Teaching Through Music and Education Reform

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See terms at golden nuggetcasino dot com slash promos ends june twenty eighth at eleven fifty nine PM Eastern Time The Sopranos, I went to the greatest acting school you could ever go to. I was a little nervous about the process, but you learned that if the director's happy, then you got to be happy. And that's that. That's the bad thing about you getting something is where they got murders because they can always kill you at any moment, you know ? It greatly helps their negotiating position. Right. This is hungry dogs. I am James Patterson and you're not. Wasn't it that the old Saturday night live thing? This is one of my favorite interviews. This is a great one. My guest today is legendary guitarist and actor Stevie Van Zant, one of the founding members of Bruce Springsteen's East Street Band, and he actually left the band to then go on the Sopranos. We talk about the Jersey Shore, how the music of the sixties felt. We also get into songwriting and politics and the sopranos and the work he's doing now to bring music and the arts back into education , which is right up my alley as well. Here's Stevie Vanza, you're going to love this one . I think back around in high school, I'm going to be a writer. And I suspect that relatively early, you kind of said I'm going to be a musician playing a band or all that stuff. Is that semi accurate? Yeah, that's accurate. Earlier than that, probably thirteen, fourteen. You know, it was the Beatles like most of my generation playing at Sullivan, February Ninth. You have the same generation, I'm afraid. Yeah . Same stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so february ninth, nineteen sixty four. And that was the beginning of whole new world being revealed to us, you know, we'd never seen anything like it. And but they were a little bit too good at that point, a little too sophisticated really, you know, to think you could actually do it. Luckily, four months later the Rolling Stones came and made it. They always had the slick producers, the Beatles, you know, very slick and Rolling Stones was more like, okay, we're coming, although, you know, I think Mick Jagger was pretty sophisticated , you know, whatever , a lot of art training and all that stuff. But they didn't let it show. No, no, they were like really the first punk band. They made them, you know, they the Beatles had the perfect harmony and the perfect hair. Yeah, yeah. The stones really didn't. They kind of were wearing street clothes and and you know, no harmony really to speak of. And you know, they made it look easier than it was, you know? Part of the reason with you, what I was interested in and I think we're very different, but I think we're also very similar in a lot of ways in terms of being kind of restless and enthusiastic . And also , which is a little rare , both having that creative urge and also that producer urge, likened to do our own, but also likened to help and work with other people and all that stuff. So but that I don't know if that's accurate, but it kind of interest ed me . Yeah, yeah, no, it's true. And it is rare. It's kind of two different sides of your brain, you know ? Or two different sides of your ego , you know? But yeah, it's rare. But my God, you're the most prolific human being that's ever lived. I mean, you make me feel lazy. Yeah, my favorite word prolific, man Yeah, yeah, yeah. two hundred books in fifty years . Is that true? I mean, I don't know. I don't count them. I don't count them. That's a book ever lines for fifty years. I mean , yeah. I think the number , you know what it got confused? I did these short ones in the novella's right I sort of in well not invented, but this thing of putting out novellas. And I did a lot of those in one year. I think that sort of boosted the number a lot. But down on the Jersey Shore , which I had some familiarity with both as a kid and then eventually I had a house down there. But I get the feeling there was a lot of music around, a lot of clubs and stuff like that . Oh yeah, no, we were the luckiest generation ever . Nothing like us before or since. It was a , I mean the Beatles had more impact than just us a wannabe musicians, they actually changed the culture to a band culture. In other words, when you went out at night, you know, as a teenager as you probably remember, you either you went to the drive in theater or the you went to see a band . I mean, that's that's all we did. So it was a very, very lucky time . You know, and once you were in a band, there was just lots of places to play. Well, it's an interesting area of thought to me because where I grew up no, there were driving there was a drive in theater, but there were no bands and there was no clubs and there was none of that stuff upstate New York . And you think about these different hubs like Liverpool with the Beatles and all of a sudden stuff happens. You know, going back in the painting, Paris a couple of times , London weirdly in terms of theater back in the Shakespeare days because theater was nowhere and it wasn't big anywhere, but it was monstrous in London. And Seattle with that kind of Neirana and that whole thing all of a sudden exploded out there. And you get Nashville and Memphis , not so much as centers, but places where it all came together for people that wanted to do stuff in the South . And the Jersey Shore is another place. But it is interesting to me, like all of a sudden, you get a lot of people thinking about the same thing and it's stimulating and it also suddenly it starts becoming a creative force. Well yeah, and it was part of an overall creative force that I refer to that period as a Renaissance period. And and I don't believe that's exaggerated. I believe when the most when, you know, when the best art being made is also the most commercial . You got yourself a renaissance, you know That was what was going on really sixties right into the seventies in all in all the arts, you know, all the arts were flourishing in an interesting new way, you know , so it was it was everything really at once at that time. And all feeding each other, I think, just a very, very exciting time to be alive, you know , thinking that every day is going to be better than yesterday, you know, had that optimism was in the air Of all of the chaos of the sixties and, you know, you know , I do. Yeah , yeah. Oh, absolutely. Vietnam, and there was a lot of yeah. Yeah, you know, protest for everything. I mean, you know, women's rights, gay rights, you know, you name it, civil rights, I mean, the assassinations and everything else, but still I went to a march to the Pentagon on the Pentagon, and I couldn't believe for me it was basically my friend and I would hitchhiked down from New York, which, you know, those are the days you could actually hitchhike places . And it was in Vietnam. We could get down there they must have been protesting five hundred things. Java Ran, it was incredible. But there's actually a thing, just what you were saying was something that you wrote, and you said, It's a matter of having high standards, which I realize is difficult now because we live in such a world of mediocrity. And we grew up in a renaissance where greatness was commercial . Not only did it exist, it was commercial. You didn't go home and say, I want to write a song that copy some other song. You went home and said, I want to write a great song. And I think that's one hundred percent. And I don't know if it's the kids now or just the whole culture is sort of going that way. Imitation, don't sorta think bigger, think something, great thinking that's and always been my whether I deliver or not. I'm always I'm not trying to do the same thing. I'm always trying to do something different and stretch and you know, whatever. Writing some nonfiction or kids' books, stuff like that, stuff that I haven't , you know, I did a thing. Michael Crichton's widow came to me a while back and Michael had loved all his stuff and he had written a little bit a part of a book and she said, Do you want to finish it? And I said, Well, let me read it what he wrote and I did want to finish it. But I thought it would be a real challenge because his stuff, it has a lot of science and mine doesn't. So I had a kind of but I thought that would be cool. I love the story they had set up. And you know, so stuff like that that kind of challenges blah blah blah. But getting back to Jersey and stuff, you get expelled at one point. I'm not saying you're a bad boy. You're getting a little car crash. I don't know whose fault that was or whatever. So do you think back then you were kind of a rebel without a cause or did you have a cause? I didn't feel that way . It just happened to be the thing I was into just happened to be not quite accepted by society yet. I felt I was, you know, kind of, you know, joining the circus I guess, you know, as it came through town to be a really good acrobat, you know what I mean? It wasn't an escapist thing or even a rebellion thing really. It was just I loved the music. I wanted to make the music and being in a rock n' roll band was the way you made the music in those days, you know Now it wouldn't be a commercial enterprise until the seventies , you know, so those of us in the sixties were really looked at as freaks , you know . And well, you said that little misfits, whatever in some of the lyrics wave your freak flag high and things like that . But part of it I guess is not just not fitting in but not wanting to fit in. Right, right. If you didn't want to be, no, I don't, you know, I'm not me necessarily, but I mean, you know, a lot of people No , well, this was a new idea. I know it's hard to explain that to younger people right now, but just deciding to not be part of society was a new idea . Up until our generation , our parents just accepted, you know the, you know, the conventional way to live and right . And suddenly, you know, with the probably starting off with the with the beat poets, I usually, you know, start, I think that's where it kind of originated , you know, rejecting the the society sort of rules. And then and that beat poetry thing leaked into rock and roll through Bob Dylan. And you know, and suddenly we were questioning the government which , you know, very few previous generations had ever done. I mean, you know , well, Vietnam had a lot to do with question the government. Because a lot of young people are going, I don't know, man, this doesn't seem right . There's something fuck ed up here and I don't want to go to the swamp honestly and you know kill people that I don't know and you know for I'm not sure what the reasons are either, you know, yeah and that was a new idea. That I mean that,'s Yes I. don't think that happened for the Korean War. And drugs drugs because you had a lot of people who were having experiences that, you know, for all intents and purposes, certainly not that many people having these weird experiences. And that was that was really weird. In the history of the world, there's never been with so many people that weird thoughts and experiences, you know, whatever. And that was different. And again, I sometimes younger people find it 's hard to believe also, but we weren't doing drugs to escape . We were doing drugs, you know, to seek enlightenment and to seek information. You know, I called LSD the hippie Google, you know You know, it was it was like that, you know, I mean you couldn't find out any information, you know, it was hard to find and and drugs, I mean, you know, I mean you have to be honest , you know , it did expand your mind at the time in a way, you know? And if, you know, unless you started to do it, you know, too often at the time, it was it was quite it was a mind expanding experience. It really was. One hit of LSD in those days and you understood Eastern philosophy. You know, you really did, you know, everything's connected, everything's alive , you know you know, matter , you know, you know, never disappears. It just changes form. And, you know, suddenly we were seeking this information because , you know, these people our heroes were doing it and turning out, you know, amazing work . You know, now we found out that by doing drugs, that doesn't mean you're going to do great work because I know a lot of friends that were taken doing drugs and they have not done great work . I remember one time I'm in college in New York City and a bunch of us and we took LSD and nothing happened. And you know, that would happen every once in a while. So we said , fuck, you know, it didn't work. We've been cheated at 'em or five bucks or whatever hell it was. And we said, well, what the hell are we gonna do? And it was a Yankee game that night. So he said, Well, let's go to the Yankee game. What the hell, you know? So we go to we get on the subway, we're going down to Yankee Stadium and I'm on the subway and all of a sudden this guy goes by and I go we're on the subway now and at the LS D is going to work . And I tried to tell my friends they didn't believe me. We got down to the Grand Concourse and I said, You guys got to help me across the street. I cannot get across the street. They still didn't believe me. So I'm out in the middle of all this. And then during the game, Reggie Jackson hits a ball out into out near the monuments out there. You know, it was about nine hundred feet and seven hundred , whatever it was, five hundred feet . And I went through this whole thing of like, I can't decide whether I want to watch Reggie running around the bases or the ball bouncing at there you know. So I don't know if I was getting enlightenment then or escape but it was fun and memorable. And I also I also thought in those days I could write lyrics which I could n't. But I would write. I remember I was standing vanderbilt at this point. I would go out there and I would sit there and I'd write I'd just sit under an awning for hours writing plays , I think . And they were all musicals. They were musicals. So anyway, speaking of writing, so early on, some of your success was as a writer early stuff, writes outside Johnny what's the writing l?y Iric mean, I'm curious about that with in terms of how did that work for you? You know, a lot of lyric writing, stuff like that. The first thing you had to do, we had to discover an identity because we grew up at a time when everybody had a very distinct identity. So outside Johnny and Nasbury Jux was really the first band that really had an identity, which was Rock Meat Soul, okay? It was a combination of rock and soul because starting in the seventies the all completely original ident ities of the sixties now became hybrids. So now everybody since the sixties really is a hybrid of something . So we were the hybrid of rock and soul. We had rock and roll guitar with soul horns . Okay . So I started writing kind of, you know, in that in that genre that I was kind of inventing at the time You know, more or less traditional soul songs, you know, with rock guitar in them. And that, you know, it started to become a little bit more personal as you went. And then when I started making my own records, of course, and it had to be personal . And then I decided my identity as a solo artist was going to be political. So my writing now took on a whole nother level required a whole not level of research because I would choose topics for every album . Every album was a conceptual album and had themes and sub themes. And so required research. I began to look into things a little more deeply . And you know, the art form that we are working in in rock and roll is more of an emotional communication . And so I would take the information that I was learning and turn it into storytelling in the songs, you know? And then I would put a list, I would put a list of books on the album cover if people were interested in the subject matter. I remember reading something about the Beatles. I actually wrote a book about John Lennon, but you find out like where some of the lyrics come from. You go, oh, okay, really? That was just about your street and nothing because it rhymed and but how much attention were you paying to the to the actual lyrics themselves? No, intensely. Every word , you know, I knew my thing was going to be exposing our country's bad foreign policy was basically my thing, you know, at the time . I felt that we had gone off the rails as far as adhering to our original ideals , and that needed to be talked about . So every word really counted . And I wrote ahead of title, you know, and I wanted to make it clear that I was writing this criticism of our govern ment from a patriotic point of view , not just, you know, just doing it just to be rebellious or whatever. So I had a title, I am a patriot and I stared at that title for a good year before I figured out how to write it, you know? It was difficult the most difficult song I've ever written . You know, so every word counted in during those political years. Yeah. I started with one shop, no college degree, no big investors. It was just a willingness to work. Over time, that one shop turned into a multi billion dollar business called Crash Champions. All the lessons I learned along the way came from the grind , and that's what my show, Podcash is all about . We have real conversations with people who've built things the hard way. We talk to founders, athletes , and blue collar leaders who kept going when things got tough. You'll hear stories of grit, leadership and growth, plus real world lessons you can take back to your team and your life tomorrow. When you get momentum , you step on the gas. That's how you get separation from everybody else. I was at Harvard Law School, as blah, blah, blah, blah, I looked up something there's kids in my neighborhood putting in sheet rock that is smarter than you. AI is going to disrupt a lot of stuff. It is never going to disrupt physical blue collar trade skills. And the guy just looked at me and he said, It's bloody impossible. So I asked him this question. I said, It's impossible unless that's Podcast with me, Matt Ebert. Watch on YouTube and listen wherever you get your podcasts . I'm Jake Halpern, host of Deep Cover, a show about people who lead double lives. We're presenting a special series from Australia. It's all about a family who was conned by a charming American. When you marry someone, you feel like you really know them. I was just gobsmicked as to what's going on here. Does the name Liz Lee Minukian mean anything to you? Oh, you bet. Never forget her. Listen to Deepcover Presents Snowball , wherever you get your podcasts. I'm sure you ran into a lot of really good groups that didn't really make, make it . But why does some groups why does East Street all of a sudden make it? You know, I don't mean that I don't care about that specific thing. And some bands that are really, really, really good. And it doesn't happen for them. It's a couple of things. You know, you got the obvious stuff of, you know, you got to be good at what you do. And the craft part of it is important. I think the work ethic part of it is important. And having management, I think, is extremely important. And the ones that don't make it and the ones that do, sometimes it's just a matter of having the right management. And then and then an additional sort of intangible maybe is in our case, having no other choice , you know . Being unable to do anything else also helps , you know . It helps your persistence because you know , when I came up and I'm writing and if you like if you're talking to a girl in a bar or something they say, you know, what do you do? I'm a writer. They say, Well, have I read any of your stuff, well, no, I haven't published and they walk away from you . What are you talking about? You're a writer, you haven't published anything. What is that? That makes no sense, you know? So you get seven years with the East Street Bad, seven years or so and you got great friends there and you're and the band is breaking out and then you go I got to do something else . What happened there? Yeah a couple things but mostly I became obsessed with politics, you know , and felt the need to do something about it just to kind of justify my existence. Yeah, I mean, nobody was really doing it and it was a particularly pernicious, you know, you know, that moment in time , you got Ronald Reagan who, you know, is this grandfatherly cowboy. Everybody loves him . You know, and behind just behind the scenes, you know, hidden is this incredibly, you know, worldwide criminal organization, you know, called our government. I just felt like that needs to be exposed, you know, because we're supporting every dictator in the world, you know, half of ' anyemway. And that was something that nobody really was talking about , you know . And then that went all the way. You know, I had a whole list of entanglements around the world . One of which was South Africa. And that wasn't really a big issue either at the time , you know? And I went down there and did some research there and was quite shocked. Gotta do something about this. You know, we got I remember talking to President Clinton, you know, who's a friend at this stage the most impressive person that he's ever dealt with. And he said , you know, Mandela, South Africa, you know, that was the most impressive human being. And he's dealt with a lot of people . You know , I don't know how this is with you It varies with people, but I always found it certainly was true with me that it was really important somewhere along the line that somebody believed in you. For me, it was my grandmother and she said , You're not going to play in the NBA, so stop. But you can do stuff. So if you set your mind to it, you probably are going to be able to do it. Did you have anybody in your life that really was like that way with you or did you just have to do it on your own? No , no, we got no encouragement because like I said, playing rock and roll in the sixties was just , you know, one step below being a criminal. I think, you know, I think my parents would have preferred me being a criminal because at least it was steady work, you know ? But there was no real there was no real encouragement . You know, at the same time , I had a deeper encouragement by being the first grandson in an Italian family. There's a certain divinity imposed upon you very young. And I was and I grew up, my mother divorced my father , my natural father when I was like two or three , I don't remember him at all and moved into my grandparents' house with four or five aunts and uncles and the Italian grandpare nts. So I was given a whole lot of love and the important at an important stage, I think of my life , which made me feel secure forever more. You know? I mean, it's supposed to be traumatic when your parents get divorced. I had none of that . And I always felt kind of secure in who I was for some reason. I think it comes from that from that early age of Oh, I think that's huge. Yep, yep, yep. And that's one thing with our son, there's this thing of like understanding who you are and just that core, whatever that is. And you're growing up, it's not about the acne or any of that stuff. We get it, like acne is not your friend, but your core is still , you know, that thing. And if you can believe in that, it's it's useful. Yeah, so that helped, I think get me through the because the rock and roll thing was such a revelation , discovered the whole band concept , again, let me remind people there were no bands in America at that time. I mean , you went to your high school dance, it was an instrumental group, you know So that whole idea of four or five guys some black bands, huh? Well, yeah, yeah. Nobody knew them. Yeah, yeah, there probably was, yeah, with singers . Yeah, yeah, I'm sure they were. Yeah, more in the R and B world. Yeah, that's that's true. But in a white in the white, you know, the white teenage world, you didn't see it . But you know, until until until the British invasion. But it was just that communication of a band was different , you know ? I had no interest in show business whatsoever . And the band thing just felt like something else entirely It was the posse, the gang, the team , the friendship, family. For me, that made me want to do it. That made me want to be part of it You know, I didn't care. One of the things that people think most people don't understand about the kind of art world such as it is and is you have to kind of deal with rejection and you have to really be able to if you're an actor, all of a sudden you're on top and all of a sudden you're not on top and you can't get hired for a while or if you're a writer and you're getting some reviews you're not too happy about or that book didn't sell or whatever the hell it is . And at one point you got involved with an oldies tour . I guess it was right after during the British invasion when all of a sudden that's all people wanted to play and listen to. When you had like Gary US Bonds and Dean or who are in their prime and great and suddenly it's like they're on an oldies tour. So talk about that a little bit. I mean, that to me is fascinating. Yeah, it was an incredible , you know , shame and tragedy because here they are inventing rock and roll for us for the next sixty seventy years and counting . And for some reason, that was the only generation that didn't flourish along with this audience and grow together , you know , eternally, you know? For some reason, the British invasion comes in ' sixty four , which is basically all English bands at first . You know, unintentional consequence. They put all their heroes out of work . And and literally in their prime in their in their, you know, thirties, maybe early forties , they're all shoveled off , you know, shoved off into this into the pastures of this old East Circuit. And I ended up there by circumstance and then doing the oldie circuit for a while, which I loved every minute of because I'm meeting all these of pioneers of rock and roll. I met literally every one of 'em . And I would later have relationships with them, you know, Gary Barnes, we would end up producing, I would end up producing Ronnie Specter. Was he on Lily Hammer? Did he make an appearance on there . Yeah, that's good. You know, and you know, little Richard I met there and would end up being the preacher at my wedding. You know, but it was but they hated it. They hated every minute of it. They hated being called oldies, . If you had three hits when the Beatles came, you play those three hits the rest of your life. And it was this . No, I remember seeing somewhere it was a washed up. I mentioned it really weren't eventually there was one club up in Newberg and I saw Jay and the Americans there. There was about twenty people in the thing and they're like, fuck, you know , you know, it was he was good. He was an amazing voice. He was unusual though because he really had a voice voice. Like one of those old the guys that would sing it with the big band era. Yeah, no , very , very operatic, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, that's that's what happened, man , you know twenty, people in the club and that's just a just a shame. We were cheering for him. I'll tell you that. We were screaming for, but, you know, they're great. They're the most talented , you know, ironically. Yeah, the most talented people, you know, I mean , I love producing those people when I ever got a chance because they actually had talent, you know? Yeah. I mean, you had to have talent those days. You know, there was nobody fixing your vocal. All right, yeah. You actually had to single ,, right right? Yeah yeah,. That's why, you know, as soon as I got in the studio , I started kind of bringing them back. We put Ronnie Specter and Lee Dorsey on Southside's first album and reunited the Drifters and Coasters and five Satins on their second album and me and Bruce did a couple records with Gary West Bonds and I did a record with Darlene Love later, you know , just to let people know that they're still around and they're still great and you, know, we always Darling love. Talk about wow, somebody who never wasn't appreciated the way she should have been. Yeah, when I did that record, I was very proud of it. And you know, she was featured in that movie Twenty Feet from Stardom , which actually right there. I won the Oscar , and I thought this album's gonna be the perfect happy ending to that movie, which was, you know, a little bit on the sad side side and and unfortunately I thought for sure we made the album of a year, but it never even got nominated unfortunately. But I'm very proud of it, very proud of it. Introducing Darlene in love. So I mentioned people having people believe in you. So then there's Maureen and I don't know why or how but she believes in you. Why? Whatever that's all about. Yeah, yeah. Now Yeah, she her eyesight has never been that good. But like so many of us, we go from being kind of rock aile looking to kind of character actor look, I don't know, whatever . Yeah, I'm with you there. Well, no, later on, a few handful of people did start believing in me, I should say. I mean, but later on I found a terrific friend who became our agent, Frank Barcelona, who really reinvent ed the entire business . He became a friend who believed in me. A guy Steve Popovich, who ended up signing the South side in the Addy Jux. Bruce Springsteen was one of those people who believed in me. Lance Fried , my publisher, you know, David Chase Later when I became this fucking award show that you just won and you won, you're gonna that's like the Academy Awards . No, I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. You get those five people though later on, you know? Like five or six people that actually did believe in you . So tell me about Maureen. Well, Maureen was a friend of mine brought her to a show and I, you know, literally thought I was singing the Bridget Pardot of New Jersey. I fell totally in love with her immediately . And it's a good lyric line, the Bridget Pardot of Jersey. I like it . It took me about a year to talk her into going out with me and it's been great ever since. Yeah, the amazing wedding with Bruce there and you mentioned little Richard officiating and Percy Sledge was there right singing. The man loves a woman, blah, blah , that's cool. They're memorable . My wife, my line about Sue is, if Sue ever leaves me, I'm going with her . So you can steal that with Maureen if you want, you know . That's a good party line. Yeah, she's you know, she really turned me onto all kinds of she broadened my artistic tremendously, you know , just into literature and took me to my first ballet, which was just wonderful experience. The first time you go to a place where the seats aren't ripped up, you know , and you know, the wonderful is that, you know, incredible atmosphere of a metropolitan opera house or whatever it was. Yeah, I had a girlfriend that did that for me too, same kind of thing. She took me to my first French restaurant. This is really cool. She was a wonderful girl She died very young, unfortunately. But she took me to this fancy French restaurant. I'm like, this is, I don't know what to order, this is weird for me and without doing it to irritate anybody . And she's got some stew on her dish and she just takes her face and she puts it in the stew and comes up and she just goes, Jimmy forget about anybody here. This is our place. This is just us. This is, you know, and it was great. It was great. It's a French restaurant. Who cares? You know, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the young rascals, you like the young rascals, good loving how can I be sure whatever? At the time, yeah. And you introduce them at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ? Yes . Okay . So what happens there? Somebody's watching you and yeah it just so happens David Chase happens to be watching and he's putting together a new TV show . He had been a TV his whole life. You remember the name of the show? Oh it was called the Sopranos , which everybody tried to talk him out of, they people are like that. Yeah. Look and I think it's an opera, a show about opera, you know, I get a call from him and at the time I really was kind of out of the music business and he said, you know, want to be in my TV show, you know ? And I was like, man, that's gorgeous. What a wonderful , what a wonderful thing. But I said, you know, no, not no, not really, you know ? And he was like, What do you mean? No , I said, well, I'm not an actor, you know ? Isn't that kind of a you know prerequisite for this TV thing? And he was , you know, he was like, well you actually are an actor, you just don't know it yet. And yeah, and that was that was a beginning of a whole new life. And what a gift to be given a new craft, you know, at that stage of the game. You know, it was wonderful. Did you know right away that you could kind of do it and it was it was pretty good or no? No, no, no. I was really quite nervous about the process because in music, you know, you're kind of used to more or less controlling your own destiny at least artistically, you know, you know, not some marketing and selling the thing , but you know artistically, you're you're pretty much in control. And if you go in in the room and you sing a song, you know, you come into the booth and you listen to it and you know, well, maybe I could do a little better and you go and try it again , you know ? Acting , you act and then you're depending on a complete stranger , you know, and I'm like, well, how's he gonna know that's the best I can do. Number one , number two , you act and then you see it six months later , you know Like, you know, so and plus there was so that method the basic method ology was throwing me and then I said to my friend, you know, I said, Geez, what you know, this first script is great. What if the second one sucks, you know ? And now luckily, I happen to luck in the greatest writing like ever on TV . But my friend was just like, you know, if the second one sucks, just walk away. What are they gonna do? You know, they can't make . Right. They just knocked you off in the second episode . He goes , you know , so I was a little nervous about the process, but you learned that if the director is happy, then you gotta be happy. And that's the that's a bad thing about you getting something is where they got murders because they can always kill you at any moment, you know It greatly helps their negotiating position right . From the state house to the courthouse in the emergency room and in the classroom . Americans are losing trust in their leaders. In a twenty twenty five US News and World Report survey, eighty five percent of Americans said government leaders care more about their own power than the people they serve . seventy three percent are disappointed in healthcare leaders, seventy two percent in business and sixty eight percent in education. But there are still leaders worth believing in. I'm Eric Gertler, CEO and executive chairman of US News and World Report. This is the Best Leaders Podcast, sponsored by the Noble Reach Foundation. On this show, we'll go deeper into the stories, challenges, and lessons of extraordinary leaders across public service, business, healthcare and education . You can find the best leaders podcast from US News and World Report on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. Gado Finny was he good to work with? Yeah, yeah, very lucky. Again, I was very, very lucky because I thought, you know , they may be resentful , you know, I mean I know what actors go through. My wife's a real actor and you know, the classes and you know, off Broadway and you know, they're they're right, right, right . And here comes, you know, half a hippie guitar player off the street . And I had said to David Chase earlier, I said, you know, I feel guilty taking an actor's job. I really shouldn't do this. And he said, No, you're not going to take an actor's job. I'm going to write you in a part that does not exist , you know That made me feel a little better, but I didn't know how anybody else was going to feel about it. And it turns out that Jimmy and everybody else just really had respect for what I had done in my other life and they knew I took it seriously. I took it very seriously. And you get on the set if it works, it works. People there it is. Yes. I went to the greatest acting school you could ever go to. It was amazing. Now, had you seen , you grow know,ing up where you grew up and whatever in terms of of the mob and whatever. I mean, had you seen enough of that? Does that help at all? You're never sure , you know , I mean whether they're the real thing or whether they're wanna be gangsters, you don't really know the difference because they're equally scary when you're young . And they were all over the place, you know, they were all over the church or every club seemed to have one. Right So you could, you know, you can observe enough of it. Yeah. Yeah, you know, and plus I had been a bit of an official , you know, just kind of a hobby with me. I had read every book and seen every movie back to the thirties and, you know, I just kind of felt familiar with that with that particular Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well I think that helps too, just in terms of, you know, on another level with book writing, if you research enough, at a certain point you get a little more comfortable . But anyways, it was became an interesting metaphor, you know, mean I for the strains of balancing one's work and one's family , you know, I think that's had that's where the universal appeal came from. I think, you know, in this case the, work happened to be a little bit more dramatic than most. But then much later , you got another show, which my wife and I loved Lilyhammer. My wife's Norwegian, so for starters she had her you had her with the minute you found that it was good. But I loved that show. I thought it was great. Frank Tagliano and Joan Nesbo, I guess you met a little bit over there. Novelist, mystery writer. Yeah, yeah, it was I fought very hard to get film incentives, you know, in Norway, you know, which they didn't have. It took Joe Nesbo's, you know, he finally, you know, he resisted the film sales for decades and finally decided to sell one of his books to the movies . And it took it took that, you know, I went to the Prime Minister, I went to the cultural minister. I was like, you know, if Joe Nesbo does his first, you know, movie , you know, in Iceland , you can start packing your suitcase right now. Okay . Because he's such a he's such a national treasure over there, you know? Yeah , you know, yeah. go You into an air port and there's like a room of his books. Yes, I know. It irritates me and none of mine. It pisses me off, but I don't sound scared. I don't know why. I've scandavia. I don't know. And I said, My wife, she's Norwegian, you know, but her father is so Norwegian. You know they do those little tasks where you spit on the thing. He's like one hundred percent Norwegian. Like nobody in his family even kissed anybody who wasn't Norwegian. I mean, it's like ludicrous . One little thing, this is weird to me, not in a big way, but a little weird. I know Sylvester Stallone a little bit. Hang up Tulsa man, it says sort of like the same story, you know He goes to Tulsa and you know, he starts a nightclub. I mean, come on, you know. One of the writers apologized to me. Really, yeah, it's a little close there. Yeah, it was it was an obvious influence . And I like Taylor Sheridan's very talented, you know , and I loved Stalone. So, you know, I was fine with it. You know, I'm like, you know, whatever. You were talking about this restless thing and and it fits into a lot of the stuff that you've been talking about , doing the right thing and politics and whatever, and staying busy. And one of the things is this teach rock thing which you've been involved in, which I love . You want to just look I don't know if everybody understands that, but how does that work? I mean, I love the idea, but yeah, you know, just took a look at what's going on in education right now, which is a little bit shocking . Yeah. The no child left behind legislation cancel all the arts classes in public education . So it was a way of getting the arts into the DNA of public education . And that's where it started. That was the idea . You know , and in the end, you know, we're basically teaching we're teaching through popular music. We're teaching history, we're teaching it's cross curricular . You know, we it works in math class, it works in science class, it works, you know , in any of the any other disciplines and grade levels. We're having great, great success with it . We have over seventy five thousand teachers now using it and having amazing success with it . And we worked about fifteen years on the content me because I didn't want it to be an after school class. I want it to be part of the part of the, you know, the normal classroom . And I didn't want art to be separate from the other disciplines. The idea here is to integrate art science, you know, into technology. You know, so that people have better way of understanding the disciplines and they're relevant and interesting to them, you know, there's no point look, what if your objective is for the kids to learn if that's it, you want them to learn. So what's going to help them to learn? In reading , if you want kids to read, don't give them books to turn them off. That's right. Give them books to turn them on. It's so simple. Like why Board the of Education, whoever the hell's watching, stop doing this. You give them stuff that, you know, Shakespeare eventually, but not like in fifth grade. You gotta give them stuff where they have a kid's imprint. I wrote a lot of kids' books and the thing was in the imprint , when a kid finishes a Jimmy book, they'll say give me another book as opposed to the millions of kids in the country who have never read one book that they liked . Turn them on, don't turn them off. It's so simple. How do you turn them on? Tell them stories. How do you turn them on, give them music, relate, get them things that they relate to. That's, you know, if they're not if they don't relate to it, if it's not relevant, nobody wants to read about stuff or learn, you know, it doesn't make any sense to me. No, no, and I congratulate you on that because that's not easy to do. And it's wonderful that you're doing that . Yes, you got to go to them. You know, give them something they can use right now. Okay Which was learn this now and someday you'll use it. Memorize it. No. Those days are over. Why should I You got to give a kid a reason to be there. Why am I here when I can get any answer I want on this device in thirty seconds? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. You know, you gotta so we go to them and we that is a problem by the way. I can get a handy answer, but they never really actually get some idea of, okay, what is history? History is not it's not about memorizing a lot of names and dates . It's in my opinion and in most nonfiction, it's about understanding something . That's right, okay. Revolutionary war, you don't have to know all the dates, you don't have to know civil war. You don't have to know all the , you know, but make it relevant to, you know, the Civil War, a very relevant thing if they if you can get to so that they understand it. I mean, we started off with the three basic missions, which was keep a DNA in the public education system. Number one , number two , you know, give them a new methodology to learn because the old methodology is irrelevant You know, and number three, if we can keep them, you know, if a kid likes one class or one teacher, they'll come to school and we want to keep trying to raise the graduation rate, you know, because the dropout rate is just outrageous. Oh yeah, I know. I know. Well, that's the thing that I've been working with the University of Florida for a while now, and it's just getting kids to read at grade level, which is hugely important because if you can't read once you get to fifth grade or something, you can't read okay, you're not going to get to high school . And they actually have a program where the average , which is a disgrace in the country is like forty three percent of kids reading at grade level. They can get it up into the eighties and and we've gotten believe strangely Florida is doing pretty well in terms of that because they've used this method a bit in Florida. So they're up into the fifties, which is actually pretty good. It's not great, but they're you know, because they're only in about a third of the counties here . But that thing of like, if your objective is, and it's such a big objective, you'll save thousands of lives if you could get this country up into the seventies terms of kids reading a grade level, you will save thousands of lives. You just will. That's it. I mean, at least you know, it doesn't guarantee you anything, but if you graduate high school, at least I get a shot, you know, it really it changes the entire percentage of those who are going to end up in the justice system. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent . But we have found, you know, enormous success with reading by just giving them biographies of their favorite artists. Okay. Okay. Yeah. You love story. You know, Beyonce , here's the story of Beyonce. Yeah . Yeah . And man, they'll read it, you know, because it applies to their lives. And anything that's useful to them, you know, they want to learn. Keep watching they get a frame of reference. But now in the last two years now, we've now taken one more step even further because there's an epidemic right now of alienation and isolation , a certain kind of bizarre effect of the social media and these devices have on the kids' psyches. And so we now have a new program called Harmony the first twenty minutes of Home Room . And it's gonna sound silly to our generation, but we have them put the device away and just talk to each other, all right? Just look in somebody's eyes, okay? Yeah , and you know, what's going on at home ? You know, what's happening? Music. What you know, this, you know, conversation . And suddenly you like maybe it's an immigrant kid or maybe it's a kid from out of state or maybe it's just somebody who's shy, suddenly , you know, so we realized we have to prepare kids to be educated at this point. Okay. Yeah. Never mind the content of the education or the methodology of the education. We have to prepare them to be educated. No, it's hard, hard, hard. The hardest, the worst audience I ever had , I went to my nephew's fourth grade, the worst audience, the toughest audience, impossible. I didn't know what the hell to do. And I'm okay presenter, but it was like , damn , and teachers have to do that every day. I have actually a book my mother was a teacher for I don't know fifty years or something, but I have a book on teachers coming out next year and it's the same thing these interviews that you turn into the vine page. And so the people can begin to understand how hard that is now because these poor teachers, they got the kids are more undisciplined than they've ever been. The parents are on them, the Board of Education's on them , the left's on them, the rights on them, the whole, it's just like, why am I doing this? This is crazy. And they're not allowed to teach. Yeah, we're really taking all that into consideration. And you know, we're having an amazing success right now. So I'm very happy with it. Yeah. No, no, no, it's a great area. And one of the weird things, all the debates, blah, blah, blah blah. Nobody ever talks about education. What is that all about? Because people don't think it's important because they're crazy, you know.? Yeah Of course it's important . Of course it's important take it for granted and you know, most people don't know what to do with it, you know, that's why we avoid the national bureaucracy, you know, where we know my all my funding is private , you know, we're not we're not doing any government grants or anything like that. You know, so you know, I don't have to wait around for anybody's permission. You know, we change very, very quickly if we have to add something or take away something or, you know , if we miss something, a teacher reminds us, you know, it's in the next day . And we just license, you know, we give giving the teachers tools to do their thing, man. And you know, and we figure if we make the teachers happy, they'll make they'll make the kids happy, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I do. Now that's the thing with this program actually at the University of Florida , what I love about it is it's just practical because the kids are in the school, the teachers are in the school, and it's right there. So we can do as opposed to there's a thing in Florida, which on the face of it, you go, well, that sounds good, but it really is stupid because it's a match . Because they what they do is they send a book a month to these kids where they don't have books in their homes . But the problem with it, it's very expensive, a B, they're not really getting books that the kids are gonna go. That was great. So the kids get the book. It sucks. They throw it away Some of them, a lot of them. The parents aren't into reading anyway, and they're spending an incredible amount of money doing it. So on theory, you go like, oh, that's great. But the reality of it is, wait a minute . No it's not really gonna make sense and people will sit there on the face of and go that's great. Getting them where the teachers and the kids are in the class and just making it with what this does is it helps the teachers to be even better teachers, which they love. The kids can learn faster than they ever learned. So the kids are happy, the teachers are happy. This is good . And they're right there. Who's going to what's the problem that this is a good thing. But they're sending physical books. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow . Yeah. Enormously expensive. Yeah, it is, it is, yeah. At any rate, so Woodhouse, you got anything coming that's got you excited I'm trying to talk to people about coming back into the business, getting something on TV, getting back into acting . I got like four scripts of my own, four pilot scripts and you know , it doesn't have to be one of my own, but I'm, you know, I just got a new agency and I'm letting it be known that I'm coming back into the business as far as an actor. So I want to get missed that I want don't to get back into it. Pecino's book, by the way, is very good in terms of acting. Oh really, really good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's brand new, right? It is. And he really gets into it in terms of, you know, he, you know, you get that he s'qusirrely , but but how he really, you know , one, he didn't it didn't happen overnight with him , but but how, you know, how he struggles to get into the character, you know, which is very revealing and good. Interesting. So anyway , so this has been great. Thank you so much. Absolutely my pleasure and congratulations on all your success. Yeah, the bad thing is you go and you wake up in the morning, I go to the mirror, I go you again . All right, be good. Okay . All right . Thanks for joining me on this episode of Hungry Dogs. Help me out by liking and subscribing to the show