Closing Act with Kenny Aronoff

Speaker 1: As a young boy, I had aspirations to play the drums. Did I live up to those expectations? Absolutely not, but this is about as close as I'm ever going to get, hyping as I've alluded to before, someone whose name will forever be enshrined in the history books as Rolling Stones Top 100 Drummers of All Time. I can personally vouch having seen this guy whale on the sticks with someone who I'm sure he's going to tell you about momentarily. We're in for a show. Without further ado, rolling in hot like a true rockstar, we've got Kenny Aronoff. Sound. (music)

Kenny Aronoff: All right, I'm doing an intro to my intro. Dude, I was in Atlanta yesterday, drove to Huntsville, Alabama. Taped a three hour show last night, went running off the stage, got into the car, got in the airplane, private jet, flew to Denver and then I got stuck there till 7: 00 this morning and almost didn't make it, it's a miracle. The weird thing is the whole time I was thinking, " It's going to be all right, it's going to be all right." Anyway, here I am. Anyway, anyway, it's great. Take those minutes off my speech, all right, you can add them. Okay, I'm 18 years old, I'm a freshman at Indiana University School of Music. It's the number one school of music in the country, if not the world. And my mom was nervous that I picked music as my major as opposed to business, law, medicine. So she's asking my professor, George Gables, as we're walking around campus for the first time, she goes, " I mean, can Kenny make a living hitting drums? I mean, is he even talented enough to have a career in music?" Which is hilarious after watching that, right? But the point is, nobody knew. I didn't know, my parents didn't know what my trajectory was when I started hitting drums as a little kid. Nobody's born successful, success does not land in your lap. It's like a math equation. Zero equals zero, you do nothing, you get nothing. I'm adamant about that. I'll never be as great as I want to be, but I'm willing to spend my entire life trying to be as great as I can be. Oh, I'm glad you dig that. Think about this, that's like a running back in football. These guys are monster, monster athletes. They're always trying to get touchdowns, play by play, game by game, season by season. But do they get touchdowns every time they get the ball? No, they try. Sometimes it is, sometimes two yards, minus two, fumble, broken leg and then they're out. The point is, they love football. It's their passion, it's their purpose, it's their deepest desires. So they come back and they keep trying to get in the end zone. I'm a full back in the music business. All right, we got that clear. Let's start at the very beginning. Me and my twin brother are playing outside, we grew up in Western Massachusetts. I was just talking to somebody who grew up right where I was born in Albany.` Anyway, we're outside playing because there's nothing to watch on TV, town of 3000 people. My mom comes on the porch one day goes, " Boys, get in here right now!" We're like, " Oh God, we're in trouble," which was usually the case with me. We go running across the lawn, we come into the family room and she's pointing to this old, black, RCA TV set with the rabbit ear antennas and the tin foil to get reception, because we didn't have cable. I don't think it was even invented. Anyway, there's four guys on the TV set dressed in suits, but they're not like your dad's suits. These are cool suits and they have long hair. Two guys have electric guitars, one guy's got electric bass. The drummer's up on this riser looking cool and then they break into some rock and roll. I mean, I'm like, " Whew!" blown away. See, I'd heard rock and roll on the radio because it was the newest thing, but I'd never seen it on TV or live, so I'm electrified. I mean, it's the most amazing thing I've ever seen. It was at that split second that I realized what my purpose was in life before I even knew what those words meant. I mean, I was feeling it, that's the point. This whole thing's about feeling. I was feeling, I was excited. I was like, " All I know is I want to be on a team of guys playing music like that and doing what they're doing." I don't know who they are or where they're from. So I go, mom, " Who are these guys?" She said, " Oh, they're the Beatles." I went, " Well, I want to play in the Beatles, call them up. I want to play in the Beatles, mom. Come on, call them up and I want to play drums. No more of this piano lesson stuff." Well, she didn't call the Beatles up and my parents didn't get me drums and I was bummed, really bummed because think about this, this was all new to me. I mean, there was no mentor, there was no person, there was no manual to tell me, "Oh, this is how you get in the Beatles or Led Zeppelin," or whatever I want to do. There wasn't even any internet so you couldn't see this stuff on YouTube. There was no people posting on Instagram or Twitter or TikToks. I mean, I didn't know what to do. Basically, my parents saw that I was crazy about hitting drums and I was banging on everything and I was listening to rock and roll. They finally went, "All right, get him a drum." They give me a snare drum and a symbol and I start practicing to my records. I start my first group at age 10 called the Alley Cats. That is me with hair. You guys, that drum is only that big, just inaudible. We played Beatles music and I'd sit there like, " Oh, man," thinking I had long hair and wishing the girls were coming after me. The latter happened, but the hair thing never quite got there. Here's the best part of the story, 50 years later I've become Kenny Aronoff, I get a call to do a CBS special called The Night That Changed America, to honor the Beatles for that TV show I saw, that 73 million people saw in North America called the Ed Sullivan Show. I get to play with the two remaining Beatles, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, woo! I mean, dreams do come true. Basically, you could say I made it right? Okay, that's my speech, bye. No, not only did I get to play with them, but I got to play with some of my other heroes, like Stevie Wonder. I mean, I was in diapers listening to him. Dave Gold from Foo Fighters, Jeff Lynn from ELO, Joe Walsh from the Eagles, John Legend and Alicia Keys on piano. Keith Urban, John Mayer and Brad Paisley, and blah blah blah. I get done and I went in the audience because there was 30 more minutes left and I was looking for my wife to see the rest of the show. Right there in the middle of this big arena are these elite seats. Tom Hanks, his wife, Ringo Starr, his wife, Paul McCartney and his girlfriend, George Harrison, John Lennon's widows and oh, Tom Cruise, Sean Penn and Johnny Depp. They're all acknowledging me because we knew each other. But Ringo, my hero, is applauding going, " Bravo, Kenny, good job," which meant a lot to me. Now, I had played with him the night before at the Grammys. I knew him, but I never had a chance to tell him how I really felt and this was that moment. Everyone's looking at me and I get down on one knee and he goes, " Oh, that's okay Kenny, I'm already married." I'm like, " No, dude. You're the reason why I play drums. You're the reason why I play rock and roll. You and the Beatles set me on a course at age 10 that I've been on ever since. I mean, I want to thank you. You helped me realize my purpose in life." And I walked away and I started thinking, " You know what? In order to be really great at something, you have to love what you do from here, not up here." Feelings will always dominate the brain. In order to be successful and stay successful it has to be your bliss, your purpose, your deepest desires, your truth, whatever you want to call it. If you're living your life that way, you're going to be unstoppable, undeniable, and authentic, that's me. The cool thing is, see I'm the guy wakes up in the morning, I can't wait to do what I'm doing. But I'm also the guy that doesn't want to turn the lights off at night because I'm digging what I'm doing. I mean, I got more stuff going on, they call me the workaholic. I'm Tom Brady, basically. Anyway, I wouldn't have divorced Giselle though. Anyway, or maybe she divorced him, I don't know. The thing is, when you're that person, the ripple effect of your joy and happiness affects everybody in the room. I get hired as much for my ability to motivate the room and save sessions and they want me on the stage. They want me in the room because I'm this happy thing, because I'm doing what I love doing. You will always work if you're that person, always. All right, I went from 10 years old, playing with the Alley Cats, to the Beatles. My story is basically about a kid who became successful and stayed successful in one of the most difficult businesses in the world, for four decades and still going strong, the music business. Let's go back to little Kenny. I'm 100% clear what I want to do, but I don't really know how to get there. So I just played in bands all the way until I graduate high school. I look back now and I was learning some heavy skills, teamwork skills, how to connect with people, how to communicate with them, get along with them, now you can collaborate. People wanted me always in their band. People wanted me, just get Kenny, he's fun. Well, the day I graduated high school, I was practicing eight hours a day, seven days a week. Most of it's because I love what I was doing. I was going to go and study classical music at the university because there's no rock and roll back then, school of rock and roll and I was way behind. I was driving everybody in the house crazy. I had timpani, marimbas, snare drums, everything all over the place. That's where I learned hard work, self- discipline and perseverance. But it was all fueled by I love this, I love this. Everyone's out partying before they go to college. Not me, I'm practicing, I loved it. I did five years of college for it, Indiana University. One year I got into the Aspen School of Music run by Juilliard and four consecutive years of auditioning, I got into the number one student orchestra in the country, if not the world, run by the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood. I got to work with the great Leonard Bernstein, conductor, that's him right there. By the way, that's me, the only one with a can of booze, Schlitz, I don't even know if they make it anymore. Take a look at how the hair is starting to go. Anyway, man, I mean this was the primo thing. Then I get into the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. You have to understand I was crapola at these things and I just worked my way up to the top because I love it. Again, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. Everyone's like, " Woo!" and I go, " I ain't going." What? Why wouldn't I go? I turned down certainty for uncertainty, a paycheck for no paycheck, certainty for possibility. See, my heart was still I want to be a rock god, I still want to play the drums. I want to be in the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, whoever, Hendricks. So I moved back home and I started practicing eight hours a day trying to catch up. I started with two guys, one in Boston, one in New York. It was only a drum set now. Then I moved to Indiana to start a band. The business model was this, and this is the way it works. You write songs, you get a record deal, then you record the songs, then you go out on tour and promote the product, make money for everybody and then you repeat it and you become Elton John or something. Become wealthy and rich. That didn't happen. Three years later after doing this, we failed. I'm like, " Man, I'm 27 you guys." I decide I'm going to go to New York, one of the three centers of the music business. And I had a life changing lunch with a singer songwriter. She basically said, " Hey, you know this dude, he lives right here in Bloomington. He's on this new network called MTV, he's on the radio." I went, " Yeah, yeah, he's all right." He's on tour, he was on tour opening up for Kiss and he fired his drummer last night. I went, " Ding, ding, ding! Records, tour, TV, what?" I go running out of the restaurant to the payphone because there's no cell phone. I called Mike, the guitar player. I went, " Mike, it's Kenny. Listen dude, I hear you're looking for a drummer, man. I really want to audition. I'd love to audition." I'll cut right to the chase. I end up auditioning, I beat everybody out. Five weeks later I'm in LA making a record. I'm like, " Oh my God, I'm in one of the biggest rock and roll studios on the Sunset Strip, blah blah blah." I've told everybody, I'm excited. All the hard work, education all came together, I'm in flow. And after two days of recording, I get fired. We all have that story, don't we? When you're young like that, when they say, " This is a gift," I'm like, " BS, this is no gift to me." But I get it now, it was a gift. At the time, no. I felt like a loser, I was overwhelmed, I was embarrassed. The producer had to get this record done quick. He needed someone with experience. I had zero experience making records that get on the radio. The purpose of a drummer, and I could ask a thousand drummers and they won't get it right unless I told them. The purpose of a drummer making a record, and my point is, nobody tells you this and you need to know this to be successful. The purpose of a drummer is to get the song on the radio to be a number one hit. That means if I have to play like this, you play like that. That means if you play whatever. I didn't know how to serve the song, serve the artist, serve the musicians, serve the producer, serve the record label, serve everybody. I was all about me and I had just learned it's about we. Seriously, that's why Tom Brady's Tom Brady. Ain't about him, he knows he needs all those 10 guys in front of him. He's the king of it and I know, I got it verified. I talked to an NFL guy. He said, " Yep, everybody plays for him." We have a band meeting. Boss goes, " You're not playing on the record, Aronoff. You're fired, you go home." And the words that came out of my mouth were life changing. I'm not going to say exactly how I said it because I don't swear on these things, but I basically said, " No frigging way am I going back to Bloomington," because that was embarrassing. And he was trying to take away my purpose. What I was going to do, go back to Bloomington, start playing clubs? No way. I said, " Well, am I still your drummer or what?" He was trying to fire me and I was saying, " You can't fire me." He says, " Yeah, but you're not playing on the record." Basically I said, " I'll go in the studio, watch these other guys play my drum parts on your record and I'll get better and that's good for you." And the key line was, " You don't have to pay me." He went, " Perfect." So I stayed, it was humbling. I went home and I suddenly understood, " Okay, now I have to serve this guy's music. It's not about what I want to play. It's what is good for him to get on the radio." I vowed I'd be on the next record. Two years later, we're making a record, inaudible, I'm still in the band. Hardest record I've ever made. My boss was going through a divorce, my boss almost died. I saw him get hit at 80 miles an hour, go flying off his bike. Actually, the bike went down, he went on top of the bike, spinning down the highway, at night with sparks and exploded in a tree. He jumped off right before hit the tree and he was losing his record deal. This guy was in a crappy mood, he was firing everybody left and right. I'd come in every day in fear. One day I walk in and the co- producer's got this metal box and went, " Hey Don, what's that?" He says, now hear my words, " This is a Linn 1 drum machine and the Bee Gees are using it and we're going to use it on this song that we're having trouble with. Try to do something that's relevant and new." Nice drum machine, those replace drums. I'm like, " What? I'm being replaced by a machine now?" I get in this fight or flight mode, grab the machine, get the manual, and this is what I call adapt or die to stay relevant. Adapt or die to stay relevant. You got to recognize when things are changing and you can't go, " Nah, nah," you got to pay attention in all our businesses. That's the point. Music business is so fickle, it's changing so fast you can't even see it. It's already changing. Music and the arts are a reflection of where society's at all over the world. So I grab the instrument thing and the idea was that that was a new sound. I took the drum beats I was playing and programmed in there, gave the box to him. I'm scratching my head, thinking, "Am I in the horse and buggy business and the car just showed up and I'm being replaced?" I mean, I thought, " Wow!" Two hours later I get summoned. Now mind you, this is a ballad and the boss tells me, " Hey, Aronoff," that's the way he talked to me. " We need a drum solo right here after the second chorus." I'm like, " What? On this song? Oh, my God." Said, " Okay, I got to save the song to save my career. Okay, okay, okay. I got to save the song to save my career." Thank God we spent all day getting drum sounds because I'm thinking, " Serve the song, serve the artist. What can I come up with that's going to explode out of TV set speakers, explode out of car stereo speakers?" All right, my moment's come, the machine's going do, do, do, do, do, boom, blam! That's what I do, I kick it on the snare drum and I stop. I'm looking for validation and they're all going, " Yeah, man." I'm feeling good and I hit a dead end. I get summoned into the control, cortisol levels are going flying through the roof. Have you ever been in that situation were people say half the people telling you what to do, the other half are telling you what not to do. Suddenly I realize I'm on my own, man, I got to save the day. It's like being in the World Series. You got to hit a home run or strike out. I'm looking at the drums, I go out into the drum room and I go, " Dude, you got 40 feet to save your career. What are you going to play?" I'm going, " Thirty feet, I don't know, 20 feet, oh, my God. This is it, dude. Come on, come on, come on, come on. What do you got?" I go 10 feet and I get to the drum set. I'm like, " Oh, my God." I went, " Okay, okay," and all of a sudden a light went off in my head. I went, " Okay, instead of completely starting from scratch, since everybody's looking at me," I went, " Okay, I'll take what I've already been doing, but just shift it." It's like if you had a room full of furniture, you don't like it, you got two choices. Get rid of it, get new furniture or rearrange it. So I rearranged it, I came up with something. To cut the story short, I came up with a part that got the song on the record. But then the label decided to put this song out as a single. That single became John Cougar Mellencamp's biggest, number one hit single ever in his career. Jack and Diane featuring Kenny Aronoff. You know what, instead of talking about it, I'm going to play. I'm going to play you the best part of the song, it's where I come in, all right? Can you hear the music? Turn inaudible off. ( singing) Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Wow, I scored a touchdown, that's for sure. For me, for the band, for John. Jack and Diane became a number one hit single. The album sold millions around the world. John won two Grammys, Jack and Diane is still played on the radio today. Plus obviously Pandora, Spotify, iTunes. John's career completely exploded, mine took off. It's like, " Who's that drummer, man? That's a cool part." The bottom line is I learned that it's about we, not me. I was obviously part of John Cougar Mellencamp, Inc. now because I made him millions and millions of dollars. I got the pat on the back, he made the millions and I did 17 years with him, 10 albums, constantly coming up with ideas for him. But then everybody else wanted this Aronoff sound, which was big in the'80s and '90s. So I was getting calls to record with everybody all over the world. I had drums in New York, Nashville, LA, Indiana, where I lived, Japan and Germany, it was unbelievable. I realized it was about teamwork and it became so apparent when I was doing Bon Jovi's Blaze of Glory record because Jon was a rock god. I knew because we were talking about breaking off from doing our own thing. I knew he thought, " Maybe I can do this on my own." But Jon figured it out. Bon Jovi, stadiums and arenas around the world. Jon Bon Jovi, not so much. He needs that team. Same with Mick Jagger, I did the Rolling Stones' Bridges to Babylon record for two weeks. I watched Mick in there with all the craziness, they're the coolest. Anyway, I did Mick Jagger's solo records. Mick Jagger is cool, he's Mick Jagger. With the Stones he's frigging Mick Jagger. God, stadiums, the greatest. This teamwork thing, there are four basic things about teamwork and I already talked about one. Is connecting, communicating, collaborating. When I record with Elton John or Bon Jovi or Rod Stewart, or Sting or Lady Gaga or Bruno Mars or The Highwaymen; Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings and on and on, I go right up to these guys. I want them to like me, they want me to like them. The whole point is we get this connection, we start talking. But you can't BS these guys, you got to be sincere. But it goes deeper than that. I used to think, " Well as long as I'm playing great, that's good enough." No, it's not good enough. We need to co- elevate with everybody. In other words, if the bass player plays bad, the guitar player plays bad, keyboard plays bad, might not get on the album. Doesn't get on the album, doesn't get on the radio. My currency's when a song goes to become number one and I'm that guy. They go, " Oh my God, who did that?" Aronoff. Oh, we got to hire him. It's imperative that I connect with everybody in that room and it comes natural for me. But that makes them feel like I care about them. I want them to care about me so that we all co- elevate together and have a hit record, okay? Second thing is I realized as I look back, all the records I made and all the people I worked with, man, I have to be innovative and creative for that team, for that artist, for that band. And solving or finding solutions to problems, whether you're on a basketball court or a rockstar drummer or you're in a corporate boardroom meeting, requires that everybody's creative and everybody has to contribute. Now the cool thing is everybody's backstory is different. Your education, your relationships, where you grew up, your family, all the above. So everybody's going to come up with different ideas all the time. That's amazing, we're all different. I used to be so terrified because John, he'd play a song, Mellencamp, once. Once on acoustic guitar and he admitted they all sounded the same. He said, " What do you got?" Okay, I'm going to go over it a little bit. I'm going to tell you my method, what I did when I started going, " Man, I'm so nervous he's playing." I'm like, " This sounds like the other song he wrote. That sounds like the song before that." What I did, I came up with a formula to deal with my anxiety. Always think of the obvious, the most stupid beat, I'd think. Then I go, " Okay, now I'm going to embellish you a little bit. Two, three, embellish a little more. Four, think out of the box." He'd go, " What do you got, Aronoff? That's a stupid beat, how about this?" Oh, that's kind of cool. How about this? Why didn't you play that first? It was that kind of thing. I came up with a method. He walked into our room once when we were coming up with this follow up record. He goes, " Listen you guys, I need ideas. I need innovation, creative ideas to get these songs on the radio to be number one. Aronoff, someone's got a better drum beat than what you're playing, you got to play it. And none of you guys own each other's instruments. No, none of you own your own instruments. You all play each other's instruments." In other words, if I got a baseline that I think is hipper for the base part, he should listen to it and on and on so that we're co- elevating together. I need hits, I need ideas. He went out of the room and I went, " What a jerk, man." I mean, his delivery was horrible, but he was spot on. I don't know how he knew that, but he was spot on. I was always having to come up with, " What do you got Kenny?" Not only for John, but for other people. This is the entertainment section again. I'm going to play you four number one, hit singles where my drum beats defined what these songs were. After I heard the song, I came up with drum beats. That inspires everybody. The drummer in a band, I always say this, you change the beat, you're going to change the song. You change the feel, the drummer's got the most powerful weapon with regard to feel and emotion. What I come up with inspires and influences what everybody else is playing. Then I listen to what they're doing and then we co- elevate together. All right, the first song is That Thing You Do from Tom Hanks' movie, That Thing You Do. Second song is Belinda Carlisle's first single out of the Go- Go's, my first number one hit single out of Mellencamp, Meatloaf, I'll Do Anything For Love, But I Won't Do That. I thought that would never be played on the radio, sold 40 million copies, boy was I wrong. And then finally, Blaze of Glory. (singing) All right, inaudible. It was imperative for me to come up with creative and innovative ideas for John or anybody else to stay relevant. In the music business, you don't stay relevant, things change fast. That was me, I was losing more hair. See, somebody was trying to add hair to my head. But in the music business, man, John, he lost his record deal twice. So we had to keep coming up with ideas, keep coming up with ideas, keep coming. That's stupid, do this, try. I mean, I was scratching my head. I mean, I started saying, " Well, maybe on Pink Houses, I won't even play the drums. I'll play tambourine," which I did. When the drums came in, it was like, " Cool." It was imperative. We lose our audience, we lose our radio play, we lose our record deal. Staying relevant, adapt, adjust, or you will die. This is always the question when we're making records. Okay, who's doing what? What's Petty doing? What's Steve doing? What's Snoop Dog doing? What's going on? How can we add that? We don't lose our audience. Here's a band that did it real well, Zeppelin. Every album was amazing. Oh, my God, how'd they come up with that? New influences, new sounds, new lyrics, new everything. Huge body of work. And the Beatles, we're back to the Beatles. These four records, Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sergeant Peppers and Magical Mystery Tour, each record completely different stylistically and they did it in one year and 11 months. Now that's rare. Usually it's two years to make a record. One year you write the songs, arrange the songs, record the songs, throw some out, do it again. Mix master. Then you do marketing, videos or whatever you're going to do, interviews. Then you rehearsal tour and go on tour and sell the product. That's two years. These guys did this in one year and 11 months and every song got played on the radio, which is extraordinary. Usually the record companies put a lot of money into getting a record played. Because think about it, if you're a new artist who are you competing with? Everybody that's already made it. Extraordinary. These people were so well and people were waiting for the records. Wait, I can't wait. All right, 10 years old, saw the Beatles, 50 years later I play with them. I became the drummer I dreamed about since I was a little kid. Three hundred million records sold, 60 nominated and one Grammy, probably more by now. Rolling Stone called me top 100 drummers. This is all great man, but it's all driven by passion and purpose. I just can't get enough. I want more, I'm loving life. I mean, all those records and I've toured all over the world on private jets like that, tour buses like that. Not that one, I'm not in Iron Maiden, that one. I'm on tour, Joe inaudible, I came last night from playing. I'm in my ninth week, I mean I live for this stuff. This is incredible. It's all driven by I love it. It's here, not up here. Words are ideas, but feelings are the truth. Feelings are the truth, are your being, your essence. That's what your purpose is. Your bliss, your deepest desires. This never lies. When you're that person, man, living your life that way, you're unstoppable, undeniable, and really authentic. You are what you are. Nobody can argue. You probably know this. Mark Twain said the two most important days in a person's life is obviously the day they were born, that's pretty important. The next part, I say it this way, what are you freaking doing here? What are you doing? What are you doing with your life? We all do things we think we should do, but the more that you can do things that you feel, you take off and it has more meaning to you. Socrates said this, " The key to happiness is to realize your purpose, but then act on it." That's the part a lot of people don't do. Act on it. I got one more story. My Uncle Matt, he was like a superhero. He was a Golden Gloves boxer, a fighter pilot in World War II, self- made millionaire and went from rags to riches. Had boats, planes, this is in the'60s. He was at our house in the country for Thanksgiving, and I got sick of being around the relatives. I went up to my room to listen to some rock and roll, and he's in my room. I had a big room, doing one handed pushups, he was a jock. Smoking a cigar, with some whiskey, he goes, " Hey, you know what the most valuable thing in life is?" I'm like, " I'm only 11." I look at his gold watch, I went, " Money, right?" He stood up and slugged me down. He says, " No stupid, time." I'm like, " Time? Time to go to school, time to do homework? What? Time to go to bed?" I said, " Oh yeah, he knows I'm a drummer. Time is very important." Then years later I went, " Ugh, he's talking about time," and I know the value of time now that I'm 25. Every day is important. He's putting purpose and time together. I didn't know, I was too young. He was basically saying, " Hey, kid," he saw how impassioned I was about music and drumming. He said, " If you want to do this, man, do it. That's what I did. Do it." Obviously it stuck with me. See, your joy and happiness is just as important as my joy and happiness because it's yours. You can't find it through me or anybody else. We can't find it through anybody but ourselves. The key is to go inward, find that joy and happiness. If you live your life by purpose, you'll find joy and happiness. But the biggest thing is, and this definitely is me, is when you're living with joy and happiness and by your purpose, that's the fuel, the ammo that will help you persevere through all obstacles and setbacks you'll run into in your life. And we do run into them, don't we? I don't want to list them all, but you know them all. You'll be unstoppable, undeniable, and authentic, like I said. But this is our mission, man. This is how you get the most value out of life. I think that if somebody's living life that way, they're going to be the most powerful asset in any organization, any group, anything that they're part of. If you're that person, I'm looking for people like that to be hanging around with and doing stuff with. You'll be unstoppable and you'll be the most powerful asset in any group. I mean, that's what people like. And if you're that person, we're starting a rock band, I want you in my band. All of you, except I'm playing the drums. Thank you. All right, in rock and roll, people clap and you go off stage. You come and do an encore. I've gone over, I'm sure, so I'm going to play my encore. This is the most difficult session, most scary session I did in my life. I want to play a sample of a recording I did with the Buddy Rich Big Band. Buddy Rich was the greatest jazz drummer ever. I'm now playing on a record that honors him and I didn't want to do rock stuff because he was horrible as a rock drummer. I did this piece, I'm going to play a sample of it and you'll see. (music) Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right, I've probably gone over. You guys have more stuff to do, but I'm going to hang around. You want to talk, pictures, signing sticks maybe, whatever. I'm going to have more coffee. Thank you.