Sarah Jarosz joins Southern Craft Radio with Joy Williams on Apple Music Country to talk about her Texas Roots, songwriting, her goals for the next decade as she turns 30, and her latest album Blue Heron Suite. Tune in and listen to full episode today (June 6) at 12pm PT / 2pm CT / 3pm ET or anytime on-demand at apple.co/_SouthernCraft

Sarah Jarosz on the first venue that was special to her

“The first venue that was really special to me that I remember going to as a kid was the Cactus Cafe in Austin, which is on the University of Texas campus. When I first going as a little-little kid, I remember my parents... they both went to UT to college. And so that's where they met. And that venue, actually, my mom used to do open mic nights at the Cactus Cafe when she was in college, which is super cool. They told me that they had this group. My parents' names are Gary and Mary, which is very adorable. They had a friend named Todd who was really into music as well. And so they would do open mics as Gary, Mary and Todd, like instead of Peter Paul and Mary. So as a little kid, it was a lot of them telling me those stories of the Cactus Cafe. And then they started taking me there. The first person I remember seeing, I think, was Bill Staines, great singer-songwriter. And even still, when I hear Bill Staines songs now, I get this deeply nostalgic feeling. Because it's that thing where when you hear music as a kid but you're not directly engaged with it and you're almost passively engaged. I was so young. I was falling asleep at the venues because it was way past my bedtime. But it was still infiltrating. And so it's really... I love that. I love having that circular experience with music and songs where you come back to it later in life.”

Sarah Jarosz recalls her music teacher, Diana

“I was so fortunate that the school that I went to from age two through eighth grade, this incredible music teacher, Diana, just happened to... It's definitely one of those... It was just luck that she happened to be such an incredible teacher. And she got me really involved with their... Well, she taught through the Kodaly method, which is basically Zoltan Kodaly is a Hungarian composer. And he developed the Kodaly method, which basically believes all children should be able to have a music education, and that it's really important for brain development. And it's all based around solfege with do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si... All these hand signals. And this is in my tiny town of Wimberley. The fact that she was just such an incredible teacher really, really helped with my development musically early on.”

Sarah Jarosz on the first song she wrote about her childhood dog

“My first memory is of writing an instrumental, because I hadn't really written any music until I got the mandolin when I was 10, or nine, almost 10. And I remember my dog, my childhood dog's name was Marley. And I wrote an instrumental called 'Marley's Blue Chair' because we had this big blue chair in our house and she would always just snuggle up on it. So, I think that was the first piece of music that I wrote.

Sarah Jarosz on being more open to collaborations as a goal for the next decade as she turns 30

“Something I'm really excited for in the next decade is more collaborations with people. I think one aspect, I've been thinking about this a lot, one aspect about having started so young is I was almost very territorial of my music and my songs, especially as a teen and in my early twenties, because you're trying to make your sound, I was trying to find who I was and who I was through my songs. And now that I feel like I kind of know who that is, I feel less territorial and more open to just joining the band with Aoife O'Donovan and Sara Watkins and having that collaboration, which has totally enriched my whole world musically, and getting to play with Chris Thile on 'Live from Here,' and just different things like that. I think that would also be a hope for the next decade, is just making more music with others and being open to that.”

Sarah Jarosz on Blue Heron Suite being the first album she writes about her home

“It's interesting because so 'Blue Heron Suite' was written before 'World on the Ground' was written or even was a thought in my mind at all. And even before I knew that I was going to work with John Leventhal and it's funny, because I did so many interviews this last year for 'World on the Ground,' because it came out almost a year ago and a lot of what I was saying was, 'Oh, this is the first time I've written about where I'm from. This is the first time I've written about Texas and my home and all of the feelings associated with that.' But really 'Blue Heron Suite' was the first time doing that. And in many ways, even though they're coming out in opposite order of how they were written, 'Blue Heron Suite' was the thing that set me off on my path of thinking back to... Having lived enough years away from home to be able to write about it, I guess. And some people are amazing being able to write about something as it's happening, but I've always needed the time to step away and process.”

Rickie Lee Jones joins Record Bin Radio with Kelly McCartney to discuss her music, her muses, and her memoir. Steve Hochman and Kelly dissect the perfection of Rickie Lee's eponymous debut, and Kelly drops the needle on Rickie Lee's sophomore album 'Pirates.'

Tune in and listen to the episode in-full this Sunday (July 11) at 12pm PT / 2pm CT / 3pm ET or anytime on-demand at apple.co/_RecordBinRadio 

Rickie Lee on the initial impact the Beatles had

Unless you were there, I just don’t know how to tell you, it was like extraterrestrials landed. The life before ended, and you can see evidence of it in the screaming faces of girls.  

Rickie Lee on the summer of 1964 and Beatlemania

They were everybody’s introduction, like, President Kennedy to a new world, a coming world. It went into my skin and my muscles. That hot summer when my cousins came and the Beatles were out.    

Rickie Lee’s influences on her eponymous debut album

You know I was using some Randy Newman. I was using a little Tom Waits. I was harkening back to the Beatles. I went every…Taj Mahal, everybody I loved, I had written in their direction.  

Rickie Lee on her place in the music world

You know some people think of me as like the last of the singer-songwriters, but I think I’m the first of another kind of singer-songwriter, who is much more pop-oriented, and sang jazz, and brought all kinds of things to the table…that folk rock detested.

Jakob Dylan joins super producer Dave Cobb on Southern Accents Radio to discussed his new album, Exit Wounds, this past Saturday, July 10th at 4pm PST/7pm EST on Apple Music Country. He talks about working with Butch Walker on Exit Wounds, The Wallflowers' first album since 2012, how he picks songs for his albums, and how he decides whether or not they should be part of The Wallflowers or his solo project. He also talks about John Prine, making the music documentary Echo in the Canyon, and more.

Jakob Dylan on how he picks songs for his album:

"Of course we all think our newest song is our best song. So at this point, I do understand that it's likely not always the case, but I'm one of the people I just tend to finish only the stuff that I know I'm going to use. If I know I'm not going to use something, I don't want to spend too much time on it. So I've never had, loads of unused songs when I finished records 'cause if I know something's not going to be used, it's hard for me to give it a hundred percent. I just move on to the things I know need all the work.”

Jakob Dylan on John Prine and writing with songs with characters in mind:

“But I thought that early on that if John Prine would be writing songs during this time that we were hearing, I don't think that he'd be naming names and using buzzwords. I think he'd be probably writing about characters living through this time. But I think he wouldn't have hit the nail on the head. I think he would have just danced around it with characters and given the storyline existing during this time. And that's what I would prefer to do. For a lot of people, they did write songs during this time, but I don't know if they're going to want to sing those songs in five years when we're out of this, I hope. That's kind of what I meant was, I want to sing my songs for as long as I'm around and if they got too many buzz phrases from 2020, I might lose interest because I think we all just want to move on.”

Jakob Dylan on knowing if a song should be part of The Wallflowers or solo project:

“It's an instinct that I have when I start writing songs and I start thinking about a record. If I've been on the road for a while with the Wallflowers, maybe I don't want to hear that sound for a little bit. Maybe the songs don't apply. If it's a solo record, I feel like there's almost anything I can do. I'm not really upholding or advancing any sound that I'm working on. It could be completely new and it can have any instrumentation that I might want to consider at that time. But the Wallflowers, it has a sound, it just does. And it's a sound that I can create in the studio with a lot of different people. But if I don't want to hear that sound, you can do all kinds of different things. But I've worked on that for a long time. I like that sound and it's a great part of me. And I want to revisit that often.”

Jakob Dylan on preferring to work with a producer who is a musician and working with Butch Walker:

“I can't tell you how many different kinds of producers there are, but I don't want someone who's just a music fan to hang on the couch and just tell me what they like. I mean we can all do that. And some people are stronger at that than others, but not just, it's only Brendan O'Brien is an engineer and a great musician. You can have both. Then you've got other people who just hang out and listen. And I can't tell you which is the right one for you or for anybody else as an artist. But I've found that I want somebody who I can relate to. Who knows what it is to walk in my shoes. Who's doing the same job as me, which is someone like Butch is exactly that. I know Butch first and foremost as a singer songwriter, as a performer. That's where I really know him from. And of course I know him as a producer as well, but I played with him plenty. We've jammed together and done shows together. So that's how I think of him, as someone who does the same job as me. But he's very, he's a great producer for someone like me, because as you produce records, there's not a lot of purpose in being there if you can't allow the artists to feel fearless and let them understand that it is their record. You can be bullied around the studio and then you just, I wouldn't do that anymore.”

Jakob Dylan on his love of songwriting:

“I live for that moment, to write songs, and when they're just... That moment when you just, you know what it's going to be, what's it potential is, and you know it's all there. And then, I can't wait to get to a room with people that I'm going to work with and show it to them. And I could see by their faces that this is something that moves them too. And I know the opposite too. I know coming in with songs and nobody's being moved, and I know we're going to sit around trying to make a song better than it is. And that frustrates me. So I usually know that if the bass player and I are playing the song together and we worked out what he's or she's going to do, and we know what the harmony notes are and we know what the groove is, then we can go in the room with everybody and they can take out their note pads and we can start writing things down. And it's not only the way it works better for me, but I live for that. I really like that. And the other way of pre-production, I don't make demos.”

John Mayer joins Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 to discuss his forthcoming eighth studio album ’Sob Rock’. He tells Apple Music why there’s “no more reason to have to adhere to any given idea of cool”, approaching songwriting like a film director, how he defines writer’s block, why his albums are different thematically, limiting there album to 10 songs, and how humor informs the album. He also discusses his relationship with Shawn Mendes and why he’s “remarkable”.

John Mayer Tells Apple Music The Mission Statement of ’Sob Rock’...

Sob Rock is made to make you feel joy because it was made in a moment where joy was at such a premium

John Mayer Tells Apple Music About ’Sob Rock’ Being Nostalgia But Not Traceable To Anything From the Past…

The idea of Sob Rock is that it might've been something that already happened. But when you go looking, it's not. The idea of sob rock is to implant false memories into your brain, because that's what it did for me. So it's a little black mirror. You can't find it. It's out of my brain, and it's out of everyone's shared Mandela Effect, okay? And the question is, can you have memories of things that never happened to you?Can you have memories of things that never happened to you, or that might've happened to you but you were too young? Can you go back in time and synthesize a piece of work that's so true to the era, that when you hear it, your brain goes, "No, no, this exists. No, no, I'm going to find it." And you can’t.

John Mayer Tells Apple Music Why There’s “No More Reason To Have To Adhere To Any Given Idea of Cool” and Making a Provocative / Antagonizing Album...

John Mayer: When I made my first record, I was told, "Look, it's not what's hot."

Zane Lowe: Yeah. What a great thing to be told at the beginning, by the way.

John Mayer: Oh, I would just get my spirit crushed. Look, this is what's hot. POD, Papa Roach, Korn.

John Mayer: What I would love other people to understand is that there is no more reason to have to adhere to any given idea of cool. Especially post-pandemic, which for the first time in anyone's lives stopped the clock on hyper modern day trade of culture. And so for me, I went, "Well, I don't have to do anything I don't want to do. And in fact, I can make a record that's in some way provocative, if not antagonizing." And then I did what I thought was going to be antagonizing, and this is the most important part of the conversation I think creatively. You may just have to dress up your intentions to make something different. And call it by a name that no one else is going to call it after it's made, and for me it was like, "I want to get in trouble. I want someone to tell me this is shit." And I made a record, that to me at the time, only in a way to coax something out of me that I wouldn't have normally done. Shit post a record, it's called Sob Rock because it's a shit posting. But more importantly it's what I thought was a shit post and this gets down to where artists sit in front of you and play you what they think is their garbage. And you go, "That's the best thing I ever heard you play."It makes a mockery of their interpretation of the experience. Which is just enough to break out of the mold and make something unique.

Zane Lowe: The whole trade, exactly. You detonated it.

John Mayer: Yeah. And the reason you have to is because I never want to be that artist who runs out of paint colors and begins to just make the same songs over and over again. If you're lucky enough to be 20 years in, you do have to deal with the fact that, wow, these paint colors they want me to use, it's another blue painting. It's another blue painting with a white stripe. It's another blue painting with a white tree. It's another blue painting with a white car. So for me, I'm only interested if I get to put new paints on the canvas. And if my way of doing it at this time was, literally no one's looking. This one's called Sob Rock because you just would never have imagined that was the name of the record. And I'm going to go so deep into my fantasy. I live, half of me is in this fantasy all the time now, especially as I'm watching the promo stuff come together.

John Mayer Tells Apple Music About His Relationship With Shawn Mendes and Why He’s “Remarkable”...

John Mayer: Well, Shawn's a little different. I think I know everything he makes. We send each other everything we make, so I know... It's really cool. As I sit here, I know what he's going for on his next record.Which I find actually really informative for me as a musician to understand. If I can understand where the key players are going, it helps me understand where I would sit, given the records I make.

Zane Lowe: What I love about your relationship with Shawn is that on paper, it feels more like somebody who is uniquely inspired by you, that you would then try to nurture and guide. But I know that you actually have a deep friendship, and there's a brodown there.

John Mayer: He's remarkable. He's remarkable. That's all there is to it. He'll send me stuff he's working on, and I'll send him stuff I'm working on. And we don't really sugarcoat it for each other. Cool. Sometimes we go, "Cool." Sometimes we go, "Now that's one." He is so honest man, he's really... You know who he reminds me of? He reminds me of George Harrison, in the sense that his spirit is immovable, and it's his, and it's honest. And that's very George Harrison to me. I remember seeing George Harrison on the Dick Cavett show, obviously not when it aired. And he's not pushed around by the excitement around him.

John Mayer Tells Apple Music About Approaching Songwriting Like a Film Director…

I think I got more out of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood than I ever expected to get out in terms of it being an achievement, an aesthetic achievement. And I thought a lot about being a director on this record, having tenure, having what the kids call clout. If I'm working on a movie or a record, then people might want to know what that idea is, and might trust that whatever that idea is is worth watching or listening to, to keep the metaphor running. So to me, it's like sitting down to write a movie. Oh, I have an idea for a movie. I don't hear about movie writers getting writer's block, I just hear about them picking different projects.

John Mayer Tells Apple Music How He Defines Writer’s Block and Why His Albums Are Different Thematically...

John Mayer: Writer's block is when the two people inside of you, the writer and the reader, when the reader doesn't love the writer, or when the listener doesn't love the player. And so writer's block is not a failure to write, it is a failure to catch this feedback loop of enjoying what you're seeing and wanting to contribute more to it. So writer's block for me doesn't happen as often as it does for other people, because I know when I'm ready to sit down and go for it.

Zane Lowe: So you know when you are connected to that conduit in a meaningful way, and you know when it's cloudy and best to sit tight?

John Mayer: Mm-hmm. And also, I don't really make records unless I've caught a new mission statement for what the music should be, what the message should be. And once I catch that, then it's a little bit easier to write. So the reason my records are so different thematically, is because I just have to wait until I catch a new script idea. I'm beginning to look at what I do more like a film director. Not to be artsy-fartsy.

John Mayer Tells Apple Music About The Song “Why You No Love Me” and How Humor Informs The Album…

…when I was making the record, the idea was that I was getting somewhere if I laughed. Not because it's hilarious and it's insincere and it's jokey. It's unexpected. We laugh when the sentence ends in a way you don't expect, or just... the song that explains this the most is "Why You No Love Me" on the record, which is funny in the sense that it is so blatantly beautiful and sappy, and it's like this late seventies kind of... All the names. The lyrics are brutal. I've never written more brutal lyrics in my life. And when I would play it for people, they would laugh because it's like, what are you doing? And then sort of go like, stop it, right? It was like this umami flavor where, musically, you're on a sailboat, and lyrically, if you really break it down, it's really, really intense.

 "Why You No Love Me" is how I have spoken those words for a long time in relationship. And it is the child who... It's not English as a second language. It's language as a second language. How do I use these words that I've just learned as a child... And maybe it takes 43 years to ask that question, but you still ask it in the language of a child. How is it possible? How is it possible that you couldn't love me, right? And that's brutal. But it's funny, as all things that are brutal are when you're an adult. Do you know what I'm talking about? And for me, I wouldn't have finished that song if I thought it was a joke. I don't have the balls to carry a joke that far.

John Mayer Tells Apple Music About The Song “Shouldn’t Matter But It Does”…

"Shouldn't Matter But It Does", I wrote in my head. It was the only song I never wrote down. I would just work on it in my head. I'd stand in the shower and work on the song. And then I went up and wrote it up in the studio in Montana. I wrote it in an evening. I just put it down, and I thought it was nice. Okay. It's nice. Normally the first song you write for a run is like the pipe clearer.

John Mayer Tells Apple Music About Limiting The Album to 10 Songs…

Yes, this is the record where I had 10 songs locked. These are the 10. My record before, which was The Search for Everything, to me suffered, because the door was open to it the whole time. New songs would come in, old songs would go out. So there was probably a version of that record that would have come out a year earlier that would have been a little more focused. So the new rule was, these are the 10.

Elton John celebrates 300 episodes and 6 years of Elton John’s Rocket Hour, one of the longest running radio shows airing on Apple Music radio. On this special show, Elton introduces us to three new artists that he’s loving right now: Yola, The Weather Station and Jake Wesley Rogers. He talks to up-and-coming British singer-songwriter Yola about returning to the live arena, Toronto-native Tamara Lindeman about her album as The Weather Station being one his favorite releases of the year, and Nashville-based Jake Wesley Rogers about his love of song-writing - and their shared love of platform shoes!

credit to: Elton John’s Rocket Hour on Apple Music 1

Tune in and listen to the episode in-full this Saturday (July 17) live at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5pm UK or listen back anytime on-demand at apple.co/_RocketHour.

To celebrate the show’s milestone, Apple Music 1 will also host Rocket Day and will encore several of Elton’s favorite episodes of Rocket Hour leading up to the big 300th episode. Tune in to the Rocket Day special programming this Saturday, July 17, from midnight PT on Apple Music 1 at apple.co/am-1

Elton John on The Weather Station’s new album ‘Ignorance’

It's not one of my favourite albums of the year. It's one of my favourite albums for a long, long time. And it just goes on repeat and repeat and repeat. So it's a brilliant, brilliant record.

The Weather Station’s Tamara Lindeman on making the album

Tamara Lindeman: It came out of so many things. I mean, one of the biggest things was writing songs strangely on like a toy keyboard with auto accompaniment. So I wrote songs with like children's beats, basically. And that really informed my process and pushed me into writing a different kind of song than I ever had. And then emotionally, the record really came out of this stew of emotions and feelings and confusions of how to be a person in this really strange time in history with so much darkness around us. And I felt like all of my songs were like two waves meeting and kind of crashing together in strange ways.

Elton John: I agree with you. We are living in the strangest of times. I mean, being a musician, not being able to play live, what’s going on to the planet, what's going on politically, what's going on just in general with media. And it's a troubling time, and I totally agree with you. The songs just blend into each other so brilliantly. A lot of it reminds me of Fleetwood Mac for some reason.

Tamara on “Robber”

This song is really complicated to me. It started as this weird drone on a keyboard and I was playing these odd chords over top. Strangely, I was thinking about ExxonMobil and like the way that they lied to us. It's very personal for me because I was born in the 80’s and that's when a lot of this stuff happened. And so I just was thinking so much about like, how do we define a wrongdoer? Why can't we see that people who wear suits kind of take more than people of colour, who too often are the person arrested and sort of seen as a scapegoat? So there was a lot in there and it's a bit of a mess, but it struck a nerve for sure.

Elton John on Yola’s new album ’Standing for Myself’

Elton John: We've played three tracks from your new album, which is called ‘Standing for Myself.’ It's coming out in July, the 30th. It's produced by Dan Auerbach, who's one of my favourite producers and, of course, he's from the Black Keys. And I think you met him in 2017, didn't you, in Nashville?

Yola: Well, I spoke to him on the phone in 2017, but I didn't meet him until the first writing session. So it was like-

Elton John: No, really?

Yola: Yes, it's a lot.

Elton John: It's a match made in heaven because he's such a great producer. And now you're living in Nashville?

Yola: Yeah. I've made the move. Yes I have.

Elton on Yola’s energy

Elton John: You're obviously having fun [in Nashville] and it's good for you because the music that's coming out of your soul is so beautiful. Now it would be correct to say that you have a lot of energy, right? You have... It just comes across. I haven't met you, but even in your music and when I see you being interviewed, you have so much positive energy coming out of you, which is so great in a world that we live in right now which is full of negative stuff. You come across as a beacon of hope.

Yola: Oh get out! Oh my gosh! That just means a lot, especially coming from you. But also, it just does mean a lot. I try everything I can do to put good energy in the world, but simultaneously not being vacuous or vapid with it, because I think that's very easy to do. It'd be like, I'm positive energy and that means that I'm not about anything. And so, yeah. I'm glad that that's coming across.

Elton and Yola on getting ready to perform live again

Yola: We've been in Telluride, of all places, in Colorado, up in the mountains, and we're just getting warmed in. And because obviously it's been a long time since we played shows. And so we've dotted a few things around, get warmed in before the Newports, plural, and the Red Rocks' and all these things that are coming up.

Elton John: I know how you feel because last Saturday I had to do a charity show on my own, just me and the piano. I hadn't sung for over a year. In the afternoon, I was sitting at my piano at home, which I never play, and I was rehearsing songs. I think even though I played these songs thousands of times, if I go there tonight and I **** this up, I will look so stupid. So I was quiet, we had houseguests, and I was trying to be as quiet as a mouse and I was trying to rehearse stuff. I'm thinking, "God, if they could hear me now," I'm thinking, "How many times has he sung that? Why is he rehearsing?" If you haven't done it for a long time, you got to do it right?

Yola on playing Sister Rosetta Tharpe in the upcoming Baz Luhrmann film about Elvis Presley

Elton John: I just want to mention something else, you're in the new upcoming Baz Luhrmann film about Elvis Presley and you play Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Now that's big shoes to fill, baby.

Yola: Yeah, no pressure. Only the person that invented rock and roll; no pressure at all. And also, I'm a rhythm guitar player. I'm not a lead guitar player. And I had to learn to play lead because obviously, she's one of the greatest guitar players. And so I spent a year and a bit learning a couple of solos for the movie. And I am grateful for the extra time that I had. I was supposed to go after three months of learning this solo. I was like, "Yeah, I'm not going to learn that." But I had all of this time, and then I was doing these solos for 15-hour shoots. And so I was landing them, having never done a single solo in my life.

Elton John: Well, bravo for that. And I love Baz, he's a friend of ours and I'm sure the movie is going to be fantastic.

Elton John on Jake Wesley Rogers reminding him of himself in the 70's

Elton John: I have to say I'm so excited to see you in person. I got turned onto your music by Jake Shears from the Scissor Sisters who said, "You've got to hear In the ‘Middle of Love’.” So I watched the video and it was so funny, it made me laugh because you look like an elongated version of me in the 1970s with the shoes, the outfit, the glasses, and everything.

Jake Wesley Rogers: Just stretched out.

Elton John: Yeah, baby. Because I'm not that tall, but you are. How tall are you?

Jake Wesley Rogers: I'm 6'4", so when I wear my platforms, I'm like a gay monster.

Elton John: Yeah. I used to wear eight inch platforms back in the day and I was six foot four then, but I'm actually only five foot eight. It's a great feeling to be towering above everybody else, right?

Jake Wesley Rogers: It really is, yeah. I feel very powerful.

Elton on Jake’s personality and "carrying the torch for having fun"

You must be excited to actually play this stuff live because it's just... What I love as a songwriter is that the songs are so beautifully formed. And for someone so new, I find that really, really, really encouraging that someone is carrying on and having the personality that you do have, and the look and everything like that. It means so much to me that someone is having fun.

Because we live in a world where there's not much fun going on. It's a bit dour out there, but you seem to be carrying the torch for having fun. Like Jake Shears who's been my friend ever since I met him. I know you've been round to his house and had a sing song and everything like that. I'd love to do that too. I can't wait to meet you because I think we have so much in common. 

Jake Wesley Rogers on writing “Momentary”

I started writing this project in London, actually in 2019 and I went on an Oscar Wilde walking tour and I kind of had one of those moments where the tour guide said, "If there's an enemy in Oscar Wilde's story, it was his lover Bosie” and I kind of had one of those lightning strike moments where I realized that for so long, for so many of us, love has been the enemy. Love has been the thing that has crucified us or sent us to jail or murdered us. I kind of wrote "Momentary" after that as a response of someone who's living in 2021 who's allowed to be out and proud when so many people before me were not allowed. That burden gift of being able to grow up and be out. That's what that song is about for me.

Jake Wesley Rogers on coming out

Jake Wesley Rogers: I kind of came out when I was 12 and then again when I was 16.

Elton John: I imagine 16 was like an Exocet missile. You just said "I've got to go for it," right?

Jake Wesley Rogers: Oh yeah. I was like, "Mom and Dad, I'm gay and I'm dating the preacher's son."

Elton John: How were they? How were your parents?

Jake Wesley Rogers: Oh, they're everything. They're wonderful. They've been so supportive. I do not take that for granted at all, especially being from the Bible Belt, being from Missouri, I'm grateful for it every day.

On the latest episode of Rock Classics Radio with Jenn, legendary guitarist Brian May joins to discuss the deluxe release of his Back To The Light album and play some of his favorites from Queen, The Beatles and The Who.

Brian May on the beginning of Queen…

"Well, it's a time of great upheaval and I was struggling to choose between a career in science and, uh, a very dodgy, dubious career in music, which probably was never going to happen. We had an insane belief as four boys who had no influence in the world whatsoever. We didn't know how to get a record deal. We didn't know how to get concerts, to play gigs, to play clubs or whatever. And it was an insane kind of belief that we were actually good enough to do this. We will conquer the world."

Brian May on the early Queen fans and Freddie Mercury’s annoyance when fans would sing along to his parts in songs…

"The people who became the core fans? Yeah. They used to call themselves the Royal family. They were great. They helped to sort of build up the belief. Freddie would say ‘Oh my God, those people are in the front row again, it's the same people. Ahhh!' And actually there came a point where they would kind of sing bits before he did and that kind of pissed off. So I think he had a word with them at some point and said, ‘Look, just, don’t sing my part. Okay.’"

Brian May on being mistaken for Led Zeppelin…

"I remember going up and down the motorway to play these tiny little shows and clubs and we would stop off in the motorway cafes. And we obviously look like rock stars, or tramps. And people would come up to us and say, ‘Are you guys in a band?' And we go, ‘Yeah, we're led Zeppelin.' You know, because trying to explain to them who we were, it would have been hopeless. And they went, ‘Oh really?’ And we go “No."'

Brian May on how revisiting the Back To The Light album was therapeutic…

"I really relived it and it did bring back a lot of the darkness of the time. But it was actually good for me to realize that the problems that I had at that point and the way that I had worked my way through them."

Brian May on the re-release of Back To The Light being available to fans in so many new ways…

“The fact that people will be able to hold the CD in their hands or the vinyl. They'll be able to smell the vinyl. They'll be able to put it on their turntables, there's a cassette version. And it just makes me incredibly happy that it will be out there all polished up and kind of there for all time."

One of the most important moments in music history, the '60 Days That Changed Rock’ on Apple Music will celebrate the albums that showed the world the mighty force of rock ’n' roll.

In 1991, rock ’n' roll was going through a seismic shift. The 80s had created mega rock bands like Metallica and Guns n Roses and they were bigger than ever as the 80s rolled into the 90s. The alternative scene of the 80s was initially isolated to college campuses and “in-the-know” clubs but bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and the Red Hot Chili Peppers made sure that they were no longer going to be defined as simply a college rock band

Debuting with Metallica’s ‘The Black Album’, each week for six weeks a different album will be featured and added to the rock music feature. In addition, Apple Music radio hosts Strombo and Jenn from Rock Classics will create companion radio shows for each album that will air on Apple Music Hits.  

8/19 (Launch) - Metallica The Black Album’s anniversary will be the celebrated this week
9/2 - Pearl Jam Ten’s anniversary will be celebrated this week
9/16 - Guns N’ Roses Use Your Illusion I & II’s anniversaries will be celebrated this week
9/23  - Nirvana Nevermind’s anniversary will be celebrated this week
9/30 - Red Hot Chili Peppers Blood Sugar Sex Magik’s anniversary will be celebrated this week
10/7 - Soundgarden Badmotorfinger’s anniversary will be celebrated this week

Tom Scholz of Boston co-hosts Rock Classics Radio with Jenn on Apple Music Hits as he celebrates the 45th anniversary of the band’s eponymous album and takes listeners through the hits that inspired him, from The Kinks and Led Zeppelin, to Jeff Beck, Deep Purple, and more. He also talks about ‘Foreplay’ being Boston’s first complete work, and when he realized ‘More Than A Feeling’ was an impactful song in rock history.

Tom Scholz on wishing he could meet Jeff Beck

"I actually wish I have, but I've never met him. However, apparently after he bought a couple of my rock man headphone amps, he did send in his two warranty cards and I have the one, my Bill Meyer bulletin board still. I mean, the guy's interpretation of just melody in general with his guitar was just unheard of up to that point. Obviously he was a guitar player for the Yardbirds along with two other great guitar players. He just had a way of it was like a vocalist singing the lines on it. He could do it with his fingers and the fret board. I think that's what really moved me, was the, his ability to control the sound of the individual notes. When somebody talks about a piece of music and playing a C sharp or whatever, you can hit a C sharp on a piano note. And it's gonna sound pretty much the same each time with a guitar. There's a thousand different ways to play that note and all of them sound different and all of them have their own sort of expression. He was just an absolute master of the controlling, the individual sounds that come out of each note of a guitar. And that's what really got me interested and trying to learn that art because up until listening to him do it I just, I wasn't that excited about it. Hearing him really inspired me… with that amazingly raspy voice."

Tom Scholz on how he discovered The Kinks

"I actually heard them driving my '55 Ford that I had restored at under that weight at way too high, a rate of speed. Especially with that music line, that was the first place I heard that, uh, with my fourth, of course, the am radio speaker turned all the way up and practically bouncing out of the dashboard. That was just an amazing thing. The moment you heard it, "du nu nu nu nuh" , you had like, I, they had me right there. So by the first snare hit, I was, I was hooked. The Kinks, they are, I would have to say probably the biggest influence for me to get interested and popular rock and roll. I was nine and an Elvis Presley fan. It just didn't do anything for me and Buddy Holly. I didn't have any interest at all in rock and roll music at that point. When I heard The Kinks, that was it. It was literally, it was All Of The Night and All of the Day. That's all I wanted to hear. Fortunately of course I grew up in Toledo, Ohio. And if you lived in Toledo, Ohio in the sixties, uh, you heard CKL w from Cleveland and you heard the Detroit stations. And basically what you got was Motown, day and night Boston. However, the city of Boston was offering a much different flavor of music and they played you know, sort of the English sound rock and roll. And at night you could get Boston radio stations on AM radio, as far as Toledo, Ohio. This sounds like ancient stuff like from back in the days of the, like the Romans and the Greeks. And that's what really, uh, sort of influenced my whole outlook on rock music was this new sort of English sound that ironically came from Boston. And that does have something to do with why my music was eventually called Boston about eight or nine years later."

Tom Scholz on Led Zeppelin

"The music was awesome. This a brief part in how many more times, which goes on for a long time. There's a brief, there's a brief part in the middle where they have some breaks and Jimmy page starts playing this melody over the top of it. Then he goes back and he adds a second harmony part to it, which clearly was sampling harmony to himself on tape. And that did not go unnoticed by me. I, I thought that was one of the coolest things I'd ever heard. Never had heard it anywhere else. And all I could think of is I would like to hear a lot more of that. Uh, so, uh, when I got, you know, when it came to my turn, sort of to, um, write in a range, I was determined that a harmony guitar parts were going to be, um, this is the thing that I was going to do."

Tom on James Gang ‘Rides Again’ being one of his favorite all time albums

"I was going to say, not everybody.... I mean, you know,  James Gang Rides Again, people, when you, you know, when you mentioned Joe Walsh, they said, oh, the Eagles now, not the Eagles James Gang. And of course a lot of James Gang was simply Joe Walsh, but his work on the guitar, again, it's his knack for a funky guitar playing. It was unparalleled. And it really showed up on that, uh, the album Rides Again, which was, uh, not only one of my first albums, but one of my favorite all time albums and I, of course was a huge, huge fan of Joe Walsh and his playing style. There was a short period of time where everything I played on a rhythm guitar sounded like Joe's show playing Funk #49. So, okay. That was another song I could play in my suite."

Tom on how Deep Purple ‘Hush’ got him excited about playing organ

"This was my introduction to Deep Purple. And of course, this is now, now you're back in the early sixties. That song just sounds and no offense did, you know, Deep Purple in their later formations and music. And that, that's what they are most popular for the music they did much later, um, in the late seventies. But that song is completely different in style. And the primary reason for that is that Hammond player was just astounding and he was doing things that not only had I never heard before. Um, I really, frankly, hadn't heard since that is what got me a lot more interested in pursuing Oregon in general. I already, I knew how to play piano. I knew how to play keyboards. It was not a big challenge for me, probably because I learned when I was a little kid. So it, it kind of stuck with me. But when I heard that guy played Hammond, I went, oh my God. So first thing I had to do was find some way to get a Hammond because they're huge, they're expensive. I was in, uh, I was in school and then headed for college. And of course, like everybody else in college, I had no money. So I did eventually I was able to scrounge the lowest echelon of, uh, uh, Hammond, Oregon called the MP3 from a really old couple that were getting rid of it. And, um, then I had to, it took me years, but I finally figured out, you know, what that guy was doing and how he was doing these things. Cause it was just so, uh, it was just so unusual. I, I had my background in hearing keyboards in Oregon in particular prior to that with Jimmy Smith and maybe a little Booker T and the mgs and of course a completely different style of playing, but one that I really appreciated. So I, I feel like I sort of learned how to play with music and by play with music. I mean, how to you know, how to mess around with music on an Oregon keyboard from Jimmy Smith, but, um, being able to utilize those style elements from that first song, from Deep Purple ‘Hush.' That was what really got me excited about playing organ. I sort of combined the two along with a fair amount of Chopin and, uh, some other classical musicians.”

Tom on what a phenomenal organ player Jimmy Smith was

"No [I never got to meet him.’ I never meet anybody. I mean, as everybody knows, I'm reclusive. And so that kind of comes with the territory of you. Don't meet people, however, yeah. Jimmy Smith, what a phenomenal organ player. And, uh, you know, just for that, those are those risks and those things to be in his brain someplace. It was amazing. Uh, I did my best at using what I learned from the combination of his playing and my classical training to, uh, uh, when I tried to fit, um, Oregon into the songs that I was writing. So I think kinda hear some of both, I will never claim to be Jimmy Smith. But I was probably kind of one of his disciples at one point."

Tom on Foreplay being the first complete piece of music for Boston

"That's true. It was the first complete. It wasn't a song cause it's an instrumental. But I wrote it in 1969. It was well, technically I was a junior at MIT. I wrote it on a, a Wurlitzer electric piano. And for those of you who don't know what a Wurlitzer electric piano is, it was one of the first and it actually had real piano keys. And, uh, these strange little vibrating reads inside, it was all electrical mechanical. So when you played it, um, you were like banging on the keys, like you would on a real piano, hard. It wasn't an electronic keyboard. So mine was on the fourth floor of the apartment building I lived in and when I would get done with my problem sets and I had a little bit of time left, I would go crazy jamming on my electric piano. And one of the things I was working on was this song, foreplay course, I would do that really late at night after I finished my problem set. So at like 12 one in the morning, I'd be banging on this thing. And I didn't realize that it was a wood floor and it was connected directly to the ceiling below me of the three girls that lived in the apartment. I wonder why those girls didn't like me. You know, none of them ....They never complained. They were the best. They never complained. And when I was leaving there, finally I have to two years, they said, you know, we heard you playing that. And I won't say the word piano every fricking night. And, um, they'd never said a thing now, let me do it. Thank God because I would have stopped. That was one of the first things that came out was the song foreplay. Uh, in the end, the version that's on the first album is the, is the shortest recorded version of it. And basically what I was keeping them awake at night, and then down in the apartment below me, uh, it has a much, much longer versions that we, that we did live. And eventually we would, we played the whole thing which went on for about six minutes. It's still one of my favorite pieces of music to play. And thankfully, one of the things that I can remember without ever practicing. So if I there've been times when I haven't played at Oregon for a well over a year, it doesn't make any difference. I can sit down and play that without a hitch. So thank God …"

Tom on how it took 40 years for him to realize how impactful Boston's ‘More Than A Feeling’ was

"I think maybe about three or four years ago, you know. I didn't really expect that people were going to get very excited about that song. You know, I went through this really agonizing process for like six years where I worked on material and built studios and, and designed equipment for making musical equipment, for making the sounds that I needed and so forth. And during that time, I mean, I was rejected by everyone all the time. I had virtually no positive support whatsoever. There was a drummer that I like to jam with and that I would sometimes work with for ideas. Other than that, there was just nobody, I didn't get encouragement from anyone. So as I was recording the first, recording of More Than a Feeling, which was a demo cut at which by the way was exactly the same as the final version. I didn't think anybody was going to like it. The reason I was doing it after, when I got to that point, which was about six years after I had sort of started on this, this quest, my goal was to get a song played on a local radio station for, you know, just a couple of times so that I could go out and play a guitar in a band locally and have people have some idea what they were going to hear and listen. I wanted to play original music. I didn't think my original music was very popular or fit in any kind of groove, uh, any kind of marketing niche, because basically every single, uh, record company that I had ever sent the demo to. And I sent a lot all said. So when I did more than a ceiling, you know, there was a song that I really liked. And, you know, I love that whole, like the whole guitar thing that Dom Dom, which it turns out it's really unusually hard for most guitar players to get the hang of, um, I've showed it to many people, including some that played on stage with me. And I thought it was very natural. It turns out it's a really unnatural and I didn't think that it was going to be a big thing with anybody. I thought, well, they'll probably pick some other one of my other songs if I do get lucky and get something on the radio. So even after I had to, even after I landed a recording contract and it knew that there was going to be an album released, whatever that meant.  I still didn't expect it to be a success. I was doing it to sort of, you know, complete a job, complete a project. And then I figured I'd be going back to work for Polaroid. And I said, well, if I get really, really lucky, I may be able to go out and play one or two of these songs in clubs with some other musicians and have a good time. That was my entire goal and to get to that goal, I had spent literally all my spare time for six years, sometimes I spent the time I was supposed to be working as an engineer doing it. And they had spent all of my money and some more that I borrowed. So it was reaching the end, and when I sent the last demo that had more than a feeling on it, it was with the idea that this is the last demo I'm going to send out. And once it's out and it's done, I'm going to liquidate the equipment because I've got to be a little more responsible. I was almost 30. And I was, you know, basically spending all my time and money doing this. So it's time to do something else. So I never expected anybody was going to really care that much. It's shocking to see how sort of ubiquitous that song is. I mean, people that don't even listen to rock music really will recognize a song more than a feeling or the, at least those chords never expected it. I still can't quite believe it. So when you say, when did it dawn, when did it actually sink in, really, about 40 years."

Sam Fender joins Elton John on Apple Music 1 to discuss his new album, 'Seventeen Going Under'. During the chat, Elton tells Sam that he and his husband David think of him 'like [their] eldest son', Sam shares the inspiration behind tracks including 'Get You Down' and 'Spit Of You', explains how he first got to know Fontaines D.C, and more.

Elton John Says He Thinks Of Sam Fender As A Son….

Well, for everyone who's listening at home or wherever you are, Sam and I have become great friends. And he's like a member of our family. Our boys, Elijah and Zachary, love him so much, and David. He's like somebody that ... he's like our eldest son in a way. And it's just great when we see each other. We play each other music and we cheer each other up when we're down in the dumps and it's a lovely thing. A friendship that's blossomed so beautifully.

Sam Fender Tells Elton John About His New Album…

Me and the boys are really, really proud of this record because I think it feels more concise as a piece of work. It feels like it's a more cohesive piece of art. And it's very personal, because of the lockdown and the nature of being stuck indoors and not having all the social situations to worry about, it became a very introspective record. And became a lot about my childhood because I was doing therapy at the time and it's become very personal. And we're all really, really proud of it. And I'm really excited for people to hear it. It's all about the trials and tribulations of growing up and self-esteem and all of that stuff, which I think a lot of people could, well, pretty much everybody can relate to that I think. So hopefully people like it.

Sam Fender Tells Elton John About New Song ‘Get You Down’…

This is a song about how insecurity can destroy a relationship. And it's about that moment of realising that these insecurities are getting the better of you. And you're well aware of it and you're well aware that you're being pathetic. But you're out of control of it. And it's that soul crushing moment where you know you're being a bit of an ass, but you can't stop yourself because jealousy's taken the reins.

Sam Fender And Elton John Discuss ‘Spit Of You’…

Elton John: I just saw a preview of the video of this track yesterday, and it's a song about fathers and sons and how sometimes we don't get to each other and can't talk to each other. That happened to me, and it's happened to Sam, and it's happened to so many people….Tell me about this, Sam, your dad liked it apparently?

Sam Fender: Yeah, he does, it's his favourite song. Yeah. But if anything, it's about boys and their dads and about how I think men are raised as well. And how we're raised to not really speak about anything remotely emotional. Me and him could talk about music and we could talk about DIY or World War II history until the cows come home. But the moment it gets serious, it's like the walls come up and we end up wanting to punch each other's heads in. But if anything, it's a declaration of love for him as well. And it's about how when I saw him with my grandmother, when I saw him say goodbye to my grandmother when she passed away last year, I saw him as a son. And how that made us realise that time is precious.

Elton John: That's a great song. One of my favourites from the album, ‘Spit Of You’ from Sam Fender. I couldn't even talk to my dad about music, let alone DIY. No one can talk to me about DIY because I have no idea.

Sam Fender Tells Elton John About The Inspiration Behind ‘The Borders’...

It's a song that's based around my growing up in Scotland, the time that I spent when my mother went to Scotland when I was eight. So when I used to go up and see her, I had another sort of childhood at the time. And there was a lot of things during that time that were quite character building moments for us as a young lad. And it was the first time that I'd ever wrote about that time of my life. And also I feel like it was the catalyst, this song in the first record, was the catalyst for all of the songs that came in ‘Seventeen Going Under’ as well. It kind of opened up the door, it opened up Pandora's Box of all of these memories and things that I could delve into and write about. And it's one of my favourite songs on the first album.

Sam Fender Tells Elton John About His Friendship With Fontaines D.C…

Yes, I've become good friends with the boys actually. They came and did a big show with us in Newcastle the other week. And I saw them live, the first time I saw them I was in ... you know South by Southwest in Austin? We did a festival in Austin when we were trying to get signed. And we played three gigs in one day. And every gig that we played, they were playing a gig across the road. So as soon as I finished my set, I'll just go over and I watched Fontaines three times in one day. And I absolutely fell in love with them. And then we went out and had a big night on the Guinness in London and became good friends. And I've loved them ever since, they're just brilliant.

On stories about David Bowie

Gerry:  "Yeah, more than one more than one. He's an amazing human he was ... and is in my mind, he's alive. A guy like Bowie, because of the body of work he left and the legacy he left,... he's alive. One of the standout moments, when we hung out, Mark and I hung out with him in New York to plan the first record that ended up not happening with him for other reasons... It happened with Brian Eno...And that was his idea as well. We went to see this modern dance group and we were out in the limo. I recognized the limo from "the man who fell to earth", the film I'd seen and loved. And he's just casually mentioned something at some point when we were sitting there in the sushi bar down by the Gramercy park hotel.."So Miles might stop by"... It's like "Miles?" And in comes Miles Davis... And David introduces us and Miles wants to know why David's interested in, in Devo. And I started giving Miles the Devo wrap, and you just can see he wasn't having it...shaking his head and David... It just made David laugh and they're having a big laugh about it. And it was, it was wonderful.”

On working with Soundgarden on the video for "Blow Up The Outside World"

Gerry: "Well, I heard it and it was an incredibly depressing five minute and 22 second dirge. And soon enough, even before I wrote the treatment, I found out that they were breaking up and that this would be the last thing they ever did together before I even wrote the treatment. That was incredibly depressing too. Cause I really liked Chris and I really didn't want to hear that they were breaking up. So I wrote that treatment, knowing that they knew more than me and sure enough, they picked it and it was so amazing because there they were on set and they each had their own dressing room and they each had their own kind of representatives. And so I was told by the manager do not have the A.D. come and get them out of their dressing rooms unless you're absolutely ready to yell “action." I don't want them having to stand out there with each other, waiting and waiting.

It's going to make them very uncomfortable. I'm thinking, "Jesus, God!" So it was a hardcore atmosphere on the set yet individually when I go to each of their dressing rooms to talk about what we're going to do in the next scene, they're so incredibly smart and polite and communicative each on their own. And, and Chris, there was something very, very brooding dark there and he was the deepest of them all. And I didn't know what the hell was going on, but you could just feel it. I mean, it poured into you right from his eyes and no wonder, they picked my treatment. It was the right treatment for their last song that they would ever do - the last video they would ever do. And it kind of captures exactly what Chris must have been thinking of when he wrote those lyrics."

On the video for Foo Fighters "I'll Stick Around"

Jenn: Is it true that you did this video for just $60,000?

Gerry: "Yes... And I did it in a very short day because they were four hours late to show up to the soundstage. Eight Hours. I worked with an outfit called "run and gun" out of Chicago that were a bunch of kids at the time that were experimenting with, uh, early CG editing in laptops... At a time when everybody was just using very expensive editing facilities. And they created that thing that looks like a germy ball floating around chasing Dave and everybody, it looks like ....You know what it is, you know what it was, it was the AIDS virus. I got it from a medical book. That's what the AIDS virus looked like. But, but what nobody knows is that what that viral ball represented, that menacing ball ...that represented Courtney Love. Yep. I'm here to tell you for the first time... I'll tell you why I did that. When I heard the song, I immediately assumed that what Dave is talking about when he said, "I don't owe you anything" and knowing the problems they were going through with Courtney, I made the assumption -It was about Courtney. And I have the naive temerity, being the kind of guy I am that you know, is kind of, what's the word untethered on some level. Um, I asked him, I said, "Hey, Dave is, you can tell me, is this about Courtney?" And he goes, "my lips are sealed". So I just rolled with it."

On “Freedom of Choice” being lost in translation

Mark: "New Traditionalists was the album we recorded right after Freedom of Choice... And Freedom of Choice.. We finished recording it and we immediately went to Japan to tour. And while we were there, I had a friend in a band called tThe Plastics, Hajime Tachibana ...like this great artist. And he, he was a visual artist for, um, Ryuichi Sakamoto, uh, also for his solo projects, but he was, but he also did solo albums and I wrote songs for Hajime and uh, I produced albums for him. And, um, we got over there and I'd been outside already been to Japan a few times and he says, "Hey mark, guess what?" And I go, "what?" And he goes "your album in Japan. The title is Psychology of Desire" because there's no trans direct translation of the title. So.. We're there in Japan. And we're on one of the shows. We go to a sushi bar late at night, the band, and there was a couple of businessmen sitting at the end of the table. And one of them comes over and goes, "my symbol big". And his partner looks over and goes, "no, his symbol small." And they're laughing. We we're just going, "what, what does that mean?" And then we're looking at his tie and he has this tie that has a hand holding a pen, like a fountain pen. And it's got a sleeve. And the sleeve of that with the hand is the tie bar, a gold tie bar. And on it, it says "New Traditionalist." And we're like looking at that and we're going "New traditionalist! That's a really good phrase." That's kind of like, you're starting new traditions. You know, if you're a new traditionalist and that's what we want to be, we want to be new traditionalist.

We liked that phrase. And so we remembered it when we went back to the U S and wrote the next album. So we come back out on tour in Japan again, the next year. And my friend Hajime comes over to the hotel, he's got a moped and he's going to drive me around Tokyo. And I go, "did you see that? We wrote a song called 'the psychology of desire'." And then he goes," oh yeah", I go "how did you, did you translate that in Japanese to Freedom of Choice?" And he goes, "ha ha... You know, and he's like, kind of weird... and I go "you know what? We got the title for ...the New Traditionals was an inspiration from these two business guys We met at a sushi bar. And he goes "title of new Devo record, not so good." and I go, "what do you mean?" He goes, "well, New Traditionalists... It translates in Japanese to 'yuppie'." I go, "what?" And he goes, "new Devo album in Japan is titled 'yuppie'." I could not believe that that was... That was like the most awesome, weird thing I heard connected to a New Traditionalists."

Tom Morello joins Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 to discuss his new album ’The Atlas Underground Fire’. He tells Apple Music about making the album entirely during lockdown, choosing collaborating and spotlighting the guitar, looking forward to the rescheduled Rage Against The Machine dates next year, and more.

 Tom Morello Tells Apple Music About Making His New Album ’The Atlas Underground Fire’, Choosing Collaborators, and Putting The Guitar At The Forefront...

This was a record that was made entirely in lockdown. Ninety-five percent of the guitars on this record were recorded in... I have a nice studio at my house, but I don't know how to work it. I don't know how to run it. So there was no engineer coming in for an entire year. So, weirdly, it was Kanye West. I read an interview with Kanye where he said he had recorded the vocals for a couple of his records into the voice memo of his iPhone. So I started recording guitar riff. That's how the guitars for The War Inside, that solo that you just played there ... was recorded with this phone that I'm talking to you on just sitting on a folding chair in front of my amp.Making this record really was, it was a lifeline, and it was keeping me sane on a Tuesday. I didn't set out to go, "Hey, I'm going to call up Bruce Springsteen and Chris Stapleton and Grandson and Damian Marley, this one, that one." It was like, "How do I get through this particular day and continue to self-identify as a musician when there doesn't look like there's going to be any music for some time now?"And so it was in this cloistered isolation, I was able to create this global conspiracy of friends and collaborators that really not only got me through the day, but helped me push, inflict my guitar vision on an unsuspecting world…. importantly, the record starts and ends with instruments. It's a way to assert that the electric guitar has a future and not just a past. And by collaborating with these diverse artists, and with the voice of my guitar being the through thread through all of it, it's a way of going, "The capstone of it." During the time I was a lot of things. I was a plumber. I was a caretaker. I was a worrier, but I also could play some kick ass guitar. And I'm not afraid to do it.

Tom Morello Tells Apple Music About Writing “The War Inside” with Chris Stapleton...

I saw Chris Stapleton at the Chris Cornell Memorial Show. And it felt to me like he had a lot in common with my friend, Chris, just a real lovely gentleman and a tremendous talent. His ability to conjure melody out of the ether is something very unique. It's something he has in common with my Chris Cornell. And we wrote this song in the height of the plague lockdown. And he was the first person that I ever tried to write a song with on Zoom or remotely. And we sat there with guitars in our hands, and for the first two hours, we just talked about what it was like to try to keep the grandmas alive, keep the kid from going crazy, the anxiety and the fear and the hopes that we had of that time. And then that therapeutic discussion became the thematic underpinning of the song, The War Inside.

Tom Morello Tells Apple Music He Plans To Showcase The New Material Live…

Absolutely. And that's an important part of the process, is while it's therapeutic to make music, it doesn't land entirely until you connect with people, until you get to share it outside of the bunker where it was made to the four corners of the globe. Now, I can finally share it with people.

Tom Morello Tells Apple Music About The Upcoming Rescheduled Rage Against The Machine Tour...

Yeah, we've got that Rage tour, North America, starting March 2022. Fingers crossed. Honestly, fingers crossed. I know that it's still a chaotic world. And I want to tour in such a way that band, crew, and fans are all safe, and that everybody's cool. So fingers crossed.

Keith Richards joins Strombo on Apple Music Hits to reflect on The Rolling Stones' album 'Tattoo You' that turned 40 earlier this year. He talks about the Super Deluxe re-issue, the loss of Charlie, their latest tour, his relationship with Mick, and the need for flexibility in life.

Keith Richards on moving forward without Charlie Watts

“Well, for a band of our longevity to suddenly have another man in the drummer's seat and is a leap in the dark. The last thing I wanted to do was a Rolling Stones tour without Charlie, but you know, Charlie said, look go on with Steve. Charlie Watts was our mainstay... You took Charlie, everything fell apart, and to be able to transition this thing and also feeling Charlie's presence in a way via Steve. And Steve loved Charlie to death and they were good friends. So it's almost like a transitional thing that we all have to deal with when we get up there every night. But so far, so good. Great energy, great fun.”

Keith Richards on 'Tattoo You'

“Tattoo You was actually one of the first albums, one of the fewest albums that was actually made from different parts of different albums over a period of time… I think ‘Start Me Up’ was at least five years old by the time it got on this album. Tattoo You is beautiful, like leftovers, which turned out to be, in its own way, a beautifully flexible album maybe because it wasn't so planned.”

Keith Richards on his relationship with Mick Jagger

“Being on stage with him is when we are at our closest, Mick and I, because, it's almost indescribable, but you know, when Mick and I are out there working and we both know that, ‘Hey, I'm counting on you.’ And there's a beautiful jousting and also like a support. That's where I actually, I feel my friendship with Mick more intensely than at any other time he's on stage. You know, I have his back. He has mine. It's an interesting piece of improvisation goes on every night and it's like, how far do you want to push it? And that's half the fun of it. It's never the same, this show, there's no script. That’s the first time I said that.”

Alice In Chains frontman Jerry Cantrell joins Strombo on Apple Music Hits to talk about his latest solo album, Brighten. He talks about how this is the first time he’s ever done a truly independent record, how he balances his solo work with Alice In Chains, drawing inspiration from unexpected events, and his mindset when working on new music. 

Excerpts from Jerry Cantrell's show courtesy of Strombo. 

Jerry Cantrell on being more involved with his new solo record

“All our records, even the records that we've done in partnership with a record company or whatever, are very personal. And we're always involved in every step of the way, from the album art to direction to what we want to do. And this record is no different. The only difference is that this is the first time I've actually ever done a truly independent record. That's been fun too, learning the ins and outs of that, and assembling a team and really just making it up as you go along. And it's been really fun.”

Jerry Cantrell on drawing inspiration from unexpected events

“You never know when where inspiration is going to strike… and that riff in particular (‘It Ain’t Like That’), to show you just how whimsical it is and how inspiration can come from anywhere, I think we were in a rehearsal at our rehearsal room at the music bank underneath the Ballard Bridge, where the band started. And I don't know, I was pissed off for something. It was a smart-ass reaction to something I was feeling or whatever. Just like, whatever. And I'm like, "Oh yeah, what, something like this?" and I just drew my pick across the strings and then did a band a couple of times. And they're like, ‘That's fucking killer, play it again.’”

Jerry Cantrell on balancing being a member of Alice in Chains and his solo work

“I'm not really compartmentalized as far as what is for Alice and what is for a solo record. It's more just determined on the time and the intent. If Alice in Chains had been in a creative process where we had made a decision to make a record, you can go through the demo process and work some stuff up and bring in ideas and build them up and tear them down. And any of this probably could have been involved in that process. But it wasn't. The only distinction is time and intent. It wasn't the time for me to be working on ideas for Alice, it was the time to make a record on my own. I guess what's a good way to say it, that the game is the same but the venue and the players are different.”

Jerry Cantrell on his mindset when working on a new record

“You got to put your trust in the fact that you've ended up in the right place more often than not, with the right people at the right time, whether that's producers, band mates, creative people, while you're working on a project or writing songs or making a record. But you go with your gut, you go with what feels right. And I think if you operate on that, that criteria of just putting one foot in front of the other, taking it step by step and trusting in the fact that it's going to work out. There's no rule book, there's no map. There's just a desire to take a journey and to see where the hell it comes out. To strike out blindly is exciting.”

Joe Grushecky and Bruce Springsteen join Strombo on Apple Music Hits to talk about 25 years of Joe Grushecky and The Houserockers’ album, American Babylon, produced by Springsteen.

Joe Grusheky on Bruce’s impact on him as an artist

“American Babylon in particular was a life changing piece of music for me because I was probably at the end of my career, and I would've kept making music, but I didn't know what I was going to do. I was sort of a bit burnt when Bruce graciously extended his helping hand to me. So American Babylon just really cemented our friendship as far as I was concerned. And I'm very thankful to this day he gave me that helping hand.”

Bruce Springsteen on the power of music

“My mother to this day, she's 95, she's had Alzheimer's for 10 years, but when I put on big band music or music that she was deeply connected to, she'll still want to dance. And she constantly drops 10, 20 years off her appearance and just, that's music, that's what it does for you. It's timeless. Its impact is timeless. And it's kind of one of the wonderful things about being a musician, which is a pretty incredible way to make a living. That's always at your fingertips. You've had access to that time machine, or whatever you want to call it, where it's very useful. It's a wonderful part of my life, and my moms too.”

Bruce Springsteen on how the collaboration with Joe came about

“And it was one of those records that it really kind of came out of our relationship. It was sort of a thing where we met, we kind of struck it up, we had a lot in common, and like I say, I'm not really a producer. I don't produce, I've produced a little bit of over the years, but not that much. And so it was really something I sort of did just, ‘Yeah, I love Joe, we have a great time together. Yeah, let's make a record.’ It pretty much came along like that.”

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss join Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 to discuss their forthcoming album ‘Raise The Roof’, due out this Friday. They discuss deciding which songs to cover on the album, their creative partnership, creating in the studio with producer T Bone Burnett, hoping to tour when safe, how American geography influenced the album, and more. 

Robert Plant Tells Apple Music About ‘Raise The Roof’…

The bottom line is, these are great songs. It just pushed them out into the world again and have a lot fun. As far as what's going on around me, there are still people making records about human relationships and they're following time on a path most of them that I hear. And that, in a way, people still need some joy and they need some sort of reflection, if that's the game that we are playing. So in a way it's kind of more comforting and convenient to join with Alison and to visit songs that came from times which we can just about relate to.

Robert Plant Tells Apple Music About Deciding Which Songs To Cover on the Album…

We've got to stay in this area of what I think are songs that actually have, they have a life and their life that you can re-energize the original themes and you can play with them because they're not hard set in people's imaginations. So it gives us the opportunity to put our own personality into somebody else's work, which in places it's quite profound and coming from another time when songwriting and people's stories and statements and concerns were from a totally different time with a different onus. And I think that gives us a opportunity not to crush the original idea, but to just take it into another place, which is our goal. And it's been remarkable really. We did exchange music for such a long time but then scuttled on to the next project. And then, slowly but surely, we have this thing where we can explore the less trodden pathways, I think of these songs.

Robert Plant Tells Apple Music About The Duo’s Plans To Tour When Safe...

We have some plans to start rehearsing. As a matter of fact, while we've been together now, with this band, we've been playing every day and it's sounding pretty good. Bottom line is, the thing is drawing together. So after a week of playing together now, I think we are almost at the stage where a little bit more work and we could be on the road, but we have to wait and see. We've got some plans and there are people called agents who start to get a little bit hungry. Their plates aren't quite as full as they used to be. So everybody's touting they're in the game and we are in the game.

Robert Plant Tells Apple Music About The Role American Geography Plays in Informing The Album and His Career…

Well, because America's made up of... Every two or three miles, it's a new America. And so geographically, it carries so many different arrivals from birth right the way through the game. So I spent some time living in Austin, Texas, and I felt far more affinity going into the hill country, into the old Comancheria, the Comanche lands, away from a new, very, very new juvenile European civilization that had found its way there. I just find it's very, very interesting, because I come from a very old country where my ancestors go back 2 or 3000 years, more or less where I live. So I find America to be stimulating in so many different ways, but I'm always a guest. I'm always checking it out. And quite often I must say, for all the years from 1968 to 1980, when I was in the hurricane, I thought I knew, I thought I had an idea, but really all I got was some sort of confectionary. I never really started taking it in and all its various, the forefathers, your people came from Germany. So there's a whole lean there. And that comes across socially, in communication, in music, in musical leanings. And I think it doesn't kind of work if you're in Wolverhampton.

Alison Krauss Tells Apple Music About Singing with Robert Plant…

Well, depending on where the lead lands, who's singing lead, where, and if I'm singing the melody, if he should sing right underneath or skip that middle part and sing the low one and vice versa, where his range is on a particular song. It's just kind of where the melody lands. And sometimes you move it around. Our ranges aren't an octave apart, kind of on like the standard duet. We're a little closer together, our ranges.

Alison Krauss Tells Apple Music She Knew She’d Re-Visit Her Creative Partnership with Robert Plant...

Yeah. I thought we would revisit this again. I didn't know when it would be. I always thought we probably would. But I didn't know. You don't want to do it out of time. And you don't want to do it out of time and not have the right songs in place or it would never be enjoyable. I don't feel like that there was a time prior to this, that would have been the right spot because we wouldn't have had the collection of songs together…

Alison Krauss Tells Apple Music About Interpreting Other People’s Songs…

My whole musical career has been interpreting other writers. I'm not a songwriter. There's probably, I had three that that I've actually helped with or written with someone. And I wouldn't even say I did that. So my whole life is searching out songs and songwriters and interpreting another person's story. So getting to hear more wonderful people and tell their story from something of a whole other world to me is really magical. So yes, this experience of hearing tunes and getting to do covers, that's my life. So I love this part of it and hearing new people because see, I grew up in a very certain genre. So hearing other people from another world is really magical.

Alison Krauss Tells Apple Music About Being In The Studio with Robert Plant and T Bone Burnett…

It's always a surprise in there. These guys have such personalities and identity, what they're playing and to hear it come together, when people are finding their way, and to hear new life to something you've heard for years. It's really a magical time. It felt like no time had passed for any of us. And you saw most of the same characters back in there. And, you know, beautiful poetry.

Alison Krauss Tells Apple Music About Covering Bert Jansch’s Song “It Don’t Bother Me”…

That was the first one we recorded. It felt like something I had already sang. The feelings of it and where it kind of landed was a very familiar place. Felt like a bluegrass song to me, was really familiar. I love the way that turned out. And I hadn't heard Burt's music or Anne Briggs. And so that was like a, a whole new moment in time where you go, how do I make it this long without listening to them my whole life? It's always a plus.

T Bone Burnett joins Southern Craft Radio with Joy Williams to chat about ‘Raise The Roof,’ Robert Plant & Alison Krauss’s upcoming record which he produced, his advice for young producers and more.

T Bone Burnett on Robert Plant and Alison Krauss

T Bone Burnett: There's this magical thing about the two of them together that... and you can’t describe it. It’s like a Venn diagram, where you have two circles that cross over and create a third space in the middle. It's that third voice that you hear. And then they have all of these opposites that become part of that, which is really pretty great. He's like a blues guy and she's a country girl. He's a blues cat.

Joy Willams: Blue in both.

T Bone Burnett: Yeah, yeah. No, that's exactly right. Alison does a version of "Last Kind Words" on this, the Geeshie Wiley tune, and it's amazing to hear her sing it because there's no affectation whatsoever. She sings it just like she says it, just like she talks it. She just says it. She sings a very specific melody, but with that, because it's not affected, it's just a beautiful song. It could be a bluegrass song or it could be a blues song. It could be either one. It doesn't matter because she's not either one.

T Bone Burnett on the sound of ‘Raise The Roof’

Joy Willams: With Raise The Roof... It's a little more darker and spacier, to me, feel. Was that an intentional move that you guys had before you got in studio?

T Bone Burnett: The idea was to make it not in any genre. I try not to work in a genre. So that way, you have a chance of creating something that can sound like it was done any time from 1960 to 2020 or something like that.

Joy Willams: Yeah. It's so fascinating, hearing you say that because in a way, what comes up for me is like, "I'm not trying to belong so that I can belong to more."

T Bone on advice he has for young producers

T Bone Burnett: The main thing I think is that… You know my life has been a study in collaboration, it's become increasingly, decreasingly important to me to be in control of anything in a collaboration.

Joy Willams: Decreasingly important.

T Bone Burnett: Decreasingly. It's the same thing. You want to choose your collaborators carefully.

Joy Willams: Just like your bedfellows.

T Bone Burnett: Yeah, that's right. So that you can move effortlessly in a direction. I would say you do that through trust. I would say of course, love is underneath and above all of it. You have to love the person because you have to. It's your job to do as true a recording or a picture of a person as possible.

Joy Willams: Yeah, to elevate them in a way, too.

T Bone Burnett: Yeah, to take the best parts of them and all of those things. But trust empowers people. Distrust disempowers people. Distrust makes people doubt themselves, makes people not want to go on. It does nothing but cause problems. So I think the most important thing to do with a collaborator is to get to a point of trust, that they're going to have your best interests at heart, and you're going to have their best interests at heart. And there are things that it's been difficult for me to say to artists, really difficult, and things I regretted saying before I said them. You know? But almost always, the right thing happens. Generally, if somebody has an idea and you think, "I don't like that idea. I don't want to do that" or "I don't want to do that song," if you don't say anything, the first person to go, "Oh, this doesn't work" is the person who suggested it.

Joy Willams: Let it happen, in a way. Let it pass.

T Bone Burnett: It’s a few minutes. Who cares? Give him a half hour to try his idea out and go smoke a joint.

T Bone calls on artists to imaging a better future

T Bone Burnett: So, as artists at this point we have to spend, I believe, all our time imagining a better future. You know? Jules Verne imagined going to the moon, right? A scientist wasn't imagining going to the moon, Jules Verne did, right? And science, a hundred years later, figured it out. We got to have something like going to the moon...

Joy Willams: That we're reaching for.

T Bone Burnett: Yeah. Well, maybe it's post language, maybe we need to get past language entirely. Because language is obviously built for non-communication, it's not built for communication. And that's true for all language. I mean, music's very much what we are, the way we...

Joy Willams: It’s vibration. So much of it is vibration.

T Bone Burnett: That’s right. So, the neuroscientists say that the things that we can see are the notes of the strings vibrating beneath them, that's string theory. So if that's the case, then that's what we are is music, we're made up of music and all of this is. So maybe we need to get closer to the source. The artists have to get us to a new place. Nobody else is going to do it, the politicians aren't going to do it, the religious people aren't going to do it. Bless their hearts.

Joy Willams: As they say in the south.

T Bone Burnett: The first time I've ever used that phrase.

Joy Willams: Wow, here? It happened here. You never forget your first.

T Bone Burnett on why he never plans to perform again

Joy Willams: So you played in the band when ‘Raising Sand’ toured. Are you planning on hitting the road again?

T Bone Burnett: I plan on never performing again, really and truly.

Joy Willams: Why? Why?

T Bone Burnett: I never wanted to in the first place. As I said, I wanted to be Burt Bacharach behind the scenes. Even he's performing now, but he's like 95 years old or something, man, and he's killing it.

Joy Willams: And you don't want to do that?

T Bone Burnett: No, I don't want to. Allen Toussaint died on the road and I don't want to that. At my age, you have a 50/50 chance of making it another year, and most people go by falling down. You just start thinking about all this stuff that you never would've thought about before.

Joy Willams: Yeah, definitely not in your 20s. You're not thinking about that.

T Bone Burnett: No, certainly not. You're thinking about like... 35 seems impossibly far away when you're 20.

Joy Willams: Yeah, it does. It did. That's in my rearview, too.

Neil Young joins Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 for a conversation at Rick Rubin’s Shangri-La Studio in Malibu about his new album with Crazy Horse out this Friday, 'Barn’. He tells Apple Music he’s thankful to still be making music and discusses planning to record the album around a full moon, the magic of his songwriting process, his guitar sound, and the importance of recording in the right environments. He also explains why going through his archives has been “a real life saver”,  shares why he likes President Biden, and details why he’s willing to give up certain freedoms for the benefit of future generations.

Neil Young Tells Apple Music He’s Thankful To Still Be Making Music…

I feel good to be where I am in the world and doing what I'm doing. I'm very thankful to be still making music. And to be alive and still moving. And I feel great about it. And the reason why I think, and people get to be my age of three quarters of a century, you get to this point and people, if they don't have anything to do, they get kind of depressed. But with me, I just got so much to do. I have all these things that I need to organize and still keeps happening.

Neil Young Tells Apple Music About New Album ‘Barn’ with Crazy Horse…

I know that I'm very thankful for having made it. And I think it was a gift and everything in it works, and it's not often that happens. I mean, it works for me. I don't know if it works for anybody else. But for me it, it works. Everything felt right. So I feel great about it.

Neil Young Tells Apple Music About Planning To Record The Album Around A Full Moon…

Well, I told them about 10 months before that I thought that by June... And I looked at the calendar and I could see what part of the month that I wanted to be there and where the full moon was. So we just chose that time. So we'd be there setting up as the moon was coming. And then when we got set up, we started play and then it got bigger and bigger and bigger until we recorded everything. So that was cool. It was really cool.

Neil Young Tells Apple Music About Recording In The Barn…

Well, it's a barn from the 1870s, and it was falling down and going back into the ground. It had a broken back, all the logs in the middle were broken and going into the ground. There was much less height to it than it used to have because it was actually disintegrating. So we took it and got a real master barn builder from a local guy and we rebuilt. Made it just like it was in the old drawings of it and old photographs because it used to be a stage stop. So you'd see these pictures with the carriages and the horses and the ladies with their big dresses with the metal ring and everything. I don't know what that's called, but the old style people stopping there to stay the night and then get back in the carriage and keep on going.

Neil Young Tells Apple Music About The Importance of Recording In The Right Environments…

I always been like that. Geography's important. Not just the room, but where is the room? Where am I? I really care about that. Because every time you move to a new place, everything changes. In the music, you feel some places are good for some things. If it's not happening, I just leave because it's nobody's fault, but I don't want to be part of it. There's some places I just don't want to be after a while with regards to music. It just doesn't feel right. And some places that are great.

Neil Young Tells Apple Music About His Songwriting Process...

Neil Young: I don't even know. It just happens. I just never not do it. If it's happening, it's happening. Everything else stops. That's the most important thing. So if you want to do that, if you want to write songs, when the song comes to you, you got to stop everything else. No matter what you're doing, you just leave and you just go somewhere and pick up on what it was you got.

Zane: Is it hard for some people throughout your life to understand that application?

Neil Young: They hardly even notice.

Zane: How?

Neil Young: Well, because I just disappear. I don't know. I'm not there.

Zane: This ability to play ghost is really coming out throughout your life.

Neil Young: Well, it's just a natural thing. It's no big deal. It's just if you got something to do and you've got to do it, you just do it. I just blend away.

Neil Young: Tells Apple Music About Being Willing To Give Up Certain Freedoms For Future Generations, Why He Likes President Biden, and The Importance of Tackling Climate Change

Zane: how many freedoms are you willing to relinquish in order to ensure survival for our children? And I sort of wonder where that sits with you…

Neil Young: All, every freedom. Every one I'm willing to let go of, if I could make it better for my grandchildren. That's the way we should be looking at this. That's why I like Biden, that's why I like what he's doing. He's addressing it, and he is not distracted by all of the petty little things that are happening day to day that people get hung up on so that the newsies can all talk to each other and go bantering back and forth between the channels. All of that's useless, it means nothing compared to the big picture. They just ignore the big picture, which is... It's too bad. But I wouldn't hold on to anything to… There's nothing more important than making sure that the earth is as good as it can be for our grandchildren. That's got to be the first thing, that's got to be the most important thing for everybody, for the human race.

Zane: It's so obvious and so basic, it doesn't make any sense for us to think any other way, and yet we still get distracted. I love hearing you talk about having faith in a leader, because I think what we're experiencing now is this kind of real doubt about the system in general. I think kids growing up going, "I don't even know what this system represents to me right now. Just seems like a lot of old people yelling and screaming for their own purpose.” And so you've sort of experienced this on and off through varying states of democracy and idiocracy, and I sort of wonder what your prevailing feeling is now with someone like Biden, who you actually support in charge. What your feeling is about the idea of government and leadership in general, because what does it mean if we're putting all our faith in one individual who's ultimately being led by other divisive forces?

Neil Young: Well, if you want to look at it like that the one individual that we put our faith in is being led by other divisive forces, then it's a loser situation, but I don't look at it that way. I have faith in this human being. Everything that the human being has done shows that the human being basically feels like I do that, that we're up against the wall, we got to do things. They may be unpopular in the short term, they may seem to be fiscally irresponsible, because how much debt can you handle? And then a thing like rising inflation comes along, which is it's just something to talk about. Yeah things are getting more expensive, but they would have gotten more expensive anyway. We just had a pandemic, we just had all this stuff, the shipping has stopped. This has nothing to do with Joe Biden. It's not his fault that there was a pandemic and everything has come to a grinding halt around the planet. His thing is a little more focused, which is what's causing the problem that is a threat to us? And he's taking that on and he's not bothered with the other stuff. I think he's doing a great job, I support him a hundred percent. Because you got to get behind something, and I like what he's doing, so I feel good about that. People are dwelling on what's wrong. They should dwell on what do we need to do, not whose fault is it.

Neil Young Tells Apple Music About The Joy of Going Through His Archives…

I'm so glad that I was there and that I knew these people and I miss them, but there's nothing I can do about it. I'm still here. And I'm picking up the pieces of the things that we did and trying to make them and put them on the shelf in their place so that if somebody walks in, it's not just a pile of crap that they can't figure out what it is. Because the worst thing would be to have other people trying to do this and figure out what it was if I wasn't around. I don't want that, so that's why it's important for me to do this. And it's only for the music and it's not so much for me as it is for the music and for all the people who made the music, because all the credits for everybody who did everything is all there and people's families in the future. I look at it and I go, well maybe the grandchildren will hear this and they'll go, this is what daddy was doing with Neil and listen to this. And my son is helping me with the archives. Zeke is working on the team now for three, four years. And it's all cool. It's a lot of fun. The archives is a real life saver for me. It gives me something to do that's rewarding and puts a smile on my face. And I find these things.

Neil Young Tells Apple Music About His Guitar Sound and Longtime Guitar Tech Larry Cragg...

Well, it's the sound , it's what's happening. When I play my sound, it's just me with an instrument that was set up by Larry Cragg, who's a genius. Through amplifiers that were set up by Larry Cragg, and Sal Trentino, who is another genius who is not with us anymore, but truly a genius. He was a tube guru, and between Larry and Sal, we would get the deluxe out and we have a pile of tubes that are contenders for the deluxe. There'd be like 600 tubes.And we just go through them, try a couple of six L sixes, try another couple. Okay, these are pretty good, Mark put them in the higher will, categorize all the tubes, go through all the tubes, which ones to sound the best.Pretty soon you've got three sets of tubes that sound like God, out of 80 tubes. So Larry and Sal were great at that. And when I did Barn, Larry was back with me.There's so much involved and so many people to make the sound. That the sound is really the life of all the music and all the people that I've known.

Neil Young Tells Apple Music About His Legacy and Catalog…

I really try not to think about that too much. Because it doesn't help me. What helps me, is immersing myself in what I'm doing. And what happens with what I'm doing is ancillary. All this stuff that doesn't mean anything. What means something to me is what are we working on now, what's next? What are we going to find and restore and bring back to the point where it's vivid, instead of just murky and... because it's in the past and we captured it. So we can go in there with our stuff and get it and bring it back.

This week on After School Radio on Apple Music Hits, Mark Hoppus welcomes Ted Lasso’s Brendan Hunt who discusses portraying Coach Beard, his sports fandom, and a few of his favorite songs. Plus, Mark highlights his Apple Music Get Up! Mix.

Listen to the episode anytime on-demand on Apple Music Hits at apple.co/_AfterSchool.  

Brendan Hunt on Being a Sports Fan…

I've always been a sports fan but never been an athlete. I would play pickup games of almost any sport as a kid and I tried little league for a little bit, and I was basically resoundingly terrible. I'm a big fan of Peanuts and Charlie Brown and all that, and I kind of blame Charles Schulz for that because Charles Schulz made it look like sports is always supposed to be miserable, and Charlie Brown ... not just getting the football taken away but standing there on the mound by himself with the rain coming down, helpless and alone. I'm like, "Okay, great, that's sports. That's what it's like. Oh, I'm doing that.” So I just stuck with it, but my dad was not around a lot and when he was around, we tended to be either attending a sporting event or watching them on TV, though I can now intellectually see how that is not really a good building block for a relationship, actually. I mean, it's too late. The cement has dried. Here I am, addicted to sports.

Brendan Hunt on Being a Member of Gen X Generation…

Mark Hoppus: You and I are both born in 1972, making us Gen Xers. Why do you think that we get to stay out of the generational warfare that exists between millennials and boomers and Gen Z?

Brendan Hunt: I think it's because whatever our problems are are just clearly justified. I mean, jeez, the dump truck that we were left with emotionally by our faded hippie parents who had such dreams and high hopes and still made documentaries about how great they were. They were the first generation to ever watch documentaries about how great they were, made by themselves, and then they all got divorced and left us at home to fend for ourselves. So, yeah, I think we're squeaky clean, frankly.

Brendan Hunt on Filming Season 3 of Ted Lasso…

We'll start in February. We're supposed to finish in July, so it'll be quite the chunk.

Brendan Hunt on Living in Amsterdam for 5 Years…

So there's a sketch and improv group there called Boom Chicago that was founded by some guys from Chicago and they held auditions at that time only in Chicago, and I'd heard about it. There's a guy who was in my improv group who had left for Amsterdam about two years earlier and not come back, and we weren't super close but it was like, I liked that guy and why is he not coming back? That's interesting. And when I went to the audition, which I kind of did on a lark, really, I was also a year into being separated, having only been married for a year and a half before that, and I was only 25 at that point. And just started to get into therapy for the first time and just realizing a bunch of ... that I was carrying around and not attending to. So, when they called me back and then they offered me the job that I had no intention of taking, it was kind of like, "I've got to do this. I've got to get the ... out of dodge and see what happens." It will always go down as a top three choice of my life, no matter what other choices I make from here.

Brendan Hunt on His First Concert…

I think it was Eric Clapton at Alpine Valley. There was a Crossroads box set tour, so he was playing all the hits. My friend of mine from school, his dad took us. We were in one of those sheds and I'd never been to a show before, so I didn't know what to do, so we sat way, way, way, way in the back, but it was a beautiful night, it was fun to be there, and the opening act was Buckwheat Zydeco.

Elton John is joined by Wet Leg's Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers this Saturday on Rocket Hour on Apple Music 1. The duo discuss their new single 'Too Late Now' and Elton declares them "the best thing to come out of the Isle of Wight for a long, long time."

Tune in Saturday 15th January at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5pm GMT to listen live, or listen back on demand with an Apple Music subscription: apple.co/_RocketHour,

Elton John Tells Wet Leg That They’re “The Best Thing To Come Out Of The Isle Of Wight”….

I've watched you live. I've seen various performances of you playing live. You're really, really good. And it's exciting. I love exciting bands…  And it's so nice, at my age, to be able to see people who've got energy and want to say something and are having fun. And you seem to be having so much fun… Well, you're the best thing to come out of the Isle of Wight for a long, long time.

Wet Leg Tell Elton John About ‘Too Late Now’…

Rhian Teesdale: ‘Too Late Now’, it's kind of got this theme of disenchantment with the world around us, I suppose.

Elton John: Yeah. That's what you should be writing about because we live in such a horrible world, at the moment, and I'm such a terrible lyric writer; I can't write lyrics. But when you and Yard Act and Idols and Sam Fender are writing songs that should be written about right now, it's great. And then, I commend you for that. And I commend you for just being yourselves and having fun. And that's exactly why I fell in love with you.

Wet Leg Tell Elton John That They Decided To Form The Band While Sitting On A Ferris Wheel…

Elton John: The story of you coming together, you were sitting in a ferris wheel, right? Watching Idles at a festival?

Rhian Teesdale: Yeah. Pretty much, yeah. We just finished watching Idles play a really energetic set. Tried to persuade them to come on the ferris wheel with us. And then, we just had to go it alone. They declined.

In celebration of a half-century of soul, Estelle is joined by the legendary Al Green on Apple Music Hits on the 50th anniversary of his essential album, 'Let's Stay Together'. The two discuss the evolution of the titular track, the distinctive 'Memphis Sound,' working with longtime producer Willie Mitchell, the legacy of the album 50 years on, and more.

Listen to the full episode today (1/31) at 12p PST on Apple Music Hits or anytime on-demand on Apple Music at apple.co/essentialalbum.

Al Green Tells Apple Music How The Title Track Came Together…

Willie Mitchell was playing the melody on the piano and I asked him what that was and he said, "I don't know." So Al Jackson came in and he was tapping on the chair, side of the building or something and Willie said, "Why don't you write something to it?" And I wrote, "I'm" ... And then, oh, man, I don't know, man. I just started writing some "I'm"s. I said, "What do you want?" He says, "So in love with you," I said, "I'm so in love with you. Yeah, that's it." I'm ...I wrote a bunch of stuff, but it didn't fit, you know? So I had to go back that night and separate what's good and what's bad, throw this away, add this in, whatever, you know? Yeah, like that. Then, that one stuck.

Al Green Tells Apple Music His Musical Influences Growing Up…

Oh, gee whiz. Sam Cook, Otis Redding, I suppose Mr. Presley, I don't know. I had a weird taste for music at the time. I just listened to whatever I could here on the radio, especially being from Michigan and they didn't play anything but what they wanted to play. So yeah. Back in the sixties, I was in high school. I grew up in church, but not in a lot of singers. I hear a lot of sanctified type music and tambourines and these heavy set ladies carrying on the service. And man, it was really nice, man. I mean, they get it going and they ain't shame, man. They get it going.

Al Green Tells Apple Music About "La-La For You”...

La-La For You, it means I love you. That's what La La For You means. It means I love you. I just, I wrote about somebody because you listen to the record, listen to the lyrics, you'll see that it is really about somebody. You can't be saying all this stuff just out of the blue. So it is about somebody. It is about a girlfriend, but I didn't use that part of it in the record, I just, La La For You. And you probably, if these things fit, you probably know who I'm talking about.

Al Green Tells Apple Music About The “Memphis Sound”, Swapping Hits With Issac Hayes…

Oh, the Memphis sound had to be about two silly guys. One is Al Green and the other one is Isaac Hayes trying to outsing one another and we were on the same label. When we found that out, we hugged one another, in Washington, we hugged one another, slapped hands and then one another said, "Man, wasn't we stupid?" We said, "Yeah, man, we sold a lot of records." Yeah, I mean, I sang One Woman. He sang One Woman. I sang I Stand Accused. He sang, I Stand Accused.

Al Green Tells Apple Music About “Old Time Lovin’”…

That's something I wanted to write for Willie Mitchell and I wrote it for myself to see, what are you actually doing? Are you actually doing something brand new? Or are you doing something that sample Ray Charles, Bobby Bland, Lou Rawls or somebody or Sly and the Family Stone. I thought the whole thing should really be, you can't dice them up so much to you don't know where you are, so you just have to put them all together and call it Old Time Lovin' because yeah, she know what that means, she don't ... Ask her. Ask her, she know what it means. And then, I started getting serious about to ask her, she know what it means. That’s what I like, man. Because I mean, you can't be nice all the time. Look, you know what it means. I don't know what it means. Yeah, I'm talking about you. Yeah. Yeah.

Al Green Tells Apple Music About "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart”...

I did a lot of covers all my life, so it wasn't that bad. I thought it was a good song. And Willie wanted to sing it, so he cut it and by the time we got back from off the tour, he wanted me to come down the studio and sing it. It sounds pretty good.

Al Green Tells Apple Music About the Legacy of Let's Stay Together, 50 Years On...

Oh, it's a knocked out piece of work to me. I didn't know that, number one, that people was going to like it. I didn't know that it was going to do what it did. And Willie Mitchell told me, "Don't strive for number one all the time because, see, after you get to number one, there's only one direction you can go, see? So maybe 26, 27, 28 and hang around that area there, you know what I mean? And you'll sell a lot of records around there."

You know, if it's not current, it stays in your heart. It's like in the background. No matter what I sing or stuff, I still hear it. Yeah, it's in my heart, but it's in the background. I can feel, hear the melody of it.

Mick Fleetwood joins Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 to discuss the 45th anniversary of Fleetwood Mac's iconic album ‘Rumours’. He tells Apple Music about the band dynamics that shaped the album, reflects on Stevie and Lindsey joining the group and the ongoing complications of their relationship, how the group’s music provided safe harbor from persistent band drama, the benefits of being in a co-ed band, how he sees his role in the group decades later, being an Eminem fan and much more.

Mick Fleetwood Reflects on ‘Rumours’ 45 Years Later…

I didn't really know what was going on until a little while later. And the fact that we're having this conversation 40 odd years later about the same body of work that was created by that line of up with Fleetwood Mac is one I don't think about it until you start talking about it...

I think probably to a large extent to the other band members, a permanent backdrop that has become part of no doubt the fabric of who we are certainly as players and artists, but also the effectual with what it did to us as people through that, the challenges of it, the sociological messes and joys that it brought, all of that are in these collection of songs known as the Rumours album. I think it was a little bit of, for me and John especially, in a way we had our, for us, it was a large tidal wave back in England with the beginnings of Fleetwood Mac in 1967, '68 with Peter Green, where we were the pop boys of certainly down in Australia and the Commonwealth, not over here really at all, apart from some boutique interest in the band, which was demonstrated later by certainly Carlos and people, and the Grateful Dead have definitely heard about the music that we made and apparently loved it.

So when the wave sort of hit, I think me and John, speaking certainly for myself, we'd had some reference to having something, and in truth the wave dissipated before Stevie and Lindsey, although we continued through the Bob Welch year and so forth, and many wonderfully talented people, you could see on a graph that for us, it was just, we were keeping going, we never thought one way or the other. But the truth is we were on a quiet period in terms of success. But me and John had had that shock as really young chaps in England, where we were… Top of the pops and stupid praises, like they're selling more than the Beatles and all this stuff. And therefore took it in our stride a little bit more, I think, I hope. And it certainly helped me until I got super crazy, and substance abuse later on and all that stuff. But in the early days of the band that we're talking about that made that album Rumours, I really felt that that too had helped me say, hang on, hang on. This is all fantastic, but we're doing what we're doing. And it helped certainly from the Peter Green days, we always, especially led by Peter, held onto our integrity as players and really didn't get super caught up in being so-called pop stars, or rock stars, or whatever it is.

Mick Fleetwood Tells Apple Music About Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham Joining The Group…

One has to quietly remember that John and Chris came at that point as a married couple that were musically connected, which was a reflection certainly God knows of Stevie and Lindsey came so connected at the hip musically as partners. And as partners, me, and Chris and John had gone through the whole, we lived together in houses for years, like Benny Folds back, the proverbial go to the country and survive as a band house that did just that. So in many ways we were preset for that to be continuing. And I think that's part of the lovely story that you are hinting at or going to, is that it really was a connected right at the beginning there of really, really connected bunch of people in full relationships, musically and personally. So we were set up, especially I would imagine when I think of Christine and having Stevie come into the band, I think that was a huge success in terms of ... And I'm gathering through all time that it was also a huge move for Stevie where she felt her identity in tandem with Lindsey no doubt as it went on for a long, long time, especially creatively. But as a lady, I think it allowed her a sense of more expression, more feeling her druthers within the framework of being creative. So it was the perfect home and it was a utopian get together that went on as we all know to be quite challenged in different ways.

Mick Fleetwood Tells Apple Music How Fleetwood Mac Provided Safe Harbor From Band Drama...

Everyone was so dedicated to what we were doing, I completely got off that train that this was disappearing and genuinely would tell anyone around me that were full of doubt, I said, "This is not going to disintegrate." We're all really, really unbelievable personal cost, knowing the misery that especially the four people in the couple set-up. Ironically, Jenny and I have broken up at the same time, so five of us were in a state of flux… A lot of pain. And this creature known as Fleetwood Mac and what we were doing became the safe harbor in a way, I believe. …was it a complete healing? No, but it has those elements to it, certainly in the complete chaos… And then a whole other scenario happened, which was the beginning of the journey, the wave of what this body of work created, which would've been, and I sort of can maybe speak a little bit for Lindsey's and it was so well put, he said, "And then we didn't ever really, really deeply heal what had really happened to everyone.”

Mick Fleetwood Tells Apple Music About Stevie and Lindsey’s Ongoing Complicated Relationship…

I'll just say it, especially for Stevie and Lindsey, I don't think certainly are not resolved fully, and I wish they were and I visualize those moments as the years trickle by somehow, but I truly, somewhat sadly think that that will go into the rainbow somewhere and never really change, but there you go.

Mick Fleetwood Tells Apple Music About The Benefits of Being in a Co-Ed Band...

…believe me, it was crazy and that's no news to anyone out there, public knowledge, but somehow, there was some decorum, there was some decorum about who and what we did as people, and it was always emotionally driven, which had it been quite literally a bunch of lads in a band, I think it would've been...Certainly, again, you'll probably hear it about 3,000 times, speaking for myself, I think having the ladies in the band, as it should, it reined us in on some damn level, and we, I think, benefited from that, certainly, as a band.

Mick Fleetwood Reflects On His Role in The Band…

…For me, it is that, when I listen to our music, not only this album, talking about for a long time, I didn't really know what it was I was really contributing, apart from ... I do know now. I do know, is that things that you've been so gracious to mention, but my piggy-in-the-middle, keeping some semblance out of panic or insecurity, to have this not stop, that seeing and hearing, hearing a body of work from time to time, that actually now comfortably does cross my mind. I go, "Well no, I didn't do that. But this is my song. This is my song." Is seeing all this, these lovely incarnations of Fleetwood Mac that I've been, and John, have been so incredibly blessed, genuinely being around incredibly talented people that we were able to invite into the band, and mercifully, with really fantastic, unbelievable storytelling results. That to me is like my song now. And I can express, I go like, "Yeah." It's not like taking credit for anything other than that. But I think, if that makes sense, it's a sense of worth for me that ... My father had a phrase, it sort of applies to things that aren't always hunky-dory, aren't always the greatest thing since slice bread, and yet we're already touching on things of huge import, which were huge versions of celebrating that brought happiness and esteem and confidence to all of us, is like, with all the blows that were taken, you sit back, and Dad would say, "But you know what? It was worth a damn." And the "worth a damn" is talking about this album, that so affected the people who made it.

Mick Fleetwood Tells Apple Music About Leaving “Silver Springs” Off The Album...

I think Stevie ... I'm pretty sure she got relegated, or would grab at one of the two, and she always requested, even down to the tours that we've done most recently would be, "Let Stevie have a go at the ... “ The list, usually with huge success. And we go like, "Yeah, that's cool." I'm thinking that she probably put this together.And of course, I think it was on this album, that one of the age-old, what's the ... Silver Springs, that didn't make it on the albums. Right? That wasn't much fun for me. I had to go and tell her.It was in the car park at the record plant in LA at that point. We used about three or four different studios, and we had to get out of the record plot. I wander around a bit, so excuse my lack of concentration. But I think when we left the record plot… Wallowing around in the abyss.mSo anyhow, I ended up in a car park having to tell young Stevie that ... A great song, and truly, truly, truly, truly, we were so intent on, at that point when you master an album, getting it to sound, and we simply couldn't, unless we sacrificed the level of the dynamic of the album, when you put the needle down, and we just felt something had to go, and then that was the song … But that song became legendary, but no doubt was really supposed to be part of this album. And it was a forever ... Like I was the Grim Reaper in the car park, that had to break the news, and Stevie's made me suffer inordinately ever since.

Mick Fleetwood Tells Apple Music He’s A Fan of Eminem...

I'm a huge fan of his. I think he right from the get go was fascinating, and just really super talented and not afraid of being misunderstood for sure, and all the rest of it.

Mick Fleetwood Tells Apple Music How Early Academic Misadventures Led To Fleetwood Mac…

I was always looking for, I didn't really know who and what I was because I was a total academic dunce, dyslexic and clinging onto anything. Sort of became an early storyteller where you can't go on a straight line. They say that most of the criminals or the arch talented politicians, a lot of them actually are dyslexic. So I learned to sort of find out and hold my own in a sort of ether of non knowing and be fairly quick on my feet as much as possible. But that part of me, I think in the shy, slightly clinging on, slightly wanting to need the need of being around other people, I learned that very early in terms of creating a team that I felt I could in a way express myself with and through, which is probably very close to the Fleetwood Mac story in terms of this funny little creature playing drums.

Apple Music’s Zane Lowe travels to Chicago for an in-depth conversation with Eddie Vedder, Chad Smith, Josh Klinghoffer, and producer Andrew Watt about Vedder’s third studio album ‘Earthling’. Vedder discusses his Chicago roots, touring the album, featuring his father on the album, his relationship with producer Andrew Watt, how activism has informed his art, the emotions that inspired “Brother The Cloud”, and the star-studded collaborations on the album. Later on, self-proclaimed “biggest Pearl Jam fans of all time” Andrew Watt, Josh Klinghoffer, and Chad Smith join Zane to collaborating with Vedder on ‘Earthling’, his undeniable vocal performance, and the fun of working together.

Eddie Vedder Tells Apple Music About His Chicago Roots…

Chicago is the original roots and they've never been completely ripped out of the ground. It helped form me both as a young kid, and then moving back as a young adult and some of my first adult jobs of waiting tables and things like that were here and fond memories of being a kid were here, Schwinn bikes and having a little gang of nine year olds, like Stand By Me kind of stuff. I think Seattle is actually where a lot of the identity stuff came in to be honest, because that's when you really had to figure out ... I knew who I was as a workman and someone who had a work ethic and somebody who could put in the hours and produce whatever you need from him. I was ready for the workload, but as far as who you were, I think a lot of that got formed up in Seattle in a way.

Eddie Vedder Tells Apple Music About The Importance of Consistency and Loyalty…

Consistency and loyalty, they can't be underrated or they can't be overrated, rather, those two things, and so when you have a long group like the Peal Jam group in Seattle and all our crew and even the people we work with with the label, it's mostly people that have been with us since day one or the week after. This group of fellas, it's kind of amazing how quickly it come together but really the threads of our relationships go way back. Our first real Peal Jam tour outside of us just playing clubs on our own was with the Chili Peppers and with Chad Smith, and that goes back to '92, Chad and all our uncles in that group, Flea and Anthony, and then getting to know Josh over the years. I'm just real fortunate. I'm fortunate that Andrew Watt worked so closely with these guys.  It fit quickly and closely and there was no alterations needed and we were off to the races as far as playing and writing and recording and Andrew had so much to do with that and every aspect of that.

Eddie Vedder Tells Apple Music About His ‘Earthling’ Tour...

Yeah, it's a lot of history. Some of these venues that we've played on this tour, some of the ones we've... They're a hundred years old. The Spectrum, the backstage is where Roger wrote Comfortably Numb for pink Floyd. Many nights there, Springsteen, all these historical... I think that the main thing is to celebrate it with the people there that night, and then take all those memories back with you and kind of make sure that they live inside you. And it's good that it happened to somebody who really appreciated it. And not to mention Dr. Jay and the 76ers and Philadelphia Flyers. All these venues, there is, there's a lot of ghosts in there. You make friends with the ghost and then say, "If you need some place to stay when they blow this one up, you can come to my house."

Eddie Vedder Tells Apple Music About Featuring His Dad on ‘Earthling’…

There was reasons to celebrate because here it was, and my dad, he sounded great. Yeah. He really sounded great. And I, I shared it with Andrew and Josh in the studio one night late. They had a real powerful experience as well hearing my Pop. And so then we decided, we just kind of added him in to the record in a collage at the end. And it'd probably be the first time my dad was ever on like a real record. And he actually did okay, but he probably just... He was a professional musician in that he played for tips, I reckon. So that's professional, I think.

Eddie Vedder Tells Apple Music About His Relationship With Andrew Watt…

The first I knew of him was someone left me a letter and a guitar at the Shoreline Amphitheater in San Francisco, which is where we would do the bridge school shows and I think it was at the last bridge school, however many years ago that was, that somebody said, "This guy left a guitar and this note for you," and it was from somebody who was in a band that had played that venue a weeks before and asked that this guitar get delivered to me, and it seemed like it was a really nice letter. I gave him a call back, thanked him and when I gave him the call back, he had my number, that's how that worked, which was great because then every once in a while I'd get a nice little message, he was very responsible with the number. I was just feeling so grateful, I wanted to leave him a message and what does this person want? But sometimes it's good to put yourself out there because... he handled it great and every once in a while I'd get a little text from him here and there and it was cool, and I knew that he was working, but didn't really know what he was working on or anything like that and I'm just really proud of the guy. He's as passionate about music as anybody I've ever met in my whole life, and that says a lot because I know you… he’s good because he's quick and as far as just the technical side of things, microphones and signal paths that you're running stuff through and the mix board, all the technical stuff that these guys do, and he has a great right hand man called Paul and another guy called Marco. It's a real fast moving experience. As a writer, that can be really, really great and there's not too much pressure that you have to do it in time, but if you want to go quick, it's like this quick little waterspout or those small tornadoes you see on the street every once in a while, it's quick, and it'll last for a few minutes, and then it just goes away. That could be what songwriting is sometimes.

Eddie Vedder Tells Apple Music How Activism Has Informed His Music...

What I've found and I think what our group has found is that to talk about making a difference or suggest that other people make a difference or having your songs be about making a difference for this issue or that issue, I think really the key after all these years is just having done that in our own lives. So without anybody needing to know... Now I'm realizing, I'm talking about it now... But without anybody needing to know, you just do that stuff on your own and it's practical and you watch it get done or you help individuals or you help a group or you help... but you just kind of are able to do that. And it's more really what you learn from that experience, and maybe that informs the songs. And maybe because if that informs the songs, then you know it's real and it's right. Even though we'd rather be hopeful than the other, but I feel comfortable doing it that way because then it's from experience and it's real and it is attainable. There is such a thing as like agitprop, agitator propaganda. And I think that's a slippery slope and I think it will activate people and I think it'll get them pumped up in the streets or whatever, but then they walk away from the rally and then they go, all right, now, what do we do? I felt like this and it was really intense and rah, rah, but wait, what do we... You have to have those things kind of in place. Exciting people is one thing, educating them is another.

Eddie Vedder Tells Apple Music About The Emotions That Inspired “Brother The Cloud”…

I guess those feelings, they just must have been just waiting to come out or something. It just came out quick. And then by the time we got to the end of it, it was like, okay, that was something, all right. And I've lost a few people in different ways in the last decade. And apparently, just like you said, as soon as you think that you have something figured out, you're about to find out the otherwise. Something else will come along. But this one, I guess, Informed me that I hadn't quite dealt with as much as I thought, at least in a positive way, or I still had a lot of emotions kind of under the surface. There was a fire inside my core that was still throwing, spitting magma.

Eddie Vedder Tells Apple Music About Collaborating With Elton John, Ringo Starr, and Stevie Wonder…

I think it was creating a painting and then knowing that within that, and you've tried to create all these little bit different colors. You kind of invented these colors on your own. And then knowing the exact color that you need for that part and it's kind of an important part, and if you had that, that's what we need to really make the song. But who has that color? What color is that? And then the color is Stevie. So, it's either you do something like that. Let's say the Ringo example because that would be the perfect … That's the perfect color. So, you can try to mix that color on your own…

Andrew Watt and Josh Klinghoffer Tell Apple Music About Working With Eddie Vedder...

Andrew Watt: Me and Josh are just, we're very… I'm proud to say it, biggest Pearl Jam fans of all time. We know the catalog backwards and front. So, I think when you sit down to go and make music with Eddie, your instincts take over, right? So, it's not as thought as let's do something like this or that, it's just what do you want to make with him, what do you want to hear him sing. He's got the best voice there is. I still don't look at it as real. It doesn't feel like it was real. It was just this kind of dream, a dream sequence which is continuing to the stage now that we're on stage playing the songs now. And it's like, oh … We wrote these songs. It's just so cool.

Josh Klinghoffer: And it's seeing for us both with how immediate a lot of it was at the beginning when we were first coming up with the first few songs, obviously the lore of how Pearl Jam wrote their first record in a couple days and they played a show at the end of the week. It seemed like that in a way. I said to Andrew at one point, "I'm not sure." Because Pearl Jam got so big so fast, so I feel like from the second album on it was always a lot different than it was that first time… Whereas on the first album they were just the guys who had just met making music. So, I felt like what we were capturing in that room was maybe a little bit closer to that that he experienced with the band the first time because they… Never again were they this little entity

Andrew Watt Tells Apple Music What Eddie Vedder Gives To His Vocal Performances...

What he gives to a vocal I've never seen before. And you can hear it, right? But to see it, it's like, okay, I got to move this chair and I got to move that. Let's get those guitars out of the way because anything could happen when this guy gets up on the mic. He just reaches in in a way I've never experienced. And watching him sing a song like Brother, and you’re sitting … The best thing in the world for me is I put on these headphones and I feel like I'm again 10 in my room with headphones listening to this singer that I listened to when I was 10.

Chad Smith Tells Apple Music About How He Became Involved With The Project...

It's rare when you just get to hang out with your friends and play music and haves have fun. I've known Eddie longer than this guy's been alive. That puts it in perspective. And we all played a lot of music together. Obviously, me and Josh has, and then we make records all the time. And then just to have this all kind of happen so organically. This summer, I went to be with my family on the East Coast, and he's like, okay, you have to come back. Find me a window. And I'm like, I had one week in July, literally like six days. And they probably told you, but the process was really... I mean, Ed had some songs. And then the three of us would get together, and these guys would have acoustic guitars, and you know, who's got a riff, who's got an idea, something, something, something. I would just kind of sit there and make suggestions about the arrangement, thinking about the drum part.

Chad Smith Tells Apple Music About Playing on Eddie Vedder’s ‘Earthling’ and Drumming Philosophy…

I mean, you have to have facility on your instrument to a certain point. There is practice involved. So you have the tools to be able to do what you hear in your head when you hear a piece of music. At least for drumming, not being a melodic instrument, rhythmically. And that's obviously a lot of practice, and it doesn't just happen like that. But most of the bands that I grew up listening to were a lot of spontaneity jamming, the Deep Purples and the Zeppelins and the Whos and the... I love those drummers and those bands. So that, early on, was ingrained in how I approach...And so... The most important thing, you can have your chops and your thing and all that, these things on the side of your head, that's the best. And these guys are such good listeners. And that's so important. You got to listen to the other guys when we're playing this kind of music, because you play off each other, the dynamics of what they're doing, even just live show, everything. So it's just capturing that, that's the lightning in the bottle, and that's what you try to do, but you don't always succeed. When I was young, I mean, I always just... That felt the most authentic to me. And that's when you're in the moment, and there's no... People just feel that.

Chad Smith Tells Apple Music About The Fun of Working With Andrew Watt…

He's comes from a rock and roll background. He does all this other stuff because he's so talented he can do anything and play anything and write, and he's so good with people. And I've seen it, and I'm so proud of him as my friend, to see him do that, and rise. I saw him conducting the orchestra at Abbey Road, telling them what to play. It's just so fun because we love to hang out and we're best buds. And then to play music together, whatever it is, and obviously, we've done rock stuff together, and the Ozzy record was really special and amazing, and had a great time doing that. You know how that all came together, and was incredible. But he does a lot of pop stuff, as we all know, and if he needs drums on it, he'll be like, hey, you want to play on this Dua Lipa song? I'm like, who's that? Obviously now... But the last record, and whatever stuff that normally was not in my world. But it's so great to put that hat on and try to make something really cool to please that artist and make it right for the music. And Andrew is so good at that. And it's fun.

David Byrne joins Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 to discuss his acclaimed Broadway musical American Utopia, working with Spike Lee to bring the production to film, collaborating with Mitski, St. Vincent, and Brian Eno, and bringing the musical to life via Spatial Audio.

David Bryne Tells Apple Music About Bringing ‘American Utopia’ To Spatial Audio...

It really works well in this spatial format. I listen to the tracks, the mixes that were done, and yes, it kind of gets a lot closer to what it feels like to be there, because in the theater, you can hear the stuff coming out of the speakers. But you can also hear the acoustic drums coming off the stage, and so you really have the sense that they're kind of in front of you and to the left and to the right. Yeah, they're all around.

David Byrne Tells Apple Music About Acclimating To Recording Studios…

It took me quite a number of years before I felt kind of comfortable in a recording studio. It's a very strange environment. You're kind of isolated from the other players in a way that allows the mixer then to kind of correct or fix or adjust the balance of instruments. But in order to do that, you're kind of isolated. You're hearing from headphones. You're not exactly playing in the room, but you're in the same room. It's all those kinds of things. I find that with the advent of kind of home recording, being able to record using software and laptop and all those kind of things, I can get half of the recording done at home and then bring it into a studio to complete it, which makes me a lot more comfortable.

David Byrne Tells Apple Music About Focus and Flow State...

I leave the phone, and I leave the laptops and all the other stuff in the other room. An interruption will kind of break my train of thought, and you get into a flow state when you're writing. And it doesn't last that long, but you can actually get a fair amount done. But if it gets interrupted, then you have to kind of start from scratch and get up to speed again. So I've had… I have realized that. It doesn't matter where that is. That can be anywhere, can be at my house or somewhere else. But, yeah, interruptions are the worst.

David Byrne Tells Apple Music How Music Helped Him Feel Less Alone…

... A lot of artists have felt like a little bit of an outsider when I was younger, and so you were trying to figure out, "Where do I fit in? How do I work this? What am I supposed to be doing? Am I supposed to be doing what those people are doing? Should I just be doing that?" I say that in the show. I look at part of the audience and go, "Should I be doing what they're doing? Should I do this?"You're really honestly trying to figure it out. There's no instruction manual. There's plenty of self-help books, but there's no real instruction manual. You have to figure out a lot of it for yourself. Music does help with that. Music and playing with other musicians really does help with that.

The stage and maybe the recording studio, or just writing at home, those were safe areas. I felt like I could do whatever, say whatever, write things, perform, do all that. I was allowed to do that there. But then, back into my normal life, I felt like, "Okay. I feel a little less comfortable in my normal life." Being on stage, or writing, or all that was very liberating. It was wonderful. Then gradually I get more and more used to it. I adapt. Now I'm pretty comfortable socially, I would say, but it took decades.

David Byrne Tells Apple Music About Being Blown Away By Celia Cruz...

There was the late Afro-Cuban singer, Celia Cruz, that ... Her voice just blew me away, and her songs are so danceable. I would see her live and listen on record, and, just, I'd feel like, "Wow." There's a kind of melancholy. There's a kind of sadness in some of the songs, but the rhythms are really full of life. The rhythms are really percolating. I thought, "That's a really interesting combination. I wonder if I can do that in my own way.”

David Byrne Tells Apple Music About Working With X-Press 2…

The experience of working on the song with X-Press 2 was really interesting. I was fans of all of them, and their DJ work, and their remixes, and all the stuff they were doing. When they approached me, I said, "Yeah. Let's try something." The track they originally sent me sounded kind of Talking-Heads-ish. That's what they sent. I thought, " Okay," and I kind of wrote to that. Then, as they would do, because they're remixers and DJs, they remixed the whole thing, removed almost all of those elements, and replaced them with the stuff that's in the track that we know. It was much better. Yeah. It didn't sound like a throwback anymore. It sounded like, "This is a new thing," and it's … They kind of tricked me, but I went along with it. To my great relief, it actually led to something completely different. I thought, "This is a dance track. Let me write a dance track about being lazy," which is a complete contradiction. If you're dancing, you're full of energy. But I thought, "Let me write an energetic dance track about being lazy and lethargic.”

David Byrne Tells Apple Music About Working With Spike Lee…

I trusted Spike. He came to the show, but when we were in the out-of-town tryouts in Boston, he saw a couple of shows and yeah, immediately said, "Yes, I want to do this." Of course, we didn't have the money to do it. But he said, "Yes." We found the money. I'll do this. I offered him, Spike, is there anything you would change? For a film you might say, "Oh, I think we should maybe cut out some in the middle, or we should, we should change the ending, make a different ending for a film or whatever. He said, "No, no, no. It's all working as it is. Don't mess with it. I'm not going to touch it, the show.”

Spike and Jonathan Demme, who directed Stopped Making Sense were really close. They were both, they were friends and they both admired each other's work. There was one point doing the filming where Spike looked up to the ceiling and says, "Jonathan." He passed away some years ago. "Jonathan, you see what we're doing here? You see what we're doing?

David Byrne Tells Apple Music About Clipping News Articles That Give Him Hope…

A few years ago, I started collecting news articles that made me feel a little bit hopeful, and I started just putting them into a folder, and gradually accumulated. Gradually, I had quite a pile of them and I thought, "Well, look at this. Maybe things aren't quite as bad as we think they are." I started, so I started a little news magazine called Reasons to Be Cheerful, named after the Ian Dury song. It's still running, and kind of to my amazement, we find stuff every day. Find things that, it's not just a somebody's generosity or whatever, but people actually solving problems in very innovative ways, all over the world. Our hope is that when they, we write about something like that, they'll make you feel a little less angry. They do for me, but it is hard. It's a constant battle. It's a constant battle. I mean, you're, we're susceptible to negative news and boy, do we get it.

David Byrne Tells Apple Music About The Beauty of Collaborating…

So yes, I have not stopped doing these collaborations. And when it works, you can get inside the writer or the other singer's head and... You can forget yourself for a minute and be inside their head and go where they're going or the vice versa. They might adapt to where you're going, which is a lot of fun.

David Byrne Tells Apple Music About Working with Brian Eno…

Brian is someone who besides just being very innovative, he pushes the people he works with to go a little bit outside of their comfort zone. He's done that with me, done it with Talking Heads, which is really productive. Sometimes it's not that comfortable but… One of the ways that Brian navigates that kind of thing, and I think all producers do this to some extent is, they're great cheerleaders. They're great salesmen, saleswomen, whatever. So when something is in this in between stage, and it's not quite good yet, but it's getting to be something really interesting, they are jumping up and down going, this is going to be amazing. This is going to be incredible. It's going to be like nothing else. They keep the enthusiasm going so that you don't fall back and go, I don't know.

David Byrne Tells Apple Music What He’ll Work On Next…

I'm working on an immersive theater project that has science experiments and experiences as a kind of basis. It's not real. It's not a music show. It's not a music thing. That'll happen in August and September. So I've got a little while to prepare for that. And then I think before that and after that, I think I'll probably start working on new music and see where that goes. And again, just like you said, I'll probably write some things, report some things. Do that and then maybe ask people, what do you think? Is it any good or should I scrap it all and start again?

Elvis Costello joins Elton John's Rocket Hour on Apple Music 1 this weekend to discuss his new album 'The Boy Named If'. He tells Elton about recording the album remotely from his fellow band members, making a conscious effort not to become "complacent", his tour plans for this year and more.

Elton John Tells Elvis Costello He “Can’t Stop Playing” His New Album ‘A Boy Called If’…

Well, you did me a great favour by sending me the album way before it came out, and there's so much energy in this record, which you've made lots of records with lots of energy, but you haven't made a record like this for a long, long time. You're one of the artists that I love because you always try and do something different… And so you're one of these artists that just does what you want to do, but this record is just so supercharged, it's like having an electric shock, for me, and I just love it. I can't stop playing it.

Elvis Costello Tells Apple Music About Band Members Recording The Album Remotely…

I think this kind of music really benefited from not being able to see our ugly faces while we were playing. Nothing put us off. I know that Pete won't want me to say that, but there he was down in his basement, as he is every day. You know what drummers are like, they want to keep ready for that call to the stage. He has his old Gretsch kit that he played on the very first record that we did together, this year's model. He installed that in his basement, now his practice kit, and he really couldn't sound any more comfortable. And there is something to be said for the rhythm section of our songs together, being my voice and his drums. I know the bass player is playing his conventional role, but there's something about that lock between my singing and his drums. And because we had that as a starting place, everything else just fell into its right place.

Elvis Costello Tells Apple Music That Album Is About Wanting To Be Connected...

Well, I think it's the sound of people wanting to get back connected with each other. We have had 45 years together and you know, because you've had long term working relationships, creative relationships, you could become complacent about it. And also, I think there is something when you go in and you try to keep it to the straight line between you and the listener that you can sometimes get in your own way in an attempt to make it. And there's something about us being separated while recording this, I think we all did our best thing for the song. The song was right at the centre. They listened to the words.

Elvis Costello Tells Apple Music About The Way Each Band Member Contributes To The Record…

As you know, records are often an accumulation of separate moments and people lose sight of that. There is something that people think if it was all done in the room together, that's more real. Well, sometimes it's real and sometimes it's just messy because you haven't quite worked out the arrangement. But with two of us, Steve, and Pete, and myself have played together on and off for 45 years, and Davey now I think has earned the right not to be called anybody's deputy after 20 years. I mean he's got his own approach to the bass, he's also a great singer so you hear his voice. Where I blend my voice with myself and then with him on top, that's a sound which, of course we didn't have. Nobody in the first group could sing, except me, and that was even a toss of a coin.

Elvis Costello Tells Apple Music About His Tour Plans For 2022…

But I really did enjoy doing it and we've planned the songs out on the stage. And you know what it's like, because you've been out there recently, you know what it feels like to be back out in front of people. We did 22 dates, we got in that little window of opportunity in October, did 22 dates with Charlie Sexton joining us, and that way I could really, a lot of the time, just be singing and didn't always have to fill every place because Charlie was covering it. And then when we did play together, it was a different thing. So the songs are going to change shape as we take them back out on the road in June in England and, here's an exclusive, the US in August. You're the first that knows that. So we're going out in the US in August.

Nile Rodgers talks songwriting with Graham Nash of the legendary Crosby, Stills & Nash on Deep Hidden Meaning Radio, and hears the stories behind classics like “Marrakesh Express,” “Our House” and “Teach Your Children.” Graham tells Nile how his former band The Hollies' version of “Marrakesh Express” was "terrible,” how they needed to get David Crosby drunk to sing one of his most famous songs and how one of CSN's biggest hits was the result of a bet with a drug dealer.

Graham Nash and Nile Rodgers on Live Aid

Nile Rodgers: I'm interested in your songs that you've written. Before we get to that though, I just got to ask you one thing. When we did Live Aid, were you on the bus? There was a bus that carted us from, I don't know, I guess some artist area. Because I know that David Crosby was on the bus.

Graham Nash: Are you sure?

Nile Rodgers: I thought so, because I kept thinking to myself, "I'm on the bus with Crosby, Stills and Nash.”

Graham Nash: Holy shit. It was a long time ago. And of course I was probably pretty high at the time-

Nile Rodgers: I know. That's why I was asking, because I know I was high.

Graham Nash: We were on tour, right? So we flew in there and we flew to do a gig right after Live Aid. So I don't remember being on a bus. I could have been. Hey.

Nile Rodgers: The thing that I remember that was so peculiar, which you probably weren't involved in this, was Lionel Richie giving us all a pep talk about not removing the microphone, because Bob Clearmountain, who was the engineer, was way out in center field and the microphones were set up strategically. And if you removed the microphone and started moving around, Bob wouldn't know which microphone to turn on, because he kept them off until he needed to have them on, because the band was behind each microphone.

Graham Nash: Of course. Right.

Nile Rodgers: And as soon as we started playing We Are the World, we played (singing). Lionel Richie goes (singing).

Graham Nash: And he walks right off.

Nile Rodgers: And he walked right off the …

Graham Nash: Anyway, Live Aid. What a great thing that was.

Graham Nash and Nile Rodgers on What Inspired “Teach Your Children”

Nile Rodgers: The immediate inspiration for “Teach Your Children” came from the famous Diane Arbus photo of the child playing with the toy hand grenade.

Graham Nash: Correct.

Nile Rodgers: Wow.

Graham Nash: Yeah. I used to own that image.

Nile Rodgers: Really?

Graham Nash: I had a wonderful collection of photography. I gave about 130 prints to a museum for a show. I never tell curators how to hang the show. They know their space way better than I would, but I'm very interested in what picture you put next to another picture. Because they start a dialogue between them. And when I was looking at the Diane Arbus photograph of the boy in Central Park with hand grenade, I began to realize that if we didn't teach our kids a better way of dealing with each other, then humanity itself was kind of screwed. That was the beginning of “Teach Your Children.”

When I sold my collection of photographs at Sotheby's in '89, I don't know whether you know much about auctions, but the previous night to the auction, people come and see what's going on. The big buyers, the heavy hitters, et cetera. I was standing there, and this tall kid comes up to me and he goes, "Do you know who I am?" And I went, "I've got a pretty decent memory, but I don't think we've ever met." He goes, "Oh yeah, you know who I am." And now I'm starting to freak out a little. I'm wondering what the fuck this guy is. I said, "Tell me. What? Where did we meet?" He said, "I'm the boy with the hand grenade."

Nile Rodgers: Oh man.

Graham Nash: And it was him. And he was like six foot five. He towered over me. I had my picture taken with him, because I wanted to know what the hell happened. What happened to that moment that made that picture so fantastic? Tell me. He said, "Well, every Sunday I would be able to go to the park, and my mother would let me take my toy soldiers. And I would have battles and I would line them all up." He said, "But one day I must have pissed her off, because when we went to the park she said, "You can only bring one thing." And so I brought my hand grenade. I was just standing there. I was so upset at my mother. This lady in black came with a camera and said, "Can I take your picture?" And I said, "Yeah, you can take my picture." And that's his expression.

Graham Nash and Nile Rodgers on The Hollies, “Marrakesh Express” and Collaboration

Graham Nash: They were a good band, The Hollies. We had 15 top 10 singles before I left to join David and Stephen.

Nile Rodgers: Yeah, I know. I bought them all.

Graham Nash: I'll pay you back, kid.

Nile Rodgers: I'm very happy to have contributed to the cause.

Graham Nash: In fact, somewhere in the basement of EMI at Abbey Road is a track of Marrakesh Express that the Hollies did. And it sucks. I love the Hollies. But man, their “Marrakesh Express” absolutely sucked.

Nile Rodgers: When I was younger and I first heard “Marrakesh Express,” it was one of my favorite songs like ever.

Graham Nash: Fantastic.

Nile Rodgers: In later years I would do something with a guy, and we wrote a song called “Train to Bombay,” and we weren't on a train to Bombay. We just made that shit up.

Graham Nash: Of course.

Nile Rodgers: But it was because of “Marrakesh Express.”

Graham Nash: But I was on a train to Marrakesh.

Nile Rodgers: So it says here in my notes that you were in first class, and you weren't really interested in the people. So you moved to, I guess-

Graham Nash: The third class.

Nile Rodgers: I guess they don't call it steerage on a train, but-

Graham Nash: Same thing. Yeah. And that's where it was happening. That's where people were cooking food, and pouring mint tea from six feet in the air into a small glass, and animals all over the place. It was way better than first class.

Nile Rodgers: I know the imagery that you're talking about, but what's really interesting is that, I guess for some reason, the lyrics and even just the melodic flow of the (Singing).

Graham Nash: And that's the genius of Stephen Stills. And that's the difference between The Hollies’ version and our version. When you are writing a song about a train, it needs a train. It needs urgency, it needs energy, it needs to be tracking right along. And that guitar part that Stephen Stills put on was unbelievable to me. He did it one after another. (singing) Okay, next track. (Singing). And he just laid it down and it was perfect. And he did the same with my song “Teach Your Children.” I played Stephen “Teach Your Children” the first day that I met him. So I played it for him and he said, "That's a very interesting song. Don't ever play it like that again." And I said, "What?" He goes, "You sound like Henry VIII." He said, "This is how it should go," and he put that beautiful Stephen Stills right hand picking pattern that he's so famous for, and he turned into a hit record.

Nile Rodgers: Wow. It's funny, I did a workshop yesterday on collaboration, and I was explaining how musicians are some of the greatest collaborators. It's just a wonderful thing to be in that room, and the ideas just start flying around the room, and all of a sudden you go from nothing, or just a tiny idea into a beautiful story. It just blossoms, I would've never imagined that you did that.

Graham Nash: I just saw a really lovely little documentary about the Traveling Wilbury's, and how they would go and they'd sit in a room with nothing. And then George looked over at a packing box, that people had put stuff into move house, and on the side it said, "Handle with care." So he goes, that's great. Handle with care. Let's start. And they turned it into a fantastic song. And it happened time and time again with those. And you're absolutely right, musicians make great collaborators. It's not my most comfortable for thing to do as a writer. Because if I have a nice melody and I say, "What do you think?" And then somebody says, "Yeah, I keep imagining elephants with pink pyjamas on." No, sorry. No, no. But you collaborate a lot.

Nile Rodgers: That's my whole life. That's all I do. I start off in a solitary mode, writing down motifs and ideas, but they come to life when I bring them to the other people.

Graham Nash: That's very brave.

Nile Rodgers: Almost everything I do. Or it's the other way around. And actually that's where I'm most comfortable, when the other person has the idea and I can come in and be the fixer. That's when I really am at my best. Great. Because I know I'm going to write the song about the elephant in the pink dress.

Graham Nash and Nile Rodgers on the Era of Albums

Nile Rodgers: What's really interesting, and I think that a lot of people that listen to the show will get a little bit of education now. We grew up in an era where it really was about albums. So yeah, the individual songs were just part of the body of work. I don't know if you agree with me, but the way I used to look at an album was, to me, the album was a film and the singles were the trailer. They were the things that you put out-

Graham Nash: Perfect.

Nile Rodgers: Yeah. To get the person to say, "I'm going to commit to the big thing." We used to struggle over the sequencing of the album and the stories we wanted to tell. "No, this song has to go here," and it was actually a big deal. And now I work with a lot of artists and they honestly don't even care about that.

Graham Nash: We used to do that really, really well. When you start an album with “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” don't tell me you're going to get up and take the needle off the record. I don't think so.

Nile Rodgers: Right. Exactly.

Graham Nash: And it was very strange. And we were doing ‘Deja Vu,’ we were all staying at this very low class motel in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. It was right next to Wally Heider’s studio. And I went to Stephen one day and I said, "We don't have a “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.” He goes, "I know. We did it on the first record." I said, "No, no, no. We don't have that song where once you hear it, you're not going to take the needle off the record. We need that song." Two days later, he came back to me and he said, "How about this?" (Singing) And he played me “Carry On.”

Nile Rodgers: “Carry On.” Nice.

Graham Nash: Stephen Stills is a bitch, man. He's a great musician.

Graham Nash and Nile Rodgers on “Our House” and Joni Mitchell

Nile Rodgers: So “Our House,” it shows you that when you're a teenager and you're just into the artist, especially back in those days, we weren't over concerned about people's relationships and things like that, like now. Now it's all about who lives with who, who goes out with who.

Graham Nash: Indeed.

Nile Rodgers: So I feel really, really stupid that I had no idea that you lived with one of the most incredible people in music, with Joni Mitchell, and “Our House” is you writing a song about your house with Joni Mitchell.

Graham Nash: Yes. There's a version of our house that I did at the Music Academy in Philadelphia. I'm playing at soundcheck, making sure the piano’s in my speaker kind of thing. And Joni sits right next to me and we do “Our House” with four hands on the piano. We screw up halfway through and I say, "Oh shit man. What the fuck?" And we all start laughing, but it's on the record.

Nile Rodgers: That's cool. I think in terms of Joni Mitchell as so serious. I remember going to meet her out in Malibu. We were thinking about working together, and she was so serious. I was like going, “Ah."

Graham Nash: Yeah. She's a serious woman.

Nile Rodgers: But “Our House” is such a... It's a heartwarming, lovely kind of ditty. You were probably in a very good space.

Graham Nash: I was in a great space. I was living with Joni Mitchell, for God's sake.

Graham Nash and Nile Rodgers on the Album ‘Deja Vu’

Nile Rodgers: The influence that you had, that CSN had on just the culture in general was incredible. ‘Deja Vu’ changed so many things. Even just the album cover, because it had the textured thing. Everything seemed so well thought out.

Graham Nash: The idea for the civil war kind of feeling on the cover, that's all Stephen. That's Stephen's idea. That's what he wanted. And it cost us... It was the most expensive album cover every made, because every photograph was put on by hand. Now imagine that when you're selling several million records. That's a lot of hand work.

Nile Rodgers: Yeah. I'm really happy working with artists that I work with now, but it's interesting that they don't come from a world like that.

Graham Nash: Different world, isn't it?

Nile Rodgers: Because to acquire things in the tactile world, like a record, we had to go out and actually physically go get the record. There was a huge amount of effort involved into getting this thing that we go home, smoke a bunch of hash and just sit there and go, "Wow." It was a spiritual commitment, a physical commitment.

Graham Nash: Yeah. Originally albums, as you well know, were just the bands hits and B sides, and put it out to make more money. But then when Pet Sounds came out and John Lennon and Brian Wilson really made people understand that an album can be an incredible journey, like a film, like you said. And that each track is a trailer for the journey of the album. And we always took incredible time and concentration to get every song in its right place. And once it's done, it's forever.

Nile Rodgers: Yeah. And also we had technical problems that we had to deal with. We had bandwidth issues and things like that, that they don't have to worry about. Now I've seen some hip hop albums that have 30 songs on it or something. And I'm going, "Well, you could have never put 30 songs on a record."

Graham Nash: We had that problem. Let's take Woodstock, for instance. Woodstock is what? Three and a half minutes?
But we played for 14 minutes. We had to fade because of time on a vinyl record. But you should have heard... I want to do ‘Deja Vu’ from start to finish, meaning from the count off, to the drummer putting his sticks down on the snare. All of it, not fading. All of it. That would be an interesting album, I think.

Graham Nash and Nile Rodgers on ‘Almost Cut My Hair’

Nile Rodgers: Man, let me tell you something. Most people will never hear me say this. But to this day, because my hair is still in insane, I wake up almost every morning and sing, "Almost cut my hair."

Graham Nash: Fantastic.

Nile Rodgers: I just think that is one of the most genius vocals and songs.

Graham Nash: We actually had to get David drunk to do it.

Nile Rodgers: His singing is unbelievable. It's off the charts on that song.

Graham Nash: Crosby's a great musician, man. He really is. Great singer, totally unique.

Nile Rodgers: And I love the line, "Must be because I had the flu for Christmas."

Graham Nash: That's right. And you know what? Crosby had the flu for Christmas almost every year that I was with him. He built it into his DNA or something.

Graham Nash and Nile Rodgers on “Chicago / We Can Change The World”

Nile Rodgers: Now this is interesting. So when we talk about the song “Chicago/We Can Change the World,” I joined the Black Panther Party exactly one year after the whole Democratic Convention.

Graham Nash: I knew that.

Nile Rodgers: At that point prior to joining the Black Panthers, I was in the Peace and Freedom Party and all the other organizations where the cops would just beat us up at every rally. And then when I joined the Panthers, all of a sudden everything changed. It was like, "Whoa." They didn't beat us anymore. They had to shoot us. So I was familiar with the lyrics of the song and the content of the song, but I'd like you to talk about it. Because as a listener, I take my perspective also because I was part of the movement then, but as a composer, how did you think about it? Where were you coming from?

Graham Nash: I was coming from a very simple point of view. To me, you can't bind and chain and gag a man, and call it a fair trial. I'm sorry. That doesn't work for me. I know that Bobby Seale was rambunctious, I know that he was vocal. I know all that. But you can't chain and bind and gag a man, and call it a fair trial. That's why I wrote Chicago.

Nile Rodgers: Obviously, I believe in... I'm pretty sure you know the story. He had a reason to be somewhat rambunctious, because he didn't have an attorney. He didn't have legal representation. And he was saying, "Hey."

Graham Nash: I know. And even that's crazy.

Nile Rodgers: Right. Everybody in America supposedly has the right to representation. And as they say, if you don't have one the court will appoint one. For those of us lived through it and saw it at the time that it was happening, it was maybe one of the most graphically horrible, ugly things that we had seen in America. To see Bobby Seale bound and gagged like that was just incredible to me.

Graham Nash: I'll bet. Especially being a member of the Panthers.

Graham Nash and Nile Rodgers on “Just A Song Before I Go”

Nile Rodgers: “Just A Song Before I Go.” Talk to me about that.

Graham Nash: I was in Maui, in the Hawaiian islands. I had taken a few days off from me and David and Stephen, and I was at the house of a friend of mine called Spider. He was a low level drug dealer. He had great grass. We were friends. I was at his house. I had about maybe an hour and a half before I had to leave and catch my flight back to David and Stephen for a show. And he looked at me and he said, "We've known each other a few years now." He said, "I didn't really realize you're supposed to be some big shot songwriter. Right?" And I said, "Yeah, I do my best." He goes, "I'll bet you can't write a song just before you go." I said, "What?" He said, "I bet you can't write a song just before you go." I said, "How much?" He said, "$500." I said, "$500. If I can write a song just before I go. Well, how about this?" And I sat down and I wrote it.

Nile Rodgers: Nice.

Graham Nash: So simple.

Nile Rodgers: Did he give you the five bills?

Graham Nash: He did. There's a joke that Joe Walsh tells about Rocky Mountain Way, but I'm going to say it with “Just a Song Before I Go,” because it was the biggest single hit that CSN ever had. Right. And I tell my audience, if I'd have realized how big a hit it was going to be, I'd have written a better song.

Nile Rodgers: Man, it's such a pleasure to talk to you. I really thought you were going to clear up that bus ride for me, because I was so high. I was like, "Well I know that we were all talking. I was so happy to be with Crosby, Stills and Nash."

Graham Nash: When we were leaving Live Aid, I noticed that... Do you remember there was a big white sign that gave all the dressing room for Neil Young, for Bob Dylan, Nile Rodgers…

Nile Rodgers: Yes.

Graham Nash: I still have that.

Nile Rodgers: Really?

Graham Nash: Oh yeah.

Nile Rodgers: I learned a lot today.

Graham Nash: Good.

Nile Rodgers: So Graham, I'm telling you man, it's such an honor and a pleasure. You've done so much for my life and career and music and...

Graham Nash: You take it easy, eh.

Nile Rodgers: Be well, be safe. And I hope maybe we can meet somewhere in the flesh and hang out and do something. It's totally my honor today.

Graham Nash: It will be my honor too, Nile. God bless.

Grammy Award-winning producer, songwriter, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Giles Martin joined Apple Music’s Zane Lowe for in-depth conversation about the arrival of The Beatles’ iconic ‘1’ album in Spatial Audio for the first time ever, in addition to “Strawberry Fields Forever” in celebration of the song's 55th anniversary. Martin shared unique insights and stories about the process of bringing immersive audio to a legendary body of work, how the new technology is transforming how music is created and enjoyed, honoring the legacy of his father and The Beatles, the implications for a new generation of artists, and more.

Giles Martin on The Evolution of Sound…

My dad was, you know, was a futurist and loved technology… so he was always looking for a way of having great sound…And what happened was with The Beatles and my dad and other people around the world they went "OK, how do we create worlds that don't exist?” And since Sgt. Pepper's, you know, originally with Tomorrow Never Knows or Revolver, they start doing this thing with these aren't live records. These are things you can only imagine in John Lennon's head.He tried to capture what was in the head and put on a record. And that's the evolution of sound. It's not just technology, it's imagination as well and that's key.

Giles Martin on The Responsibility He Feels Mixing The Beatles For Spatial Audio…

I still find it hard to believe that that I get given this responsibility. I never thought in my life I'd be mixing or remixing Beatles stuff. And I realized that when I walk into a room at Abbey Road and I can get a four track, one inch tape and it has A Day in the Life in it or Paperback Writer or anything, and I can press play and I can hear it how lucky I am and how many people would want to do this? How many people would want to be in that position? I shouldn't have this privilege, everyone should have this privilege.

Giles Martin on The Journey of Bringing New Technology To The Beatles’ Catalog…

I think Sgt. Pepper's the first Dolby Atmos record. We went back and redid it because technology changed, like it does. Paul and Ringo and Olivia and Yoko, and now, you know, the kids as well, they they look after this great legacy of music, and I just work for them basically. But Paul and Ringo are always going, “How can we push technology? How can we change the way?” So it made sense to me to do Sgt. Pepper's, you know one of most famous albums of all time in new technology, because that's what The Beatles want. Paul says, “I don't want to be stuck in a museum. I don't want to be under a glass case. I want, you know, people discover things. I want people to listen to stuff, old people to explore. I people have an opinion about things”. You know, it's that and The Beatles don't want to be the sort of on some mount going, “don't touch it.” You know, like some people said to me, why would you go and do this? I go, 'Because they asked me to’, and I don't go do this work because, you know, I'm bored and there's a cupboard of Beatles records I need to go look at.

Giles Martin on Spatial Audio Becoming More Accessible…

I've been working in surround for a long time, you know. I did the Love show in Vegas, which has seven thousand speakers in a room and we did a surround sound record that which was very successful. But then you couldn't hear it anywhere. You know, you couldn't hear a — people don't have surround sound unless they’re very niche. And it took a while, it took like a company like Apple to work out how to make it a consumer experience on a grand scale, you know? It's all very well.I could put people in a room that I can build and go, “This is gonna be an amazing experience”, but how do you then have it so it's easily accessible for people? You're going to have more intimacy and then you're going to you're going to notice, hear it, you're going to really listen to it and it's going to touch you. And that's what music is about. I don’t want people to listen to these mixes and go, this is a mix. I want people to listen to the song and go, “how does this make me feel? How does it make me feel?"You know, that's that's the key. It's like kids who have never heard The Beatles, which which there's lots of them. Well, you know, if it doesn't have The Beatles or if it's anyone, it doesn't matter as long as they feel something when they listen to it.

Giles Martin on How Long It Takes To Mix a Track in Spatial Audio…

It does really vary. It can take, it can take half a day or three days or ages if you get it wrong, it's as simple as that. And the reason was for a lot of lot of the stuff like the the early, early material we’ll go back into the Studio Two where their band recorded and we'll find a way of rerecording the room. So you have the Studio Two around you when you listen to it. So that takes a while.So that's the process, so we’re mixing not just the original tracks, but actually — Capturing ambiance of the room that they're in to make it more real. So that's a process that if you could add on to that and then once you got the tracks up, you know, I'd mix things incredibly quickly. And sometimes some tracks just take ages because you just think this is, this doesn't feel right.

Giles Martin on The Beatles Songs That Were Challenging To Mix in Spatial Audio…

There's always a few troublemakers, and so it's like, you know, you know in all honesty, Hard Day's Night was was tough.Because, you know, the way it was done, it was, it's got, I’m going to get this wrong. It's got it, so it's got John's vocal, acoustic guitar, and congas on one track. Guitar, drums and bass, another track. John and Paul, another guitar, I think, another track. And it's that balance, if you start splitting the Spatial Audio as opposed to mono, you going to, the levels change because of compression, so. There's a lot of technical stuff that goes on.And to get the same feel was was tough with that. A Day in the Life was always tough. Day in the Life sounds really good in Spatial Audio. That was really tough just because it's such an important song and it's a song, these tracks, like Day in the Life, is a four track. And what I mean means that people, people listening is four track means you have essentially four things and you can't separate them.So it's it's a acoustic guitar, piano, shakers and maracas, shakers and conga, sorry. And then there's bass and drums and there's a vocal track. And then there's the strings, all the strings on one track and you're thinking, that's one of the biggest records ever. And it’s only got four things. So, you have to go, OK.And if people listen to that Spatial, they'll hear the piano and acoustic guitar on this side of the shaker, and they'll hear the bass and drums on the other side because you can only put them on, and the vocals in the middle, and the strings go around you. And it's getting that balance, getting that feel right.

Giles Martin Says “Strawberry Fields” Was His Dad’s Proudest Work As a Producer and Explains How The Song Perfectly Showcases Spatial Audio…

It was my dad's, I think, proudest work as a producer, you know, because it was two different takes, two different speeds, he put the strings, he did, he created this thing. And it’s a lovely story, he — John Lennon got in touch with him and they didn't speak for a while for different reasons. John got in touch with him the month before he died. And my dad went to go see him in the Dakota building. And, John, you know, sort of —, they were thinking about working together again. And John said, “you know, I'd love to just go back and record everything again properly this time". And my dad was like, “what??” And he goes “come on, we probably could do a lot better this time around.” My dad goes “what about Strawberry Fields?” and John went “especially Strawberry Fields” — so the so the legacy and the importance of that song for me personally is huge. And then you take the multitrack and you go “Okay, how do I make Spatial?”. And to me, that song kind of suits that world of Spatial Audio, it suits falling into…nothing is real. That's that's what the line says in the song. And so it suits it. When I was doing this work that was the one where I go…. I remember doing it and thinking and putting on putting that to my AirPods or the Max’s and going, “this really works. This really works. OK, listen, guys, this is the reason why this technology should exist.Strawberry Fields.The reason why this should exist”, you know, so that's that's it's important.

Giles Martin on Working with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, Continuing To Embrace Technology, and Paul Saying “We Were A Really Good Band” After Hearing Sgt. Pepper in Spatial Audio…

It's like a family and there's pressure involved, but it's not as though we have marketing meetings and we sit as a board that sits around, it's like Paul and Ringo, and then there's Olivia and Dhani, and then there's Sean and Yoko. And you know, we communicate, we send, we send stuff around, we go, “listen to this” and they'll make comments and they love the technology, they love the idea of people listening in different ways. and I know this from my dad as well. You know, they never thought 50 years time or 60 years or whatever people would be listening to this stuff. And actually, I was with Paul. We have an Atmos room here at Abbey Road and Paul came to listen to Sgt. Pepper. and we sat and we listened to it. We wandered around the room was like a big room because “we were a really good band”. I was like, “Yeah, you were”. He goes, "you know, we were we were really lucky to have your dad”. And I said, "Well, I think, you know, he was lucky." And he goes “And we're really lucky to have you” and I went “oh God no, come on, you know?I think about how lucky I am”. He goes "we're all lucky then.” So yeah, he's — there's so much in all this, there's so much love and passion and care attached that goes into this. And if I can make them happy, then you know, and then other people listen to it, they can hear the passion that goes into it, then that's that's job done worthy.

Giles Martin on How Spatial Audio Allows You To Time Travel…

I remember when I walked into Abbey Road and… my dad, you know…he started to lose his hearing and didn't tell anyone that I became his ears and that's how I started doing what I'm doing. And he started working on the anthology project, and he hadn’t listened to The Beatles since they broke up. And I came in and I listened to A Day in the Life on a four track tape machine, and I was in a room upstairs and he pressed play and John was like talking to him, but obviously years old, and it was like he was in the room. It was like there was there was no hiss, there was no crackle, there was no like old…It was literally like he was coming to the speakers in the room. And I thought to myself, that is magical. records, don't get old.We get old. We get old and records stay the same age. John Lennon is the same age now you know on that recording as he was in 1967, when he was saying those words. And with Spatial Audio and the work we do now at at Abbey Road, you can time travel. You could be there with the band, you know, with Dolby Atmos, you could be there with the band and be in the same space with them and you can just time travel. You could snap your fingers are just pressing play or finding something. Finding some new experience, You know, we get old, music stays the same age.

Giles Martin on the Legacy of Abbey Road Studios…

My mum started working at Abbey Road in 1948 and my dad started working at Abbey Road in 1950. And it took a long time for them to get together, but get together they did. And you know without Abbey Road they would never have met. Without Abbey Road I wouldn't exist. I'm not the most important thing I think ever is produced, but I'm personally grateful that my parents met here. Listen, Abbey Road was the first studios that existed in the world, you know? I think, 1932 Abbey Road Studio One was built and, and it was the first purpose built studios in the world. And so it was the kind of home recording, if you like. And and from those days of Elgar, Glenn Miller, all that sort of stuff.And then eventually The Beatles, and then Pink Floyd…the walls are soaked with sound…You walk into that room and it's like, you know, it you feel as though you're in a magic place and you can't design that. You know, that's the great thing about the magic of music, it happens. And I think the the magic and grandioseness of somewhere like Abbey Road creates that performance space.

Keith Richards joins Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 to celebrate 30th anniversary and re-release of his second solo album ‘Main Offender’. He tells Apple Music about deciding to make another solo record after ’Talk Is Cheap’, the necessity of the hiatus from The Rolling Stones and how it made the band stronger, what he learned from being a frontman and how it benefitted The Stones, why he didn’t make another solo record for 23 years, the upcoming 50th anniversary of ‘Exile on Main Street’ and more.

Keith Richards Tells Apple Music About Listening To The Newly Remastered Version of ‘Main Offender’...

Zane: Let's look back for a minute. But only if we can honor this album in the present day. And not just stay in the past. Because I listened to this album again, the remastered versions, and what I was immediately struck by, Keith, is how fucking good it sounds.

Keith: Yeah. That's a good start, man. Yeah, yeah. I was too. Because I hadn't heard it for a long time. And that was one of the first things that struck me. When I was listening for this reissue. Yeah, I love that band.

Keith Richards Tells Apple Music About Putting The Band Together...

The opportunity to put that band together came when Steve Jordan and I had been working. We just finished Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll, the Chuck Berry movie. And by then, we were hooking, pretty much solid all the time. I said, "We should keep this thing going, man. What if I call Waddy Wachtel and Ivan Neville?" And everything just fell into place. And it's yeah, a little dream band of mine that. Hey, it's 30 odd years ago now. But I always remember that period working with the Winos as such. It was like a vacation there. Hard working man, because those cats are very meticulous. Because they knew that it was my first time out as a lead, as a front thing. So I was being well protected from all around.

Keith Richards Tells Apple Music About Branching Out To Make a Solo Record and Connecting With Steve Jordan at the Recommendation of Charlie Watts...

It took a while. I never envisioned doing anything by myself. I don't. Now I wonder why. But at the time, it was just that all we did was the Stones. It was pretty much a full time, all year round job, by the time the tours and the recording. And the idea of stopping for a while and for whatever reasons it was like, "We are not going to be working for a few years," was a bloody shock, quite honestly. And Charlie Watts had said to me, he said, "Listen, if you're going to do anything by yourself, Steve Jordan is the man to go to.” And finally after that, Steve and I slotted in with each other almost by accident. And so once I got over the shock of change, I found it real easy because Steve and I suddenly found a thing going. And I found it really encouraging to write songs with a drama. Because that was new to me.

Keith Richards Tells Apple Music Why Steve Played in The Band Instead of Charlie…

I always assumed if I did anything by myself that I'd do it with Charlie. And I think it was just by the quirk of the fact that Steve is also a drummer. And that I started writing with him, that that sort of became a natural thing to say, "Anyway, Charlie has said no, you don't want me in, if not in another rock and roll band.” It'd just be like half the Stones. And that's not what you should be.

Keith Richards Tells Apple Music About Being Surprised By The Success of His Debut Solo Album ’Talk Is Cheap’...

I mean pleasantly surprised. And as you say, when group members go solo, you just don't know how it's going to come out. I just loved making it, that's a great fun. And you're quite right. By the time we'd finished that one, as I was saying, I was already thinking about Main Offender, because it was a continuation to me, even though there was a year or so in between. But it was something that had to be done. It was written.

Keith Richards Tells Apple Music About Deciding to Make Another Solo Record After ‘Talk Is Cheap’…

I mean, at the end of Talk is Cheap and stuff, I just felt that it was only just a beginning, that there was so much more, and I felt the band feeling that way. Then I went back to the Stones to do Steel Wheels, I believe, and then immediately afterwards I got back in with the Winos. It was double duty, but I loved it, man.

Keith Richards Tells Apple Music About The Rolling Stone’s Necessary Hiatus...

Quite an important part on the keeping the Stones together, we were at that period couldn't possibly have been we wouldn't have hooked again, the Stones. It was a weird period, and looking back on it now, it was a necessary hiatus. Once we started back again, I felt stronger than I had for a long time. And that's a hell of a band too.

Keith Richards Tells Apple Music What He Learned Being a Frontman and How He Brought That Knowledge To The Stones…

Well, first thing is, doing the Winos I had learned a lot more about being the front man. In other words, I came back to the Stones with a lot more knowledge of what Mick's job entails. And it's quite surprisingly different, you're out there all the time. I mean, you are nonstop. With the Stones, I can slide my time. But doing the Winos, while I was working the Winos singing and playing guitar too, that tightened me up a lot. And I brought a lot of knowledge and a much tighter feel when I got back to the Stones. One thing could have fed the other.

Keith Richards Tells Apple Music Why He Didn’t Make Another Solo Album After ‘Main Offender’ For 23 Years…

The Stones became active, hyperactive again. That was why. The Stones went on a touring binge of years. …It was basically the Stones went into full scale operation again and there wasn't really any more time to fit it in.

Keith Richard Tells Apple Music About The Comfort of Steve Sitting in For Charlie in The Stones...

Once again, it was Charlie Watts that nominated Steve to take his place because he knew he wasn't going to be able to make the tour. He thought that he was going to maybe just replace for a bit, but as it turned out, well ... And Steve's been a great friend of the band since we both got together. And so Mick and I and Steve worked sometimes together in rehearsing places. So he was not like a total stranger, but for me it felt very comfortable to have my old friend solid there on the seat. It's like, at least I know the man.

Keith Richards Tells Apple Music About Wanting To Collect More Vinyl...

I have a turntable, and I do have some vinyl, and I love the sound of vinyl. That'll probably get the turntable going around. I want to check it out on vinyl. Yeah, I do. I would like to build up back a vinyl collection now that it's still viable.There's some magic in there.

Keith Richards Tells Apple Music About The Upcoming 50th Anniversary of ‘Exile on Main St.’…

Well, Exile is, it is one of my favorite babies, man and it was an incredible record to make in this damn basement. And I sometimes wondered if we'd never get out of there, but one of my favorite. That house in the south of France where we recorded was bizarre to the max, and I have great memories of it. It was Riviera beach time. Everybody's going crazy. And yeah, that was a hell of a record. We liked it so much it became a double.

On the latest episode of ALT CTRL Radio on Apple Music 1, Hanuman is joined by Patrick Carney of The Black Keys to discuss the band’s latest single “Wild Child”, their upcoming album ‘Dropout Boogie’, and the 20th anniversary of their debut album ’The Big Come Up’. He also tells Apple Music entering a prolific period with bandmate Dan, bringing in more outside collaborators, burning out and taking a break in 2016, the group’s decision not to immediately sign with a major label at first, and more.

The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney Tells Apple Music About The Origins of The Group’s New Single “Wild Child”...

We went to Dan's studio in Nashville, Easy Eye. And we just posted up there for a couple weeks and just threw down a bunch of ideas that came to us off the top of our heads. And I think it was the 10th idea was what became "Wild Child". But yeah, it was pretty much in two weeks we kind of laid out what became the whole new record. We spent a few more weeks after that finishing it up. And I mean, "Wild Child", the most simple way to describe where it comes from is when we get in the studio, there's a couple litmus tests we have for if something's worthwhile. And if it's fun to play. This was one of the songs that was really fun. And we were listening back to the instrumental and we were not sure what to do with the verses. We had our friend Greg Cartwright who was in a band called The Oblivions. He's in a bunch of bands, but he's a dude from Memphis. We had him come to town, hang out with us. So we played him that track and he's like, "Oh, I got an idea." And from that we were able to kind of put the song together.

The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney Tells Apple Music About Entering a Prolific Period and Inviting in More Outside Collaborators…

We've actually just been in the studio basically constantly since then. We've been having kind of a prolific period. We've been experimenting for the first time. The only other person we've ever invited in the studio to work with us, was Danger Mouse. And he produced 'Attack & Release', 'El Camino', and 'Turn Blue', and the song "Tighten Up" off of 'Brothers'. But that's the only guy we've ever collaborated with. And lately we've been kind of just inviting friends to the studio and jamming with them. And it's been so much fun.

The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney Tells Apple Music About Burning Out and Taking a Break From The Band in 2016...

We've been a band for almost 20 years. Our first record came out 20 years ago on May 14th. And it took us a long time to reach the point in our career where we started getting played on the radio and things like that. It took us six albums to get there. So it wasn't until 2010 that we kind of experienced that type of thing. And when that happened, we kind of went all in. Anything we got offered an opportunity to do touring wise or something and we just said, "Yes, yes, yes." And we ended up burning out basically. We just kind of got fried. And we just worked so much in a four year period of time, five year period time that we took 2016, 2017 off.

The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney Tells Apple Music How He Feels Listening Back To The Group’s Debut Album ‘The Big Come Up’ 20 Years Later…

Our first album, it kind of has a magical feeling to me when I hear it. We were two buddies from Akron, Ohio who both dropped out of college and decided to start this band because a small little indie label in LA decided to... Basically, they said they would put a record out if we sent them a finished record. So we had to pay for everything and we had no money. So we hunkered down into the basement at the house I lived in with some friends. And when we had time, we worked and figured out how to do it all ourselves. And it came out. There was no PR person. There was no agent. There was nothing. And we ended up getting into my minivan and touring around the country and really rolling the dice hard.

The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney Tells Apple Music About The Group’s Decision Not To Sign With A Major Label At First...

They started coming around. And so we ended up signing to that label, the label we aspired to be on. We signed that label for our second and third record. And it was a really weird, magical thing. The fall of 2002 was just six months after the record came out, Seymour Stein founder of Sire Records was flying into Cleveland to come see us and hang out with us. And the world was kind of our oyster out of us being line cooks at a greasy spoon restaurant and mowing lawns to this. And then we were smart and we didn't sign to the big label right off the bat. We took the hard road and we did it all ourselves a while and it took us a long time to figure it out. But we basically signed up for the minor leagues and went to spring training, learned how to write songs. And I'm convinced if we would've signed to that big label right off the bat, we would've been toast within a year or two. I was obsessed with the band Pavement and one of the lyrics was, "You have to pay your dues before you pay your rent.” And I really took it to heart. I still do and we definitely paid our dues and we definitely paid our rent too, so.

The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney Tells Apple Music About The Band Burning Out, Coming Back Together, and Their Unlikely Bond and Friends and Bandmates...

I think that was the thing that ultimately kind of got to the point where we burned out because we got to the point where we became spoiled little bitches for a minute. We went from the minivan to being princes. And then we had to take a little time out. And it was that little minute of reflecting on everything. It allowed us to put in perspective just how special our friendship is and our chemistry in the studio. And this record, I think is just a reflection of that. When I talk about this record, it's hard for me to talk about the music or what we were doing sonically. That's not even that interesting to me. I think the record's really good. But to me, I think the most interesting thing for us to explain this to someone who doesn't know anything about music or something, it's just that Dan and I were kind of like... Our friendship was just circumstantial. We ended up growing up around the corner from each other and we weren't that similar when we were kids. And we found this one thing that we bonded on was music and humor. And we both have the same type of humor. And we both like the same type of music. And we define ourselves knowing each other for 35 years at this point. And to be in the band for 20 years and still having fun, I think that's just kind of a rarity.

Bonnie Raitt joins Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 for an in-depth conversation about her expansive career and 18th new album out this Friday, ‘Just Like That…’. She tells Apple Music about her musical upbringing growing up in Los Angeles, not feeling like a commercial artist, the current polarization in the country, mentorship, and  what she admires about the younger generation of female artists including Adele, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, and more. She also recalls the time she spent with Prince, their mutual admiration for one another, and him having her back when she was dropped from her label.

Bonnie Raitt tells Apple Music About Growing Up in Los Angeles…

I grew up here and there's a lot of history that's been gentrified, neighborhoods for people of color and Latino and black families. In San Francisco where I live now, in Northern California, and in LA, there's just really cool neighborhoods that musicians found and they could afford a while back and now lawyers have discovered it too. And next thing you know ... So that kind of real history and mom and pop restaurants and stuff, we got to be careful. So my memories of LA were riding bikes in Griffith Park and going on camping trips? Within an hour, you can be in the snow, within an hour, you're at the beach, or in the high desert, so the weather was fantastic. There was all kinds of ethnic restaurants and sections of town that were really cool. So I was aware of the melting pot part of it. And both my folks were from Southern California, so they were telling me about their history growing up, picking peaches in the valley when the whole valley smelled like orange groves. What? So it was nice, but I was definitely growing up in the show business.

Bonnie Raitt Tells Apple Music About Her Musical Upbringing…

Music was such a strong part of our growing up. My mom was a pianist and my dad's a rehearsal pianist and music director. And she was a great singer too. And he rehearsed a lot. And I did a lot of concerts, not just the shows. So I was singing and my brothers were singing. We were all playing instruments and singing from the time we were little. So one of the great joys for me is to listen, to sit in the backstage when I was really little and watch a people perform other stories. Inhabit Carousel and Oklahoma and Pajama Game and see how they sold different songs and inhabited the characters.And between that and the heritage of Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, I was exposed to a tremendous amount of storytelling music when I was growing up. And that let me really believe, like people that are into film, you just believe that those people become those characters.

Bonnie Raitt Tells Apple Music About First Picking Up a Guitar...

I just picked up the guitar because I emulated Joan Baez and they were singing songs of protests…    So, it seems just like the natural time I was growing up to pick up the guitar, because everybody was doing it in America. It was like a folk music craze going on. So, it just seemed seamless to me. And I taught myself to play, again, just for myself ... I wasn't into performing for people, but I just used it as a self-expression. And appreciated really good writing and really good lyrics.

Bonnie Raitt Tells Apple Music About Finding A Different Way To Exist In The World Through The Arts...

I love taking songs that other people have done first and then doing my own spin on them. And it comes from just being a teenager and sitting in my room with no expectation of becoming a musician for a living and just entertaining myself. It wasn't enough for me to hear John Lee Hooker, or the Rolling Stones doing Little Red Rooster. I had to learn how to play that sound… Between films and books and imagination and music, it was finding a different way to be in the world through the arts, I think. It just seemed as natural as breathing to me.

Bonnie Raitt Tells Apple Music About Exploring Multiple Genres Throughout Her Career...

I can't limit myself to one style of music. It would drive me crazy. People say, "Why don't you do a whole blues record, or a jazz record? Oh, you're so good at ... Why don't you do a funk record or work with this producer?" Because then I would miss out on the mixture of songs that it makes my life really interesting.

Bonnie Raitt Tells Apple Music About Not Being a Commercial Artists and The Upside To Not Having Hits…

I wasn't selling records from the first time I put my record out. I knew I wasn't a commercial artist. That wasn't my intention. But I would've liked to have had it. If my friend and Linda Ronstadt could have had a hit, I went, "Hey, I did a couple of songs in the mid seventies that ..." Runaway got some radio play. A single as just getting the door open to be able to pay your band better and tour more and go out international, build an audience. But the good thing about not having a hit is that you don't have to follow it up with anything. People aren't comparing you to the previous record. So, I had about six or seven albums where nobody was doing that, because it was just my core fans.

Bonnie Raitt Tells Apple Music About Choosing a Life on the Road and Smoking and Drinking To Try To Sound More Like Etta James...

It's not really a real world that you're living in, traveling with a circus like that. So, it's a lot of fun, but I'd made a choice early on to be a road person and run my own band and pick my songs and put records out, rather than be a mother and a wife. So, I can't really say that I came into my adulthood until I could stand the way I sang, maybe in my thirties. But I wanted to sound like Etta James and it just wasn't happening fast enough. So, I was just smoking and drinking and living that blues mama life to try to get my voice to sound more like what I felt like. But by the time I was in my late twenties, I just went, "Okay, she's got a little bit a character now." But by the time I hit 40 and I'd been sober for a couple of years, I had aged in a way that was coincided with a rebirth of me personally. And I had learned a lot about relationships and been through some hard times and came out the other side. And so it was really that record Nick of Time, I think was the one I could listen to my vocals and not gag.

Bonnie Raitt Tells Apple Music About Polarization, the Pandemic, and the Importance of Supporting Musicians…

It's hard to separate the last couple of years' COVID experience from the nightmare of the election cycle and the polarity and the hostility and viciousness that's become what our country's climate is, and the anxiety and stress of watching this play out, this polarization and this sinking and not believing in science and the center not holding anymore. What we agree is that what just happened, people's idea of the truth, I just wasn't expecting that in this lifetime. So, I'd have to say I was in such shock and trauma from Black Lives Matter from the climate refugee immigration nightmare, that's just was not ending so that when the shutdown happened, it was just one more paralyzing part of this...I'm painting a pretty negative picture but the election meant everything. And it was revealed an underbelly that I didn't even know was to just focus on raising money for musicians' relief in their musicians' community and food banks and all that. It gave me a purpose. So, I knew that we eventually were going to either get back on the road or I was going to get in the studio. So, it felt healing to have something to focus on and pull those songs together and know that people are hurting out there. And I can't wait to get on the road, not just to support my band and crew and the groups that I support, but to have some fun again and bring some light.

Bonnie Raitt Tells Apple Music About The Time She Spent With Prince…

I did get in the room. I even got in his closet. I got to see his clothes and his shoes and everything. Well, we watched Sly & The Family Stone and The Staple Singers on a giant screen. And I was at his house in Minneapolis. And then when I first met him, he sent a car for me with purple lights in the back and little porcelain figures with...the face, it was pretty great. So anyway, what an incredibly creative and interesting person because he was so shy in some senses, but his funk cred is unbelievable. Musician to musician, it was really a joy because he was a big fan of mine. I didn't even know he knew who I was, although I made my first album in Minneapolis and he said he thought that was so cool. Because Minneapolis and St Paul, like New Orleans, have a mixed race scene. The rock and R and B and blues musicians all hang out together and they're all influences. You're going to go play this. And so in that era he was growing up, he was very much aware of me and I was doing R and B covers and rock and roll, the same kind of mix that I do now, he's doing on those first early records. And he said he thought it was really great that I was covering a Don Covay song or Martha and the Vandellas and all this, you know? So he was little, but he was growing up and admired my playing, and I went nuts for him when I first heard about him. The word was out on him in the Minneapolis scene before he even had his first record and it was this wonder kid who played every instrument.mYou know, our time together was aborted somewhat because of scheduling and so I couldn't make when he was available so he went ahead and did the tracks in his key or they were songs he'd already written. So when I got out there and we had a couple days to try some things, they were way too low for me, but he wanted me to play slide on some stuff and he wanted me to teach him how to do it, and then he sampled some of my slide on Cream…I just showed him how I do it. So I got the feeling he said, "I don't necessarily have to learn how to do this because I can just sample you." Oh, God. So we didn't get to experience the melding that we would've done and I was supposed to go and work with him again when our schedules melded and then he stayed in Europe and we didn't get to work together again. So it was an aborted effort but mutual admiration for each other, and I really appreciated that at a time when I had been dropped by Warner Brothers, he called up and said, "You got shafted." I mean, he didn't know the details but he said, "Come on over to Paisley Park because clearly, I respect women musicians.” So, you know…

Bonnie Raitt Tells Apple Music About The Importance of Inclusivity in Music…

There are some great women engineers. We just need to host, all in the arts, there needs to be more mentoring and letting people get the experience so they can get the credit, because you know, you've only got a certain amount of money to pay for a record, especially since you don't sell CDs anymore, and you don't want to just hire somebody that hasn't done it yet. So we just have to be gracious with people, being inclusive of women and people of color, and not be ageist and shove people off the job because they're 60 years old.

Bonnie Raitt Tells Apple Music About Mentorship and The Younger Generation of Artists…

I'm in touch with some women friends of mine, Maia Sharp, Susan Tedeschi, people that are peers but a little bit younger. And it's really wonderful to watch the poise with which a lot of younger artists, women especially, are handling their success. People like Adele and I watch Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Norah Jones, who's a little older, but even as they got their huge successes, what incredible poise and self-awareness and good lawyers, and they were smart, they really paid attention to what was working for other people. So I grew up watching people not have a say in their own royalty rates or in their own careers. I grew up with a dad who had to wait for another Broadway show but he chose to go on the road and take the shows he was famous in and take them out to the people, and that's how he made his living. And I said, "You know, if I do this for music, I'm going to model myself on the folk musicians that are just getting decade after decade of loyal fans, playing those festivals in their 60s and their 70s and their 80s." That's the path that I chose…

Bonnie Raitt Tells Apple Music About “Down The Hall”…

Down the Hall, for me, was another story that, in the real world, just moved me so much. It was just not even a question for a second that I wasn't going to write a song about it. But I read this article in a New York Times Magazine about a prison hospice program. And I had no idea that this even exists. Just the idea that prisoners would volunteer to be with people at the end of their lives. When you get into reading their interview and see the photographs of the beautiful photo essay that went with the article. Because it's all even at the end of your life. But for these guys to be so bent up and embittered and traumatized and depressed about having to be in there, then feel bad about whatever they did, or maybe they're not even guilty. And they don't gain anything by volunteering, they just saw the need and the transformation inside to say, "maybe I could be of help. Not for any... lessen my sentence or give me some money to send to my family." Just because they don't have anybody there at the end of their life. And then, all of a sudden, they're on the ward and they're washing somebody's feet, shaving their head, and waiting outside the bathroom stall. What that takes for someone to get into prison and then have that transformation. It was just such a moving story to me that it was like Just Like That and Down the Hall. Not anointed, but I felt like I was called to write their story.

Bonnie Raitt Tells Apple Music About Her Purpose…

To wake up and be in service of a higher purpose is really what motivates me. When I want to be discouraged and stay numb, or just get involved with one of local, easy personal pursuits. I feel I was given this gift for a reason, and I was given a position of raising attention and supporting the people that sacrificed so much for no money. And that are all these activist, grassroots groups. And whether it's fighting a toxic dump or Native American tribes trying to get a uranium mine off their land... organize the rest of the community to not take the buyout. That kind of thing? Those are my heroes. And as you were saying earlier, it's a journey. There's no end result. There's never been a decade where everything was better. The Central American war was in the eighties. Nuclear power is still facing endless, embittered plants that are dangerous. And terrorist targets and waste disposals. So the safe energy fight, the justice fight, the equal rights fight, the environment. Access to healthcare and food. The inequities in our society are just too huge for me not to pay attention.

Bonnie Raitt Tells Apple Music What’s Next…

I haven't thought about anything farther than the tour, but I know that I'm never going to be complaining about anything if I can help it. Because being unable to tour and play live and feel the security of supporting my musicians community, I hope that doesn't happen again. And if it does, we'll still figure out a way to get through it. But right now I'm really, really heartsick about Ukraine and about the state of democracy and our election protection and access to voting. I'm really threatened here in this country and in the world and then you layer climate on it? So, if I didn't have this job to do and be able to have the joy of music and bring joy to people and find joy in other people's music that I... I listen to Mavis and I listen to Toots and I listen to Jackson and Bruce Hornsby and so many singer-songwriters that are still putting out some of the best music of their careers, five or six decades in. I look at Tony Bennett and Mick and Keith and go, "Hey man, I'm going to be 85." Mavis is 83 and I hope I'm still going strong. There's too much work to do and too much fun to have to retire. I would be bored to death.

Rod Stewart joins Deep Hidden Meaning Radio with Nile Rodgers to talk about songwriting and the stories behind some of his best-loved songs. Rod explains how he accidentally “stole” one of his biggest hits and the two legends discuss the perils of plagiarism, they talk about Rod writing about love and soccer in the same song, and about working with Jools Holland on a new album. Rod also tells Nile about his other great passion - his enormous model railway! In a fascinating and very funny conversation, the two friends and musical icons chat about their craft and their love of making music.

Listen to the episode in-full anytime on-demand with an Apple Music subscription at apple.co/_DHMRadio

Rod Stewart challenges Nile Rodgers to reform the Jeff Beck Group

NILE RODGERS: When I was working with Jeff [Beck] on the album ‘Flash,’ my secret desire was to try and get you guys to reform The Jeff Beck Group.

ROD STEWART: Well, listen, if you want to get us back together, you can do it. You can speak to Jeff. I know Ronnie would do it. Ronnie would love to play bass again. I'm up for it, mate.

NILE RODGERS: Those early records just blew my mind.

ROD STEWART: We didn't know. Obviously we didn't know how good they were. We really didn't, until about 20 years later, because they weren't phenomenal sellers, but they were grassroots sellers. You know what I mean? They influenced a lot of bands. You and you alone can get The Jeff Beck Group back together.

NILE RODGERS: You think so?

ROD STEWART: Yeah.

NILE RODGERS: All right. So here's a secret I'm telling, and I hope Jeff doesn't get pissed off, but so he hires me to do the album, hires me to do ‘Flash,’ and he walks into the studio and I'm ready to hear a bunch of really great demos. And I'm like going, "All right, Jeff, we're going to be like smokin’, man. This is going to be awesome." He comes in and he plays the theme song, the entire album, ‘Chariots of Fire.’ And he says, "I went to the cinema and I saw this. and I thought to myself, "Dammit, I should be doing that.”"

So he comes in and he says to me, "This is what I'd like to do." So most people don't know that I orchestrate. So I write an arrangement of... I forget which cue it is, but it's the one that goes [sings Eric’s Theme from Chariots of Fire]. Do you remember? So I write this whole thing out and we play it, and Jeff is killing. And we play this and I am always on the side of the artist. I never take the side of the label. But this was the first time in my life. I called Sony Records and I said, “Guys..."

ROD STEWART: Help, help.

NILE RODGERS: “He wants his album to be a cover of the soundtrack of ‘Chariots of Fire.’ I'm getting paid a lot of money. What the hell do I do?” The cool thing about this is that from whatever nuttiness that happened, we wound up... Well, you guys wound up getting a Grammy because we have the song “People Get Ready,” which you and Jeff wound up doing together. And I'm like going, "All right, now we're going to be one step closer to The Jeff Beck Group." And that was the only song I could get on that record that would have both you guys on it.

ROD STEWART: Well, it's all in your court now, my man. I don't want to put you under pressure. It's in your court. You can tell whoever you want. Get the word out there. Me and Ronnie are touring in the summer, he's with his group, what are they called, but closer to Christmas, we'll be available.

NILE RODGERS: Cool.

ROD STEWART: Say yes, you want to do it!

NILE RODGERS: I do!

Rod Stewart and Nile Rodgers on Da Ya Think I’m Sexy and plagiarism.

NILE RODGERS: “Da Ya Think I'm Sexy.” Talk to me about that one.

ROD STEWART: Well, I nicked it from... It wasn't a conscious nick. I was in Brazil for the festival, and I heard this song, [sings “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy” melody], and I just, I nicked it. Subconsciously I came back in the studio and started singing it and put words to it about six months later. But I put my hand up and I said, "Fair nick, I'm guilty." And all the proceeds actually went to UNICEF.

NILE RODGERS: No kidding.

ROD STEWART: The writer of the song agreed. Yeah.

NILE RODGERS: Wow.

ROD STEWART: Have you ever been done for plagiarism when you've nicked someone's songs?

NILE RODGERS: To me, that's just songwriting. Quite often I've said on this show that I believe it was Verdi who said “Good composers borrow and great composers steal.”

ROD STEWART: Wow. Verdi. How would you steal his music?

NILE RODGERS: We can't help that. We listen to music. Just like you just said with “Da Ya Think I'm Sexy.” You listen to music, you hear the song, you hear the motif, you hear the riff, and it gets stuck in your head and you say, "That's cool. This is what I would do with it." That is songwriting.

ROD STEWART: That's called plagiarism!

NILE RODGERS: Yeah. Well, you know-

ROD STEWART: It's plagiarism, no matter which way you look at it.

NILE RODGERS: But yeah, Bowie had a different word for it. Bowie would say that, "Nile, that's post modernistic reinterpretation."

ROD STEWART: Oh, well done. Good old intelligent David. Actually, the late and great Robert Palmer, he was a good friend of mine. And we had a few drinks one night and I said, "Your ‘Johnny and Mary’…” Don't know if you remember that song. "Was a big influence for me to do ‘Young Turks.’” And he said to me, he said, "That's strange because whenever I heard ‘Hot Legs,’ I went out and was influenced by... I was influenced by ‘Hot Legs’ and wrote ‘Addicted to Love.’” I mean, there's no connection, but the feel, both songs have the same sort of feel.

NILE RODGERS: ‘Stealing’ sounds like a strong word because it makes other people think that we are not artistic about it. But it's certainly not that at all. It's being influenced. I mean, what the hell? You hear something cool, you can't help yourself. I do it all the time. I'll hear a riff and then I'll redo the riff my way.

ROD STEWART: Yeah. Play it backwards. You ever tried doing that? Playing it backwards. That's a good old trick.

NILE RODGERS: A lot of big pop songs now are very reminiscent of other songs. I remember one night I was chatting with Andrew Lloyd Webber. I think he got a little pissed off, but he was cool about it. And I said, "Andrew, isn't that main lick from ‘The Phantom of the Opera,’ [sings melody]." I said, "Isn't that a variation of ‘Mack The Knife?’” And he goes, "No, it had nothing to do with Kurt Weill”. “That's the exact same motif from Kurt Weill!”. And he said, "No, it doesn't." I'm like, "Okay, cool. No problem."

ROD STEWART: Guilty as sin.

NILE RODGERS: Well, he didn't get pissed off. He was cool. We were having dinner, but I could see somebody must have said it to him before. I mean damn, come on. It's almost impossible. You hear a riff like that and it gets under your skin and you figure out a way to do it. And then he took it another place.

ROD STEWART: It's the attitude that you cop from the song. You don't steal it. You cop the attitude. “Johnny and Mary” and “Young Turks,” if you listen to them back to back, they're both stories about couples, but that's as far as it goes, and they're both fast, but that's as far as it goes.

Rod Stewart on fans’ reactions to the song “The Killing of Georgie”

NILE RODGERS: I think “The Killing of Georgie” is one of the most important LGBTQ+ lyrics ever written. Give me the story behind that song.

ROD STEWART: Well, it was the early '70s when the Faces were touring America and we had this wonderful black friend of ours, handsome as hell, would bring records around to our hotel and play them to us. He'd say “Guys, you heard this? Heard that?” And his name was Georgie and the song’s, more or less, how it happened, one night he got stabbed and therefore the song. And the wonderful thing about the song is even nowadays, people come up to me, they're in their forties and fifties, and say, "When that song came out, I was lost. I was in a dark place. I didn't feel I could come out. I couldn't tell anybody I was gay or whatever." So it helped so many people. And that gives me immense satisfaction.

Rod Stewart on singing standards and working with Jools Holland on a new album

NILE RODGERS: When you started singing standards, I really understand the huge amount of success you've had in the last more than a decade.

ROD STEWART: Yeah, it's an album [The Great American Songbook] that I've been waiting to do for so long. And I approached Warner Brothers, oh, 30 years ago to do it. And they turned it down. They just said, "No, you are a rocker, not a crooner." I said, "Okay." And the late, I was going to say, the late great Richard Perry, he's still alive, dear Richard Perry. You know Richard, don't you?

NILE RODGERS: Very, very well.

ROD STEWART: You've been up to Perry's Pub? So I got together with Richard and we started recording it, sent it over to Clive Davis and Clive just freaked over it, loved it. Clive said, "We would like a traditional backing," because the way Richard and I had done it was more keyboard-ish and up to date. Clive took it back to the basics: strings. He said, "I want it Fred and Ginger, Clive said I want it.”

NILE RODGERS: Wow.

ROD STEWART: They've sold 37 million copies, those five albums.

NILE RODGERS: I've actually stood on the side of a stage one time. And I was going, "Man, look at that, man. He's got this whole new thing. It's all still Rod." It's like the Rod I know, the practical joker, the funniest guy in the room, that dude, but you're delivering these songs that are emotional, that people have listened to for 50, 60 years, and you made them yours. And it was like, "Man, that's killer."

ROD STEWART: And do you know Jools Holland?

NILE RODGERS: Of course I do. My God, I played with him many times.

ROD STEWART: Yeah. So we're making a swing album now, and he's got the best swing band in the world. So we're halfway making an album together. In fact, next week we're doing another five tracks.

NILE RODGERS: Oh cool.

ROD STEWART: Jools and I, we have a lot in common because we both love model railways. So we are real soul brothers. We talk about music and then say, "That's enough music. Let's talk about our hobby," which is model railroads.

NILE RODGERS: Do you have a big layout at your crib?

ROD STEWART: Massive, massive. It's taken 27 years to build it.

NILE RODGERS: Wow.

ROD STEWART: Anyway, that's another story.

NILE RODGERS: Yo Rod, seriously, take a picture of that.

ROD STEWART: Yeah, sure. I'll send you a picture.

Florence Welch joins Zane Lowe in-studio on Apple Music 1 for a conversation about Florence + The Machine’s fifth album ‘Dance Fever’. She tells Apple Music about almost giving up on the album after heading directly from the studio with Jack Antonoff into lockdown, the difficulty of processing the uncertainty of not knowing if she’d ever be able to perform live again, how humor and self awareness informed the songwriting on the album, and trying to embody her favorite male vocalists like Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, and Iggy Pop on album opener “King”. She also discusses navigating sobriety during the pandemic, reflects on initially drinking to fuel her creativity and keep up with the hard partying indie scene she came up in, why being a musician is bad for personal relationships, and more. 

Florence + the Machine also created special poem versions of the songs ‘Cassandra’, ‘King’ and ‘My Love’ exclusively for Apple Music, which will be available from tomorrow.

Florence Welch Tells Apple Music About Almost Giving Up on Her Album After Heading Straight From The Studio with Jack Antonoff Into Lockdown...

There were so many moments where I had nearly gave up on this record. There were so many moments where I nearly went, "It just feels like the way that the world is, this is just too hard to finish.” I started with Jack, and we were meant to make the whole record in Electric Lady in New York in... March 2020. I went to New York. I had my suitcases packed for a month, we were going to make the whole… we had a bunch of amazing songs done. The first song we wrote together was King and… so Jack had wanted to work together for a while, and we met and we got on really well. I found him really great to talk to. I never start working with anyone at this stage in my career, unless we get in the studio and do something, and that really tells you whether something's going to work. You're never like, "Yeah, let's do this," until you've had a play date, and on this play date we wrote King and then Choreomania. I'd had Choreomania and it was in a very demo-like state, and what Jack did to it, he took it so far. I was like, "This guy's really good. He's really, really good.” The strength of those two songs was like, "Okay, there's really something here," and then we agreed to start the record together. We got to New York, in that one week we wrote Free and we wrote Back In Town. Ironically, Back In town was the last song I wrote before my mom called. My mom never calls me, she's a very busy lady. We basically have to make appointments with her secretary. I saw my mom, she said, "You should come home." If mom calls, somebody's died or something has happened. I saw her, I was like, "It's time to go," and it was very much that stage where they were like, "This will just be a month." It was interesting to me, though, as well, because for all of my anxiety and for all of my worrying about things that would happen in the future, I was wildly optimistic about this. It just proved to me that my anxiety doesn't know anything. My anxiety is not a psychic. Everything that I think bad will happen tends to not happen, and then the things that I cannot conceptualize… happen, which is weird, so I'm really optimistic. So me and Jack were both like, "See you in a month, going to get home," and then I didn't see Jack for a year and a half year. I don't think he left his apartment for a year.

Florence Welch Tells Apple Music About Processing The Uncertainty of Not Knowing If She’d Ever Be Able To Perform Live Again...

I felt like this cathedral of touch that I had built had just flattened overnight.  And the grief and the loss of... It's also, it was like, "It's my job." And I just didn't know if it would come back and I don't know how to do anything else. I don't know how to do anything else? Because, there were so many false starts as well of like, "We can go to finish the record, or we can't, there's another variant. We're going to get to New York to do it. Oh, we can't. Everyone in England has COVID, you can't leave. America doesn't want you.” And so, there were so many false starts of whether this record would even finish and where the gigs... And you would see a tour go up, you would see it get canceled, you would see a show go up, you would see a get canceled. And so, it was almost like, after two years of desperately wondering, I almost settled in.  I was like, "You know what? Maybe, this isn't..." It's like, "I will never, I could never live without this thing." And I still feel that a world without live music, I was really questioning whether I even wanted to be in that world. That's how I've seen miracles take place, is on stage. It's how I've seen people transcend their physical bodies and bring heaven into the room. For me, music and gigs, they are my kind of spiritual practice, and making music. And I always felt like I was in communication with something outside of myself that would provide me this moment of relief from self. And that is a kind of transcendence, I think. And so when all gigs and live and... these places that had been my church… I felt abandoned, I think. I felt abandoned. 

Florence Welch Tells Apple Music How Humor and Self Awareness Informed Her New Album...

I think it's funny. But my therapist is like, "You have to stop laughing at terrible things.” She's like, "A, you have to stop trying to make me laugh. And every time you say something bad, you think that it's hilarious." But that's my work. That's my ongoing work… But I think there's a humor also in self-knowledge, that runs through this record, that I've actually found really liberating. And able to take the things that perhaps I used to protect myself, mythologies and a creation. And I feel like I can kind of wink at it a bit more and be like, "I know a lot of this is sort of fantasy." But it's like the self-awareness has allowed me to maybe take myself less seriously, as well, which has been kind of enjoyable on this record.

Florence Welch Tells Apple Music About Tricking Herself Into Releasing Her Music Into The World...

…making a record is so fun. And when I make records, I make them really with the... have to make things with the idea that no one else will hear them, and I'm in a private dialogue with kind of myself. And so then when you get to the realization that this private dialogue is going to be completely public, I'm always... It's like I've tricked myself again. I'm like, "What the...? You did it to yourself again.” Always if I'm afraid, or it feels really exposing or vulnerable, it's like the dare. It is. It also maybe means something is working, if it makes you feel uncomfortable, vulnerable, you're like, "Ah, this probably means it will resonate with people." Because it's the most kind of vulnerable things that really are the most universal, often. But yeah, every time it comes to handing it over, I'm also just like, you think you'd be able to celebrate what you've done, but I'm just always flooded with self-loathing.

Florence Welch Tells Apple Music About Album Opener “King” and Trying To Embody Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, and Iggy Pop…

I was like, "I'll never write a song again, I can't do anything." It came from a real conversation in a real kitchen, and then it went into this metaphysical archetypes world, and I think I was thinking about these male performers that I have idolized for so... I was thinking about Nick Cave, I was thinking about Leonard Cohen. I was thinking about how, in some ways, although everyone undergoes huge changes, their physical bodies, especially moving through touring, have been allowed to remain unchanged… and they can commit their body entirely to the stage. These people that I had tried to follow in their exact footsteps, I was like, "Oh my God, I can't do that. I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm going to have to make choices." It's so funny because in the singing, I'm trying to still embody them. In the lower baritones, I'm trying to do a Leonard or a Nick, or an Iggy Pop was a really big reference, so it's this, "I can do it." It's this desperation of trying to hold onto this idea that I had about myself, all the while it is even being undercut by the song itself.

Florence Welch Tells Apple Music About New Song “Free” Resonating With Live Audiences...

We've already been playing Free a bit. And sometimes you just know a song is working because when we started playing it before it had even come out, just this ripple started in the audience of people catching onto the chorus and starting to move. And it was one of those moments where I was like, "Oh, this is a special one. This is really hitting something in people." And that's so magical for me. That's when it really, the celebration starts

Florence Welch Tells Apple Music About Aging and Identity…

...this idea that there was so much I wanted to do, but if I wanted to have a family, there was this sense that suddenly I was being irresponsible with my time by choosing this thing that I've known my whole life, which is performance, which is making songs, which is striving to be the best performer that I can be, and suddenly realizing that it felt like a betrayal… Somehow it would be your fault or something that you missed that boat, so I think that scream at the end of King, it's just one of frustration, and confusion as well.

Florence Welch Tells Apple Music About Initially Drinking To Fuel Her Creativity and Attempting To Find Her Place in the Hard Partying Indie Scene at the Time...

I had thought that the chaos in my life and the drinking and everything was fuel for my creativity. And that was how you were a Rock&Roll star, that was how you did it. That was the brief. Because, as a young woman coming out in the indie scene, you didn't want people to think you were girly or sensitive. And it was like, "If I can drink as hard as these people can and if I can drink them under the table, that's how I make my place in this world." And that was all I knew. It was a scene. And in the South London scene that I came from, that was how you did it. The gig was either the side of the drinking. And then, it was the drinking before, the drinking during, the drinking after. And if you could hit the sweet spot where that made the gig really good, that was great. Sometimes, you missed it.you're just throwing a bucket of paint on someone and screaming, and that's the show.

Florence Welch Tells Apple Music About Sobriety During The Pandemic...

…a lot of what makes sobriety amazing is that, you get this very big life. So you get to do and experience things that you would have completely ruined, had you been drinking or you wouldn't be able to show up for, or you just messed things up. And so, sobriety gives you an ability to live. And when there was no living to be done, I was like, "I don't know, maybe just drink." It's like, maybe, but I think luckily I'm further along now that I'm like… It’s not even discipline. It just doesn't... It's not... It would cross my mind, but I'm like, "It's not..." Yeah, it doesn't stick, it's like a fleeting thought. But I definitely had that like, without that outlet, without creativity, definitely some of those thoughts crossed my mind.

Florence Welch Tells Apple Music How Making Albums Upends Her Life and Why Being a Musician Is Bad For Personal Relationships...

A lot of it is questioning what it gives to me as well, and being like, "Why do I need this so much, sometimes at the cost of more sustainable forms of intimacy or more stable relationships?" because I think making an album, every time, it upends your entire life. If you're in a relationship, they just have to hang on for dear life. It's gotten much less chaotic as the years go on, but being a touring artist and being a musician is just so bad for the personal relationships in your life. I think this record is questioning a lot my commitment to my sense of, and again, winking at it and being like, "How committed am I to my own loneliness? How committed am I to my sense of a tragic figure?" and with the last record I felt like, "God, the loneliness." Now, this record is, "But are you choosing this?”

Florence Welch Reflects on Early Success and Her Breakout ‘Ceremonials’…

I had such little care for myself, at that moment when Ceremonials was starting to blow up everywhere. And sometimes, when I look at younger artists having a huge moment, I always wonder what it's like for them on the inside. In some ways I'm like, "That's so great for them, but I know what it's like to be on the inside of that.”  

Florence Welch Tells Apple Music How The Pandemic Fueled Nostalgia...

But, I think, it put everyone into an early mid-life crisis. It was really, all you were left with was your life up to that point. Because, you also weren't creating new experiences and you didn't know when those new experiences would come again. And so, I think the thing that I was most hungry for, was that time almost before... Because, although the fact that this music took off and the fact that Florence and the Machine happened, is incredible to me. It's so of its own world, that the fact that it became big, is crazy. This wild thing, that for it to sort of go global, I never kind of get over that, that happened.

Julian Lennon joins the latest episode of Elton John’s Rocket Hour on Apple Music 1. He tells Elton about his forthcoming album ‘Jude’, why he’s choosing to release it on his mother’s birthday, performing ‘Imagine publicly for the very first time, and more.

Julian Lennon Tells Apple Music About His Forthcoming Album ‘Jude’…

I literally didn't think I was doing another album. I really didn't. I thought that that was it. But I started digging into a box of old tapes of mine from 30 years ago, in fact, when I used to live in LA, and found all these old songs that I hadn't... That weren't right for previous albums or just…weren't quite finished. That got me on a roll in updating them, reproducing them. Some of the songs, I mean, still have the original vocals on from my back bedroom in my home studio 30 years ago in LA. So that got the ball rolling to get into doing this new album again.
 
Julian Lennon Tells Apple Music The Album Release Date Is A ‘Homage’ To His Mother…

The first song came out on my birthday, and I wanted to keep it in the family, so the albums coming out on my mum's birthday, just as a homage, in many respects, so September.
 
Julian Lennon Tells Apple Music Choosing To Perform ‘Imagine’ For The Very First Time For Ukraine…

Elton John: So talking of homages, I saw you do the most incredible version of ‘Imagine’ for the Ukrainian people. You'd never sung that song ever, and it's one of the most famous songs ever written, by your dad. And it was the most beautiful candle lit. It was just beautiful. And you sang it, you had just an acoustic guitarist and yourself. And I thought that was incredibly brave and incredibly beautiful moment to actually do that song. And you chose things exactly the right moment and you did a beautiful job of it. I can't think of anybody that I know who's seen it, who was just not blown away by it. And I think... I have to congratulate you because that's a hard, bloody thing to do.

Julian Lennon:  Let me tell you know, since I've been in the business, I've kind of been dreading the day that I'm... Because I'd always said that I would only actually sing it if it felt like it was the end of the world, in many respects. And after watching what's been going on over the past couple of years, and especially recently with Russia and Ukraine, the people of Global Citizen said, "Got anything up your sleeve?" And I've been watching the horrors on TV, as we all have. I just felt, this is it. And once I'd said yes, if you I had anxiety before, once I'd said, yes, I went, "Oh my God, how am I going to do this, that honours it, and is different and is my own take, but still respects it in every way, shape or form."

For me, the only way I could do that was take it away from the piano, the plunky piano, and do it as raw, as unproduced as possible and as heartfelt as possible. For me, that was the way to do it. I have to tell you that we will be releasing that as a single in some way, shape or form very soon with all donations going to refugees in Ukraine and around the world. That's on the cards.

Julian Lennon Tells Apple Music About Titling His New Album ‘Jude’…

Julian Lennon: It felt very much a sort of coming of age, I guess. Especially as life moves on, you tend to look at your life and look at where you've come from. And especially after having seen the Get Back movie with Sean and Olivia Harrison, and then Stella being there. I mean, I'd had the idea of the name before that, but it was just made so that it felt even more right.

Elton John: Did someone in the Beatles call you Jude then?

Julian Lennon: Well, it was McCartney. ‘Hey Jude’ was in fact, ‘Hey, Jules’ in its initial stages. And it was very much written about him thinking about me and my circumstances and that I needed to be strong and at the end of the day, find my way through this mess that I was going to be in… I think I honoured the song and I think I honoured where I've come from, my legacy, so to speak, my heritage. I think, again, now just felt like the right time, because life is too short and this felt perfect for this moment, too.

The Black Keys join Zane Lowe in studio on Apple Music 1 to discuss their new album 'Dropout Boogie’. The group’s Patrick Carney tells Apple Music about the blessing of the duo’s lifelong friendship and creative partnership, their evolved mindset pertaining to the band’s career and ambition, auditing a posthumous Michael Jackson release to attain their first Number One album, and working with Billy Gibbons. He also discusses receiving early support from Beck following a chance encounter as a teenager and why he hasn’t watched The Beatles’ ‘Get Back’ documentary yet.

Patrick Carney Tells Apple Music About The Blessing of His Lifelong Friendship with Bandmate Dan Auerbach…

The older we get, the more we believe, the more we realize how special it is, the gift that we were given, to be able to have this connection that we have. And we don't take it for granted, man. We work on it all the time. There's a lot of levels to it too. It's like we grew up around the corner from each other and when we finally kind of... We used to trade baseball cards with each other and we got picked on by the same piece of (censored) down the street. And when we finally found ourselves into music at the same time, just even recognizing the fact that like... Because we were in two different kind of groups of friends, you know? And I guess just having the maturity to be like, this is- This is bigger than all that. And then we... It's crazy. It's like at this point I see Dan more than I see anybody else in my family or any friends, you know? So he's my longest friend, we've known each other for 30-something years.

Patrick Carney Tells Apple Music About The Group’s Evolved Mindset Pertaining To Working and Output…

For a long time it was like, "You got to have big first week numbers. You've got to do this." And part of it may be that we have done that. We've had the number one record before and you realize, "Oh, these aren't the things that you really want to chase necessarily.” So for me and for us, we've been looking at things less cyclical and more just like, "Oh yeah, we're a band and we're making music." And there's no, "We're making a record. We're putting record out. We're touring." It should all just be, "We're working.” That's it. It takes a while to figure that out.

Patrick Carney Tells Apple Music The Band Almost Has Another Finished Record Done...

We almost have another record done. Yeah, we've we've been hitting the Rolodex hard. Oh, we've been making a lot of cool stuff and it's been fun. 

Patrick Carney Tells Apple Music About Auditing a Posthumous Michael Jackson Record To Achieve Their First Number One Record... 

When we put out Brothers, it was number three and our previous charting record was 14. I was like, "If we got three, why can't we get one?" So then we made our next record and it was like number two because Michael Bublé's Christmas record sold like a billion copies. And we're like, "That's (censored) us right now?” So then we're like, "We got to get the number one thing." So we make Turn Blue and one of the 50 (censored) posthumous Michael Jackson records came out and literally we're sitting at home, our manager calls like, "Yeah, it's a number two record, Michael Jackson." I'm like, "Bull(Censored), there's no (censored) way that that garbage has sold more than us.” And they went and they audited the (censored) books and they found out that they were giving the record away at some Cirque du Soleil (censored) in Vegas. If you bought a ticket, you got a record and they were counting that (censored). So they threw them all out and we got the number one. We had to fight Michael Jackson's lawyers to get the number one.

Patrick Carney Tells Apple Music Why He Hasn’t Watched The Beatles’ 'Get Back’ Documentary Yet…

I have mixed feelings. I want to see it, but at the same time, I talked to a lot of people like who are a little bit younger than us, and they're just like, "Yeah, I don't really get the Beatles. It's just overexposure." And I'm thinking like, well wait a second, literally at this point we've seen every single thing… Well, I'm saying that like, the mystique now is fading. You know what I mean? If you listen to, The Clash, imagine if every fight The Clash had was on film? You know what I mean? I don't know. I feel like it's just a little bit exhausting. You know? It's like sometimes a little bit less exposure is good and keeping that stuff under wraps. I don't know, a 14 hour documentary of band in the studio, it is something that sounds like I'd watch, but… …if I were to watch it, I'd probably just be like, whoever didn't tell these guys to go on vacation for two years is a (censored) idiot. And they all paid the price for it. You know?

The Black Keys Tells Apple Music About Collaborating With Billy Gibbons…

Patrick: I was a little nervous. It's the first time I've ever recorded with a legend like that.

Dan: He showed up with a bottle of red wine. He didn't bring a guitar. He played a guitar that I owned that used to be owned by Mississippi Fred McDowell. And so I handed it to him, we plugged it straight into the amp, turned the amp all the way up and it was boom, it was Billy Gibbons. And when he finished the bottle of red wine, he took off. And we had four songs finished by the time he left.

Patrick Carney Tells Apple Music About Receiving Early Support From Beck Following A Chance Encounter With Him Backstage as a Teenager...

I met Beck when I was 16 on the Odelay tour because my uncle Ralph, the who bought the Opticon, he was friends with Smokey Hormel, Beck's touring guitar player. Anyway, Smokey Hormel put me on the list and I got to go see Beck and I got backstage. It was a big deal. I was 16 and I meet my first rockstar. That record was just so important to me because it was so good, it was so fun. Anyway, I go backstage. I was very nervous and he's holding the fruit bowl and he was like, "Do you want a pear?," being so weird. And then, the next time I really run into him, we were on tour with Sleater-Kinney on our first tour with a band showing us the ropes and we're playing the Roseland Ballroom in New York in February of 2003. And we have a record called Thickfreakness coming out in a couple months and I had a promo in my sleeve and Sleater-Kinney's like, "Do you want to go to the SNL after party? Beck invited us." So I was like, "Yeah." We go there and we're at this after party. It's too expensive for us to order a drink so we just start pounding, I'd start pounding on the leftover drinks on the table.And Chris Kattan comes over. And he was like, "Are you drinking other people's leftovers?" And I was like, "Yeah." He's like, "Dude, can I hang out with you?" Yeah. And then, I got the balls to go say hi to Beck and I was like, "I met you, blah, blah, blah. And here's this record." And the next day, I'm sure I was like, "Oh, fuck, I probably sounded an idiot." And a couple weeks later, our agent calls us and like, "Yeah, Beck just invited you guys to support him on the whole summer tour," including playing in a show at Brixton Academy in London, which is another big, huge thing. He really was an early big supporter of ours. That was a huge break for us, to get in that tour and meeting the people we got to meet on that tour and getting the confidence of being endorsed by someone that you really, really are a fan of and look up to. And it happened a couple other times with us. It happened once Radiohead took us out, which is another really cool thing. But with Beck, it was different because he was hanging out with us. He was interested in us as ... You know?

Patrick Carney Tells Apple Music About The Band Burning Out in 2013 and What He Would Do Differently In Retrospect…

We just burned out. We were going through some heavy stuff and Dan got divorced in 2013. We made a record that year. We should have taken some time off. Dan should have done some side projects. But we worked through it and then we just had to take some time off. So, Dan did the Arcs, he did his solo record, started his label. It was all good. The only thing I would've changed is just communicating better to each other that it's okay to take some time off.

Patrick Carney Tells Apple Music About The Smallest Car They Ever Toured In…

…it was a Buick Century. It was a rental, but the drums fit in the boot and then we got the amps in the back seat and so we couldn't recline, but it was fast. We drove across…We got it up to 120 in Wyoming. I remember that…

Patrick Carney Tells Apple Music About The Importance of Receiving Early Support From John Peel…

John Peel is our first big time supporter. It was like a game changer for us when we found out he was playing our music and we did like three Peel sessions real fast.

Patrick Carney Tells Apple Music ‘Delta Kream’ Is One Of His Favorite Records The Band Has Made...

We made that Delta Kream record and we had so much fun making it. It was like, we were just excited. Felt good, I don't know… it was one of our favorite records we made so we just rode that wave right back in the studio. We couldn't wait to get back in and we started work working right away.

Jack Johnson joins Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 to discuss his new album ‘Meet The Moonlight’, due out next week. He tells Apple Music about working with producer Blake Mills on the project (and calls him “one of the greatest guitar players alive right now”), the origins of his love songs, being grateful for a career in music, songwriting and creative process, the experience of hearing his music in public, “Better Together” soundtracking people’s weddings and births, and more.

Jack Johnson Tells Apple Music About Working With Blake Mills and Calls Him "One of The Greatest Guitar Players Alive Right Now”...

I really, really can't say enough about the guy, Blake. We were texting this morning, just joking around stuff. It's just nice to have a new friend.I feel like we've just, we've developed a friendship over the course that was really great. Same with Joseph Lorge, the guy who's the engineer on the record, just beautiful humans. You first get into a room with somebody you don't know that well, we talked a bunch on the phone, we decided to give it a try, so I came over. What I liked about him is we started talking about what it would all mean, and I didn't know him too well yet, so I didn't know, "Are we agreeing we're doing a record or what are we doing here?" He was really cool, because he said, "You know what? Let's not even let all that other stuff that happens between the managers and whatnot, let's just get together and make music for a week, and let's just decide if we like hanging out and everything." So, I was like, "Oh, okay, good. He's like that, that's great," and so we got together.

It's weird, all of a sudden, you're in a studio where somebody you don't know that well, and it takes a few days, but when you spend 12 hours a day together, you get to know each other really quick. Man, anybody who knows or has seen him play, he's one of the greatest guitar players alive right now, he's so good. He just doesn't always show it off, but when you see how easily his pinky goes all the way to the other side of the neck while he's playing. It's just the most just very subtle thing that he's doing, but it's so hard when you watch his hand, I can't believe the chords he can do and stuff. He always supports the part. That was one thing I thought was so nice, there was never a time where I had to be like, "Oh, don't you think you should tone it back?" Every part he would play was just supporting whatever the song was, and he would just add something that… He's just really talented at what he does. It was took me a while... Once you gain that trust, then it was really fun once I had the trust, because then he would make a suggestion, I knew it was worth at least trying.

Jack Johnson Tells Apple Music About The Origins of His Love Songs…

the love songs, they're really just jokes, they're all just trying to make my wife laugh. Most of the time it's because I've forgotten an anniversary or I've forgotten it's a birthday or whatever it is, I wake up and I'm, "Oh, I've got to really quickly get something together here." So, I'll just start doing something I know is going to make her happy. And then some of those are so personal, I don't ever share them and they're just for her.

Jack Johnson Tells Apple Music About Gratitude For His Career in Music…

In my world, I feel so lucky I get to do this. I can't believe I get to wake up and go in the studio and make music and get to go on tour. And just two days ago we walked in and we got to rehearse for the first time in five years and walking around, just seeing JJ, my initials spray painted on the side of all these cases, and I was like, "Holy cow, this is all based on my music, this is so weird." Music is a trip.

Jack Johnson Tells Apple Music About Songwriting and His Creative Process…

the little ideas will come out of nowhere, and then the songwriting process for me is that whatever that original spark was, I'll just try to start asking myself a question like, "Why is that line looping in my brain right now? What does it mean?"Sometimes I ignore it, sometimes I go for a while where I got other things going on and I'm not really thinking about writing songs at all. And then there's a time where I think, "I'm going to try to get all these scraps of paper together that I've written down one or two lines," and then just see what's going on and see if I can put them together, and it's fun. I feel like sometimes I get to play the role of a songwriter, and other times I just don't even think of myself as that at all, it's just like, "I'm Dad, I'm working on this farm over here." Real experiences, obviously, always help songs. If I just sit there thinking in a room that's quiet trying to write songs and you don't take things in... you've got nothing to put out. So, it's more important as a songwriter, I think, to have real experiences and then you can share them.

Jack Johnson Tells Apple Music About Hearing His Songs in Public…

It's funny when you hear a line or every once in a while like in the grocery store and one of my songs will come on. And at first, when you first hear it, especially in a muffled situation, you hear more the base and the changes. And you'll be like, oh, I know this song. And half the time you'll be like, I know this song and I like this song. What is this? And then the other half is like, I know this song kind of annoys me. Oh shoot. That's one of mine. Every once in a while, I'll appreciate some of my own. Sometimes I get embarrassed when I hear them.

Jack Johnson Tells Apple Music “Better Together” Is The Song That Has Connected Most With People…

I remember writing that one. I remember writing that song and it's funny, to talk about that song for a second, because that's become by far the song that... Just I know from people sharing personal experiences, that's the one that's connected with the most people better together. And people have used it during their wedding day. Or people have told me they had my playlist on when their baby came into the world and things like that, which is really important. That's a beautiful moment.

Jack Johnson Tells Apple Music About Working With Good People…

I think life's too important to spend time with people that you don't consider friends. All the guys at my guitar tech, he lives down the street for me in Hawaii, and the piano tech is just a good friend. Everybody's friends at this point, we've had the same crew for 20 years, we've been really lucky.

Jack Johnson Says Some of His Most Memorable Shows Have Been in Brazil…

Brazil is pretty amazing when you play in Brazil, the amount of energy that comes back at you. And there's been some moments where it's just like you could stop playing your instruments and half the crowd will sing the music part and half the crowd will sing the lyrics and stuff, you know what I mean? It gets crazy there. So they're some of the most memorable ones, I think, were the live shows in Brazil.

To celebrate the release of Baz Luhrmann’s highly anticipated ‘Elvis’ film and soundtrack releasing tomorrow, the acclaimed director joins Dave Cobb on the latest episode of Southern Accents Radio on Apple Music Country to discuss working together on the film's soundtrack at RCA Studio A in Nashville. They discuss the process of selecting the music for the film, the importance and influence of Black music on Elvis's career, being allowed access into Elvis’s untouched bedroom, Austin Butler’s portrayal of Elvis, recording with Steve Nicks and Chris Isaak, and more.

Baz Luhrmann Tells Apple Music About The Process of Selecting Music For ‘Elvis’ and The Importance and Influence of Black Music on Elvis’s Career...

It's not that I said I must do a biopic. I don't think the film is a biopic, but I've always thought that Elvis... If you want to know America and American music, or American pop culture in the '50s, the '60s and the '70s, Elvis was the good, the bad, and the ugly of it is at the center of that. The other thing I got to say, and you've touched on it, is that you can't explore America in those periods without looking at the issue of race. Elvis, again, is somewhat the good, the bad, and the ugly at the center of those issues.

What I discovered by being in Memphis, the space in Graceland. I live my movies, but what was really blew my mind was when I discovered Sam Bell, who was an African American gent, he’s just passes last year. You know this, Elvis is in one of the few white designated houses for a period of time in the Black community. And Sam, whose probably known Elvis since little kids. There was that young little African American kids, a gang of which Elvis was part of. So they’d go into juke joints and gospel tents. You know it because it’s in the movie. And he loves country music too. And he also loves opera, actually.

There's '50s Elvis, the rebel. There's '60s Elvis, the highest paid actor in the Hollywood bubble. And then there's '70s, Elvis. He is, as a person, the periods you're talking about musically, but also in terms of his symbology. So the process was one of incredible investigation. You know my label is House of Iona with RCA. You know that RCA owns thousands of recordings of Elvis, 900 songs he recorded with hundreds of takes. I mean, going through the archives was mind blowing.

Baz Luhrmann Tells Apple Music About Being Allowed Access To Elvis’s Untouched Bedroom...

Now, I have to be a bit cautious here because I consider it a great privilege, but almost no one's been allowed upstairs into the bedroom of Elvis's and he has a sitting room next to the bedroom. There's a big white organ in it. I had to see it. I mean, the Japanese prime minister came and he couldn't go up there. Understandably. And I really respect this. Lisa Marie protects it because of what occurred up there. But, I did go in and without giving away too much, nothing's been touched. The clothes have been removed, but nothing's been touched. But I noted, because I had to remember everything in 20 minutes, I wasn't allowed to take a camera or anything. I had to remember everything to reproduce it for the set. There was a spiritual book open on a coffee table, sitting next to where the guitar was. And I think his search for spirituality, and that's why he wore all those religious signs around his neck. I just think... That's what I mean when he was spiritual, he didn't particularly prescribe to any religious system so much, as he knew then, there was a higher force on all of us, and he was able to connect to it through music. I just think that's when he felt at peace and outside of that, he felt very, very tortured actually. Searching, always.

Baz Luhrmann and Dave Cobb Tell Apple Music About Austin Butler’s Portrayal of Elvis…

Dave Cobb: Well, I think in the film, you had Austin Butler actually singing the track for this and we recut it. Hearing him sing, he became Elvis. It was unreal how he really worked and he nails every single facet of Elvis.

Baz Luhrmann: He's the young Elvis. We have a lot of the older Elvis, the real Elvis doing older. He does young Elvis. And we have a lot of guest artists, but I mean, he just lived Elvis for three years. He just never broke character, day and night.

Baz Luhrmann and Dave Cobb Tell Apple Music About Recording “Cotton Candy Land” with Stevie Nicks and Chris Isaak...

Baz Luhrmann: The whole idea of Stevie [Nicks] and Chris [Isaak], and I just, by the way, there's a kind of Easter egg in there, in that the Colonel's favorite film was Nightmare Alley, recently made by my friend Guillermo del Toro. He loved it. And there's a character called Madame Zeena, and Stevie is the voice of Madame Zeena in our movie.

Dave Cobb: Well, doing that song, cutting that with her vocal. I'll never forget. Listen, Stevie Nicks, Stevie Nicks is one of the best singers ever to walk the planet. And she heard... She'd seen a little clip of the film and she was going to sing the character. And I remember her going, "I know this character, I know this person. I can be this person," and she became a character. So in the film, Stevie Nicks is singing a character.

Baz Luhrmann: There's a young actor called Angie. Angie, a friend of mine, who's representing... There's this character on screen, but it's Stevie's voice. I think we termed it carnival goth. Right? She's kind of got this tiny goth sound that Stevie came up with. I mean, it's her voice. I don't know. There's something just so perfect about it. She's such a great artist too. And Chris [Isaak], kind of like contemporary Elvis, Roy Orbison too. It's a great cut, by the way. I think it's... You and I talked about it, but you really bought that bang, bang flavor to it.

Baz Luhrmann Tells Apple Music About Striving To Make Southern Church Music The “Spine of the Move”…

Dave Cobb: Well, probably the last thing to acknowledge in the film, there's a lot of orchestration with voices in the film. And we had the brilliant Shannon Sanders and Elliot Wheeler who works in your team, just really putting a lot of things together. I think it's going to be a really special thing for people to hear. In my opinion, growing up in the south, you're hearing the Southern church all through this film. It sounds like home.

Baz Luhrmann: Elliott was brilliant. You guys were all great together and Jamison… on supervision. But great team. One thing I wanted to do was to make Southern church music the spine of the movie. You'll hear it right throughout. And because I think it's actually the soul of Elvis. It's his inner thoughts. He was not a particularly verbose person. But when he sang, he spoke.

On the latest episode of Essentials Radio on Apple Music Hits, Estelle is joined by renowned Reggae pioneer Jimmy Cliff who discusses 'The Harder They Come' on the film and accompanying soundtrack’s 50th anniversary. He tells Apple Music about the origins of the project, Reggae music's endurance, the stories behind notable tracks “Many Rivers To Cross”, “You Can Get It If You Really Want”, and “Sitting Here in Limbo”, his musical upbringing, and more.

Listen to the episode in full anytime on-demand on Apple Music Hits at http://apple.co/_EssentialsRadio.

Jimmy Cliff Tells Apple Music About The Origin of ’The Harder They Come’ Film...

At the time, I resided in the UK, and the director, Perry Henzell, brought the script over to me and said he would like me to play in his film. So, we ran a scene, and he was very happy that he had found the person to do his film after all these years walking around with it. Well, it took a few things to make me say yeah because at the time, I was doing very well in Europe. I had hit records there. I was making good money. Well, one of the main things that made me agree to say yeah was the director said to me, "You know, Jimmy, I think you're a better actor than singer.” And my eyes popped open because I've always said that to myself, and nobody ever read my mind to say that. So, that really closed the deal for me.

Jimmy Cliff Tells Apple Music About Being Surprised By The Success of ‘The Harder They Come’…

We all were. Because it was the first Jamaican film, and we all went into it, like we dived into the void, empty handed. However, we were all confident that this could be a success.

Jimmy Cliff Tells Apple Music About Performing His Hits 50 Years Later and The Endurance of Reggae Music...

Because they want it, I give it. Where there's a demand, you have to supply. That's what it is. That's the motivation for doing it night after nigh.  Part of reggae music is not only the music, the rhythm and all of that. The language, it was a new sound to people's ear. So yeah, all of that is good.

Jimmy Cliff Tells Apple Music About “Many Rivers To Cross”…

...that song was a picture and the emotions of all different things that people go through in this life; as an African descendant man, I thought that was an essential part of the song; As people in general, people go through that, and I was thinking of all of those emotions packed into one.

Jimmy Cliff Tells Apple Music About “You Can Get It If You Really Want”…

It's an inspirational song. It came to me at one of the moments in my life when I was motivating myself. Songwriting is like this for me at least. Some songs are autobiographical, in some songs you are describing a situation; that was an autobiographical song that I was inspiring myself.

Jimmy Cliff Tells Apple Music About “Sitting Here in Limbo”…

Well, that was an autobiographical song at one moment in my life, when I was feeling kind of low and I had to uplift myself. Give myself, so to speak, hope, and that's where that song's coming from.

Jimmy Cliff Tells Apple Music About His Musical Upbringing…

My family, everyone sang. We were a singing family, and there was always music for everything. Music for dinner. Music for breakfast. Music for funerals. Jamaica is like that. So, yes, I grew up in a musical family. I sang in the church. There was music around all the time. So, yeah, at about age of six, I decided I want to do music… I sang folk songs, and I sang Calypso, and I sang what we call foreign songs, which is mainly American music. You know? Whether it be Sam Cooke, Fats Domino, Ray Charles, R&B, especially from New Orleans.

Elton John is joined by singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten on the latest episode of Rocket Hour. She tells Elton about the inspiration behind her latest album ‘We've Been Going About This All Wrong'.

Sharon Van Etten on making her latest album, ‘We've Been Going About This All Wrong’

I had just moved to California in September of '19 and finished building my studio in January of 2020 out of my garage. And sooner than later, I was challenged by the universe to call my bluff on all the reasons why I moved to California. And I began writing. And when I tend to write, I don't really know what I'm writing about. I just write about whatever I'm going through. And I'm analyzing all the feelings and emotions of having a family and relocating and figuring out what this new uprooting means and in terms of the end of the world.

Sharon Van Etten on moving to California

It's very different than New York scene, but having a family and wanting more space in nature… Originally, I thought it was going to be a great idea. And for many reasons it was, but the environmental shifts are pretty jarring between the fires and the earthquakes and things like that. But I do love it for the collaborations and artists that I've met while I've been there.

Sharon Van Etten on collaborating with other artists on her new record

Mostly people that I had be-friended from my previous album. Zach Dawes is an artist who actually helped make that Josh Homme cover happen. And he had a big part in helping me learn what the sonic palette of this record was going to be, as I figured out what I wanted the instrumentation to be. But the band that played on it is mostly my touring band now.

Elton John on Phoebe Bridgers, Nova Twins, Wet Leg and the many great female songwriters

There's so many great women's songwriters, artists in their own right and doing all sorts of music. In Britain, we have people like the Nova Twins, making great rock and roll records. Wet Leg. And then over there, you've got Phoebe Bridgers, yourself. And it is a constant stream of brilliant women musicians. And I just think it's great because to me, with a couple of exceptions, you guys are writing the best music and making the best records. And it's really great to see. And you make records, to be honest with you, that I could play your record now and in twenty years time, it would sound as good as it did when it first came out. And that's what I love about it.

Elton John on loving Sharon Van Etten’s music

ELTON JOHN: You are pretty good at writing songs and making great, beautiful records that one can sit down to after a long day and just put the record on vinyl and just listen to it and just go and lose yourself in it. And I think that's the greatest thing I could say about music. It touches me, it takes me somewhere else and it makes me feel warm inside. It's just brilliant. And that's why I love doing this radio show is because I get to hear records that some people don't. But you are very much loved in this country. And you're very much appreciated in this country and rightly so. And we're going to play ‘I'll Try’ on the show. I promise you that we're promoting this record all the way through from now on. And it really is, I'm quite nervous talking to you because I love you so much. And I have done for a long time.

SHARON VAN ETTEN: Oh, stop. I'm nervous talking to you. Are you kidding me? You are celebrated in my family and in my partner's family. My partner told me he dressed up in drag wearing his boots and his boas since he was a kid. His older sister used to dress him up and they would just have... You're still such a huge…

ELTON JOHN: I'm always dressing up in drag.

SHARON VAN ETTEN: But your voice is just… It's definitely been an influence.

This week on After School Radio, Mark Hoppus celebrates episode 100 and chats with tennis legend John McEnroe, where they talk about his love of music and his time spent playing in a band.

John McEnroe on meeting David Bowie for drinks at his hotel…

"I was in a hotel in London, I would say it was 1981 or two, somewhere around there. It was around the time that I had sort of reengaged and started trying to play the guitar. And one of the songs that I was trying to play, it was a fairly straight ahead, simple song, "Suffragette City." So I'm in my hotel room, I'm playing this, I'm butchering "Suffragette City" and all of the sudden there's a knock on the door, and I open the door and it's David Bowie. And he goes, "Hey man, I heard you were staying in the same hotel. Would you like to come up in have a drink in my room." And I go, "Hell yeah. Yeah, absolutely." And then he goes, "Don't bring the guitar.”

John McEnroe on learning guitar from Bill Wyman, Eddie Van Halen and Carlos Santana...

"I did have a lot of people that did attempt to teach me to play guitar. Probably the first guy was Bill Wyman, a fellow bass player. He was trying to teach me the one, four or five blues move and I wasn't able to sort of digest that as quickly as he would've liked... But the late great Eddie Van Halen did try to teach me on a handful of vacations, but he'd get frustrated after a couple minutes. I remember I said, "Could you teach me that riff in 'Ain’t Talkin’ ’bout Love?' Because I thought that was like some incredible riff. And he's like, "Hey man, I had to do something. It was only two chords, that song." So I go, "Okay." So then he played the riff and I go, "Do you see it?" And I'm, instead of playing it remotely like him, I'm playing, "...," slow motion. And he was like, "Oh, forget it. Let's just go party, forget it." So he gave up on me, but I had Carlos Santana, for example, the great Carlos Santana...so I've had some teachers, or I would probably call them more somewhat friends as opposed to people that actually attempted to help me play guitar."

John McEnroe on his life as a touring musician…

"I was the greatest, most traveled, not greatest, I should say, take that back, the most traveled unsigned band in music history, I believe. When I went out on in '94 after I'd stopped playing and I was in the midst and the end of a pretty bad divorce, a little bit lost, trying to sort of just figure out how to spend some time. It seemed sort of natural to try to move away from what I was doing at that particular time, because I was sort of sick of it. Even though, as it turned out, it'd been pretty good to me and hopefully vice versa. So my agent at the time was Italian, so we had this idea to do this tour of Italy. It was the first tour... I played 12 shows in 14 days. I had a couple young guys with me. A buddy of mine was another bass player, Kenny Passarelli was his name. He used to play with Joe Walsh. He co-wrote "Rocky Mountain Way.” A great bass player. I saw him when he was playing with Elton John, he was with Crosby, Stills & Nash. He was the bass guy, the hired gun. They're playing stadiums, I'm thinking this is incredible. That was fun. I felt like a real rock group. I was like, "Wow." This is part of why I played tennis because you're out there on your own and you don't have to worry about all these other guys. And so it was certainly everything that I thought I envisioned in a rock band. And subsequently I did a lot of shows, and the following year I went to Japan, Europe on three, four occasions, South America, my wife was pregnant with our first child, my second wife at the time. And she was with me and playing all over the world because I would connect it with some tennis exhibitions and stuff. It was quite an experience, but at one point fairly early on in our relationship, my wife's Patricia Smyth who's was in Scandal and a solo artist, she said to me, after there was a festival I did in Belgium I think, and she said, "Okay, if anyone's going to play music, it's going to be me, not you. So that's the end of that." Because I also had this idea that I was like, "Okay, Patty was a little bit..." She had toured with Rod Stewart. She had had a platinum record. It was a big hit that Don Henley helped sing on one of her... "Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough.” But she seemed sort of disillusioned with the music business the way they treat females, so I thought I was going to come in and bring that positive energy. So I said, "Hey, we should play in a band together." And she was like, "Yeah, we should play mixed doubles at Wimbledon." I go, "You don't play tennis." She goes, "Exactly." So that sort of set me straight on what priorities should be. But I've long been a lover of music, love music and love playing just... And that's part of why I actually did do it and play as a group because I was so used to sort of being by myself and doing it on my own that I did want to experience something with a group of guys and see how that would work. So that was something that I always was interested in pursuing, but never really... Now it's sort of like a passion, it's not a job. It's more just, I love doing it."

John McEnroe on meeting The Allman Brothers…

"I remember when I was probably 20, 21, I saw The Allman Brothers for the first time, maybe 20, in New York at the Palladium I think. And I walked into the back and Gregg Allman's there with Dickey Betts, and they look at me and they hesitate and they go, Greg Allman says to Dickey, "Hey man, there's the golfer." And I go, "Well, close enough. I'll take it. But I'm the tennis guy, I actually run."

John McEnroe on how he looks back on his life playing tennis and raising his children...

"There's things that, did I need to take it that far? From that to, I could have trained harder. I could have done this better. I wanted to have children, but I thought I could juggle the children and still be the best player in the world. And for a variety of reasons, that proved to be more difficult than I thought. And so when you bring kids into the world, your responsibility, to me, is first and foremost to your kids and trying to make your relationship last. Not, put them aside, I'll see you in a couple months, I got to go train and got to try to win some more.  So it was difficult to navigate, especially tennis in a way, because you're on your own. And as you succeed, to me, I was relying on my instincts and they work well for a while, but at a certain point, they call it in economics, the law diminishing returns, and eventually it started to, I don't want to say backfire, but not work as well. And then that's the difficult... To know when to sort of shift gears and do it in the right way, that's always the trick. So of course I would've liked to have handled things differently at times and done things differently, but all in all, if I want to send a message to kids or my own kids for that matter, I want to look at the glass half full as opposed to half empty.”

Red Hot Chili Peppers' Chad Smith joins Hanuman Welch on ALT CTRL Radio on Apple Music 1 to discuss the band’s new song "Tippa My Tongue” — the first single from their forthcoming double album 'Return of the Dream Canteen’. He tells Apple Music about the origin of the song, the decision to release a second double album this year, reuniting with longtime producer Rick Rubin, doing their first stadium tour, the band’s unique chemistry, and more.

Chad Smith Tells Apple Music About New Song "Tippa My Tongue” and Releasing a Second Double Album This Year...

We're just so happy to be making music again. Like most people, and creative people, and artists, to be able to have that opportunity to go out and play concerts and play new music. We wrote a lot of songs during the pandemic time and we recorded them all. We just wanted this next record to be an extension of 'Unlimited Love'. It stands on its own. We felt like we had so many songs that we love that we just need to have them all come out, and we don't want to put them all out at once. Here's the second batch and it's just as important. And just as effervescent to use your word, and joyful and happy. The cool thing about our band is one of the things I think is kind of whatever we do, it sounds like the Chili Peppers. You got Anthony's voice, is so identifiable. And then you got the band, which has a unique sound. Of course, having John Frusciante back in our band again, we've got that chemistry going and we just want to share it with everybody. I told Anthony, I said, often you try to figure out which song is the first one to come out off the record. I just said this one's got more hooks than a fishing tackle box. It's got some Hendrixy riffs, and it's got some P-Funk and it's got Chili Peppers. I love it. I just think it's a great song.

Chad Smith Tells Apple Music About The Band’s Unique Chemistry…

…we're comfortable with each other. We do have a special chemistry, the four of us. Even the five of us with Rick, like you mentioned, and it just comes really easy. We just know instinctively because we played together so much what to play and how to play. Everyone's such a good listener. And all that experience of playing together. It came together really pretty effortlessly.

Chad Smith Tells Apple Music About Reuniting With Rick Rubin…

 …having Rick come back, he came to hear us rehearse. We hadn't played any of our new songs for anybody. We played him probably 20 or so of our songs. He came back in the studio, and where we were rehearsing, and he was just walking around amongst us.He was so overwhelmed with the fact that here, four guys that only make this music, the sound and the way they play, and the interaction, the chemistry. He was like, "These four people that I love are back together doing it." He got really emotional. He told me later that when he was on his way home he was crying. It was just such an emotional thing for him. I get it, man. We don't take it for granted. We do have a thing that we do, for whatever reason, we're put on this universe.

Chad Smith Tells Apple Music About RHCP Doing Their First Stadium Tour...

Right now we're just in it. We're cranking it out. We've been touring since June. We did all of Europe. We're doing the states now. We did the west coast, we played my hometown. My 95 year old mother came out on stage. It's just been really a special thing for a lot of people that maybe were too young to see us when John was in the band 11, 12 years ago. Our longer time fans thought, "Oh, we'll never see him again in the band." All this energy, the pandemic, the new record, the stadiums, it's a pretty exciting time for our group. We're loving it. We've played lots of big places, and big festivals, and all the Coachellas and all that stuff. But never just strictly on our own. We've done it in Europe, but in the states and we just said, "F**k it, let's go for it, man. Let's let it all hang out and get a good bill." We got strong bands and artists playing with us, The Strokes and Thundercat's been opening and Beck, and lots of great people. It's a great night of music. We just are so grateful to see all the people come out and fill up these stadiums. It's amazing. We just kind of pinch ourselves sometimes. It's really great.

Chad Smith Tells Apple Music About RHCP Inviting Thundercat on Tour...

Oh man, it was a no brainer. We were so happy when he said yes, because like you said, he's such a great musician. He can play in any setting. He's so musical, he's an amazing performer. His band is incredibly, he's got great songs, but a lot of people don't know him as his own thing. I think it's great to give him some exposure that he more than deserves. Obviously Flea loves him, we all do. But as a bass player, he's like, "He's my favorite bass player." Modern bass player right now. He's just incredible. He gets the crowd going. He'll play the most soulful funky Stevie Wonder kind of thing. He can do it all. The only complaint from me is he's playing too short, but he's awesome. Get there early if you can people, you will not be disappointed. Thundercat is the real deal.

Aaron Dessner of The National joins Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 to discuss the group’s new song “Weird Goodbyes” (feat. Bon Iver). He tells Apple Music about the origin of the track, collaborating with Bon Iver, coming back together as a band for the first time in the three years, and previews the sound of the group’s forthcoming (which he says reminds him of the ‘Boxer’ era).

Aaron Dessner Tells Apple Music About “Weird Goodbyes” and The Return of The National...

I think it was a hard at first to come back because we had never taken a break in 20 years and then the pandemic forced us to take a three year pause. We’ve basically been touring our whole adult lives, since the late 90s and then there was this break… and you could be home and you could work. Be with your families. "Weird Goodbyes" is one of the first songs we wrote coming back to it and there’s lots of emotion in it. I hear the old engine of the National and I hear also new places that we’re going to and it did help set a course for us. It’s really special to come back, it’s like a family… a slightly dysfunctional family that comes back and then you restart the engine and it's very powerful.

Aaron Dessner Tells Apple Music About Collaborating with Justin Vernon and How He Ended Up on “Weird Goodbyes"...

Justin, he’s one of my best friends — I would say more than anything we’re close friends so we bounce things off of each other. Usually if we write a Big Red Machine song it’s by accident. Whereas The National is much more intentional in a way. This song, all of us weirdly, as soon as Matt started singing that song we kind of starting hearing Justin harmonizing… The heart and feeling in it felt like something he would sing or be moved by. He heard the song, I sent it to him and he was deeply moved by it. I think also because it was the first new National song he’d heard in years. Who knows? Maybe there was a chance The National wouldn’t make new songs? He’s definitely someone who only makes music when he’s inspired, he doesn’t force it. He had some great ideas for us and kind of pushed us a bit harder. He sang so powerfully and we were like… “this is done"

Aaron Dessner Tells Apple Music About The Subject Matter of “Weird Goodbyes”...

Some of the words he wrote early on after I had written the music. Its really based on the drum beat. I think Matt, his words were so moving from the beginning. To be… life moves so quickly and you age so quickly and its sort of wanting to hold on to right now and actually feel the air, really be able to hold on to things. Because I think ultimately the song is about mourning, loss of innocence, loss of motivation.  It’s a great National song if it's about a lot of things and this one is.

Aaron Dessner Tells Apple Music About The National’s Forthcoming Album...

For Matt, when his has a breakthrough…for this album, he’s been really doing the work and he’s pushed himself. Something things come quickly and other times there’s a struggle and it’s kind of a combination of that….  The album we’re making, which is really special and we’ve had a lot of time to work on it.

Their sketches and kind of trying to create an environment for some one to live in or give meaning to, like Matt or Justin. In this case, I was really trying to imagine what a new National album would sound like and feel like and this was one of the first songs that came to life with that in mind and kind of lean in to what is a future of The National that would be interesting or emotionally compelling. So we’ve been writing with that in mind.

I wouldn’t say its super heavy… its emotional. There’s a way of writing about disillusionment and disconnect and wanting to escape or reconnect…. It actually feels very direct in a way. It reminds me of older songs, even ‘Boxer' era. We’re really excited… we’re very close.

Marcus Mumford joins Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 to discuss his new song “Better Off High” from his forthcoming solo album ‘(self-titled)’ due out next month. He tells Apple Music about the origin of the project, working with Blake Mills during the pandemic, needed to reconnect with his songwriting muscles, and that it’s a record about freedom and healing.

Marcus Mumford Tells Apple Music About HIs Forthcoming Solo Album is About Freedom and Healing...

I think it was important to start at the beginning of the story of making this record for me. The first song I wrote was a song called ‘Cannibal’, and that felt like the first song that had to go on the track listing, first song to come out as well. Then it was followed closely by ‘Grace’, which is the answer to it in my view, and songwriting wise, it was the second song I wrote for the record. Pretty much going in chronological order. What people hadn't heard yet is where it gets to, which really it's a record about freedom and it's a record about healing. I think, certainly in my story, it's important to face up to some of the gnarlier stuff first in order to get to that place of freedom and healing. In the way we've rolled out this record, it starts with some of the hardest stuff. If people can get through that, it's worth the wait, I think, because we do get to a place where it is fun.

Marcus Mumford Tells Apple Music About The Origin of His Solo Album and Working with Blake Mills…

I started in January, was it January '21, with this task ahead of me. I didn't know at that point whether it was going to be for the band or for someone else or for me. I just said, "I need to reconnect with my songwriting muscles. They've gone into atrophy during COVID." I did a bit of scoring work and I did a bit of songwriting, but not enough that my... The songwriting muscles weren't being exercised. I just went away. Said to the lads in the band, "Look, I'm going to go away and write. I don't know what it's for, but I'm just going to follow the creative. I'm going to set myself the task of writing as honestly as I can.” It was at home in Devon, in England, in my little studio to start with. Then, because I have a US passport, as long as I did the quarantining the right way, I was able to come to LA. Once I'd started writing, I connected with Blake Mills, who I'd written a song with six years previously, and we'd taught together and I'd been a huge fan of his work for a long time, both his writing and his playing and his production. I took him ‘Cannibal’ in its infancy as a song and said, "Do you want to work on this with me? I don't know what it's for at the moment. It's not for any particular record. I just want to flesh it out." We did that, came together quite quick. Then we moved straight on to ‘Grace’. And that was the second song. ‘Better Off High’ was the third. We just kept rolling and even up until like November '21, I was refusing to refer to it as a record.

Muse's Matt Bellamy joins Zane Lowe in-studio on Apple Music 1 to discuss the band’s new album ‘Will of the People’ out this Friday. He tells Apple Music about the evolution of the band, why he’s a fan of Lady Gaga, being influence by Rage Against The Machine, embracing more metal leaning sounds on the album, the longevity and brotherhood of the group, how current events shaped the sound of the record, and more.

Matt Bellamy Tells Apple Music How His Son’s Love of Slipknot Influenced The More Metal Leaning Sounds on Muse’s New Album ‘Will of the People’...

…it also coincides with a little bit of my son, who's really gotten into Slipknot and stuff like that. And we never pretend to be able to touch those guys, but hearing that stuff blasting on the way to school most mornings, that really kind of got into the album a little bit.

Matt Bellamy Tells Apple Music About The Brotherhood and Longevity of Muse…

Friendship and brotherhood. It's like supporting each other. At different points, we've all had difficult periods where one of us is like, "You know what? I don't want to tour next year. I can't do this." You respect that. Whereas I think other bands maybe fight that and go, "You can't do this tour, blah, blah, blah. We'll get someone else in."It's like there is something that ties you together if you've been together since teenage years. It's hard to really put a finger on what that is. It might be because you've been on that journey from coming from nothing to being very successful, that they become some of the only people that you can actually really relate to, and talk about what the journey felt like, the ups and downs. All of us have been through relationship collapses together and stuff, and we talked our way through that.We're now like the longest marriage any of us have ever had. Basically, the three of us have been together longer than anyone. There's loads of other people, peripheral people, friends, ex-wives, and all this kind of stuff that I don't want to say we've left along the way, but the people that have happened along the way. But the three of us, as time goes on, they become the only people that know every single data point of your life.

Matt Bellamy Tells Apple Music About The Drums on the Album…

He [Dom] had like a different kit for everything pretty much. But I was really pushing him on the double bass drum stuff, do you know what I mean? Because he's always been a single bass drum player, so you don't get the "du-du-du-du" which is like the real metal vibe. And so we got a double bass drum pedal and I was saying, "Come on, just practice that." And like every day I'd come in and go, "Come on, go du-du-du-du, just keep it going.”…but that was what was refreshing about it. It was nice to actually find something that we weren't good at, do you know what I mean, and actually try and get really good at. Because metal, it turns out these metal players are absolute geniuses.

Matt Bellamy Tells Apple Music About Divisiveness in Society and Fighting For Revolution…

I mean, our generation has seen this huge change. Obviously, it started with 2001 and just across this whole period of time, we've seen this thing going on. What is this thing? It's kind of like something's going on in the West, a kind of collapse, a kind of division has been emerging. And now we're dealing with real external threats. We just feel like we're a part of this generation where something's going to go down in a major way... Yeah, America's where it's going down, no question. The division in this country is kind of like, if that's not solved, it's a major, major issue. Major threats from outside are going to come in.And that this place could fall apart. So trying to be a part of the solution, or trying comment on it or even give people the ideas of how they could solve it, I feel like that's the way to go.

I think revolution is certainly coming. I think that's the bottom line, is whether it just falls into a kind of Civil War and chaos and some external threat, like China, Russia takes advantage of that, that's one path. The other path is there's a revolution, which, I don't like this path, but a revolution is often replaced with authoritarian regimes of one kind or another. If I had to pick one thing that I'm fighting for, it's can we create a revolution? Can we create change here, where it isn't violent and it doesn't lead to an authoritarian vision?That's the challenge. That's the path that we have to try and make happen.

Matt Bellamy Tells Apple Music About Bringing Together People With Opposing Political Views at Muse Shows…

I mean, I always see it as a positive, that if there's people from both sides of the coin are coming together to listen to something or be a part of something, maybe at one of our shows. I know it's idealistic, but I mean, I always try and have some kind of hope that these two schools of thought, which are opposing against each other in the US right now. The question is, is there any common ground here that can be found to bring these people together? And I think the one thing both sides have in common, hard right, hard left, they both agree, there's a massive amount of corruption in the elites. And I feel like that is something that both sides maybe can agree on. So coming up with a new system of how to solve that I think is something that could bring both sides together.

Matt Bellamy Tells Apple Music Why He’s a Lady Gaga Fan…

Matt: Actually, I'm a bit of a Gaga fan. I always have been a monster. Yeah. I'm going to do that thing where I say I saw her play in front of 500 people in DC in 2007 or something. I did indeed. And always from day one, I thought she was just an absolute phenomenon. Yeah.

Zane: What do you love about Gaga?

Matt: The theatrics. Well, first of all, she's just an unbelievable talent. She's an amazing pianist, singer. She's better than me on both those things, and I just respect that. And I think she's an amazing songwriter, but then just the way she creates the visuals and the whole theater around the whole thing, I just think it's amazing.I've always wanted to delve into fictional theatrics and things like that with our show as well as the music. We talked about it earlier. Sometimes delving with dystopia, you can get more of a vibe across if you go straight fiction rather than trying to say, oh, heart on your sleeve, this is what we think politically. But yeah. She's amazing. She's been amazing at that, crossing that line between what is fantasy and what is reality. And I think that's a great place to be as an artist. Yeah, actually I met her briefly. She wouldn't remember, but I met her briefly in 2007 at that show. I think it was Washington DC or something. We were touring nearby and I said, look, we've got to go and see this show. I love this singer. She's going to be massive. And the guys went to the show, and the rest of the guys were like, what is this? They had no idea. But I was like, this is amazing. And I've never told anyone this, but I think she had two iPhones or something that were made into eyeglasses, like a video. And I totally straight up ripped that.Yeah. I was like, cut to four years later I'm wearing video glasses. That is me doing my Lady Gaga moment. But she said one thing to me that I remember was real weird wisdom that she said to me. We were just chatting briefly. And she goes, "Oh yeah, I know Muse." She goes, "Rock. That's a tough genre, man. That's going to be a tough genre." And I just thought that, what was that? Where did that come from? But it was true. Yeah. She knows. She knows.

Matt Bellamy Tells Apple Music About Being Inspired by Rage Against The Machine…

getting to the core kind of political belief, I'm very influenced by Rage Against the Machine. I'm a huge fan of them. And through them, I sort of learnt a lot of different perspectives. There's different ways of looking at the word freedom, basically. That's the issue, isn't it? There's freedom, raging libertarian freedom, but there's also freedom for a person to be able to own a piece of land and just look after their family, do you know what I mean? So, how do you bridge those two gaps together?They were a total anomaly… in terms of musicality, in the '90s, they really stood out. we've learned from, in my opinion, the best. So I've seen Rage Against the Machine 15 times.

Matt Bellamy Tells Apple Music About Being Inspired by Dystopian Art...

I think in the past, a lot of our stuff's kind of delved into fictional dystopia, like George Orwell. I mean, I'm a bit huge fan of '80s dystopian films, and then obviously you know I've written about George Orwell books and stuff like that in previous albums. I think sometimes, through fiction, you can explore things that are maybe a bit more harder to speak about on the nose.

Matt Bellamy Tells Apple Music Why He Loves Living in Los Angeles…

It's something about LA, something about California, you're literally on the edge of a massive tectonic plate, do you know what I mean? There's that. But it's also just full of risk-takers and just crazy people. I love it.

Matt Bellamy Tells Apple Music Why He Stopped Drinking Before Shows...

I think I stopped drinking before shows maybe late 2000s.I did other things as well. And it was like, I'd look back at my performances and go, "What the hell was that? That was terrible."You want to keep your (censored) together when you're doing that, yeah. So, yeah. I had to knock booze on the head.

This week Huey Lewis was joined by NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana to discuss a poignant past encounter with Journey, the nerve-wracking time he cut a version of "Hip To Be Square,” his love for Whitney Houston and more.

Joe Montana on potentially witnessing Steve Perry’s exit from Journey...

Joe Montana: My wife, Jennifer, and I were at a restaurant called Fior d'Italia at the time in North Beach. And she kept looking at me. She going, "What's wrong with you? What are you doing?" I go, "Well, Journey's back there in the back." And she goes, "So?" I go, "Something's not right." And so Steve left. And then on the way out, I stopped one of the guys and I said, "Hey, man. Is everything okay?" He goes, "Nope. Steve just left the band."

Huey Lewis: Whoa.

Joe Montana: I go, "What?"

Huey Lewis: You're kidding. Wow.

Joe Montana: Crazy.

Huey Lewis: Oh my God. So that may be the last time they were all together.

Joe Montana: It could have been.

Joe Montana on being calm on the football field but nervous to sing a version of “Hip To Be Square”…

Huey Lewis: So now you say you can't sing a lick, but I know different. We first met at, I think, if I'm not mistaken, at the Bammies, the Bay Area Music Awards. And you joked with me. You said, "Look, if you let me sing a little bit on your record, I'll let you take a few snaps." And I never got my snaps, by the way. So I made good on that promise. And you guys, you, Ricky Ellison, Ronnie Lot, and Dwight Clark, our good pal, Dwight Clark, came down to quote-unquote sing on our record. We cut "Hip To Be Square." And we've made a loop for you. It's a loop of your part. And I think if you listen really close, you'll be able to hear yourself in there. Can we play that a little bit, please?

Huey Lewis: It's hard, but I think I can hear you in there, Joe.

Joe Montana: I remember what happened, Huey, that we were in there and all of a sudden, you go, "Okay, stop. Geez, somebody is so damn flat." And from that point on, I lip synced, I think. And you were fine. So it must have been me.

Huey Lewis: That was really funny. And I'll never forget how nervous you guys were.

Huey Lewis: I mean, back in those days, I was still on the sidelines before MC Hammer and Jerry Glanville and the Atlanta Falcons and then they wouldn't let anybody on the sidelines anymore after MC Hammer was high fiving Deion Sanders in the middle of the field and the NFL got upset. But before that, I was on the sidelines a lot. And I was always amazed how people would be so keyed up. They were just wild, except you. Were just cool as ice and this calm would come over you. I just couldn't believe it. And you were just so confident and in the moment. Compare that with how you in front of the microphone.

Joe Montana: Oh, no way. When you talk about the singing and how nervous I was, just go back, I was watching the thing you just did with Mr. Barlow, took us all to through Hawaii after one of the Super Bowls. And watching myself on stage, you can just see I'm melting, man. There was no way Huey Lewis: I remember it like it was yesterday, that we were in Kauai and I looked in your eyes and you were petrified.

Joe Montana: Yep. There was tears.

Joe Montana on his love for Whitney Houston’s music…

"I was just blown away by her voice and the way she sings. And I don't know. There's a lot about the songs that I pick and I listen to a lot of times are more of the slower type songs where you can really hear the person's voice and connect and the song has a lot to do with it. But to give you another quick story about this is that... I mean, I really liked the way... She was really popular. In fact, I tried to name our first daughter Whitney and my wife said, "Absolutely not." So that's Alexander's middle name now is Whitney. But no, I just think that I wa"s like you, man. You get blown away by a voice with that power and range or whatever words you would call it. But wow. I mean, she was just stunning to listen to and I loved it in the movie. It stuck with me."

The incomparable Stevie Nicks joins Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 to discuss her new release "For What It's Worth", her tour and her incredible relationships with artists past and present, including Tom Petty, Prince, Harry Styles, Miley Cyrus, and more.

Stevie Nicks Tells Apple Music About Her Relationship With Harry Styles and Miley Cyrus…

…he’s that kind of a friend. He's a brother, and a son, and maybe we’re best, best friends in another life or something. I don't know. But yes, we're very close. Miley and I, I didn't really know Miley until we went into the Edge of Midnight, Edge of Seventeen thing. And then, we had so many phone conversations. And we're both so loud and so talkative that we just went a million miles during our first phone conversation. And we just hit it off. And we went back and forth with Andrew Watt, her producer, therefore my producer also. And then Jimmy Iovine got involved and sent them all the Edge of Seventeen sticks, whatever that means. The sticks, where everything lives, on the sticks. And so, they had all the original vocals and everything that was important on Edge of Seventeen. And it was super fun. And when it was done, I thought it was really excellent. And had it not been for COVID, she wanted me to come to New York and do this New Year's Eve thing, but I couldn't go.

Stevie Nicks Tells Apple Music About Her Close Friendship with the Late Tom Petty…

Tom was one of my best friends in the world. I met him in 1979, the end of 1979. He gave me ‘Stop Draggin' My Heart Around’ and had already recorded it and sang it with me. And I didn't even know him. So he and I were really, really dear friends until he passed away. I'm also doing ‘Free Fallin' at the end of the show. We also did that in Fleetwood Mac three years ago at the end of our show. And it's just one of my favorite TP songs. And then when we come off, we play Learning to Fly. It's like I don't know, I think I just want to keep him with me. I just want to keep him here as long as I can. Sometimes I'm in tears, sometimes I can smile with a little bit of the remembrance of the hysterical person he was. And he was a real music connoisseur and there's so many different sides of Tom. I mean it's like this really sweet Tom and the Tom that would just say, "You better do that again and do it right." He had so many different personalities. But I mean his ex-wife, Jane Petty, said, "Besides me, Stevie, I think that you're the best friend that Tom ever had." And I thought that was the nicest thing that anybody in Tom's world ever said about me because I think so. I agree. I was a really close friend of his. It's hard for me every day and probably always will be.

Stevie Nicks Tells Apple Music About Her Close Friendship and Connection with Prince…

Prince and I were good friends. It's like he and I inspired each other back and forth. I wrote Stand Back inspired by Little Red Corvette. I sang along to Little Red Corvette on the radio, and I wrote the song, I had a piece of paper and pencil, and I wrote the song in the car. And then, I went back to Los Angeles and recorded it, but I had to call him. So, I finally got a number, and I just said, "So, Prince, this is Stevie Nicks. And, I wrote a song to your track, Little Red Corvette, and I would like for you... I don't know if you're in town or not, but I'm at Sunset Sound, and... Are you here?" And, he goes like, "Yeah, I'm here." And, I said, "Well, could you come down?" And he goes, "Yeah, yeah. Sure. Sunset Sound?" And, he walked in 15 minutes later. And so, he did play on it… he played keyboards on it, and then he played some guitar on the middle part. And, if you really listen to it, you'll find it in there. So anyway, I gave him half the song, and everybody's happy, and then from that day onward, he worried about me and my drug addiction. And, he would be always, somewhat loved me, and somewhat was so worried about me, he couldn't hardly stand it. So, we had long, long conversations about it on the phone. So, our relationship went on from about whenever Stand Back came out, until he died. It wasn't an in person relationship all the time, but we talked a lot. And, when I got all better in 1995, after my last rehab, he was so thrilled and happy. So, yes, also ‘Edge of Seventeen’ he loved. And so, that inspired him to write ‘When Doves Cry’. And, it is said that the raspberry beret was somewhat inspired by me, not the part about walking around with nothing but the beret on, but the fact that I had a raspberry velvet beret, and he had seen it and liked it. So, it's little things that we both did inspired us. The connections are all there, and very real, and very alive today, as they always were. So, losing Tom and Prince, in the same time, was... I mean, very close to each other, was very weird.

Stevie Nicks Tells Apple Music About The Varied Backgrounds of The Various Members of Fleetwood Mac…

Christine's a certain kind of writer. She's our pop star and our single writer, mostly, over the years since 1975. Lindsey's our rock and roll, I don't want to say country really, but say rockabilly writer, because his brother brought him all these rockabilly records when he was really little kid. He was just entranced, I think, in all of the 1950s music. That's where he came up through, and then he's flipped over to The Kingston Trio. He had a whole bunch of influences that I really didn't have. You put Christine, blues Christine in London going... Stevie Winwood and Eric Clapton were her friends when she was in school, and they hung out. And we're like, "Oh my God. That's so fantastic.” And then there's me, who moves around with her parents, whose dad works for a beer company and moves every two or three years from when she's in the third grade all the way up to when she doesn't move with them at the beginning of her third year in college. All of our backgrounds are very, very different. But then there was one. There was me. Then there was me and Lindsey. Then there was me and Lindsey and Chris. Then it was a trio. It was a duo. Then it was a trio. It was just you, and then it was a duo. Lindsey and I had to stop being a duo the day we joined Fleetwood Mac. No more duo, just a trio, which was hard, since we'd been a duo since 1968. And it was now 1975. But you know what? It was super fun.

Stevie Nicks Tells Apple Music About Her Friendship with Christine McVie…

Christine, I adored from the minute I met her at dinner at a Mexican food restaurant in Los Angeles. I thought, "She's going to be... She doesn't know it. She's five years older than me. She's going to be my best friend. And she doesn't know this yet, but she is.” And she was. We had the best time. We really enjoyed all of those amazing adventures together. And it was like having your best friend in a band with you, which is unheard of. It's usually, you just don't get two girls and a guy, two girl writers and a guy. You just usually don't get that. So we were really lucky. That started us off on such a great foot that we just were able to just put on our high heel boots and go straight up the ladder.

Stevie Nicks Tells Apple Music About Touring With Mike Campbell and Neil Finn…

I was really good friends with Mike Campbell, because I've known him since, again, with Tom, 1979. And Mike has sent me a million tracks, and I almost always do one or two or three of Mike's tracks whenever I'm writing. So I knew Michael really, really well, very close friends. I think I had met Neil, but I didn't really know him well. Michael was a pretty easy fix because it was like, "You need a job. So how would you like to do this?" And Mike was like, "Well, I don't know. Let me think about that for a day." And I'm like, "Okay. You think about it.” And then we went to Maui, and we got on everybody else's computers, and we looked at every possible singing, guitar-playing guy. Mick knew Neil Finn. At the end of a week, he said, "Well, what about Crowded House's Neil Finn?" And we're like, "Well, he's got a beautiful voice.”

Stevie Nicks on Fleetwood Mac Being Famous For Getting New Guitar Players...

I think that what everybody would say, as far as the breakup of Fleetwood Mac, Fleetwood Mac was famous for getting new guitar players. We were the new guitar player - not me - but Lindsey was the new guitar player that came in at '75, when Bob Welch left. And before that, there was herds of guitar players. Whenever something happened, they got new guitar players.

Stevie Nicks Tells Apple Music About Working With Damon Albarn and The Gorillaz...

Well, I have to tell you, it was really great. Because when I got the song... Because Greg Kurstin sent it to me. Evidently Elton John said to him... Well, I think he might have asked Elton to do something. And Elton said, "Well, I can't really sing with you. You don't write your words in the right place.""It's really, I think, choppy. And you sing... Well, I just don't know how you even sing. I don't think I can do it." Anyway, and I was laughing so hard. Because I had just done a song with Elton, and Elton, I adore. But I had to learn how to sing with Elton. I really had to practice for weeks to be able to sing this song called Stolen Car. And I did it, and I was right there with Elton, but it was hard. So anyway, so Greg tells me this. And I go, "Send me the song." He sends me the song, and I play it for everybody in my dorm house. I call Greg back, and I go, "Oh, I think this is now our new favorite song," and I haven't even sung on it yet. But yes, I would love to do this, and I'm going to... Listen, I'm going to prove him wrong. I'm going to sing exactly perfect with him.So I learned that song as if I had written that song and as if I was a Englishman, with that accent. And I love it so much. But this is the only thing I asked for. I said, "I'm not asking for anything except the 50 bucks I'd probably charge you. If you make a video of this..." Because that's how I know about the Gorillaz, is because of all their crazy cartoon videos. I'm going, "I want to be in the oil video." I want to be a Gorilla, and I want to have big, false eyelashes, and I want to have blond hair, right?So, that's what I said. I said, "This is my one demand that I will make." And so, they're doing it as we speak. And the whole song is... I think that song is somewhere between love and war. Because when it's... (singing) And then there's... (singing) My favorite part. But anyway, whatever it is, I can't wait till it comes out because I'm so proud of it. Now, I was an honorary Heartbreaker. I was an honorary Foo Fighter. And now, I'm an honorary Gorilla. I'm so happy.

Stevie Nicks Tells Apple Music About Her History With Stephen Stills’ Song “For What It’s Worth”...

So, I'll tell you why I used it. Since 1966, when it was first written, I was a big Buffalo Springfield fan. So then, we moved quickly towards the future, and say 1968 is probably when I really started listening to Crosby, Stills & Nash. So, what happened was, is that then I really became a big fan of that song. And, even in those early days, that was right when I joined the band with Lindsey, it was 1968 in San Francisco. And, in my little head, thinking that, "Yes, of course this is going to work out." I said, "I'm going to record that song someday.”

Stevie Nicks Tells Apple Music Why She Decided To Release The Cover Now...

…it took a whole long time to do it, but the reason that I recorded it was because a week after the Uvalde shooting, I recorded it. I just said... It just came into my head. Sometimes you're just sitting on the couch, and sometimes it'll just come into your head, and you didn't even look for it, and it just comes. So, I thought, okay, I'm going to record it. And, I called my favorite producer, Greg Kurstin, and I said, "I would like to record this." And, he goes like, "Okay, great." He recorded it, he played everything except the lead guitar solo by Waddy Watchel. And, I went in and sang it, and with this whole COVID thing, it's not all so easy to just do that, but we did it, and we wanted to put it through a record company, because it was early in the summer. And so, that of course then takes a while, and then I had to go back on the road. So, it was not ever a protest song. Stephen Stills wrote it about the kids on the Sunset Strip getting together to go to the Roxy, and Troubadour, and everything. And then, the police said, "Well, you can't be keeping everybody in the Hills awake. So, you have to be gone by 10 o'clock." And, of course, I don't go to bed till eight in the morning. So, just imagine. It's like, you have to be off the streets at 10 o'clock, and they're like, "Are you serious? That's not going to happen." So, it turned into riots. I mean, they were like, "You're not going to tell us when we have to go to bed. So, we're not going to leave." So, that's really what he wrote it about. I had no idea, but it is. That's the truth.

Stevie Nicks Tells Apple Music How She Approached Covering The Song and What She Hopes Fans Get Out Of Listening To It...

So, everybody has their own meaning for that song, but I just think that somewhere in Stephen Still's amazing songwriting, visionary, whatever you want to say, for what it's worth, he managed, in that song, to cover everything. To cover everything that everybody's complaining about, and fighting against, in the entire world. He managed, in that song, to touch on everything so subtly… you could have said, "Okay, is that song about gun violence? Is that song about women's rights? Is it about immigration?" You wouldn't have had any idea exactly what it was about, but you could take it all in to be about anything that you personally wanted it to be about. But, I know, if I'm going to sing some really famous rockstar guy’s song, I better sing it well, or I'm going to get totally panned. So, I put everything I have into doing an interpretation of a song written by a man and sung by a man...especially such a famous man and songwriter as Stephen Stills. So I really did try to stay as within Stephen's realm as I could. And that's really, basically what I tell the audience is, "This is a song I long wanted to record. This seemed to be the right time. And I hope that you, whatever you're..." I don't know if I ever said whatever your views on anything are, I hope that you can rise above that and take it for what it is. And also, I just hope you like the song.

Stevie Nicks on Avoiding Covid…

I still have not got COVID, and I'm not getting it. That's my mantra. And I said, "Well, I'm not having it because I'm not having the long haul after effects of it." I barely made it to 74-years-old. I am not going to drop dead of a stroke in two years because I got COVID. So anyway, that's why out here, we are being so careful.

Stevie Nicks Tells Apple Music About Returning To Touring After Three Years...

We haven't been on tour in three years, so it's like, "Wow, let's see, what do we do now," kind of thing . We went out in the very beginning of the summer and we did three shows. We went into rehearsal for two weeks, then we did three shows. Then we came home for almost four weeks. Then we did five shows and then we came home for two months. That was the bulk of the really hot part of the summer. And then we just went back out and I mean we've done three shows I guess. So I have to tell you, I mean after being at home watching miniseries and not leaving the house hardly ever and being in a small bubble of... We had a sorority house bubble, and then just bang, into rehearsal and bang, right back on the road

Stevie Nicks Tells Apple Music Why She Avoids Outdoor Shows…

I swore off outdoor shows about 10 years ago because heat is not my friend. And if you dress and you have outfits and I'm wearing... My choice of outfit is a black velvet jacket that's very from the past that I love, but it's a black velvet jacket. But anyway, it's really hot. So I'd prefer to be indoors because for me, it's more dressy. It's more sophisticated. The sound is way, way better for me. I don't know how it is out there because I'm not out there, but how it is for me in my ear monitors is much better. You know what the sound is going to be because a big building doesn't change all that much, but outdoor venues change at every single venue. One will be great, the next one will just be awful and there's nothing you can do. It's the weather.

Stevie Nicks Tells Apple Music About the Carefree Nature of Tour Life as a Young Artist…

you have to remember between 1975 when I joined Fleetwood Mac, I was 28. I was just about 28, not quite. I was older than people would've probably thought because I looked really young so I was deceiving. But when you're really young and you're really in a brand new, big, huge band for that first 10 years, really nothing bothers you. The sound doesn't even bother you. Nothing bothers you because you're having such a good time and it's a free for all. It's just great. And you're not worried... It's not your problem if it doesn't sound good out front because you're not out front and you don't have ear monitors stuck in your head, blowing your head off and giving you ear problems, you're just getting your head blown off from a set of monitors that are at your feet that are so loud that can't tell if it sounds good or not. You're just on a wing and a prayer. So as long as you're just on a wing and a prayer, then who cares? It's like whatever, bring it on.

On this week’s episode of Rocket Hour, Elton John chats with Marcus Mumford. He tells Elton about working with Brandi Carlile, Mumford & Sons, his new solo album (self-titled), playing with Joni Mitchell, his love for Elton and more…

Marcus Mumford on Elton John

Well, it's a bit of a trip for me to be talking with you on your podcast about this record, because you are partly responsible for this thing happening at all, Elton. And I hadn't imagined it being out. When I first played you those couple songs in Los Angeles and you and David sat me down in your kitchen and gave me one of the great speeches that I'll always remember about fearlessness. I still, at that point, didn't imagine a world where I was putting the music out. I hadn't got that far, and I'd only just started writing really. And, I think I promised to myself that I would write just for the sake of writing music, partly to enjoy music again. And then Cannibal came out and then Grace came out and then it got more fun.

Marcus Mumford on Brandi Carlile

Well, Brandi and I have been friends for a long time. And actually we're both ambassadors for the same charity. In the UK it's called War Child. In the US, it's called Children in Conflict. And we really connected again through that. And then we saw each other at dinner with you in Los Angeles. And she sidled up to me and she said, "Something's going on with you. You're presenting quite differently in the world and I'd like to understand it as your friend." And I said, "Yeah. I can explain that to you." And then, I guess, you had called her and told her that you'd heard a couple songs and that she should too. So we drove along the Pacific Coast Highway together and listened to music. Some of her music, some of my music, and she put her arm around me that morning and said, "Dude. Whatever it takes to help you bring this music into the world, I will be here for it." And we drove straight to the studio and recorded.

Marcus Mumford on Mumford & Sons

I really agree with you. And I said to the lads that this is not to launch a solo career that I could do alongside for the rest of the time, at all. It was really, it was a project-based thing for me. These songs naturally felt like they had to be not really put on anyone else. I had to carry these on my own. But, I've always said to them I want to go away and do this, and then I hope to come back to the band, a better writer, a better performer and actually a better band member now. And certainly having made some changes in my life, probably a nicer bloke to hang out with and make music with too. So I think it's going to be a good ... I'm really excited about the next one. I've got a few songs kicking about. I know the lads do too, so it's going to be fun.

Marcus Mumford on lead track Cannibal, taken from debut solo album

Just a line in the song that naturally came. I was actually looking through my lyric books, because I write everything out by hand when I'm writing lyrics. And that word came up a bunch. It was rattling around my brain until I got it in the right place in this song. And it just felt like the right way to start the record. It's an intense way to start a record, but once I'd written it, there was no hiding from it. And for me, it's not actually a sore subject now, because I feel like I've had the opportunity to do a lot of work on it. And in my family, amongst my friends and people like you, honestly, Elton. So, yeah. It felt like the natural thing to do to write a song about it, once I'd done some work on it.

Marcus Mumford on playing with Joni Mitchell at Newport Festival

It totally was. And in rehearsals we'd done it slightly differently. At the jams, we'd all sort of pitch in and sing a bit. And I think by the time she got on the stage at Newport, for the first time in 20 years or whatever, I think she needed less support from us and from Brandi. And so, Brandi had said to me, make sure you sing it all so that she can join in when she wants to, and then she can duck out when she wants to. But, by the time we get to that song in the set, she'd been singing stronger than I think anyone had heard her for a long time. So, I felt like, now I've got to duck out and get out of the way of Joni Mitchell, because she's rising. She was just rising throughout that set. Thanks to Brandi, really, who's been like a physiotherapist, to her vocally. And so, I ducked out. I planned on singing much more than I ended up singing on that song, just because you've got to make way for the queen, haven't you?

Marcus Mumford on Monica Martin

… She was playing a show at Largo and I texted a friend of mine who was going and said, "Can I come?" And they said, "Yeah. You can come, but you're going to have to play a couple songs." And I said, "That's fine. As long as I can get in the room, because I want to see Monica Martin play." And she was even better live than I'd hoped she would be. And we met and I said, "I'm gently stalking you, because I'm so obsessed with your music. Would you hear this song I'm working on for my record?" And she did. And she came in and sang it. She held my dog for the entire day, while she was singing. And she layered up her parts. She did it all in one day. And she just blew us out of the water. It was amazing. So we had to mix her really high.

Marcus Mumford on the positive influence of female artists

I'd worked in a male-dominated environment for a long time. And I started out working for Laura Marling. She was the first person to give me a job. I was her drummer. And I hadn't really worked in a studio with women since then, and it had been far too long. And actually, it just so happened that with this music, particularly, for some reason, I found that women really connected to it. And I found in my really vulnerable moments in the studio, it tended to be a woman who'd come along. Even if it was Clairo who's 23, or Julia Michaels, who I'd never worked with and never met, who's 25. And just come along and lift me over the particular wall that I'd faced. And then behind the scenes too, my team's changed a bunch. My publisher, my agent, head of my record label in the US, and now one of my management team, all women. And really key to it. And there's good reason for the record being dedicated to my wife. So, just at this period in my life, it was what was necessary and it was awesome.

Marcus Mumford on his love for Elton John

Elton, can I just say? Can I just take the opportunity, publicly? Because, I know I've said it privately to you, and I've said it behind your back a lot, but I don't think I would've made this record without you. And I'm really, as much as you might be proud of me, I'm even more grateful to you. Because, yeah. I'd hit various walls along the way, even before I started making it. And you have been a constant friend and encouragement to me. And you and David, both, I'm so grateful to you. And so, being on your show is like full circle, complete joy. So, thank you.

Apple Music’s Zane Lowe travels to Rick Rubin's iconic Shangri-La recording studio in Malibu for a conversation with Neil Young and Rick about Young’s new album with Crazy Horse entitled ‘World Record’, which Rick produced. Young discusses the reason for his prolific musical output (“I'd be crazy to stop”), the origin of the project and what he loves about working with Rick, why he avoids social media (“it scares the s**t out of me”), why he decided to sell the rights to his catalog and how he feels when his music is used commercially, his forthcoming documentary film to mark the 50th anniversary of ‘Harvest’, his quest to identify new ways to tour in a more environmentally friendly way, meticulously managing his archive, and more.

Neil Young on His Prolific Musical Output…

I don't care. I figured that's why they like it, because I don't care. It's what I have to do. I want to do this. That's why there's 51, 52 albums because I want to do this and I can still feel it. I'd be crazy to stop.

Neil Young on The Origin of New Album ‘World Record’ and Reuniting with Rick Rubin…

So all these songs started like that. 8 out of 10 of them started with the melody, with no instrument. No words, no instrument, no chord changes. That is significantly, completely in another zone, and not thought of or sitting down to feel anything…just walking. So then I started thinking maybe four, five months later it might be nice to go to do some stuff. I'd written a couple of other songs and one of them was Chevrolet. I just finished that and I was back here and I said, "God, it'd be nice to get in the studio and do some stuff." Checked it out and the Horse was ready to go. And so I called and I booked the studio and I said, "God, that was easy. Usually you can't get in this place." I mean, I'm going, I got it, it's three days later. I was very, very lucky to get this place again. So, here I am and then I said, "Well, I'm going to call Rick now," because I thought of Rick right away. I'm going, "Who's going to help me do this?" And so, I thought of Rick because he's here, it's his place. So, there we did. We've done things before, but we've never completed a record before, which doesn't mean anything because the things we did, we remember. And we remember what they felt like, so that's our history. It's not about what records came out. So, musically we are very similar… it just seemed like the right thing. So, I told him the story of whistling and doing this stuff, and then writing the songs in two days, all of the songs were finished in two days… It's so weird, it was the weirdest project.

Neil Young on What He Loves About Working with Rick Rubin…

He was the closest I have been to working with David Briggs, who was my first producer. Rick loves music. I love music. Rick loves music. Rick knows how to make records. I know how to make records. We have fun hanging out together. What's the problem? It's what we do.

Rick Rubin on The Early Stages of Making The Album…

Super exciting, had no idea what to expect because Neil does different things at different times. So, excited and curious. And then we sat in the living room here and Neil played me the whistling versions, and then read to me the words. I don't think you sang me the words, I think you read to me. That's what I think you did. So, it was the idea of, I still had no idea what the songs were like. I had an idea of a melody, none of it sounded like Neil, historically. It sounded foreign but it sounded really good. And it was interesting because mm-hmm, I haven't heard this before, that's interesting. And had no idea what it would be like when Crazy Horse played on it. And I remember, I may have even said, "Are you sure you want to do this with them?" Because based on what we were listening to, it was not clear that this was going to play the Crazy Horse's strong suit. No, honestly, during the process, it made no sense. We were just laughing every day. It's like, "What is happening?" You listen to it one day, you know what's wrong, we're going to fix it tomorrow. You come in tomorrow, you listen, it's completely different. I hope people get out it of what we got. If they did, it's a home run.

Neil Young on Why He Avoids Social Media…

It scares the shit out of me. I don't like to go to social media. I don't like to get involved in that and the back and forth of one celebrity against another celebrity to do as a certain kind of people. I mean, who cares? There's so many more important things than that to think about today if you really want to look at what's happening. Again, even as I'm saying that, I can feel like, whoa, you've said that so many times already. People know that, but people don't really know it well enough to act on it. I keep going back to the same old thing and it's going to be the death of me pretty soon. I probably have to stop doing that. Ya… Fuck them if they can't take a joke.

Neil Young on Why He Sold The Rights To His Catalog and How He Feels About His Work Being Comercially…

Neil: I wanted to sell my songs because I don't have to worry about a fucking thing now. I don't have to do anything I don't want to do. I've got the end of my life to go out doing exactly what it is I want to do and not doing what I don't want to do. Unless it hurts somebody that I love, then I really have to think about it, but when it comes to expressing who you are and what you can do, if you're constricted by money and a lot of people are relying on you, you don't have to do that. You spend 75 years getting to the spot. You don't have to pay for what you did. You just sell what you want and you use the money to be able to go forward living life the way you want to live it and to make the examples. That's the way I feel about it. I don't have to go on a tour if I don't want to go on a tour.

Zane: How do you feel when you hear your songs in the context of a different context now? Are you okay with that?

Neil: No. I don't like that. I like the songs to be the songs. I don't want the songs to become associated with a product or with a movement or with a politician or with a sport or with anything.

Zane: It’s such a trade at the end of the day, it totally makes sense. Why would I need to hold onto these things when I can actually free myself to go and live my life, actually live my life. What are they going to be worth to me when I'm gone?

Neil: Right. Just to be clear, the fact that I sold my publishing had nothing to do with anything that's being used now in a commercial way. That was an accident that happened through a bad decision that someone in the business world made on my behalf. That was... These things happen and life goes on. It's a singular example. You won't see it again. It has nothing to do with my publishing company who I chose because they would take care of my art and I didn't try to milk them to death, because I put so many restrictions on them that they couldn't do this or couldn't do that. They just sell it like music. Not to sell a politician. I don't want my music to be associated with liberal or whatever the other word is, right, left. Got all these slang words for any of these people and any side. I don't want that. The music is for everyone. It's for people.

Neil Young and Rick Rubin on Their Recording Process…

Neil: we went back to the place, and whatever we used that was acoustic, getting back to the place through the board, if there was ever any acoustic echo or anything that got used or anything that was added from the board to sound of the board, all of that, that all went to analog. But our original tones came from an analog tone to a digital tone, where we worked with the digital tone, blended it to an analog. Neil: We want the digital control.

Rick Rubin: And we mixed to analog again, after it went into the digital realm-... We mixed to analog tape. There's a lot you can do with digital that's really convenient that you can't do with analog. Or if the, I don't want to say you can't do it with analog, but if you did it with analog, the downside of, you wouldn't get the same benefit that you get if you do it digitally... Because you have to make copies and they're going down generations. Whereas, if you can get into the digital realm immediately from the analog highest quality, if you're playing in that world, it's not degrading, it's not getting... There weren't even times in the past where you'd put up a two inch tape, where we'd put up two inch tape, something we were working on in the past, and you listen to it and it didn't sound like it did when you recorded it because it starts degrading. It can happen fast, it can happen. If you mixed it a year later, it wouldn't sound anything like the original track. It's always changing.

Neil Young on his Forthcoming Documentary Film ‘Harvest Time’ To Mark the 50th Anniversary of ‘Harvest’…

We made a movie about it. We had a whole movie of making Harvest that no one's seen. Actually, it's going to be in theaters. Yeah, for one night only, of course. People blink and it's over. That's good. That's the way it should be and then it becomes available in all of the regular formats. No, it's great. You look at it, you'll see it. It's us 50 years ago making this record and everybody's having a great time. I think we played seven songs that are on the record. Not those versions, different versions.I've had it for a long time and that's what the archives is all about, you just have to go back to the right year and then look and there it is. There's a release coming up somewhere for something. Keeps me busy.

Neil Young on His Archives...

It's all there. Everything that I ever did that I wanted people to hear is there. And there's more things, but I haven't found them yet and I haven't been able to prepare them. But they're all there, and I love the Archives. For me, it's been my friend for years now. A place where I can go and take care of my stuff and organize everything and make sure they got really good archivists and engineers and record keepers.We broke even a couple of weeks ago. And we're not now though. We just peaked. We came above them and then we went down again. But we made it. We did it. I don't know how many years it's been, but we finally got to the point where the new ideas and things we were developing… they didn't outspend the income.

Rick Rubin on How He Approaches His Archive…

I've never taken it seriously, and at some point it'll be an issue if we ever decide to look back. It's going to be a challenge. It's hard to say so much of the things, because I work with so many different artists, most of whom are assigned to labels, it's all over. It's in the different archives of the different record companies all over the place. So it's hard to know. But we would record, when we were recording mostly on tape, which we did on this album as well. But in the old days of recording on tape, sometimes we would use 150 reels of two inch tape for one album if we were doing a lot of takes. And those still exists somewhere ... With all of those takes. And I've never looked back at them, but I know that they exist. I can't imagine someone would've erased them at a record company. But you never know.

Neil Young on Titling The Album ‘World Record’…

I really don't know. It seemed like a normal title for this, then I went, "No one's used that title?” I'm sure somebody used that title, but I don't know.

Rick Rubin on Mixing The Album For Vinyl…

We always try to make everything sound as good as it can, basically. The only reason, I think, the only reason that there was a second one for digital was because we had more time and we didn't have as much time for the vinyl one, so we put all of our energy into making the vinyl one as good as we can. Then anything that we heard after that we were still able to do for the digital, so we did.

Neil Young on His Idea for an Analog AM Radio Station Broadcasting Vinyl Quality Audio to the World...

Hey, if you want to get involved in our radio station…we’re thinking about it. An analog AM radio station… broadcasting vinyl quality to the fucking world. All you need is the right kind of radio. You just get the radio, then you can have any music. Radio is the future. It really is.

Neil Young on The Importance of Taking Action to Battle Climate Change…

…we got a lot of work to do. I think it's a great situation for the world, it's probably the only time in the world that you could ever see where all the people of all the countries, all around the world could all have the same idea. Wait a minute, we got to do something because this is no good, we are all feeling it. And the Russians and the Chinese and the Americans and the Canadians and French people, the Italians, they're all feeling it. The Australians, the New Zealanders, they're all feeling the same thing. You just take that and just go, what if everybody focused on just loving earth and looking at life like a hippie for a minute? Just doing that and just don't do anything to hurt what you love. If you've got enough money, you should be able to do a lot of stuff. You should be able to only eat food that is clean food, that's not coming from factory farms. Factory farms were where we got climate change. If you go right to the factory farm and then go back in time on the factory farm, that's the beginning. That's it. That's when the earth started to go in the sky. That's when everything got screwed up and we started growing things for money instead of for health and for natural goodness. That's what I think of. I think of those kind of things.

Neil Young on Exploring Viable Fuel Alternatives For Touring and the Challenges of Touring with a Low Environmental Footprint…

R99 is a combination of mostly animals and vegetable fats and waste. It's absolutely viable for our tour. I looked into it for touring all of the vehicles and for powering all of the vehicles and for powering the shows, the lights, the sound, the venue, everything we could do with this renewable fuel and we could take the generators with us, set them up, maybe have two sets of them and have them, hop, skip over one another, but do that kind of a thing to have a tour that wouldn't have an impact, where we wouldn't be impacting. Then I came up against the food. All the venues have got arrangements with different people, contracts and that's all factory farmed food that everybody eats when they come to see one of our shows. That's exactly the opposite of what we believe in. That's the part I'm having trouble with and I'm trying to figure it out. Our time should be focused on moving forward into the direction of uniting and fixing the problem.

Rick Rubin on Why He Doesn’t Collect Vinyl…

It's the rabbit hole of having to have the vinyl of the thing that I want to listen to. I like living with no stuff and I don't want to have a lot of records. I just don't want to have them. I love the way they sound and it depresses me when I listen to them because when I listen to that record, I want to listen to all the records, but I don't have all the records and I live in different places in the world and I don't want to have duplicates of every record everywhere I go. It's too much. It's too much. I do high res digital everywhere I go and I have high five systems with high res digital, which is the best I can do and still have everything, have the benefit of what's good about the digital is that it's all available. I make that choice. I used to really be into collecting things. I just felt like at some point, I think when I moved to Malibu, just the idea of not having stuff felt really good. 

Elton John, host of Apple Music’s Rocket Hour and crate-digger extraordinaire, took a look back over the past year and picked some of his favorite tracks that have been played on the show. In a new playlist, Elton takes us track by track through some of his selections.

Elton John Tells Apple Music About His 'Rocket Hour' Show and Giving Artists Exposure

Legendary producer Don Was joins Dave Cobb on the latest episode of Southern Accents Radio on Apple Music Country. They discuss the valuable lessons learned from producing Bob Dylan and George Harrison, producing Greg Allman’s final record before his passing, and how The Rolling Stones’ ‘Blue & Lonesome’ was an accident.

Don Was Tells Apple Music About The Valuable Lessons He Learned While Producing Bob Dylan and George Harrison…

All my life, I wanted to produce Bob Dylan. There came a day in 1989 when I was in the studio producing Bob Dylan, and George Harrison came in to play a guitar solo on a song. Bob's messing with him. He moves the engineer, Ed Cherney, out of the seat, and he sits in the engineer's chair. He's working the remote control. George Harrison says, "Don't let him do what he did to me last time, which is he just recorded me one take, and that was it. I didn't get to fix the thing." I said, "Okay. Yeah. Sure. No problem." Bob, of course, hears that, and he's going to do the same thing. George hasn't even had a chance to tune up or to hear the song. He doesn't even know what key it's in. Bob fast forwards to the solo and is like, "Go." He hits it into record. George figures out what key it's in. All things considered, it was a respectable effort, but it wasn't the solo that you wanted from George Harrison. Bob shuts the machine off after the solo. He says, "Okay. That's great. Thank you, man." George Harrison turns to me he says, "Help, Don. What do you think?" Bob looks at me and goes, "Yeah, what do you think?"

Well, the whole room dissolved in the echo. Time slowed down. I flashed on the time I tried to sell my car to get a ticket to go see the concert for Bangladesh. George and Bob. Here they are, three feet away from me, saying, "What do you think?" I'm in this tough bind. Thankfully, a voice came into my head and said, "He's not paying you to be a fan." I thought, "All right. You got to tell the truth here." So I said, "It was good, man. But let's tune up, try another take. Let's see if we beat it." George was like, "Thank you." I guess I passed Bob's test. But that was a pivotal moment, realizing  that I'm not there to be a fan and that they're actually paying me to do something.

Don Was Tells Apple Music About Playing Live With Bob Weir And Being Part of Wolf Bros…

First of all, he's a wildly creative guy. I love the way that he approaches the songs as a singer, which is, he tries to inhabit the character every night. The whole thrust of Wolf Brothers, as opposed to doing another Grateful Dead band, is that we give him space to interpret. We don't crowd each bar with a lot of information so that he can phrase without fighting any of us. One of the songs we were working on the other day, I held an E for a couple of bars because he was singing. Don't fight him. That's all you need, is that one note. He's an incredible interpreter of songs. He's the wildest guitar player you're ever going to hear.

Don Was Tells Apple Music About How The Rolling Stones’ ‘Blue & Lonesome’ Was An Accident…

It’s absolutely the right record for them to make, and I love that record. But it was an accident. We were at a point where we were making a new record, and it was getting a little intense. So just to diffuse the room a little bit, Keith said... I can't remember which one he picked now, but he picked one of the songs. And they just did it in one take. And it was like, wow, that's really good. And no one wanted to go back to fighting over this other song. So it was like, "Eh, let's do another one." So at the end of the day, we had six great blues tracks. All of them first takes. And so we said, "Well, yeah. Let's do it again tomorrow." But no one ever mentioned, let's make a Blues record. It was a little like when a guy's pitching a no-hitter, you don't bring it up in the dug up.

Everybody knew that, wow, this could be an album. But no one said anything about it. So we did it over a couple days. Eric Clapton was in the other room, and he walked in. Keith handed him a guitar. And he played on a couple of songs. And he had the same look on his face that I had. Because he's a little younger than them, and he had gone to see them when they were a pub band in Richmond.

Don Was Tells Apple Music About His Reflections On Producing Greg Allman’s Last Record Before Passing…

He knew he wasn't going to be around long. I knew that he wasn't going to be around long. But he and I never once talked about it. He didn't want to talk about it or acknowledge it, but you can tell in the choice. I submitted many, many songs for him. But you could tell in the reflective nature of the ones we ended up recording that he was really trying to tie up loose ends. The last song we cut was Song for Adam, a Jackson Brown song. And he and Jackson were old friends. They crashed in some apartment in the 60s together before either one of them was famous. And they remained good friends.

And we got to the last verse [and] it seems like he stopped singing before his song was done, basically. And that got Greg all choked up, and he couldn't get those lines out. He just left those lines open. But his health declined right after. It was almost like he was holding out to make this record. So all those vocals on that album are the live vocals that we did in Muscle Shoals. He literally stopped singing in the middle of the last song he recorded.

Portugal. The Man’s John Gourley joins Hanuman Welch on ALT CTRL Radio on Apple Music 1 to discuss their new album ‘Chris Black Changed My Life,’ New Single “Dummy,” growing up in Alaska and the band’s musical progression since their debut album.

Portugal. The Man’s John Gourley Talks to Apple Music About Their New Album ‘Chris Black Changed My life’…

I think there's one thing you hear in the studio every time, if you listen to Rick Rubin, or Jeff Bhasker who we've been working with, people like that, Benny Blanco, you never go into the studio going, "Hey, let's write a hit." I mean, that's just not really how it works.

You can recognize when something brilliant happens in the studio, and you could go, "Wow, that's really special." But I think we just kind of went in with this idea that we were going to make this... I don't know, we wanted to make something punk, and loose, and kind of crazy. And working with Jeff Bhasker, who's this synth wizard, we were going to do something just way out there. And during that process, we lost a very dear friend of ours, Chris Black, who the new album is named after, it's called 'Chris Black Changed My Life'. And I think in that moment priorities kind of shifted, and pandemic hit, all of these things happened. Sitting down I just thought about him a lot and family. And I mean, we were forced to be in these little pods.

We wanted to explode out of it. I mean, that's exactly what we were feeling. I think when we were working on music, a lot of this came down to I think this cooped up feeling that everybody else was feeling was very... It was cathartic for me, it reminded me of home, and the isolation of growing up in Alaska in these cabins. And I think in sitting down to write this album just about family, and everything Chris has done for me, it was just really looking at the music that I really loved growing up. I really love just Motown, Elvis, I love these fifties and sixties songs where people really structurally... And time, it was three-minute songs. That's been my obsession, I love a three-minute song.

Portugal. The Man’s John Gourley Talks to Apple Music About How Their New Single “Dummy” Is An Ode To The Cure

Yeah. I've said it a bunch, but that song to me was just this ode to The Cure. I mean, this is really, really early on, this is pre-pandemic. We were in the studio with Paul Williams, who is just a masterclass songwriter, icon, legend, Paul Williams, Rainbow Connection, Carpenters, he's written so many amazing songs. We were sitting down with him and we were working on something, and it was just a different song at the time. And our drummer comes in, and he's like, "Hey, I got a bassline for this." And he keeps telling me he has a bassline, he just starts doing this thing in my ear. And he's trying to whisper this bassline to me, and I'm just like, "Jesus Christ, this is ridiculous. That's how the bass sounds in your head?"

So I was like, "Why don't you go in there and record that real quick, and I'll figure it out on bass?" And the whole time I just kind of knew that is something really special coming from this... I mean, he is a goth kid. I mean, that is the world he lives in. And I just always kind of felt like it needed this playfulness, yet the weight of this kind of cartoonish reality we're living in right now, everything is so exaggerated. So that's what the verses were to me, it's Looney Tunes, it's the piano hanging over your head, it's the anvil falling. And you can hear it, but it's going to smash you. So just cut loose, it's "Boys Don't Cry", go dance.

Portugal. The Man’s John Gourley Talks to Apple Music About Growing Up In Alaska

Well, my parents were dog sled mushers. So growing up with a dog sled mushing, Iditarod running, Yukon Quests running family, you grow up around dogs, and these packs are very essential to their being. And I mean that passion for things, like that passion for racing, that passion for running, that passion for being out together in these packs, I think that has seeped into my being. So building those families and keeping it all together is really, really important to me. I mean, we work with Rich Holtzman, we've had the same manager forever, we've had the same lawyer forever. These people that are in our lives, they're a part of this family.

Portugal. The Man’s John Gourley Talks to Apple Music About Their Musical Progression Since Their Debut Album…

First albums from bands, you see everything they grew up with. You go out on tour and you have this experience, and yeah, that was really fun, I liked the heavier bluesier stuff, that's kind of where my guitar playing falls. So we made 'Church Mouth', we made this bluesy record. I learned how to play chords on our third album, so 'Censored Colors' is me learning how to play chords going, "Oh, that's a seven." I still barely know what that means.

But the growth of this band has just been documented. That is our college, our college was going through and just learning how to play everything, and then we signed to Atlantic, and here's all of those albums in one. And then you expand into Danger Mouse with Evil Friends, who very much lets you explore sonically, and structurally, and arrangements, and there's no rules to that. And I think coming off of that album, I had a lot of the ideas for 'Woodstock' bouncing around during that period. So I mean, "Feel It Still", we had that basic song kind of sitting in this bag of, I've shown it to a lot of people, and it wasn't until Asa Taccone heard that track... He heard me playing the bassline, we were just in a lounge together, in a studio lounge, and I was playing the baseline just completely stressed trying to figure out this album. And that's my safe place, is that baseline.

So I feel like it's all been this journey of just learning each time, and creating something new. This album, 'Chris Black Changed My Life', has been the most exciting for me, just working fully working with Asa Taccone on a lot of these songs. Working with Jeff Bhasker, who is just an absolute genius.

Apple Music’s Zane Lowe joins U2’s Bono and The Edge on a road trip across the desert and a journey through 'Songs Of Surrender', their new collection of reworked classics out tomorrow. In the extensive interview, the pair discuss the impetus for stripping down their songs for the project, the longevity and legacy of the band, Bono’s unwavering devoting to the group and why he most identifies as a songwriter, activism and not taking themselves as seriously as others, commercialism and ambition, and bringing mischief to Las Vegas when they launch the MSG Sphere venue this fall. Plus, Bono spontaneously shares a pre-written apology letter detailing everything he’s sorry for.

U2 Tell Apple Music Why The Band Decided To Strip Down Their Songs For the ‘Songs of Surrender’ Project…

The Edge: Our songs are the boss, and they were through this whole project. They told us what to do. I think it was a lot of opportunism because of the lockdown. Suddenly we had the space and time to just make music without there being any kind of pressure or any expectation. And this idea, I'd been knocking around for a while, to try some more of our songs in a stripped down way that we had done over the years. In our show, we'd take a song Every Breaking Wave, and we'd bring it down to piano, or Staring at the Sun, bring it down to acoustic guitar and voice. This was a golden opportunity to see where it would take us. But also the joy of it was there was no necessity to put it out if we didn't like it. We could just do it and see how it worked. So we could really just enjoy the process. It was really amazing fun.

Bono: It's both a vanity project and a grudge match. The grudge match is, we were trying to prove, or else maybe obfuscate, was if our songs could stand up with the best songs, our favorite songs. And so that was it. We wanted to see. It was some trepidation. Will they stand up?   People say your songs are like your children. Wrong. Your songs are like your parents. They tell you what to do, how to dress in, and to turn up for work, in the video, whatever. They do boss you about the songs, but, after a while, if you're successful, and as a songwriter, songs become big. They're owned by other people, not you. And in with this collection, we were sort of trying to listen to them again and trying to think, well, first of all, will they hold up? Will they stand up to being broken down outside of the firepower of a rock and roll band like U2? Because the songs, if they're any good, they never end. But rock and roll bands, they do.

The Edge Tells Apple Music About The Overarching Idea For ’Songs of Surrender’...

...just serving the songs... was the overarching idea for this collection. And to serve the song, but to serve the voice, which meant the voice was the centerpiece of every single arrangement.  So what's fun is to hear things like City of Blinding Lights, which sounds like a completely different song lyric to me, because Bono's interpreting it in a way that he couldn't possibly have done with the rock version. And not just this, other songs. The same is true for a lot of them, where you're hearing it in a different way. And that's, I think, why you went for new lyrics in a lot of songs is because there was a kind of opportunity there, there was a platform to deliver lyrics that weren’t; there before.

Bono Shares His Apology Letter…

Edge is the most influential guitar player in 35 years. The only person who won't say that is him. The band has staked out extraordinary musical landscape. The subject matter's been interesting. We've got a singer that has an annoying gene, but we need a bit of bottle in our rock and roll singers. Right? Actually, I've got an apology. I wrote it. “I apologize for having the unreasonableness of youth as I enter my 60s. I apologize for being a singer who will get in your face whatever direction you're looking. I apologize for not being shy or retiring and for loudly giving thanks for where I go to work. I apologize for stretching our band to its elastic limit. I apologize for wanting to make an unreasonable guitar record that rattles my cage and others. I apologize for repeating over and over, that rock and roll is not dead, it's just older and grumpier, and occasionally makes fireworks out of its mood changes. But most of all, I apologize for apologizing.”

Bono Tells Apple Music About His Unwavering Devotion to Making Music with U2...

It's a lot of things I want to do in my life, but it turns out there's a devotion that is required now for the song, for songwriting and for the band. There's only one thing that I need to do and that is to make music because if I don't do that, I'm in trouble. And I don't want to make music with anybody else other than Edge, and Adam or Larry. If I can have that, I want that. But it requires a kind of a pledge. It's like you're teenagers again. It's like you're going to go there. Some people might say, "You know what? I can't do that." And that would be totally understandable. It might even be mature. It might even be sane, is to say, if you think that I can commit to this like we did when we were kids, you're out of your mind. That's what it requires for me. I mean, each member of the band has their own decision to make, but I'm clear. I mean, this is what I want to do. This is what I do with all my time at the moment, is work on new songs. Even though we're here to talk about Songs of Surrender, it's the new songs that get me awake at night. Songs of Surrender is only possible because the so much amazing momentum for new work and for the future.

The Edge on Why U2 is Still Together, Friendship, and The Band’s Dynamic…

The thing about your friends is you get to choose them. Right? You don't choose your family. And I think our band luckily found each other as friends first and then, lo and behold, we found out that we actually weren't bad as songwriters and performers. But also the way we're designed, we're not in competition. So it's not like Lennon and McCartney where these two guys who the rivalry probably made them better. They're also basically doing the same thing. Singers and songwriters. I do a lot of music composition, but I need Bono to finish the song, so we complement each other. We don't ever cancel each other out. It's additive. So we shine brighter working together than we ever could on our own and I think that's why the band is still together, as much as the friendships are sort of the same, meaning, the friendships are real and they work.

U2 Tell Apple Music How American Culture Influenced The Band in The Early Days…

Bono: …we came to America to look for America at a time when America was looking for itself. America was trying to discover who it was in the 80s again, it was got a bit lost. And so it was an amazing time to arrive in America. And for us, a lot of our versions of America were from music, but also from books. City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, reading the plays of Sam Shepherd, Patti Smith, poems of Allen Ginsburg brought us to the... I mean, the Joshua Tree, I don't think... His America was really... And Howl. These were important tracts for us.

The Edge: And also Wim Wenders. Remember Paris, Texas? That was a huge movie. To see America through a European eye like that was important for us.

Bono Tells Apple Music Why He Identifies First and Foremost as a Songwriter and Explains His Longstanding Creative Partnership with The Edge…

We share our songwriting in U2. And the reason we do that is because, well, Larry and Adam make those songs valuable. So there's an economic aspect. The other reason is because through improvisation, that's how Larry and Adam normally contribute to the songs. And so that… it was also good advice from our manager, Paul McGuinness at the time. But the only thing of it is that, and this is the vanity bit, Edge and I more and more revered ‘the song’. I used to be saying, "Well, what did you do with your life?" "I'm in a band." "What do with your life." "I'm an activist." "What'd you do with your life?" "I'm a singer." But now I would say I'm a songwriter. I'm a performer, I'm a songwriter first. The text is everything. The melodies are everything. And there are great songwriting couples, duos, duets, duals. And this is, I've been working with Ed since I was 16 and we've been writing songs together and he's the musical genius. He comes with the magic and I helped shape it and I try to put into words what's in the music. Then I come to him also with music.It's often not as genius, but he makes it so.

Bono Tells Apple Music Why Faith Is Required For Songwriting…

The faith is required for songwriting. Ask any jazz artist, any people. You jump in off and hoping you land on a particular cord or place. And then I suppose, I think the scriptures say "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for but not seen." So when you're a kid and you don't have anything at all to offer the world, at least it feels like that. And you're at a place in your life and in your country's life where there doesn't look like there's going to be a lot out there, you need faith. And we found it in each other. We found it in music. We had a certain religiosity is the truth. Even though Ireland is dividing along sectarian lines, it's nearly at civil war. So we reject formal religion, but we find our own way and music's the language of the spirit anyway. But that's where we connect with our music and that's at the heart of who we are is faith. And the idea then that the world is more malleable than you think. That it's not stuck in stone. You can kick it, you can caress it, you can kiss it, you can push it, you can shape it.

The Edge Tells Apple Music About U2’s Activism, Earnestness, and Not Taking Themselves As Seriously as Others…

I think that's why it was so important for us to make the album like Achtung Baby and the tour that followed Zoo TV, because we'd start, started to become caricatures on that basis, like the Joshua Tree period had way over exaggerated this sense of earnestness and responsibility. And we just had to own up and say, “Actually… We’re very silly, we're not those characters.” We absolutely set out to offer ourselves to serve in some shape or form in U2 as a band and through our music, but we were also not taking ourselves nearly as seriously as people thought we were. And we were able to laugh at ourselves. And Achtung Baby was that antidote for us as much as for music fans to that overly sanctimonious, pious and earnest sort of image that had grown up around us. We needed to flesh out the truth about who we were and give ourselves the freedom then to be in both. Because that was the thing we loved about Bob Marley. He was able to, without any issues, like blend the spiritual into the political…Sexual, there was no to him, these weren't different baskets. These were all part of who he was.

Bono Tells Apple Music About Bringing The Sphere to Las Vegas and Continuing To Push Boundaries…

The mischief now is to bring a cathedral to Las Vegas. There happens to be one. It's called Guardian Angel Cathedral, it's one Catholic cathedral. We're bringing another. It's called the Sphere. And we are going to make a cathedral right off the strip in Las Vegas. We're going to make much mischief there. There will be much delight. It'll be delightful. We're going to take our live show to the next level. All we've tried to do from the beginning is break that fourth wall where you look at the camera. Well, for us, the case was we would jump off stage. I would jump into the crowd, climb, try to break the fourth wall. Then we started doing it with technology; videos, turning them into video art. The satellite stage could only exist because of ear monitors that allowed you to go in front of the speaker stack. That's how the satellite stage was invented. We invented it. And our shows have always been pushing at the outer perimeters, really. And this is the next level. This is how we hopefully take ourselves and our audience to the next level. We're choosing Achtung Baby as it's the right place for such mischief, because the fly was always headed to Las Vegas. It's a place where people come to be entertained. This is different. We're going to Oz. This is the yellow brick road.

Bono on Commercialism, Ambition and the Hip Hop Genre’s Embrace of Corporations...

Bono: …back to Achtung Baby period, because you're right, that was at that moment there was this idea that anything that was commercial had no authenticity. That to be pure and to have your work be taken seriously, you had to be pure and anti-commercial. Which, if you think about it, if you're trying to make out an album, is a ridiculous position to take. If you make an album, you want people to hear what you've done, which means that you have to have your records in the stores and lots of people buy them. So you want to promote your record, do the things that every band has always done. There's a difference between allowing your music to be tainted by a bad use, a bad association where you're cheapening what you're doing. But we never had any problem with ambition, nor did any of the bands that we looked up to …so the "corporation" word was a pejorative in the 80s, but of course hip hop came along and said, "Hold on a second.” And we think about what we're doing. We are our own industry. Coming out of Compton, if you're D re or Kendrick, it's not a sellout to set up your stall and to be selling your wares. So there was a beautiful honesty that came from hip hop.

The Edge Tells Apple Music About Always Searching For The Next Song…

...if you are lucky enough to be in the position that we're in where we have some songs that are revered, what else would you want to do with your life? What else would you want to do with your day than...get another one.

Dave Gahan and Martin Gore of Depeche Mode join Zane Lowe in-studio on Apple Music 1 to discuss ‘Memento Mori’ — their first album in six years out later this week. They tell Apple Music about continuing to evolve 40+ years into their career, embracing simplicity on the new project, the passing of beloved founding member Andy “Fletch” Fletcher, early influences, how 1990’s ‘Violator’ changed everything for them, writing with Psychedelic Furs’ Richard Butler on the project, their infamous 1998 Rose Bowl performance, and more.

Martin Gore on Depeche Mode’s Legacy and Continuing To Evolve 40+ Years into Their Career...

I mean, we could easily, if we wanted to just not put out music anymore and just go out and play the hits, but that's not what we're about.

Dave Gahan on Embracing Simplicity on Depeche Mode’s New Album ‘Memento Mori’…

Some of the greatest songs from people like Bob Marley or John Lennon or the simplicity of them is what really stays with you forever. Over complicating things, and sometimes it's necessary to throw the whole kitchen sink in there and everything when you're making music, but sometimes it's just stripping everything, more things away. Which we making this record, Martin and I were very kind of aware of the fact that it was it not to over clutter everything or over complicate things. We had a great team with James Ford and Marty Salogni. It was in the end, just the four of us. It worked out really well. And they were on the same page with us as well, trying to almost… yeah declutter.

Depeche Mode Reflect on the Loss of Andy “Fletch” Fletcher...

Martin Gore: Well, I think Dave said this recently that he was the band's biggest fan. And believe it or not, I honestly believe that he enjoyed being in Depeche Mode more than me or Dave. I mean he was like larger than life.

Dave Gahan: I think as we get to actually miss Fletch and grieve him through the process of certainly making the record because his presence was there. I know that sounds weird, but it was. And it continues when we're rehearsing now and when we're doing things and we've been out on a promo trip for a while and doing things. Everything that we do with without Fletch is a first.

Martin Gore: The first show is going to be kind of... hopefully not too much. It could be weird for us being there with the audience for the first time. It's not going to be easy. It's going to be something that we think about all the time. He's not here any more. Physically, he's not here. He was always on my left side. And I looked, even now when we were rehearsing often or when we've been doing things, when we did our first TV. We did this TV in Italy called the SanRemo Pop Festival just recently. And that was the first time we went on stage and we performed Ghosts Again. And actually, the whole experience was, for me, felt awful. Everything about it was wrong. And although everybody afterwards said, "Oh, it was great. It was great." All that kind of stuff. I kept thinking about how strange it felt to not have Fletch behind me on there.

Depeche Mode on Their Early Influences…

Dave Gahan: I think initially we both were huge Bowie fans and a lot of Glam. We came out of Glam, T-Rex. Kraftwork. When Kraftwork came along, they were a huge influence. We were going to clubs and listening to music, Roxy Music, all that kind of stuff. And I liked The Stones too. I like Jagger. And I like their badness. When I say badness, I mean they were the villains. And I like that.

Martin Gore: I've always listened to all kinds of music and I think as a songwriter it's important to be aware of everything that's out there. If you're an electronic musician, you shouldn't just listen to electronic music. It's interesting to... I like things like Kurt Vile, for instance, and the chords, that weird chords or that's always been very important to me. And I'm really into words. So I obviously I like people like Bob Dylan. I mean, I used to like Neil Young a lot. I still like Neil Young.

Dave Gahan: I love Neil Young. I still like Neil Young.

Depeche Mode on How 1990’s ‘Violator’ Changed Everything For The Band…

Dave Gahan: Yeah, I mean, it changed everything because we'd never sold that many records and played to that many people. And everything took off. So yeah, to say everything didn't change, it would be a lie. Everything did change. The perception of the band, the pressure on my end, the pressure on me as the front guy, everything changed around that time. I think that's why probably, when we went in to record Songs of Faith and Devotion with Flood producing, he was like, "We have to make a completely different record. Try to take everything away from what we know as being Depeche Mode. And I think we did. We managed to do that, which was unexpected, and also an incredibly difficult time for the band, probably. We'd reached a point where things, the wheels were starting to come off.

Martin Gore: Martin Gore: Yeah, I mean, I think that the success of Violator obviously did put extra pressure on us. I felt incredible pressure to come up with a bunch of songs that could match that, with Songs of Faith and Devotion. And I think that probably started me drinking a bit more. And then Dave went down his own path at that time. And also, maybe there's something ... I think there is this fallacy that we all have, that drugs and drink make us more creative. It's very easy to fall into that trap.

Dave Gahan on Going Down The Path of Drugs and Drinking To Play a Character...

...of course it's self-destructive. There was always, for me, with certain drugs, I wanted to feel, again, just the same thing, a part of something. So it enabled me to feel like I belonged to something, until it didn't. And then you were just alone. And I think it's the same thing, booze, drugs, whatever. You reach a point where you certainly can't get any more of it in your system without something terrible happening, and for those around you as well. But there is a belief, in the beginning. I had the same thing. There was a sort of belief that it was part of the character I was creating.

Martin Gore on Working with Psychedelic Furs’ Richard Butler on The New Depeche Mode Album…

I wrote four of the songs on the album with Richard. Which is something I've never done before, worked with somebody outside the band. He reached out to me. I think it was around April 2020. The pandemic had hit, and he just texted and said, "We should write some songs together.” And he actually said that to me once before. I don't know when it was, 10 years ago or something. Nothing ever came of it. But we were in the pandemic, and I thought, if I'm going to try and do something different, now is a good time to experiment. So we did. We just started writing songs together, and we ended up writing six that I really liked. And I thought it would be a waste to use them as a side project, because me and Richard could have just made an album together, written another few and put it out as an album. But I think they would've just been lost. So I called him and I said, "Now this might sound a bit crazy." And I said, "But what do you think about me using the songs for Depeche?" And he said, "Yeah. I love Depeche.

Dave Gahan on Album Opener “My Cosmos Is Mine”…

It's actually one of my favorites on the album. And not initially… when Martin first sent me the demo, but it didn't strike me. But quite often is the ones that creep up on me later that I most identify with for some reason and that song was one of those. I remember singing it, I remember going into Martin's house and in his studio, and I knew we were capturing it. We had captured something, the combination of that, the song, and I'd found a place where I wanted to be with it. And I feel like I found a meaning in the song that I identified with, and I don't often. And then it's not something I talk to Martin about. I mean, he might have a completely different concept about the lyrical content of the song, but I found my place with that song. I knew it was going to be something that was going to be a great introduction to Memento Mori.

Dave Gahan on Album Closer “Speak to Me”…

Well, it's weird because initially the idea sort of came to me and the song was incredibly elevated by Martin, and James, and Marta Salogni, into a different place, to another world, somewhere else. And that's exactly where I wanted the song to go as well. And it was beyond what I could have really put together myself. It was a very simple song, but honest and real. For me, it was a key that opened the door for me to want to continue to make a record with Martin again, that was a Depeche Mode record. It was like an answer. It was an answer to that question for me. Don't know if that makes any sense. It's a bit sarcastic, but at the same time there's an absolute peace and joy in the emptiness of the end.

Martin Gore on Having Four Additional Songs Ready To Go In the Vault…

We actually recorded 16 songs for this album and it was very difficult to actually choose the 12 that made it. So we have these four... Which is very unlike us, in a very, very small vault. Which were finished and mixed and everything. Yeah. They're all ready to go. We don't often have anything in the vault. Trust me.

Dave Gahan on Depeche Mode’s 1981 Debut Album ‘Speak & Spell’…

...we were so young …When we look back on that now, it's kind of amazing what we achieved in that first five years. Those songs, for instance, that first record when Vince was writing all the songs, pretty much apart from a couple that Martin would write, we were playing those songs. That's how we kind of formed together. We were already in clubs in England and trying to go other places as well before we even made that record, that first record. So when we went in to record it, luckily with the help of Daniel Miller, who produced the record and bought a couple of pieces of gear that we used relentlessly on that record… without him, we most definitely would not have survived those early years. He helped us to have the courage and also the ability to grow.

Depeche Mode on the Importance of the Band’s Infamous 1998 Rose Bowl Performance…

Martin Gore: We were probably talked into that more than anything else. I mean obviously people said to us, "Things have changed in America. The alternative market is now huge. You can play the Rose Bowl.”

Dave Gahan: We always wanted to end like with a special show or something. And yeah, maybe it was presented to us this idea that you could do... Come back to California and do a big show…... It changed the perception of the band. And we weren't really that. We weren't really a stadium band, but all of a sudden the media and everything jumped on this idea that we were this huge... We were certainly doing much better than we ever had. And we were playing to maybe sort of 15, 20,000 people a night, but the Rose Bowl was like 70,000 people or something. We were not prepared. We were not prepared. It probably made me a better performer because I knew I had to... There was something about filling up the space. I was on my own, so I was fighting for connection. So that constant connection with fans, with the audience, with the people that were listening to our music, and I felt that connection. It was tangible, so I hung onto that. And I learned how to then bring that onto the stage and feel like you're unified. So those moments when that really does happen when you're performing and there's this uni... You're all together. 

Bono and The Edge take Apple Music’s Zane Lowe on an exclusive sneak preview tour of Sphere — the innovative Las Vegas performance venue the band will christen in September. The group shares why there’s nothing like Sphere in the world, how the venue will bring completely immersive sound to the live concert experience, and what the shows mean for the band’s touring future. Plus, Bono reflects on the invention of stadium rock by the Beatles, and muses about what the future of live music in general might look like. U2 also reflects on some of the experiences that led up to this point, including iconic music video shoots and being embraced by Frank Sinatra early in their career.

U2 Tell Apple Music There’s Nothing Like Sphere In The World...

Bono: It’s not a line we just throw out, but the idea behind U2 is always to make the worst seat of the house, the best of the house. This changes the whole dynamic on that. Most music, over playing a theater, most music venues are sports venues. They're stadiums, they're arenas. They're built for sports. They're not built for music, they're not built for art. So this building was built for immersive experiences in cinema and performance. It was not built for, you can't come here and see an ice hockey game.

The Edge: So, the sound has been designed as a priority from the beginning. Best sound, I'm sure we'll ever hear. Really excited about it.

Bono: ...there are no speakers. The entire building is a speaker. So wherever you are, you have perfect sound is the plan.

The Edge: There's nothing else like it in the world and won't be for many, many years.

U2 Tell Apple Music About How Sphere Will Bring Completely Immersive Sound To The Live Concert Experience…

The Edge: So what this has been designed to achieve is completely immersive sound. So you've got the main array of speakers is above our heads, but throughout the entire building are speakers that are focused so that you have the capability of placing the audience inside a whole 360 degree sonic spectrum. So in the way that Atmos, I don't know if you've been listening to Atmos mixes now? Big big breakthrough in audio in terms of the dimension. Well, this can do that kind of Atmos mixing in a live context, which has never ever been possible before. So not only is the visual side of it groundbreaking, but the audio side of it is again, cutting edge.

U2 Tell Apple Music What The Group’s Sphere Shows Mean For Band’s Touring Future…

Bono: We have to see if our audience love this. I think it's going to be hard to get us out of here.

Zane Lowe: What does that mean for touring now?  Bono: We're not touring Achtung Baby anyway. So, with The Joshua Tree, we took that album around the world. This will only be here.

The Edge: Yes. But touring itself is not over. Don't forget it's 18,000 to 20,000 people a night, so it's not like you're not going to be doing a hundred shows.

U2 Tell Apple Music How Sphere Will Allow The Band To Achieve a Level of Intimacy They Never Could Before...

Bono: we can achieve intimacy at a level that we could never, whilst playing to 10,000 or 18,000 people. We work very hard to achieve that intimacy in arenas. We get there, we work very hard to achieve that in a stadium, we get there, or a festival. But here, the building's made to work for the audience, it's made to work for us.  

The Edge: I think the truth is that depending on where you are in the venue, you'll get your own very unique show.

U2 Tell Apple Music Their Upcoming Sphere Shows Are The Next Step in the Evolution of Stadium Rock…

Normally when I walk into a venue, I can feel that sort of an anxiety, but I haven't had it here. I'm just very excited. Think of when the Beatles came to the US. So they had a tiny little system, they played in Shea Stadium in New York. Nobody could hear them. It's just the sound of the crowd. And they invented stadium rock, if you like. And then it took every decade, every generation, we became more able to perform and that people could hear our music and see the band. This is the next, I suppose level, the next evolution in that. It started with the Beatles in Shea Stadium.

U2 Tell Apple Music Their Favorite Vegas Moment Was Being Hosted by Frank Sinatra At One of His Shows During The 80s As The Band Was Just Beginning To Take Off...

Bono: So the Las Vegas moment is, it's a bit Hollywood too, but so we got into to Sinatra and people were paying a thousand dollars a table or whatever, maybe more. We were in there free. We were kind of dressed as U2, whatever that was in the eighties. So Sinatra walks to the front of the stage and he's just there. And if you're a singer, Sinatra's on a different level. And he goes, "Yeah, who else is here?" There's like Elizabeth Taylor's there, such and such over here. I mean, it's just stars everywhere. And he does the thing of, "Well, tonight we have, they're number one in the United States. They're on the cover of Time Magazine, these people. They're from Ireland. They're called U2 and they're here." And so the spotlight comes on us. And so I guess we've seen it in the movies. So we all stand up and we wave because that's what you're supposed to do in that situation. And Frank just pulls away and goes, "You did not spend a dime on your clothes.” Most people didn't know why we would be interested. It's not exactly indie. Right. It was a rock and roll band wanting to hang out with a crooner. He was the chairman of the board, and we knew, something in us new,…that’s something we need to understand.

Thundercat joins Zane Lowe in-studio on Apple Music 1 to discuss his surprise collaboration with Tame Impala on new song “No More Lies”. He tells Apple Music why the experience was “one of the greater moments” for him and discusses the origin of the collaboration, how Tame Impala’s “Apocalypse Dreams” got him through one of the hardest moments of his life, the experience of creating together, and more.

Thundercat Tells Apple Music About The Origin of His Collaboration with Tame Impala...

For me personally, this is one of the greater moments for me. I don't even know where to begin with this. This is me and Kevin Parker. And from the day I heard Kevin's music, I knew me and him could do something. I knew it from the minute I heard it…I was like, "Man, I would've been in his band." I remember something like saying, "I'm a fan of your music," it almost feels like tongue in cheek. It's a weird way to fluff. But there's a part of it where I'm like, genuinely, for me, I own all your albums. And I remember a very specific thing for me, and we both, we were sitting there while we started working on it, and I had to make sure I had... Because there's a part where it's all washed over in alcohol psychologically for me. And I was like, "When did Apocalypse Dreams come out?" Just to see which order this is in, because there's a part that this could've inspired that, and there's a part where we both were just in the same mind frame, psychologically, in the feelings of certain things, I think. And I expressed to Kevin how Apocalypse Dreams got me through one of the hardest moments in my life. That song, I can distinctly remember myself in the car crying and screaming the lyrics to that song, but it was coming out like vomit. Just was kind of one of those things where I'm like, maybe if I ever meet him one day. Here we are. There's only a couple songs like that. And it was like that helped me cope. That was one of the helps. That was one of a genuine spiritual moment for me. And I told him, and I was like, "The minute you said 'Everything is changing,' it just made me feel okay." And I then I was like, "Kevin, I don't think you understand what I'm saying." So what you're hearing with this is everything from that. That's what this feels like for me. Yeah, he's a G. Yeah. Kevin's sick, man.

Thundercat Tells Apple Music About The Process of Collaborating with Tame Impala...

I had to make sure I wasn't coming in too hot, because I was like so excited! I'm way too... the ADD's in full swing. I didn't know if I should just immediately get naked and sacrifice myself. I was like, "Kevin," I was like, "Hey, you like me?" I was like, "Hey, can I play some music?” I’d already know he's chill as hell. So I'm pretty sure that I was like, "You got to let me know if I'm messing up right now. You got to let me know if I'm talking too much." He's like, "Nah, it's fine." And I'm like, "Are you sure?" Because I was like, "I got a lot of stuff to talk to you about." But I think we genuinely warmed up to each other, and it's a couple of moments. I think the minute he played this idea that he had started working on, I had pulled the bass out. I was like, "Man, please let me, I can..." I was immediately engaged, and it was kind of like this thing where it was like... He was like, "Oh, okay." And it was funny. His demeanor is so funny sometimes. He was just like, “Oh." It became a game of ping pong for us. It was like, "Oh, oh." And we're talking about life. We're sharing stuff, but we're talking about it. There was moments that we captured within this song.

Thundercat Tells Apple Music About Touring with Red Hot Chili Peppers…

Chili Peppers, man. I mean, I think if you're going to step into an environment that is stadiums only and you're going to get to tour with a band of that caliber, Chili Peppers, I reckon that's probably the most dialed in experience because those guys have lived at all. Seeing Flea come out on stage. Yeah. And I seen all of them, but seeing Flea come out and just whoop ass every night was like, I have no excuses. I have none. This is full account. This was like, do better. It was like, way better. Man, it was inspirational beyond reason.    

Apple Music’s Zane Lowe sits down with Metallica at the Johan Cruijff Arena in Amsterdam  for a wide-ranging conversation ahead of the launch of the group's M72 World Tour. The band tells Apple Music why they’re “the four biggest Metallica fans in the world” and discuss still chasing acceptance 40 years later, longevity and gratitude, the art of crafting setlists, the infamous Snake Pit and their constantly evolving stage production, the ritual of opening their concerts with “The Ecstasy of Gold”, the never-ending journey to find the ultimate riff, buying a vinyl pressing plant, latest album ’72 Seasons’ and more.

James Hetfield Tells Apple Music The Group’s Members Are “The Four Biggest Fans of Metallica in The World”…

Zane: You're about to embark on another adventure. And I think about expectation. I think about that word expectation, right? I know what we expect, the ticket holders, we want the show of our lives. We want it to be the best show of the tour every single night, right? I wonder how you've kind of been able to manage that through a lifetime of expectation, taking that really seriously every night.

James Hetfield: We want the same. We want the same too. We're fans too. We're the four biggest fans of Metallica in the world sitting right here. We want it to be the best for us selfishly, but also for the people who support us and the family, as we call them, come here and shake off the Covid or whatever they got going on in their lives to come here. As you look out here, you see this is designed around the audience to get audience in the middle, on the sides and everywhere. They're a huge part of our show.

Metallica Tell Apple Music About Still Chasing Acceptance 40 Years Later…

Lars Ulrich: …people kind of roll their eyes when I say this, but still chasing acceptance or still chasing fitting in, or still chasing like, "Hey, we're still hovering on the outside. We're these misfits and this disenfranchised musicians that don't really belong in the cool kid’s club. And people go, "You're so successful." Yeah, but 40 years later, I still feel like I'm on the outside.

Kirk Hammett: We're still waiting for the invite to the cool guy’s club. Well, that's what it feels like. It's a feeling.

James Hetfield: We chase that but we don't want to be in it. No, we don't.

Kirk Hammett: As far as I'm concerned, this is the cool guy club for me.

James Hetfield on On Longevity and Gratitude…

James Hetfield: I don't think through COVID, through deaths, through accidents, through broken bones, there's never been a doubt in my mind that we wouldn't continue, you know? It might suck right now but we're going to push through this in some form or another, your Napsters, all of these things.

Zane Lowe: Not even during those really tough personal times for you the first time around 20 years ago when you were really going through that first wave? We spoke about that before, but that wasn't a moment when you were like, is this my life?

James Hetfield: Well there was a moment where it definitely had to be taken away to realize how much I care. And how much I care about it, and how much we all care about that thing too. And that it's needed at times, you know? When you're pampered, when everything's fine, when something, the rug gets yanked out from under you. Gratitude, realizing what you do have and how much you do love it and you're going to miss it. We don't know much else, you know? We love what we do and this is what we get to do, and be of service to ourselves in the world with it.

Lars Ulrich Tells Apple Music About His Longtime Role As The Author of Metallica’s Setlists…

Lars Ulrich: I mean, I don't relish, but I accept it and James likes to point out, I obsess over it in the best of ways, of course… And I take it seriously, first of all, the fact that these guys trust me enough to carry that is a huge thing. So in terms of not letting the team down, of course, but I've been doing it for a long time, basically the whole time. And I have tools now available and so it becomes a combination of new album, it becomes a combination, obviously, of what's called the toe tapping favorites of…We did a whole run last summer where we played Enter Sandman had always obviously lived toward the end of the set…We played it third all last summer and the look on people's faces would come out. We say hello with Whiplash, we go into Creeping Death…People are like, "Holy f**k, is it time to go home already?"

Lars Ulrich on the Origin and Legacy of Metallica’s “Snake Pit” and Its Integral Role in The Group's Live Show…

Lars Ulrich: I mean, the snake pit has been part of what we've been doing for basically 30 years going back to the Black Album days and… So the Snake Pit started off, one of our managers back in New York in the late 80s, early 90s, the idea that when you would go to a restaurant, that the best seat in the restaurant was actually not in the house, but the best seat was in the kitchen. So in crazy, cool restaurants, if you could somehow get into the kitchen and eat in the kitchen, you were in there where all the action was. So the idea that came out of that for that snake pit on the Black Album tour was basically to be in the middle of the stage. So we had a stage that was shaped like a diamond, Kirk was referring to it earlier. And there was 30, 40 spots in the middle of that stage. Radio contest winners. Friends, family, a few crazy metalheads from around the audience would end up in that snake pit and they would be on stage with us. And then it morphed and basically for I guess 30 years now, the snake pit has been an integral part of at least a Metallica indoor show. And then in the stadiums when we've been playing outside, it's been sort of this extension of the stage. You've seen it but they've never been like crazy big. There's been room for a couple of hundred here, a couple hundred there, whatever. We were told between 900 to 1200, depending on the density, obviously. And as you know, when you get into these things in different countries, the fire marshal has different and all this. But I mean, it's going to be incredible. We've been in here for a week now, and we've been playing to the silence that you pointed out. And this is a big place and it's a European football stadium, obviously it's further to the sides. But when this is populated, not just with all these beautiful souls here on all the sides and on the floor…

Lars Ulrich Tells Apple Music About Constantly Evolving Their Stage Configuration...

Lars Ulrich: Black Album was the first time when we started f***ing with the concept and how can we do it differently. And then on that tour, there was a drum kit on either side. Subsequently, I think on the Load Tour, we had two stages. One at either end of the arena with a drum kit on each of them. And then I think on what St. Anger, we had a stage that kind of spun around, Death Magnetic, something else. I mean, we always loved toying with and f***ing with the configuration. But when we've played indoors, we've always loved try to be in the middle of the arena. But then the opposite of that is when we played festivals or played stadiums or even smaller places or whatever, we'd be one end. So the whole thing is always about screwing with the configuration and always trying to play in a different setup. But obviously we've never done four drum kits and we've been here a few days trying to get the practicals of that figured it out. And Jimmy, my long suffering tech has put in a hell of a hell of a week…

Metallica on Opening Their Concerts with “Ecstasy of Gold”…

James Hetfield: It's connected to us. So I could only imagine what the fan feels when they hear that.

Kirk Hammett: You know, as our manager said, it's like a calling. When you hear that, it's revving up the engines, you know? Metallica is imminent…it's a real mixture of emotions, but it's always a huge shot of adrenaline, at least for myself. And I do have expectations for myself that I need to fulfill, you know? And so for me, just being in the moment and being totally present and just concentrating on doing the best I can is all I can do. And it's all I ever really think about in those few moments when we're just about to walk out.

Rob Trujillo: It also lets you know that you need to be there. Like if we're in the bathroom or something, you know? Doing the pre-gig poo or whatever, it's just like, "Oh damn." You know? You start running.

Lars Ulrich Tells Apple Music About The Magic of Connecting With Their Audience On Stage...

Lars Ulrich: I think a lot of it is really about two things, it's about leaving something behind, which is the day, the week, the month, whatever you've been carrying around and freeing yourself of that as you walk to the stage. And then the other thing is connecting, connecting with people, connecting with the other guys in the band. At its best, when it really works, it's a connection to each other and to the audience, breaking down those security barricades and doing away with those and becoming one. And the great thing about having the opportunity to do these type of configurations is that you maximize the potential for that connection because there's literally more areas where more people can connect with band members and vice versa. And so at its best, that's when it really works. I love to try to intellectualize it and try to find the answers way too close to it still to need to have more time to have it in the rear view mirror. And whether it came out of the darkness and the despair and the uncertainty of COVID, it all plays a little bit of a part in it. But we've heard ourselves say over the years, "As long as the body parts, the knees, the elbows, the shoulders, the throats, everything, as long as they're capable, we still have that energy and that fire when we're playing together.”

Robert Trujillo Tells Apple Music There’s No Shortage of Metallica Riffs…

Rob Trujillo: There's no shortage of riffs, bass lines, grooves. A lot of bands, when they've been around as long as Metallica has, they can't come up with riffs. They're just not inspired. That doesn't happen here. In fact, we've got an abundance. I can't tell you how many riffs I have that were never heard. And that's a good thing. It's a great problem to have. There's a lot going on here creatively and that's why I still think about the next round. And 72 Seasons' a badass record.

James Hetfield Tells Apple Music About The Lyrics on ’72 Seasons’…

James Hetfield: ...life is a work in progress for me and for all of us. We all go through stuff. We all uncover things from our 72 Seasons and we're still working through whatever. Trauma, old, new, big tea, little tea, whatever it may be. There's still stuff and we're all trying to get better at navigating life, and I think a lot of the lyrics on this record have a little bit more of an inkling of hope and them sprinkled in there.

James Hetfield Tells Apple Music About Writing Album Closer “Inamorata” on Zoom…

James Hetfield: Written on Zoom, by the way. Lars and I sitting there fiddling around trying to connect over Zoom, right? The Pandora's box was opened at that point. We're bored, let's do some stuff and that was one of the riffs that came out of that session. I wanted something haunting. I mean, I don't know. I don't think about it, man. Thank you Tony Iommi or whoever I just channeled. Or Cliff or whoever it is, thank you. Or thank you guitar for spitting that one out, you know? It just happens, I can't explain it and I don't want to know, you know? I'm a messenger…

Kirk Hammett Tells Apple Music Why He Loves Heavy Metal So Much…

Kirk Hammett: …thank God for this music called heavy metal. That we all coexisted and live our lives in and draw inspiration from, you know? It really encapsulates, at least for me, so much of my inner experience ever since I was a kid to just this moment, you know? It's why I love this music so much. It's so emotional and it reflects the entire humane experience like in Inamorata, sadness, heaviness. But there's uplifting parts of that song too that bring you out, and there's contemplative parts of that song too, you know? Thank God for heavy metal, because there's other types of music where it's just straight. You can't go those places.

Metallica on Buying a Vinyl Pressing Plant…

Lars Ulrich: Well initially it stems out of wanting to, when we first heard that, obviously, first of all, five of us have been sitting here 10 or 20 years ago, "Going vinyl is the biggest thing again in the world." I mean, nobody would believe that part of the conversation. But now there's such a backlog of orders. And so when we had to make a decision, it's coming up on a year ago when and how we wanted to release this record. All our deadlines were actually around the vinyl. And some people don't do the vinyl because they just can finish the record and get it up to the DSPs in two, four weeks and a whole different thing. But we want that vinyl to be part of it. And so many of the fans are obviously asking for it. And so we've had a relationship with the great people down at Furnace for about a decade. And it just coincided with the fact that they were looking for somebody to come in and be partners in their organization and their business and we were like, "Okay, you know what?" So this works because we can control our own deadlines and our own setups. We can also help others and we can get more of friends, peers, other independent artists in under this umbrella. We can put additional funds to it and increase the shifts and all this type of stuff. So there's so many things that can happen because of this. And listen, anytime that we have an opportunity to invest in something that is Metallica, it's in the fabric of what Metallica is, we look for it obviously. I mean, we're not running around and investing in camera equipment or if it fits within the world of something, when we've done other things. But it's about something where Metallica has that it produces, I guess an advantage for being in this band and can also help the rock community and the other independent artists that are out there.

Kirk Hammett Tells Apple Music How Performing Sober Makes a World of Difference…

Kirk Hammett: I got into a cycle where it's just like play a show, go out, stay out all night, then wake up the next day hungover, go out stage, sweat the hangover out on stage and go do it again. But you know, there was no progression, you know? When I was doing that, I was kind of staying at this one level. It took me a long time to notice that I wasn't progressing, I wasn't going anywhere. And over time you notice, you take it into account and you do what you need to do to get back on track and it makes all the difference in the world. Yeah, I mean, I think that having a clear head about everything and especially on stage, makes a mountain of difference just in terms of performance, execution, everything, my own enjoyment. And being present. Absolutely being present.

Today, music icon Neil Young has released nine of his most eclectic and distinctive albums in Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos®, exclusively on Apple Music. Through newly available titles like Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, After the Gold Rush, On The Beach, Freedom, Harvest Moon and more, the legendary singer and songwriter brings his distinctive tenor, soulful lyrics, and musical mix of rock, folk, blues, and country to the immersive audio space for fans to experience his catalog collection in a rich, new way.

“Alongside writing and recording one of the greatest songbooks in history, Neil Young has long been a passionate and staunch advocate for creating the best listening experience for music," said Zane Lowe, Apple Music's Global Creative Director and Host. "Hearing his music in immersive Spatial Audio feels right.”

Having sold over 50 million albums in his career, Young is no stranger to the modernization of music and controlling how his music is experienced in the streaming world. Dolby Atmos is an immersive audio experience transforming how music is created and enjoyed. Music in Dolby Atmos goes beyond the ordinary listening experience by immersing listeners in the song, revealing details with unparalleled clarity and depth. It gives artists more space and the freedom to fully realize their vision and unlock new levels of emotion in their music for their listeners to enjoy. Young's music in Spatial Audio is a must for fans to experience true multidimensional sound and clarity and is available to Apple Music subscribers using the latest version of Apple Music on iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple TV 4K.

Listen to the Neil Young Spatial Catalog HERE

Newly Available in Spatial Audio on Apple Music:

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969)

After The Gold Rush (1970)

On The Beach (1974)

Zuma (1975)

Comes A Time (1978)

Rust Never Sleeps (1979)

Freedom (1989)

Harvest Moon (1992)

Mirror Ball with Pearl Jam (1995)

Previously Released in Spatial Audio and available on Apple Music:

Harvest (1972)

Barn with Crazy Horse (2021)

Noise and Flowers (2022)

Toast with Crazy Horse (2022)

World Record with Crazy Horse (2022)

Mick Jagger joins Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 to discuss the new Rolling Stones song “Sweet Sounds of Heaven” featuring Lady Gaga and Stevie Wonder. He tells Apple Music about the origin of the collaboration, working with Lady Gaga, how the band’s forthcoming album ‘Hackney Diamonds’ came together and was kicked into gear by acclaimed producer Andrew Watt, and what makes the album different from past Stones releases. Plus, Mick reveals how Paul McCartney ended up on the new album.

Mick Jagger on Collaborating with Lady Gaga on “Sweet Sounds of Heaven”…

…she's a really great singer and I'd never heard her sing quite that style before. Not exactly. We did it live in the room and that was a great experience, her just coming in the room and her just opening up and seeing her bits and feeling her way and then getting more confident. And then we came back and then did some extra parts that we hadn't done on the day and then we did some tidying up and we were just in the overdub room, really face-to-face, getting them really tight, the parts really tight, and then being slightly competitive and screaming.

Mick Jagger on New Rolling Stones Song “Sweet Sounds of Heaven”…

It's all played live. And of course we did overdubs, but it's all played in the room. Yeah, there's that moment, especially in that session where we had Stevie, and you're feeling your way out a little bit and then you do that soul ending, which is you do sometimes on stage where you stop and you start. It's very kind of tried and tested redoubling thing. But, yeah, I mean, it really feels like, yeah, it is played live… it was a good moment… we played it with Keith and Ronnie when we were in The Bahamas when we more or less finished everything. But we hadn't mixed it then, so then we mixed it, I mixed it with the mixer and Andy [Andrew Watt] and we were in three places. And then when we finished mixing it, we had a sort of three-way playback. And, yeah, it's a really good moment when you play something. And it's always a great moment when you play it back like that. And, "Wow, we finished it and it sounds really good, and we're pleased with it." Because if we hadn't been pleased with it, we've had to have change it. You've got to choose the right songs because we recorded a lot more songs than this. And then to choose a set of songs, these aren't necessarily even, you might prefer one than the other, but they will come out. The other ones will come out. But choose a good balance of the songs you've recorded.

Mick Jagger on How Paul McCartney Ended Up on the New Rolling Stones Album ‘Hackney Diamonds’...

Mick Jagger: We kind of often text each other and stuff. The thing was that Andy had said to me, "Look, I'm working on this, Mick. It's had my complete attention, my complete focus, for six months." And then he said to me, "I didn't really tell you completely the truth because I had this week booked with Paul McCartney right in the middle"… right in the middle of the three weeks we got booked for, we only had three weeks booked for cutting tracks. "So right in the middle of the three weeks, I've got Paul McCartney booked." He says, "It's the only thing I couldn't cancel." And I said, "Well, it's all right. We will take a few days off. It's all right. We've got time." "And we've got a lot of great stuff." And he said, "Well, yeah, but why don't we invite Paul for one of the days and get him to play?" And I said, "Well, yeah, that's a great idea." So Andy called Paul and asked him if he wanted to come on one of his days that Andy had promised him.

Zane Lowe:  Amazing. So wait, so Paul paid for his session to be on a Stones record?

Mick Jagger: He gave up one of his recording days, I think would be fair… he didn't get an invoice, but he did give up one of his recording days.

Mick Jagger on the Origin of Forthcoming Rolling Stones Album ‘Hackney Diamonds’…

I don't quite know how it works. But I didn't really know where we were with it. And then we recorded a lot of stuff, but we didn't have a deadline. And I don't think we were that mad about what we recorded, though there were some really good things, but there were some things that we weren't crazy about. And there was no deadline and there was no cohesion and there was no finish line or style or anything. And so I think we got a bit lazy and lackadaisical about the whole thing. So I said to Keith, "Well let's do it another way. Let's have a deadline. Are you up for doing a deadline? Are you up for getting a new producer?" And Keith sort of, he agreed with all this straight away… And I mean, if it didn't happen, it didn't happen. And when I said, "let's go to Jamaica and just hang out and just jam a bit and so on." He was very keen on that because just the idea of doing that, of being very loose and so on, and getting this album back on track. And he was very amenable to all this. …and Jamaica was super relaxed, a very nice place, beautiful views, and there's no pressure, but you still want to play and see how things go. And Steve's there, Matt was there, me and Keith and that was it. Then we brought it onto the next, we did some rehearsals involved Ronnie, and that's where we introduced Andy into the equation. And then Andy just bulldozed the whole thing through and he said, "Oh, this is a good song. This is a good song. I love this song." That made it easy. But, yes, there does seem to be a moment where everyone seems to be in agreement that they want to move forward, they want to make an album, they are excited, and they want to finish it.

Mick Jagger on What’s Different About the Forthcoming Rolling Stones Album ‘Hackney Diamonds’…

…we don't have Charlie, so that's a huge difference in doing these sessions that we talked about. Though I play with Steve a lot. I play with Steve on the road. And I also play with Steve in the studio. I mean, I've done demos with Steve. I mean, I know he's very enthusiastic, so that's always good. I mean, I think I have a really good understanding with him. I'm interested in grooves is my thing. I'm not just only interested in melody, lyrics, but I'm interested in grooves. What groove should this song be in? What do I think for this band that fits this groove for this song? And because the Rolling Stones have a certain kind of bass, you can't do any groove. You want it to be the perfect groove for this band. So Steve and I would work on the grooves. And as I would work, used to work with Charlie on the grooves, so  it's like experimenting. I would just hang a bit late at night when everyone had gone home, just pick up a guitar and say, "Okay, so tomorrow we're going to do this one. You remember this one?" Because there was so many songs that was hard for everyone to remember. "So we're going to do this one tomorrow. And I'm a bit worried about this. Should it be like this? Should the bass run be like this? Should the tempo be like this?" So Steve and I would work on that. So that's a big difference. And then having Andy Watt as a producer who's very enthusiastic and very cracking the whip and making sure everyone's really working hard.

Mick Jagger on Working with Producer Andrew Watt…

…the thing is, Andy knows when, I think one of the great things is you don't need to do the song many times. He knows when it's done. So you do the song four times and it's done. He said, "That's it." And then everyone will look at him and go, "What? It's done?" "Yes. And now to the next one"… not all sitting around and thinking about it. There was none of that. "We move to the next one now." And we'd all say, "Ah, that's great." And we would all applaud each other because it got to be a joke that we'd finished another track and move on to the next one. So I think that's really good to know when you've done it

Bono and The Edge of U2 join Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 for a conversation about their new single “Atomic City” in Las Vegas as they prepare to christen Sphere this weekend. They discuss the origin and subject matter of the song and its relation to Vegas, recording the track at Sound City with Larry Mullen Jr., the heartbreak of playing their upcoming shows without him, and how the band’s fans inspired their upcoming Sphere shows.

Bono on U2’s New Single “Atomic City”…

It's just an invitation to our audience. It's like a come-all-ye. You know what come-all-ye is? It's an Irish word for... A come-all-ye is like a song that invites everybody in. Las Vegas was known as Atomic City because they had atomic bomb tourism here in the fifties. "Come and watch the mushroom cloud." But now all the fear and dread of splitting the atom and using it as a weapon of mass destruction, there may be clues for how we get out of the climate crisis through fusion rather than fission. Though even fission, which is regular nuclear energy, is getting safer and smarter. And we've campaigned against nuclear energy and we've kind of turned around a little bit on that one. And so the lyric, "atomic sun for everyone," that's that reference. So we're using it as in a comic sense, Atomic City, but actually the idea that by not splitting the atom, by fusing the atom, you have unlimited energy, it's just a beautiful idea to plop in the middle of a seventies swing stomp…

U2 on Having Larry Mullen Jr. Play Drums on “Atomic City” and The Heartbreak of Playing Their Upcoming Sphere Shows Without Him…

Bono: It's really tricky for him. And he came in the night before we recorded it in Sound City. So many stories in that studio. And Edge wanted us to go there. And Larry went the night before to just make sure. He didn't know if he could play for an hour or... he didn't know if he could play for 15 minutes. And he just played up the storm.

The Edge:  John was saying (his tech) that he loved the sound of the room so much, he ended up playing for like three hours.

Bono: It was the right place for us. And it took its toll on Larry. He's miming. We're doing the video and he's like, "Ow." But he's going to get back to fitness.It's a heartbreak for Larry to be here and to see this and know that Bram is standing in for him. And by the way, Bram is a superstar. He was a fan of Larry's and a student of Larry's. And now he'll be here playing instead of Larry, and that's got to hurt as much as some of the injuries. But he gave it all on this song anyway. Drummers are born, not made. And they speak their own language. They're a breed apart. And we're nothing... That's where the rock and roll comes from in our band.

U2 on How The Band’s Fans Inspired Their Upcoming Live Dates At Sphere in Las Vegas...

The Edge: Walking in and actually seeing our stage there and the finished building was quite a moment. That's when it really got real.

Bono: In the end, this is about trying to make a connection with our audience. That's what this is about. Trying to make the worst seat in the house the best seat in the house. Whether it was jumping into the crowd, whether it was climbing speaker stacks, whether it was early forays into video, this was all just an attempt to get closer to our audience.

Following U2’s can’t miss inaugural shows at Sphere in Las Vegas this past weekend, the band joins Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 as the they gear up for the second weekend of shows. In the conversation, Bono, The Edge, and the group’s creative director Willie Williams break down the origin of the sights, sounds, and spectacles that have taken the Internet by storm. The group also reveal they have 100 songs “in the bag” and tease “some amazing new songs” as they hint at an album coming in the future — adding that new music is the band’s reason to exist.

Bono Calls U2’s Sphere Shows “A Science Project in Service to Art”...

Bono: This can bring you to any time and place and make you feel like you're there. It's a science project in service to art.

Bono on How The Band’s Fans Inspired The Sphere Experiment...

In the end, this is about trying to make a connection with our audience. That's what this is about. Trying to make the worst seat in the house the best seat in the house. Whether it was jumping into the crowd, whether it was climbing speaker stacks, whether it was early forays into video, this was all just an attempt to get closer to our audience.

The Edge on The Benefits and Challenges of The Intimacy of Sphere...

Walking in and actually seeing our stage there… And seeing our instruments and lights and the finished building was quite a moment, to be honest. Because that's when it really got real. Where you're actually...imagining, "There's going to be a person in each one of these seats." And the proximity is incredibly intimate. That's what's so amazing. It's 18,000 people, but everyone is going to get this perfect view of the stage. Unfortunately, with this incredible visual, we're going to have our work cut out to actually…

Bono Speaks To The Opening Moments of U2’s Sphere Shows…

What we wanted to do was create... It should feel like a cave. We want to strip it of all electricity. We want to strip it of all its technology. And we want to start with the very first expression that people had, which was cave painting. You might think, "It's a very science fiction cave you got here." But that's what we're going to do. We're going to bring it right back to that first moment. And that's how we start the show.I sing, as I did on Zoo TV originally. I sing an Irish melody called “Sean-nós”. “Sean-nós” is normally unaccompanied singing. It's the North African influenced Irish. Our music in Ireland has real strong connections with the Southern hemisphere. And I won't have my glasses on. I find my goggles, my fly shades, I put them on. They don't just change the way people see me. They change the way I see the world. The way the band then performs behind that moment is straight out of the future, with a touch of 1990 in Berlin, in Zoo Station.

Bono on U2 Creative Director Willie Williams...

Willie's done a ridiculous job of managing the ridiculousness not just of the building, but what we're trying to do with the building. …this man is really committed. He doesn't do things by halves. And it really is a privilege to get to open it and help, I suppose, in a way with the build.

Bono on the Futuristic Sphere Projections…

…these are ones and zeros. This is not photography, this is not cinema photography, this is from a game engine. But a game engine taken to the next level, a level it's never been at before.

U2 on Having Larry Mullen Jr. Play Drums on “Atomic City” and The Heartbreak of Playing Their Upcoming Sphere Shows Without Him…

Bono: It's really tricky for him. And he came in the night before we recorded it in Sound City. So many stories in that studio. And Edge wanted us to go there. And Larry went the night before to just make sure. He didn't know if he could play for an hour or... he didn't know if he could play for 15 minutes. And he just played up the storm.

The Edge:  John was saying (his tech) that he loved the sound of the room so much, he ended up playing for like three hours.

Bono: It was the right place for us. And it took its toll on Larry. We're doing the video and he's like, "Ow." But he's going to get back to fitness. It's a heartbreak for Larry to be here and to see this and know that Bram is standing in for him. And by the way, Bram is a superstar. He was a fan of Larry's and a student of Larry's. And now he'll be here playing instead of Larry, and that's got to hurt as much as some of the injuries. But he gave it all on this song anyway. Drummers are born, not made. And they speak their own language. They're a breed apart. And we're nothing... That's where the rock and roll comes from in our band.

U2 On Where U2 Goes From Here…

The Edge: Well, I think new music, new tunes. There's a lot that we have ready and some that need a little dusting off, but will be ready soon. I tell you, we've got some amazing new songs. Really exciting.

Bono: Edge has about 100 in the bag. I have about 20… but Adam's got something to contribute. Larry will be sitting there going through the bag going, "Yeah, no, that's shite. That's shite. That's shite. Is there anything here that isn't shite?" We'll find 10. And that's all you need.

The Edge: That's all you need.

Bono: 10. And that's your reason to exist. If not, U2 should just f**k off. Go live on an island, or go away and be a nuisance somewhere in the world. Useful somewhere in the world. Either will do. But if we want to continue as a band, it's only about one thing. It's about the text, it's about the tunes, it's about the performance. It's about whether you believe us or not. And we have an extraordinary musical genius in our band. We will try, I will try, to put into words the music he's making. I make it with him. But it's Las Vegas or bust, baby.

Bono and The Edge on U2’s Fight For Their Future…

Bono: The fight is for our future. It's love versus luck. But that's what our band is built around. It's not just friendship. We overuse the word "love" like the Beatles did. And you're either... It's like, "Whoa, back off." Because it's a lazy word to use unless it has meaning. And if it doesn't have meaning within the band, then it's not going to have meaning outside of the band. So this is the time when if people have lost their love, they should f**k off. Including me. You know what I mean? That's what it is, right? And if you're not falling in love with music... Because music pays our bills. And if you don't love music, it's your time to f**k off.

The Edge: The thing we've not forgotten is what a privilege it is to be standing on this stage, playing our songs in front of this audience. We take that hugely importantly. We don't want to mess up. You don't want to waste that opportunity.

Legendary director Martin Scorsese joins Zane Lowe in studio on Apple Music 1 to discuss his acclaimed new film 'Killers of the Flower Moon'. Scorsese tells Apple Music about the impact that movies had on him growing up, his love of music and how he’s approached the use of music in his films, and his storied career. He also shares details on the making of ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ and what moved him to share the story on the big screen.

Martin Scorsese on Whether ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Is The Most Important Film He’s Made…

Well, the point is, does art have to be important for the moment? How should I put it? Art should be important all the time. You follow? And then it'll fall out of importance, and then it might come back into importance. You could talk about literature. You could talk about the fact that Herman Melville, he stopped writing stuff. I'm not comparing myself, I'm just saying that you could talk about that Van Gogh only sold one painting. You can go on and on like this. So we have to think in terms of importance. I'm very, very, very satisfied in a way that this picture has been through the nature of events and through time and through the pandemic, and this is how the film finally found its way to the public at this point in time. We didn't plan this, but it seems fortuitous, and I'm very happy because I do think as we were, to address your idea of importance again, in the story, as we were... I was very, very cognizant, and it's one of the reasons I pulled back at first from doing it. I was very cognizant because I understood that there's much more to the story of just one horrific series of events, let's say with the Osage Nation, that if I can make that to reflect history, to reflect who we are as human beings… so in a way, can this reflect the macrocosm of who we are as human beings in greed? I think that's where I forced myself to go with the story. Leo went with me on that, Leo just went.

Martin Scorsese on Falling in Love with Music at an Early Age…

I mean, it started with, I was born in '42, so 1945, I contracted asthma. Wasn't allowed to go do sports, wasn't allowed to run around, wasn't allowed to... You had to be careful, too, kids get into laughing fits and they get spasms, and you couldn't do that either because you start to can't breathe. And so my parents, working class people, and they didn't have... They read, but they didn't have books in the house. And so it was radio and photograph records and the radio, I would listen to, shows like "Gangbusters," that we refer to by the end of our movie. Anyway, but that's 1933, '34. Okay. The records were something. The records were, primarily the ones that came to mind, I was four, five, six years old listening to these things, playing them. What was it? The swing music of Benny Goodman? The Benny Goodman Quartet, "Avalon," most of "King Porter Stomp," all that stuff. But primarily it was Django Reinhardt, in the Hot Club of France, there were five 78s, and both sides, I played them over and over again. And I didn't know, as a child, I didn't know that it was a group of instruments that was creating the sound. I thought it was one sound.

Martin Scorsese on His Early Film Influences…

There's that balance that I've made over the years between my embracing and inspiration for the Hollywood-produced, grandly produced pictures, sometimes spectacles, other times intense psychodramas like Sunset Boulevard or The Bad and the Beautiful, things like that. These were key films I saw at the age of 10, 11, 12, 13. And so, that and these films of the Italian neo-realism, which I saw at five or six years old on television, small 16-inch black and white TV.

Martin Scorsese on The Influence of Iconic Concert Film 'The Last Waltz, Working with Robbie Robertson, and Blurring The Line Between Docs and Features...

…it was an event, not just a music event. It was a cultural event. But here, when you say you're doing a film on the band, or you have Muddy Waters standing there, you have Joni playing Coyote. Stay on her. It's in between the lines. Watch what they do with their eyes and their mouths and how they move their heads, how they get into a line. Don't cut away to the guitarist. Don't cut away to the keyboard right away, the way you see. Just hold as much as you can. As much as you can. And so with 16 millimeter, we thought of that, but something happened. I got to know Robbie a bit… The two of us together were crazy, that maybe separately we were crazy in a different way…I can't really speak for him that much, but together, we really weren't crazy, meaning to say. So I had come up with the idea, "Let's do it in 35 millimeter," and that hadn't been done. That hadn't been done before, that kind of concert. Now, there was the Sanders Brothers, I believe they did the Elvis film. This is Elvis, I think, in 35 in Vegas, but it was quite controlled. This… would be different. However, the one advantage we had was that we knew who was going to be on stage where and where they're going to be standing and if they're going to be moving around. It's not a group where they were dancing around on stage. The band didn't do that. There wasn't always one lead singer. One song, you have four voices, that's interesting, the same character, by the way. We somehow…Jonathan, they got the money together and UA backed us, Eric Plescow, Mike Medavoy. They had done New York, New York, finishing Apocalypse Now, the beginnings of Heaven's Gate and Raging Bull. They already gave a green light to Raging Bull. So this was a little later, Raging Bull was later, but that was the studio that was allowing these sorts of things.

Martin Scorsese on Robbie Robertson Getting Mad at Him For Liking Punk Rock…

He just got mad at me when I liked the punk movement. We were living together in my house, a small house up in Mulholland Drive, and he would just come in sometimes, "Just lower it, lower it. It's too loud." I said, "No, but it's The Clash." He goes, "I don't care." He said, "I don't care. They have no musicianship, none. They can't play the guitar. They can't play the drums." I said, "Doesn't matter." He did concede with Elvis Costello, though. He conceded. When I showed the album, we went into the old Tower Records, myself and Jay Cox, who was a movie critic, but he was beginning to write rock criticism with Time Magazine. We looked and we saw all this English punk music, and we looked around and he said, "Grab that one, The Jam. Grab that one, The Clash. That's got to be something," and then we saw this Elvis Costello. He said, "Take this one because with that name, he better be good."

Martin Scorsese on The Iconic Use of “Layla” in 'Goodfellas’ and Working with Great Composers Across His Career...

Zane Lowe: It would be really silly of me not to talk about Layla and not to talk about the chemistry that that moment has in Goodfellas at the end and the way that it works so beautifully throughout. And the question I've always wanted to ask you, because I know how it made me and millions of other people feel, what does it feel like when you see it for the first time? Not in your head, but when the chemistry of that music…

Martin Scorsese: Oh, that's like nothing you've ever, that's in a sense, one of the, I guess, crazy things that makes you want to, I don't know, make a painting, create a piece of music, create literature. It's something that happens. I must say sometimes I use the word as a joke, but it kind of transcends what you're doing. It really does. You're off into another universe. And, I played that music back on the set for those shots. It was played out in the streets and so the crew felt it too. Layla was just something I love. I also didn't know the history of Layla. I didn't know that. I just took the last part of it… the drummer did and the whole thing, and Eric Clapton, all those guys were really nice, said, "Okay, we don't usually give an okay for this song," but they did for that. I did have the opportunity to work with some great composers, though, of course, Elmer Bernstein, of course… Bernard Herrmann, Howard Shore, and Philip Glass. But, it has been 27 films. Primarily, I make up my own tracks.

Martin Scorsese on the Evolution of Film Premieres…

In New York, we used to go at that time to the Russian Tea Room and have a little caviar and champagne at that time. That's now 40 years ago. After a while, there weren't openings like this though before. Unless I was 13 years old and my cousin took me up to see a big Hollywood premiere at the Roxy Theatre in 1956, I think it was. It was '55, and it was Giant, which is a film which obviously influenced this film a great deal. And somehow, he got ahold of a ticket and convinced one of the ushers that he lost his other ticket and could he let us in? And we got in to see Giant. Those were premier days of the old Hollywood premieres. People screaming as Rock Hudson got out of the car, people screaming. James Dean had just died, but they were screaming for him too. And we got in there, and then suddenly there was this life-transforming experience up on the giant screen at the Roxy Theatre. The epic American film in a way. Many different, because he made three. It's a trilogy, A Place in the Sun, Shane, and Giant. George Stevens. In any event, that's a premier. And we've had some premieres like that over the years, but now it's become something where I think the quieter rumination, so to speak, along with family and a few of the friends who made the film. That's where we go with that.

The iconic Pearl Jam sits down with Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 at their warehouse headquarters in Seattle for an in-depth conversation ahead of the release of Dark Matter. They talk about why Andrew Watt was the perfect producer for them, collaborating with Stevie Wonder on the song “Waiting For Stevie,” and how a studio flood led to them finishing the record at Rick Rubin’s legendary Shangri-La Studio. Zane gets an exclusive look inside the warehouse with unprecedented access. The band deep dives with him into how they feel about their critics, reflect back on their Ticketmaster feud, and their purpose of striving to be a positive force in the world.

Pearl Jam Talk To Apple Music About Their Clubhouse…

Eddie Vedder: Well, we used to have a place more centrally located in the city, and when we were getting moved out of there, we were a bit at a loss. It was an older building and we had an attachment to it, and then we found this nondescript rectangle of a building. We were fortunate that it was more what we bring to it as opposed to the actual building or structure, and then we got it sounding good. A lot of people worked hard. I think all of us to have a clubhouse, a headquarters, it's all under one roof from our political activism to some of the what... We sell things. Merchandise and t-shirts and posters. Everybody who works in these different departments, it's a family. So this is a comfortable place and it's not often empty. There's usually if you think you're just going to run down and use the studio or record or, someone's usually practicing for a benefit, someone's got kids tutoring kids and doing experimental recording. That was a few weeks ago that looked really interesting, but it's a lively building. It's a healthy vessel and the blood's pumping through it.

Pearl Jam Talk To Apple Music About How Their Feel About Their Critics Throughout Their Career…

Stone Gossard: I think it's always a balance of you take a little from the outside, you know in your heart what feels good. We've had a long run, so we've had a lot of opportunity to be up and down and still have it sort of all come out in the wash, in terms of some records you come out and they're not critically acclaimed, but 10 years later there's a song in there you realize is your favorite song and it means something. You realize something in that song that is still talking to you 10 years later. So it's all a little smudgy in general, but I like a review that's critical, I think you get something out of that. It's nice to read a glowing review, but I do think somebody who sort of parses it a little bit more sometimes is you get something out of that. You can learn something.

Eddie Vedder: I think you filter the good things that are said, but it's even more important to filter the other stuff. I mean, it's good to have your... What's the sound guy in there? You look at it with your good eye closed. But maybe there's some constructive criticism in there and usually it's more about a live show than a record or something, but I think it's okay to be aware. Maybe there's a bit of truth in there or maybe something that you were trying to ignore and you're like, "Oh, okay." Or maybe somebody won't notice, but it's apparent and something for you to work on. So there's something to be said to take in what could be critical. And to be honest, you're probably going to find more meaning in that than what you can get out of the positive stuff. I mean, what would be good to read something positive about this one is that people respect our artistic direction. And if it wasn't for everybody or if the live show wasn't for everybody or something, then that's okay because art is subjective but it is a step for us, whether it's a step forward or any direct... It is a step and it's an artistic step and again, it's subjective, but we believe in it.

Pearl Jam Tells Apple Music Why Andrew Watt Was The Perfect Producer For Them…

Stone Gossard: His style is he has got a guitar on the whole time you're playing with him, he's playing with you, he's playing with the band. We've never done anything like that before. That was a little bit of jumping off the cliff but again, his enthusiasm and his understanding of the band, his love for the band, his ability to play any of our songs at any point and go... Know the history of the band, all the B-sides, everything that we've ever done and then to be cheering us on in a way that you'd laugh at it and think this is silly, but then also it was infectious and you would just end up being sort of caught up in his enthusiasm and his confidence about it. Yeah, and that's why he really is the perfect producer for us because we're so part of his childhood. He understands us so well that there's no color he's bringing to this band that makes people go, "Oh, that sounds like..." Or this is something different. He actually can fit in a way that it sounds right, and that's just how he produces. He plays along. He's got to feel the music in the way that the band does.

Pearl Jam Talks To Apple Music About Finishing The Record At Rick Rubin’s Legendary Studio Shangri-La After Their Studio Flooded…

Eddie Vedder: We were kind of scrambling and there was a couple of places we definitely knew we didn't want to record, and then Rick Rubin was kind enough to help us. Literally, he was a parachute. We were going to hit the ground unceremoniously, but it was a parachute and where we landed was this place called Shangri-La, which a history for all of us, but me growing up with The Last Waltz. And that was a really, there's a vibe there that if you're attenuated to it, it's palpable. And I feel like I was able to tap into it, I think we all did.

Zane Lowe: Were there moments where you felt the spirit of The Band everything else not to be too caught about it, but was in you?

Eddie Vedder: Again, because I really wanted to keep up with everybody and things were moving quick and didn't want it to be homework. And there's an old school bus, again dilapidated, but vibey and I just had a typewriter in there and-

Zane Lowe: That's Bob Dylan's old tour bus.

Pearl Jam Talks To Apple Music About Writing “Won’t Tell”…

Jeff Ament: Well, I will say that the best part for me was that it was a brand-new way of writing and collaborating. It was, I have a version of the song and Andrew had said, "Hey, you got something? And so I played for him and he goes, "That's great. What if we just give Ed the lyrics? Don't play in the song. The band works up a version of it, we tweaked a couple things and then just see how it works out?" To hear the melody and the phrasing that he chose, was literally hair standing up on my neck going like whoa, this is a cool way to do this. And then even further down the road, the words got totally changed and then it turned into his interpretation of a dream that I had. So it was one more further removed from a dream, so it seemed dimensional to me in a way that I'd never been involved with songwriting wise. So again at this point, 30 years down the road with the band to have there was a new thing. It is just like, you live for it.

Pearl Jam Talks To Apple Music About Recording “Wreckage” And How Andrew Watt Pushed Them…

Eddie Vedder: A lot of it I think was written on the mic. I think probably that one was a lot of just... And Andrew would, to be honest, he'd start to piss me off a little bit and then I'd try to do something really good just to say like, "Fuck you. Back off." Seriously. I would be like.. There was one day I said, "Look, I need tonight off, or I need to sleep or I need to do something, but you have... Work with Mike on this. Just I'm trying to buy myself frigging eight hours or 10 hours of not... I just need to clear." Because we're already 15 days in a row of just, go, go, go. He said, "I get it. I totally get it. Little dude, I'm with you. I will stay an extra three weeks, whatever it takes, I will do this, I will do this." I said, "Okay good, because come on it's going good, but something's going to break here."

He said, "So how about this? You go home at 10:00, but before you go, if you get the bridge on the Stone thing and then the outro on the other... Oh, and then if we can just do... And stay with us here, we're going to record that other thing.. So then that was one of those things I was like, "All right, give me 10 minutes." I went in and wrote and sang it and I just wanted to get the fuck out... I just needed eight hours to myself.

So I don't have call him and apologies, let me clarify that…that was part of being pushed and we should be pushed. And maybe when you're starting to feel a little shaky and vulnerable or whatever, that could be the opening to access some of the deeper shit that might be normally closed down. It's not like you have just a zipper. It's like you get into these layers and maybe being on edge might be, I think ended up being helpful. And so I appreciate the fact. I mean, look, the whole band we started this group is kind of where we all picked up instruments because in some ways it was a fuck you to authority or parents who wanted you to have a real job or whatever. I think that's always been in us. So to have Andrew gave us a fire, it wasn't we were fighting with him, but it was good to be pushed. And I don't think some of it would've happened quite the way it did if we hadn't been.

Pearl Jam Talks To Apple Music About Working With Stevie Wonder On The Song “Waiting For Stevie”…

Eddie Vedder: Andrew had worked with Stevie because Stevie was working with Elton [John], and Andrew was working with Elton. So Stevie was in that basement and playing this old piano, which was Andrew's Mrs. Mills. And so they had an open line of communication and then he was going to come down. Now the whole time before he shows up, you don't think it's really going to happen anyways because how could this happen? How could you be? Is this really going to happen? But sure enough, he showed up and was just incredible. We recorded late into the night, and one of the great things, he doesn't really have a circadian rhythm, so it's just his time and it was a powerful, powerful thing. But what happened is, in that time between 8:00 and 11:00 while we were waiting, Andrew was playing something. I said, "Did I show you that?" No. Or something like that. I said, "Well, here's one." I had this thing from no code. It was so similar. So then we overlaid and then, so that was where the riff of the Stevie song came out. When the group joined in, then it just achieved liftoff.

Pearl Jam Talks To Apple Music About Wanting To Be A Positive Force On The World…

Eddie Vedder: You want to be careful not to add to the noise. And we all do things that make tangible, practical, positive effects in our, either communities or within the medical community looking for a cure for a disease. Everybody has issues and functions and being a positive force in this world. Music, you don't want to divide... I think there's a power in having people join together, be communal, have a communal experience, where they're all agreeing on something for two and a half hours and there's power in bringing people together. And then from there, then they can take that feeling of community and acceptance and agreeance and positivity and planting healthy seeds.

Matt Cameron: I think in terms of issues and things, trying to deal with things on a local level and do esteemable acts hopefully throughout the day or try to do things that you have control over maybe a little bit. There's a thing that my friend Whitney Williams has turned me on to, is like you make people without houseless kits of little bag with socks and a $20 bill and things that people need. And so you hand those out in your car if you see somebody, and those are kind of like mutual aid trying to do things one-on-one with people and recognize their humanity. And I think that's a cool thing to be part of, and it's part of the ethos of what happens in our band.

Pearl Jam Talk To Apple Music About Their Reflections On Their Ticketmaster Feud…

Jeff Ament:  Yeah, I think you try to hold onto that idealism that you... I think it's easy over the course of time to sort of be jaded and sort of like, we fought that fight somebody else's turn or we know whatever the deal is. But I keep trying to tap into that person who maybe was naive and went into it feeling like you could make a difference. I think it's easy to feel beaten down. I think particularly now, there is so much noise. How do you simplify the message and not just say, "That person's an asshole. And people are bad and people are doing bad things." And just say, "Love each other." Just something really simple and say, "Let's take care of each other." And that means everybody, just simplify the feeling. But trying to stay in touch with the 25 year old kid who is treading water with a stack of Ticketmaster lawyers around you and...

Zane Lowe: It's one of my favorite things in the movie, watching you two just try to suppress…

Jeff Ament: Terrified. Insane. Yeah.

Pearl Jam Tells Apple Music How They Feel This Album Has Changed Them…

Stone Gossard: I think we just learned a really great lesson in terms of our trusting each other and our collaborative, the power of our collaboration in terms of how we each bring something to the table. And we've made records in a lot of different ways but this experience, when we look back on it, really is everything got touched by everyone. And it just shows that when you're 60, there's still a lot of dreams to be had. There's still a lot of... Art is still very exciting and particularly collaborative art. I mean, I think that that's our superpower is that we're still doing it together. There's not a lot of bands that write together like we do, and not a lot of bands that have singers that want to share in the way that Ed wants to share with us and that he gets energized by it, that he we're at our best when we're doing it. So I say more of that. That's exciting territory because it's a little bit of all of us, and that's something that's original.