Sam Hollander

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Questlove Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to another episode of Questlove Supreme.
I'm not Questlove or Supreme, but it is an honor
to be here Today's especial. Today we are doing one
on ones. I suppose no Team Supreme, just me Unpaid
Bill and we can get into why I called Unpaid
Bill if you like, because it's just me so I
have a lot of time to talk about myself in

(00:32):
other news. Today's guest is I will say, one of
the most interesting, enigmatic, incredible people I have ever met
in my life, and we have only known each other
for like what like a year and a half. Maybe
let's just go with it. Okay, I had this whole
big intro plan, but I think we should just get
into it. Today's guest is songwriter, producer, composer, top liner, father, husband,

(00:55):
and all around incredible human being. Sam Hollander. Yes, Ca, okay,
here we call your name is Sam.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
My name is Sam, So Sam.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
I suppose you've listened to a few Quest Love Supremes
over time, couple. Okay, you know when they asked me
to do a one on one, the first person I
thought it was you because people don't necessarily I mean,
you did write a book about yourself, which was a
nice touch.

Speaker 3 (01:17):
I thoughts up.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Just you know, so people would know who you are,
but you are responsible for so many things that I
don't think the majority of listeners may or may not know.
And so I thought we'd get into them all. And
I think my favorite way to start all quest Love Supremes,
which is the most way, is where were you born?

Speaker 3 (01:33):
Well, let me just start off by saying, it is
an honor to be Questlove Supreme. I know you were
looking for mid season summer replacements, and I feel like
I'm sort of like Stephen Botchko's nineteen ninety cop Rock
right or you know it was. It was highly heralded
and then forgettable. And that's sort of the story of

(01:55):
my life. So I was born in New York City, Bill.
I was born in New York City, and uh through
some of the darker times in the city. It was
a very violent, violent place, and my parents ushered me
out of here to Westchester County, and eventually, through lots
of stops and starts, I ended up in Bedford Hills,

(02:15):
New York, site of the Bedford Hills Correctional Women's Correctional Prison.
You might remember Gene Harris who murdered the Scarsdale diet doctor.
She would have been one of the many.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
I would I would remember that.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
Do they call him tenants?

Speaker 2 (02:31):
Inmates?

Speaker 3 (02:31):
Inmates? I like tenants better. Bedford Hills attended fox Lane
High School. You might know it from Dukes of Hazzard's
John Schneider bo Duke was in fact a fox Laner,
as well as Susan Day from the Partridge family, KIMMYA. Dawson,
Moldy Peaches, MRSA Winaker. The list goes on and on.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Are you here to speak on behalf of Fox Lene schools?

Speaker 3 (02:55):
It's like a recruiting tread. I'm here for That's what
I'm doing.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
Sam. Yes, what is your first musical memory as a child?
Because you have? For those who don't know, Sam wrote
a book, and I highly recommend reading the book for
two reasons.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
It's a salacious tell all.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
It is a salacious tell all from a very silacious life.
Lad No. The best part about your book, in my
personal humble opinion, is not only that it's you have
an incredible story and it's almost impossible to believe any
of it, to be honest, I mean, but there's parts
in it, and this is important. There are parts in
it that any producer, anyone interested in music, any engineer

(03:31):
or mixer, or anybody who even wants to be anywhere
near music and needs a piece of advice, an unsolicited
piece of advice, and not like in a dickhead way,
like in a I've lived this life and I'm going
to tell you about it and how to get there.
There are what you call what is it called in
the book footnotes, Yeah, the footnotes, and there's other things
you put in.

Speaker 3 (03:51):
The bonus cuts. Bonus cut.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
All the bonus cuts are these parts of these random
paragraphs in the book where it's just pieces of advice.
Like some of them are go to events that as
KAP or bm MY sponsor and meet people. And I
think there's a lot of the book is about networking
and talking to people and what I like to call
the other side of our job, which is like the bullshit. Well,

(04:14):
you can be the greatest writer, the greatest musician of
all time. If you're a dick and no one wants
to hang out with you, then no one's going to
hire you to do anything.

Speaker 3 (04:20):
I learned something pretty early on, right, So I mean,
I'll get back to earliest musical memory. But I did
learn something early on when I started to have any
morsel of success. Jonathan Daniel, who owns Crush Management, is
one of my best friends and really my mentor in
many ways. One day, I was melting down about something
and I can get kind of fiery, and he took

(04:42):
me for a walk and he put it in such
succinct terms. He said, you know, everybody likes happy Sam,
nobody likes angry Sam. And I walked away from that
and it was like a Yoda moment, you know, and
it dawned on me. Likability is something and I never
really took stock in it. You know, I'm genuinely curious

(05:04):
about people. I like people. I'm pretty social, and I
root for people, and I think I always have to
some extent. And you know, in the music business, that's
something they don't tell you. It's important, is be curious
about other people and cheer for their victories even when
you're losing, because there will be a moment where the

(05:28):
tables turn and you will have your moment and when
you finally sort of actualize whatever it is that you're chasing.
It's just such an incredible feeling to know that people
are actually rooting for you and not shooting darts at you.
So that was my little sidebar. But let's get back
to let me get back to the genesis of it.
The first song I ever heard was Magic by Pilot,

(05:50):
which I believe is the ozembic song now, but before
before it was pressuring, you know, an era of weight loss.
It was the first first song I ever heard. I
think my brother had the forty five, and you know,
I was completely hooked, and I took guitar lessons. I
started guitar lessons at seven with a woman who was

(06:12):
in the fast folk movement in Grawich Village and she
was really rad. I took a guitar for a few
years and I quit, and I do it again, and
I quit, and even today I have like five chords
at my disposal. I think it doesn't really work with
my ADHD. My hyper focus doesn't exist outside of lyrically,
so it's very hard for me. But I do fumble

(06:32):
with it and I use it in the writing process,
as we'll discuss. But you know, the Magic song was
interesting because that was this weird gateway drug to k
Tel Records, and I got really into k Tel records, which,
for those of you who are too young to appreciate,
sort of worthy equivalent of the now, that's what they
call music series or any sort of compilation of current hits.

(06:55):
But in the seventies, when I was this little kid,
very tiny, they these k Tel records. They would mix
genres sometimes, so you'd have pop hits that would and
it would be solo songs, disco songs, rock songs on
the same record. And that's how I first heard music,
and that's still how I hear music. So I've never
really been genre specific. I always hear it as like

(07:16):
this weird amorphous just grouping of genres and sounds, you know,
And so that was it for me. I also became
a huge fan of the notion of a three minute song, right,
and that's my attention span, which is why I don't
make jam band records, you know what I mean. So
I have we'll get to that, well, we'll get there,
but yeah, I have three minutes of my disposal and
that's where my attention wear was off. So you know,

(07:38):
I was just exposed to so many different quote unquote
genre as at a young age, and I loved all of it.
And I always envisioned songs dressed up in any any fashion.
I never really so when I heard a disco record,
it wasn't the notion of the four on the floor
and the sort of the pounding beat. It was just
the song and the structure and stuff like that that
I fell in love with. And I've taken that into

(08:01):
everything i've done since. It doesn't matter what the assignment
is or who I'm working with. I just strip all
the noise and anything extraneous about it, and I just
take it primarly to what is the basic song in
the smallest shape, and then me figure out how to
dress it up. And that comes from just being exposed
to tons and tons of genres very young.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
So your family is an interesting story, and we don't
have to go too deep into it, but I'm very interested.

Speaker 3 (08:25):
They like me.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
No, well, you're already ahead of the game. I'm interested
in musical families. A lot of the families, or a
lot of the people we talked to you in this
line of work grew up in churches which we clearly
did not, and or like come from families where music
is a big thing. I know you quote your brother
as like, you know, turning you on too music. I
was just telling before about how my sister doesn't even
listen to music. I know your parents were hippies and

(08:48):
Da da da da, my preio.

Speaker 3 (08:49):
Like almost before hippies, they were rad man, they were
a generation before that, but they were incredible artists.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
But good, yeah, sorry, And like my parents are doctors
and my dad like smooth jazz. Mom likes Mandy Patinkin,
which is also fitting, but moving on, it's.

Speaker 3 (09:03):
Also kind of awesome.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
It's also that part of it is great. I'm not
gonna lie and yoyo ma, those are her two fixtures.
But talk to me about how your family and how
your brother's record collection I believe affected your overall.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
Yeah, you know, I owe a lot of it to
my brother. You know my brother, you know, when we
grew up, he was listening to a lot of seventies stuff,
and he was listening to a lot of Southern rock
and all this shit kicker kind of GARYA the Z
twenty eight, And he used to cruise around listening to
Mally Hatchet and stuff like that. And I was listening
to tons of disco, so I was on the other
end of the coin. You know, I wasn't a kiss

(09:37):
kid as much as I was a Beg's kid, So
you know, I was bullied a lot. But what was
funny about my brother, though my brother went off to college,
he went to Boston University. In his first semester, he
became friends, I believe, with the radio DJ who lived
on his floor at the you know, at the university station.
My brother came back with crates of vinyl crates, and

(10:01):
it was all this early new wave, like the two
tone Sky stuff, chronic Towne, I believe, murmur so It's
gonna be eighty three, murmur, all the Ram stuff, obviously,
the Smith stuff. Like he came back with just this
incredible knowledge of this music that didn't exist in the
suburbs where I was, you know, certainly not in sixth

(10:21):
grade or seventh grade. And when he came in and
I was exposed to it, my head fucking exploded. It
was just this whole other It was like a revolution
of sound because I, you know, I at that point,
I was listening to the Beatles, and I was listening
to Who and a lot of disco, and then suddenly
I'm exposed to this entire weird cultural clash of stuff.

(10:41):
At the same time, hip hop was beginning to happen,
and you know, I had friends who were really in
a rapper's delight, and you know, we got into all
the Sugar Hills stuff early on. So we would buy
all those twelves who'd go to stores and just get
all the twelve inches anything that came out on you know,
Sugar On Prelude or Tommy Boy or you know, Sleeping

(11:05):
Bag and Fresh, and we would bring back all these records.
So between the new wave and the hip hop stuff,
you know, I began to really have a taste level
for the first time in life where I was really like,
I felt like I was early on stuff as opposed
to just listening to classic rock and stuff. So I
owed my brother immenseally for that. My mom was bad ass,
because my mom was like this jazz head, you know.

(11:26):
So my mom was mingus and all this cool stuff
and chick Corea and stuff like that. And then my
dad was really into Brazilian stuff. There was a lot
of stan Getz and with Jilberto. Jail asked Gilberto all
that stuff, and I was exposed to tons of stuff. There's
lots of sounds in our house. And me I had

(11:47):
the mom who was listening to talking heads and was
listening to what was the record that she really she dug,
It's gonna Hit Me Again, and it wasn't the water Boys,
but it was one of these Scottish things, and she
was just really cool. And so it's funny because I
think I was the least cool of anybody in my house,
but everybody who's listening to really cool stuff, and I just,

(12:08):
you know, I was, like I said, I just absorbed
anything around me, and I just was trying to at
all costs just sort of learn learn from all of
it and combine it. And that was the most That's
what I look back on growing up. I remember, you know,
I had two turntables, like two techniques at a Gemini mixer,
and that was pretty terrible. But I loved mixing genres,

(12:32):
you know. So I took the instrumental from Brass Monkey,
you know, the Beastie Boys, and then I put the
Bob o' riley or peggiated scent behind her something like that.
Like I'd mess around with different genres, different sounds. And
then I learned about Rick Rubin from a Village Voice article.
A Village voice wrote this piece, He's the king of rock.

(12:52):
There is no higher sucker MC. You should call him
sire or something like that. It was a Village Voice,
and it was my senior year in high school. And
I'm like this colossal. I'm graduating the bottom of my grade.
I'm djaying at parties, I'm singing in a band doing
like hohoskerdo and and you know which is crazy? You know,
do hooskier doo covers, just screaming into the mic. And
I'm lost. I have no idea who I am, but

(13:14):
I know I'm a music kid, and I'm really trying
to figure out. And I'm writing all this like weird beat
poetry stuff. And I read the Rick Rubin article and
it was about a suburban kid from Long Island who
had gone into the Weinstein dorms at NYU and started
a label and he basically took what he knew from
rock and he'd brought it into the dorm and hooked
up with hip hopcats. And I was doing the Tela

(13:35):
rock stuff and I was so blown away by it.
My head exploded because I thought, Wow, this is me
I'm one of these multi genre quote unquote guys. I
listened to everything, and I sort of have an idea
of why the hip hop stuff, like why it's resonating
at least with my friends and stuff. And at the
same time, I'm a rock kid. So that's why that

(13:57):
sort of was like that that lightning bolt, you know
what I mean, Like that was the moment where I thought, wow,
like there's a there's a precedent, and I didn't think
I could. I don't really never want to be a
producer to the other Rick Ruben variety. I really wanted
to be more of a top liner. I wan to
write lyric and melody, but just expose the notion that
you could get into this from out of nowhere. I

(14:18):
didn't understand it. There was no manual, so I wrote
a book. There was no manual like coming up. Now
you can watch you two tutorials on anything. But when
we grew up, like trying to become like a professional songwriter,
there's nothing about that. You just had to sort of learn,
you know, I mean streets of Hills, kitchen.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
But like, talk to me about your career and also
generally the way you talk about music is like in
this totally genrealist thing. I feel like as a person
who writes music too, I get pigeonholed into certain things
all the time. It's like, well, you're the sesame street guid, which,
by the way, I'm not saying is a bad thing, but.

Speaker 3 (14:52):
It's a very sexy ca.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
I mean, that's how I got you. I know, here
we are. It worked, it did, fuck yeah anyway, but
I I you know, or like, you work on a
theater thing. In my line of work, it's like you're
the music theater guy, and I feel like you don't live.

Speaker 3 (15:07):
There or you have Is it that it's intentional? Right?

Speaker 2 (15:10):
But like, how have you done that?

Speaker 3 (15:12):
Well? Because I had the luxury when I came up,
you know, after attending three colleges and two semesters.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
And crushed education.

Speaker 3 (15:23):
Obviously you can tell you tell so well. I'm a
soub verbally dextra. Just tell tell all the skills that
I have. You know, when I when I moved to
the city, I was living in the in the East village,
and I started hanging out a bar called Nightingales, which
is on twelfth and Second, and it was a place
you didn't need an ID and I started hanging out there.

(15:47):
I was eighteen with my friend Jake Miller, who was
this incredible singer songwriter, had a band called Xenix twenty five.
He passed away a long time ago. He's a beautiful soul.
And Jake and I started hanging out this bar and
there was the scene of like, you know, sort of
jam bandy, kind of crunchy, and I describe it, but

(16:07):
like sort of greasy, sort of cool bands of the
era that were beginning to pop out of there. There
was Blues Traveler, there was Spin Doctors, There's Maloz. And
I started hanging around this scene and although musically some
of it wasn't my thing, I began to notice how
instantly the industry swooped in signed all the bands, and

(16:28):
then these bands were immediately pigeonholed into that thing. Right,
and Blues Traveler have gone on and had incredible careers
and they're dear friends and they've transcended it. But I
think a lot of these bands got bunched into a scene.
And I was twenty one, and I could tell that
they were already labeled. You know, I didn't listen to
hairband stuff in high school. You know that was sort

(16:50):
of a that was my big rebellion. I didn't listen
to hairbands, right, But what I realized about hairbands is,
you know, the hair band thing was a scene and
it was probably the most magical time ever for a
lot of people. And then you know, grunge comes and
it's eradicated, and I think a lot of people who
were connected to it had a hard time getting footing.

(17:10):
And that was always my biggest fear is I love
this so much. I just never wanted to get to
a point where I was. I was completely intertwined with
a moment in time, and it was over hard to avoid.
But I've consciously always taken steps in the process to
go after things that are out of character, outside of

(17:32):
the box in terms of what people think I can do.
So I'm hard to label. You know, when Panic of
the Disco happened and high hopes was this this massive
world wide number one. The next record I took was
the OJ's Farewell record.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
And really interesting to a lot of people.

Speaker 3 (17:49):
Don't do that, and you know, but on purpose, I
think it was very intentional.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
Because you because you didn't want to. My guess is,
if we're going to go okay, too. The High Hopes
business is the minute you wrote High Hopes, ten different
similar ish pop rock outfits called you or like, we
want the next High Hopes and you said no, or
you said I'm doing the OJ's record, which is a
hilarious sense.

Speaker 3 (18:10):
Of well, I can be bought, Bill, Let's not lie.
So I probably attempted versions of it. But what I
would say is when you have a moment and you're
like in the songwriting zeitgeist for a second in time,
and I've had waves where I've sort of been deeply
in the mix, in times where I'm an afterthought, the
one thing I would say is it's just it's strategy.

(18:30):
And I think a lot of writers are probably less
strategic to some extent because maybe they're less calculated humans
than I am. The probably better people. But what I'm
going for is I just I'm trying. I look at
music as this entire sort of weird canvas that's in
front of me, and I'm trying to paint corners of it,
and always I want to be able to look at
it and think I sort of I hit everything I

(18:52):
thought I was capable of, And you know what, I'm
not gambling huff but man, I lived for those records
as a kid, and I studied them and I wanted
one shot to do what I would do with the OJS,
and I thought that was that would be to me,
that's cooler than working with any band that wanted, like,
you know, a assimily of what I've already done.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
Do you look at this like work? Does this feel like?
Do you? Because people ask me this a lot, like
they think that I you know, we write songs for
people and kids and enjoyment, and it's creative and all
creative pursuits. I think to some people are sort of
just shrouded in like happy and enjoy it's all great
and whatever, but like it's a fuck ton of work.
Do you how do you look like? I know, we've thought,

(19:31):
we talked about this. It's puzzles to your routine, They're puzzles.

Speaker 3 (19:34):
Everything is a puzzle, and I'm trying to crack the
code on a puzzle. And I have, like I do
treat it like sport, like a professional athlete in terms
of their seasons. There's training and I'm I'm extremely thorough
and religiously like sort of dialed in when I'm in season,

(19:54):
and it is work. It's my passion and it's the
only thing I probably am I can function as a
capable human doing. But it is work, and it is
an absolute mind fuck a lot of the time. And
you know, the business stuff I hate. I'm not business. Ye,
I don't have that wiring that would have if I

(20:16):
had continue to matriculated some university probably would have helped
that cause. So I thankfully I'm surrounded by people are
who are competent humans in a way that I'm not.
But just the puzzle of song is something that eats
at me twenty four hours a day and where I
write something and then I relive it in my dreams
and I constantly am reworking and trying to figure out

(20:37):
where the flaw is and it can you know, it
just beats me up, you know. And it's one of
these things where it's such a strange thing to articulate
because you know, people think, oh, how hard is that? Well,
you know what, it's a voice in your head all
day long where you feel like you're losing your shit,
where it's just like I'm walking around just singing something
over and over and over and nause even why is
this not working? And then eventually when it happens, then

(21:00):
it's no longer work and it's just it's the greatest
feeling in the world.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
Do you feel like this is what your ADHD and
your anxiety are actual benefits.

Speaker 3 (21:15):
I mean, the thing about the ADHD is, you know
they always say, you know, it's it's you know, it's
your superpowers, your superpower. Yeah, well it wasn't in school,
so it definitely wasn't a superpower. My parents went to
ivy universities. I graduated the bottom of my high school
and did eighteen hours at the University of Pacific in Stockton, California.
No disrespect, go Tigers or whatever the mascot is.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
Eighteen hours.

Speaker 3 (21:38):
Eighteen hours. That's true. So you know what's interesting about
in life? What I found about ADHD it's interesting is
I do have this strange ability to handle many micro
assignments at once in song and things like that, where
I can have like four or five records going at
once and I'm really laser focused on all of them,

(22:00):
which is wild and I and then if I just
have to focus on one, I lose my shit. It's harder.
It's like I'm better with more plates, like sort of
flying in my hands. So that's a toy even answer
the question.

Speaker 2 (22:15):
Okay, so we talked about college. You went to four
different colleges and you did really well at all of them,
as we can tell. I believe Temple was in there
somewhere or something like that. Well, go al, good Philadelphia situation. Anyway,
So you leave college, you don't, will you? I passed
college on your way to great news?

Speaker 3 (22:33):
I was. I was on a semester at sea.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
Sure, Oh, like one of those that's good, all right,
like a pirate. So you left college and you moved
to New York.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
I'm in New York City. The last school I attended
was NYU.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
And following Rick Rubin, following.

Speaker 3 (22:50):
Rick Rubin at n YU, and it wasn't what I expected.
And I delve in that in my best selling book,
I Want To Under Matt Holt ben Bella books available
at a local Barnes and Noble or any chain you have,
or on Amazon.

Speaker 2 (23:06):
And I will say, I don't read books. It's the
first book I've read in ten years, and it was fantastic.
I read it in eight hours and I loved her
a minute of it.

Speaker 3 (23:13):
People say that to me a lot. Bill people say
it was a very fast read. Now I don't know
how to take that.

Speaker 2 (23:18):
If they loved it, I feel like.

Speaker 3 (23:20):
You know, I have a friend who's a speed reader.
She's actually really a speed reader, and she's it's amazing.
I thought, well, you spent six minutes on it, what
was your takeaway?

Speaker 2 (23:29):
But is that a profession speed reading?

Speaker 3 (23:30):
She's a speed reader like for life. No, but she's
like part of clubs like speed reading clubs.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
Yeah, a lot of weird friends.

Speaker 3 (23:37):
Well I'm available, it's true.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
But like you also, I was just going to get
to you later. But like you know, fucking everyone. And
that's one of my favorite things about you is that
everybody who I drop your name to, they're like, oh yeah, Sam,
he's the best. Like there's no everybody speaks not only
speaks very highly of you, but everybody knows who you are.

Speaker 3 (23:54):
Well, such a quest love Casino showed it.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
Well, Ques, but he also doesn't know who you are,
and you've worked with him, but he probably I wouldn't
remember that.

Speaker 3 (24:00):
But that's and I'll hold it against them. I like people, man,
I like people. I also I like people. I'm probably
a pretty lonely guy, so I like being around people,
and I like to learn from people, and I'm I
like characters. I'm really into characters, and it doesn't matter

(24:21):
who that you know. There's no hierarchy in my brain.
I just sort of like people, and I'm I don't know.
I'm much happier person when I'm out socializing than when
i'm by myself, and by myself, I'm kind of dark.
And when I'm alone around like big groups of stuff,
I like holding court because I just love watching all
the interaction between people, and I like connecting people. Something

(24:44):
I learned from Jonathan Daniel again from Crush and who
early on was the first people who explained to me
the notion of being a connector in life where you
really connect people and don't ask for anything, want anything,
or assume anything. Just connect people who I think might
like each other because it puts like a really good

(25:05):
energy out there and it will manifest in different ways
and always has.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
This is also something I'm very good at, which I
think is why we're friends one.

Speaker 3 (25:13):
By the way, look we have very similar wiring. We're
both very very attractive people.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
In podcasts, so all the cameras are working very well
good at this.

Speaker 3 (25:21):
Moment, my light incredible right now, it's that shirt.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
I can't that that shirt and the shirt the whole
color scheme is like so.

Speaker 3 (25:27):
Well, while I'm doing it, this is a floral Paul
Smith number.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
Why you gotta drop brand games?

Speaker 3 (25:32):
Now? Underneath would be the homage Doc Ellis t shirt
when he did the LSD, when he did throw a
no hitter on LSD. Okay, it went with the matching nikes.
And there is a blue sock thing happening that was
not intention.

Speaker 2 (25:46):
And you always wear a hat as if we're you
are a.

Speaker 3 (25:49):
Stunted man child. Here's the thing, you know, I wear
lids and hoodies everywhere, which makes me very recognizable, and
there's five people who care. But the reason I do
is I don't really the shape of my head. And
also I've been doing it since I was a little boy.
It's funny. I related to Adam Sandler in so many ways.
Obviously very attractive Jewish men but with very dowe features.

(26:13):
But what I would say about Sandler is I still
I never grew up, and I you know, I look
at pictures of me in high school and I got
my dad's and there was there was there was the
baseball half phase and then there was like the I
went full ducky, yep, pretty and pink, so I was
like doing the pork pie. And then I went to
a fedora for a while.

Speaker 2 (26:32):
There's a snow hat like there.

Speaker 3 (26:34):
Was always like the snow hats. I always like the
snow hats. And what I realized is, I don't know.
I just I feel like I never want to lose
the youthful spirit. It's in my writing and it's how
I wake up every day. I still feel like a
little kid anything that is a constant reminder. When I
look in the mirror and I still feel like I'm sixteen,

(26:56):
I feel very free, and that's sort of who I am.
That's sort of the compositeive my thing.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
Here's a sidebar. How does that affect you as a parent?

Speaker 3 (27:05):
Well, I mean I wouldn't want to be my kid.

Speaker 2 (27:09):
I mean what does that mean?

Speaker 3 (27:11):
Well, I mean when you go to parent teacher night
and you know, there's there's seventeen you know, hedge fun
bro guys and suits in the back of the room,
and there's one very florally draped, sloppy guy with ill
fitting clothing.

Speaker 2 (27:27):
Bank account MEAs motherfucker.

Speaker 3 (27:29):
It's just it's just it's for a child. It's it's
probably a lot toun back. I have a feeling now,
I'm hoping. I kind of feel like I'm nearing that
age where my kid is like, oh wait, he's not
that mortifying. But you know, for many years it wasn't easy.
In La was simple though. In La I was just
part of that thing then, But in Westchester it's a

(27:50):
little different.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
There's a great there's a great line in your book
because it ranked he to me about you took the
Descendants gig. What does it total? We're skipping head made years,
but whatever, you took the Desceentence gig, so you kid
would think you were cool. And I have to tell
you that. All I do now shout out to Jake Cousin, Jake,
our producer who's about to have a kid. I was
explaining to him that his life is about to be

(28:12):
over because anything that he ever did for himself doesn't
matter anymore. All you're about to do is think to
your kids. So all I try to do and fuck
you for this, is to get a goddamn descendance gig.
Because all I listened to in the car is Camp
Rock Descendants High school musical, the musical, the musical, the
musical and all.

Speaker 3 (28:28):
And I had that moment, right did I did? So?
I had that moment. I remember I did this record
called Shake It with Metro Station. It was a really
really big song. And when that blew up, I was
connected with Steve Vincent at Disney and lovely guy. He's
been there forever, he's been, you know. He shepherds the

(28:50):
music on every property they have, starting with high school
musical on and he's a lovely guy. And I remember
sitting with him and I was basically begging to work
on camp.

Speaker 2 (28:59):
Rock, you know. And I just watched it last week and.

Speaker 3 (29:02):
I don't know if you I don't think he really
got it. I couldn't. I don't know if he understood
where I was coming from. And I was like, man,
I just it would be a big flex for my kid,
she's three, I need something. And what happened was through
the years, I would take a lot of these Disney
gigs and it was awesome because you're working with very
sweet people. And the flip side was, you know, it

(29:23):
was so cool when like the Descendants blew up and
my kid and her friends are, you know, watching these songs.
You know, maybe they're reacting to that in ways that
they didn't react to boys like girls or gym class
heros or one of these other think it was super cool,
but obviously I'm pretty needy. That isn't lost on either
of us.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
No, today and.

Speaker 3 (29:43):
Every day Jesus.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
All right back in time, so pot we're post NYU.
And the reason I want to get into this is
because you after your NYU career, you started to be
your performer.

Speaker 3 (29:54):
Yet that didn't work.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
Well, I know, but I find that. But you look
the part of the comparisons and the contrast between like
you write music, people assume that you perform it versus
you don't and you just write it. And I feel
like you dabbled in all of it. And this was
that early time, right post your fake college career.

Speaker 3 (30:15):
Yeah, I want to look. I wanted once again, there's
no manual. There's no manual, you know, And I'm in
and I'm in the city and hip hop is is exploding,
and I fall in love with all this Native Tongue
era stuff, right and it was it was Daylon tribe
really and the Jungle Brothers like those three were sort
of the pillars of what I got into off the bat,

(30:36):
and then there's obviously all the black sheets and roots
and everything else that came along with it, you know,
but the early native tongue era that eighty nine ninety.
I became obsessed, and I knew that I wasn't verbally
dexterous in the same way you know it's textious word

(30:57):
it is? Sure it is, now, let's go with it.
Isn't dexterosa drug whatever, dexadrin, dexn dexadrine, dexterius is that dexterius?

Speaker 2 (31:08):
No dexterous.

Speaker 3 (31:09):
You're the lyricist and be dexterous, so it'd be dexterous, okay.
But I you know, I knew my way around words
and word play. I just didn't really it wasn't uh
innately and I'm seeing any way, shape or form. But
I thought it'd be kind of rad to take my jukebox,
which was full of, you know, some pretty out records.

(31:29):
And I was a you know, I was a record collector, man.
I was a flea market guy, just like all these
kids were. And I thought I had some pretty cool samples.
I tried to get people to wrap over. I couldn't
get anybody alive to work on my tracks. I start
making beats, you know, and so I decided to just
wrap over my own stuff, which basically meant me screaming
over them because I didn't really know what I was doing.
So I sounded like this weird amalgamation of Doctor Dre

(31:51):
and Hell. But I uh I. The craziest shit happened
is I got a record deal. We had a group
Perfect and my friends Don and Jason Don Jason Lynn
two of my best friends, and we had this weird
little group and we got signed. We got signed on
the day we are big showcase for Select Records, and
Select was bad ass because Select had Chub Rock Utfo

(32:15):
the real Rock Sana I believe you know. It was
a very cool seminal hip hop label of that time.
And then they signed us, and that's what that ended
the label obviously. But what was funny about is the
day we auditioned for the label. As we're about to audition,
and there's a TV at the lobby of Smash Studios,
which is the rehearsal place where we auditioned for the label,
and they announced in real time that Magic has HIV.

(32:39):
And you know, I'm rethinking every single bad decision of
my life, questionable move up to that point, and yeah,
as we all are, and then we have to get
on a stage and perform and basically like the Beastie
Boys on Meth you know, perfect time. Somehow we got
a record deal. So we we got we got a
record deal. And it was the first of many many
mistakes in my career. Their track masters before they blew

(33:02):
up doing all this stuff for Bad Boy, et cetera.
They were red Het Lover Tone was signed to Select
as well, and those guys were They had spoken and
Fred wanted them to produce my record, and I passed
Bob Power, the great Bob Power, who on this podcast.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
He was perhaps our I think he was the first
or second person that win.

Speaker 3 (33:23):
Okay, so Bob Power right after this is when he
had already done that. The second day he did Daylea
Soul is Dead, and this is right around the time
he was doing Low End Theory. He produced one of
the songs, and my dumb they got me a record deal, sure,
and then I didn't use them. And then I didn't
use them because I had to make my own record
because I was that guy. I'm awful and so I

(33:44):
decided I'm going to produce my own record. And what's amazing.
It was great because you know, I you know, I
had my first real check and I had the ability
to do this, and I felt like a really you know,
a twenty one year old adult. And what of course,
I make the worst album ever recorded, and I commit
more musical crimes. And God bless my two bandmates because

(34:05):
they're sitting in me watching me just crash this car
in real time, and they went along with it, and
they were so kind that they didn't, you know, restrain
me at any point and say, wow, this is mortifying.
But I made a record, you know, I had a video.
It came out. I was dropped by the time I
was twenty two. I will tell you a true story
that this a little adendum to my best selling book,

(34:27):
Twenty Minute Wonder.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
Oh title this book books Ben Bella Books.

Speaker 3 (34:32):
But book. Yeah, it was a true story. I h
it's all true. Before a reefer was legal.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
Okay, I work ages.

Speaker 3 (34:43):
I was a puffer. Yeah, And I was at my
brother's apartment. He lived on twentieth and eighth, and he
let me. He used to let me just sit there
with my journals and write, you know, my poetry or
my rap or my songs. Whatever I was writing. He
would let me sit out there. He would spin records.
He DJ's so he'd spin record and then I would
just sit stoned on his porch, staring at you know,

(35:04):
if Avenue. And it was it was really, it was
actually a wonderful time in my life. But on one
given day, I thought, well, you know what, I'm gonna
go buy some vinyl myself. I made that that that
pilgrimage from my brother's apartment across all the way uh
down down Grange av Over to sixth down, through McDougal,
through Washington Square Park to Tower Records. Okay, it's important,

(35:25):
it's important for me, the ADHD, but I'm landing it.
Stick with me.

Speaker 2 (35:29):
I know the exact record you're talking about. Okay, scored
the documentary.

Speaker 3 (35:33):
Okay, that's that's look at you.

Speaker 2 (35:35):
Yeah, just a little flex there. And by the way,
that fund yourself. I love that documentary, thank you. It
was one of the I.

Speaker 3 (35:40):
Look at you like a little differently, right, thank you.
All right. So so I make it to Washington Square
Park and I see like this weird sea of purple
in front of me, and nah, it was like ten
thousand princess. It was the n y U graduating class
would have been my graduating class if I hadn't dropped

(36:01):
out of college. And I can't believe i'd input it in.
But you know, I know Matt Holt wants to do
the sequel with me. We've already been obviously talking about it,
but no true story. So I actually waltzed by High
out of my mind, waltz by my college graduation of
a school I dropped out of.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
And what would my class as.

Speaker 3 (36:21):
If anyone knew me? And I didn't really register their bill.
But I have no idea where that came from. But
you know, I will tell you one thing about that
Tower Records though pivotal for me in so many ways,
because you know, right up the block was the Whiz.
Two blocks up was the Whiz on Broadway right there,
and on Friday nights, i'side the Whiz, all the jeeps

(36:42):
would roll up and whatever the biggest hip hop and
specifically house tracks of eighty eight, eighty nine, ninety. They
would just sit outside and blare them. And sometimes everyone's
radio was on hot you know, on BLS or kiss
or whatever, and I'll never forget. That's where I first
heard Gypsy Woman by Crystal Waters, and I can still

(37:05):
see the entire two hundred kids in the streets singing
La Da Dad, you know. And those are those moments
that were embedded in me where I realized music as
a culture was just some other shit and I, you know,
you don't get that in the suburbs at the same extent.
So that's when I fell in love with the city
and I just wanted to be around it. And that's
when I was going out every night of the week,

(37:25):
any showcase, anything I could get into, any if I
even in our unsuccessful hip hop amalgamation, when we would
do shows at a lot of these venues AKA and
underact me places like that, whenever we do a show,
if we ever met a junior A and our person

(37:48):
I was really big with, like very junior A and
our people, you know, and interns. But you know what,
I was smart enough to realize that these people someday
would actually be running this thing, so I would I'd
befriend people who were my age and my level, who
were just starting out as well, and a lot of
those people run things now. My first gig ever was

(38:09):
boxing records at Big Beat Records was just this little
independent label and there are about seven or eight employees
and there were two interns. It was me and Adrian Bartos,
who is Stretch Armstrong, but we were the two interns
in the back. And they are about seven or eight
of us, and it was run by Craig Callman, who
is the chairman of Atlantic. Now you know at that
point he was twenty three and I was probably nineteen.

(38:31):
So it's a good story.

Speaker 2 (38:37):
You told a story. I'm gonna tell a story. Last night,
I went to see Stereophonic, which is the.

Speaker 3 (38:41):
Very tying to see it.

Speaker 2 (38:42):
You have to see it. If you worked in music,
or you live in music, or you have anything to
do with music, you have to go see the show.
It could also be called like Fleetwood Mac making of
the rumors out.

Speaker 3 (38:51):
That's what I've found, That's what I've heard.

Speaker 2 (38:53):
It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. It's like it's like
really involved. The music is amazing, blah blah blah. But
the take home is, in my opinion as a music person,
is this is it should be called why we need
producers because it's essentially like a bunch of people who
are like on many substances and have many relationships, and

(39:13):
there's tons of dynamics, but no one can make a
decision and there's nobody overseeing it. And then the guy
who's the lead guitarist decides that he's the producer, and
we all know how well that goes. So my question
to you is, as I was watching this, I was
thinking about, God, I'm gonna ask fucking Sammis, is like,
talk to me about being a producer versus being a
songwriter and why you think being a because I feel
like in my life I've graduated from like a ranger orchestrator,

(39:36):
whatever the nebulous title that is, to guy who writes
things from time to time. But then, like, what people
know me as in the last few bits has been
like overseer of things, connector of things, which sounds which
I try to explain to my parents and they're like,
we don't know what the fuck that means, and I
was like, don't worry about but like I feel like,
talk to me about why producers are important and why
we need them and why you're one.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
I just like that you used overseer Like that that's good.

Speaker 2 (39:59):
You can use you can put that in your next
book entitled twenty two hit Wonders.

Speaker 3 (40:04):
We're way beyond that. We're at least twenty two point five.
We can have half hits.

Speaker 2 (40:09):
Yeah, yeah, look here again.

Speaker 3 (40:11):
Here's the thing. I'm a pretty terrible producer overall. Wow,
I can I can answer that. You know, it's funny.
My breakthrough cut was a song with Jim class hero
Is called cup Its choke Hold. I produced it, okay,
and when I produced it, it opened up a tidal
wave of opportunities. So it was a number one hit.

(40:33):
And then I did I Pretty Shake It, I Pretty
check Estuliet for Weet the Kings, And these were like big,
big songs, and so I was the me and Dave Kats,
who I made them with, very important. I did the
Wee the Kings and the Metro Station with Dave Kats,
and when we did it, we were hot Rolling Stones
Hot List Producers of the Year two thousand and eight.
I say that flex right now.

Speaker 2 (40:53):
That was like a pretty gentleman.

Speaker 3 (40:55):
You understand where there's is eating It's great is We
would start to work with artists who'd come in the
room to work with Rolling Stones Hotless producers and see
this guy, and then they realized we had no idea
what we're doing. Now, Dave katzon knew more than I did,
but you know, we were we were prone to do
a lot of let's quad that anything. We just kept saying,

(41:18):
let's quad that, yeah, you know, and for the uninformed,
that just sort of makes that's thouty four right four? Yeah,
just just quadruple that whatever the part was. But we
liked saying that from the back of the room to
our engineer, Hey, Sean, let's quad that, yep. And you know,
there are all these sad tropes that we were.

Speaker 2 (41:36):
I double everything leads. I don't give a shit, I
double everything.

Speaker 3 (41:38):
I just but you know what, I had no idea
what I was doing. And the reality was, I'm a
songwriter with a producer mentality, and what that means is,
I'm truly a writer who kind of understands the way
the movie should end and hears it sort of in
his head sonically, like this could be this, this could
be this, could be this. But the reality is, when
I go deep on something, if I'm really going deep

(42:01):
on it, it's gonna suck.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
Why cause.

Speaker 3 (42:05):
Remember when Alex Rodriguez started doing steroids, right, Sure, you
start to befuck, right, you start to get really big
and you're like, really like your numbers are going through
the roof. But the problem is you're gonna get busted.
I was the same guy. I feel like I put
everything on musical steroids, and I would send my tracks

(42:27):
to mixers like Tom Lord. Algae in Miami was mixing
a ton of my stuff back then. And there was
always this, you know, there were always these moments where
I felt like I'm about to get totally outed as
the worst producer in the world.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
And I feel like this every day.

Speaker 3 (42:42):
Yeah, it's just like, you know, there's imposter syndrome and
there's just being a fucking impostor. And I was truly
an impostor with production, and I didn't really know what
I was doing. I do, you know, I do a
little programming, but I just felt like, honestly, like I'm
a guy who's had a lot of joy playing around
with an SP twelve sampler SP twelve hundred and you know,

(43:02):
I'm at one point five seconds or whatever, and I
made like primitive beats and that's how I kind of
got started in this and that's probably the peak of
my creativity. As a producer everything else, I can get
it done, and sometimes I can really hit something out
of the park and I think, wow, I'm really not
that bad. But I am wise enough not to believe
my own hype because there are eighteen year old kids
who are infinitely more sonically inclined. We're just more creative.

(43:25):
And when I'm in a room with somebody who I
deem a real producer, it's mortifying because they just they're
just so beyond me. And I've learned there's no ego
with this. As a writer, I'm pretty good. I stand
by my work and I think I'm unique. But as
a producer, best selling novels, best selling novelist.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
It's number on Amazon? Okay, do they still have Z shops?
Is that I don't know what that is?

Speaker 3 (43:52):
That's like the cutout bend for always looks at Amazon?

Speaker 2 (43:56):
Or is it like at the strand, like it's in
the pile of like five dollars a under.

Speaker 3 (44:00):
All my records started out still there. I'm very used
to having an idiot set record, so.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
I want to talk about breaks. So we've never talked
about this because I didn't know until I read your book.
So when I was in my early twenties. I was
making musicals and doing whatever I was doing. And a
friend of mine, Chris Jackson, who later became George Washington
and Hamilton and all this other shit, he was working
with who I didn't know at the time, McMurphy. And so, yeah,

(44:28):
so I read the book and I couldn't believe this
because so I'll let you talk about McMurphy, but let me.

Speaker 3 (44:35):
Say what I say, pour some more whiskey to.

Speaker 2 (44:36):
It, hashtag angels and begs. And so Chris, my friend Chris,
He's like, listen, I've been working on these music with
these guys. Dadd have you ever heard of the system
of McMurphy. And Frankly, as a Jewish kid from Long
Island who liked like Coltrane and Dave Matthews, I did
not know a lot about the system of McMurphy, full disclosure.

(44:57):
So I went and I'm sitting there with McMurphy, and
he he is the nicest guy in the world.

Speaker 3 (45:02):
Sexy fella.

Speaker 2 (45:03):
He is a very sexy fella, like not but like
not a person who's ever been in my life I
like ever not that like his personality and his son
we like went to his house and he like still
worked in Acid remember that program, it wasn't you know,
And like he played the guitar really well and he
was lefty and I was like, who the He's like
a cartoon And we collectively produced this guy, Chris Jackson's album,

(45:27):
and at the time I didn't know and so finally
like this is crazy, So I googled him and like
and then like he would teach me. He would just
leak all kinds of things to me about how to
make music and how to write good songs, and like
he would his his shit was so sophisticated, but you
would never know. And I loved that about like the
the harmonic structures were so intense, and like the way

(45:49):
he played the guitar, like Babyface was like so involved,
but the songs were so simple and elegant, and it
was really one of the anyway you can speak this,
but like in your book, Mick and his part David,
they gave you one of your early breaks. They give
you a space, right, they believed in you, and they
gave you some shit. I just thought that was that
was a weird moment for me reading in your book

(46:10):
that we both had that.

Speaker 3 (46:11):
It's crazy, those guys. So you know, I'm old as fuck.
So you know, if you wanted any opportunity in this business,
you would look at the back. You'd look at the
back of records. You'd see labels, producers, whoever. And then
you'd go to the phone book and you would try
to find phone numbers and you would cold call. And

(46:33):
that's what I did, and I cold called the Science
Lab which was their production company, and those guys were
coming off don't disturb this group which I danced to
at my prom which was kind of rad. I mean,
and it's a year later and I cold call and
I just say, look, I'm an artist, and you know
I'd love to send you a demo tape. Blah blah blah.
And this lovely fellow, Todd Allen working for them, and

(46:54):
he answered the phone and he invited me in, and
you know, I think they dug me and I sign
me to a production deal. And I was eighteen, and
I mean, those guys were so bad ass. I mean,
you know, David was playing on Shaka con records. They
were I think they were writing for Shaka. They did
this record Attitude, a song I think was called we

(47:15):
got the juice, which was incredible. They had really some
crazy They had this incredible setup. They were in the
sixteen fifty Broadway and a floor below was next Plateau Wrecks,
next Plateau Records, which had the beginning of Salt and Pepper,
you know, and stuff like that, and then the science
lab in their room. Little Louisvega was using their room,

(47:36):
so all that early house stuff was getting made at
the end of the hall as well. So I was
able to absorb so much badass shit. And I was eighteen,
and they were lovely guys. I ran into david a
hotel in la about four months ago, and look, I
owe those guys immensely because they were the first people.
You know, it's hard, especially when you drop out of

(47:57):
school and your parents were like these, you know, massive
intellectuals and very academic, and you're trying to rationalize this decision.
And if somebody who actually who's succeeded and is a
class act at the level of those guys, you know,
is able to, you know, express interest in you and
take you under their wing, it buys you a little

(48:17):
time with your parents. And that's what it did. It
brought me time and so I owe them momentally because
even though once again those guys, you know, there was
only so much listening I was going to do at
that age, I was still going to do my own thing.
They just being around and being in their orbit. I
was privy to some crazy stuff, you know. I remember
Drey Betts was one of the cats in the in

(48:39):
their circle, working out of the spot, and he was
doing that what's to justify my love? That's when he
did justify my love? So I remember hearing that very early.
That was pretty cool. What was so great about no
Internet and no access is you kind of stumbled into
shit And that was the New York that I miss,

(49:02):
you know, I miss the wide eyed excitement of stumbling
and stumbling in the rooms. I remember, you know, my
friend Jake Miller, who I just goss, who passed away
a long time ago. Jake and his band they're called
Zanix twenty five and they were doing sort of like
a Progmeday kind of thing, and they were living on
a loft on Second Avenue, and through Steph Skimarta, who

(49:25):
is Warren Haynes's wife, who was doing a and RT
Forth and Broadway, they meet the Jungle Brothers And next thing,
you know, the Jungle Brothers are making this progressive, weird,
psychedelic rock sort of hip hop record in this loft
with these guys. And you know, I'm the biggest Jungle
Brothers fan in the world, man, and I'm like allowed
to hang out every once in a while and just

(49:46):
watch my friends like throw down with these guys making
this really cool progressive shit that never saw the light
of day. It was neat. It was just every day
was it was just like this weird New York was
like this one big reveal. Right, you just like walk
through a door and if you were socially inclined and
you were not, you know, I was fearless, man. I
walk up to anybody and if you still do that, yeah,

(50:08):
I mean, well you know now they run.

Speaker 2 (50:11):
But then I was.

Speaker 3 (50:13):
Young and it was a little less creepy feeling.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
We interviewed Chris Rock like years ago, and he said
the best thing. He's like, yeah, I know, I'm a
comic and I do these things. He's like, but you know,
my best quality is and we're like what he said,
I I show up and I essentially I show up
and I don't get kicked out. So I'm always there.
And I feel like a lot of the anecdotes in
your book are like I was just there. There's like

(50:35):
some bitch about like Cusack, and like you were part
of this like weird rat packing New York situation where
it was like you and him and whoever the fuck
else was and some screenwriter and you're doing all this stuff,
and I just feel like you, You're around, You're always
and there's some pictures of you in that book where
you're just like in the background, fucking just sam just there,
like the songwriting aside, I was just there.

Speaker 3 (50:56):
I was like the ultimate hanger ond, you know.

Speaker 2 (50:58):
But that's my thing too, Like seemed to be around, dude.

Speaker 3 (51:01):
I can close my eyes and it's you know, it's Thanksgiving,
probably ninety three, and John Cuzak is doing Thanksgiving with
me and my grandmother and my mom and dad and
my brother. I'm his wife on the Upper East Side.
And then John and I go out afterwards and meet
up with Jeremy Piven and Uma Thurmat.

Speaker 2 (51:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (51:23):
So it's me, John Cusack, Jeremy Piven, and Uma Thurman
and we're all standing on the stairs of the met
and it's pouring rain. And we're sort of dancing together
and I'm self aware enough to know one of us
doesn't belong in this, you know, and I just it

(51:44):
was amazing because it really lit a match in me.
And that's why I look, I'm forever indebted to those
guys because they they saw something in me. You know.
Maybe I didn't ask for anything, which was a nice skill.
I definitely I wasn't a taker, which is good, but
they let me hang around and just being sort of

(52:06):
tangentially involved in all their sort of happenings and after
hour stuff. What was cool is, man, I just got
to see how great it is to sort of to
have access and to achieve whatever pinnacle. Like they were
all very successful at that time, and it lit a

(52:28):
match like, man, if I had a measured level success,
I won't feel like an outsider in every room. I
will feel like maybe I belong one step more. I
didn't want to be a plus one my whole life,
and I think that really fueled, like that sent me
into orbit creatively because I thought, you know, if I'm
able to achieve something and it resonates on any creative scale,

(52:51):
if I'm not a plus one anymore, and I'm actually
part of the group, and I've you know, I've earned
my way where you think, oh, this guy just isn't
another one of the hangarounds, do you know? I told
Piven not to.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
Do entourage, really, but why is that not in the
book I did? That's a good line. Had that conversation.

Speaker 3 (53:07):
Me and my wife and Jeremy went to uh Fred
Siegel for dinner with twenty something years ago whatever it is.
He told us about this thing he'd been offered. I
was like, I don't know. It sounds kind of whack man.
I don't know. I'm not an agent. Trust me. You know,
you don't want me wrapping you in anything.

Speaker 2 (53:22):
It feels like Lynn invited me to Hamilton off Broadway
and he goes, what'd you think? And I was like,
I don't know that, like my grandmother from like Long Island,
and you just get it awesome And I stuck to
that you nailed that. Yeah, I really I feel like
I'm a really really good sets for six Jesus. So
I feel like this is a good spring where it's like,
yes the cusacknith that's a word. So we get into

(53:47):
two thousand and I feel like two thousand until today
is like or maybe a few years ago is like
Sam Holland or Heyday. And what I mean by that
is like between two thousand and twenty twenty. This is
the time we're talking of you as rock producer of
the Year and big Dick of the West and all
the shit that you accomplished in those particular years. But like,

(54:07):
what was the first song that led off two thousands,
that led that that opened the door? I know, there's
there's a Clive Davis kind, there's a skipping stone.

Speaker 3 (54:16):
That's a lot of things. I mean, the one thing
at the end of the day. There are like three
or four little ten pole things that happened. But the
first is Carol King. Because I connected with Carol King
in two thousand and you know, we begin writing songs together.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
And explain how that happened because it's.

Speaker 3 (54:35):
A really good story, well you know I.

Speaker 2 (54:38):
And also not one that anyone would ever put on you,
even in that shirt.

Speaker 3 (54:42):
Okay, wow strong. So what what I realized in my
twenties is there are no doors open for me. I
failed as an artist, and I started making beats and
hawking beats around and nothing's working. I meet a guy
named Joe Ricatelli, who was awesome who ended up being
the president of RCA, but before that he was a

(55:03):
running promotion in Island and I met him through my
friend Kimberly, and he gets me and my partner at
the time was a guy named dougdan Angelis. He gets
his remixes and I start building up remixes, remixes, and
then it continues solo and with Dave Scholmer and different configurations.
I'm doing remixes of def jam catalog stuff. He gets

(55:24):
me in the mix and I'll tell you, these remixes
are god awful and no one's ever heard them, but
they were always the b sides to like a club promo.
So he cared enough about me to always throw my
things on. So I had a Suddenly my discography, which
had nothing, had method Man DMX the Thong Song, like
all these pivotal records of that time, I had, like
the techno remix. Now, no one alive was listening for

(55:47):
the techno remix on these things, but suddenly I had credits,
which was rad my only access to getting bigger stuff.
I realized was going to be creating my own groups
because there was no future in techno remixes and for
me because I'm terrible, but also because there are probably
people who are amazing at it. I just wasn't one
of them. You know, if your Crystal method, you're like, hey,

(56:09):
fuck you, Sam Holland. But you know I'm not Crystal Method.
So I realized I got to put groups together because
the one thing I realized as a student of the
game is somewhere between you know, the Malcolm McLaren's and
the Stockacheman Waterman's and a lot of these British cats.
You know, if people aren't going to record your own songs,
then you better find your own groups to sing them.

(56:31):
And so I would take out ads in the Village Voice,
and I started casting for groups to like cut my stuff,
and I find people, take them off for coffee and
just say, hey, I'll write. I have a studio. You
know it's a little dump, but like you know, I'll
write a song. Whatever. We can collaborate and you know,
I'll figure it out. And what happened was I got
a bunch of people signed over a very quick amount

(56:54):
of time. There was a there was a there was
a a news source for music Hits Daily Double, which
still exist but they had something called a rumor mill,
and if you were in that, your phone ring off
the hook. Somehow a guy named Joe Fleischer got wind
of my stuff and he started touting me and my
partner as like the next guys. And it was right

(57:16):
when he had just blown up the Neptunes too, so
we're like going to be the next guys, not the Neptunes,
you know. And we start getting all these calls from labels,
and I'm developing all these acts at the same time,
and over like a two year period, I want to say,
we got five or six act signed a major labels.
The first was a woman named Tarsha Vega, and I

(57:36):
believe she was an assistant in the CBS Television accounting
department or something like that. And she came in and
she had never rapped and never sung, but perfect yeah,
but you know, her personality was so great. She was
super cool looking and she was just a great vibe
and she was down for me just writing stuff. And

(57:56):
I started writing these songs with my man, Dave Schomer,
and we were he was doing the tracks and I
was writing the lyrics and the melodies. And what happened
was RCAA Records heard it. They signed her as my
first act signed to like a major. I'd had a
a singer name Sabrina Sang signed a Tommy Boy that
didn't happen, so I'm over one. Then RCA signed Star Shavega,

(58:18):
massive deal, all this press, and I'm once again producing
a record. I mean no idea what I'm doing. And
I make another terrible record and that's on me. But
what's funny about it is it's time for a cameo
on the record and we're looking for a cool feature.
And my wife had just seen Blood Brothers on Broadway

(58:38):
and she said Carol King is amazing and Blood Brothers
and the label was thinking more along the lines of
India RI or something like that, and I was like,
how about Carol King? And everyone looks at me stoneface.
But Brian Maloof, who was an R on the project,
had a relationship with Carol's manager, Lorna, who's very lovely,
and Carol next to you know, within a week, is

(58:59):
down at our state do you And she sits down
across from me and Tarshah the artist, and she's going
on and on about what's going on lyrically and the stuff,
and she really digs it and to to shout out Tarsha,
who is this wonderful person. Tarsia just looks and says, well,
he writes the lyrics, and that's him, you know he
I don't write the lyrics. And Carol looks at me

(59:21):
like very puzzled. I don't thinking, what's up? This is
MoU kisso New York in the flesh. That's how we
do represent. So immediately me, Dave and Carol start writing
together a lot, and we write a bunch of tunes.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
Just because she likes her lyrics. Yeah, I think she's
just like the both of us.

Speaker 3 (59:38):
But I also think she liked the fact that, like
you know, it was music was changing and we were
pulling lots of influence. But also we're super respectful of
her catalog. We were knowledgeable. We knew like I could
talk jazz man with her and other stuff. And she
came in the room with us and three or four
songs and we wrote Love Makes the World and that
ended up being the title track and the single from

(59:58):
the last album She Ever May and that was, you know,
twenty four years ago, and that was a really cool
calling card because through that she introduced us to Paul Williams,
who really became like a big brother figure to me
throughout my entire career. I connected with Al Rodgers, you know,
and I just started I felt personal. I was getting
lots of respect from the old guard. I just still
couldn't permeate anybody my own age. And that's when I

(01:00:22):
knew I had to go even deeper into developing acts.
And that's when Jonathan Daniel steps in, because we're watching
what Crush Management's doing at the time, and they have
all these cool young bands and they're bringing me in
and I'm beginning to collaborate with them. And while we
created Boys Like Girls and we found we the Kings
and Metro Station, these things also created a Cobra Starship

(01:00:45):
with Crush Me and Dave katz Day. We created Cobra
Starship with those guys. Yeah, we did not do that one,
but we did do Snakes on the Plane, which is
the greatest song ever, the greatest song ever. But we
did that whole first album, and you know, we just
we had this incredible symbiotic relationship all of us. We
shared this loft and you know, we would just develop acts,

(01:01:06):
and you know, once an act was successful, they would
take the next one on the road with them as
direct support, and we were working outside of the industry machine,
which was awesome, and that's what sort of that was
what sort of elevated my moment. I just you know,
it just at thirty four, I'm making beats on kids
bop records and think and thirty five I have like

(01:01:29):
a number one hit, So anything, it all shifted at
that age. And that's really why I wrote the book bill,
to be honest with you, because you know, at the
end of the day, go fuck myself, thank you very much.
At the end of the day, I think what's interesting
about my story is the futility in the previous fourteen
years was at a level that most people will never fathom.

(01:01:50):
And I thought, you know, I'm so sick of reading
you know, people's tomes where they gloss over all this
shit where it's literally like one hundred pages of the
struggle fifty pages and then it's like victory lap, victory Lap,
victory Lap. And what I wanted people to understand is
the torture never ends, and I've never gotten to a
place of comfort. It's like I might be fiscally sound

(01:02:10):
at this point, but I'll tell you something. I still
get my ass kicked every single day creatively where I
deliver something and it gets shredded or stepped on or tossed.
And that's what I want people to understand is it
is the greatest life in the world. I think you
and I share this affinity for it, like we've been
able to do things that we knit where we never
dreamed were possible. And the flip side is we still

(01:02:33):
get spit on every day we wake up. I tell
my kid as she has, you know, as she dabbles
with her interest in this, I said, look, it's a
kin to get stepping outside on Broadway every morning getting
hit by a cab and then yeah, and then you know,
dusting yourself off and going off and writing a song
because that's what it's like, because that's what my inbox
looks like in the morning. It's like one like disaster

(01:02:54):
after another. And then I just I do it again,
and do it again, and do it again, and hope
that the time works in my favor.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
I was impressed, given I'd also work in this line
of work that like the so many lows, sam and
so many highs, there seems it seems to be like
you're always searching for some sort of middle, and there's
and what you just said just says this is there
is no middle. There's no middle, right. It's either like
you've reached pieces of shit or you're number one smash

(01:03:22):
hit right, And it's always it's always that.

Speaker 3 (01:03:25):
Well, it's also you know, I'm thankfully them at an age.
Now I'm twenty eight, and I've aged like a twenty
seven year old, just Benjamin Buden. But what's interesting at
this age is I have enough perspective to look back
on it and understand the waves, right, And I really,
you know, I can sort of almost on a pie

(01:03:46):
chart in my head. I sort of understand where the
highs were, where the dips were. So I'm not it's
hard to fluster me at this point because I'm ready.
I'm ready for rejection, you know what I mean. It's okay,
and I understand that I'll still have another moment. I'll
always have another moment, and I'm always going to have
another disaster. And as long as I can wake up
knowing that, then nothing sort of irks me.

Speaker 2 (01:04:13):
You mentioned Paul Williams and the great Paul Williams and
the greatest the greatest. And there's a section in your
book which I find very funny, sort of like the
composers I wish I could have been, or I wish
I could be, or the ones I respect the most,
or whatever you want to call it. And there's who's he?
What's it from? Abba maybe or whatever. But my favor
one which we've never discussed, is Joe Riposo and so,

(01:04:35):
and I thought long and hard about this as I
read it, and people ask me about him all the time,
and what it's like living in that shadow, and it's
a lot, and I think it's a weird. I think
when someone's the first to do something and do it
unbelievably well, and you're someone who like takes over that
thing or like tries to carry that torch, it's a
lot of pressure. And in the beginning I thought like this,

(01:04:58):
and then I mean, over time, just like I'm just
trying to do the best job I possibly can and
I'm here for a reason and blah blah blah. Anyway,
And the thing you mentioned about how how Sesme Street
was major in your in like your songwriting and your
childhood and everything else.

Speaker 3 (01:05:13):
And simplicity Fender Rhodes but it was.

Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
But it was so complex. And that's my favorite thing
about Sesme Street is people are like, it's songs for children,
but if you look at that stuff, it is not
simple at all, and it's really ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (01:05:27):
Particularly he was a freak, but I just love the repetition.
There were just ideas that even as a young sort
of barely formed musical brain, you know, I did he
did the three s Company theme.

Speaker 2 (01:05:42):
You know, there's a lot of like under the hood
and stuff about it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:45):
But he was also Sinatra's favorite, right, Sinatra's favorite writer.
It's like, I've always loved people who who are in
on the joke. And that's how I look at it,
Like we're all in on the joke. It's like it's music.
It's the goal of what we're doing is we're trying
to sort of make people feel something illicit emotions. And

(01:06:09):
when I listen to Reposo stuff, you think, oh, yeah,
it's it's Sesame straight and you know it's it's it's
it's this these warm, sort of tender little moments. You know.
Won't to come at him, you know, but at the
core of it is just the badass like man, you know,
put on those songs, you know, and you get chills.

(01:06:29):
It's like they're they're so broad and he was able
to write really broad stuff for a genre that I
think previously wasn't at that level of sophistication. And to me,
he's one of those, like he's one of those pillars.
As a kid, when I heard his stuff, and it's
crazy because you know, in Cape Cod we spend a

(01:06:50):
lot of time in Chatham in the summer. And it's
about twenty years come. I am having a cup of coffee.
I'm sitting on a bench outside the library and I
turn around and it says this bench is dedicated to
Joe Roposo who lived his life here. Blah blah blah
blah blah, you know, and I had chills because it
was the only bench, you know, I just I had coffee.

(01:07:12):
Probably who sits on a bench in from a library.
I was doing but it's like, you know, it's like
it's like it was just like this place that I
used to go and sit, you know, I had like
a routine, and I never looked at the little placard.
It's like this small little placard and I was so
moved by that. I thought, well, this is this is
divine and you know he set the bar for that genre.

(01:07:32):
But I just love the ones. What I love about it.
What I mean by the joke is, here's this guy.
He's doing Sesame Street at the same time he's writing
Three's Company and he's writing songs for Sinatra. He understands
that's all music and this is what I would you know,
taking it back to square from one. It's all genre lists, right,
He's just writing exactly what he felt. You know what's
weird is sometimes I listen to my voice. I sound
like Joe Biden. It's a really right feeling.

Speaker 2 (01:07:55):
It's like a weird drink.

Speaker 3 (01:07:56):
It's a weird feeling. We're just like, fuck, man, I'm
a little monotone today. What is going on? I'm sorry?

Speaker 2 (01:08:03):
All right, So we're Carol King's post two thousand, right
in the early two thousands, we get the Carol King.
Carol King becomes the calling card of the thing.

Speaker 3 (01:08:11):
What happens next, well, you know, I start doing these
fun little bands and a lot of hits happen. And
what happens is once again, because I knew that all
scenes eventually die or more for something as these uh
as we're making these pop punk or emo records and
they're becoming big pop hits. I begin to realize there's

(01:08:33):
a shelf life because we're we're repeating ourselves a lot,
like a lot. I'm writing a lot of songs lyrically
with escapism themes and us against the world, you know,
like this is like I to we yes, yeah, yeah,
there's a lot of a lot of a lot of
Paul Williams tricks, et cetera. Then I'm just applying to
this and I realized that I'm beginning to phone songs in.
And I got to this point where I was like,

(01:08:54):
you know, I can phone in a B plus a
minus every time out. I know what that is. I
know how to get it there. And songs were going
from first singles like getting first single on Everything to
getting like the third single on things, you know, and
songs weren't working the same way, and the talent level
started to shift a little bit, where starting to work

(01:09:14):
with some kids who interested me less. You know, that
first wave of these scene kids that we worked with,
you know, the kids and you know and boys like
girls and Wee the Kings, Jim Classerros, Trivy McCoy, you know,
these kids were awesome. They were like little stars, you know,
and I started to see kids feel less like stars
to me. There's still some ones that popped, but there

(01:09:36):
were kids that just felt like they were at the end,
dying end of a scene. And that's when I immediately
made the conscious decision to jump into what they call
hot ac or whatever, but like just sort of like,
you know, the equivalent of soft rock. But what happened
was I would stay at La Park. Suits in La
always stay at the same hotel, and when I stayed

(01:09:58):
at this hotel, they would blast the stuff on the roof.
It was always Matchbox twenty or Dave Matthews or you know,
Uncle Cracker, Train Sugar Ray, all this stuff and what.

Speaker 2 (01:10:08):
I'll really you then went on to work with Yeah,
what was weird.

Speaker 3 (01:10:11):
About it was? It was funny about it was I'm
sitting up there and I'm realizing that they're not playing
my music. My music isn't I think I'm you know,
in the Zeichist at the second and these are hits,
but they I don't know if they're going to be recurrent.
I don't know if these songs are going to live on.
And I got into music with the notion of sure,
I just want to write one hit, but I wanted
to write a hit that lived on.

Speaker 2 (01:10:30):
It's legacy important to you, because it's another question I
get asked all the time as the sesame street guy.
It's like, like, you do you do you think about
your legacy? Is that a thing that comes up to you?
Because it doesn't. It's it's I do not. I'm not.
Maybe I haven't reached the age or the gravity toss
of my life. I don't think about that.

Speaker 3 (01:10:49):
Oh I'm psychotic. I think about it every.

Speaker 2 (01:10:50):
Day, I know, but you're you fine, but you're not
psychotic in like a psychonic way. You're a psychonic and
I'm in my head kind of way, and there's anything
wrong with that. I'm also ninety five, so there are
one hundred years old.

Speaker 3 (01:10:59):
So but you look, it's a lot of people say
that where you know, here's what I think about legacy.
I've been doing it so long and I've put so
so much work into this, and I like to I
would love to look back. I love people to look
back and think, Wow, this guy brought some joy. You know,
that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:15):
That's already happened.

Speaker 3 (01:11:16):
But that's it. But it's but that's what the legacy is. Like,
I hope that people someday can connect the dots and
go and think, wow, the guy wrote some really uplifting
ship or some stuff that made me feel something, and
and there was a lot of it. There's a body
of work, and it's a body of work. I know
if it's a legacy, but I do take my body
of work seriously. And you know, I've also committed many
musical crimes, so you know they're worth mentioning as well.

(01:11:40):
I've made some records that you know what, you know,
what's I love? You know, there's things I love about Spotify, right,
but Spotify with their playlist when they're written by playlist,
like each one of them does one, right, Amazon does one,
Apple does one, and Spotify. What sucks about Spotify's is
it's just every song you've ever done. They don't curate it.

(01:12:02):
So just when they sent it to me, I was honored.
I'm like, wow, I get like a written by page.
But it's four hundred.

Speaker 2 (01:12:07):
Songs and not all of them are great.

Speaker 3 (01:12:08):
Not all were great. I mean there are some things
in there there there there is one song written with
some Canadian kid who were to name nameless. Where I
turned that thing on, I was like, holy fuck, I
wrote the worst song ever written. Yeah, and I don't
know what the protocol is. If I can just take like,
you know, pull it into Alan Smithy, you know, and
take my name off it it? Yeah, just you know,

(01:12:29):
has it just a pseudonym very late in.

Speaker 2 (01:12:31):
Life, but primes committed by all.

Speaker 3 (01:12:34):
Right, but it was a train train, So then I
started writing with let's get it, come on, you're you're
you're you're really taking us off?

Speaker 2 (01:12:40):
Course I do, but like I find, I was, I
have more.

Speaker 3 (01:12:43):
Okay, but here's the thing, my train. So I hook
up a.

Speaker 2 (01:12:45):
Train and ask about train but find talk about train drops. Jupiter.

Speaker 3 (01:12:48):
Let's want to I want. I didn't write that. But
what happens is all these bands let me let's talk
about quest left.

Speaker 2 (01:12:54):
Yeah, let's just talk about questions the whole time. He'll
be happy. But what if he just strolled in right now?
What a moment that? Okay, here.

Speaker 3 (01:13:02):
Is this imposter nice shirt? Yes, so he will rocks
some floral shit. I sat next to him at the
moth Galla last year.

Speaker 2 (01:13:10):
All right, moth Galla, did you tell a story? Fuck
you first?

Speaker 3 (01:13:13):
Of all by the way I did once.

Speaker 2 (01:13:16):
Oh my God with Jeff Garland. Oh you want to
go deep, you want to go deep? Go ahead, you
got no.

Speaker 3 (01:13:20):
I'm just saying, like, honestly, if they didn't ask me
to speak in the moth gallup, they just they just
let me sit there. But Questlove is a very good
looking man, and you know he gets a lot of attention.
He's like a table one guy. Sure, I'm table nine, but.

Speaker 2 (01:13:33):
Like, do you always find it funny when you meet
somebody who you think is a table who should be
a table one guy, but they're not cool, and you're
just like, what what happened to you?

Speaker 3 (01:13:44):
That's the same thing as when you meet me and
they think, no, no, did you end up a table nine.

Speaker 2 (01:13:48):
Thinks you're cool? Like there's no expectation with him, there's
like an expectation that you're going to be cool and
then you are not him. But with some people and
you meet and you're just like, oh, that's bummer, that's
not what I thought.

Speaker 3 (01:13:58):
I find most people cooler than.

Speaker 2 (01:13:59):
Me percent but you're pretty cool. Moving on, so we're
post trained, but before we in the train, I feel
like there's minutia of songwriting that I want to get into.
I love all your accolades. Read the book. He talks
about all the accolades, you chuck, shut up. We talk
about songwriting all the time. In fact, we write songs together,
you and me Sam all the time now. So having
been in a bunch of like writers composer rooms. Yeah,

(01:14:22):
and so there's a section in your book about Max
Martin and the whole synchronicity of Swedish pop and how
that shit works. And it's another thing that I have
a lot of, uh I do, and and the way
that they work and how that happens is a thing, right,
and and so there's a lot there's interesting things in
your book. And we have talked about this at late

(01:14:42):
about like Swedish well that but like songwriter as therapist
song like. So in my early days when I let's
talk about me for a second, in my early days,
when I had a publishing deal, they were like, go
to this thing, sit in a room with someone you've
never listened, you don't know anything about, and write a
song about car washes or whatever the fucking was. And
I remember going, and I was so young and naive,

(01:15:03):
and they had paid me five thousand dollars and like
taking my whole life's earnings and I was like, cool,
I needed I couldn't pay rent, so great, take that
for a year whatever. And I remember feeling so uncomfortable
and being like this is not what I do, This
is not I need like alone time, and I can't
deal with it, and dada, so smash cut. Two years
later when I stopped doing like the writing sessions, and
then I was just like producing records or making things,

(01:15:26):
and I find this idea go back to stereophonic from
last night, Like the producer as therapist or psychologist is
like I feel like eighty percent of the gig man
like dealing with the crazy and then and then also
like having the ability to tell so and so the
lead singer like actually no, like it should be this

(01:15:47):
or like whatever. And there's also there's a bonus cut
in your thing that says, like some of the effect
of whether you like it or not, the lead singer's
always the person that makes the decision of the bit
right whatever your person that is right, which is which
is one hundred percent correct, Like the bass players not
saying shit, the bass players in the back like thumping
out roots and like loving his life and like who cares?
And he gets laid the most. Always the bass player,
but like the lead singer is always the guy that

(01:16:09):
makes whether he knows what he's talking about or not,
that's the guy, right.

Speaker 3 (01:16:11):
Well, writers, one thing I'll say, aspiring writers, if you're
out there, if you're aspiring songwriter, if you are able
to permeate this beast of an industry and you get
a publishing deal and they say to you, hey, you
know what, we have so and so banned and we
want you to write with the drummer. You don't do it.

Speaker 2 (01:16:32):
You just just veto it right away that day and
they're not going to happen.

Speaker 3 (01:16:36):
And I have friends who still fall for it, which
is the craziest thing. People my age you still fall
for are like, oh my god, it's the drummer from
blah blah blah. You know I think I can get
on the record. No, you can't.

Speaker 2 (01:16:46):
Nor do you want to look at the credits?

Speaker 3 (01:16:48):
You know, look who you know who has the keys
to a project? Yes. To answer what you're saying, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:16:56):
Like, how do you approach those things? What do you
have a different mind?

Speaker 3 (01:16:58):
Well, first of all, it's a speed dating.

Speaker 2 (01:17:00):
It's a date.

Speaker 3 (01:17:00):
It's a speed dating. I did it for so many years,
and you know, I do it less now just because
I'm probably burned out of the process. But for many
years I would do two hundred speed dates a year
where I would get in a room with some configuration
of people and it's thirty five minutes of small talking
and trying to bond and you know, sort of forge
your relationship. And then we have to get deep and

(01:17:23):
really like expose some nerves and really figure out who
we are in the room. And it's interesting because when
you're writing with their artists. Some days you're writing with
artists who are incredibly lyrical, which sort of falls into
my domain. So then I have to shape shift immediately
in the room because I do not want to suppress
their thing, and I know I'm smart enough not to
suppress it. But the flip side is I got to
figure out how I exist in the room, because if

(01:17:46):
I'm just the editor, I don't really feel that like
I've earned my keep. So it's constantly. The adaptability is
huge in a room. You know, you have to be
able to do a lot of different skills based on
you know, the artists that you're working with, and many times,
most times the A and R person or the publisher whatever,
won't give you any exposition on the person because they

(01:18:07):
don't really know what their creative process is. So you
can get a room with somebody and you think, wow,
they write really poetic stuff and realize that they don't
have any verbal dexterity at all. They have nothing, and
so you then have to become that person instantly. Other days,
you know you're writing with an artist who you believe
is incredibly lyrical and they're the best melodic writer you've

(01:18:27):
ever seen, but maybe they don't do the things. And
in other days they say, oh, they don't really have
a lot to say, and you're sitting with somebody and
they write the most profound shit. I wrote a song
with a sixteen year old kid from London named James
t w and a great writer named Nolan Sipe. It's
about nine years ago. We wrote the song called what
You Loved Someone, and it was written from the perspective

(01:18:50):
of parents coming home and telling their child that they
were getting divorced, and it's sort of all the fallout
from that. This is not a fun song. I would
tell you it's probably the best song I've ever written. Really, yeah,
and it's a huge song, like globally huge song, seven

(01:19:11):
hundred million streams. I'm like, that's a big tune. But
what's interesting about it is Nolan and I, who are
both pros with a lot of hits, we didn't come
up with that topic. The sixteen year old did.

Speaker 2 (01:19:21):
Really he guided it.

Speaker 3 (01:19:22):
We just like then wrote the song, but it was
his vision and he really guided it, and you know,
and his melodies were beautiful and he had some really
great lines, and also he's a great guitarist. But there
was no exposition with that. No one ever said to me, Hey,
when you get in the room with the sixteen year
old kid, he's gonna write the most profound shit of
your career. It's like, you don't know. And so the

(01:19:43):
number one skill as a songwriter and an aspiring writer at
any level is to read a room. And reading a
room is priceless, and if you don't have that ability,
it's going to be hard to be a collaborator because
you have to know when at the foot on the
gas and you have to know when to slam on
the brakes and just get out of the way. And

(01:20:05):
it changes every single day. So that's what I'm saying.
You never get to a place of comfort with it,
because if you are going with the same, if you're
going if you're treating it with some sort of repetition
every single day, doing the same routine, it won't work.
You're dealing with different especially and you're on a treadmill
of sessions. And then the biggest mind fuck of all
is that you can write something that you believe is
absolutely game changing, but you still have that awful voice

(01:20:29):
in the back of your head that says, tomorrow, this
person's writing with a whole new configuration and they're younger,
and they're hot, and they are, you know, having their moment,
and he's going to fall in love with that grouping
because they're cooler, and they'll end up getting maybe the
single or the cut that even though you really feel
like you wrote the most powerful shit ever, it just

(01:20:50):
messes with your head all day long.

Speaker 2 (01:20:57):
You're like a lyric first guy always, and I know
for a fact that guys like Max Martin are melody
first guys. So but like both of you have written
hits and for totally different reasons, He's written more sure
he has and he's written a ton and he would
if he was here, he would have something to say
about this.

Speaker 3 (01:21:17):
But whatever, Well he's better than me.

Speaker 2 (01:21:18):
No, God, why this is not a competition. It is
a competition. It is a fucking competition.

Speaker 3 (01:21:23):
He's Max Martin, but like, but.

Speaker 2 (01:21:25):
Like with Max, he always talking about Melly, right, So
it's Mellody, million Mellion Melly and I feel like his
disciples are million million Melldy and you live in more
of like the this is shitt example Bob Dylan lyrical world.
And I think that that's so interesting because at the
end of the day, a fucking hit is a hit.
So like you've written a hit, he's written hit. I've
been on the same charts in different places. But like,

(01:21:45):
why is it that?

Speaker 3 (01:21:47):
Because like, why is it that his songs are bigger?
Because because he's better, because he's why let's start there. No,
but what I would say is one thing I would
say is.

Speaker 2 (01:21:57):
But how can you have that different approach and still
have the same outcome?

Speaker 3 (01:21:59):
I guess, well, Melody is king, right, So I've been
with you, it's not with me. But I think maybe
I'm lucky because truthfully, at this point, Melody supersedes everything.
The one thing that helps me lyrically is I'm pretty conceptual,
So songs like you know a check Yes, Juliet, or

(01:22:21):
one of these things that sneaks through one of these
like quirky hand clap, handclaps, A pretty quirky little tune,
you know, might be the biggest song in my career
might be. And it's a it's a quirky little number,
and it didn't come from a melodic place. It came
from a lyrical place. I mean that was based on like,
you know, that's a there's a real shape to what
I wrote there, and there was a reason for it.

(01:22:41):
And then fits really stepped in and with that, you know,
the crazy blown out horn sample thing. And when we
wrote that thing, it was obvious that it was very unique.
But that's a that's that's the kind of record that
I love because it's it's kind of a morphous I
don't really know what hand clap is. It's not really alternative,
it's not really pop, I don't know what is. It's

(01:23:02):
kind of weird. And those are my favorite tunes. The
quirky ones are the things that I really react to
because they're a little bit off because that's where no
one can fuck with me. Like, if I'm trying to
write something that's hyper melodic, there's like an entire country
of Sweden that can outright me.

Speaker 2 (01:23:21):
So it's not a big country.

Speaker 3 (01:23:22):
I just so I know that lyric and concept is
going to be the place that I can enter the
building first and then you know, just sort of piece
it together to the best of my ability. But that's
my that's my greatest skill, you know. But you're right
in terms of we all can end up in the
same place. But what's interesting is a guy like Max

(01:23:44):
and some of these writers who are so blessed melodically,
they can kind of hit it every time out because
they just hear things that other people don't hear. For me,
it's a little harder because I have to these concepts
have to be really unique to me and really and
they have to sort of hit beat that I feel
like are just so uniquely me that maybe it'll raise

(01:24:05):
its hand.

Speaker 2 (01:24:06):
So we've been talking for a long time and we
can stop at any time. But I have two more
questions that I think are important ominaries. I'm a sagittari, Okay,
so is my wife? See sort of explains it all.
It's all coming very cleared out, all right. So I
have two questions.

Speaker 3 (01:24:25):
All right.

Speaker 2 (01:24:25):
My first question is because people ask me this, like
do you know when you have a hit? I know
that's like such a generic question, but I feel like
it's important because I do. Sometimes you're like, in my
so's I'll talk about me for a second. Sometimes I
feel like I fucking killed it, and then I'll send
it to whoever sent it and they're like, this is
the worst. Sometimes I'll write what I believe is the
biggest piece of shit of all time and they'll be like,

(01:24:45):
its fucking genius, and I don't and and I've been
doing this for not as long as you have, but
long enough, and I still don't know. And like, to me,
that's a little bit of the excitement that I still
can't fucking figure this out. After thirty years, twenty five
years of doing this, I still can't figure out. I
should be able to fit, but I still can't.

Speaker 3 (01:25:04):
I definitely know, you know, one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (01:25:06):
Okay, because I asked Max the same question, and he
we were talking about how great he is. He's like,
everything to him is super subjective. So it's always just like,
I don't know, it's how I felt that day, like
why'd you write this? No? No, how I felt that day
like there's no I think. I think there's an idea
that there's like a math and a science to it,
and I think some of it is. But I think
a lot of it, more so than you would think,

(01:25:26):
is super subjective, where it's just like can I say something, yes, sorry,
I'm talking a lot. Fuck that guy all high and
Low here quest Love Supreme starring Bill had said this
is what this is What I would.

Speaker 3 (01:25:42):
Say, is I get the you know, I get a
galvanic response sort of it happens. There's certain songs where
I just instantly the chills start.

Speaker 2 (01:25:51):
Like handclap. Did you know one hundred percent?

Speaker 3 (01:25:53):
You did one hundred percent?

Speaker 2 (01:25:55):
Of course you said those songs are fucking awesome, you dick,
all right?

Speaker 3 (01:26:00):
You know? Someone to You by Banners a song that
nobody really heard. We heard Steve Day and our guy heard.
I don't even know if if Mike the artist heard,
but I was convinced that Someone to You by Banners
the second it left the room. I was like, man,
I just think I wrote a perfect song, like as

(01:26:20):
good as I can get. I believed everything about the
song would work. Everything was stacked against this song. It
took five and a half years for it to break.
It'll be at a billion streams in a year. It's
a big song. And the truth is I knew it
the second this kid left the room. And this is
like a young artist who you know, was at the
stage in his career where I don't know if he
could sell out of Starbucks yet, but I knew the

(01:26:42):
song was perfect. And they're just all you need to
There's certain songs, you know. You know I knew Check, yes, Julia,
it was going to be huge. I know, there's just
certain ones along the way. You know, I could pinpoint
you know that. I definitely wait for Superman by Docot
would be a big song. They're just songs where we

(01:27:02):
leave the room and I think, wow, this is a
big this just works. I can see it sort of.

Speaker 2 (01:27:06):
And was it like a chill thing because that happens
to me from time to time, where it's like you
hear something you're like, oh, I can't not trust my body.
Having a completely out.

Speaker 3 (01:27:13):
Of band cloud, high Hopes, Check, Ustruliat, all three of them.

Speaker 2 (01:27:16):
Yes, Yeah, I believe that absolutely.

Speaker 3 (01:27:18):
And also the Banner song, and also that James c.
W ballad. I left there and I thought to myself, Okay,
when you love someone, it's like a mid tempo e ballad.
It doesn't really have a pulse and it's not a
rhythmic record. I have no idea who's going to play
this thing. And it's the best song I've ever written.
It's gonna get heard, and it did. And people find things.
Sometimes people find things that are pretty good. Doesn't happen

(01:27:40):
a lot now there's so much content out there. It's harder.
But sometimes if something actually you know, and trust me,
everything I do isn't that good, But every once in
a while one of them is. And I like to
believe there are very few that I think people really
slept on, do you know what I mean. I don't
look back. I don't have that catalog full of songs
where I think, oh, this should have been, should have
been if they if they weren't hits, it's usually a

(01:28:02):
reason they weren't.

Speaker 2 (01:28:03):
Is there one song you wish you had written?

Speaker 3 (01:28:06):
Changes daily?

Speaker 2 (01:28:09):
I love that's your answer.

Speaker 3 (01:28:11):
It really changes daily. I think the you know, I think,
at the end of the day, best of my Love
by the Emotions is a song. I think that's the
to me, that's the most perfect record I can think of.
Or September by earth Wind and Fire, both of those
Ali willis earth Wind and Fire. One thing about both
of those songs is it Morey's white? Is they got

(01:28:36):
feel good? Right? I like feel good records. I like
music that's uplifting and feels good. You know, I've only
had two ballads work in my entire life. When labels
call and say, oh, this just needs a ballad for
this record, I tell them to call somebody else because
I'm not that good. I like feel good, and I
do it because it probably I'm creating natural dopamine for

(01:28:58):
all my lows. I want to make music that balance
is how dark I can get.

Speaker 2 (01:29:04):
It turns out yeah, pretty dark.

Speaker 3 (01:29:05):
Yeah, So it's like that. That's how I that's what
I need to get to to keep my sanity. And
so records, those those classics that do that thing are
so beyond my capability, and I do my versions of
them and they're never on one hundredth is good and
just that those are the records. So basically, I want
to be more white. I think I've just learned.

Speaker 2 (01:29:25):
I mean, could be worse.

Speaker 3 (01:29:28):
All right.

Speaker 2 (01:29:29):
Sorry, Uh Sam has to receive a phone call from
Carol King.

Speaker 3 (01:29:34):
Uh Hi, hold on a second, Hi, please let it
be Carol wrapping up. Hold on, it's my daughters.

Speaker 2 (01:29:39):
Your daughter, my daughter, she's good. Okay, No, no.

Speaker 3 (01:29:42):
Don't you know called me in the car once. That
was a great flex. Ringo calls in the car. Fuck yeah,
I got Ringo calls. And the one that I'd say
is Ringo called in the car one day and I
was driving around with it here. This is like the
name drop of all name drops.

Speaker 2 (01:29:54):
Is it Ringo? Please say?

Speaker 3 (01:29:55):
Oh my god, no, it's my you know love this
This is what my life's devolved to. Is my parking.
My parking expires in ten minutes in not Grisco, New York.
Just important factory. But right now fun fight, definitely not.
But one thing I'll tell you about Ringo is it
took me like five years to even get his phone number.

(01:30:17):
And we you know, we wrote a bunch of songs
and finally I hit him up. I was like, Dad,
you gotta give me your phone number. And he's like,
I'm not giving you my fucking number. And I was
like okay, because I'll give you like the landline in
our house that goes to an answer machine. Neither I'll
call you back or I won't.

Speaker 2 (01:30:31):
Like Bill Murray, Yes, it was very Bill Murray.

Speaker 3 (01:30:32):
But you know, truthfully, I did it because I'm desperate.
So one night I left on a message and then
I flew down to Florida and I'm driving around Florida.
You're gonna dig this flex. It's me, my my brother's
brother in law, Peter and Bill Cower, ex coach of
the Hall of Fame, coach of the Liverburgs Dealers.

Speaker 2 (01:30:49):
Yeah, Jesus. And we're driving home with cousin Jake. Who's
fucking cousin Jake?

Speaker 3 (01:30:53):
How about this visual? So we're riding around, it's Cower
and Peter and the phone rings and answer it and
I hear, hey, you don't think you have him in?
And I do do, and I just go right to
speaker with it with no exposition. I'm like, what's up, man,
what do you got? He's like, what are you doing?
And I just see both of their faces sort of

(01:31:14):
do that thing, and I go, hey, ringo, say how
to coach Bill and Peter. It's a true story. And Ringo. Definitely.
I didn't, you know, I didn't go further on coach
Bill or Peter.

Speaker 2 (01:31:27):
What's on your phone? Did it say Ringo?

Speaker 3 (01:31:29):
No? So the thing about it is he he's one
of those people who comes with one of the block
numbers or whatever. Yeah, so it says, And so I
think that's either there's only three people I know who
have that. It's Ringo, my friend Matt Nathanson, and another flex.

Speaker 2 (01:31:42):
Those are very different people.

Speaker 3 (01:31:44):
You've never seen them in the same room. And nor
would you ever Why would bring gooing Matt nathan ever
go Matt Nathanson and my brother Ben. My brother Ben
calls for one of those numbers too, So how.

Speaker 2 (01:31:56):
Do you answer it? FBI, He's just he's a very
covert fella, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:32:00):
But I would say so somewhere. So I answered it.
It happened to be Ringo. And that was a great
reveal for everyone in the car. Okay, that's all I got,
you know, the good folks. I just want to I
want to thank him here. That was honestly, thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:32:18):
I'd get so much for this. This might Hey, Jake,
this might be my last and only podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:32:24):
Can we just say one thing yeah, cop Rock, cop Rock?
Why is ninety Stephen botchko one season replacement? Sam Hollander?

Speaker 2 (01:32:32):
You the king of the name dropped like Minutia.

Speaker 3 (01:32:37):
You know it was a great mid season replacement.

Speaker 2 (01:32:39):
Who what?

Speaker 3 (01:32:40):
Manimal? Google? Manimal?

Speaker 2 (01:32:42):
What was that?

Speaker 3 (01:32:43):
Y'all weren't born yet? But if you know Manimal?

Speaker 2 (01:32:45):
How old are you really?

Speaker 3 (01:32:46):
Uh? Well, we say so far? Twenty eight ninety four?

Speaker 2 (01:32:51):
Pie carry the one?

Speaker 3 (01:32:53):
You're Honestly, a lot of people would say seven.

Speaker 2 (01:32:55):
You're fifty? Your what fifty two?

Speaker 3 (01:32:57):
I don't know what that is? What is a fifty? Wow?

Speaker 2 (01:33:00):
Old are you really?

Speaker 3 (01:33:01):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:33:02):
You look like you piloted Jimmy Buffett's boat.

Speaker 3 (01:33:07):
She should look like should look like me and Jack
Klugman at the racetrack, you know, ponies in nineteen sixty nine.

Speaker 2 (01:33:17):
I think collectively that you and I look like Stafford
and Waldorf from the fucking Muppets, and we could probably
be them when we get a little bit older or
for you.

Speaker 3 (01:33:26):
Not old for me, for you, just man for me
growing down?

Speaker 2 (01:33:29):
Yeah, Okay, it looks like you run a teaky bar
in marathon.

Speaker 3 (01:33:34):
Key. Look, here's the thing. I'm a festive guys. I
think you've noticed, and I'm spirited. I'm joyous until i'm not.

Speaker 2 (01:33:42):
You look like you celebrate Hanukkah three hundred and sixties
in Margarita Ville. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much
for listening to me and Sam talk about songwriting and
our lives and Judaism and all those things. Okay, I'll
leave it this because I look, we've known each other
a while. I don't read books. I read your whole

(01:34:03):
fucking book, Sam, and I feel like you need to
understand that that's a big deal.

Speaker 3 (01:34:07):
Let me tell you something.

Speaker 2 (01:34:07):
But hold on, No, no, you talked a lot. I'm talking,
so then it is your interview. But who cares. Okay,
there's a great there's a great line where you're giving
with one of your bonus cut tracks, whatever the hell
you call it. You wrote. You write stay Wild and
stay Weird, And I feel like that hit home for me.
The reason is is because I think that that's important.
Like if there's anything I've learned from Sam, it's like
he's a true original. He doesn't succumb to any of

(01:34:29):
the bullshit, and he does Sam, and I feel like that,
in addition to this shirt is like really sums the
whole thing up. And I think that if you want
to leave anything here personally speaking, I want to leave
with that. And I think that that's a good moment.
Thank you very much, Sam Hollander. You're a fucking legend
to say whatever you want.

Speaker 3 (01:34:47):
It's a Paul Smith shirt.

Speaker 2 (01:34:49):
It costs so much money in addition to my customs,
Ford Broncos and all of this house in Bedford Hills.

Speaker 3 (01:34:57):
Can I say something, can say something? Yes, yes, go ahead.
Here's what I would say. The most important thing I
want to say about stay wild and stay weird.

Speaker 2 (01:35:04):
I thought so that should be your shirt.

Speaker 4 (01:35:05):
You know, market What I believe, I truly believe this
is if you are blessed enough to do this with
your life professionally, and you catch some breaks and you
actually get to, you know, turn some of these weird
fucking dreams and realities.

Speaker 3 (01:35:25):
It should never be lost on you how crazy it is.
And don't conform. If you ever were able to permeate
the system as an outsider, I was the ultimate outsider.
I didn't want to play with inside the lines. I mean, honestly,
I'm so unfiltered, and usually you're punished for that, but thankfully.
The music business, if you have any success, you're actually

(01:35:46):
rewarded for it, which is crazy. And so what I've
learned in all these years of doing it is I just,
honestly I trust my own weird little inner mechanisms. I
chase whatever I chase, and I'm just I don't have
the best time possible doing it because I still wake
up every fucking day and I can't even believe that
I got to do this in my life because there

(01:36:08):
were not a lot of other options.

Speaker 2 (01:36:11):
Take it from us, two lawyers, Thank you, goodnight, thank you,
thank you for listening to Quest Love Supreme. This podcast
is hosted by Mere Quest Love Thompson, Liyah Saint Clair Sugar,
Steve Mandel, and myself unpaid Bill Schrman. The executive producers
are Meir just walked into the Goddamn room, Thompson, Sean
g and Brian Calhoun. Produced by Brittany Benjamin, Jake Paine

(01:36:34):
and liahs Sinclair. Edited by Alex Conroy I Know Alex Conroy.
Produced for iHeart by Noel Brown.

Speaker 1 (01:36:49):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio. For
more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Hosts And Creators

Laiya St. Clair

Questlove

Popular Podcasts

40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season

Dateline NBC

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Sam Hollander