Pillbox Hats, amazing song. I said, oh, look at the lyrics of that too. And I'd been learning to improvise as a singer. And...

And I went out on stage and he said, you know, blowing in the wind. I said, I probably got that one down, but I didn't. And I just walked out on stage. I could see it was a home crowd, Ireland. People, oh, wow, one of ours is up there with Bob Dylan. Wow, oh, it's Bob. Wow, okay. And he's going to sing. Oh, my God, he can't sing. Oh, he's changed the melody. Oh, he's changed the words. And you could just see, I mean, go down in flames.

And afterwards, I see Bob and I say, look, I'm sorry about that. It's just the way we've been working at the moment is just kind of improvising stuff. And he was like, it's okay. You know, everything. I make him up all the time. And he was generous about it. Nothing's fixed in time.

Something like that. That's a great Bob Dylan impression. Yeah. One of my favorite moments in the film was when your bandmates were concerned that Pavarotti was going to show up with a camera crew. And he showed up with a camera crew. He did. It was just funny. It was a really well-timed moment. And when you said it on stage, it was so well-timed. Because it's like, here you're honoring this man who's this incredible, fantastic singer, but your bandmates...

They've got a good instinct. This is going to be a big press-up as well. This is part of the reason why he wants to do this. And then that's not going to be fun because it's going to be weird. And then boom. Yeah, one of the great arm wrestlers, emotional arm wrestlers of all time. It's interesting that there was a generosity there, which...

which he wanted opera, because opera was kind of the punk of its time. Classical musicians looked down on opera. These are stories from the street. They're too accessible, you know? Really? Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's crazy. I would never imagine that. Opera was much rougher, and he instinctively knew, and he was constantly trying to make...

relationships that would cross the divide and make sort of opera popular. And so to the point where, yeah, he did, he used to call our house and say, you know, at first it was with me, but then when

he would haunt our housekeeper, Teresa, and say like, is God at home? Well, tell God he is late on the song or, you know, he do this kind of carry on. And I, again, these figures in my life, I knew that I was on sacred ground when I was near him. I knew this. But the band, they didn't have the...

They didn't have the relationship with opera. Well, actually, Edge's dad was into opera. But my dad, it was, I was using Luciano Pavarotti to get to my dad. That was the real thing. And so, as you see in the film, I play my father just by turning my head. And I become him. And I was trying to impress him by being Finnegan's pub.

where we'd be sitting not speaking to each other and I'd try something and I'd go what do you think about Luciano Pavarotti calling the house and he'd go did he get a wrong number you know all that and so yeah there was an emotional through line because our house was an opera unfortunately my dad was going on in his life was operatic but it's also funny yeah

Yeah, and it's also this... You are both celebrating the brilliance of this incredible singer and also you're taking the piss out of this whole cult of celebrity thing that comes along with it. Yeah, and Princess Diana. The best line... The thing with your dad and Princess Diana was hilarious. So, because Edge's dad is... Edge's mother and father are from Wales. So, to, you know...

So we're with Pavarotti in Modena, I think it was, and he's... So the Princess of Wales is meeting the great tenor and he is offered to meet, you know, anyone who wants, you know, Edge's family, because they're from Wales, to meet the Princess of Wales. And he says to me, ''Look, does your dad want to go?'' And I, of course, know the reason. I know the answer and the reason for the answer.

But he says, well, just ask him. So I ask him. I just go, da, listen, we wouldn't want to go meet Lady Di, you know, the princess. What? What? Why would I want to meet a member of the British royal family? That's like asking me, do I want to meet the winner of the lotto? And I'm like, OK, got it, got it, got it. And then later she comes into our dressing room and melts him.

Just by reaching her hand at how do you do? And he's like, oh, very well, thank you. And as I say, 800 years of oppression gone in a second. And if you wonder about the reasoning for having a royal family, and a lot of Irish people do,

There I'm saying that's the reason. The weight of it. The weight of it overcame him. Yeah. Yeah. It's a very bizarre relationship, though. You know, I got one quarter Irish and the relationship between Ireland and United Kingdom and England is like it's complicated. Were you were you I've read that you got into martial arts because you felt picked on at some point. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

So you don't like bullies? No, no. No, I don't like that at all. It's the weakest inclination of the human spirit, you know, to pick on the weak.

It's terrible. It's a terrible instinct that humans have from probably from the time where you had to ostracize weak people because you lived in a tribe of people barely surviving and you couldn't tolerate any weak links in the chain. I mean, it's essentially probably where it came from. It probably came out of a survival instinct. A Darwinian thing. Yes, where everyone was barbarians and you had to force people to be the hardest version possible because otherwise the genes wouldn't survive. Yeah. The survival of the fittest, it's...

Yeah, which is the world we live in. Yeah. I mean, this is one of the things that attracts me to Christianity, is the idea of the first will be last, the last will be first. It's so radical. Mm-hmm. And it's literally the opposite of the survival of the fittest. Right. But America, why I love America is it has... I mean, the British Empire bullied it, and it stood up. I was...

We were coming here. I was asking someone in the car about the Declaration of Independence and how many Irish signatures there were. It wasn't that many. I can't remember what they were. But they were all committing treason. They were putting their lives, they were pledging their lives, their fortune, and their sacred honor. So America, the very essence of America...

is this idea of sticking it to the bully. Yeah. And I know America can be a bully. We all have our moments and all that, but it's the essence of who you are. And it happened again with the geezer with the tash. The geezer with the tash. That's a great way of calling Hitler. You know, you weren't having it. Right. And I...

You know, as an activist, which we can talk about later, but the, you know, I remember going to, it's only a few hours from here, but I was in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Warren Buffett came to one of our, it's called Heart of America tour. We were raising awareness on this pandemic, this AIDS pandemic that was killed just, you know,

30 million people at this point and why might America be interested and I'm very Irish and very given a lot of that and afterwards I ask the sage of Omaha for any advice and he gives me two pieces of advice but probably well the one was don't ask people to do something simple because they won't trust you he said ask them to do something complicated

What do you mean by that? Well, he said, what are you asking people to do here? And I said, well, I'm asking them to... We're asking them, the one campaign, we're asking them to send a note to their local congressperson. He said, no, no, no, don't do that. Too simple. Make them do something more difficult and they'll trust you. Maybe 10 postcards. It's harder to do. I was like, okay. And anything else? And he said something which...

really changed my life and changed my conversation with this country of yours. He said, don't appeal to a conscience of America. Don't do that. Appeal to the greatness of America. And you'll get the job done. Americans want to be great.

That is true. I think it is true. And because in Ireland, we work with guilt. You know, you can guilt people. It's a lot of countries. You can work them just, you know. But Americans, not. Give them the chance to be the cavalry. Yeah. And they'll... I mean, Omaha Beach, the heroism of Omaha Beach, the lives poured out, you know, and just to save Europe from tyranny. And that's who America is. And...

You know, I gave it the Joshua Tree because I, you know, it's not just as an Irishman, but probably more because I, as an Irishman, fell under the spell. Even as kids, you know, coming here, a lot of the cooler bands would just play the coasts, you know, the cooler UK bands or European bands. But I wanted to be all over America. I mean, we played, we opened for...

wet t-shirt competition in Dallas. What year was this? 81. I was a freshman in high school. We in Austin, I don't know if anyone can remember, but it was called the Club Foot.

It's a bad pun, but there was no AC. I remember it was a tin roof. And for Irish people, we were just being boiled. But I have really, really great memories of just busing it through this sort of mythical landscape. There's nowhere, nowhere in this country I would want to fly over. But I do now.

You know, he got the plane, he got the this. But I just remember thinking, there's so many Americas. Yes. But the mythology of America, I was reading, you know, Sam Shepard. I was reading, you know, on the road. I was reading, you know, all these great writers and just opening up my imagination. That's where the Joshua Tree came from. And, yeah, it's a...

It's a mythology that then, can you imagine, I get to discover that in my case, it's not just a mythology. I was part of something that was extraordinary. So former governor of this Texas, George W. Bush, conservative, starts to lead the world in the fight against the AIDS pandemic, the greatest pandemic.

health crisis in 600 years since the bubonic plague. And I'm like, people say, that's impossible. It's just not going to happen. And he does. And it becomes a bipartisan thing, and 26 million lives are saved. So it's strange, the way you see things. I had this, it wasn't a naive sense of America, but it was a sense that everything could be possible here. It was somehow possible

the landscape of America was a little more magical than everywhere else. And it wasn't just a country, America. It was an idea. Yes. Yeah. At its greatest, that is what America is. At its greatest, it's an idea. And it's an idea that was, like I said, was founded...

with the concepts behind the Declaration of Independence. And those men who wrote that, the men who signed the Bill of Rights, they were so young. They were so young. Some of them were 18 years old at the time, which is so crazy. Jefferson was 32 or 33 when he wrote that. He's an old codger. And then, by the way, years later, he's in France. I think he's in France. And he loved wine.

I found this out because I saw a signature in a book. I was on some tour. I like to drink red wine. I've never been to Bordeaux in my life, but I went with some people who knew their way around wine, and they asked me to sign a book in this particular vineyard, posh kind of vineyard. But this was across the road from the big name sort of thing. And I asked, I said, can I see the first book?

there's Thomas Jefferson's name in the first one. I thought, wow, this guy's dreaming up America on some very fancy red plonk. Yeah. Not plonk, actually. Some really... It's just... But, you know, I know there's lots of contradictions in America. And I know there was slavery still and that he had slaves. And I understand. But I'm encouraged that America...

perhaps doesn't exist yet, that it's still being written. If you think about it as a song, you think about it as a piece of music, it's not finished. It's still being written. They started at those signatures. You, and if you let people like me stay, you're writing it. I'm not writing. I'm the annoying fan who follows America into the bathroom

And with the liner notes, which are the declaration. Going, didn't you say this here? And get out! Who followed me into the bathroom? It's like, but I... Yeah, I like the idea that it's... That this is far from finished, this composition. Yes. And for some people, the America that is available to you and me doesn't exist yet. But it will. And it can. And...

We hope that every election cycle, like this will be the one that finally makes us what we truly believe we are. But the country is just so co-opted by this. First of all,

You have this genuine issue with the fact that it's essentially a popularity contest to see who gets to be running the government. You have a popularity contest that's fueled entirely by special interests and the military industrial complex and pharmaceutical drug companies. And it's just, it's all the opposite of an authentic song. Right. The thing about an authentic song where it makes your fucking goosebumps stand up, you're like, God damn.

You think it's an AI composition? Can I tell you a story? A long time ago, probably 25 years ago, I was on Mushrooms with a friend of mine. And we were laying on the side of this hill overlooking this canyon. And we played In God's Country. Oh, wow. And it was just the peak of the mushrooms and the songs, the melody, the way that song hit.

It just, it gave me this insane appreciation for things. Like at that moment, it was like this very unique fusion of the beauty of the music and the love of the experience. Like the,

Mushrooms bring out this loving, communal quality, happiness and joy. And just lying in this field, looking up at this canyon and hearing that song. It was like, this is what music does. It takes these moments in...

And wherever they're at, it breaks them through the membrane into this new place. Like this moment, it broke through this membrane and brought me to this. I think about it all the time. I think about that particular experience. This episode is brought to you by Farmer's Dog. It doesn't matter how old your dog is. It's always a great time to start investing in their health and happiness. And thankfully, the Farmer's Dog makes it easier than ever to feed your dog a healthy diet of real meat and veggies.

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wherever you are, is, you know, we need new dreams tonight. And you can't be living on, we can't be living on secondhand dreams. And that's, I think, the renewal, I think, is what we're all looking for. And, yeah, it's something to be protected. And I, not protected, that sounds like it's,

I think you're right, though. But I think America's more vulnerable now than it's ever been. It feels like America's fallen out of love with the rest of the world. I don't think the world wants to fall out of love with America. It just feels like. And, you know, I've had 25 years, and I'm just a tiny cog in, I suppose, you know, people look at,

or even luminous ones or ones that have ideas way above their station and think that might change things. But it's social movements always change things. And what happened back then with that Heart of America tour was mind-blowing because I learned a few things that I wasn't expecting. Like I had grown up with a couple...

More than a few bumps with evangelicals. You know, it was like, whoop. It was like... Because, you know, how do you... You can't approach the subject of God without metaphor, right? So literalism is by its nature anti-metaphor. And, you know, Jesus, all we know is that he spoke in parables because they're not literal. How do you explain these as poetry, as music? And I found it really difficult to be around...

evangelicals because they were so, you know, just literal about everything. And then on that same tour where I met Warren Buffett, I ended up at a college called Wheaton College, which is like a big, in Chicago, it's a big evangelical thing. And they were like, they were really helpful. And there was like, I realized that these were kind of, and this is not to be at all dismissive of some incredible people, but it was like,

I felt there was sort of narrow-minded, sort of, what would I say, just sort of narrow, the vision, if I could just open the aperture of their vision just a little bit wider, that they could be the most incredible force for good because they just worked harder. They didn't tell lies. They were just great people. And I think they led part of this vision.

that then ended up saving 26 million lives, you know, and called PEPFAR that George Bush started and Obama continued. Then I go to Catholics. I'd end up in Notre Dame. I had a few bruises with the Catholics over the years too. And I'm meeting these people and they're like, no, no, we believe in the value of human life. If we can do this, how much does this cost? And I'm like, well, you know,

All of foreign aid is probably just less than 1% of government spending. But the part that keeps people alive is half of that. So it's like half a percent. Now, it's not my money. It's up to you if you want to do that. But they did. And lots of people came together. It was priests and punks. It was the wildest collection of people. And just recently, like in the last three months,

And this is not about politics, because I've worked with conservatives, I've worked with liberals. I don't care, you know, I don't have those. I'm Irish, I don't have a chance to vote. But all of that was torn down without a heads up, without any notice, because people thought foreign aid was like 10% of the budget or 20%, and it was doing things that it shouldn't have been doing. And I'm sure there was some waste. But I can tell you as a person who...

who saw what the United States were doing around the world and saw this... I saw America display itself at its finest. And I remember being in the Oval Office with President Bush and these antiretroviral drugs. I said, paint them red, white and blue, Mr President. These are the best advertisements for America there'll ever be. And he's looking at me thinking I'm taking a piss, but I'm not. And he wasn't, as it turns out. And he...

He spoke about the least of these, which is a wild concept. I don't know if you know this, but it's like the, it's in Matthew, I think it is. It's the only time that Jesus speaks of judgment. It's not like what's going on in your pants. It's not like what's going on over here or over there. The first time Jesus Christ speaks in kind of force,

of judgment is the way we treat the poor, the poorest of the poor. And he says, well, in the way that you're treating these, the least of them, the sick, the blind, the people who are suffering from malnutrition, that's how you treat me. I am them. And so now when we cut to the people who

like you went to Boston University and you taught at Boston University. I taught martial arts there. So just recent report, it's not proven, but the surveillance enough suggests 300,000 people have already died from just this cut off, this hard cut of USAID. So there's food rotting in boats, in warehouses. There is

This will fuck you off. You will not be happy. No American will. But there is, I think it's 50,000 tons of food that are stored in Djibouti, South Africa, Dubai, and wait for it, Houston, Texas.

And that is rotting rather than going to Gaza, rather than going to Sudan, because the people who know the codes for the warehouse are fired. They're gone. And so this... I don't know. I just... What do you think? What is that? That's not America, is it? Well, they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Right. This is the problem. The problem is...

For sure, there have been a lot of organizations that do tremendous good all throughout the world. Also, for sure, it was a money laundering operation. For sure, there was no oversight. For sure, billions of dollars are missing. In fact, trillions that are unaccounted for that were sent off into various – they don't even know where because there's no receipts.

The way Elon Musk described that, he said if any of this was done by a public company, the company would be delisted and the executives would be in prison. But in the United States, this is standard. When Biden left office, when it was clear that Trump won in the 73 days, they spent $93 billion from the Department of Energy on electricity.

just radical loans, just throwing money into places. And there's no oversight, no receipts. Like the whole thing is, there's a lot of fraud, a lot of money laundering. But also, we help the world. And when you're talking about making wells for people in the Congo to get fresh water, when you're talking about food and medicine to places that don't have access, like,

No way that should have been cut out. And that should have been clear before they make these radical cuts. Like there's got to be a way to keep aid and not have fraud. And you can't say we're going to kill everything so that there's no fraud. But then you're killing all the good and you're doing it without letting anybody know it's going to happen. So no one's – it's not like they had three years to prepare. Let's build a new infrastructure. Let's make sure that everything's set up. Mm-hmm.

They want to change and they want to change quickly and do the nature of American politics. They have about two years before the midterms, right? So everything has to get done as quickly as possible. You have to show a growth in GDP. You have to show that the economy is booming again under these ideas. Make America first. Terrorists for the world. Bring back American manufacturing. And this mad rush to do it all as quickly as possible while cutting out as much waste as possible. Yeah. But the ironic thing is...

Even though Elon Musk has proposed all these things and the Doge committee has proposed all these things, they've made no cuts in terms of the budget. They've cut nothing. They vote against it. It's such a tiny part. I mean if it's big government or whatever, people want to shrink. I get the instinct. But this, the life-saving part –

It's like the little finger of the giant. Right, exactly. I mean, and I've met all these people. And I'm sure there's part of it, you know, there's... I think about 10% of it goes to things like governance and, you know, human rights organizations. You might say that's political and we shouldn't be involved in that. And there's reforms, I imagine, that might have been necessary. But just have the reforms. But to...

to destroy, to vandalize. I mean, it felt like with glee, these life support systems were being pulled out of the walls. And I was reading today, you know, it's like, I think it's in Christianity Today, and they're just talking, I think it's called Christian Relief, one of these organizations.

and they're dealing with malnourished kids. And they are having the conversation now about, we don't have the funds, we have to choose which child to pull off the IVs. And it just seems to me like a kind of, I don't know if evil is a strong word, too strong a word, but what we know about pure evil is it rejoices in,

the deaths, you know, of the squandering of human life, particularly children. And suffering. Yeah, it actually rejoices in it. And I just, you know, whether it's incompetence, whether it's unintended consequences, it's not too late.

For people, like I have conversations with Marco Rubio. He's convinced people aren't dying yet. I don't know who's telling him, or not telling him rather, but his instincts are correct. He wants to die. He used to wear a one campaign armband. Americans, no matter what political color, they just...

They just... You see them just... The size and sort of... They just grow in stature when they know they're being useful. I had a truck driver on that same tour. He had tattoos all over his head and whatever, and he was just saying, can I drive? I heard 50% of all truck drivers in Africa are going to die. Is that right, because of this disease, AIDS? I said, yeah. He said, can I give you my number? I will drive. Like, that's America. And...

And yeah, the bureaucracy, the pen pushers, I get it. I get people's frustration for it. But I just want to remind Americans of the size of their country. And I'm not talking about the geography. The impact. I'm just the size of the idea. Yes.

You know, it's just an extraordinary thing. It's an idea, I think, big enough to fit the whole world. And when it becomes a continent, you know, when it becomes an island rather than a continent, I think it's a subcontinent. I should have gone to geography lessons more. But, you know, you know what I'm talking about. When it shrinks, America seems to stop being America. And I know you don't want to get into wars and you shouldn't. Right.

But that don't concern you. But there's this word freedom, land of the free. Yeah. That's – and the brave. This is who we look to you for. And we look to you for these qualities. And I believe they're everywhere and I don't believe any one party has a –

Has a hold on them. No. On these qualities. But, you know, it's a funny one for me. One of the reasons I came on the show, I wanted to, on the show, was I wanted to interview you. I wanted to, I just wanted to get your take on where America is at the present time because you're talking to everyone. You know, this isn't, this is a compliment to you, but my...

book, you know, wrote this book, Surrender. And sort of, if there's a point to it at the very end, it's just, I'm shouting at God, I'm having my wrestling match with my maker. And you just get this thing of, and you've probably picked it up by now, shut up and listen. And I need to listen more. You are an amazing listener. And I don't know who it was, it was someone who said...

Listening doesn't grant the other side legitimacy, but it grants them their humanity and restores your own. You sit in this room and you listen to everybody, and that makes you very valuable to the country. And I wanted to just get your take on it. What would your advice be to me and people like me who are not part of the big...

industrial complex. We just want to serve the idea of America and the people who depend on that idea. What would your advice to me? I would give you zero advice. I don't know if I'm qualified to give advice. But I would say that America goes through these great periods of overcorrection.

It goes these great periods of like you saw it during COVID, during the lockdowns and the authoritarianism. And we fell into a kind of state of tyranny where there was just massive oppression of free speech, including government sponsored oppression. They were contacting different social media platforms and banning legitimate doctors and scholars because they had different opinions about how things should be handled. Right.

There was wide-scale censorship, a push for a changing of the First Amendment. The First Amendment needs to be overhauled. The First Amendment doesn't apply to hate speech or to disinformation. There was all these new ways of talking about censorship in this country and condoning censorship. And it's very dangerous because it's all about money. It had nothing to do with protecting people. That's what I worry about, David.

the argument about free speech is that it seems to be sponsored by a lot of people who you sense don't really respect it so much. But it is a very economic for them to not have to live with the consequences of a story. I think, well, is it the communication? I think it's 1996. This is a long time ago. Communications Act, Decency Act.

That meant the internet did not have to apply by the same rules as the rest of the media. Right. So we could say anything we wanted. And at first that felt like liberation, but I'm not so sure anymore. And so, I mean, you can tell me more about this. I am not a free speech absolutist, but I do want to believe in free speech. But I'm nervous that the people who are...

supporting free speech and using their bots and their own activists are people from countries who would not at all respect our, your, mine ability to express ourselves. And that's what I worry about is I think the old interweb is being played like a

Like a harp. Unquestionably. Like an orchestra. Yes. And the people behind the curtain would surprise us, I think, if we knew. I think it's worse than that. I think it's programmed like an EDM concert. I think it's not even an orchestra. I worry, and this has been substantiated by data, that more than 50% of the interactions going on on the Internet and social media are not real.

There was a former FBI analyst that said it might be as much as 80%. It's bots, as you said. And this is a problem with the concept of free speech. I'm completely wholly in favor of free speech, just like the ADL was back in the day when they let the Ku Klux Klan march. Like, look, you've got to...

The way to combat bad speech is with better speech. The way to find out whose arguments are correct is to let them debate in the marketplace of free ideas and expose these people for what they are and have the people that are on the sidelines that are letting these great thinkers have these discussions.

say, okay, this guy makes sense. This guy is clearly a grifter. This guy has ulterior motives. This guy has an ideology that's very toxic, and he's trying to push this on the whole world for control, for power, for money, to benefit the special interest groups that he's a part of, or whatever it is. That the problem with

Free speech is you're also going to get a lot of ugliness because there's a lot of ugliness in the world. You're going to get a lot of people that say horrible things. And I think the only way we sort through all that is you have to let them. And then you have to let people rise up that oppose those horrible ideas. And those people become heroes. Those become the Martin Luther King Jr.'s. Humor helps. Humor helps. One thing we know about the Ku Klux Klan is

is if you mention the silly costumes, they don't like that. It's like they want you to be afraid or you want to be nervous, but it's like, dude, look at the stage gear. You're a ghost. It's like, come on. Do you know who Daryl Davis is? No. Daryl Davis is a musician who was a traveling blues musician.

and did some shows where afterwards he met some people that told him that they were in the Ku Klux Klan. And he was like, are you kidding? And the guy shows him his fucking Grand Wizard ID card or whatever the hell it is. He becomes friends with these guys. Here's my card. Daryl's black. Right. Daryl's a black man. And becomes friends with this guy, goes to his house, meets his family.

The guy throws the robe away, gives up his membership in the KKK, renounces his membership and gives Darryl the rope, says I want you to have this. Darryl has done that personally. The last time I talked to him was a few years back. He'd done this personally to over 200 people.

Just by being an amazing human being, by being a brilliant artist and hanging out with them, just being kind and as an example of just a great human. And they were like, I guess I'm wrong. I guess I'm wrong. This idea that black people are inferior and the white man is a superior race, that can't be true because I love this guy. And so they would just quit. They'd quit. And he has a stack. It's not the smartest theory. It's a terrible theory. But if you're in a place with only terrible theories and that's what you grow up, there's Daryl.

And they give him all his ropes. You know, good man. He's a great man. Good man. And he's a kind, like very peaceful. Like when you speak to him, he's real. He's amazing. One of your, you know, again, one of the reasons I'm here is the, I think there is a sense that people just want to be part of something.

And, you know, when we were growing up, there were clubs you could be a part of, you know. There's people you could hang out with and you knew where that was going. But if you wanted to belong and have a sense of purpose, you ended up there. And so I think that it's okay to...

For men to admit that in this moment they are probably, you know, we're a little adrift. I hear this from my daughters. I hear this from my wife. And it's like that's where this feeling of being dislocated. So you're attracted to these things.

simple ideas, you know, the concept of the gang or America, like it's a team sport between the Reds and the Blues. America's the team. That's all. And this thing, look, I'm vulnerable. We are all, especially when you're growing up, teenagers, you know, you are very vulnerable to those points of view. I, you know, early on, we had sort of

Yeah, I would say I got close to what you might call fundamentalists. And this is all versions of fundamentalism. It's all a very narrow view. And, you know, what you see going on right in Gaza is you see Palestinian people

being held hostage by Hamas. It's not just the Israeli that are being held hostage by Hamas. The Palestinian people and the fundamentalists in Israel, in the cabinet, these far-right fundamentalists.

Because at a time, you remember a few years back, everything was kind of wishy-washy and kind of the new age and whatever you have in yourself. And now these strong, clear points of view have arrived. It's the great overcorrection. It's the great overcorrection.

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Yeah, there's a real problem with ideology and there's a real problem with fundamentalism and there's a cowardice in it. And there's a cowardice in I'm the only one that's correct. There's a cowardice in not listening to any other ideas, not listening to any other positions. And we're being played against each other in this country. The thing about the bots and the social media stuff is it just accentuates this divide between the left and the right, which I think is mostly bullshit. Most people are good people. Most people...

just want to be happy and healthy and have friends and family and do what they want to do for a living and have the freedom to pursue those things. Most people aren't trying to victimize people. Most people aren't trying to destroy other people's lives and destroy society. They just want to live their life, but they're being sucked into one side or the other, which is radically opposed to each other. The great overcorrection. Did you think...

That President Zelensky was being bullied in that meeting in the Oval Office. Like, is that just just to think about it as a playground? This is a guy, his maybe maybe his life dependent, but certainly the life of many, many people he knew depend on. And he had to listen to that. Well, the whole thing is strange, right? I mean, the argument in the White House, like you don't have the right hand of cards and

Just the fact that this is all being done publicly is very strange. There's cameras and photographers. I don't like live podcasts. I've done them before, but there's something about having an audience where you're playing to an audience. Conversations should be just a couple people in a room. That's what I think. I think that's the ones that resonate with me the most.

Yeah, I just think it's the best way to do it, the way that resonates the most. I think the kind of conversation that you're going to have with a world leader shouldn't be performative. It certainly shouldn't be with...

A bunch of people snapping photographs and pointing cameras and then pushing each other back and forth. You know, you don't have the right hand of cards. This is not cards. You are playing cards. And it's just a crazy way and each calling each other disrespectful. It's a crazy way to handle any world events. It's just terrible platform for it. Yeah. Just think of, again, I think of America, the Americans of Omaha Beach, the people who that

like the level of courage. Yeah. And I think of these people on the front line in Europe. I mean, I haven't really spoken about Europe with you, but, you know, if America is the melting pot, I would say Europe's the mosaic. You know, it's all these different people

who speak with a different language but are trying for one voice in Europe, which can sound like cacophony. They call it Eurobabble in Brussels. But I'm really now realizing how romantic it was, you know, with the Enlightenment, with the Renaissance. You know, we've got a lot to offer. And Europe has... Europe's under threat. And those bots...

Every election now where this candidate is pro-Europe and pro-European unity, they are just getting a shitstorm of disinformation. And I just think, wow, but it's... I think Europe and America are just sexier than these people. Is that a trite thing to say? But it's like they're so kind of...

Unsexy. You know, that's, I mean, that's, sorry, I have to. Unromantic. Unromantic. That's right. It's just these very dull, not funny people. And are trying to take over the world. They're not funny. Lukashenko of Belarus, that dude is not funny. We don't have to go further. We don't have to go further. Who do you think is the funniest world leader?

Oh, my God. Yeah, that's a really good question. It's got to be Trump. He's the funniest. Well, he has the thing that a lot of stand-up comedians have, which is he can say the thing in the room that no one else is going to say. Right. And that generally creates a laugh. But I also think he mightn't be able to take a joke often.

Well, he's not good at that. He doesn't enjoy a joke coming his way. No, he doesn't. I mean, Zelensky's actually a comedian. Right. I met him before he became president. He played piano with his penis on television. It was quite a piano. I mean, it's funny to go from playing piano with your penis to becoming the president of Ukraine. Becoming the president of the United States, by all accounts. So...

But he came to Ireland as a comedian. He told me. I didn't know. And he played, like, small towns. I think he played Dundalk or Drogheda, somewhere in the east coast of Ireland. But comedians can read a room. I mean, performers. I think comedians are at the top of the food chain because you don't have a band. You don't have a fucking tambourine. You don't. You just have...

The read of the room and the material has to be really funny. I use this sometimes with our band. A lot of our music is just experimental and innovative. We improvise and then we try to turn it into songs. But sometimes we'll write a pop song and we'll end up with a pop song. And I'll say, well, the thing about a pop song is it is empirical. It's like it either is or it isn't. It's like a joke.

that doesn't have a punchline. It's like a comedian does not walk out on stage and tell a joke, and if people don't laugh, go, they just don't get it. It just means the joke isn't funny. So I, it's not a popular theory in our band, by the way, but I hold on to it very tight. I just say, if you can't go out and play this song and it just connects, then it's not a pop song. We don't, we only do a few pop songs regularly.

every decade probably because a lot of what U2 does is different kind of rock and roll but I do think there's something empirical about some songs are better than the others I witnessed a I witnessed one of the most ridiculous moments in my life but it was kind of funny Oasis do you know Oasis they're an amazing band just love them and

So I witnessed this. It couldn't be a more childish fight between two of my friends. Liam Galler was a friend at that point. I know Noel better now. And Michael Hutchence, who was the singer of In Excess. And they really were doing the...

My song's better than your song. Oh, no. No, no. And I was thinking, I was laughing to myself. And then I thought, it's interesting. Both of them have a point. That song of theirs might be better than that. And I started to think about it. And comedians don't get a chance to be subjective. It's not like Prince walks out...

and plays a whole new album and can go, they just don't get it. It's like, you're either funny or you're not. Right. You're going down in flames. Have you gone down in flames? Oh, sure. Yeah. Oh, yeah. What was your worst gig? Oh, I've had so many. Especially in the early days. You're trying to figure it out and, you know...

The thing about material is material is essentially like a calf that's newly born. And it has awkward legs. And it has to develop into a bull. But it takes a long time. It takes crafting. You have to sit with it. You have to go over the ideas. Some ideas come to you in full form. And some ideas, you have to believe in them. You know there's something there. And you have to dig and trust the muse and find it.

And, you know, sometimes those bits would just fucking bomb. And you have to just like, oh, gosh, I abandon this. Should I keep working on this? You have a team of writers? No. Wow. No, I just write everything myself. You're kidding. No, always. Yeah, always have. I just like my my view on stand up. The kind of stand up that I do is supposed to be here's the world through my eyes. This is how I'm seeing things from the most ridiculous, awestruck and laughing at everything perspective.

And I have to it has to be through my lens. Well, that's amazing. I mean, because I've seen, you know, on Saturday Night Live when we do or I've seen some of the talks, I see these geniuses, you know, crunching jokes and coming out with material. And that's a different thing. It's a different thing. Yeah. Like a Saturday Night Live monologue or, you know, a Tonight Show monologue or any of that kind of thing. That's a different thing. The real stand up is clubs.

I went with Dave Chappelle to a club. He brought me to... It was amazing. Are you still friendly with him? Oh, real good friends. Yeah, I love him to death. He's incredible. That's jazz. Yes, he's a real artist. He can go there. Well, you know, it's like... Yeah, no, I... Why am I talking about this? I'm talking about this because people can't take a joke. Right. And some people... I mean, we don't need...

belly laughs out of our leaders. We just need vision. You need vision and kindness. But to deal with the Ku Klux Klan, humor helps. To deal with the fascists or whatever, I mean, certainly Hitler in the late 30s was getting rid of the daddists and the surrealists because the language of fascism was to fight back. But they liked that language. And...

I mean, the language of resistance against Hitler was to fight back. But that suited them. They did not like being laughed at. So Fjord did not like being laughed at. Well, because if you can mock something, like you can have a position or an opinion on something and someone can disagree strongly. But if they make everyone laugh at that position, now they've made a real point. Because it's actually an opinion that you might not have even agreed with has caused you a belly laugh.

Like, oh, God. Like, that's how you really get it. Because if you go on stage and just have a bunch of opinions and just lecture people, there's people in the audience that go, well, fuck you. I feel differently. But if you could go on stage with that opinion and make people laugh at something they know they shouldn't be laughing at, like, oh, my God. And you're like, then you're introducing ideas into a person. It's a spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down. Yeah, no, you're certainly the... Because with rock stars...

And again, I honestly feel like I'm just impersonating one. I don't think I am the material, really. But people, when they see me coming, they sit in their wallet. You know what I mean? They're like, oh, here he comes, and he's going to have a sign up. Whereas comedians, people are much more open. People are just more open. I think it's a responsibility, but it's...

It's something to be valued. It's just, I was saying to somebody recently, I'm not sure I trust people anymore who aren't a little bit funny. I mean, funny in the, not the funny peculiar. Right, right. There's a place for that too. But, you know, people who make you laugh are open. Yes. And also, the contradictions of the world and how bizarre things are, it's just ripe with humor. And if you don't ever pick up on it,

Like, what are you focusing on? Like, you don't ever see the hypocrisy and the ludicrousness of just this existence, this temporary existence on a spinning orb hurling through the universe and concentrating on who gets to use what bathroom. Like, is this like, you know what I mean? It's like we're weird. We're very weird. And if you don't see that, you're not paying all attention. You're not all in. You're certainly not balanced. Right.

Those mushrooms were working very well for you. Yeah, I'm telling you, man. In God's country. That's the ticket. That's beautiful. This episode is brought to you by Netflix. So, my brother Shane Gillis, one of the funniest human beings that's ever lived, has a show. It's called Tires, and it's returning for season two, launching June 5th on Netflix.

It's a fucking hilarious show by, again, one of the funniest guys ever. Season 2 sees Will and Shane rush to grow personally and professionally after the unexpected success of their big marketing idea without fully realizing the cost of doing business. Watch Tire Season 2 on Netflix on June 5th, 2025.

We all know Americans are still recovering from years of surging prices. Now, some in Congress want to make cuts to Medicaid, a program that provides critical health care to 72 million struggling Americans.

Thank you.

Did you know that 12 million Medicaid families live in rural communities? Many of these people voted for President Trump, but they didn't vote for this. If Congress cuts Medicaid, a lot of rural hospitals could close and a lot of rural families will be hurt. No matter how you look at it, cutting Medicaid just doesn't make sense. Tell Congress not to cut Medicaid. Our health and our communities depend on it. Wow. I'm so touched. That album, you know, a lot of the...

songs on that were, you know, very vulnerable, you know, and I don't know if you know, Brian, you know, produced it, invented ambient music and worked with David Bowie, Talking Heads, you know, and recently Coldplay and other people. But,

He had a profound influence on us. Because we didn't go to art college. All the Beatles, the Stones, they all went to art college. We went to Brian Eno. And he had this incredible musician in partnership with him for the production of that album called Daniel Lanois, one of the greatest musicians you'll ever meet in your life. And some songs come really quickly. Like, boom, you just... But some are just like what you're saying. They're like...

the the foal the the legs are going around yeah and the one that was like that was where the streets of no name and so we were working on it for what felt like weeks and brian you know came in and he just said i am not having us spend one more minute on this song and he went to wipe it so he was actually going to wipe it and and so there's no other copies

And Pat McCarthy, who was our engineer, went on to produce R.E.M. and Madonna. Great dude. He physically blocked Brian from it. But that song for me, and it's not the lyric that I'm most proud of or anything, because Brian was just saying to us, just go with your first sketch. Remember talking about paint on canvas? But I'm saying it's not that clever.

Don't let it be clever. Just, that's what you said, that's what you meant. And it's the strangest thing, Joe, because we go on stage and I sing that song, we sing that song, we play that song. And it's like, what the fuck? We're the streets of New Orleans? What's that about? I started it in Africa when I was with my wife when I was a kid and you were 25, 26?

Something like maybe 26. She was 24. And it was about the devastation that was happening in the Ethiopian famine. And I just couldn't explain it to myself. There was other inferences about the song. But none of them matter as much as this question to your audience, which is, do you want to go there, to this place, a place of imagination, a place of soul, a place of...

that other place. Do you want to go there? Do you want to go there together? And everybody feels it. Because we all want to be outside of ourselves at a certain time. And we all want to have that experience, that meeting with, some call it the universe, some call it God, some call it themselves, whatever. But it's music now. I think all art, as far as

to the condition of music. But I was saying, we go to church in the dark. You know, that's what rock and roll is. And we're just looking for little shards of light. We find it in an audience. We find our transcendence together. With the movie, we also go to church in the dark. In cinema, you're in a dark space and it's projected light telling other people's stories. And...

Somebody said cinema is like being born. Like you go into the womb. It's like you're floating around in the, as Jim Sheridan would say, he's my hero, psychological genius, Irish director, My Left Foot, The Boxer, some great films. He'd say, yeah, you're in the amniotic fluid. You're inside the mother and you're about to come out into the light. That's cinema.

great cinema is that journey towards the light and I love that I love that but it's the same for some people their cathedral is a hike the natural world yeah have you ever heard Richard Rohr no Rohr he lives in Albuquerque he has a thing called it's called the center of the center of

Action and Contemplation. And I really love that it's that way around. And he's a Franciscan friar, but very otherworldly thoughts about the natural world and finding the divine in it, as well as just in each other, but just seeing it in the world around you. I think you'd enjoy him. He's worth a read. Do you... If Rogan...

Is it Irish? Is it Catholic Irish? Yeah. Right. Yeah. You might enjoy him. I'm sure I would. Yeah, he's a real beauty. He lives, he's got a little hermitage. And yeah, he's good. He's great on the Enneagram as well. Do you know the Enneagram? No. It's a sort of archetypal thing. It goes back to Sufi, I think early Sufi, and then the Christian fathers.

what they call the desert fathers in the fourth century but it's a way of recognizing archetypes and our own it's not a big thing for me or anything it's not archetypes but I think my our daughter Eve's an actor and she said a lot of writers are interested in it and she said in some of the

Clever schools they teach this the Enneagram. He's any Richard was an expert in it. I think here it goes Oh any grant three center looks like a cult of intelligence the mediator peacemaker So the perfectionist reformer the giver helper supporter performer achiever romantic individualist the observer thinker the loyal skeptic the trooper and

The epicure, enthusiast, generalist, and the protector, the leader or the boss. What would you say you are? Oh, Jesus. I don't know how you could tell. I wouldn't. I think I just keep on keeping on. I try not to pay attention to me as much as possible. I think there's a thing that happens, what you're talking about, on stage where everyone...

achieves a higher state of consciousness through a song. I think that's where it is really like a church. That's where it is really like a religious experience. When a great song is playing that like really, like when people hear it and like, oh, you know, maybe it's the first couple of bars of Sunday Bloody Sunday. They hear it and they're like, yes! It's like this thing that washes over everyone collectively and we're all experiencing it together and it takes you away from yourself.

You know, everyone's caught up in their own struggle and their self and how they exist in this world and all the problems of reality. And then there's something about these moments of divine inspiration where they impact people in a very profound way. And I think that's one of the reasons why people are so deeply drawn to music and especially live performance.

Because music is wonderful. Music by yourself is great. I love listening to music in my car. I love listening to music, period. But music, when you're in a live setting, when everyone's experiencing it together, it's a religious experience. There's something attuned to it. There's a reason why they sing in church, right? It achieves very similar results. Yeah, I miss that.

You know, when we were kids, the tunes weren't that great in the church. And I said to my, I mean, no offense to whoever was there. I agree. But, you know, I was like, I said to our kids, you know, as they were all, none of them were baptized yet.

Protestant or Catholic because my father was Catholic my mother was I just said you want to be Christian you want to be Christian but you decide I never got religion rammed down my throat I'm certainly not going to put it down yours so we'd go and sometimes you just get a feeling in a place I said just trust that feeling and they might say well the tunes aren't that good and I'm like it's okay but I remember when I was really young

walking in and hearing, like, the Salvation Army band and people singing, and I remember getting the shivers, just thinking, these hymns, these ancient songs, they really connect us. And I miss that. And I think people would return to religion if religion wasn't so fucked up. Yeah. And I think people...

The church has to serve the people and not the other way around. The church presently, I don't know how many churches you'd have here in Austin, Texas, but I'd probably say if there's 276 different kinds of churches, it's just one church. It's just in 276 bits and pieces.

It feels sometimes like it's at odds with science, but it's not. Science is the pursuit of truth. And so these are pilgrims too. Great scientists are trying to crack the code of the physical world. The great theologians are trying to crack the code of the metaphysical world. And nobody knows. That's the thing about literalism, you know, that beautiful thing...

You know, everyone has it at their wedding. Love is patient, love is kind. We can roll over you. Love is this, love is that. And then it goes faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. And I remember talking with somebody and saying, well, why is love more important than faith? Why is love more important than hope? And the clue is a few verses later where it says, we see through the mirror darkly, but one day we'll see face to face. We know now in part.

But one day we will know fully as we ourselves are known. You cannot be a fundamentalist and not understand that that is an explanation to just realize that you can have faith, you can have hope, but love means you need love. We need love because we cannot be sure. Our certainties, our certainties, that's the scary thing.

And, you know, I trust a feeling as a musician. I trust it when I'm going, you know, to sing or to improvise. But they're not certainties. They're instincts. And I love that you feel that music is still a communal place. Our festivals are amazing. And people are deprived presently.

of a place where they feel comfortable. I'm comfortable in the back of a cathedral. I'm comfortable at some, what's your friend, the blues guy, or, you know, a gospel church. I'm just looking for the spirit wherever I find it, in a conversation. I can feel it when it's happening. When we're having an honest conversation, you feel it. It's a thing, and I can put down my salesman...

and just have a conversation because the three on that Enneagram is probably my number because it's so excruciating. But it's the salesman. I sell ideas as well as songs. And I sometimes just have to just shut up and listen. Yeah, I think we're all those things.

Just to varying degrees. And I think the spirit of the thing is what you're talking about. This intangible moment where everybody realizes they're in it, whether it's in a church where they're singing. One of my favorite moments with you was on the Jimmy Fallon show, singing Ordinary Love. Oh, wow. I loved it. We played it on the podcast.

When it happened, the next day when it got out on YouTube, I brought it in here and I go, you've got to listen to this. This is just such an amazing rendition of a song because it's just you sitting on these chairs. And Jimmy Fallon is next to you on the table. Like, this is it here. What a beauty. We played this. I want to listen to it. Let's put this on. Put the headphones on. I fucking love this version.

♪ The sea wants to kiss the golden shore ♪ ♪ At once you'll see that's been lost before ♪ ♪ Wants to find us ♪ ♪ Can't find you anymore ♪ ♪ To our fight ♪ ♪ We throw this rock together ♪ ♪ But time ♪ ♪ Leaves us polished off ♪ ♪ See you ♪ ♪ Birds fly high in the summer sky ♪ ♪ Build a house in the tree ♪

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I love this part. Oh, come on. That is, that is without a doubt, hands down, my favorite performance ever, ever on a talk show ever because it was so for

First of all, it starts out so relaxed. You're sitting on the couch and you're singing it and you're just so on it. You're so on it that everyone just gets captivated by it. And then the music builds and then you bring in roots. It's fucking phenomenal. And that is what we're talking about. That's like this moment that elevates people.

It takes people out of their life and just this joy of expression all happening simultaneously with everybody in the crowd. And then when you stand up and you start dancing and roots are playing and whoo, it just washes over everybody. That is – it's hard that you should bring it up because I'm sitting at a table with a couple of journalists.

friends of a friend of mine this economist called David McWilliams you'd love him by the way he's the guy who says the poor think in minutes the rich think in years you know they're kind of one of the one of his quotes but anyway sitting with a bunch of people and they're from London and

And this guy's going, yeah. He says, Mick Williams here. He's all about you two. He's all about you. Yeah. He hasn't got any of your fucking records. I have your records. I've got all your records. I've fucking gone off you. Right. Gone right off you. That fucking song.

ordinary alumni he's got whatever glass in his hand and he's getting the Dutch and the British courage and the Irish courage and he's going that song about Mandela and all that so I'll listen to it it's like fucking nothing and then I was watching Jimmy Fallon you played the same song and he said I was in tears he said it's just something something happened

So I look at it and I'm going dodgy haircut on the singer. But I am also being defensive because I can feel something too. There is something going on. That is the thing. And you two, you know, we're making an album at the moment and it has to be framed around that.

Not that song, not that even style of songwriting, but that thing, the thing, the moment. The spirit. Whatever that is. Yeah. And the conversation you're having with your audience, with somebody, a deep listener. By the way, that same woman who said about listening, she said deep listening is an act of surrender. And so...

It's coming full circle for me. Well, if you're in that audience, there's an act of surrender, for sure. And if you're an actor, if you're singing it, you have to. And everyone recognizes that. That's why it resonates. So, I mean, I just think if we're a rock and roll band with four people in your band, there's nobody who sounds like Adam Clayton. You know what I mean? There's nobody who sounds like Edge. There's nobody who sounds like Larry Mullen. And there's nobody who wants to sound like me. No, no. I can sing. I can sing.

And I'm becoming the singer I am. And that's the reason I'm still in a band. Because we all have to answer that question, don't we? Why would we still be in a band? We've got to feel that it's our best album that's going to come. If it is, it's going to be because we frame it around that moment in the room when that happens. I promise you, I can't promise you for every...

song on the album. I'll come back if you'll have me and I'll play you some of the songs. But for the live rock and roll pieces, it has to have that. I recognize that. You can come back anytime you want, by the way. Oh, thank you. Anytime. But yeah, that's what everybody wants out of entertainment, out of

celebration. That's what everybody wants, these moments. And that was a real moment, man. That was a real moment that resonated through the television. I couldn't imagine what it would have been like to be in that room. And I was thinking that, like, God, I wish I was there. Because, you know, you see Will Smith, and Will Smith's in the corner, you see him just taken over by the music, like, nodding his head, like, oh my God, just in that moment. It was so pure. Strange resonance. I don't know if it was mentioned. He played Nelson Mandela.

No, he played Muhammad Ali. He played Muhammad Ali. Right, right, right. I got that wrong. That just would be funny. That would be funny. Yeah, but it was... That's what everybody's looking for. That's what everybody's looking for out of art, out of religion, out of just love and community. We're looking for these moments that elevate us above everything else. And there's a moment when...

a great performance like that. Just when everyone in the audience realizes what you're doing and we're all in it together and people at home are in it. Like that was so powerful. It's everything through the television is like 60% of what it is in person at the most. You know, we, we used to avoid TV because it's,

It's actually Bruce Springsteen's advice years and years ago. He said, be careful being on TV because people can turn you down. They can go off to the kitchen and make coffee. So he's kind of right about that. It can take away the mystery. But that studio that he's in, Jimmy...

You know, that's a historic place. You know, Beatles or whatever, you know. Think of all the artists that have been in on the... So there's something going on there. Oh, yeah. And he's a very beautiful spirit. He just really is. He seems like it. I don't know him, but he seems like a real sweetheart. Oh, yeah. I've been out late night with him. I've been, you know, in all kinds of situations. And...

is just a really a see-through heart, you know, transparent person. It's just, you see, you see, you see what he's thinking. Now, how he does that night after night, I will never know. Yeah. Like I'm, I'm terrified going on those shows. This is easy for me because I'm talking, I don't do full stops and commas. I,

But, you know, I don't have to. You're not asking me to. I'm just having a conversation. But to be sharp and be on it. Yeah. I don't know if I'm going to be sharp or on it. And part of being in U2 is I have to be true to my mood. And then I have to allow the song to take me somewhere else. And, yeah, it's a funny thing, you know.

Yeah, there's performing. There's not much psychology written about being books about the psychology of a singer. Probably there is for comedians or actors. No, there's barely for comedians. I think the problem is that only the people that can truly do it understand it.

Right. That's the problem. You know, the problem... And then what you're talking about, confinement for the talk show format, that's also what makes that moment so much greater. It's the pop song. Yes. It's just... It doesn't belong there. That...

That format is for hollow platitudes and selling a new television show and getting in and out before the seven-minute commercial break. It's the worst way to have a conversation where you're going to get the most out of people. Because when you have time constraints on conversations –

You immediately feel under the gun, so you're kind of tense and you're pressured and you don't know when... And then the audience is staring at you and then there's bright lights. Everything is wrong. Everything is...

It's opposed to the way normal, comfortable human conversation and connection works. It works with silence around you and just people talking or in a pub or wherever you're at, you know, in a living room with friends at a party. Like that's the real human connection where it's open ended and you're just talking. Yeah.

As soon as you lock it down, and then you have to lock it down for commercials, and you have to button this up, and there's a new person coming in in five minutes, so they've got to shuffle you out the door and hold up your album and tell everybody to buy it, and then you leave. I'm like, was that good? I guess it was good. You know what I mean? I never liked doing them. I always felt confined, and I would never do stand-up on them. I was always asked to do stand-up on them. That's not where stand-up belongs. Yeah.

But if someone can pull it off, like there's been great comedians that pulled off incredible Tonight Show sets, like Richard Jenny and George Carlin. Yeah, who's your favorites? I mean, I'm not going to ask you about your mates, but people that you, we were talking earlier about singer people that I just looked up to. Who were the ones that formed you? Well, when I was a child, I was probably, I guess I was 15 or 16. My parents took me to see Live in the Sunset Strip.

in a theater. And it was Richard Pryor. He performed. He did a concert special in the theater. I think it's his greatest performance.

And when I was there in the theater, I was laughing so hard. And I remember very clearly looking around at all these people and they were falling out of their chairs laughing. People were just falling back, slapping each other, going, oh, my God. Oh, my God. Like they couldn't breathe. And I remember thinking, this guy is doing this. Just talk.

And I remember all the funny movies that I'd seen like stripes and you know all the great comedies Animal House funny comedies nothing compared to this and this guy's just talking and

It was an incredibly profound moment for me. I remember I got obsessed with Richard Pryor. I started buying Richard Pryor cassettes. I would buy whatever I could. You could find them. I found a bunch that were weird printings of him at Red Fox's Comedy Club. I actually found them in a truck stop once. They were selling these cassettes. I was like, what is this?

And then I bought them and there were the incredible performances, like 15 people in the crowd. He's just ranting and going on these like unhinged rants about things and just having fun and being really loose.

And I just couldn't believe that someone could do that, that he could just by talking this theater filled with people were just falling down laughing and just blown away. So that was probably my first thought about standup comedy. My first real thought, just how, what a crazy power to have. Like what an unbelievable thing to be able to do with just your words. Yeah.

Yeah. I saw Robin Williams do that a few times. I was in a room with him, and he just could not turn it off. Yeah. And it was wild. He was certainly not in control of it. Right. And that's... There's a genius comedian called Tommy Tiernan. I don't know if you've seen him. Sure, I've heard of him. Again, when he goes out... And he doesn't go out often because I think it scares the shite out of him what he's going to say next. Yeah. And...

So that is the thing of having the material and then being able to blow, you know, just let go of the material. Yeah. That's, I think, must be part of this, is it? Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Yeah, it's part of it. These ideas, they come to you and you just have to decide whether to embrace them or not.

And you get yourself into such trouble because you just say the thing that you thought of. But the art is, in fact, being able to say the thing you've thought of. It's a strange one. I didn't truly realize that. And I never had any aspirations of comedy whatsoever when I was young. When I loved Richard Pryor, I just loved it as a fan. Just like I loved rock and roll, I didn't want to be a singer. I just loved it. And then I saw Kinnison. And...

I think that was the first moment where I went, oh, this is comedy too? Wow. Okay, what is comedy? Because everybody else had been telling jokes. With Pryor, it was like these stories of life that was so revealing and so vulnerable, but also hilarious, deeply fun, just so accurate in the caricatures of people. And then there was Kinnison.

I was like, okay, this is comedy too. And the first thing I ever saw of him, I was actually introduced to him by a girl that I worked with, a girl that I worked with at a gym. I worked at the Boston Athletic Club. I was a trainer. I was teaching people how to lift weights. And there was a lady who was a volleyball player who I was friends with that worked there. She worked the front desk. And she was like, I

I saw HBO last night and this comedian was so funny and in the parking lot of this gym that we worked out she did Sam Kinison's bit of homosexual necrophiliacs paying a bunch of money to be with the freshest male corpses have you ever seen the bit I have so the bit is the guy he goes imagine this you're at the end of your life he

You know, you're lying now. You're like, well, I guess I'm dead now. I'm going to be alone with Jesus. And that's going to be great. I'm going to be in heaven. And hey, he starts rocking back and forth. What is this?

It feels like someone's got a dick in my ass! I mean, life keeps fucking in the ass even after you're dead! It never ends! It never ends! She's doing this impression. She's lying on the parking lot, on her stomach, going back and forth. And I'm dying laughing. I was like, I gotta see this. So my first introduction to Kennison was this friend of mine.

her doing it on the concrete. That was good. It was amazing. No, no. You're doing her doing him. Oh, yeah. She did a great job. She had me howling. Who else? Well, he was a huge one. Eddie Murphy, for sure. That was a huge one. But then again, that was also like...

I still didn't think I was going to do stand-up until I saw Kinison. When I first saw Kinison, that was when I was like, maybe I can do it. Because I had friends telling me to do it. But it was friends that I did martial arts with. So we would have to... From the time I was 15 until I was like 21, 22, all I did was travel around the country competing. And I was with this... Such a wild combination, if you don't mind me saying. It's just like... It just...

The martial arts seem so unfunny. It's very unfunny. You know, you were fighting for your life. It's very scary. So when it's terrifying like that and everyone's nervous, that's when gallows humor comes in. And I was the guy who – I always needed attention when I was young. So I was getting my attention from being really good at fighting. But then I was also getting my attention around also the people that were really good at fighting at being funny.

So when we were all like a bunch of fucking crazy people, their hobby was to travel around the country trying to kick people unconscious. So this is the group that I'm hanging out with. And most of them were older than me. I was the youngest because I was in high school at the time. Most of these were grown men. And I was competing against grown men while I was in high school, which is another crazy thing. My instructor was –

And he threw me to the grown men when I was 16. It was terrifying. But because it was so terrifying, I developed this way of releasing steam. And so my way of releasing steam, I'd make fun of different guys that we trained with having sex, like how he probably does it and this and that. And I was just always trying to crack people up. And I had one friend that I'm still really good friends with to this day, my friend Steve Graham, who talked me into doing stand-up.

And I never thought, I'm like, you think I'm funny because you like me. I go, but you're crazy too. Like you're a fucking psychopath as well. Like you think I'm funny because you're doing the same thing that I'm doing. Like we're nutty people. We're not normal. Other people are going to think I'm an asshole.

When you walked out though, tell me, was he there when you walked out? The first time? Oh yeah, he was there the first night. So can you paint me the picture? I was at a comedy club, I was terrible. I went to open mic night, I did like five minutes, it was horrible.

But I got a couple of laughs. I got a couple of chuckles. And I was like, I got off stage. I was like, I think I could do this. The weirdest thing was like I had probably at that time, I was 21 years old. I had probably fought at least 100 times.

And I was way more terrified of doing comedy. Way more scared. I imagine. Way more scared. Like fighting was scary, but I was like, I know it just has to start. Once it starts, I know what to do. Like the real fear of comedy or of fighting was before the fight. It was all the demons, all the thing. Why am I doing this? Why are you doing this to yourself? That's what you're really fighting in the end. That's what you're fighting. You're fighting the fear.

But I knew once it started, I wouldn't be scared at all. Because you don't feel fear when you're fighting because you're so in the moment. You're in the moment. You're zen. You almost don't exist. You have to, to operate at the highest level, to have instantaneous reactions. Mm-hmm.

And to be able to manage your pace and all these different things. You can't think about yourself or how you look or how you feel or whether your girlfriend's mad at you or whether you're going to fail out of high school. You have to be locked into what you're doing. So I wasn't afraid of fighting. I was afraid of everything before fighting. I was afraid of feelings. But that's where the comedy came from. The comedy came from alleviating that.

Right. So there is a symbiosis there. There's a thing in it. It's a task, a very complicated task. The way I describe fighting is it's high-level problem-solving with dire physical consequences. That's what it really is. You could call it fighting. You could think it's brutish and aggressive. Just say that again. It might be the title of our new album. High-level problem-solving with dire physical consequences. Yeah.

So as far as like sport... I just put meta in front of the physical consequences. Yes. We got ourselves an album. Yes. It's the most consequential of all sports because when someone beats you, they don't just beat you. They take away everything you are as a man.

When someone destroys you in a competition, you are not a man anymore. You are significantly decreased in your value. Everything about you, you feel terrible. You are as good the day you walked in there confident.

And you still feel like shit. Where you felt like you could take on the world. You have the same skills. You're as good as you felt when you could take on the world. And now you feel like utter dog shit. And yet we know that failing is how we succeed. The Samuel Beckett lines. Fail, fail again, fail better.

I may have failed to get the quote right, but that's it. You know, fail, failure and fail better. That pain is fuel. The pain of failure is the most potent fuel, the most potent inspiration known to man, and the more terrifying the failure, whether it's failure in stand-up comedy or it's failure in... That's very high stakes. If you think about it, I'm just thinking this through this second, both your chosen passions...

entail the risk of humiliation. Yeah, you have to have that. That's the only way you get better. It's the only way you really get better. That's tricky. Yeah. Super tricky. I grew up my best mate since I was three years old. He gave me my name, Bono. He gave us all names, and his family names. He was a genius, really. Painter, became his painter. His father, there was tough stuff going on on our street.

In their house. And he grew up... Well, the father used to... He was kind of a religious extremist. Let's call it that. He used to humiliate the kids by putting a bowl on their hair and cutting their hair. So he'd walk around with his pudding bowl. So everyone would be around and be like... They were just so fast. They were all...

They could all look after themselves. Like the Boy Named Sue. It is the Johnny Cash song, Boy Named Sue. And so Googie, my mate, so I grew up sparring with him. This is literally how we grew up. So we watched all the boxing matches, all the obvious ones. And he just really went into it. His obsession became mixed martial arts.

So he wants his kids. You know, they're going down to the gym. And then my godson, okay, his name's Noah. And he comes. This is not a joke. This is not a joke. So Googie, my mate, since I'm three years old, comes up and he goes, he says, Noah, he wants to give up fighting, you know, cage fighting. And I said, oh, that's okay. He said, what does he want to do? He wants to be a doctor. And I'm like...

Googie, this is a really, your kid wants to be a doctor and you're disappointed, but he could be such a great fighter. And I said, Googie, he wants to be a doctor. This is a, by the way, he became a doctor. This is not, this story, that's how it ended. But I said, and he, Googie, he was such a good fighter. I said, why did he give up? He said, well, he's down the gym. He said, I can't even beat the best guy in the gym. If I can't beat the best guy in the gym, there's no point in me having a

big career. He said the best guy in the gym was Conor McGregor. And he was a few years older. So it's... And then two of his other kids are fighters. Now! Wow. So I've grown up around it and because of my mates and his kids. And... But that thing of combat, being comfortable in combat is a thing you need to be careful of because...

You can end up there. And sometimes I do, because it's an art form for you, it was a profession, it's different. But people like me, fight or flight, is a problem.

Because sometimes fight is on. And there is no fight. Right. So that's part of the shut up and listen instructions I'm receiving from, which is I'm kind of born with my fists up. And from every way, just growing up and being around what I was around and experiencing what I experienced, I have that. And even in the band, I'm a bit like that.

And so I've got to be careful because it's not always somebody coming around the corner who wants to take you out. And they might actually just want to take you out. Right, right, right. And it's not becoming of to be combative at all times. So I'm learning to put my fist down. I'm learning to spend those times in the morning thinking,

thanking God that I'm alive because I had a heart surgery as we talked about earlier and just waking up is great just like wow I've just woken up what a thrill and I'm trying to get to that place with not with the world but with myself I've not made peace with the world I certainly have not but I am making more peace with myself which is sometimes a bit harder and and the family and listening to them more

And, yeah, that's it. This combat thing is interesting. Were you in the neighborhood, I asked you earlier, but were there people... Is there people you can remember? Sure. Like, as being...

Like on you. Compat it? On you. Oh, on me? On you. Not from the time I started training. Once I started training, I got very good very quick and I became kind of known for it. Because I was doing it in a crazy way. It wasn't as simple as like, oh, he takes karate. It's like, no, he – on the weekends, he's traveling around the country and fighting in tournaments.

I was winning them. I found a thing very early on that I could excel at that was scary. And I realized through that thing, you can get good at anything. You just have to put your attention and focus to it. And, well, when do you put your attention and focus to something the most? Well, when your literal health relies on success. It was so scary that you couldn't half-ass it, which is like –

I have a problem with things that involve too much personality and charisma where they could mask truth. And I think this is the problem with evangelical preachers. This is the problem with politicians. And rock stars. And it could be anybody. But it's like there's this siren call that will lead you to the rocks. And it's believing your own bullshit. Right.

fighting was... It didn't matter what your personality was. It didn't matter... It's empirical. Yeah, nothing mattered. It didn't matter how many people liked you. If you get kicked in the head, you get fucked up. And...

On the flip side of it, I used to love when I would go to someone else's hometown and they had all these people beating, like cheering for them. All these people like, you know, you're going to fuck them up. All these people cheering in the corner. I would love that. It was my favorite thing. My favorite thing. I was like, they can't help you. Do you have rage? Me now? No. I'm just, when you're fighting, I mean, obviously my, what we do in music is we try to turn rage into...

something beautiful, and that's what rock and roll is, the sound of, you know, I think it was Neil Young who said something like the sound of revenge. But whatever, it's rage for sure. There's rage. That's what separates certain bands. You want to know what the difference between a pop band and a rock and roll band? Rage. It's rage. Rage against the machine. And you bet. Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me. Yeah, we had that, and that was...

That was coming through me. And I had to. So I'm just wondering where you where'd you get that rage from? Or maybe you didn't have it. I mean, I'm told by some people that it's like Mike Tyson had rage. But some boxers, you know, they didn't. They could they could they thought it made them weak. Well, it gets in the way of clear thinking. And, you know, I had this guy named Yuri Prohaska on the podcast recently. He's a brilliant fighter.

who's in the UFC, who was the light heavyweight champion at one point in time and is still one of the top light heavyweights in the world. And we were talking about anger and rage and that it leads you down a bad path of decision-making when you're fighting. It interferes with the flow. It interferes with the way.

And like I was saying before, when you're competing – I've never competed at that level. When you're competing at a world championship level, anything that fucks with your mind, anything where you're doubting yourself or talking to yourself or – all that is resources that is being allocated towards something that's completely useless as opposed to being like –

completely in the moment and in the zone. If you get taken out of it for a moment, if they feel for a moment that you're thinking, like you're looking for a way out, you're looking to quit, you're gone. You're done.

Like when your friend was saying that his son didn't want to be a fighter anymore, this is my advice always. Whenever someone says, I'm thinking about stopping fighting, I go, quit. Quit right now. Because somewhere out there, there's someone who's not thinking about stopping at all. They're going to fuck you up. They're going to come for you. It's going to be terrifying. You're locked in a ring with Mike Tyson and you've been thinking about getting a regular job? Like, yeah, you're fucked. You're fucked. You're fucked.

Because there's all-in people. In my opinion, I love fighting, but I think only all-in people should be fighting. And the moment you're not all-in, get out. You've got to get out. Because the difference between an all-in person and a one-foot-out-the-door person is—

is enormous. It's enormous. Even if skill level is similar, the person who's all in is a terrifying person. All they want to do is this one thing, and they're completely focused on it, just being the best in the world, this one thing. They're going to find holes in you. They're going to find your weaknesses.

They're going to push you in a way that maybe you didn't push yourself as far in the gym. So come the second round, come to third round, you start breaking down. And they're not breaking down at all. They're breaking you down. It's a terrifying place to be when you know you're not all in and the other person's all in. So anybody, if that was my son, he's like, I'm thinking about quitting. I'm like, good, quit. That's what I'd say. Quit. Find something else you love. Find what you love. You don't have to do this. But if you're going to do this, you've got to only do this.

This has to be your fucking life. Right. Your fucking life. I mean, I don't want you to be a rock star and a fighter. Shut the fuck up. You can't be both. It's not possible. If you want to do that thing, that thing is your whole life. I don't have any tattoos, but if I did. Kind of amazing you're at this far without no tattoos. I know. If I did, there's a quote. It's from Nietzsche.

And I wouldn't normally quote from Nietzsche. You know, I'm not that interested in Nietzsche, but he's written some aphorisms that I like and whatever. But in our summer plays where we go to, there's a little trail called the Nietzsche Trail. And he apparently came up with this line, which is, for anything truly great to take place, there requires, and this would be my tattoo, a long obedience in the same direction.

Oh, that's good. So, so that's so. And I think of edge when I think of that. I don't think of me. I'm sort of I'm just I'm I'm I just my I'm just my curiosity just takes me into place. I shouldn't be.

But that long obedience in the same direction, that's what you're talking about. Yes. Does it apply to people, to tickling? I always wondered, would it be great if you're the biggest fighter ever and just a little tickle? And it's like, maybe that's... I don't think that would work. I think people would have already tried that. Come on, man. Totally unaffected. You've got to do it. You're so filled with adrenaline, you don't feel tickles. Yeah. Fuck.

You're sparked out. Did you ever... There was a comedian called Ken Dodd. I remember him from Liverpool when I was a kid growing up. He had a feather. He used to just tickle people. I'll get the tattoo. You get the feather. The feather's awesome. Oh, fuck. It is a funny thing. That quote is so accurate. It's one of the greatest quotes of all time. I think it's a strong quote, and...

And it's, you know, it's a person who's, he was pushing away higher, even the concept of higher consciousness for a lot of his life. And yet...

in managing to bump into it. There's a quote of his I swear I'd read, but when we were doing the book, we couldn't find it anywhere, so I might have made it up. But he was, because that's the history of that in our family. Jamie will find it. Well, it's not. It's a, Jamie, it's about friendship. And I don't think it's, I don't think so. But it's, the idea is that

Friendship is deeper, kind of wider. It's less dramatic than, you know, romantic love. But it is, it's somehow the essence of great relationships is actually friendship. I think that's Nietzsche, but we couldn't find it. So I may have just made it up.

Though love be deeper, friendship is more wide from like Chronicles of Narnia. Oh, I'll take that too. Something like that. Thank you, Jamie. I'll take it. My dad was funny. He used to quote this playwright, Irish playwright called Sing, you see, because he was suspicious of nationalism because in Ireland, you know, you would be because the country was nearing civil war and along sectarian lines. So...

He used to say, Ireland, what is Ireland but the land that keeps my feet from getting wet? So that's a great quote of Singh's. So when we did the book, Surrender book was on Knopf. So they went off. Couldn't find it anywhere. Couldn't find the quote anywhere because he made it up. And it's a great quote. And I think it's okay if you say something three times, it's yours, right? So I'm in a band with

And that friendship is pulled and pushed and it's difficult. And at some point, one of us is usually trying to break up the band. But...

It's a very deep bond. Can I say something about that? Yeah. That was really great about the film as well. When you went into the fact that it's a true democracy in your band. It's annoying, isn't it? But I would expect nothing less from you. When you said that, and I wasn't aware of that, I was like, of course. Of course that's how you would set it up. Well, it's fine to be a democracy, but we share things also.

the economics. Yes. That's where you find it. Exactly. And we had a manager, Paul McGuinness, for most of our life. And it was one of these things, he said, just don't ever be fighting about whose song it is. Because in the background, it's like, I want my song on the album, or I've got two. Just get rid of that. Just share everything and make sure that you all feel like a stake in each other. Yes. And so the arguments in U2 are,

are never about, well, this is my idea, so you're really stepping on my toes. We've developed a sort of band ego, bigger than individual egos, even an ego as big as mine. This is bigger. This is even bigger. And it's the quiet ones. But yeah, I think we've learned to just, the great, we don't argue about what's very good.

Sorry, we do argue about what's very good. We don't argue about what's great. So if we're talking about, is that chorus? Nah, that guitar? Nah. But it's all for a purpose. We're all just talking about it. But when it's great, people just back off. We just know. It's like greatness has its own... What's the word? Has its own...

brings with it a certain acquiescence to that thing. And then you learn that very good is the enemy of greatness. It's not even next door neighbors. Like we used to be with you two, we were really crap or great. But then we got very good. Very dangerous.

Being very good is not helpful because there's a chasm between what is very good and great. Greatness, what you were talking about there back on Jimmy Fallon, that's a moment of greatness. It's not, which is different from saying we were great. It was great.

And very good could be just sitting there playing the song. It's a very fine song. And these are very fine players. That could just be very good. It didn't make that moment that resonated so deeply with me that I brought it up. We played it multiple times on this podcast over the years. I'm really happy you did. And that's what my friend, I forget his name, or my friend that I just met for the first time at the...

kitchen table who is who had you know had the guts to say he so disappointed because this the recording of that song was just very good that's really what he was saying yes yes you hadn't captured like but I think that unique moment of the way you guys did it is what made it so special it's because

You know, Jimmy Fallon's sitting there. Will Smith is sitting there. And you're just on these chairs. And you're singing on the chair. So you're moving on the chair. And then eventually everything picks up and you're standing up and dancing. And the whole crowd felt it. It was like this build-up to it. It all flowed together, but it just... I haven't seen that back, by the way. Really? No, no. I haven't seen it. I probably saw it on the night or the next day. Oh, wow. So I haven't...

I sent that to everybody. I sent that to all my friends. As soon as it came out online, I was like, you've got to see this. This is incredible. Well, thank you for that. But there might be something to do with the fact that the four members of that band feel equally involved in that song. There might be. And that the democracy, which is such a pain in the hole, is actually one of the reasons that when...

U2 walks onto a stage, people tell me, even if they're not bands, you know, they just come along as guests, their hair comes up on the back of their neck. And I explain, actually, that happens to us too. It's a strange thing when we walk out. And it seems to me, I haven't figured this out, that the whole universe conspires to...

break up great relationships, right? You fall in love, it's romantic. This is families now. This doesn't have to be your partner in life, your wife, your husband, your... Families, kids, everything. It's just the whole world just seems set against them surviving. It just pulls at us. Like gravity itself, you're resisting it.

And so when you manage to get through it and you're standing there, the forest, and there's something going on, it feels like you've resisted gravity or whatever forces that pull you apart. There's something about it. And some nights it's really not easy. But, I mean, not the music, but the friendship.

And but we we've we've we're through it right now. And you feel it in these recordings and you'll feel us in a way rediscovering each other. That's amazing. I haven't been playing for you. We just played in London acoustically at the Ivor Novellas Awards the first time in five years, the four of us played together because Larry had a back injury. And so but yeah, there's something in the chemistry.

Well, there's also the fact that you guys continue to create because one of the things that happens to great bands is they become a prisoner to their old songs. Yeah. You've got to be a bit careful there. Yeah, a lot of bands. Ordinary Love, that's what's so beautiful because that's in the last... Is that... That's like 10 years old or something. Something along those lines. Which is a mere minute if you've been around for... We'll be around... I think the first time we met in Larry's Kitchen...

is it will be 50 years next fall in the kitchen. Wow. Drummer wants musicians, whatever we go. We're literally. And in the in the film, you know, we've got the the kitchen table. We got the chairs, you know, because I'm on the road with, you know, 250 Mack trucks and a space station and whatever else with you, too. But here you could put everything into a station wagon. It's like literally a table and chairs.

And the chairs are Edge, Adam and Larry. And I've got to, you know, I use the kitchen table as operating theatre. So it starts with the heart surgery. It's the hospital bed where my father says goodbye to me with the expletive. And it's the kitchen table where...

All operas really begin in the kitchen, don't they? It's like you're sitting there, and in our case, it'd be me, my father, my brother, mother's past, and it's just male rage in its different shapes and forms. So I get to be on the road with a table and chairs, but then I get to bring out the chair. There's Larry. Yeah, there's Edge.

There's Adam. I introduced them as chairs. And it was amazing for me to have that experience of doing things and telling their story. If their memoirs come out, I'm fucked. No, I really am. But it's over. And I'm done with the past. I'm not sure the past is done with me, but I'm doing my very best

to deal with the past in order to get to the present, to make this the sound of the future. So the songs on the next album, when you are, or whomever you're with, or your kids, or whatever, are out at the Joshua Tree or wherever it is, park or at the lake here in Austin, Texas, and you're listening to our new album, that we will take you somewhere, because...

it has to be, these songs have to be, they have to be everything or what's the point? Right. What is the creative process for you when you are, when you have a concept for a song, when you have an idea? Like, how does it work? Do you, do ideas just come to you? Do you sit until they come to you? Do you sit in front of a pad and write them down? Is it, that has never been an issue. Like, Edge and myself are the sort of song starters. Yeah.

And, I mean, he is, I think we were counting them up the last time, like 526. He said, 526 songs I have here. I said, Edge, they're not songs, they're ideas. And he goes, well, this one's a song. And I go, oh, yeah, that might be. And I will have and have stuffed in my phone and paper and Air India sick bags and whatever else I've written

my life and the glimpses that you get. And I don't write out of misery, which is great, because I know some people have to be really miserable before they're out. I write out of joy a lot of the time. Sometimes I'm writing my way out of a situation. But most times I'm writing my way into something. And especially with this next album, I just think the world needs some...

it needs some yeah some wild guitar music but it also does not need the blues right we're in the blues right now yeah and um well we're in danger we're in danger but you you did say on one of your recent podcasts you were saying hold on a second still more people got access to water and heat

And our air conditioning and in the history of the planet. So we've got to keep, we just don't want to lose that perspective. And we don't want to, you know, this incredible thing in 20 years, if you think about it. I mean, maternal mortality halved, more than halved. And people coming out of extreme poverty. Some of this is China. Some of this is capitalism. Some of this is that. But it's...

I don't want to lose the sense of the next chapter could be our best. And that's going to need vision. Yeah. And I'm not talking about U2's new album. But that is part of it because art changes the collective consciousness of a civilization. Yeah.

And songs that really deeply resonate with young people that have a that that are great songs that also have a message and carry with them conversations that people have about the songs and about what's going on in the world. It shifts consciousness. It shifts consciousness in a positive way. And those young people may grow up to become people that aren't corrupt politicians, that aren't corrupt Congress, that don't.

give in to the lobbyists and the special interest groups, but really look out for their constituents and they get into it for the right reasons because everybody's going to be co-opted if you don't. You're right. Yeah, we better be good then. And for me, the go-to group is the Beatles. And I had this moment where Paul McCartney picked me up

At John Lennon Airport, he was driving the car and brought me and kind of showed me where the different neighborhoods of the Beatles. And it was just an amazing experience. And he'd stop and he'd say, oh, this is where this happened. And he said, do you mind me telling you this? And I'm like, are you kidding me? And then he stopped at the traffic lights and he said, oh, yeah, that's where I had our first real kind of conversation, you know, with...

with me and John. I said, hold on a second, I'm a bit of a Beatle student. Didn't you have that when you were in the Quarrymen? He says, no, no, no, no, it was a different level. He bought a bar of chocolate, and after the war, you know, chocolate was really hard to come by, you know, it was kind of a real luxury. And he bought the bar of chocolate, and he didn't give me a square. He broke it, Cadbury's milk chocolate, broke it in half. And I said, oh, so you're into sharing too?

He said, yeah. And he says, I don't know why I'm telling you that. And he drove on. And I just thought, oh, I know why you're telling me that. Greatest collaboration, not just in music, in the history of music, maybe the greatest collaboration in the history of culture started with, wow, they shared, they gave it.

My mate, Googie, who I just spoke about, who knows all about you and knows all about your sport, he taught me everything he had. And they came, it was tough at times, as I told you, in their house. He just gave me half of it. Whatever he got, just half. So when I were in U2 and our manager, McGuinness, says you should share everything, I was like, yeah, I've been sharing everything. I've been sharing everything anyway.

And even now, age and myself, we're sitting in our house. We share this place in the south of France. We've been there for 30 years. All our families have kind of grown up there. French are too into themselves to bother us, which is really why we like it. And we sit there and we think the real owners are going to come. Right. You know what I mean? Because we still don't really believe this has happened to us. And you know what?

I think that's probably right because we don't really own this stuff. You get it for a short period and then you hand it on. I think something about the four and the way we share is in the sound of our music. I think so too. No, no, no, I think you're dead right. I think that when you... And I was just standing there with a little tambourine, Jimmy found it. But it's him playing the tambourine.

And, yeah, there's something – again, there's not much scholarship about this type of stuff that you can read up on. But it resonates, right? You can feel something. Yeah, I believe it. I think there's something to it. It's a – you've made decisions that have sort of affirmed this –

to a higher goal. It's not a hierarchy of, you know, who's the lead singer, who's this, who's that. It's not who's the big star. It's just we're all together to do this thing. I'm in a band where every member of the band thinks they're the leader. I think that's every band. And I voted for this. And it's sort of great.

I think it's worked out, you know, and you guys are still together, you know, which is also a giant win, you know? I mean, that's one of the most difficult things. Yeah, well, you never know. You could run down the road any minute, but whilst we're running down the road...

It's a thrill. I think that's also what makes you great is the same feeling that some of the real owners are going to come. Like you never really buy into it even though it's you. And that's real. I think we all should have that. And I think if you lose that, you're in trouble. I think we should all have that. I think that's right. I call this – I'm going to learn some of this from my wife.

He used to say, don't, you know, look up to me. Don't look down at me as a woman. Look across to me. That's where I am. Okay. And there was a lesson in that about horizontal relationships rather than vertical ones. Right. I don't have a boss. I don't want to be a boss. Yes. I mean, I have that relationship with the band that is equal. I have it with my mates. Right.

And it's just the way I know it to be the most efficient. And, you know, the boss is the boss. I mean, Bruce, it's an amazing thing what he does. And it's his vision. And he's found a team around him to help him realize his vision. It's like you going out on the boards. You write your own material. It's your point of view.

That's not. I'm part of. I think, isn't there two stories they say in the cinema? There's the gang and the man against. Stranger comes to town. I think it's one. And then there's the stranger goes off in the Odyssey. But usually there's a gang. That's a different story. That's the third story maybe. I'm in the gang. Yeah. Comedians are in a gang too.

We're in a gang at a club. We're in a gang together. We all convene together. I mean a gang in terms of a collaborative gang, too. We work together. We work on ideas together. We talk about bits together. Especially at my place, at the Comedy Mothership, it's set up like that. The whole club is set up entirely for comedians. Completely different pay structure than any other club. Pays way more than other clubs do.

The comedians get most of the money. We get the money from liquor, essentially. Liquor and a small percentage of the ticket sales. But most of it goes to the comics. And the vibe of the place is not that it's my place. The vibe is that this is our place.

I paid the bill, but I shouldn't have had that much money in the first place. It's ridiculous. Like the whole thing is crazy. Like that you could do something like this. And if you could do something like this, you're supposed to. If you're the person that for whatever reason the universe has blessed you with a lot of zeros –

Throw it at something fun. Let's do it. And so it's ours. And so there's that in comedy too. You can't – well, look, it sounds glib actually as I say it. But, you know, you can't outgive God. No. It's like, you know, just the more you – and that's what I was saying also about the blessing on America.

One of the things I do like about some of these churches is not the ones that put pressure on you, but people will give some cash every week to help with what's going on in faraway places or whatever. They tithe. I think they call it tithing. And it's just part of the blessing of America. It's this... Okay, so it's...

It's less than 1%. It's half of 1% of the government budget to keep all these people alive all over the world. They love America. Because they love America, they're not going to be a problem for America. It takes them away from terrorism. It takes them away from anti-Americanism. It puts them in the direction of freedom. That's a blessing. So if you count your zeroes,

And you say, that's mine. That's ours. We're not sharing that with those people. The definition of neighbor is just next door. Be careful. Because there is a bigger blessing out there. There's just a bigger blessing. There most certainly is. And it sounds like you're in it. And it is in the business where you'll see it. Because people have...

have a great mouth on them I have a big fucking mouth but it's not about what you're talking about it's what you're doing it's how you're living it's how you it's that's the U2 thing is not just about the songs it's the it's the way you did you use the word way a minute ago you said it's the way when you're fighting yeah anything that takes you away sure what is what did you mean by that

There's a great quote by Miyamoto Musashi. This is the guy I actually have tattooed on my right arm. It's, once you understand the way broadly, you can see it in all things.

Beautiful. Yeah, and the concept is he was the greatest samurai that ever lived. He killed 60 men in one-on-one combat with swords. He got to the point where he was killing people so easily he decided to stop using swords and he would fashion a wooden sword out of an oar from a boat on the way over to go kill a guy. Sounds like Googie. He was an extraordinary human being, but he wrote a book on strategy called The Book of Five Rings. You're kidding.

Yeah, and Go Rino Show, the Book of Five Rings. This book is all about... Where is he from? Japan. All about how you... From the 1400s. You had to be balanced in everything. To be a great warrior, you had to be great at calligraphy. You had to be great at poetry. You had to be an artist.

You had to be able to meditate. You had to be balanced. You had to know the way. And don't let any bullshit – this is the modern interpretation. Don't let your ego. Don't let other people's perceptions. Don't let insecurities in. Don't let any of these things in. Stay on the way. And the way is like this way of thought that once you – everybody says –

How you do anything is how you do everything. This was his earliest version of it. - This is wonderful to hear. - Once you understand the way broadly, you will see it in all things. It's that Nietzsche, this path to greatness, once you realize what that is, like, oh, this is this intense focus and dedication to something that could be applied to anything.

You could apply it to being a better father. You could apply it to being someone who writes books. You could apply it to music. You could apply it to anything. But that's what it is. It's like finding what the thing is and throwing the essence of you at that thing, like really doing it. And to do that correctly, you can't have macho issues. You can't have insecurity, things that you're compensating for. You have to be pure. Right.

You have to fight. It's a constant struggle. Stunning. They're stunning insights. In my path, or I suppose, or whatever you call it, my practice, I have this, I am the way, the truth, and the life. This is what I learned from Jesus. Become a bumper sticker. Probably taken the meaning of it away. But it's the same thing. I've got to... Because when I focus on this...

This kind of – this radical idea to serve rather than to lead, to be no greater love and all that. All this stuff. Unfortunately, this language has been ruined for you guys. I'm so sorry. Kind of, but no. We can get past that. It's powerful. Yeah, it's real. And this Jesus is a long way from –

the one that you meet on these kind of sales programs. But it is humility, and it is service, and it is discipline, and it is not my will, thy will. It is indeed surrender. And anyone, wherever they are in the world, Japan in the 1400s or the 15th century or wherever we are,

Anyone, scientists, you know, the pursuit of truth, it just gathers. Yeah, there's something about, I'm trying to think of the word, the sort of gathering where we will all end up in the same place if we're really, and I'm not talking about life after death as in like you have to enter a competition.

But we're in the same... Consilience, I think, is the word. I think it was... I don't know who wrote a book called Consilience, but it's the idea that all disciplines, all art forms, everything comes together on a point, a kind of convergence. But the word is consilience. And if it isn't,

I just made up a great word. It's a great word. There you go, Jamie. Well, those moments that were... That's the book. Where great art hits that peak. Oh, really good. Thank you. That's really good. Jamie's the best. How did you not know? How long have I been talking?

I mean, I'm three hours because I this I mean, I don't know why you this is my family at this point. We gone to bed. It'd be just the two of us at the fire locked in. Jamie's locked in like, see you later, dude. That thing, though, is like what we all it's what we know how hard it is to reach to like ordinary love. Like when you guys were doing that, we know that that's not a first take.

That's not like you just wrote the song and you guys are out there jamming. No, that's a polished song. And the fact that you're doing this and you're doing it acoustic right there sitting on a chair. Everything is off, right? You're not on the stage. There's not a spotlight on you. There's no mist. There's no lights.

All the theatrics are removed. You're in a brightly lit studio sitting down with a bunch of people beside you, which is like the most un-rock and roll thing of all time. It's corporate almost. No one does that. But yet you fucking nailed it. And that moment...

It took everybody to a better place. That's what we're all hoping for in everything. We're hoping from our leaders –

We're hoping for that one speech, that one JFK speech, where you just go, oh my God, yes. That's the prayer. We don't want to be... Clinton when he was young, he had some bangers. Obama when he was young. They had these speeches that made us feel better as human beings, better about the country. That's the danger of the conflicted times that we're in, is that people don't feel good even about America. There's people that think that the American flag is a symbol of injustice.

It's like it's that's a crazy thought. Like America's you, too. It's not just you to the band, but it's it's us. It's all of us human beings, regardless of your political ideology. And we got to think of that first. We're a community. We're a neighborhood. You know, we should think of ourselves as a giant neighborhood and community.

We don't. We think of ourselves as opposing tribes that are in this battle to stay in control of whatever the direction of the country is. And it's being...

orchestrated by artificial intelligence bots that are constantly battling with people online and state actors and intelligence agencies and money and all this shit is together and it's all confusing everybody as to what is the purpose of being a human being that's alive with other human beings the purpose is community communing we're supposed to be a united states we're supposed to be a community

And all the differences that we have, the political differences, they should be so fucking secondary that it should be a small part of the elections. A small part of the election should be policy because we should just all agree that we should figure out – you want to have a good use of AI? Figure out what's the objective best use of resources to support the collective whole and how does that get accomplished? How does that get accomplished without fraud and waste?

And what's the best way to navigate where it doesn't have fraud? That should be done, whether it's Democrats or Republicans. It should be like, what are we looking for? We're looking to clean up the lakes. We're looking to stop pollution. We're looking for clean energy sources. We're looking for education. We're looking for health care. We're looking for housing. We're looking to get people off the streets that have mental health issues and get them help. And don't just give them fentanyl and give them money for needles. That's stupid. Don't let them camp on the street. That's stupid. That's stupid.

Also stupid ignoring them, right? That's stupid too. So some real resources. And once we do that, we could all do better. The whole country can do better. We'll be less at each other's throats. There'll be less anxiety. It can be accomplished. But we have to address the primary factor in this country, which...

For crime and horrible behavior. It's completely disenfranchised neighborhoods. It's areas that have been fucked since the 1940s.

And they're not doing anything to change them. And no one's pouring any resources to try – there's no plans to try to revitalize these communities and elevate these people out of dire poverty and gang violence and drug use. There's a way to do it. It's not impossible.

but there's no resources put at it at all. That should be another thing. That shouldn't be a Republican thing or a Democrat thing. Why should we spend money on that? It should be community. Look, the people who voted for Donald Trump, who I'm not a fan of, and I know you have respect for him, and I respect that, but the people who voted for him, I have immense respect for them and their sense that they...

felt left out of the American dream, a lot of people. And in so many ways, when, you know, the world got globalized and a lot of people did very well out of that, particularly in the global south, but everyone in America, I think, you know, a lot of people, a lot of communities paid the price for that.

And I don't know what the pie was grown. Nafta, I think, was supposed to be a trillion dollars. It ended up being, the pie was, I think it was one and a half trillion. So there was enough money to reinvest in communities, but it never happened. And so people were pissed off. If, and I think we should be with those people. I'm not sure this is going to be the answer that they're looking for. And if it's not...

I would encourage people, yes, I'm not American. I don't vote. I'm Irish. Just you'll know. I trust in the wisdom of crowds. I really do. I mean, you too. And, you know, Americans will know and they must. I can see where they're going right now. They're trying out this new version of themselves.

and where we're not interested in the wider world as much. We're trying to fix our own problems. I would say they are bound up in each other, and I would say there's a higher purpose for America than the one that's being offered presently. But I don't want to get into the politics of it. I think it's an overcorrection. Yeah. I really hope so because we really, really, really need you. We need America.

And this European project, we have a land war on the outskirts of Europe. It is the most astonishing thing. And we don't know what's next. Poland, have you ever, you know, the Polish people, they have two million Ukrainians staying with them. They never complain. These are the most remarkable people you'll ever meet. There's all that money that was invested in by guess who?

George C. Marshall, an American general who became Secretary of State, who had the cleverness to say after the war, the Second World War, and I think it was like 4% of the GDP was invested in the rebuilding of Europe. And the idea was we have to make Europe succeed, and that's how we will defeat communism. And so when Ronald Reagan...

you know, pronounced a death sentence on the Soviet Union. And the reason Mikhail Gorbachev threw his hands up and said, we've got to, this project is over, is because he knew that people could see it was dysfunctional. He knew that it was a better life across the wall, the other side of the Iron Curtain. And sometimes it takes putting your money where your mouth is to show that

What freedom is. America did that. We owe America. And we need you. That's all I want to say. We need you. And together, wow, there's 450 million people in Europe. It's like, you know, we don't be fighting with Canadians and Mexicans here. You put all this together, this is formidable. And these boring...

People who are listening to you are probably tuning in now. What they're saying? They said something about the good country. Like it and they hear the mushroom. It's like, you wouldn't know. You've never been lifted by music, sir. You know, you wouldn't know. You send people to death. Build some bologna up the bum. This is like, come on. It's like, come in. Your time's up.

And, you know, I know we want to rewrite history and all the rest of it, but you can't do that. We are free people and it is great to be free. And I don't want to stop singing songs about freedom. I want to be it. And that's what we talked about earlier. And that's, I think, as human beings, there's a constant struggle. You want to laugh out loud.

I think there's a constant struggle to find the path. And I think we go through a series of overcorrections and a series of going really far left and really far right. Order, disorder, reorder. That's Richard Rohr's thing. It's part of the battle of good and evil. There's a thing that's— Well, do you believe there's good and evil? I do. I do. I believe it. I think it's naive to think that if evil acts occur, there is no true evil.

I think it's naive and evil acts are undisputable and the concept of evil has always existed. I think there's a- And we can become part of it. Yes. You've seen it outside a pub when people, somebody's down, kid goes down, people are just kicking. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You've seen it at a football match. Yep. In American football, you don't, but in Europe, in football and soccer, you see mad violence.

And it's like a spirit. You can watch it in a crowd. And it's, you know, we've all been part of it. It's not like we're separate from it. Right. It's an entanglement. Right. But rarely is evil so obvious. There's a great book called

by Bulgakov called The Master and the Margarita. Have you heard about this? No. So the devil appears in the rooftops of Moscow and he goes, oh, this is going to be fun. Nobody believes I exist. It's one of the great... The Stone, Sympathy for the Devil, I think that's inspired by him. But this, it's insidious sometimes. Evil is harder to spot. But I think we know, we kind of know

When we see it at full force. We just can't be afraid of sounding foolish. And when you say that I think evil is a real thing, you can sound foolish. You can't measure it. Right. You can't prove it exists. Right. But, you know, that's what I say. But science, you know, science, we need science. We don't need science to prove that evil exists. We need science.

religion to suggest that it exists and how we might deal with it. And in ourselves first, I would suggest, you were talking about fighting the biggest opponent, it would appear, is indeed yourself. You're up against yourself. I've got to that place, and I'm not a sportsman competent, but just in my own walk, I realize, wow, all these people I thought I was, you know,

I was up against, you know, in my head. It's yourself. Yes. I love this thing of the way. I'm going to remember that. And I love the truth. And I love being alive. I love the life. I'm going to hold on to that. Please do. And keep doing whatever you're doing, man. I appreciate you very much. Thank you. Thank you for coming here. It was a lot of fun. Absolutely. I loved it. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it.

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