Episode 162: The TC Singularity
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Transcript
Time Crisis back again. This week we get back to the Beatles. We talk Let It Be,
their new TV show, and so much more. We also talk about Corona Island, Arby's
Vodka, and the new Grateful Dead film. This is a very TC.
Time Crisis with Ezra Koenig.
Time Crisis back again. This one's a real time crisis. Everyone's got somewhere to
go, so we're trying to... Some people don't know this. Sometimes when we record Time Crisis,
it stretches as long as seven hours, which is quite a bit of work for the editors. In
fact, recently we unearthed about 60 hours of never-before-heard Time Crisis footage,
and using new technology, we're going to edit that down to a six-hour thing. That's going
to take years, though. We're going to create some very realistic animation, and that's
going to come out in a three-part series in a few years. But yeah, truly, we go way over.
But today we're doing it real time. We got to really bring our A game, but we're off
to a bad start. Seinfeld's not even here.
Trim the fat.
Lord knows what he's up to. Jake and Nick are here.
Seinfeld has a nine-to-five job, and when we tape during the day, it's a real problem.
True. He's a working stiff.
Yeah, we're squeezing it in.
You're lucky, Jake. We make our own schedules.
Yeah, I sort of do.
[laughs]
Off to a killer start, guys. No fat to trim.
Yeah.
This is why we'll never do a TC live show.
Tell me more about that.
Because we're terrible.
Unlike the Beatles, we're terrible under pressure.
There he is.
Well, we've never been under real pressure. Hold on. This show might be a diamond in the
rough. Let's not throw it away soon. Seinfeld, welcome back.
What's going on?
Well, listen.
You're looking rugged, son.
Seinfeld's got a rugged look. Don't feel any pressure.
However, we do have to trim the fat on today's episode. We've got to get right in.
We're going to jump in. There's been so much TC news.
There's such a category of TC stuff now.
It truly feels like sometimes the universe just delivers it just for us to talk about.
You don't even know how much good stuff there is that doesn't make it into the show.
I hit the thread recently. I was in Paris recently.
I was walking down the street and I kept seeing these ads for Burger King.
Burger King France is up to some very freaky stuff.
From what I could glean doing zero research, they have a new bacon burger and they have
bits of bacon in the bun.
But we don't even need to talk about it. That's just an example of the type of TC content
that's just kind of flowing all over the world at any given time.
The thing that really blew up the TC thread recently was the announcement of something really big.
And that's the Grateful Dead biopic.
And it's not enough that it's just a Grateful Dead biopic.
Just to underscore how TC this is, it's directed by Martin Scorsese.
And if you're familiar with the longstanding TC bit in my neighborhood,
which is a kind of thought experiment, an exercise that we do when we listen to
classic music of the 50s and 60s, sometimes we speak over it in an Italian American accent
talking about in my neighborhood.
And that's a tribute to the films of Martin Scorsese.
He's a major influence on Time Crisis.
So that's one thing. And second of all, this Grateful Dead film stars friend of the show
multiple times as a guest, Jonah Hill.
So to say that we're excited for this film, I think is an understatement.
And it's made by our parent company.
Oh, and Apple's making it?
In a real crazy turn of events, I actually know one of the screenwriters pretty well.
Really?
Yeah, Larry Karaszewski.
We actually had our wedding party at his house.
Ah, yes. I thought so. So I guess I met him briefly.
And he had texted me like, I forget when, maybe six months ago.
And he's like, I can't say what, but I'm cooking something up right now
that you're going to be very excited about.
And you said, well, hold on, Larry.
I'm pretty sure they already have a screenwriter attached to the Richard Montaigne's biopic,
Flamin' Hot. Maybe they brought you in to do some rewrites.
That'd be cool.
I said, well, Larry, as far as I know,
Steven Soderbergh is not going to be directing the Robert Pollard biopic starring Todd Berenger.
So what's left?
Ooh, Dead. Anyway, yeah, I was like, is this Dead related?
And he was just sort of like, sent an emoji that was sort of like...
Mums the word.
Yeah.
The new drunk drivers
Have hoisted the flag
We are with you in your anger
Proud brothers
Do not fret
The bus will get you there
To carry us to the lake
The club is open
Yeah, the club is open
Hey, the club is open
Come on, come on, the club is open
Come on, come on, the club is open
The main thing that I've been thinking about, and actually we've texted about this,
we haven't really gotten to talk about it.
But of course, the first thing that comes to mind is like, what is this movie going to focus on?
I'm so curious about it because is it going to be just like opens 1961, Palo Alto, California?
Yeah. Jerry's giving mandolin lessons.
I could totally picture that. Yeah, it's almost like a little bit of like inside Llewyn Davis energy.
It's like a West Coast inside Llewyn Davis.
Well, I guess, wait, what was he? He was a real shredder on banjo.
Like a local banjo teacher and his young student, Bob Weir, try acid for the first time.
And it's just like 24 hours in early 60s Palo Alto.
Because I like that. I'm buying a ticket for that.
It's like a prequel, right? Very square folk community.
Maybe we have Robert Hunter entering into the CIA sponsored Stanford runs acid experiments.
Totally. The main characters are Robert Hunter, Bob Weir, Jerry Garcia, and Corbin Bernson plays a CIA agent.
Right. It turns out Jonah Hill playing Jerry Garcia is only in it for about five minutes.
We just see a few scenes of him teaching banjo and mandolin lessons.
And actually it's mainly Robert Hunter being dosed in the CIA.
And about 50% of it's a cartoon featuring the voices of Zendaya, The Rock, and Ryan Reynolds.
I think there could be something really fun about like the square version.
Just like just before the tide turned. Yeah, the folk world, maybe a touch of acid.
Some Stanford University house parties, that kind of vibe.
That would be cool. I mean, of course, it'd be the late 60s San Francisco would be cool.
Maybe a Scorsese, I'm sure he's read chaos.
Maybe we'll actually, there'll be a little bit of like that energy.
Charles Manson living next door.
I guess, of course, it might be just the whole epic story of their whole lives.
That's my bet. So you think this movie starts out with clean shaven Jonah,
kind of dressed like Peter, Paul and Mary style, little goatee, short sleeve button down shirt.
Yeah. Was Jerry clean shaven or he had a goatee? I think he had a goatee.
He had that like folk music look of the goatee, short hair, button down shirt.
Like a well-oiled goatee. Yeah.
And then it ends with like the full gray beard.
Is it going to be like an Irishman three hour epic?
There's so many different Jerry hairstyles because then like early dead days,
it was like clean shaven, but like mutton chops with like dark hair.
And then there was like the classic, like still dark hair,
but like full beard with like the sort of like aviator frames with those sort of like rose tint on them.
And then, yeah, then obviously Papa Bear.
Yeah. Then enters Papa Bear territory.
Do you think there's going to be a scene with young Jerry Garcia losing his finger?
Oh yeah. That's a good point. Like you had to even start with childhood.
I mean, and if you really want to get into the character, as we've talked about on the program before,
you know, Jerry had like a pretty harsh childhood.
Not only did he lose his finger in a wood cutting accident, he also watched his father die.
Oh, right.
His father drowned in the Russian river.
They were at a kind of a family country house, you know, out in the sticks far from San Francisco.
And he watched his father drown as like a six year old or something.
I mean, if it was about any other musician, a hundred percent, that would start.
There'll be like a little kid playing Jerry with the Grateful Dead.
Yeah. It depends how Jerry centric it is.
That's something we also don't know because all the headlines have said Grateful Dead biopic.
Jonah Hill set to star as Jerry.
Now it's possible that, you know, people are making a big fuss because, you know,
Jonah is a famous, excellent actor. He's going to play Jerry.
But, you know, for all we know, they just haven't cast the rest of it yet.
And there's going to be, you know, it's about the whole band.
I wonder if we'll get any big names playing the rest of the band,
or if it's going to be like Jonah Hill is Jerry and like some kind of like unknowns kind of filling out the rest.
I thought maybe Martin Star could play Phil.
That's a good call.
I could see it. Yeah. I could see like you get the early days, the 60s, psychedelic counterculture stuff.
I could see them kind of yada yaying the 70s, just kind of breeze through like, yeah, they were.
And then like going to like touch era 80s.
Right. Almost because like the 70s are just too good.
Yeah. Not enough attention.
Yeah. It's like the band was playing great.
There'll be like a montage scene of like, yeah, man, Europe 72. That was crazy.
Right. That was awesome.
Apple spent 80 million dollars to bring the whole production to Egypt.
And then we watched the movie. It's 45 seconds.
Yeah. They did not CGI the pyramids. They shot.
Marty, you're killing me. CGI the pyramids, man.
Come on. Really not that important of a chapter in the dead's history.
Long distance rider, what you standing there for?
Get up, get on, get out of the door.
Playing cold music on the borrowed floor.
Drowning your laptop, dead to the core.
There's a jig in the matches that's too solid to tap.
No hope in the water just to cool him down.
Fire, fire on the mountain.
Fire, fire on the mountain.
What do you think the longest musical sequence in the film will be?
Because I assume that Marty's like a bit of a deadhead. He's definitely a rock fan.
Yeah. I'm sure he knows their catalog pretty well.
So I wonder if there's any, if it'll be important to him to
reproduce the jam experience in a cinematic style.
If Marty will be like, it wouldn't be the dead if we didn't have at least one
10 plus minute jam. And I want to capture that on film.
I mean, that could be an interesting moment that it's just a like it's an epic
morning do. And then, but he keeps cutting behind the scenes
because there's a CIA agent there trying to.
Just to remind everyone, Scorsese's produced
the documentary, the six part documentary that was on Amazon.
Right. Yeah. So he's been in the mix. His quote was there more than just a
band. They were their own planet populated by millions of devoted fans.
Interesting. Are there going to be any fan characters? Jesse Plemons is
Dick Lotvala. I don't even know what Dick Lotvala looks like.
Just. I have a prediction
guys. I think Ezra's going to get a call to
sort of guest in it. Cameo. Wow. That's a hell
of a prediction. I think Jonah knows
how deep it is. It's sort of like when Larry David does his remember when Larry
David and curb ends up being in that Scorsese film for
a second. I just, I can see it. You know, there's enough connections.
I can see that being like, Hey, as you want to, yeah, maybe as
you know, is Dick. Marty's been trying to get me to do something for a while.
Obviously I'm not an actor, man. I'm not an actor.
He wanted me to pop up in Hugo. So Marty,
I'm busy in the studio. Irishman.
He wanted you to have one line as an aid to RFK
and the Irishman. Yeah. I almost
did the Irishman that felt close to home. Nice
East coast flick. But now I truly am a terrible actor.
Well, I remember you were, you were in girl. I remember the only time I've ever seen you on screens.
You were in girl. I was in girls season two or something. That's
a great show by the way. Great program. Just an HB, just an excellent program.
It's an HBO. It was on HBO or yeah. Or showtime.
It definitely was premium cable. It wasn't comedy central or
FX stars. Yeah, that was another
big cameo. Ezra, you remember which one
you were in on the major laser cartoon.
And triumph, the comic dog show. Well, that show was called Jack
and triumph, a short lived show, but I love Jack
and I love triumph and they wrote something. And then I just remember when I got there, I was kind of
I did my best. It wasn't important that I was a good actor, but I just realized
I was in some plays growing up and a little bit in high
school. And I don't know. I just realized that I don't have what it takes.
I will say though, you know, it does have what it takes.
Have any of you guys seen licorice pizza? I haven't seen it yet. I caught a screening
over here a couple weeks ago. Alana truly is an
excellent actor. I believe it. I'm very excited for this movie.
Oh, you're going to love it. It's so up your alley. I'm sure. It's a pure
Jake film, but as far as a musician with no previous
acting experience, like truly excellent.
Unnatural. We'll talk about that when more people have seen it. Back to
the Grateful Dead film. Yeah. I wonder, is it going to be just
full of, I mean, that's pretty Scorsese to have random
little cameos. They might be musicians. Bradley Cooper as
Steve Miller. Right. I mean, exactly. It's like, how much do you fill out
how epic and sprawling is the universe? Like, is there going to be someone playing Bob Dylan?
Right. Is there going to be someone playing, you know, like
is there a scene at Altamont? Like, is there, you know, someone playing Mick Jagger?
Or, you know, like there's so many. Harry Styles as Mick Jagger.
And it's like, you know, like a 90 second scene.
Just Jonah and Harry Styles. Jonah's like, "Not cool, man."
And Harry Styles is like, "Oh, come on, man. It's
all right. Come on, Jerry. Like, chill out, man." Everybody just cool
out. Everybody cool out. I mean, you know, I remember
in the documentary, there is footage. I think we've talked about it. There is footage
of Jerry and Mick interacting. It's unclear if that was
that day or it might have been in England. And just like pretty funny
just to see these two dudes who are like obviously from the same era, but just
in many ways, as far as front men go, cannot be more different. Kind of
Jerry, big smile on his face and just Mick like, "That'd be cool."
If that was a moment. But yeah, I think you're right, Jake. I gotta say, though, the 80s is where the drama is.
This casting of Jonah is just genius, though, because
Jerry was like a very funny dude. Oh, absolutely.
He had such a great sense of humor. And yeah, I just love that
they cast Jonah. Friend of the show, Jonah, because it's just, yeah. He's
gonna nail it. Yeah, yeah. I think it'll be great. I'm curious if he's like,
does he play guitar? Do you know? Does he play an instrument? We gotta get him back on
the show. He probably can't say too much. Well, I know that, I know Jonah plays
bass. I think he plays guitar. I know, I feel
like Jonah's into music for sure. And I'm pretty sure he
played bass in a high school or a college band. That's tight.
Don't quote me on this. We'll double check when we have him back on the show. But yeah, I have this vision
of Jonah plays bass. In an unusual choice,
not everything's gonna be one-to-one in the Scorsese film.
A few small changes. For one, Jerry plays bass.
Just, you know, Jonah, Jonah had a little more experience
with the instrument, but the Phil Lesch character will play guitar. So, all the
music will actually be the same, but it's gonna be Jerry on bass. I just love
the thing about him watching like YouTube videos of Live Dead
and just like being in his house, like holding a guitar, like
just like mimicking the like physicality of Jerry and just like, I'm very
fascinated by this process. I mean, that's the whole fascinating thing too, is just
like non-musician actors who play musicians,
how hard do they go? I guess it depends. Does the director
cut around their hands or do people learn
just enough that they don't, that it kind of syncs up? Because you could also picture
like, yeah, if you get your rhythm right, say for instance you were playing like some
classical pianist and there are gonna be scenes of your hands moving.
If you get the rhythm right, nobody's gonna care if like the actual audio is like
(imitates clock)
- Yeah, yeah.
- As long as it's like, (imitates clock)
even if it's messy as hell,
just the fact that you move in time ought to be enough.
- Yeah, just like, I mean, I feel like,
I'm just picturing those like kinda eighties concerts,
when Jerry was like so stationary,
but his, he had a very specific stance.
- Yeah.
- And very specific, like physicality,
which is pretty subtle in a way.
And so I'm just, I'm just very curious to see
how that all plays out.
- Or maybe there won't be a lot of music in it.
- Yeah, it could go, obviously that's a choice
somebody could make.
They could say, he might say, "Everybody knows the music.
"This is about the people."
- Who's gonna play Bobby?
- Yeah, I wonder, are these gonna be like,
I could totally see the casting of the rest of the band,
like they announced them and we're kinda like,
"Oh, we were like hoping it was gonna be
"just like a fun mix of people."
And they're just like, "No, no, these are all like
"really respected New York stage actors."
- Yeah.
- Like this guy was on two episodes of "Mad Men,"
but he's better known actually for his stage work.
- All right.
- Zachary Quinto as Bill Kreutzman.
(laughing)
- I'd love to get my hands on that script.
Yeah, and is it gonna end with like Jerry dying?
Is it even gonna make it there?
- You know what would be really psychotic?
If it was just sort of like,
Jerry dies halfway through the film.
It's 1995 and then the second half of the film
is about a rat dog. - John Mayer.
- And a furtherance. - Yeah, venture against it.
- Yeah, further venture getting to dead and co.
- What if the whole film is like framed around
an episode of "Time Crisis" as like a framing device?
And you know like on an episode of "Frasier"
when like "Frasier" is telling a story,
but then I get a detail wrong.
And so they like go back, they're like,
you know what I mean?
Like, "No, I wasn't wearing that sweater."
- No, no, no, no, hold on there, Niles.
That wasn't quite correct.
(laughing)
- Yeah, like Jake gets a year wrong
and they're like, "Oh no, it was actually 1979."
And then it like flips to like a different thing.
You know what I'm saying?
- Oh, absolutely.
- It opens like this with all of us logging in,
you know, and sort of getting the tech right
of the FaceTime.
- Yeah.
- And then as we talk, it sort of goes back,
you know, flashes back.
- Well, also I like the, when Jake talking about
the Dick Laudvalla character, I could totally picture it.
It's like, it opens, you're in this dark room,
an archive going down these long hallways
filled with tapes and stuff.
And then finally you get to a solitary man
sitting with headphones on
in this big empty kind of warehouse,
Daniel Day-Lewis as Dick.
He's taking notes.
- Hello, I'm Dick.
(laughing)
- Listening to the show and-
- These are my picks.
- That's our way in.
And every pick Dick makes suddenly flashes back
to a different era of Dead History.
- Oh, I love this.
- It's that, no, that's pretty good.
That's pretty, he just looks at the tape
and then it sort of starts to flash back
as he sort of just, you know, reads the set list
on the back of the tape and then puts it down,
picks up another one.
He's just going through his,
basically going through his garage.
- It's kind of like Titanic or something.
- Yeah, Dick picks up the tape.
Also there's that Steve Jobs movie
where they chose to tell the story of Steve Jobs
through three Apple keynotes
at three inflection points in his career.
- Right.
- Famously Seth Rogen as Wozniak.
- Oh, right.
Was that the one with Fassbender?
- Yeah, Fassbender was Jobs.
So that was an interesting take to pick three keynotes.
You could also picture this one as three dead concerts.
I could totally see that kind of working.
The first one's an acid test,
whatever that would be like 66.
- Well, I'm thinking 19,
like the 65 show in Palo Alto at the pizzeria.
- Magoo's?
- Yeah, you start there.
- Yeah, it's the Warlocks.
And they're just like walk out just like,
oh man, that show's awesome.
Yeah, then maybe you cut to the 70s,
then like a really dark 80s show
just before Jerry goes into a coma.
And then one more like kind of 90s resurgence,
Soldier Field, I don't know.
- Yeah.
- And obviously in between we have these like
very artful 10 minute sequences of Daniel Day-Lewis
as Dick returning the reel to reel to the shelf,
running his fingers until he finds the right one,
picks it up, smells it, looks at it,
and is instantly transported back to that moment.
- Oklahoma City, 1974.
(laughing)
- This is my pick.
(laughing)
♪ Laying back in Oakland with a face over my head ♪
♪ Watching the bars and children on the street ♪
♪ Black patched lips, black white girls who giggle ♪
♪ I smile at the little fella who wants to chime my feet ♪
♪ Been a three days ride from Bakersfield ♪
♪ And I don't know why I can't ♪
♪ I guess I came to pee from bare feet ♪
♪ So it's 10 I've got to follow ♪
♪ And a girl is just 14 ♪
♪ In an empty case of the Mexicado ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪
♪ Is there anything a man don't stand to lose ♪
♪ When the devil wants to take it all away ♪
♪ Turn the swellies off, keep the dice in front of you ♪
♪ 'Cause we could make it all our happy days ♪
- Wow.
Really something to look forward to.
Also the--
- When is this gonna come out?
Like three years?
- Yeah, we're not getting this movie
for two, three years minimum,
'cause they just announced it.
They haven't even started shooting it.
- Right.
So they'll probably shoot it next year, hopefully.
So maybe we'll get it in 2023.
- Maybe, 'cause I kind of remember
that Scorsese's next film is called
"Killers of the Flower Moon."
- Yeah.
- And I kind of remember it because about five years ago,
I started writing a song with Sam Gendel,
legendary saxophonist, called "Flower Moon."
- Right.
- So, you know, in the years
before the album actually came out,
every once in a while,
I'd be thinking about the concept of,
maybe I'd still be working on the lyrics,
or I'd Google "Flower Moon,"
just to see if anything else was out there.
So I was hyper aware when it was announced
that Scorsese was making a film based on a book
called "Killers of the Flower Moon."
So anyway, that movie's still not out,
and I feel like I first heard about that
four or five years ago.
So, you know, these things take time.
Maybe by the time "The Grateful Dead" movie comes out,
we will have talked about it so much,
we will have to have actually cracked the code
on what happens in it.
- Right, when it finally comes out,
we'll be talking about other stuff,
and we won't get to it for three months
after it comes out.
- Guys, should we capitalize on the heat
and make our own "Grateful Dead" movie
to sort of come out a couple weeks before Scorsese?
- During Seth Rogen.
- Yes!
- Well, hold on.
- Rogen is Jerry.
- Seth Rogen is not a friend of the show, Jonah is.
So, look, he might be--
- But he's already attached to another project.
- No, no, Jonah's attached to the Scorsese "Grateful Dead"
film playing Jerry,
but that doesn't mean that he wouldn't wanna
be in our movie where he would get to play,
I don't know.
- He could play himself. - Mickey Heart's dad?
- Ooh.
- Oh, wow.
First of all, Jonah would kill in that role.
Yeah, that's great, Jake.
In this movie, Jonah plays Mickey Heart's dad,
and it's just about the infamous incident
where he absconded with the bread.
- I like the idea that Jonah,
what if, just to make it simple,
what if Jonah plays Jerry in our version
of the things we think are gonna,
the things that happen in Scorsese's film?
Do you know what I'm saying?
- Oh, interesting, yeah.
- So he's himself-- - Kind of meta.
- Very Kaufman, yeah.
- Yeah.
- So we get to do Daniel Day-Lewis,
we get to do it all,
but we are making what we think Scorsese will make.
- Yeah.
- Vignetti, it just seems simple.
- And honestly--
- Also, we get all the heat of Scorsese film.
- Very simple.
- And I'm being totally serious right now.
- Let's throw this together.
- I would never dream of competing with Scorsese
in terms of artistry.
He's an absolute legend,
he's made some of my favorite movies.
But I will say, if we can get Daniel Day-Lewis,
we could really make some noise.
We might actually blow him out of the water.
If we could get Jonah Hill and Daniel Day-Lewis,
I don't think Scorsese has a chance.
And I know everybody's thinking,
well, how are you gonna get Daniel Day-Lewis?
He's retired from acting, whatever.
But you don't know until you ask.
And sometimes if you bring somebody a really cool role--
- Huge deadhead.
- We're all Hollywood adjacent in this circle.
We know a little bit about how the business works.
And you don't know until you try.
And for all we know, he's sitting there saying,
all right, I announced that I retired from acting.
Of course that some people
are gonna not offer me roles anymore.
But I mean, I thought some people might try.
Here I am sitting on my ass in a castle in Ireland.
I thought somebody might say,
well, you are the greatest actor of all time.
Here's an idea.
I'm a little bit offended that nobody's hitting me up.
Then somebody says, I got an idea for you.
Dick Latvala starts thinking like,
oh my God, this is the role
that's gonna bring me out of retirement, I'm in.
We'll have to parent trap him.
'Cause we'll say, we'll tell him,
and we got Jonah Hill's Jerry Garcia.
He might glance at the news and say,
oh yeah, I heard about that.
Say, yep, that's our movie.
And then we'll go back to Jonah and say,
listen, I know Scorsese's your boy,
but if you ever wanted to act with Daniel Day-Lewis,
you got it.
- You won't actually have any scenes with him.
He's alone in his garage.
- It'll be like "Heat" where the two main actors only meet.
They meet at a diner about four fifths of the way through.
- I think you're right though.
I think you get Daniel Day, you secure Daniel Day,
and the rest will come
because everybody will wanna be in a film
that's his first film post-retirement.
And just tell him we're doing it micro-budget,
under 10K, call in favors.
'Cause what we wanna do, I think, with this film
is really prime the pop.
We're not even competing really.
We're just priming the pop for the Scorsese film
that's the main event.
- Almost think of it like a marketing tool.
- Yeah, exactly. - Oh, absolutely.
All ships rise.
When there's a healthy "Grateful Dead" movie ecosystem,
maybe by the end we even get Scorsese directing this thing.
That probably has happened
in some truly absurd Hollywood (beep).
There's two competing biopics,
and little by little, one of them,
just through all sorts of treachery and lies,
little by little gets people moving to it,
until by the end it's literally
the exact same group of people except for the producer.
I'm sure that's happened.
- I have two more casting thoughts.
- Yeah?
- Adam Driver as Mickey Hart.
- I could see that.
- Shanning Tatum as Bob Weir.
- Whoa, I mean, it's way too jacked.
- Well, yeah, he'd have to slim down.
- Right, I could see that if he slimmed down.
Also, is there any role for Leo in this?
- Pigpen.
- Leo as Pigpen?
- You sort of see it, like, you know,
when he's doing his, in the Tarantino movie,
when he's doing his sort of hippie,
you know, that's the cowboy house?
You know, he's doing his hippie cowboy,
you know, bad guy?
- Oh, absolutely. - In the Western.
See that?
- I frankly could have modeled, you know, after that.
- That scene when he's just putting his face in ice water
and just coughing?
- Yeah.
- Oh yeah, excellent.
Well, look, however you slice it,
this is something to be excited about.
I'm sure it'll be returned to this topic many times.
What else has been going on in the world?
I mean, we've got a list here
of so many TC-centric products and collabs.
I mean, let's see.
Let's see if we even give a (beep)
about any of this stuff.
Some of this stuff truly sounds like something
we could have made up five years ago.
- Should we go rapid fire?
Should we go rapid fire? - Let's go rapid fire.
- And get Jake's takes maybe?
- Yeah.
Justin Bieber and Tim Hortons teaming up.
Real, fake, or who gives a (beep), Jake?
- Well, I like it.
I like that he's back with his, you know, back to his roots.
Canadian company, Canadian star, I like it.
- I think this is big for Tim Horton.
I don't think they've ever done a bigger celebrity collab.
There was the Shawn Mendes thing a couple of years ago
with Shawn Mendes with his, he was on the Cups,
but this is much bigger.
- Is there buzz in the Canadian community
about this, Seinfeld?
- I have a friend who went this morning, actually,
'cause I think it dropped today,
and he got up early to catch the heat right when they opened.
I think there's some good buzz going about it, anecdotally.
- And all it is is a new line of combinations
for its popular Timbits?
- Oh, that's right, yeah, Timbits,
which is Tim Horton's donut holes.
Yeah, he's got his own kind of custom flavors going here.
- He's doing chocolate white fudge,
sour cream chocolate chip,
that sounds pretty good, actually,
and birthday cake waffle.
Okay.
They were developed in collaboration
between Bieber and chef, Tallis Vokes,
Tim Horton's director of culinary innovation,
and they're being renamed TimBibs.
Is Tallis Vokes like a household name in Canada, Seinfeld?
- No, this is the first time I'm hearing that name.
- Let me get a number crunch on chef, Tallis Vokes.
I'm curious about their background.
And there was an ad for this collaboration
that features Bieber in a 60-second commercial
that shows him brainstorming with a Tim Horton's executive
who happily writes Bieber's worst ideas onto a whiteboard.
I haven't seen it, but I can picture the commercial.
This is that same type of self-aware branding
where everybody gets to be kind of like,
Justin Bieber and Tim Hortons, it's kind of awesome,
and it's also kind of silly and predictable,
so now let's have Justin kind of playing a dumb celebrity
who's pitching all these bad ideas,
and the executive's going,
"Absolutely, whatever you want,"
and they're almost poking fun at the whole concept
of collabs and celebrity endorsements.
But here's what Bieber had to say about it.
"Doing a Tim Horton's collab
has always been a dream of mine."
By the way, it's so amazing that the phrase collab
or collab has become just so fundamental.
It's truly its own word.
- Right.
- Has always been a dream.
Like, yeah, when Justin Bieber was seven,
was he thinking about like,
when he walked into Tim Hortons,
he was thinking, "One day I want to collab with you."
I grew up on Tim Hortons.
It's always been something close to my heart.
I'm sure that's true.
I'm sure he really does have a deep affection for the brand.
♪ Yeah, you got that yummy, yummy ♪
♪ Yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy ♪
♪ Yeah, you got that yummy, yummy ♪
♪ Yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy ♪
♪ Say the word, on my way ♪
♪ Yeah, babe, yeah, babe, yeah, babe ♪
♪ Any night, any day ♪
♪ Say the word, on my way ♪
♪ Yeah, babe, yeah, babe, yeah, babe ♪
♪ In the morning or the late ♪
♪ Say the word, on my way ♪
- So, Tell Us Vogue's is a splashy new hire for Tim Hortons.
He actually joined the TH team at the start of 2021.
He's a top chef.
He's worked at Nobu.
He's worked at Gordon Ramsay's restaurant.
(laughing)
- Wait, what?
Nobu? - For real?
- Is that their fancy sushi place in Malibu?
- Yeah, well, it's not just Malibu.
- It's all around the world.
- Robert De Niro is--
- Robert De Niro is a co-owner.
- Okay.
- So that means that there's only three degrees
of connection between the Grateful Dead movie
and the Justin Bieber-Tim Hortons collab.
- That's right.
- Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Tell Us Vogue's, Justin Bieber.
Everything's connected.
- And Tell Us Vogue's really--
- Everything's connected.
- It's all connected.
He's very impressive.
His role, by the way, is he's culinary lead at Tim Hortons.
He's worked at Gordon Ramsay's restaurant, May's,
which closed in 2018.
But of note, he's the food stylist for The Handmaid's Tale.
So anytime you see--
(laughing)
- What the hell?
- Well, anytime you see a shot, like a beauty shot
in The Handmaid's Tale, which is shot, by the way,
in Canada, side note.
When you see a beautifully stylized shot of some bread
or perhaps some porridge for the handmaids to dole out,
that has been styled by Tell Us Vogue's.
- I'm not hatin', that's a very random CV,
but you know what, we all have random CVs.
It's 2021.
- Yeah.
- Our talents take us to various places.
- You call it random, I call it diversified.
- Oh yeah, I call it smart. - Yes, very diversified.
- Oh no, let's not knock Tell Us side hustles here.
His resume is a tapestry of interesting things.
- There's just some big, disgusting, sweaty ham on the table.
(laughing)
- Take eight of this scene in The Handmaid's Tale,
he's like, "Hold on, I gotta get in there."
Like a spray bottle, just like re-glistening it.
Amazing.
- He's doing some press for some weird
post-modern academic journal, and just talking about,
"You know, I really tried to bring some of the kind
"of dystopian food stylings that I did on The Handmaid's Tale
"to the Justin Bieber collab.
"There truly is nothing more dystopian
"than the concept of Tim Biebs."
It's kind of a bit of Justin Bieber,
a bit of Handmaid's Tale, a little bit of Nobu.
I brought my whole history into this project.
- I like also, he's doing Handmaid's Tale,
and he's really trying to sort of cross-promote,
and he keeps slipping Tim bits.
(laughing)
Come on!
Enough with the Tim bits.
- When's the Handmaid's Tale Tim Horton's collection dropping?
Can you find an email for Talas?
That'd be a cool guest.
- He's on LinkedIn.
- Great.
- We could talk to him.
- I think that this is an important,
we've been talking about Tim Hortons
for a long time on this show.
This is a really interesting collab.
So I'll just say, for an upcoming episode,
let's put out feelers, and if we can either get
Justin Bieber or Chef Talas Vokes, I'll be happy.
- What's next?
- What's next?
Applebee's Cheetos Boneless Wings.
- Gross.
- Also, truly, we've reached the singularity.
Everything, it's all come together.
Everything exists.
Actually, I know that's not what the singularity really is,
but this is the TC singularity,
is just when every kind of like bizarre food collab
already exists.
- Yeah.
That's not even like shocking or interesting.
It's just sort of like--
- That's pure who gives a (beep)
- It feels like this really just depressing,
inevitable conclusion.
Moving on.
- I just want to say,
I believe we've talked about this before,
but really a boneless wing,
I mean, it's disgusting in its name.
It's grotesque, but really a boneless wing
is just a chicken finger.
I mean, even calling it, you know what I'm saying?
- I know, but it's not breaded and fried.
- Or it's not, I mean, a chicken nugget
or a chicken finger would be like ground chicken
that's like put into a patty and breaded.
- Wait, is this a slurry?
Is this a slurry?
- Is this a slurry?
Yeah, is a boneless wing a slurry?
- I think it's a slurry.
I think they're just ripping the bones out of the wings.
- Who's doing that?
- I assume you do that.
- Mechanically?
- Oh, absolutely mechanically.
- Okay.
- Well, yeah, I don't want to talk about--
- This is disgusting.
- But hold on, let's move on.
- Jake, wait, wait, no, Jake, Jake, I'm sorry.
Before we move on, I just want to--
- I gotta move us on, guys.
We're on a tight schedule.
(laughing)
- I think the word slurry,
that's a trigger word for Jake, slurry.
- Well, I think also we did a whole 45 minutes,
one episode about slurries.
And I remember the listener response was negative,
to say the least.
People were really--
- The TC heads don't like meat slurries.
- No one wants to hear about industrialized meat production.
- Before we move on, Jake, I just want to--
- I got it.
I just need to read one quote from Joel Yashinsky,
the chief marketing officer for Applebee's.
And he said, "Incorporating Cheetos into the menu
is a way to, quote, 'reach out to the Gen Z demo,
specifically and directly.
We see this as a great opportunity
to really connect with them on flavors.'"
That just gives us some insight
into how the marketing world thinks about Cheetos.
And by the way, these come in both original Cheetos flavors
and Flaming Hot.
And I guess Gen Z has spoken.
It's a Cheetos generation.
And the marketing world is listening to them.
- Gen G, Gen G.
- Gen, yeah, Gen G.
Yeah, Gen G, C-H-E-E.
- Guarantee you that product is bombing.
- I don't know.
- I don't know, man.
♪ Sometimes I feel like I just wanna go back to my old ways ♪
♪ You're telling me I'm silly ♪
♪ It's no fun in the old days ♪
♪ I'm such a romantic ♪
♪ I never remember how things really happen ♪
♪ I guess you're attractive or something ♪
♪ Live in the moment ♪
♪ That's what they tell me ♪
♪ But whatever happened ♪
♪ To when you would hold me and hold me and hold me ♪
♪ Girlfriend or girl that's a friend ♪
♪ It's easy just to pretend ♪
♪ That we don't have something real ♪
♪ It's just how we feel ♪
♪ We feel ♪
♪ Oh, it's just how we feel ♪
♪ How we feel ♪
- Okay, moving on.
I mean, truly, just the hits keep on coming.
We truly live in the TCU.
The TCU was expanding at such a rapid rate
that it is now exactly the same size as the known universe.
In other words, we live inside the time crisis universe.
Now we have Arby's Vodka.
Arby's released two limited edition
French fry flavored vodkas.
Arby's Curly Fry and Crinkle Fry Vodka.
It's a way to celebrate the addition
of crinkle fries to the Arby's menu.
- Insane.
- Well, okay.
- Does this even actually exist?
- I know, this is like a truly,
this product doesn't exist.
- Who the hell would want this?
The whole point of vodka too is that it's flavorless, right?
You add stuff to it.
- Well, people like flavored vodka.
I mean, have you ever been to like the Russian Tea Room
or something like that?
Sometimes when you go to like a Russian place,
they'll have like all these different kinds of vodka
that are different colors infused.
- Yeah, yeah.
- These are made from high quality potato vodka.
So I guess it makes sense.
It's potato on potato.
- But I agree, this feels like another one of these,
does this exist?
Or did they make 10 bottles as a goof,
mail them out to like regional distributors
and then just got some press?
- That's all it is.
I mean, whatever.
- I have a bit of a non-story around this product.
Hey, if you'll indulge me.
Well, when the news broke that this vodka was coming out,
I remembered that Arby's is following
my popular Seinfeld Twitter account
and I DMed them and I said,
"Hi Arby's, can I please get some vodka?"
No response for six days.
And then they replied, "Drive to your nearest computer
"and go to arbysvodka.com."
And it was just a place where I could fill out a thing
and pay for the vodka.
- Wow.
- Yeah, it felt like a bit of a diss, but there you go.
- And they said drive to your nearest computer?
- Yeah, I don't know why that was the verb,
but they're saying, you know,
"Here's where you can purchase it."
- That's disrespectful.
They were just (beep) with you, man.
- Yeah, it felt like they're--
- I mean, I guess they figure that's the game that you play
because maybe they interpret Seinfeld 2000
as being kind of, you know,
having that kind of detached meme,
nothing is sacred kind of vibe,
but they don't know that there's a real flesh and blood
human behind there who is actually looking
to try what sounds like a pretty cool vodka.
- Yeah, I was stoked, but I think you nailed it.
Listen, you put the memes in the feed.
When you're DMing someone else behind the scenes,
that's when the memes stop
and you're just two people interacting.
And for them to come back at you
with this kind of detached,
why don't you drive to your nearest computer
and feel like, you know what, shut the (beep) up.
- Exactly.
- This is just a guy standing in front of another guy,
another Vassar grad, asking for some free vodka.
- Grad to grad.
- Grad to grad.
They could have written back like,
oh, hey, listen, big fan of the account,
but actually we're not giving out anymore,
but I'd love to direct you this way
'cause honestly it's pretty good.
You should try it, dude.
No, instead they wanted to have a bit of fun.
- You know, with Arby's being a major joke in Seinfeld too,
with the character David Putty often suggesting
that they go to Arby's for dinner,
it feels like an Arby's night.
You'd think that an enterprising social media manager
might say, oh, there's some mean potential here,
but you know what?
You blew it, Arby's.
- Arby's has now become an enemy of the show.
- Straight up.
Let's get nihilist Arby's back.
- Yeah, we still like nihilist Arby's.
I mean, now Arby's is nihilist Arby's.
That's the singularity.
It's out here making vodka, (beep) with Seinfeld in the DMs.
Everything is beyond parody.
♪ You can walk on the water ♪
♪ Drown in the sand ♪
♪ You can fly off a mountain top ♪
♪ If anybody can ♪
♪ Run away, run away ♪
♪ It's the restless age ♪
♪ Look away, look away ♪
♪ You can turn the page ♪
♪ Hey buddy, would you like to buy a watch real cheap ♪
♪ Here on the street ♪
♪ I got sticks on each arm and two more on my feet ♪
♪ Life is a carnival ♪
♪ Believe it or not ♪
♪ Life is a carnival ♪
♪ Two bits a shot ♪
- Justin Bieber has his little Tim Hortons collection.
Applebee's has their Cheeto boneless wings.
Arby's has their little vodka.
But what about Corona?
Corona's got something a little bit bigger than all those.
- They've got a global pandemic.
- In the middle of a, they got a global pandemic.
But for people who forgot, Corona is a beer.
And they just announced that they've got their own island.
It's called Corona Island.
And it's a unique destination for visitors
to disconnect from the everyday
and reconnect with the natural world.
(laughing)
I love that.
Just like- - Very natural.
- A beer company being like,
God, it's so (beep) up.
People have lost touch with nature.
They don't have a way to just go connect
with the natural world.
Everything's about technology
through the weird filters of modernity.
People need a branded beer island
to reconnect with the natural world.
It's located in the Caribbean Sea.
(laughing)
Heard of it?
And it's gonna open in the spring.
The island's gonna open.
And they're hoping to receive a blue verified mark
from NGO Oceanic Global.
I don't know anything about this NGO
and I don't mean to throw them under the bus,
but there is a giant worldwide scam
where people start NGOs just to verify corporate stuff.
We could start some sort of NGO right now
that's like Time Crisis Global and be like,
yeah, we give everybody a golden seal
if their company is ethically in line
with the treatment of animals and the global supply chain.
Like there is all this weird stuff
where it sounds like super official,
but for all we know, they basically bought it or something.
But let's be open-minded.
Maybe Oceanic Global's one of the good ones
and they're just making sure that Corona Island
is really taking care of how they use plastic
and how they deal with waste and things like that.
- Felipe Ambra, the global vice president for Corona said,
"Corona Island is unlike anything we've ever done before.
As a brand that's so deeply connected with nature."
- How are you connected with nature?
'Cause the ads have people on a beach,
which is presumably like adjacent to like a huge hotel.
- Yeah, when I see those Corona ads,
I'm never picturing these people
just like backpacking on a deserted island.
They're always sitting in beach chairs.
- And you have ice cold beer,
which requires like multiple fridges.
- Right.
- So connected to nature's.
- I mean, all beer is connected to nature.
- This makes me think there needs to be
a Mountain Bruce song called Beach Bruce.
- Oh yeah.
Wait, that's actually,
I mean, when you do the full Jimmy Buffet thing,
that's Beach Bruce. - Oh, for sure.
Beach Bruce.
Beach Bruce is almost like a side project.
(laughing)
- Love that.
- I wanna say this sounded very familiar.
I just wanna say, as we talked about this Corona Nation
or Corona Island, I was like, God, I feel like I,
this sounds so familiar.
And I remember a story that I actually heard
on This American Life years ago,
which is about Cuervo Nation
and that Cuervo Tequila bought an island.
- Whoa. - And the story,
yeah, and the story at the time is a very funny story,
but it was that there's a guy, Cuervo Man,
who was basically a dude who was the mascot
of Cuervo Nation, who just had to be drunk all the time.
And it was like- - Oh God.
- Yeah, it's actually a good story.
John Hodgman is the one who does that, This American Life.
But I'm looking it up now and Cuervo Nation is a tiny,
this is from 2005, Cuervo Nation,
a tiny eight acre island located in the Caribbean
just off of Tortola was founded in 1996 by Cuervo Tequila
as a haven for refugees from quote, political correctness.
The tiny island nation guaranteed citizens 21 and older
the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of a good time.
- Wait, so what happened? - Is it still going?
It's 25 years old now?
- It can't be.
I mean, this is where I'll do some digging, but.
(laughing)
- Either it's a thriving community,
they got totally cut off from the rest of the world.
There is a population severely inbred,
but they're doing okay.
And they kind of speak a mixture of English, Spanish,
and there's some loan words.
It's unclear where they came from.
It's very hard for anybody to understand.
They basically have their own dialect at this point.
- So it does not look like it's still around.
It says in the early 2000s.
So it's actually Marina Cay Island.
It has a pretty interesting history,
but in the early 2000s, Jose Cuervo leased the island
referring it to as Cuervo Nation.
The island was used as a promotional tool.
Today it's the home of Pusser's Restaurant
and Villa Rentals.
- There's some messed up islands in the Caribbean, man.
(laughing)
- Yeah, the Caribbean has a lot of weird private islands.
I mean, you always hear about Mystique.
That's the Mick Jagger Island, which basically is private.
- Of course, yeah, famously there's Little St. James.
- Oh yeah, Epstein Island.
Now you got Corona Island.
Wait, is Corona Island Little St. James?
- Yeah.
- I was actually just wondering.
- Corona acquired a 10-year lease from the Epstein Estate.
- Came with planes.
- Corona got it for dirt cheap in a CIA auction.
(laughing)
- Well, I was kind of, actually, as we've been talking about,
I was kind of wondering, what's the backstory on this island?
I guess maybe they didn't wanna,
does the press release say anything
about what this island was called before?
What's the history?
Are there indigenous people on Corona Island?
- So it's basically you go there,
you stay in a crappy hotel, you eat nachos,
you drink Corona.
I mean, it sounds cool.
- Could be worse.
- Yeah.
- What was the island called before Corona Island
and how did they acquire it?
That's the most interesting part.
Did they buy it off of an impoverished nation?
Was it in some sort of weird international law limbo?
Does Corona have their own kind of like Navy?
- Yeah, it's like under what nation's laws is it operating?
- Yeah, is it a sovereign nation?
- Is there a police force?
- The Hells Angels are doing security.
- Are there just like hundreds of islands in the Caribbean
that are just like kind of sitting there?
- Probably.
I gotta say the SEO on this is terrible
because anytime you type in Corona Island,
it just talks about coronavirus on the island.
It does seem to be close to--
- Corona's had a rough run.
- You know?
Yeah, it seems to be off the coast of Columbia.
But the press release--
- Okay, but it's not part of Columbia?
- Unclear.
But the press release is really burying
any sort of like previous historic information.
It seems like they just want you to feel like
this just wasn't on the map before.
- Yeah, come on.
Come on, guys.
What's the real story?
I just love this, just like,
New Island just dropped Corona Island.
We're about to open a new island.
Oh, there's a new island opening?
Great.
- Sick.
But obviously they didn't build all the infrastructure.
They didn't put in plumbing.
- I mean, did they?
I mean, I'm sure there's still some empty islands.
- There was some resort that went out of business
and they bought it for pennies on the dollar.
- Yeah, and it's just part of Columbia or something.
It's not a sovereign nation.
I guess they're not--
(laughing)
They're not claiming it's a sovereign nation.
- Sorry, their tagline is,
"Only a beer like this could create a place like this."
- Oh, like a very--
- It really does.
- A very normal middling Mexican lager.
There's like nine other beers exactly like it.
- Wow, did you see this part?
Corona is plotting a number of activities
promoting conscious consumption once the island is open.
Those may include workshops around living without plastic
and guided meditations set to natural island sounds.
- Okay.
I love that meditation and beer combination.
(laughing)
- Meditation and beer.
- Also, it's easy for Corona.
It's like they don't package their beer in plastic.
So it's like it's aluminum and glass.
So it's like, yeah, let's put it in plastic.
- Am I tripping or just sometimes people say
that packaging and shipping stuff in glass
is actually bad news.
I feel like I've heard that 'cause glass is heavy.
- It's all bad news.
Yeah, I mean, what, you know.
Transporting liquid, you know, it's all heavy.
- You should be making your own beer at home.
You should drink local lagers from the tap.
- Yeah, local.
- You should go be walking to your local brewery
with a growler, fill up the growler,
take it home, drink it up and bring it back.
There's no reason why your average household of four
or five needs more than one glass growler.
You come home, you drink out of the growler and that's it.
- Beer is not a grocery item.
(laughing)
- Beer is not a grocery item.
There's an auction hosted by Charity Buzz,
which sounds very fake and dystopian,
but check it out.
Check out the Corona.
(laughing)
Oh man.
Charity Buzz presents the Corona Island auction.
Just too perfect.
Anyway, one grand prize winner and nine guests
will win an all expensive paid week long
private island stay next year.
So I wonder, so when they say private island,
does that mean this is a private island
or merely that you will have the island to yourself?
'Cause private island implies
that it's not part of a nation.
- I think you're staying on the Corona Island
with nine friends and it's just you.
- Right, so it's not a private island
in the way that sometimes you hear about
some billionaire owns their own island.
I mean, look, I'd love to know more about Corona Island.
I wanna know the history of it.
Just to start with, where did this island come from?
- Yeah, they're being very, very, very secretive
about what it used to be.
- Little St. James.
(laughing)
- It literally might be.
Okay, if we have any--
- That would be so funny.
(laughing)
- If we have any TC heads who like to sail,
maybe a pirate, maybe a cartographer,
anybody who really knows the Caribbean well
and who knows which islands they're spoken for,
if you can find us anything
about the real history of Corona Island,
just like where did this come from?
What was the transaction?
Anyway, let us know.
♪ Are we starting over all again ♪
♪ From where we left ♪
♪ Time to reach across the table ♪
♪ And lay the past down there to rest ♪
♪ Sometime I will tell you ♪
♪ Of all the hell you put me through ♪
♪ But today we're starting over ♪
♪ I don't have the courage with you ♪
♪ Yes, it's good to see you ♪
♪ After so many years away ♪
♪ You know how time just keeps on flying ♪
♪ It all feels like yesterday ♪
♪ Sometime I will tell you ♪
♪ Of all the tears and sweat and blood you've brought for nights ♪
♪ Keep it simple, we're taking it all down to the studs ♪
♪ Down to the studs, we're taking it down to the studs ♪
♪ Too late and too late ♪
♪ To see if we could still be buds ♪
♪ Ain't life kind of funny ♪
♪ As you get a little down the line ♪
♪ All those things that seem so crucial ♪
♪ They don't stand the test of time ♪
♪ Sometime I will tell you ♪
♪ Of all the tears and sweat and blood you've brought for nights ♪
♪ Keep it simple, we're taking it all down to the studs ♪
♪ Down to the studs, we're taking it down to the studs ♪
♪ We're doing everything to try to find a deeper love ♪
♪ Down to the studs to fortify before the flood ♪
♪ When it all comes raining down ♪
♪ From the storm clouds up above ♪
♪ Down to the studs ♪
- So a lot of people have been talking Beatles lately.
I can't really tell,
is Get Back like really taking over your world, Jake?
I feel like I've got a lot of people hitting me up
being like, you watch and Get Back, this is crazy.
All the musicians love it.
- If I look at Twitter, it's definitely like 60% Get Back,
which I love.
- Yeah.
- I'd rather have that than dumb politics.
And we watched over Thanksgiving weekend.
- You said you're gonna gather around
the whole Longstreth clan to watch.
- We did, we watched about three and a half hours,
like an episode and a half as a family, which was great.
A lot of fun, even though I honestly think
they could have cut quite a bit out.
I really enjoyed it.
I didn't think every episode needed to be
two hours and 50 minutes.
I feel like they could have been two hours 15 maybe,
but there was so much of them just like schlepping gear
around and trying to plug in monitor speakers.
It's just a lot of stuff.
It's just like, I don't, you know,
I loved them arranging the songs
and writing the songs together and playing the songs.
And I liked some of the banter, but anyway,
I finished the whole, the last one and a half episodes
in the last few days at home.
But yes, it's been in my life big time last week.
What about you?
- I still haven't watched the whole show.
I think I mentioned on the program
that I saw a little preview.
- Yeah.
- Of the premiere, but they,
that was kind of like bits and pieces.
So I feel like I've seen a lot of it
and I started watching the program.
Yeah, obviously you could talk forever about, you know,
it's just cool seeing them be regular people
and seeing the songs come together.
It's pretty fascinating.
One thing that's made me think about
is just the album, "Let It Be," period.
'Cause obviously this, in this era,
they're doing some songs that ended up on Abbey Road,
but these, most of what you're seeing
are the songs that became the album, "Let It Be."
And it made me, I'm sure like a lot of people,
read up a little more on "Let It Be."
There was a copy of it in my house growing up
when I think probably my mom had it.
And I'd always throw it on.
I do remember as a kid being like pretty,
like kind of depressed by "The Long and Winding Road."
Not that it's a bad song.
I appreciate it more as I'm, now that I'm older,
but I knew that that was, had been a single
and it's just like those Phil Spector arrangements.
It's just, that's just like a sad, weird song.
- Yeah, even the song itself, I think,
might be the schmaltziest non-tongue-in-cheek parody song
that the Beatles did.
- I think I'd probably more people would like that song.
It's obviously well-written in the sense
that it's like very functionally, it works.
But I could picture if they had done it
like really stripped down, like no drums,
just like a yesterday style,
just like string arrangement, acoustic, Paul.
♪ The long and winding road that leads me ♪
There's something about the drums.
♪ Dun dun, ch ch ch ♪
- Yeah.
- It's like they're "Touch Me" by The Doors, which I like.
- Yeah. - But anyway, yeah.
I was thinking just about that album in general.
Like was that an album that you spent much time with, Jake?
"Let It Be."
Can you name the opening three tracks on "Let It Be"?
- "Two of Us," "I Dig a Pony," and "Across the Universe."
- Oh, okay.
All right.
- I know the record.
I mean, I know all the Beatles records,
but like, yeah, I didn't,
it's never been a real go-to for me.
I love a lot of the songs on there.
I never, and I still didn't quite grasp this
from watching the six-hour documentary.
I never understood what was the hurry?
Like why do they have to be done by the last day of January?
Like why couldn't they just keep working on this record?
- Is it 'cause Ringo had to go back
to shooting "The Magic Christian,"
the film that he was acting in?
- Oh, wait.
I mean, they do say something
about how they need the stage back for this movie
that Apple Films, the Beatles company, was producing
called "The Magic Christian."
- Yeah, but they moved out of there.
- I guess Ringo was gonna be busy, though.
Yeah, it's a little bit unclear.
And in the trailer, that's how they set it up.
"The Beatles have 30 days to record an album."
I know what you mean.
It's like, why?
- It's like, I mean, I love them waiting to the last minute
to write and record a record.
That's hilarious.
But yeah, they were in the like Twickenham
like soundstage for like two weeks,
and they were like, "This sucks."
And then they moved to the studio,
and then Billy Preston comes in,
and then things really start cooking.
- And they ended up shelving that album for a year anyway.
- Yeah, and they're in a groove.
They have like a great two weeks,
and then it's like, "We're done."
And it's sort of like, "Okay, well, what?
"Ringo's gonna go film a movie for three weeks,
"and you couldn't just pick it up in February?"
I don't understand.
I never understood what the crisis was.
I guess they were trying to make a television production.
I don't know.
- Yeah, I think that might've been an element of it.
And maybe even back then,
we kind of take it for granted
how much the record industry has changed in some ways.
And I'm sure some people would argue it hasn't in many.
But it's also possible that we look back
and say the Beatles were the biggest artists on earth.
They could have taken seven years
to make an album if they wanted to.
But maybe even back then, they're still relatively young,
and maybe they still did feel a little bit
like oppressed by the label.
Maybe EMI was like, "Guys, we need the record."
And even then, the Beatles,
the biggest artists in the world were a little bit like,
"Oh God, all right.
"Oh, I don't wanna get in trouble with EMI."
- They seemed naive to their own power.
- There is a part where they're talking about,
"Why won't EMI give us the eight track?"
And they're like, "I heard they gave it to the Beach Boys."
And then George is like, "All right, you can use my eight track."
I guess just today, if it was Billie Eilish or something,
it wouldn't even be a conversation.
Her manager would just be yelling at somebody.
- So then we get 45 minutes of them moving in
George Harrison's eight track,
and Glenn John's trying to get it hooked in.
But yeah, you're totally right.
It's sort of like, I was shocked by the lack
of professional infrastructure around the band.
Did they even have a manager?
Obviously, there's this stuff
about Brian Epstein dying in 1966.
- Well, so he was dead, and then famously,
their new manager, Alan Klein, was very controversial,
and that's partially why Paul left,
'cause some of the guys liked him and some didn't.
So maybe this was a weird time for them.
- No, no, but here's the thing.
You haven't seen part three yet.
In part three, they meet Alan Klein for the very first time.
John Lennon has a real late night.
I think they didn't have a--
- Were they self-managed in this era?
- I got the sense that there's no manager at all.
- That's why you need a good manager.
Without a good manager, you got George Harrison
having to bring his eight track from home.
- Yeah, they seemed, without a manager to help them
through this kind of morass of,
do we make a TV show, do we play a show?
Also, the fact, I love that they did the rooftop show.
I mean, the footage is great.
It's a really cool, surprising thing to do,
but it is funny that they are thinking about playing a show,
and they're like, we can't find a venue.
It's the Beatles.
They couldn't find a venue in London.
I was just like, what is happening?
And there's even a bit of Peter Jackson text that comes up,
and they're like, no venues were available
in the next three days, or something like that.
And it's sort of like, how is that possible?
- And also, it seems like,
because there was a studio at Apple,
it seems much easier than schlepping everything
to a venue, at least they could just run the cables down
to the tape machine. - True.
- Or whatever.
♪ I, I, I, dig a party ♪
♪ Where you can celebrate anything you want ♪
♪ Yes, you can celebrate anything you want ♪
♪ Oh, I, I, I, I, I, I ♪
♪ Do a road hop ♪
♪ You can penetrate any place you go ♪
♪ Yes, you can penetrate any place you go ♪
♪ I told you so ♪
♪ All I want is you ♪
♪ Everything has got to be the way you want it to ♪
♪ Because ♪
- I've been in London a bit lately, so I couldn't help
but walk past that building on Savile Row,
which many people know, but in case you don't,
that's famously where all the fancy tailors are.
You go get a suit on Savile Row.
But so anyway, I was like,
oh, let me check out whatever it is.
I looked it up, oh, number three,
let me see where the Beatles' office is,
'cause I'd just seen all that footage.
And then I walked past,
and right on the front of that building,
I see Abercrombie and Fitch.
(laughing)
I guess it's like their UK corporate headquarters
is the Apple building.
- Oh man, I love that.
- Anyway, if anybody works for Abercrombie and Fitch,
you wanna get a Vampire Weekend rooftop concert,
we can wear Abercrombie head to toe,
and we can make an Abercrombie EP.
- That's like when Sam is just good,
you go to Hayton Ashbury, and it's like a huge Gap store,
and like a Ben and Jerry's, and like a T-Mobile.
It's just like, oh, hell yeah.
- Perfect.
One thing I've noticed a little bit
is that obviously people are excited about Get Back
because it's the Beatles,
but I also feel like in a weird way,
I would say basically every Beatles song is good,
or has something worthwhile about it.
But I do feel like in a way,
watching them work on it has probably given people
more appreciation for some of these songs.
Like, I feel like there's this,
like such a renewed love of track one, Two of Us.
I just feel like I'm hearing more people being like,
Two of Us, man, it's one of McCartney's best songs.
- Two of Us, that's an all-time record.
- I would not go that far, yeah.
I know what you mean, 'cause I, yeah,
I was never a big fan of I've Got a Feelin',
and I've never been a big fan of Two of Us.
They're fine.
- They come across much better now.
- Totally. - Post Get Back.
So I think this whole thing was just about putting Two of Us
and I've Got a Feelin' more on the map.
(laughing)
♪ Two of us riding nowhere ♪
♪ Spending someone's heart and near ♪
♪ You and me Sunday driving ♪
♪ Not arriving on our way back home ♪
♪ We're on our way home ♪
♪ We're on our way home ♪
♪ We're going home ♪
♪ Two of us sending postcards ♪
♪ Writing letters on my wall ♪
♪ You and me burning matches ♪
♪ Lifting latches on our way back home ♪
♪ We're on our way home ♪
♪ We're on our way home ♪
♪ We're going home ♪
- Classically on this record,
when I would think back to being like 12,
I would listen to it and I'd be like,
"Across the universe, let it be Get Back, I'm out."
That was my like, kind of like brash, like kid take on it.
- Right.
- I thought everything else was okay.
Like one after 9/09, I couldn't make heads or tails of that
as a young person. - Bad, not good.
- To be fair, that's their jam flow, man.
They wrote that as teenagers. - For sure.
- And it is kind of like sums up their,
you know, their kind of like influences and stuff.
I don't think it's bad.
It's just like, I just,
I didn't have the cultural context to realize,
okay, this is the Beatles in the last year
of their existence.
And this is them doing a throwback
to what they were doing before they were even a real band.
- Right.
- Riffing on like the early rock and roll.
They like, I couldn't look at it that way.
Now I understand it more and that gives me more.
- Right.
- Yeah, now I understand it.
And then like Maggie Mae,
that's, they're just saying like a Liverpool
kind of like folk song.
I mean mine, dig it.
Yeah, I didn't have much appreciation for those songs.
Yeah, it was really those three stood out to me.
Across the Universe, All Time.
That's like a top five Beatles song to me.
- Really?
Wow.
- Or top 10.
- I don't think it would be in my top 40.
- Really?
- I don't think so.
But like from this period, I love,
the two John Lennon songs are my favorite.
The Don't Let Me Down and Dig a Pony.
- Well yeah, but Don't Let Me Down is not on Let It Be.
- I know.
This came up last episode.
I remember you thought it was on Abbey Road.
- Oh right, yeah, yeah.
- I was like, no bro, it was a single.
- It's a B-side.
- Which is insane.
Don't Let Me Down, yeah.
The footage of them working out all those parts
with Billy Preston, that was super cool.
- Yeah.
- As a lifelong Don't Let Me Down head.
- I only wish that we could have had this footage
for all the Beatles albums.
- Totally.
♪ Don't let me down ♪
♪ Don't let me down ♪
♪ Nobody ever loved me like she does ♪
♪ Ooh, she does ♪
♪ Yeah, she does ♪
♪ And if somebody loved me like she does ♪
♪ Ooh, she does ♪
♪ Yeah, she does ♪
♪ Don't let me down ♪
♪ Don't let me down ♪
♪ Don't let me down ♪
♪ Don't let me down ♪
- One funny thing, being in London,
I went to an interesting talk at Abbey Road Studios recently.
- Wow.
- These two kind of legendary in the Beatles community guys,
Kevin L. Ryan and Brian Keehoo,
they wrote this book called Recording the Beatles.
Are you aware of this?
- No, I'm not.
- So it's this like massive book that came out in 2006.
And so these guys, Kevin and Brian,
are kind of like, my understanding is that they were both
two like all time obsessive gearheads,
but also like really diligent researchers.
And they were both trying to like go super deep on like,
what did the Beatles record with?
'Cause you know, it's like one thing to be like,
John played a Gibson on that, or you know,
Ringo had a, on that one they're using like a slinger lens set
or you know, whatever, there's that stuff.
But to really get into like the nitty gritty of like,
what was the chain?
Like, what was the mic?
What kind of cable connected the mic to the preamp?
All that stuff.
- Wow.
- Nobody had ever really done an in-depth thing.
And my understanding is that they're basically two guys,
15, 20 years ago,
who were both like showing up at these old school studios,
like Abbey Road and just being like,
finding anybody who used to work there to ask them questions
about like, was that plugged directly into the board?
You know, like really deep questions.
And then somebody was like, you know,
there's another guy asking all these questions.
This is almost like some Zodiac type (beep)
just like, you know, there's somebody else on the case.
You guys should meet each other.
And then there were these two American guys
and they met each other and they were like, wow.
- Let's team up.
And they teamed up and they wrote this book
that's kind of legendary with producers
called Recording the Beatles.
And I think the first edition sold out like immediately
and they're working on a follow-up.
Anyway, they were giving a talk at Abbey Road
and it was kind of just about the whole history
of the studio.
And it was cool 'cause you got to sit in studio two,
which is the room the Beatles used a lot.
And they like brought out some of the old pianos they used.
They were playing some of them and like instantly you're like,
oh yeah, that's like the Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da piano.
And Pink Floyd used a lot of the same gear
when they were working on Dark Side of the Moon.
Like there's a Celesta that Pink Floyd used
and the Beatles used on multiple recordings.
But a couple of things that stand out,
so they're just going through the whole history
and they're finding all this like footage and pictures.
And there were these pictures of the Beatles
'cause when you watch Get Back and everybody's like,
oh, Yoko's hanging out, what's up with that?
That's bizarre.
But then they were showing pictures of the Beatles
in like 64, 65 and there would always be a row of chairs,
almost like, I don't know,
almost like it was like basketball practice or something.
They would always have their friends just sitting there.
So that contextualized Get Back for me a little bit.
They would always have a row of like seven chairs for friends
just to kind of come hang out and watch them record,
which maybe was less boring back in the day
'cause there'd be more like complete takes.
Like today, if you just like came over
and watched somebody record,
you're kind of just like sitting in a room with them,
staring at a computer versus back then,
you'd probably be like,
if you listen to them do like 10 takes of something,
you might, and you're just like a friend
reading the newspaper or something,
you might just like peek your head out and be like,
that one was hot.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Nice Ringo.
But yeah, I guess there was always this thing
of like in these big rooms,
there'd just be people lined up watching them.
But anyway, seeing some of these glimpses,
I was like, oh man, it'd be so,
I wish I could see the Beatles like recording Revolver
or something.
- Yeah, that would have been amazing.
There was a book that I was really into
and my brother was really into called Revolution in the Head,
which came out in the 90s and was written by Ian McDonald,
who was a British guy.
He was like a classical music writer mostly,
but he wrote a really great,
it's much more concise sounding than recording the Beatles,
but he goes through every song in chronological order
and gets pretty, doesn't get into like the cables and stuff
and like the preamps,
but gets deep into like,
just kind of like who was doing what
and like puts the songs into sort of like
their creative context in terms of their chronology.
And anyway, for Beatles heads out there,
I return to it every now and then.
It's a great book.
- Yeah, I flipped through that.
That is a great book.
And I feel like as long as I've known you and Dave,
that's come up quite a bit.
- Yeah, Dave has it.
He had like,
it actually came up because we were watching Get Back
over Thanksgiving and Dave brought up
like an Ian McDonald quote.
And I was like, do you have that on your phone?
He's like, oh yeah,
I have a PDF of Revolution in the Head
on my phone at all times.
- In Dave's studio, there are three books,
The Holy Bible,
The Constitution of the United States of America
and Revolution in the Head by Ian McDonald.
That's it.
I've also heard with all this Beatles talk going on,
I've heard multiple people ask me
if I'd read Jeff Emmerich's book
and Jeff Emmerich worked with George Martin.
He was like the long-time engineer of the Beatles.
And apparently he wrote a pretty spicy book.
- Oh really?
- And I was like, so what's the upshot in the Emmerich book?
And a lot of people said he only respected Paul.
He gave Paul the props.
He said, Paul's the one who like took the reins.
Like people (beep) on Paul,
but he was like, he was the genius.
- But like Jeff Emmerich was not in Get Back.
I didn't remember seeing anyone referred to as Jeff Emmerich.
- No, I don't.
- I mean, George Martin seemed to be-
- Yeah, he might've been out by then.
- George Martin even seemed to have
been taking sort of a backseat role in those sessions.
- And ultimately I think Let It Be
is credited to Phil Spector.
- Weird.
- As the producer, and he's like, he's not there.
I mean, he clearly, by today's standards,
he might've like mixed it
and he certainly added some string arrangements.
- It is interesting.
I did notice them like,
in terms of the Jeff Emmerich comment about Paul,
like they would definitely defer to Paul
in terms of arrangement choices.
Like what kind of like drum pattern should there be?
Or like, is this like, Paul would be like,
this is too plotting or this is too slow.
Or like, he definitely was taking leadership
in terms of like the like formal musical
sort of arrangement choices.
And definitely wouldn't shy away from being like,
Ringo, play a different pattern on the hi-hat.
Or like, which I thought was interesting.
- Right.
- John, he wasn't doing that.
John would write songs.
- Yeah, he seemed like he was a little bit checked out.
- Yeah.
- Well, yeah, and it's because of course
with the Beatles, people really get into just like,
well, who's your favorite?
Whose songs do you like?
And of course, when you look at it,
you realize, well, you know,
there's a lot of people helping each other with the songs,
people arranging each other's
and perhaps Paul taking the biggest lead on that front.
Well, this week for the top five,
we're gonna do the top five Beatles songs.
And these are just their five biggest songs
on the Billboard charts.
I guess just in terms of like,
how long they were on the charts
or how high they reached.
- Okay.
- Can you off the top of your head,
just do your top five Beatles?
I feel like we did this years ago.
- My favorite Beatles songs?
- Can you do it off the top of your head?
- No.
- What are your top five,
just like not single Beatles songs?
What comes to mind?
- I thought about when we were texting the other day
about the show, I was like,
maybe we should each bring in our top five Beatles.
We can do this another episode.
- Top of head?
- Maybe we'll do another episode.
- Top of head, I go.
- Okay, you know, we'll save it.
Let's just throw out one.
Let's just throw out one Beatles deep cut
that you ride for hard,
that you feel like is unsung.
- Well, I don't know if it's unsung,
but the first thought, best thought,
happiness is a warm gun.
- Oh yeah, amazing song.
- I mean, everyone loves that song,
but that's kind of, it's like not a hit single.
- No, definitely not.
And it's a strange song.
- Yeah.
- I always used to say that the White Album
was my favorite Beatles album.
- Damn.
- And that to me is like the epitome of,
of course I can understand, you know,
as we've spoken about the show,
White Album's not electable.
Sergeant Peppers,
that's what's going to get the votes
on the greatest albums of all time.
But I always felt like the White Album's my favorite
and not just because it's like long
and has more room for different weird ideas,
just like even just the songwriting,
it hit some kind of strange peak for me
and a song like, I totally agree,
happiness is a warm gun.
It's so weird.
It's like this mini sweet kind of proggy.
- Mm-hmm.
♪ She's not a girl who misses much ♪
♪ Da da da da da da ♪
♪ Oh yeah ♪
♪ She's well acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand ♪
♪ Like a lizard on a windowpane ♪
♪ The man in the crowd with the multicolored mirrors ♪
♪ On his half-nailed boots ♪
♪ Lying with his eyes while his hands are busy ♪
♪ Working overtime ♪
♪ A soap impression of his wife which he ate ♪
♪ And donated to the National Trust ♪
- What about you?
- I'm gonna say, it's so hard to say,
is there anything that's truly off the beaten path
with the Beatles?
I mean, everybody loves this song,
but I don't think it was a single
and it's really always been one of my favorite Beatles songs
is "I'm Looking Through You."
- Oh, hell yeah.
- Everybody's listening and saying like,
oh, yeah, of course, everybody loves that song.
- Not a single.
- You'll find a lot of people for every Beatles song,
but just truly that song also epitomizes
that middle period Beatles freshness.
♪ The only difference is you're down there ♪
It's hard to describe, but that,
and also I have this strong memory of being a kid,
starting to get really into the Beatles
and visiting some family friends,
basically in Woodstock, New York,
and being in a crunchy grocery store,
which already at the time,
I was kind of being like, wow,
upstate New York, summertime,
and then just they were blasting "I'm Looking Through You,"
and I was like, you know what?
This is one of my favorite Beatles songs.
This is great vibe.
It's like a really intricate, you know,
there's still, it's right in between.
There's still that early simplicity,
but it's getting the slight sophistication that's,
you know, it's a real bridge moment for the Beatles.
♪ I'm looking through you ♪
♪ Where did you go? ♪
♪ I thought I knew you ♪
♪ What did I know? ♪
♪ You don't look different ♪
♪ But you have changed ♪
♪ I'm looking through you ♪
♪ You're not the same ♪
- But yeah, I agree.
Let's do our top five Beatles and go deep.
Maybe we could do that the next episode.
- Yeah, like--
- End of the year with some real Beatles stuff.
- End of the year app.
Everyone does their homework,
brings in their top five Beatles.
- We got Justin Bieber and Chef Talas Vokes
telling us about their favorite Beatles songs.
All right, but the five biggest Beatles songs of all time
based on the billboard.
- It's time for the top five on iTunes.
- Number five, "Yesterday."
(soft music)
- I've been playing "Yesterday" on the guitar recently.
- Oh, really?
- Yeah, I just, it's one of those songs
when I was learning to play guitar in high school
that I had like the Beatles chord books, you know?
And I learned the chords to it.
There's a lot of them.
For whatever reason, they'd always,
I just always remember them.
Like they just like, they just stuck in my memory.
♪ There's a shadow hanging over me ♪
♪ Oh, yesterday came suddenly ♪
- How old was Paul when he wrote this?
This came out--
- '65.
- August '65.
What year was Paul born?
He was--
- Great question, let's do this.
- One thing that crossed my mind is like
when the Beatles broke up, John was the oldest.
He was 30.
- Uh-huh.
So Paul was born in '42.
- So he was 23 when it came out.
He might've been 22 when he wrote it.
- Yeah, he was born in June of '42.
So yeah, he would've been 22 when he wrote it.
- That's crazy.
- Yeah, so Paul was 27 when the Beatles broke up?
- George was definitely 27.
Paul might've been like a little bit older.
No, when they broke up.
- No, George was like 25 when the Beatles broke up.
- Oh, George was, wow.
Crazy.
♪ She had to go ♪
♪ I don't know ♪
♪ She wouldn't say ♪
♪ I said something wrong ♪
♪ Now I long for yesterday ♪
♪ Yesterday ♪
♪ Love was such an easy game to play ♪
♪ And I need a place to hide away ♪
♪ Oh, I believe in yesterday ♪
- I mean, this is one of those songs
that's famously referred to,
in terms of talking about McCartney's genius,
where he dreamed the melody
and he thought it was some other old standard.
And he just kept being like,
"What is this song I'm playing?
"Does anyone know this song?"
And then--
- Right, he just woke up and it was,
♪ Scrambled eggs ♪
(laughing)
I think when I was younger,
I didn't appreciate "Yesterday" quite that much
'cause it's not the coolest.
I was like, "It's a pretty song,
"beautiful string arrangement."
But it is interesting to think about it now.
It's like, this is in the rock and roll era.
They do the song without the band.
- Yeah.
- No drums, no bass.
It's acoustic guitar, strings, and vocals.
And yet, it doesn't sound,
you're not gonna mistake it
for a pre-rock and roll song.
It's hard to say why.
It's a ballad and yet it fully feels like 1965.
And it kind of almost like--
- Yeah, it doesn't--
- It almost opened up this new type of pop ballad.
- It doesn't have a retro feel.
- No.
- It wasn't like, "Oh, Paul was trying to write
"a great American songbook-style song."
The way they did on the White Album,
where they're doing stuff tongue-in-cheek.
- They had some genre fun.
- And those feel that way.
But this, yeah.
I think 'cause he dreamed it.
It came from his subconscious.
And it's ineffable.
It's like, yeah, I think that's why it's so powerful.
He was able to directly wrench it out of his subconscious,
which is incredibly rare.
Do you ever dream music that you remember?
- I almost, I never remember it.
I used to not dream that much.
I've been having more dreams lately.
There's a line on the next album that I half-dreamed.
It's really simple, but sometimes those really simple phrases
are the rarest of all.
We could sit around in a circle and just be like,
"Everybody, pull out your phones.
"What are some weird phrases you may have written down?"
We'll be on some, like we joked about,
delicate glassware, and be like, "All right, let's sing."
But sometimes the really simple, like a simple rhyming cutlet,
not cutlet, a simple--
- The rhyming cutlet.
- A simple breaded cutlet.
A simple rhyming cutlet or a simple breaded cutlet.
It all depends your appetite.
Okay, now we're cooking.
No, but you know what I mean?
Sometimes a really simple cutlet that just says something
kind of like basic and familiar, but that rhymes and is memorable
is sometimes the rarest thing of all.
So there is something like that on the new album
that whenever this was a year ago, I was half asleep.
And not the melody, just the phrase popped into my mind.
And normally, like many people, I would say,
"All right, I'll remember that."
But you never do.
So thankfully this time I did grab my phone
and I just wrote it down.
And then maybe a week or two later, I was working on a song
and that came to mind.
I was like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, this feels right."
It'd be amazing if a whole song would come.
Actually, there was something weird about the chord progression
for "Unbearably White."
I had some weird deja vu, and hopefully nobody tells me
that that's borrowed.
But I did have this funny feeling where that came in a dreamlike sense.
I felt like I already knew it or something.
And I originally wrote it on piano.
Anyway, the number four top Beatles song on the charts,
"Can't Buy Me Love."
This came out March 16, '64.
Not one of my favorites.
Another McCartney one.
He wrote it at the George Sank Hotel in Paris.
I wonder why this one was such a big hit.
It's like--huh.
I mean, it's got a nice groove.
♪ I'll give you all I've got to give ♪
♪ If you say you love me too ♪
I like how the first verse is about my friend.
Is he calling the woman his friend?
Or he's just addressing different people in each part.
♪ I can't do much for money ♪
♪ Money can't buy me love ♪
♪ Can't buy me love ♪
♪ Everybody tells me so ♪
♪ Can't buy me love ♪
♪ No, no, no, no ♪
♪ Say you don't need no diamond rings ♪
So he's singing to his girlfriend.
♪ Tell me that you want the kind of things ♪
♪ The money doesn't buy ♪
Now he's talking about platonic love.
He made that very clear in the first verse.
♪ I can't do much for money ♪
♪ Money can't buy me love ♪
♪ Yeah ♪
You know one thing that "Get Back" made me think about?
I don't know who plays what guitar parts.
'Cause John was holding down some of those leads
on the song "Get Back."
I know.
So like, is this George or is this John?
I bet that's George.
I had the same thought.
I was like, "Wow, Lennon plays the solo on 'Get Back.'
I never knew that."
Yeah.
If you read "Revolution in the Head,"
or if you looked at it,
I'm sure that would say Lennon plays the solo.
And then watching him play the solo
a few times in the movie, I was like,
I was starting to understand Lennon's style of lead a bit more.
'Cause he plays lead on some of the Abbey Road stuff.
And the way he'll stay on one note for a while,
I was starting to get a sense of John Lennon's language.
As the lead guitarist.
But it does seem kind of loose.
George isn't like, "Oh, that's my job. I'm the lead."
It seemed like John just kind of was noodling
and came up with that solo.
And it was like, "That's the vibe."
When asked about the meaning of "Can't Buy Me Love,"
McCartney said, "I think you can put in any interpretation you want on anything.
But when someone suggests that 'Can't Buy Me Love' is about a prostitute,
I draw the line."
All right.
I never thought it was.
It's not about a prostitute.
I never thought it was about a prostitute.
I think it's about two friends.
And one of them is just making sure,
"Listen, if we're going to have a really deep friendship
full of platonic love,
I got to make sure that you're not a breadhead.
So listen, my friend, if you want diamond rings,
I'm not the friend for you.
Not into that stuff.
We're not going to have a lot to talk about.
Let me get one thing straight.
Money can't buy me love."
There's so many amazing early Beatles songs.
I'm just mystified that that one was one of the top hits of the '60s.
That must have just really connected with the psyche, the '64 psyche.
"Money Can't Buy Me Love," getting ready for the anti-materialist hippie era
a few years early.
The number three biggest Beatles song is "Get Back."
Huh.
It's funny.
I never--
All this "Get Back" talk, I never knew that--
I always thought of "Get Back" as a solid song.
I never thought that as just an absolute Beatles banger all time.
I agree.
It wouldn't be in my top 50 probably.
I mean, I like it.
I always thought, "Come Together,"
that's the late Beatles cool rock song.
Or, yeah, "Don't Let Me Down" or any number of songs.
Yeah.
I mean, this could have been--
I mean, this is a good song, though.
This could have been a deep cut on the White Album.
Right.
[MUSIC - "GET BACK"]
(SINGING) JoJo left his home in Tucson, Arizona,
a horse and callop on the grass.
Get back, get back, get back to where you once belonged.
Get back, JoJo.
Now, in the part that you saw, did you see the part where
originally the song was a protest song about anti-immigration policies?
Yeah, I did see that.
Yeah, where he was talking about Pakistanis.
Yeah.
It is fascinating to see them--
and John Lennon has that song "Road to Marrakesh"
that eventually became "Jealous Guy."
It's interesting that they have full--
all of the music essentially written with one set of lyrics.
And then they're like, "Actually, no.
We have to do a page one rewrite on the lyrics."
Yep.
And they're always making the right call.
Yeah.
I mean, I love "Get Back."
This is a good song.
Yeah, I just never would have--
Watching the doc made me aware of the structure,
where it's like verse, chorus, solo, chorus, solo.
Yeah.
And then the second verse doesn't happen until now.
Yeah, I also wonder if there were some rock and roll
enthusiasts who didn't like all the twee and psychedelic stuff.
And then when they heard "Get Back," they were like, "All right."
Hmm.
I mean, dare I say, "Get Back" is kind of dead-ish in a way.
"Get Back" has a little bit of "Working Man's Dead" energy.
I mean, at one point in the doc, Paul's really doing
one humble pie vocal impersonation of going up to the country.
Yeah.
I mean--
Yeah.
--he's definitely in that mode here.
Yeah, this totally has that, yeah, that like canned heat.
Yeah.
1970, dead, just kind of like no frills.
Oh, wait, did I say humble pie?
I meant canned heat.
Canned heat.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jake would like to issue a correction.
He deeply regrets mistaking--
Wait, what's humble pie?
Is that like a Steve Winwood band or something?
I don't know.
I meant humble pie is a '70s band, if I'm not mistaken,
because I read it recently in Tom Sharpling's--
in the legendary Tom Sharpling's memoir,
he tells an anecdote about being in an elevator with Patti Smith,
and he's not sure what to say to her.
She's a legendary artist who means a lot to him.
And the first thing that pops to his mind is that he had always heard
that Humble Pie was one of the hottest bands around in the early '70s.
He doesn't want to bother her with some inside baseball question
about her work, so he says, hey, did you ever catch Humble Pie in the '70s?
And she says, uh, no, and leaves the elevator.
We should-- let's get him on next show.
Okay, let's try to get Sharpling on next show and have him do it.
He'd be great to do Top 5 Beatles with.
And maybe he can do a Top 5 Humble Pie for us to educate us about Humble Pie.
That's actually a great call.
Jake will do Top 5 Canned Heat, Sharpling will do Top 5 Humble Pie.
The number two biggest Beatles song of all time, this one,
their first number one in the US, and then they replace themselves
with this song, back to back, but this is I Want to Hold Your Hand.
I mean, this, and She Loves You, that's like the epitome of early Beatles.
This one rocks.
Yeah.
Oh yeah, I'll tell you something I think you'll understand
When I say that something I want to hold your hand
I want to hold your hand I want to hold your hand
Oh please say to me Let me be your man
It was cool seeing John Lennon sing so much in his talk.
It's like, yeah, he might be my favorite rock singer.
There's something about him, it's like, it's very casual, but it's also very clear.
His voice is always sharp, but it doesn't seem like he's trying.
I don't know, he's like a very...
You can always hear him, there's like a purity or something.
There's like a crispness to his voice.
I can't hide, I can't hide, I can't hide
Yeah, you've got that something I think you'll understand
When I say that something I want to hold your hand
I want to hold your hand I want to hold your hand
And when I touch you I feel happy inside
It's such a feeling that my love
I can't hide, I can't hide, I can't hide
Yeah, you've got that something I think you'll understand
These early recordings also just kind of sound hard.
Obviously they weren't as hard as the early kinks,
but it's still like, I don't know, just the recording,
it's got a toughness, even though it's a pretty sweet song.
Well, I think a lot of that's probably just recorded live in the room style.
Yeah.
Like, "Oh, he knocked out eight songs today."
Two mics on the drums.
That's another cool thing about Get Back,
is also just to remember the Beatles as musicians,
like not just songwriters.
You know, just to think about in real time them like hashing out these parts.
And you just like Ringo, just this very natural drummer,
great feel off the bat.
Oh, yeah.
Dude, Ringo is so zen in this movie.
He's like, he has to be so patient.
And I just, I loved his energy.
I loved how he was just like...
Speaks very little.
But he's not checked out either.
I mean, sometimes there'd be a shot of him
leaning against the wall with his eyes closed, you know,
while the guys are working out a harmony or a riff or something.
But a lot of times it's like the guys are working on the songs
and they're nowhere near to dealing with the drums yet,
but he's kind of there and he's watching very attentively.
And he has a sense of focus and purpose
that he's lending the room, even though he's not playing.
He was a real band member.
And not to be a Luddite, but today he'd be staring at his phone.
Hate to say it.
Oh, for sure.
The guys would be hashing this out,
just be knee deep in Instagram.
Oh, yeah.
Working on his socials.
I had this like really psychotic moment where like,
for just a split second, like I thought Paul was pulling out like,
it was just like an incidental scene.
He was pulling out like his keys or something out of his pocket.
And for a split second, I thought he was pulling out his phone.
And I was like, wait, what?
That all happened in like the span of a second.
I was like, of course he's not pulling out a phone.
That'd be sick if Peter Jackson just threw in like a few things
just to f*** people.
I mean, we've talked about it.
I'm sure there's like a subreddit for it where people find images.
Because I've seen stuff like this where people find images from the past.
You know, it's like, this is a daguerreotype from the 1890s.
And look, that person is holding a phone.
Look at the way they're looking at it.
It's like as if it's proof of time travel.
There's a whole universe of that kind of stuff.
And you know what?
It might be real.
That'd be sick.
Yeah.
Let's not rule it out.
Just sort of like how in that Game of Thrones episode,
there was like a Starbucks cup like in the background by accident.
If like Peter Jackson like accidentally put in like a Starbucks cup
or like purposefully put in like CGI Starbucks cup or like an iPhone,
like deep background and like one frame.
A box of Tim Beibs.
Everybody's like, wait a second.
No, no, no.
Tim Hortons did not announce Tim Beibs until 2021.
It doesn't add up.
It's like, all right, guys, hold on.
They weren't Tim Beibs.
They were just Timbits.
All right, that makes sense.
And then the number one biggest song that the Beatles ever had.
This topped up Billboard Hot 100 for nine weeks
and stayed on the chart for 19 weeks.
It's "Hey Jude".
We've heard this a lot on Time Crisis.
We've heard this a lot.
I guess it makes sense.
Now we know this is their biggest chart hit.
Also just a single, not on a record.
Yeah.
Remember to let her into your heart.
Then you can start to make it better.
It was interesting.
I don't know.
I'm sure Jake, Get Back has also like sent you onto Wikipedia quite a bit.
And looking at the Wikipedia for the album, "Let It Be",
it's interesting to see "Let It Be" was not well received.
The song or the album?
The album.
It got like scathing reviews.
I mean, the song was big, but...
Scathing.
It got scathing.
People were just like, what a dud for the Beatles to end on.
This sucks.
And even the song "Let It Be", which is now considered an all-time classic,
apparently a few journalists really compared it disfavorably to "Hey Jude".
They're just like...
You can't win.
I mean, yeah, it's like you write one of the most beautiful rock songs ever,
"Hey Jude", one of the most era-defining hits.
And then you write another beautiful song the next year,
and they're like, "This is the phone-in version of 'Hey Jude'."
Insane.
You know, one thing I really liked in the rooftop footage
was how positive the response of the man on the street was for the most part.
People of all ages, they'd be down on the street like,
"Do you know who's playing right now?"
And people would be like, "Yeah, it's the Beatles."
And there'd be old guys, and they'd be like, "Do you like the Beatles?
What do you think of the Beatles?"
And they'd be like, "I love the Beatles. They're great singers."
Yeah, a lot of them are like, "Oh, they're great. They're great."
I almost got the sense that there was almost like a national pride in the family.
Oh, definitely.
♪ Then you can start to make it better ♪
♪ So let it out and let it in ♪
♪ Hey Jude, begin ♪
♪ You're waiting for someone to perform with ♪
Those loud-ass drums sound crazy.
Maybe it's just through my earbuds, the drums sound really loud.
Yeah, like, surprise.
Is he playing in the middle of the ride cymbal?
Like that real tinny part?
He's holding it down.
♪ He is on your shoulder ♪
♪ Na na na na na na na na na na ♪
♪ Yeah ♪
♪ Hey Jude, don't make it bad ♪
♪ Take a sad song and make it better ♪
♪ Remember to let her under your skin ♪
♪ When you begin to make it better ♪
♪ Better, better, better, better, better ♪
♪ Oh yeah ♪
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
La, la, la, la.
La, la, la, la.
I'll praise you.
La, la, la.
La, la, la, la.
La, la, la, la.
I'll praise you.
La, la, la.
La, la, la, la.
La, la, la, la.
I'll praise you.
La, la, la.
La, la, la, la.
La, la, la, la.
It is insane how many of their classics
aren't even on the records.
Like, is there another--
--standalone single?
--is there another band like that?
I don't-- I don't think so.
I mean, I think there's like solid standalones,
but not like this, like all-time classic.
Wouldn't it be weird if like Hey Jude
had been on the White Album?
Yeah.
It also seemed like they didn't really sweat those decisions.
Like when they recorded Don't Let Me Down,
they were like, put it out as the B-side.
Right.
Maybe they were hemming and hawing, but in the movie,
there was no hemming and hawing.
It wasn't like Lennon was like, I really
want that to be on side B.
Well, yeah, also, they just kept things moving.
They didn't have time to overthink it.
It is just also like pretty wild that the Beatles just never
like--
of course, you can look at some songs that are like fourth tier
Beatles songs, but they just never dry--
like even if you want to like hate, say,
like there's a few songs on Let It Be that aren't like all-time
or Beatles songs, it still has those singles that just like
kind of push it into like cultural ubiquity.
And it is kind of just amazing that there's just never a dry
spell where the Beatles like--
you know, if you took like the worst songs on Let It Be,
Abby wrote in the White Album, and you made an album,
it would still be cool, but that would be like a dud Beatles
album.
Like--
Yeah.
--they never had an album like that.
I mean, like I love Rolling Stones'
Her Satanic Majesty's Request, but like people generally
look at that as kind of like they were trying
a psychedelic album.
She's Like a Rainbow was a fun single,
but it's not like--
it's not an all-timer.
Like the Beatles don't have an album like that.
And again, I'm not dissing that album because I really love
that Stones album, but it's--
you know, that was like--
I remember when I first wanted to get that album on CD
when I was like 13, 14 or something.
Really had to like search for it.
It might have even been like out of print or something.
I just-- like there's no dud Beatles album.
[MUSIC - THE BEATLES, "DUDE BEATLES"]
[MUSIC - THE BEATLES, "DUDE BEATLES"]
Another interesting thing about the Beatles
is that getting deeper on Wikipedia,
everybody made a few like really good records right out the gate.
Like obviously--
Yeah.
--George Harrison, All Things Must Pass, All Time, Classic.
Yeah.
Plastigono, Ben and Imagine, Beloved, Ram, Very Good.
And then every McCarty album had some good songs.
But like within like four years, all of the big three songwriters
and the Beatles had released albums that had like been hated.
Like horrible reviews, like didn't do well.
Within a few years--
Wow.
--after All Things Must Pass, Harrison put out albums that like--
people were just like, sucks.
Even Lennon, the album he made after Imagine,
people were just like, lost the [BLEEP] plot, man.
Pathetic.
Was that Mind Games?
No, no.
It's called Somewhere in New York or something.
I love Mind Games.
Oh, yeah.
Whole record.
That was kind of like his comeback.
Was it?
OK.
Sometime in New York City.
It's like one of those weird albums that's like partially in the studio
and partially live.
So that came out June '72.
And people were just like, damn, Lennon lost the [BLEEP] plot.
This album's pathetic.
So again, that's like within three years of Get Back,
he dropped an album considered such a dud that he
must have been reading the reviews and being like, [BLEEP] damn, I [BLEEP] up.
Or whatever.
He might have been like, [BLEEP] them, they don't understand.
But he was dealing with like some serious pushback against his art.
Yeah.
And I think the first McCartney solo album, it did pretty well.
But people considered him the culprit for the Beatles ending.
And they were like, this sucks, full of [BLEEP]
I love that first McCartney.
Like they all got their--
They thought it was just like--
They all got their--
--tossed off.
Too sweet.
And I mean, he definitely dropped some undeniable music.
But people were always a little bit hard on him and certainly on Wings.
But all of them made excellent solo work.
But I guess even with the Beatles at the time,
they might have felt-- they got some bad reviews here and there.
And they probably felt like, damn, did we really let everybody down
by putting out Let It Be?
Should we just have ended with Abbey Road?
Yeah, that's a funny one.
I mean, yeah, they'd set the standard so high that it's really
funny to just trash Let It Be.
When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me.
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And in my hour of darkness, she is standing right in front of me.
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
Let it be.
Let it be.
Let it be.
Let it be.
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.
And when the brokenhearted people living in the world agree,
there will be an answer.
Let it be.
But though they may be parted, there is still
a chance that they will see there will be an answer.
Let it be.
Let it be.
Let it be.
Let it be.
Let it be.
Yeah, there will be an answer.
Let it be.
Let it be.
Let it be.
Let it be.
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.
Well, we did a good job doing this one, this episode,
in a timely fashion.
This is the second to last episode of 2021.
We'll be back for one more.
I'll just leave you, since we've been talking about it,
I'll read you some of these quotes from Wikipedia
of the reception to Let It Be.
Here's what the NME said about Let It Be when it came out.
It was also kind of seen as like the soundtrack to a not very
good movie, so maybe that colored it.
This is what Alan Smith of the NME said.
"If the new Beatles soundtrack is to be their last,
then it will stand as a cheapskate epitaph,
a cardboard tombstone, a sad and tatty end
to a musical fusion which wiped clean and drew again
the face of pop.
This album shows contempt for the intelligence
of today's record buyer.
The Beatles sold out all the principles
for which they ever stood."
Jesus.
Contempt.
Sold out?
What principles did they--
wow.
I mean, I guess it shows that nothing's changed.
John Gabry writing for High Fidelity magazine
said that the album, "It was not nearly as bad as the movie
and positively wonderful compared
to the recent solo releases by McCartney and Starr.
He admitted that Let It Be, Get Back, and Two of Us
were pretty good, but derided the Long and Winding Road
and Across the Universe."
And specifically, he added out for Across the Universe,
which he described as "bloated and self-satisfied,
the kind of song we've come to expect
from these rich, privileged proto teenagers."
Wow.
Damn, just like a harsh.
Throwing out the privileged word.
Yeah, the more things change.
Yeah, truly.
Anyway, that's what the critics have to say,
but check it out for yourself.
The album's called Let It Be.
It's on all the streaming services.
You could probably get it on vinyl too.
The band is the Beatles.
We hope we'll hear more from them.
Check it out, TC Heads.
All right, see everybody in two weeks.
Peace.
Time Crisis with Ezra Koenig.
(electronic music)
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