Ep 123 | Why Is a Grammy-Nominated Artist BLACKBALLED by Music Industry? | John Ondrasik | The Glenn Beck Podcast

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There are a handful of ways that you can find the truth,

but music is one of those that speak to our soul.

It's part of our DNA, our experience.

It is

just an irremovable part of our human story.

It allows us to express something deeper than we can imagine or express in words.

Music comes before words.

In America, music means something even more special, beginning with Thomas Edison's invention of the phonograph.

That was here, which allowed music to be recorded for the first time in human history.

In the time since, we have given the world Elvis, the blues, rock and roll.

I would say country music as well, but I think that's more Scottish.

But everything else, distinctly American.

Jazz, distinctly American.

Any American cultural landmark, good or bad, is attached to a song or an album.

New York, New York.

I left my heart in San Francisco.

It also, there were musical movements, the 60s.

On September 11th, a little bit of America's innocence died right in front of us, and so much of that day is still inexpressible.

But in the quiet days that followed 9-11, a song by today's guests spoke to us.

Spoke to us when we needed it most, and it was everywhere.

You heard it.

If you lived in those times, you heard it and you know it.

And I'm willing to bet at least one of the times you heard it, there were tears in your eyes.

And that's because it connected you to that moment and to America, to America's heroes.

When you listen to it, you understand the struggles of

the everyman and Superman.

And I'm not talking about the Superman of 2021 whose struggles is, which outfit should I wear?

I'm talking about the Christ-like Superman who inspired us to be more heroic.

Truth, justice, and the American way.

This puts our guest today into a rare category of musicians willing to express American values, let alone doing it in a memorable way.

He is a musician.

He began playing the piano at the age of three.

Since then, he has excelled as a songwriter, a producer, and a performer with a Grammy nomination, multi-platinum and gold singles and albums.

His songs have appeared in roughly 350 movies, advertisements, TV shows, including The Sopranos.

He has spent a lot of his musical career performing for veterans and active duty military.

He wrote his latest single, Blood on My Hands, in response to the tragic suicide bombing in Kabul earlier this year, which left 13 American heroes dead.

Today,

the man known as Five for Fighting, John Andrasik.

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I am fascinated by songwriters because

you can do something that I can't even imagine.

Being able to put emotion into

music, and then it just lives on forever.

And it affects, I mean, there's a song I asked you to bring.

When's the last time you sang it?

God, it has to be over five, six years.

Okay.

And

I loved it when I first heard it.

And I think it is.

It is more appropriate today.

And I can't tell you how many times I've listened to the song.

And, you know, you never knew, but

you were influencing me the whole time.

I'm honored.

Thank you.

So

I'm just playing, and I want to talk about the lyrics because I just think it is so appropriate for today.

This is Freedom Never Cries.

I took a flag to a pawn shop

for a broken guitar,

I took a flag to a pawn shop.

How much is that guitar?

I took a flag to a pawn shop

that got me that guitar.

Was a flag in a pawn shop to me?

I saw a man on the TV with a mess and a girl.

A man on the TV

had a 10-year-old son.

I saw a man on the TV.

His son had a gun.

And he says that he's coming

for me.

I never loved the soldier

until there was a war.

Or thought about tomorrow So my baby hit the floor

I only talk to God

when somebody's about to die

I never cherish freedom

Cause freedom never cries

I wrote a song for a dead man

to settle my soul

A song for a dead man.

Now I'll never grow old.

I wrote a song for a dead man.

Now I'm out in the cold.

What's a song to a dead man?

It's me.

I never loved a soldier

till there was a war.

I thought about tomorrow till my baby hit the floor

I only talk to God

when somebody's about to die

I never cherished freedom

freedom never cries

now you can cry for her you can die for her

lay down your life for her

kiss and wave goodbye to her

anything at all

cry for her and die for her

make up your mind to her

anything at all

there's a baby on the doorstep

wailing away

there's a baby on the doorstep longing for the day

there's a baby on the doorstep who'd give his life to take

a flag to a pawn shop,

a flag to a pawn shop.

May he forget why he is crying

some

day.

It's fantastic.

Oh, thanks, Glenn.

Just fantastic.

Thank you.

I mean, it is.

First, tell me when you said I wrote a song for a dead man and now I'll never die.

What does that mean?

Well,

sometimes to what you just said, I wrote a song for a dead man and now I'll never never grow old.

The songs last, right?

I'll be gone, but the songs last.

And

I think as artists, your paintings, right, will outlive you.

So

we can still have an influence when we're gone.

And I think that's important for artists to realize because as you also said, once you write the song, it's not yours anymore.

You kind of give it out to the world and the world does.

with it what it wants to.

But yeah, I wrote that song kind of after the Iraq war and

then, of course, after 9-11, when we saw the images of children with AK-47s, you know, being brainwashed by their parents, it was so disturbing.

And that was the first time I'm like, you know, do we really understand how much we are blessed to have freedom?

Because when you grow up with it and it's everything you know, it just becomes a fact of life.

And you don't expect that it could ever go away.

So how did you come up with the freedom never cries line?

You know, it's funny.

People take that many different ways.

And sometimes I hesitate about talking about lyrics because

some people may have a meaning that has nothing to do with what I wrote it about, which is great.

Because people, what they'll do is they'll take music and they'll apply it to their lives in the way that's best for them.

So for me, Freedom Never Cries is about the fact that freedom doesn't wave its hand and say, hey, I'm in trouble.

I'm over here.

Something's going wrong.

It just kind of is there.

And then one day maybe it's shrinking and maybe one day it's not.

And, you know, here we are probably 15 years after I wrote that song.

And

I think we're certainly seeing that reality of freedom shrinking.

And

the only people crying are folks like you and folks that are saying, hey,

this is dangerous, us.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The baby on the doorstep.

Yeah.

When I first heard those lyrics, because I couldn't understand them the first couple of times I listened.

And when I understood that the baby is crying and would give anything

just to go

sell a flag for a guitar at a pawn shop

is

so profound.

So profound.

Yeah, I think, you know, we see so many

people in countries who would give their lives so their children could experience the freedom we have.

You had one on your radio show today talking about that and

the fact that we take it so for granted.

And there's a reason people want to come here.

I mean, we're seeing that in Afghanistan right now.

You know, we had There were people that understood freedom for 20 years and didn't understand a world without it.

And now they're smashed back into a time warp of tyranny.

That really happens in the world.

You know, Cuba, you know, Iran.

It's something that I think in the West we just take for granted.

And

if you don't stand up for it,

you may risk losing it.

And I see the possibility of that.

Isn't

it so bizarre that we're living in a world now where the artists are on the wrong side, it seems to me.

Yeah.

You have had, we've talked about this before, you have Eric Clapton coming out against these mandates, writing a song, singing a song, and everybody butchering him.

Yeah.

You know, your song, which we're going to get to, blood on my hands in a second.

You're few and far between where,

you know, the song by the Beatles Revolution

was the answer to the revolutionaries coming to them and saying, we're this close.

We just, if you'll join us, we can overthrow it at all, overthrow all of of it and they said at the time if you're carrying around a picture of mao nobody wants to hear you right okay

where is that

where is that understanding where's the culture are they are do they actually every artist actually believes this is the right track they can't see it or are they just afraid i think it's both i think certainly the groupthink and and the tribal nature of the arts um it's hard to overcome, especially when you're raised in the art schools where there's only one worldview.

It takes a really brave, courageous, thinking person to question the orthodoxy.

So I think, you know, that kind of reality, and the fact is, in that community, everybody's talking to themselves and they don't listen to any outside ideas.

But there are people.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

I was

lucky enough to meet a very, very famous painter who

his art is

not art that I necessarily like.

It's very modern.

Peter Max.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Peter,

I was talking about something on the radio, and he said, I want to talk to you.

Come over to my studio.

So I went over to his studio and he showed me a painting and he said, You like that, don't you?

And I said, it's stunning.

I mean, it was photographic in its quality, and it was this beautiful, I think it was a woman, beautiful, beautiful painting.

And he said, I hate that painting.

And I said, why?

And he said, because I could never get it to look the way I wanted it to look.

Everybody else will look at it and say it's beautiful, but I only see the flaws.

Yeah.

Then he told me, you know, Peter Max is known not for photographic paintings.

He said, I used to go to Time Magazine.

This is back in the 60s when they never took photographs and used them for the cover.

They were always painting.

And he said, I would bring my painting every week because the guy at Time, who was in charge of the cover, liked my work, but he never bought any of it.

I never did one.

He said, and then one day he said, quite honestly, it was after a weekend of me getting high and just having fun.

And I was just doodling stuff.

He said, I was doing spaceships and bubble writing and everything else.

He said,

that Monday, I went into his office and I had all my artwork ready for him.

He said, said, and he opens it up and he pulls it out.

And I'm on the other side.

And he pulls it up and he looks at it and he says, Peter, this is genius.

And he's like, what are you talking about?

I've been showing you the same crap every week.

Right.

And he said, hold on.

And he goes and he gets all the artists on the floor.

And he said, you guys, come in here.

He's like, what is there's nothing different.

It's the same photographic quality.

He realized when he pulled it out to show all of the artists, oh my gosh, this is the stuff I did over the weekend just for me.

Right.

And

the guy said, this is the language of a generation.

Wow.

And that came to the yellow submarine kind of

all of that.

Wow.

And so I wonder,

in a

world of artists where

You're you're

you should be encouraged to break the mold, encouraged to go another direction.

How does that not translate?

You know, again, I think there is a fear.

You know, most artists are not financially independent.

Many of them have families,

and they're afraid that if they go against the status quo, that this passive blackballing, it's never, oh, you're canceled.

You just don't get hired.

Or people don't, you know, they don't

give you a showing.

And it's a livelihood thing.

And it's just, it's scary.

I do think folks are getting a little bit more

brave when a few more folks speak out and they understand that it's not just threatening maybe the political worldview, it's threatening their ability to make art.

Because, you know, we've moved from a place where it's about the battle for the battle of ideas to the battle for ideas.

And I think so many of us, like I started following all these people on Substack who I don't agree with, Barry Weiss, Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald.

Why?

Do I agree with what they say?

Usually not.

But you know what?

They've been canceled by their own tribe.

And those people need to be able to speak out.

And they understand the danger of it.

And I have become friends with many of them.

Yes.

And we don't agree on everything, but we found that we agree on a lot more than we ever thought.

And we have basic principles.

And we agree that we should have a conversation.

And we agree that, you know, to solve issues, we have to have the argument of ideas.

And especially, Barry Weiss said when the Times, you know, I thought the Times thing with Cotton was

an illuminating moment because we've always heard about, you know, the indoctrination of colleges, the indoctrination of colleges, but we really haven't seen it in the real world beyond kind of our kids coming home and, you know, hating their parents.

But when we saw the kind of Lord of the Flies take over the New York Times, it was, it was, to me, it was not only scary, it was like, oh my God, it's now the fruition of this indoctrination is coming into all of our media powers.

And that to me was

our offices and our government and the people who give us the news, who

we elect to Congress.

So I think that to me was a big wake-up call.

And

how else are we going to fight it?

You know, the arts has a way of breaking through that wall.

I mean, we saw it today.

What have you been talking about on your show today?

Chappelle.

Blood on my hands.

Let's go Brandon's song.

We're not talking about some speech by Pelosi or, you know, whatever, you know, the Republicans are whining about today.

We're talking about artists, and it transcends.

It goes around, it goes over, it goes through.

I know that.

That's that's the left has cornered that market a long time ago.

Yes, I was talking to a very famous painter in New York who will remain nameless at least until he decides to

and he's close.

Good.

But he's one of the best artists known in America today.

And he said, you know, it has been systematic.

He said, there's a reason why

conservatives have deer paintings, paintings of tanks, tanks, planes, and the American flag.

He said, because that's what you've been dealt.

Everything else

has been pushed over to the other side.

They began to ridicule great masters.

Yeah.

And that's relegated over here.

And they've encouraged all this other.

And so this other realm that is the popular art, he said, that's all indoctrinated.

And if you like realism,

you'll generally get the red, white, and blue, and it's all pushed over there.

And he said, that's by design.

It is not by chance.

Well, let me tell you a story that I think maybe illustrates a view I have.

Because you're right, we have seeded the arts.

And my dear buddy Andrew Breitbart would always talk about politics being downstream of culture.

The Republican Party and the conservative movement, especially the leaders, have zero understanding of the power of the arts.

Zero.

Zero.

I was asked to play

the Republican convention

when

McCain was running.

And

this was

when W was the devil.

His provo ratings at 12%.

But I love McCain.

I wrote a song about him, Last Great American.

And I said, okay, I'll play.

And they said, all right, we want you to play right after

I'm like, oh, geez, really?

You really want to throw me in the fire?

I said, okay.

And this was the time that Obama was having.

Remember the Greek column rock concerts with every star in the world?

Yes.

And it was just like, you know, the production, it was like the most amazing concert of the decade and just like the biggest stars with the fireworks and everything.

So I said, okay, guys,

I'll do it.

I believe in the cause.

I'll need a piano.

And they came back, the RNC came back and said, well, we have budget for a keyboard.

Oh, my gosh.

And I said, guys, you're asking me to basically throw my career in the toilet.

I'm going to play Freedom Never Cries.

I just need a piano because it needs, you know, it needs to have the piano.

It can't be sitting again at a keyboard.

We just came off Obama's like concert for the guts.

They say, no, no, we have budget for a keyboard.

And I go, never mind.

But that reflects the complete, even with blood on my hands.

It's a song that most of the country agrees with.

It's a song, frankly, that plays very well to the base of our side.

It certainly wouldn't if I wrote about Trump, which I would have.

But even

our members of Congress, they don't understand the power of the arts.

And they don't understand the tools that we have that can change the narrative.

They like to hear themselves talk.

They like their brands on Twitter.

But when you actually give them content, they wind their whole careers about, oh, we have nobody in the arts.

Nobody's on our side.

Nobody understands a worldview.

And when you give it to them, not only do they not know what to do with it, they don't understand the power of it.

So, I think we need to elect people, you know, elect people that understand that nobody wants to hear your speech.

They really don't.

You know, they don't really, really, you know, it's great you have two million followers on Twitter, but if you want to move the needle of the culture, you got to

embrace the artists who are willing to sacrifice their careers for your worldview.

It's amazing to me because I've always felt that

there's front of house and back of house.

Yeah.

And both are important.

If conservatives, generally speaking, were back of house,

it'd be a disaster.

Let the artist do what they do.

But the artists need to understand if they're running the finances and they're running everything else, it's a disaster.

And that's what we've forgotten, the two wings of the eagle, left and right, the back of house, front of house.

We're both necessary.

Yes.

We're both necessary.

Yes.

And we don't have to seat it to the left, especially now, especially when we see parents rising, we see the country rising up.

You know, you get it because you're an artist, right?

You're actually an artist.

You understand how someone walks in and sees one of your paintings and has a reaction that you could not get by talking to them for 10 years.

You see that, okay?

Our side doesn't get it.

I shouldn't say all of them, but most of them don't.

And I'm actually having some conversations with some who I think do.

But I think that's really

a powerful arm of this culture war is don't cede it to the left.

Call them out.

Call them out.

And especially on something like Afghanistan, which we all know in our hearts, I guarantee you, you know,

the people that write the songs about oppression and civil rights and humanity and write much better songs than I do, they know we're right on Afghanistan.

And they need to be encouraged or pushed to join this cause because it is not a political cause.

It is a moral cause.

And I hope they do.

Play this song.

Play this home.

Sure.

It's amazing.

It has given me a great deal of hope that

while what I saw on television just horrified me.

Yeah.

Horrified me.

Yeah.

Also, at the same time, the response, all of us still know that's dishonorable.

Yes.

That's dishonorable.

And as long as we have that in our hearts and that in common, we can come back together.

I think you're right.

Got blood on my hands.

And I don't understand

What's happening?

There's blood on these hands.

They're still Americans

who left on the Taliban.

Now, how's that happening?

Winking, blinking, can't you look me in the eyes?

Willie, Millie, tell me when did you decide this will defend your secret motto?

Now means never mind

blood on my hands.

hands.

Got blood on my hands.

Flag of the Taliban.

He

overfaned

General Austin.

Is there no honor in shame?

Can you spell Bagram without the letters in blame?

And Uncle Joe,

stick a drip in your veins.

I can't hear her scream.

If she's not, she's not.

She's not on TV.

And I can't hear him scream

If he's not, he's not

he's not on TV

to every

Afghan ally that we

left behind

Every child who won't know freedom faces covered in blindness for this

American promise.

Now, shit in the fire.

There's blood on our hands.

We just want American

asking

what's happening

What was the moment?

What did you see on TV?

What were you feeling when because I know you said you you beat on the piano for a while not intending on writing anything?

Did you write on the guitar or the piano?

I actually wrote it on piano.

Yeah.

And

what was the thing that pushed you to go?

Yeah, I think, you know, when the 13 soldiers were killed, I was so angry because I think we all thought that could have been prevented with better planning and just

honesty and running a humanitarian military operation, not a political one.

But

it really became a song when I was driving to Mammoth with my wife and my son, and we had just left Afghanistan.

The last soldier had left and I got a call from a friend, Ashley, who's just called today to talk to you guys.

And she's an amazing person.

She does incredible humanitarian work around the world.

She's kind of my hero.

Unsung, nobody will ever know her name.

If you can ever convince her, I'd like people to know her name.

People should know her name.

And we will tell the stories of the heroes.

And she called me.

I hadn't talked to her.

She says, I need a contact.

I'm organizing EVACs of AMSITS from Afghanistan.

And me being just the singer dude, I'm like, what's an AMSIT?

She's like

American citizen.

And there was quiet on the phone.

And after a while, I said, so you're risking your life to go rescue American citizens we left behind.

And she's kind of started choking up.

And she said, yes, who's going to do it if not us?

And so that made me very angry.

It became very personal.

Yeah.

Very personal.

And that night I kind of wrote the blood on my hands.

And then I was working on it.

Again, still wasn't sure I was going to put anything out.

I was just writing it for cathartic reasons.

And then a few days later, I was driving back from swim class, and I was listening to some of the excerpts from the president's extraordinary success speech.

And

also, even more impactful for me was Millie and Austin's coming out very soon after that.

which I hoped they would qualify it.

I hope they were going to come out and say, look, this really was an extraordinary success.

And there's things like Bogrom and there's things like

The Deadline that maybe we should talk about.

But they did not.

They came out and said,

what a great airlift.

Can you guys look at the

Guinness Book of World Records airlift?

And that made me very angry and scared.

Scared.

Scared.

I've always expected our generals to be the adults in the room.

And our presidents can do kooky things.

We saw it with the last president.

We see it with this president.

And I've always felt if it's really critical, if it's something that risks our national security, if it's the American promise, if it's something that has to do with honor, our generals will do the right thing.

And they did not.

And I'm like, this is an Orwellian exercise.

This is an Orwellian movie we're watching.

And then I thought, well, yeah, Afghanistan's really a horrible thing, but it's not a geopolitical risk to our survival.

But I'm like, if I'm freaking China right now, if I'm Russia right now, if I'm Iran right now, I'm going, maybe now's the time.

So that night driving home, I was like, I need to write a song

and blinking too, you know, blinking saying, oh,

our allies are with us just the night before.

Our allies are with us.

We didn't.

Biden didn't take the call from the British prime minister for 40-some hours.

Well, he said that the day after parliament condemned us.

Crazy.

I was literally felt like I was watching Baghdad Bob.

You know, remember Baghdad Bob, our everybody?

I'm literally going, is this really the world we're living in?

So driving home, I'm like, I need to write a song calling out Blinken, Millie, and Austin, and the president.

And I'm like, well, maybe it's the same song.

So I got home and I wrote the kind of chorus part and I wrote the lines about Millie, Blinken, and Austin.

You know, sometimes songs.

Do you remember how it first sounded when you first started writing?

Yeah.

Can you play that?

Yeah, I mean, you know.

General Austin,

It was very, like,

very nice.

You know, it sounded like...

It doesn't sound like that now.

It sounds like a nice fight for funny song.

You know, it sounds like...

You know.

It was a nice melancholy song, you know.

And I knew singing it that it had to have a different tone.

So I started experimenting with some vintage organs because to me, I'm like, I want this to have

like a B3?

No, like some old,

some old kind of sample.

Like an old church organ?

Yeah, I was going through my samples because I wanted the tone of the first version to reflect Vietnam.

Because this was Vietnam on steroids, even though they were trying not to do it.

So I found an organ and I kind of created this track.

Same chords, with this vibe, kind of like a no-quarter, Led Zeppelin vibe, that that really kind of you know the Neil Young songs Dylan and all it is in that track is a shaker chicken shaker that organ and a vocal and I think that's why that initial track was Relatively powerful because it was very slow.

There was not much instrumentation.

It was really all about the words.

And I was really happy when folks said, hey, this reminds me of like a 60s protest song.

It is.

It is.

It is.

It is.

Yeah.

And so that's kind of, and then...

It reminds me of Ohio.

Every time I hear it, I think of that song.

Well, those again, I grew up on those artists.

And I wanted the song to have that historical musical tone.

So when people hear it, even the folks are like, oh, this is not Vietnam.

No, it really is.

You know, 10 times, 100 times, 1,000 times worse.

But so that was kind of my plan there.

It was.

Strangely,

it was

scary to see the generals act the way they did.

Yeah.

But really

a relief to see how no one broke the chain of command.

Yeah.

This was not an illegal order.

It was just a really bad order.

Yes.

And you know, and I know, because I know a lot of the people were there.

You probably know a lot of people were there.

That was killing them inside.

And yet we still held order.

It was the generals and the administration, but the average person that was, you know, in our arms forces, they did the right thing.

And that, while I was horrified by what the Pentagon was doing, I had hope because I thought, okay, well, they're holding it together.

And I know that they're seething about it.

So many in the State Department, you know, when I go out and play this song live, I'll have folks come up to me after.

We've talked a lot about veterans and their response to this song and how

it's helping be a voice for their pain and shame.

But the active, that's the fascinating thing.

The active will come to me and say, you know, thank you for saying this.

Many of us agree with your sentiments, but we can't say it because we will be court-martialed.

We will be kicked out of the academy.

And I understand chain of command.

You can't have everybody rising up against

the leadership.

On the other hand,

what I expected when the president gave his speech, and this is what a lot of the troops tell me, and again, this is not some singer dude.

When this happened, I called Tulsi Gabbert.

Because number one,

I wanted someone who was not a Republican, not on the right, and someone who was a former military.

And I said, Tulsi, The Voice of America just called me.

They want me to play the song and they want me to talk to the troops.

And I go, I want to make sure when I'm talking to our troops around the world, I'm saying the right thing.

Tell me what they're feeling.

Tell me their sentiments.

Are they as angry at Millie as I am?

Do they think he sold out his honor?

And she was very helpful to me.

She said, yes, people are very angry at the leadership.

They feel that if you're a grunt on the lines and you make a mistake, whether it's your fault or not, you are held accountable.

And they feel these guys will probably get $100,000 keynotes and book deals.

And they cause this mess.

But she said, you know what?

You have to tell the troops.

Say, this is not your fault.

You served with honor.

You served with honor.

You protected the soldier next to you.

And again, this is not even about giving freedom to the Afghanistan.

We all want to save the world.

We want to save everybody.

But the troops' job is to protect the person next to you and follow orders.

They served with honor.

And the fact that their leaderships did not, and I look,

it's the first time that I have ever seen in my lifetime.

I know we've been dishonorable in the past.

Yes.

But the first time in my lifetime to where I saw dishonor and it was, it was like a punch in the face over and over and over again.

I was so humiliated and so

sad for what we were showing the rest of the world.

We were suddenly the people that the left says we are.

Yes.

You know, we all of a sudden, we're people that just cared about getting out and we don't care about anything else.

And it was so dishonorable,

I didn't even know how to deal with it at first.

I still, though, I mean, I wrote a song, right?

You get on the air and you cry and you talk about it.

We're all trying to deal with it our own way.

But again, the dishonor to me

is

Austin and Millie not resigning.

I remember when Cotton asked Millie, Millie, why didn't you resign?

If you gave all these

suggestions that were ignored.

I mean, how many people, how many generals resigned in the Trump administration?

270?

If you gave all these orders and you were ignored and this historical disaster, the greatest American shame is on your watch.

Why didn't you resign?

And you know what Millie said?

He said, because that would be a political act.

And I almost fell off my couch laughing.

The guy's been the biggest political actor for 20 years.

He was the one that came out and said, what a great airlift.

He was the one who's been leaking to the press during the Trump administration.

There's even an article in the Wall Street Journal about he was suppressing Iraq investigations.

So this guy's been a political hack for 20 years.

And for him to come out and say, I wouldn't resign because it was a political act, I think is so disgusting.

And to me, talking to the troops and people doing EVAs, I think more than anybody, they are disgusted with Millie and his

kind of of behavior and his lack of honor.

And our troops are too.

But I always tell the troops, I go, look, he may not be held accountable by the Biden administration, but history will hold him accountable.

Oh, this is going to be remembered.

Yep.

It will be remembered.

Let me,

how long did this take you?

A night?

Once I had the kind of Millie lines, and then frankly, we haven't talked about the most important lines of the song.

And the most important lines of the song, which are more relevant now than ever, are the I Can't Hear Her Scream If She's Not on TV.

Because I saw already when I was writing, finishing the song, that the media, as soon as our last soldier left, the media basically decided to move on.

Let me ask you, what the, because I've thought about this a lot.

Yeah.

What the hell is wrong with us?

We are paying the highest prices in gas we have paid in I don't know how long.

Right.

When Bush was in, you know, the media would talk about the price of gas and everyone on the planet was, that's all they were talking about was the price of gas.

If the media, which nobody trusts, nobody really is even watching,

if they don't bring it up, we don't talk about it.

Yeah.

And it can just disappear.

What is that?

It's dangerous.

It's not a democracy.

When one wing of the mainstream media,

when one powerful media organization, which is everybody but Talk Radio and Fox and Blaze,

has the narrative.

It's incredibly dangerous for a democracy.

And we know, and I hate to do the whataboutism, but we know if Trump was president,

CNN.

And you know what?

I'm proud to say, and I think I can say the same for you.

You would have reacted exactly the same way as you did, and I know I would have.

Oh, yeah.

If Donald Trump did exactly the same thing, I would have lost my mind.

The song would remain the same, only the names would change.

And here's another thing.

Beyond CNN having their how many Americans trapped in Afghanistan counter 24-7 that they'd be running, Donald Trump would have been impeached and removed.

Yes.

He would have been impeached, deservedly so.

Yes.

And that is, again,

and removed.

He would have been removed.

I feel very confident about that, you know, talking to many of our Republican senators who are, especially the veteran senators who are just incensed.

And that is not healthy for this country country when everything is decided about what tribe you're in, whether it's the music, the media.

And I don't, I think,

you know, Breitbart said this 20 years ago.

He's like, the media is the great danger to our republic.

It is.

And I would say the same thing if we had 90% of Republicans teaching our kids and 90% of Republican talking points on every television station.

That is the biggest threat to this country.

And you do a great job trying to fight that.

Other folks do.

but it's tough for folks who don't, you know, they're at the airport, there's one TV, and they get nobody.

I mean, the CNN town hall the other day,

not one question on Afghanistan, not

one.

So that tells me they're an arm of the Democratic Party, which

again, I just, it's, it's just disturbing and scary, but that's where the arts come in.

Yeah.

Um, let me, um, let me take you to another another song

because I've heard you talk about it took you 30 minutes to write Superman.

I don't know if that's true.

Is that true?

I would say 45 for the most part.

45.

And I know that other songs have taken

months

to write.

Didn't the

100 years

took you months to write.

The riddle took a year.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What's the difference?

What happens?

I guess if you could explain that, you would solve it.

But

yeah, I think Superman, I think, I look at it as a gift.

It wasn't.

But it wasn't Blood on My Hands the same kind of gift?

Blood on My Hands came very quickly.

It almost felt like I didn't write it because it was also a very different kind of song for me, right?

Yeah, it doesn't sound necessarily like you.

It doesn't fit into like the 100 years Superman guy.

But that came quickly too.

But it does, and I want to get to this later.

It does fit the guy

who has written.

I mean,

you're one of the only people that I know that's writing popular music that is American.

You know, I think the greatest,

the only one that does PR for the American way of life is Ralph Lauren.

I think he is the best advertisement for America.

Yeah.

He still believes in it.

He doesn't run from it.

He's not ashamed of it.

He knows it.

And

you have something, and we'll get into it with your childhood and growing up, but you have something in you that is very American.

Well, my first record was Americatown.

I've written Last Great American, Two Lights.

I mean, I do write a lot about the country and our troops and freedom.

I guess that's just what I care about.

Superman,

I always say, you know, some, you know, I'm not a very religious man, but I'm a, that was a gift from God.

Somebody gave that to me.

Where did it start?

You know, it's, it was just, you know, it was a time in my life.

I was writing thousands of songs.

And I sat down one night like I did every night.

And I kind of, you know, as songwriters and artists, we like to have kind of symbolism and play off them.

And I was feeling, you know, down in the dumps like most artists young artists who are not being heard and woe is me nobody wants to

I'm not David Lee Roth kicking you know doing backflips at the forum and so it was kind of a

I wouldn't call it a selfish song but a song about a young person afraid to be heard it's not easy to be me and with this thought of you know what if Superman you know was human and you know it's hard to be the rock for everybody, you know, and at the end of the day, we're just doing the best we we can.

So I kind of took that

symbolism and wrote Superman as a human being.

And I think that kind of iconic kind of

hero who I guess Superman does not fight the American way anymore, but I guess fights about tomorrow, which again disgusts me.

He fights the American way.

The American way.

Yeah, he does fight the American way.

But then, so I wrote the song and people, I think, took that sentiment in.

Yeah, the Superman we have now is an imposter.

That's right.

Yes, yes.

Yeah.

All right.

Can you play it?

Let's take us through it.

Superman

that does fight for the American way.

I can't stand the fly.

I'm not that naive.

I'm just out to find

the better part of me.

I'm more than a bird,

more than a plane,

more than some pretty face beside a train.

And it's not easy

to be

me.

Wish that I could cry

Fall upon my knees

Find a way to lie

Fight a home I'll never see

It may sound up

Don't be naive

Even heroes have the right to bleed I'm maybe disturbed won't you conceive?

Even heroes have the right to dream.

It's not easy

to be head away

from me.

Now it's alright.

You can all sleep sound tonight.

I'm not crazy

or anything

I can't stand a fly

I'm not that naive

men were meant to ride

with clouds between their knees I'm only a man in a phony red sheet

Digging for cryptonite on this one west street only a man

a funny red sheet,

looking for special things inside of me.

No, it's not easy to be

me

45 minutes of work.

Thank you, God.

Just amazing.

The idea of Superman digging for kryptonite.

Yeah,

he just wants to feel, you know, he wants to feel something.

Sometimes I think we try to be the rock for everybody and take care of everyone else but ourselves, especially those of us who are kind of ambitious and like to win.

But if you don't, you know, if you don't take care of yourself first, it's hard to take care of everyone else.

And I think that has been what

so many, I think, have found in Superman, especially men.

So did you know that was a hit?

No.

No.

So do you have that sense when it's a hit?

No.

I mean, I knew it wasn't even our first single.

I had a song called Easy Tonight, which was kind of a guitar rock song that was a number one song on AAA radio, but didn't cross.

Sold.

10,000 records, which is nothing in the business, but it gave me a chance for one more song.

And And the label said, all right, you get one more.

And

I'm like, well, if I'm going over the cliff, I noticed that when I played Superman, people listened.

In a way, they didn't listen to the other songs.

I go, well, if I'm going to go off the cliff, let's go with Superman.

And they're like, no, it's too slow.

The radio is not playing piano singer-songwriters.

That's why we had you call yourself Five for Fighting because the male singer-songwriter is dead.

That's the age of Lilith Fair, boy bands, grunge music.

And I said, well, if I'm going to, you know, if this is it, I'm going to go with Superman.

And they're like, all right, it's your career.

Sorry.

And radio did not want to play it initially.

It didn't fit their formats.

But a few, back in the day, there were a few program directors that could take a chance.

And it started reacting.

People started calling.

But even then, it was kind of hit a tipping point.

But it could have gone away in a week, but a few people stuck with it.

And then

once it kind of started to be heard, it became what it became.

Yeah.

I was a

programmer for years and years.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And

I used to, you know, pick hits in the days when that actually happened.

And

it's weird because I don't have this ability anymore.

But back then, I could hear a song and go, hit, hit, hit, hit.

Yeah.

And it must be frustrating as a writer because

you must write things and go, oh my gosh, this is just

everything to me.

And it goes nowhere.

Is there a song that you, is there anything that is like that that you're like,

if anything could be a hit, it would be this one for me.

It's funny because

after Superman, how do you follow that too?

You have this song that's concert for New York, this kind of impact on the country.

You'll never have anything like that again.

Hang on just a second.

Let's go there for a second.

How did that happen?

Wasn't there a paramedic that

contacted you about

Superman from 9-11?

Well, I was in London on 9-11.

I was over there.

Actually, we're going to start to launch Superman.

I just gotten there.

When the first plane hit, I was, like everybody else, stunned.

And when the second plane hit, I started calling everybody I knew in New York to see if they were okay.

But, you know, you might remember there were no flights for a week.

Everybody was trapped.

I canceled all my concerts.

I sat in my hotel room.

I was just, you know, numb like everyone.

And I got a sense that people were starting to use Superman to play

on their news programs to pay tribute to the firefighters and first responders.

But I didn't get a sense until I landed at O'Hare.

I literally kissed the tarmac.

I was so happy to be home.

And I did start getting emails from our families who lost loved ones.

And

I kind of saw, especially in New York with Scott Shannon and some of those folks really embraced Superman.

And a few weeks later, I got a call from my friend Rick Krim, who was the head of VH1, an old friend of mine.

And he said, hey, we're doing this concert for New York.

And I'm like, oh, that's amazing.

You know, McCartney's doing it.

I'm like, that's great.

We'd like you to play.

I'm like, really?

I'd just like a ticket.

Can I just have a ticket?

And I was scared to death.

But then I was like, yeah, I mean, the song is kind of reflecting a lot of that.

And I remember that the day I went to Madison Square Garden, you know, any other day in my life,

it would have been heaven on earth.

Like all my living influences were there, you know, McCartney,

Townsend, Elton, Billy.

And I expected, it's funny, I expected to be like really early.

I'm like one of the new guys.

It was a four-hour concert, right?

So I kept, I opened the itinerary and and i kept paging looking for me and there was only like two pages left i'm like oh thank god they forgot me i'll just like sit there and i turn to the last page and it's like john cougar five for fighting elton john janet jackson show over something like that or paul mccartney and and then the nerves really start

this can't be this can't be so i kind of sat around for three hours and the who's trailer was next to me and that was bouncing up and down i thought that was cool um um

And

so I remember walking out there, and funny story, I really have never talked about this.

So I got out there, and as you remember, it was a live show, 27 million people watching.

Everybody was everybody.

And they'd had a lot of technical problems because it's a live show.

They put it together last minute.

So I had these inners in, and I have my cello player, Vic, sitting here, and I'm sitting at the piano, you know,

you know, and they couldn't get any sound in my ears.

So I finally, and they were filling, you know, I forget who was introducing me, five for fighting, and this, they're filling, fill, fill, fill.

And then I'm playing and I hear a chord.

They go, oh, it's in there.

And they go, all right, five for fighting, boom.

And I hit the first chord and a hundred decibels of white noise in each ear.

Oh my gosh.

And I'm talking about moments of truth in your life.

Yeah.

So it's true what they say, how time slows down.

So I'm playing the intro to Superman.

I can't even hear it.

I'm just watching my fingers.

And I have two choices.

I can stop, take my ears out, start over,

which would be kind of lame and embarrassing, or I could keep going.

And I looked out into the crowd and there was this huge burly union worker, you know, and all the folks at Madison Square Garden, they'd been down at ground zero for 30 days, just picking through the rubble.

Just, I can't imagine.

And he had two beers.

And I started singing Superman, and he started singing with me.

And I just looked at him and we sang together and I never heard a thing.

I just sang it with him and he started crying.

And I'm like, just skip through the song.

Don't choke up.

So I never heard a word of my performance.

I watched the garden sing it and it was the most moving, surreal experience of my life to this day and nothing will ever top it.

Have you ever talked to him?

Did you ever find him?

Do you ever tell that story?

No, I've told it a couple of times.

I mean, I've talked to a lot of, I still keep in touch with a lot of the firefighters and the stations.

When I go to New York, I'll pop in.

I don't know who it is.

I'm so grateful.

He got me through probably the most important moment of my life.

He saved me singing the song with me.

I'd like to find the tape.

And I wonder if it's...

You can see it from the back, see him, yeah.

But just to talk about the concert for New York, because I'm talking about me a lot.

What really kind of changed my worldview about music was watching The Who play that night.

Because when they came out, all these people who had not been able to release,

when they played Bob O'Reilly and people were just singing and screaming and crying and hugging, I'm like, okay, this is why it matters.

Charts, nice.

Ticket sales, nice.

Fame and fortune, nice.

But it really showed me why music matters and how a song.

can transcend and provide solace and cure to a nation.

And that night, The Who Did and the rest of those performers as well.

Which is harder for you, the song or the lyrics?

Lyrics.

Lyrics.

I mean, I know Cohen is your favorite lyric.

Oh, Leonard Cohen?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I mean,

he's a master.

You know,

lyrics, I think melodies will get you on the radio.

Lyrics will keep you there for 30 years.

Yeah.

I mean, I think

my favorite lyricist is Bernie Toppin.

Well, I was just going to talk about Bernie.

Yeah.

I mean,

Elton John would have been a jingle singer

without those lyrics.

Well, you've heard some of his latest songs without Bernie.

And Elton is my hero.

I wouldn't be here without Elton.

No, Bernie.

Bernie's great, all those 70s, Joni Mitchell,

even James Taylor, even some of the Middle songs.

You know, I just heard a song,

Where'd the Hell My Phone?

I don't know if you've heard that.

I have not heard that.

Oh, you need to look it up.

I will.

Where'd the hell my phone?

And I thought to myself, is this really where we're at now?

Where are those lyricists?

I don't know.

I mean, it's easy for, you know, over-the-hill rock guys to be curmudgeons and say, oh, the music was great when I was making it.

Yeah.

You know.

But yeah, I do think I asked myself, what songs of this age are we going to hear 10, 20 years from now that define these times?

And maybe.

Have you heard AJR?

I have not.

I don't know much about it.

I just hear from my kids.

Like, and there's some good music out there.

There's some good songwriters.

There are.

You know, good singers.

You should look up AJR because it's

interesting because my son

is a big fan of AJR.

And so

to figure out my son and my daughter, I listen to their music.

Yeah, me too.

And

they're profound.

They really are some really great lyrics.

Really great lyrics.

So you you did Superman.

Yeah.

It was a huge hit.

Yeah.

And now the pressure is on to follow it up.

Yep.

And this one, I've heard you say, took months.

I spent two years, made a record, realized I didn't have the song to follow Superman, and also understood that the tendency for one-hit wonders was to regurgitate the song, your first song.

And I didn't want to write Superman 2.

We saw that movie.

How do you mean?

Give me an example of somebody regurgitating their song.

I don't want to embarrass people, but

there are bands that have had a hit.

And, you know, and the record company pressures them too into that.

It's like, all right, it needs to have the same tempo.

It needs to have the same key.

It needs to be the same thing.

It's just a B version of their hit song.

So I knew I had to have a song that would stand alone if Superman never existed, but also be the same guy.

It's hard.

If you go too too far away from what people are familiar with, you lose your audience.

But if you just give them the same song, they'll just go listen to Superman again.

So I wrote three or 400 songs and I made a record and the record company was not happy.

You know, they were ready to drop me.

And I'd been doodling with

ideas.

And you talked about, do songs come from, you know, lyrics or melodies?

Sometimes they come from concepts, just ideas, post-it notes.

And And 100 years was that.

It was a time I was sitting there and at my house and life was pretty good, Glenn.

I kind of realized my dream of having a hit song.

I had two little babies, a wonderful life,

wonderful wife and life.

But I, like many, I don't know about you, sometimes like to dwell on the past or obsess on the future.

I have a hard time recognizing where I am than now.

I think many people that do what we do

have that challenge.

So I kind of just said, what if I have a song that's kind of a wish is never better than this and recognize the moment even when it's not great and the verses are stages of our lives.

And that really was the epiphany for the song.

You know, creativity usually comes in sparks.

And you have to be able to recognize when that comes.

And you can go for months, months, months, grind, grind, grind, grind, grind, grind, grind, grind, grind, grind.

And then here comes the spark.

And the spark was, okay, here's this concept.

Say it in a way nobody said it before.

Let the verses be our li the years of our lives, stages of our lives.

And then it was about writing it down.

And that was the work ethic part.

So, you know, it's

the only song I've ever heard that is even in this category is,

gosh, it's a Frank Sinatra song, you know.

When I was 25.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's interesting because I remember hearing that song when I was young.

Yeah.

And I didn't really understand all of it.

You know what I mean?

Because I wasn't that age.

Right.

And this song has the same kind of

combination to it that I think if you're 15,

you don't really understand

the rest of the song.

Well, and again,

I wrote the song when I was...

my early 30s.

I'm kind of the top of the second verse, the family on my mind guy.

And

I had no idea about the rest.

You know, the 45 Midlife Crisis, you know, I wrote that.

Turns out I was right.

But I had, you know, and the bridge.

But the nice thing about 100 years as opposed to Superman,

you know, Superman, I could not write now.

I could not write that song.

It's pretty damn easy to be me.

It's pretty damn easy to be you.

Most of us, right?

When you see people with real challenges.

So Superman, I couldn't write.

But 100 years,

we're always somewhere in that song.

And every night when I play it,

I kind of giggle when I hit my spot, which is now the bridge.

And pretty soon it'll be the vamp.

And hopefully I'll make it to the end.

But

it did.

It took three, you know, three or four months to get the 30 lines to get each.

You know, the key to art is making it seem simple.

It's so hard to make things seem simple.

And it seems like, oh yeah, you could have written that in 10 minutes.

It's just, you know, but for most of us, unless we're prodigy writers like, you know, Bernie and Leonard Cohen, we have to go through, you know, hundreds of pieces of paper and trash cans to get the 30 songs if we're fortunate enough to get them right.

Yeah, I was I was told once by somebody I really admired.

He said, the difference between a professional

and somebody who will never, will always be an amateur is

We make it look easy,

but it's it's because we did all of the hard work for so long.

Oh, it's suffering.

It's being willing to suffer.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

All right.

Play.

I'm 15

for a moment,

caught in between

10 and 20.

And I'm just dreaming,

counting the ways to where you are.

I'm drawn it too for a moment.

And she feels better than ever.

And we're on fire,

making our way back from Mars.

And 15, there's still time for you,

time to buy and time to lose.

15.

There's never a wish

better than this.

When you only got a hundred years to live.

I'm 33 for a moment.

I'm still the man.

You see, I'm a there

kid on the way,

a family on my mind.

I'm forward to five for a moment.

The sea is high.

We're heading into a crisis,

chasing the years of our lives.

In 15, there's still time for you,

time to bar,

time to lose yourself

within a morning star

And 15 I'm alright with you 15

There's never a wish better than this

When you only got a hundred years to live half time goes by Suddenly you wise another blink of an eye 67's gone the sun is getting high

We're moving on

Always moving on

I'm 99 for a moment

I'm dying for just another moment And I'm just dreaming

Counting the ways to where you are

In 15, there's still time for you

22 I feel you too

33, you're on your way.

Every day,

a new day now.

It's a new day now.

There's never a wish better than this.

No,

better than this

when you only got a hundred years to live

to live.

fantastic.

Thank you.

Fantastic.

Let me just address.

Can I have, would you come back?

Anytime.

Okay.

Yes.

Because we are already an hour into this and I still have a lot more to talk to you about.

I do want to talk about your childhood.

Yeah.

Your dad.

Yeah.

It was amazing.

Amazing.

Yes.

And if you ever go to,

what is it, a Costco?

Yes.

And you're pushing the cart around.

Thank you.

Yes.

That's you guys.

Right?

Here's my Precision Wire Products hoodie that I wear proudly.

Yeah, I actually give it to you.

That's great.

I love it.

That's the family business.

Shopping carts.

Yeah, my dad was an astrophysicist.

He worked at the...

What?

Yes, he worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the golden age of spaceflight in the 70s.

Wow.

And went to UCLA, went to Pomona.

And I had the greatest childhood.

I would go down to the JPL mainframe on Sundays, and I'd play Star Trek on their computer, putting the punch cards in while he would go work on the navigation of the Mariner spacecrafts.

Holy cow.

And bring home like, oh, here's the latest pictures of Titan from Saturn's moons.

It was amazing.

It's kind of where I got my science bug.

And when my grandfather passed away

relatively young in his 60s, my dad left JPL to go run this kind of down and dirty welding business in Watts, right by the Watts Towers in LA.

And we had about 30 people at the time.

And I would go down there and bend wire and he'd pay me a penny.

We called him hairpins.

I could sue him now for that.

Minimum wage, definitely.

Get some lawyers.

I know, my dad, too.

And he kind of used his engineering skills to not just redesign things like shopping carts, but more importantly, the machines to make them.

He was building computers on

our dinner table when Gates was building them in his garage.

And I've always thought, wow, if he just marketed the computers instead of shopping carts, this may be a different conversation.

Yeah, there wouldn't be a conversation.

Yeah, but I've worked at Precision my whole life.

It's a great example of the American dream.

You know, we have about 300 employees.

Are you still in Los Angeles?

We're in commerce, believe it or not.

One of the few manufacturers left in California.

Why?

Well, part of it is my dad's in his 80s, and the moving a business that big is challenging.

We are actually...

Is he still running it?

He didn't run it during COVID.

I took over and ran it.

I mean, he worked from home, but he still comes in now that he's got his vaccines.

He's 83, coming in six days a week, still running the show.

And I've been much more involved the last five years because it's really not so much about our family.

You know, we have 300 employees.

Many of them have been with us 30, 40 years.

And there's no other jobs for them than this.

And during the pandemic, it was really my mission to just keep the business alive for them.

And it's great.

You see, as I said, we get people that start at minimum wage.

Many of them can't speak English.

And we have this tradition that every year we have a Christmas party.

And for kids, if they get a B average, we give them gift cards.

And the kids will line up and they'll get their gift cards.

And now we have kids 25 years later coming back from Stanford, from Princeton.

Their parents, you know, these immigrants, very,

very low income, are now putting their kids through Ivy League schools and they are driving ram trucks and they have a middle class life because they're in America.

And the American dream happens at Precision Wire every day.

So it's been a great grounding mechanism for me when all this entertainment gobbled's going on when I go back there and I smell the wood.

So yeah, I'll be back and doing that with grandpa next week.

So I was just, I just had dinner with the head of Toyota North America.

Okay.

And he's the guy who moved them out of Los Angeles and moved them to Texas.

Yes.

And he said, one of the reasons was, he said, it wasn't for me.

It wasn't for, you know, any of us fat cats at the top.

He said, my wife and I talked about it.

And he said, they're sitting in traffic for two hours.

Yeah.

You know, that's four hours out of your day.

They're going to work.

They can't afford anything closer.

He said it's just it was wrong for the workers to have them there.

Well, I will be going looking at real estate after our little chat here today.

Oh, here in Texas?

Yes.

Me and Toyota moved here, too.

Well, I think California is so toxic, and it's not a blue or red state.

It's a litigious state.

And they think that business is evil and that all they do is basically take advantage of the worker.

And I do think there are a lot of folks who would want to get out just for affordable housing.

But some have family there, right?

And so they're not going to leave their family.

It's a hard challenge.

But I think for the business to sustain itself, we will certainly have to have another location out of California.

And we're working on that.

You just can't.

You know, when you said it exactly right, they are hostile to business.

And, you know, I am generally hostile towards unions because of what they've turned into.

Right.

However, unions are so important when the corporation has become hostile to the worker.

You know what I mean?

There's this balance that when it's really balanced between everything, that's when everything works.

Yes.

And we just keep going from one end to the other.

It's a mutually beneficial operation.

But Marx doesn't teach that.

Well, and I think most of the politicians that come from that worldview have never run a business.

They've never seen the American dream in front of their eyes, which is sad.

And it's so sad to see what's happened to California.

I love the state.

It's so beautiful.

It was such an artistic bastion of creativity in the 70s.

To see what happened to California, it's really depressing.

But as you said, for businesses, it's not a choice.

If you want to survive, especially in manufacturing, you cannot exist there.

And I fear it's just going to be kind of like Hawaii, a state of

government officials and tourism and there'll be little left besides big boxes of you know warehouses that's really sad really sad really sad yep john so good to see you you're the best boy god bless you man

thank you

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