Conrad Flynn | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

I'm essentially a guy with a very limited resume, but great references. We're going to have a blues jam into a satanic infinity. I'm totally game for that. I'm a firm believer in that. That may sound insane, but I'm telling you, it does something to you. The metaphor of the video game or the computer game for our world is actually incredibly apt. Can you see why we're all crazy? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Trust me. Yeah. Yeah. Conrad Flynn, thank you very much for being on The Magnificent Others. I want to do a little bit of promo before we start, which is you have a substack, the Flynn effect. With an E, not affect, E-fect. I just discovered your substack yesterday. So I'm a substacker myself. So how do you find the substack experience? It's very good. I was warned, Billy, ahead of time that you feel a lot of pressure to post a lot. And so I'm having the classic writerly thing. if you post or you put something out there and at first you feel good. And then- And then you see nobody cares. Well, that can happen. That always happens. That's my life. Yeah, no one cares. But then like, regardless of how it feels, in a few days, it's like you never did it and the pressure was to be like, you have to put something else out there. Well, this is the dopamine of social media, right? They kind of get you into a system where you're somehow serving some invisible master. But overall, I've had a positive experience. Sometimes master is visible on social media. Like, oh, this is what we're doing. But I think you're doing some cool work on Substack. So I please go check out a sub stack. I find you hard to define. You know, you don't have a he's the rock singer of so and so. So can you give me your elevator pitch of who you are? That's that's a funny thing, because other people will be like, you know, your resume or whatever. I'm essentially a guy with a very limited resume, but great references where other people are like, oh, I know Conrad. I back Conrad. But in terms of what I actually do or I've done, even my closest friends, Billy, are like, I don't know what you do. So I'm a writer. I used to do stand-up comedy. How funny are you? Depending on how... I'm about a seven or eight. Okay. When I'm really feeling it, I can be a nine. Yeah. But I'm a unique seven, unique eight. All right. I have to come watch you do some comedy sometime. If you're in this world of new media where you're sort of figuring out who you are, you're a writer, but you're also personality. Obviously, you're appearing on podcasts talking about your work. which we'll get to in a second. But what is your aspirational goal of where you want to take this? You know, Billy, that's a good question. I think with a lot of this stuff, it is so amorphous, as you're saying, where it's like you can be a writer, but then you do a few podcasts and then people want televisual stuff. And so then, you know, so I'll probably have to do a podcast. I'm working on one now with, I'm getting one off the ground with my buddy Stephen Thomas Erloin, who is the great American rock critic. He worked for AllMusic for a number of years. Okay. And so we're likely going to do one on, uh, uh, rock and the occult, uh, called Running with the Devil Tentatively with Sue Kalinske and Greg Johnson. You created the Osbournes, but, um, I'll probably do that. I love writing. I love cultural commentary. But as you know, Billy, you kind of see where this stuff goes. There's, as soon as you try to define yourself, people are like, well, now we want you to have a talk show. And then you, you know, yeah, I think, um, the sky's the limit for what you're after. And, and you talked about a little bit about your, your interest, uh, is it too narrow to say your current interest is where rock meets the occult or is it wider than that i mean it's wider than that but uh i it's always an interesting subject for me i mean um my grandfather uh both of my grandparents worked in show business so you know you know what goes on behind the wizard's curtain exactly exactly you know that the the wizard is just a normal guy but also the wizard the wizard be weird you know there's stuff that goes there's stuff that goes on in Oz, that's strange. So as we were talking before we started taping Billy, I love the fact that entertainment, it is mystifying. You are dealing with images and iconography and larger than life people. But at the same time, it's super mundane. And as you know, as a musician, there's a lot of just like chilling out. There's a lot of waiting. There's a lot of humdrum. There's the two hours of gig and there's the 22 hours of waiting for the gig. Right. So, exactly. So, trying to, exploring, you know, cultural connections, literature, politics, how these things intersect. But why music in the occult as opposed to the wider net of the occult? I'll tell you, because my great-grandmother, Jackie Hubbard, Jackie Smith, she got married many times. She worked for Mercury Records. Chicago? In Chicago. In the 50s, 60s? 40s and 50s. Okay. Mercury Records is always known heavily for their gimmicks. Uh, they hired, you would know this as a baseball guy. They hired, um, the Chicago White Sox. They at one point had a little person or dwarf, uh, as a player to shrink the strike zone. That would be Bill Veck was the White Sox owner. But I think that I, not to correct you, but my memory serves me is that, that, that maybe that little person who batted actually was for the Cleveland Indians, but. It may have been, no, no, that, that, that might make more sense. Um, but so she would do, Mercury Records would do these promos with, uh, with my great, great grandmother. And Mr. Mercury, they took that dwarf and they put him on and make him Mr. Mercury. So Mercury Records always had these gimmicks. And the first, like, satanic occult rock gimmick actually was through Mercury Records. Which was? It's Coven's 1969 debut album, which is the album that has this song called Black Sabbath and it has a bassist named Oz Osborne. So Lester Bangs was like, this may, when the album came out, Lester Bangs was like, Black Sabbath is like the UK answer to Coven. So ironically, there is some... And Black Sabbath actually covered Coven's song, Evil Woman, I think. Does that ring a bell? I'm a little bit familiar with Black Sabbath, but I'm not sure on that one. I know who I'm... Yeah, you would be the guy to ask about that. I'm pretty sure... Evil Woman, I'm pretty sure was done by the band Coven. Yeah, I'm not going to doubt your Black Sabbath. Evil Woman, don't play your games with me. Yeah. Sorry to interrupt, but I get the feeling from looking at your work, you are you are a deep music fan you do really like music oh yeah no you're not because uh i watched some of your interview with tucker carlson at times it comes off if people are the uninitiated but they might think you have a crusade like a like a tipper gore crusade against rock music or something and i don't think that's not the nature of your work i think you're just looking at the association i love looking at things and saying but with a lot of stuff that i do uh billy i like saying something could be this thing or it could be another thing and leaning certain You know in the social space you're gonna have to pick a lane. Oh no. You won't be able to stay ambiguous. Yeah, they'll drag you into it. But yeah, I grew up in the era of the 2000s where, you know, there was the MP3, the, you know, I was later than Napster, but the Soul Seek era. And so, you know, that era of teenagers that could listen to whatever music they wanted to. And they had all music. We had Stylist Magazine. I'll even bring up Pitchfork. My friends at Pitchfork. Your great best friends at Pitchfork. And you could, you know, someone could talk about an album, unlike in the 80s or 90s or 70s, where that meant you had to go to a store and that there was like a huge lag between reading about something. So, Billy, like you could go through, like I remember being 15, 16, and just going through entire genres in a few weeks just because it's like, you know, it's time to learn. We're here to learn at the feet of the master. So, yeah. Just talk briefly and not in any way to gloss over, but as you mentioned, you grew up in this kind of Hollywood family. Your grandfather, his name is- Robert Conrad. Robert Conrad. Because I hear Conrad fling. We made it intentionally confusing for people. Certainly for my generation, was this very well-known actor and kind of a legendary Hollywood tough guy. Yes, yeah. I seem to remember him appearing, I don't know if it was on Johnny Carson or something, and being a kind of physically intimidating presence. Well, that's because Gramps grew up in Chicago, a fellow Chicago guy, and he'd always play up his south side of Chicago roots. My grandmother, whom he married when he was a teenager, she was from Winnetka, which is- This is close to where I lived. It's a little more tawny up there. Yeah. It's a lie. Gramps would say, a lot more tawny. It's a lot nicer. It's the joke. It's the other side of the tracks. And it was a lot nicer on the side. Absolutely. Absolutely. But she was a Cubs fan and he was a White Sox fan. Ooh. So as you know, Billy, this was an interfaith marriage at the time. Yes. I love that. And, but Gramps is a, you know, he was a super tough dude and he would go, he was like a a little bit of a gangster in high school. He went to school with the Spolotro brothers, who were his best friends. Okay. Those are at Martin Scorsese's Casino. Those are those mafia guys. Well, I grew up with some of the grandkids of those same people. You know the deal. Yeah. Yeah. Once they got into trouble in the 60s and 70s Chicago, they all moved to the suburbs, and I went to school with the grandkids. And when the grandkids went in trouble, they would threaten you and say, you don't want to mess with my father and my grandfather because you might end up in a cornfield. that's that's kind of by the way that's that it sounds like a joke but it was real dude that's that's my grandfather too like he would if you know he'd say stuff and i'm just like what are you doing like this is just some but um yeah so he was he was a bit of a tough guy and uh yeah he he moved to he won a james scene look-alike contest in the 50s which was a big deal and so he comes out to hollywood uh he breaks into warner brothers he climbs the warner brothers fence which He was the last contracted Warner Brothers actor. Yeah, Jack, what ended up happening was... But I think it's worth, because of your work, it's worth pointing out that he was at the tail end of the studio system, what we would commonly call now old Hollywood. Yes. Before new Hollywood came in and everybody got stoned and started making weird movies. Right, right, right. No, he was part of the Normie guys. Yeah, Normie and not Normie. But yeah, he got signed by Jack Warner. And he and his co-star in Hawaiian Eye, Connie Stevens, were the last people signed. But what ended up happening was he was a stuntman on the show Maverick at first. And his buddy Nick Adams had gotten him work on it. And the stuntman accidentally punched Gramps. And so Gramps, sorry, the actor on Maverick had punched Gramps. And Gramps, having been a former pro boxer, he punched the actor on Maverick. Which, as you might imagine, shut down production that day. Because if the star of Maverick has been punched by a stuntman, that's gonna shut down production. Yes. And on the totem pole of... Oh, yeah. He would have been under the star. Well, what ended up happening, though, was they told Jack Warner, like, hey, Maverick's down for the day because stuntman punched him. And so Jack Warner said, well, who did this? And he saw Gramps. And at a pure Hollywood showbiz magic, Jack Warner was like, sign that guy to a contract. I love that. So sometimes it's the guys you do punch. Yes. And then your other grandfather, Harry Flynn, was a press agent. Yeah, he worked for Walter Winchell, the big 50s publicist. He worked with him at times. If you've ever seen the movie The Sweet Smell of Success with Tony Curtis, the Burt Lancaster character is very much based off Winchell. So, I mean, The Rock and the Occult. My grandfather worked on Bewitched and Adrian McCheney, which are both the lightest of occult touches, but he also was the publicist for The Monkees. And they mentioned him on an episode at one point. Oh, that's amazing. So there is, as you know, Billy, you go back over your career or people you work with and you will find like funny connections that are just like, oh, I guess it was destined that I always be interested in this. Well, what strikes me about it other than just the obvious familial connection is that if you grew up in that world, certainly somebody sat at a table and told you as a young person, hey, by the way, what you're seeing isn't real. Yes. I had to learn that, you know, the hard way. But if you're out here long enough, we're in Los Angeles, you know, you learn that there's a there's a public veneer and then there's like the reality. Right. It's well documented and every generation has its abuses and excesses. I mean, people are talking as we tape this about the the P. Diddy documentary that's just come out. Right. And people people ask me if I've seen it. And I was like, well, I was around it in the 90s. You know, I went to some of those parties and I never saw anything too crazy. But what I'm saying is I was in that atmosphere multiple times, and so I don't feel like I need to hear about it because I sort of saw it firsthand. And I wasn't surprised by some of the revelations. And on the other hand, I'm not surprised that if those types of excesses were going on, I don't know. I didn't see anything, but I do know that Hollywood has a way of covering up if somebody's making somebody enough money. Totally. So when we talk about dark behavior, the occult, hidden agendas, secret societies, whatever you want to talk about, Hollywood has a long history, whether it's communist influence in Hollywood or whatever. Right. Walter Winchell exerting tremendous power. Luella Parsons had a hopper covering up for all number of things, whether it's unwanted pregnancies. Poor Loretta Young claimed that she had a child that they had to hide and she later adopted. But it was really her daughter because she claimed she'd been raped by a top Hollywood star. etc. Recently there was a revelation that I believe it was Natalie Wood was raped by a top Hollywood star I don't want to say the name because I don't want to get sued but it's certainly out there The point is Hollywood has a long history for looking the other way so maybe to the uninitiated that's a funny word to use in this context for the uninitiated it might seem shocking to them that that certain things could go on in, let's call it a form of plain sight. Right. But in Hollywood, you'd be surprised. Totally, Billy. I mean, I still think people underestimate the influence of the Bill Cosby revelations of a few years ago had on people because there were so many things in entertainment, as you know, where it's like with the 90s world, you saw it, but you kind of lived it. It's kind of an open secret. You kind of don't care just because it's like, it's not my business. when people learn that someone that was from decades considered the epitome of the good sitcom dad. And that's actually like a whole history of sitcom dads getting into trouble. A friend of mine's working on- You should do a podcast on that. Oh, a friend of mine's working on a documentary. I can't say about who, but she's like, oh yeah, it's all about the sordid life of the sitcom dad. And I'm like, sitcom dads get up to, they probably party more than any rockstar sitcom dads. But yeah, when people found that out about Bill Cosby And, you know, that put a face to the whole idea that it's like, oh, my goodness, if this isn't real. If Bill Cosby can engage in these types of behaviors. And people kind of knew about it. Obviously, he went to jail over it. So it's not alleged. Right. Go ahead. I didn't mean to say. No, I was going to say that it's like 30 Rock joked about it where there were jokes about, you know, don't go to a Cosby thing. He'll drug you. And it's like people already go over the deep end too much in terms of reading too much. Well, even there were people joking openly about Harvey Weinstein. Weinstein. Weinstein. Yeah. I certainly heard those stories behind the scenes. And I've heard, I'm sure you have too, I've heard innumerable stories about people who haven't been outed for bad behavior. The point is, sorry, the point I'm after is it doesn't surprise me that all sorts of things can happen in this town and within the corridors of power, whether we're talking about D.C. or Hollywood or the London financial districts. and you grew up in this i you i learned about it but you grew up and so i guess the point i'm making in mutuality is neither but neither one of us is surprised when we hear these totally totally billy i mean i'm sure you have moments with your your um your kids where you're not trying to like open their eyes to the reality of hollywood just be watching some movie and you're like oh that's so-and-so's boyfriend or you know that's you know that guy he famously cheated a musician i knew out of someone and it's like you're not trying to blow their little minds they're just they're probably just trying to watch a pixar movie but but like you just you have trivia i mean we're both trivia dudes and so you know so so you naturally just want to share like oh yeah by the way that guy's like the dirtiest dog in the industry and so if you tell that enough to your kids yeah you know it isn't so much that they want to blow the lid off something just so much as they just are very much aware well recently one of my kids asked me about judy garland dying at a young age and they wanted to know why and they're like kids my kids are at this point are 10 and 7 and a baby but they love The Wizard of Oz like I do. So when they look at The Wizard of Oz, I'm not in a big hurry to tell them what Judy went through in her herself. Right, right, right, right. You know, and it's well-documented. And, you know, I've read the books. I met Liza Minnelli and sat and talked to her for 20 minutes once about her mother. And I've talked to other people who, you know, were associated in the Garland world. So anybody can put those pieces of information they want together. But there's no mistaking the fact that Judy Garland was abused by Hollywood. Oh, totally. And she went on to be one of the biggest stars in the history of Hollywood. So if those types of excesses go on with some of the biggest stars, Shirley Temple talked about when she was basically underage, one of the moguls whipping out his you-know-what in front of her and expecting her to do something with it when she was like 12 years old and she was one of the biggest stars in the world. Right, right, right. And that's the thing, Billy, too. The Wizard of Oz, I wrote about it on my sub-stack a few weeks ago, you know, Even the writers of The Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum, through his mother-in-law, Matilda Jocelyn Gage, big-time spiritualist, his mother-in-law was like one of the most foremost feminists of the 19th century. She came up with the term patriarchy. She hated Christianity. And she was really into the occult, deeply into the occult. So there's something there, too, in that a lot of times people think that this is a recent Hollywood. Oh, not at all. Yeah. Frank Baum from Chicago. Another Chicago guy. Chicago has its fair share of woo. People underestimate that. Well, my theory on Chicago and Chicago's connection to the entertainment business is when you grow up in such austere conditions, Hollywood becomes the Emerald City at the end of a particular... It does. It was for me. Sure. You know, our aspiration was to get out here and make our dreams come true, and we did. And then, of course, it turned into a nightmare, but that's for another podcast. But you make a great point about Chicago, where Chicago is one of those cities that, because there's so many talented people there, and they do have the benefits of a rich cultural history with music and Second City and all those things, but not being the Emerald City gives you that crucial chip on your shoulder. Oh, yeah. So that's immediately- I'm sure you saw that with your grandfather. Oh, yeah. Well, he had multiple chips on his shoulder. I think Quentin Tarantino, in one of his books or interviews, he says Napoleon didn't have a Napoleon complex. Napoleon had a Robert Conrad complex. So like that, you know, I mean, I don't talk to you badly about Gramps, but Gramps was intense about that kind of stuff. But yeah, having that sense, I hate to say resentment, but just a sense of I'll show them while also having a lot of advantages yourself. Yes. I mean, you see that a lot in the San Fernando Valley with certain directors and writers who grew up in the valley, their fathers work in the industry. They have all kinds of what you might call privileges. But from their perspective, they're like, yeah, but my grandfather is or my dad isn't like a movie star. I'll show them with no sense of irony of like, dude, you live in Studio City. I see. Your dad is a commercial director. Things are going well for you. But in a way, that is the crucial element, is to have the building blocks to do stuff yourself, but to almost delude yourself into like, no, they've all doubted you. That's a crucial key to follow people. Okay, so like anything that drives us, there must be a consistent line for you to wake up, you know, week after week and sort of plume the depths of this type of information, which in many ways, shockingly, is not more explored. And we can certainly talk about the reasons why. But what drives you to kind of get into the underbelly of the greatest myth-making machine in the 20th and 21st century, which we will loosely call Hollywood? it. Well, I mean, part of it, it has to do with both sides of the family being into it, hearing all the stories, but also it has to do with the very persona of my grandfather. Because I love my grandfather, Bob Conrad. Harry Flynn's great. Harry's just pretty on the nose, good guy. But Bob Conrad, who I'm named after, his first name was Conrad. It was actually Conrad Falk. Okay. His grandfather's name was Conrad. So he would call himself two and me three. Like, you know, I loved Gramps. But Gramps also had an incredible dark masculine energy. Like, he was a former gangster. Like, he rolled with those guys. You know, people always say, Billy, like, I fell in with the wrong crowd. But people never say, I'm the wrong crowd. Okay. No, you started hanging out with me and bad stuff started. And in other words, everyone always deflects to like, you know, I was hanging out with bad people. Gramps could be like the problem. And so, but he was also an all-American hero. Like, you know, Chuck LaBella, your producer, my friend. He was like, you know, my dad wanted to be Bob Conner. And a lot of my buddies, like, they're like, oh, yeah, my dad loves your grandfather. American dreams. Yeah. Literally the embodiment of the American dream. Yeah, he is all those things. And all those things are true. And this is a key thing about entertainment, where it's like, it can be gnarly, but there's also an on-the-nose thing of like, he was these things and he was this good character. But he also, a friend of mine, the late film critic Bill Weaver, he said, like, Con, he goes, if they were making Fight Club in 1961, one, he was like, your grandfather would have been Tyler Durden. He goes, he had the look, but also the negative vibe. So in other words, Billy, it's when you grow up with your mom being this very sweet Christian woman, who I love very much. She wants me to text her right now. She has no doing an interview. But then her dad is like this Tyler Durden figure that is like incredibly gnarly, Luciferian, mafioso Chicago dude, who was also like a great hero too. It isn't how do you get into that but like how do you not especially when people only know the good side of them or people you know i could not be interested but is the idea that it uh light is the greatest disinfectant um it's long past the time where hollywood's sort of true inner motivations good or bad be all sort of laid on the table like what is the through line for you well part of it is just because you know at some point and you probably already had it don't spoil the fun oh well that's just said, like, I was, I worked on trying to do TV shows or trying to do projects that get into, like, the background of how people make it in Hollywood. And that's always interesting, too. And that is wholesome. And, you know, I think you and I, we both have in common. We both love Disney. Like, I'm down for the wholesome stuff, too. You know. Another Chicago guy. Oh, yeah. There we go. People, by the way, they were like, you need Billy Corgan's podcast next. Like, I held off doing other ones. And I'm like, look, Billy likes, he likes Disney. He likes pro wrestling. I too used to be a little boy. I'm like, we're going to get along. We have a lot of things in common. I appreciate that. This will be fun. I guarantee you, no one's going to talk to you like I'm about to talk to you today. No, no, no. I'm always down. We're going to take a river raft down a very interesting, the river sticks. I'm always game for that. Trust me, trust me. I'm always game for that. My uncle said, he goes, the Flynn effect is rambling and weird digressions. So you're, you're. We're going to, we're going to, we're going to have a a blues jam into a satanic infinity. I'm totally damn for that. We were saying about, we were saying before that, Disney. Disney. Well, no, it was about... Sorry, I interrupted. I'm the worst interrupter, but the critics of the show hate me interrupting, but I just like talking to people. No, no, trust me. I'm something of an interrupter myself. Okay, well, we get on. No, no, no. It'll come back to me, I'm sure. But it was about my grandfather. Oh, about Hollywood. Part of it, Billy, is that, oh, Hollywood can be really, really wholesome in the sense of how people, you know, make it, you know, the La La Land version of the story. And I've done things, I'm interested in that too, where people start out, where was your first apartment, you know? But then that isn't the whole story of it either. But is it, sorry, but is it you want to get to the bottom of, just give me like a, like we're in a pitch meeting, like where does this go? Are you okay with the rambling maybe is a different way to ask. I like getting to the bottom of stuff and I like, cause it's all part of the same thing. Are you into a greater mystery and you're cool with wherever the mystery takes you? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I'm just trying to understand, because I'm fascinated by people's motivations. Totally. Well, I'll say this. My part of it, and I talked about this with Tucker, the weird stuff where it's like my grandfather knowing the mafia guys, my grandfather met Jimmy Hoffa the week before he died. His best friend was Jay Sebring, who was murdered by the Manson family. You know, all that. I actually went to that house once. Oh, really? Yes. the Cielo when did they bulldoze it like 20 years ago yeah it was when a fellow music artist was working there which I thought was a bit dark but I went up there to see visit somebody And I a very I a Christian and As a man. And it was, I knew this, and this is one of the reasons I want to talk to you, but I'm sorry, you know, you can call me whatever you want. When you're in a house where a bunch of people were, you know, tortured and killed, and that's the same front door, and it was, the energy in there was very dark. Oh, I don't doubt that. And to your point earlier about Hollywood, there's the book, you read the book Chaos by Tom O'Neill from a few years ago. I saw you reference that book, but I've not seen it. Oh, it's very good. So I've met with Tom a few times because I have nothing. Can you summarize it if you don't mind? It's essentially Tom in 1999. Tom was a writer, I think, for Premier Magazine. It's going to be a great plug for Tom O'Neill. And he was doing a story on the 30th anniversary of the Manson murders. Okay. And he ended up looking at it and looking up. He wanted to interview Vincent Bugliosi, who was a good friend of my grandfather. My grandfather played him in this NBC show called The DA, which was like the precursor of Law and Order. So my grandfather went to the Manson court case. That gave me the trial. The trial. Many times. There's one thing, Billy, where one of the Manson girls is reprimanded by the judge for making eyes with my grandfather. And he says, he's like, Squeaky, I ask that you stop trying to get something going with Robert Conrad. But my grandfather was researching the role, as was Peter Falk researching Columbo. His show did a lot better than The DA. But so one of the the thesis of O'Neill's book is that between the arrest of Charles Manson in August of 69, right around Black Sabbath formed famously like that to that month. There's the there's the story of one of the guys looking at a horror movie and going, people pay a lot of money to be scared. And it's like, yeah, that's the same month that the Manson murders happened. and then Manson's arrest in November. Essentially, what O'Neill gets at is that Hollywood was doing some kind of Cosby, more Diddy parties, 60s versions of Diddy parties in 1969. But to have come out with that in terms of, yeah, these parties are pretty regular. You had a lot of celebrities going to them, a lot of drugs. We're not ready for these revelations in 2025. Like, people are constantly going down conspiracy see rabbit holes because we found out what we found out about bill cosby and all these other allegations from years ago if people had found out in 1969 like yeah your favorite stars not only do they do drugs but a lot of them are bisexual a lot of them like go to orgies like we would have the united states government may have like shut down hollywood or put like john wayne in charge of it okay so like is there empirical evidence for that or is that just a supposition that's you'd have to read o'neill's book but like as someone who my whole thing is like i i am a do your own research guy and I'll get me PDFs and Kindle books guy. But I also have enough family stories that it can it's always made my research interesting because I could always verify it by asking my grandfather. Sure. So that that's always been my thing, too. But is the point of it that so sorry, I'm just trying to understand the kernel of this. It's so OK. Yes, this stuff is always gone, as you've said. But what about 69 sticks out in your mind or what stuck out in Mr. O'Neill's mind. Is that there was a great deal of cover-up in terms of the true motivations that his thesis, and I hope I'm doing Tom justice with this, was that the helter-skelter thing was very much played up. The race war thing that Manson was trying to do. That a lot of it was pretty humdrum, like these people were going to sex parties. These people were essentially going to ditty parties. Someone got murdered in part because Charles Manson realized, remember, Charles Manson was having the Beach Boys perform his songs on the Mike Douglas show. He was, uh, Neil Young had bought him a motorcycle. That's, that's in books. I never heard that one. Oh, that's verified. That's, you know, he was a dude in the scene, but he realized at some point, and when people know this, anyone who works in the entertainment industry understands the motivations. He realized he was always just going to be a dude. That's like, Hey dude, thanks for bringing the drugs. Thanks for bringing the girls. Thanks for bringing the boys. Uh, but this is where you get off on the Yeah, you're not on, you're not, you don't belong at this party. You're not actually going to guest on the new album. You're not actually going to be in the new band. And when people think I'm next and they realize they're not, it's surprising. I hate to say it in show business, these kind of things don't happen more often where people flip out. So Manson was essentially, according to O'Neill, a pimp, among other things, who was increasingly in show business. Increasingly, again, the Beach Boys loved him. You know, he's in the scene. And then he goes to a Doris Day party. Terry Melcher. Melcher's mom. And she says, like, in O'Neill's book, she's like, I'm not signing this, dude. He's a freak. I don't want, you know, famously like, uh-oh. And then when that happened. There's speculation that one of the reasons Manson went to the house where Jay Sebring was murdering and Sharon Tate was that he mistakenly thought Melcher was there or something. It's never been sort of proven, but that's always been the supposition. It was almost like a confusion or something. I mean, if I could use a kind of risky analogy here, the way to think about the Manson murders is like Kanye West famously had a meltdown a few years ago, went off the rail, like Charles Manson, started putting swastikas everywhere. Imagine if Kanye West had never made it in 2004 and he was just merely one of Diddy's buddies who was like getting songwriter credits. And in 2001 or 2002, Kanye West was told, dude, thank you. You've done a great job. You're not in this club. Too much cuckoo in the Cocoa Puffs. Like, you're... And then at a ditty party, if, like, some dude showed up and started murdering a few celebrities. That is, to me, the equivalent of what the Charles Manson case was. It was a dude that was always a little bit like, just make sure he's sedated today. He's cool. But is your... Okay, but what I'm saying is, is it... Where does that extend into your greater work? Is it... They use that as a sort of smokescreen, like, oh, it was some lunatic over here and we can continue with our Bacchanal over here. Like, is there a greater... Yeah, yeah, that's it. Okay, I was trying to understand. Again, Charles Manson'd be crazy. The Manson family is crazy. That all is true, but what- So when you say played up, it was like- Let's just say it was exclusively this. They said a narrative this way. It was exclusively Helter Skelter, Race War Store stuff, not also the parties. Let's just focus on this specific motivation and block out all the other stuff. Okay, that makes a certain sense to me. Yeah. But is that, I mean- I think it's- I'm not a moralist, but is that just opportunistic? and self-preservation on their part. Totally. I mean, it would have, who knows? I mean, that's the greatest. You know, it's like famously in Hollywood when the Hays Code came in. Right. It was a way to kind of like, on one hand, control the people that were working against the movie industry, which was like Catholic. Right. A lot of Catholic organizations were coming out saying these movies, they're too immoral. Right. What they call the pre-code days, you know. People showing up with, you could see their boobs through their negligees in 1933, which, you know, if you grew up on 40s movies, you watched the pre-code movies, you're almost shocked at how, there was obviously hints of- of same-sex behavior and all sorts of prostitution and, you know, all any, any manner of unsundry things. But, uh, the point is, is at some point, you know, the mogul sat around and said, we've got to figure a way to get the heat off of us. And if we got to throw a few people over the bus, under the bus. Uh, so are you making that same connection? Exactly. No, that, that is exactly it. So it was, it was like, let's just say it was this, it freaked everybody out, but you know, it's to party and have those kind of access to people. But also with ditty parties and stuff, I mean, if you're a really big star, a really big star, the problem is never meeting people or meeting willing young women or young men. The problem is making them go away. The problem is getting them the next day to not follow up with like, hey, you said you'd read my script or hey, check out the demo. And so the purpose of those parties, and they're not even unique to Hollywood. I mean, you know, Weimar Republic, Germany had them too. with, what's his name, Eric John Hanneson, the fortune teller, he would have these wild parties and film people and blackmail people. The, for Hollywood, those parties are helpful, I think, because they systematize, well, bring people here, it's anonymous, but they go away. You don't have... That, because as you know... Sorry, but in your estimation, are they feeding some darker machine that's in place, or is it just generation to generation? I think it's both. I mean, there could be some darker thing at force there, 100%. But from an economic, like the social economic perspective, it's very helpful for the very famous to be able to have as much sex as they want, which eventually becomes insatiable for them, but also not have to worry about, like, yeah, there's this girl that won't stop calling me because she says I let her on, but I don't know. That's one of the economic reasons for those parties, is they know you show up here, you see this athlete, you see this. You just know there's no follow-up. Don't ask him for his email. You're out of here. That's why those parties, you can stop them. And like an encampment, they'll just show back up because they are helpful to the super famous, I think. Is there any evidence in your mind, because it's certainly been speculated, you know, there's the one gentleman who wrote the book about the possible CIA influence on the psychedelic rock musicians, whether it was The Doors or Crosby, Stills, Nash, stuff like that. There's, you know, the idea that there was some... Weird Sins in the Canyon is the book. Yes. So there's that. But then also this idea that... Because to people that look at and we use the, you know, P. Diddy as an example, you know, one person would look and say, well, I can understand why these these abuses or alleged abuses are actually proven abuses. happened. But I tend to look at it from the standpoint of like, well, if there's all these rumors and whispers around certain camps and nobody's doing anything about it, why are they being allowed to run so free when ultimately you would say that's probably bad for business? Is it ultimately like has been alleged with the Epstein issues? Is there some kind of compromise situation? Do they almost want characters to run free to create a compromise situation? I know that's a totally different subject, but I think it sort of runs parallel to the idea that, and we certainly had a situation in Chicago with another star where, you know, the rumors were around for a decade. And nobody ever seemed to do anything about it. And of course, we would muse, why is nobody stepping in and doing about it when there's all this talk in plain sight? Right. I think there's certainly, I'm very, very open to that. I mean, yeah, like I said, the Weimar Republic, it had Hanneson, who was the Nazis. He was this guy that was an occultist and a mystic, and he was like a popular personality, but he would also do fortunes for the Nazis. and as my friend Rick Spence told me, he's this historian. He's got a podcast, Strange As It Seems, that goes into a lot of this stuff. And he was like, Honeysen was essentially the Epstein of the 30s for Germany, where you would go to his parties. His venue was literally called the Palace of the Occult. And, you know, popular politicians, you know, maybe they go to some orgies there. And they would take pictures, film it, and now we've got blackmail on you. And now, what do you know? You know, so this kind of stuff, Like with Epstein, it's not new. With regards to your question about weird scenes inside the canyon, the only thing I didn't get to with Tucker that was really interesting that actually tied my interest in Rock and the Occult along with the tech stuff, you know about Kenneth Anger, of course. Of course, yeah. Kenneth Anger, filmmaker. Jimmy Page did a soundtrack famously for, what's the movie? Lucifer Rising. Lucifer Rising. One of the stars of Lucifer Rising, by the way, was my mom's neighbor going up Bunker Spreckles. Okay. What a great name. What's his name from the Red Hot Chili Peppers? When he checks in hotels, he'll use Bunker Spreckles because he's like the surf king. But he was supposed to be Lucifer. And he was the boy next door for my mom. So again, as to my interest in this stuff, my mom's boy next door is literally Kenneth Anger's pick for Lucifer. But so Kenneth Anger gets into a lot of this stuff, Billy. This is actually like the through line. If you want a through line between... I'm looking. That's what I'm looking for. Yeah, no, I'll give you one. So this is a really good through line. Between 60s rock and earlier stuff and even weird CIA stuff. um and typically the cia stuff i i don't have the family background in it so i tend to back off but this was just this is too neat to not actually go into so kenneth engers um his mentor in a lot of ways was the filmmaker harry smith okay he was the one that did compile the american anthology of folk that harry smith interesting oh yeah no that was his mentor he was a big filmmaker uh he lived at the chelsea hotel leonard cohen would visit him for spells and stuff harry smith is one although he wasn't particularly a musician, he went on to be one of the most influential people in music in the 20th century because he set the folk boom and Bob Dylan into motion. Right. As you know, Billy, that is like, without being a musician, he is like forefather for everything. Absolutely. So he also, before Jimmy Page put Do It That Will on records, he put that, I think, on those anthologies. Did not know that about Harry Smith. Oh yeah. No, Harry Smith believed that Aleister Crowley was his father. Like legit? Legit father. Yeah. So with Harry Smith, he was from the Pacific Northwest. He came from a long line. And again, this sounds crazy, but you can read it in the bios. My friend, Mike McGonigal. Just don't worry about qualifying. We'll just go down the rabbit hole. All I love to do is you put foot out to my knees. It's a conversation about these things because I think my point would be so much of what we would touch on, hopefully in our chat today, is it's speculative, but it's speculative because there isn't enough information. So you do end up connecting dots and you can say, you can lean into this association or you cannot. But there is a tremendous amount of association that goes on with occult, secret societies, satanic forces, Marxists, communists, the U.S. government. There's a whole lot of smoke there. And somehow it seems to center around not just corridors of power like Washington, D.C., but somehow out here in Hollywood. Oh, yeah, yeah. So, no, no, that's exactly true, Billy. So Harry Smith, his mentor in turn was the filmmaker Maya Darin, who did Meshes in the Afternoon, the godmother of indie cinema. Okay. And what was interesting with her is her, she was sent to Haiti by Gregory Bateson, her grad school teacher, to study voodoo possession. Okay. So you have this tree from Anger to Harry Smith to his mentor and collaborator, Darin. And Gregory Bateson, he's like the Esalen Institute. He's like one of the godfathers of Silicon Valley. He's one of the godfathers of cybernetics. Yes. How does the mind steer? Esalen Institute ends up becoming a very influential force on the West Coast, particularly up like the Big Sur area. Yeah. Basically the precursor of spirituality meeting Silicon Valley. Is that accurate for you? Yeah. So this is one of the big things that I never got to, which was I was like blown away. I was reading, it was Rapid Eye Magazine from the 80s, like the industrial post-punk. Yeah. And so they have this whole article about this. And I was like, this ties both together. So it was Bateson, brilliant scientist. His dad came up with the term genetics, who sends Darren to Haiti with a camera to go study how does voodoo possession work? In other words, what's going on in the mind? And Bateson was also an expert on schizophrenia. And so you get the idea. What's the difference between possession and schizophrenia? And famously, scientists, you know, they're like, some people say it's the same thing. Other people, you know, one's from the dark ages. The other one's actually real. I literally just had this conversation with Linda Blair, who, of course, famously starred in The Exorcist. Oh. This exact topic. Well, there you go. Next time we'll have her here, too, to weigh in. What do you think about possession, Linda? No, but so Bateson, again, the scientist, the great scientist, sends Darren, who's the queen of all this, like, she studied dance under, I think it was Catherine Dunham, the godmother of black dance, who herself was from Haiti. So they're sending him, Billy, to Haiti to study possession. All right. The scientists are. Not the weirdos. Well, the weirdos, too, but the scientists. And so, Darren goes and she ends up becoming a participant observer. She makes a movie about possession, but she also writes a book and she's possessed no less than seven times. And so, what's interesting about that is that that ended up becoming huge in the 1950s literature on brainwashing. There's a book, Battle for the Mind by William Sargent that talks about this. And he's like, this is how brainwashing works. In other words, Billy, the schizophrenia movement of the 50s, there are some connections there between them studying possession. And then Gregory Bateson, by the way, he's like a parent. Some people credit him as being the founder that suggests the idea of the CIA to Bill Donovan. He tells Bill Donovan, because he worked, Bateson worked in the OSS in World War II during Black Topic. Which is the precursor to the. He did black propaganda, meaning he would intentionally do psyops. He's the king of like, we're losing the war, we're losing the war. That's what you tell them to depress the idea. So it's Bateson who tells Bill Donovan, you know, we should continue doing this after the war's over. And Bateson also is one of the first guys to do LSD. And he's the first guy to give Allen Ginsberg LSD. And the first person, Billy, to give Allen Ginsberg LSD sets off a lot of things in motion. Yeah. So in other words, between, you know, Kenneth Anger to Harry Smith to Maya Daron, you know, you're also not far away from the Jack Parsons world. There are people like Marjorie Cameron. There is a scene. And, you know, people can help us in terms of untangling what the implications of this are. But to your point, yes, the CIA, there is a bit of involvement there, seemingly, in terms of cybernetics. How do you steer the mind? And there is a connection there. But there's a lot to unravel. but you know okay so before we dump uh jump dump before we exactly before we jump into our sea of free association here right uh i have one good question i think a lot of good questions uh do you think artists are attracted to the mystical uh writ large or is it that they are natural portals to channels high and low um i think obviously artists are attracted to stuff because the nature of creativity especially music music is unseen billy like no one sees music you know in terms of Where do ideas come from? Where do songs come from? This is a point I try to make to fans of mine all the time, because of course they want to criticize whatever comes out of the effort. And I say, you know, I'm okay if you don't like what I do, but understand I always start with a blank page. Right, right. And if everybody starts with the same blank page, how is it that a certain artist is able to consistently produce nothing or something from nothing, where most people can never get past the nothing? Right. so that's kind of what i'm trying no that's exactly true it's a mysterious process there's a great book on the subject um i've always been interested in this but a great book uh that i can recommend to people is matthew ingram's the s word spirituality and alternative music and it goes i was going to get you a copy but he he was uh doing another print of them uh it goes from the 50s till today and it covers brian eno it covers my bloody valentine all kinds of stuff by the way that's one of my interest i know that we have a shared thing in terms of my interest in this stuff billy a lot of people would take the heavy metal route heavy rips my thing was always like kevin shields's guitar tone fascinating it's like on loveless it's almost spooky and and kevin can i give you a piece of insider information please do so alan molder who mixed and produced um loveless the infamous my bloody valentine one of the greatest albums ever made uh he mixed my album siamese dreams shortly after loveless had come out right so i was fresh in the in the aftermath of asking the guy who actually made the record with kevin what it was like and later i became friends with kevin and and the entire band and we used to go visit them at they had a house somewhere in london but um the thing i think you would find fascinating because this will this will uh ping your spidey sense here i said what's it like to work with kevin he says very interesting he'll sit at times upwards to eight hours playing the guitar part over and over again and manipulating the frequencies until he got exactly what he wants and then he does it one take yeah yeah okay so intuitively i'm going to say my take as a musician and say your take from your perspective but but what i'm saying is the way i read that uh is musicians are uniquely attuned to what frequencies do to the human system, which in my estimation is hardwired, because a musician understands intuitively that these frequencies, these chords, these drum beats will arouse something in a common way amongst people in a global way, not just a particular tribe. Right, right. So, you know, we all know in music that the happy chord is D major. Right. Right. So a lot of the pumpkin songs that were very popular were written actually in C sharp major, which is a bit darker. So you get a similar effect to D major, but it's slightly darker. So when I hear this story about Kevin sitting there and manipulating frequencies for eight hours until he gets exactly what he wants, to me, he's looking uniquely at this frequency is going to convey something that goes beyond just the chords I'm playing. So I think that's what you're hitting at. No, totally. That's it. And he was obsessed with this book called Hypnagogia by Andreas, Italian last name. It starts with an M. I forget it. But it's like when people, you know, they'll get into the really heavy metal aspect of it, but people overlook the drone. And as you're talking, frequencies and stuff. The drone is in these notes, by the way, but keep going. I love it. So with Kevin, that was always my thing. It's like I wanted to do a project about Rocking the Occult that was focused not on the 70s or 80s, not on metal per se, but about early psych, 66, and then 1991. I mean, Alan McGee famously got into the occult in a big way. Okay. He got into a hole, he almost lost his mind. But, so it's like, that's interesting to me, because you don't associate, Billy, creation records with that stuff, which I love. Okay. But one of the... But for those who don't understand the subtlety of what you're saying, you're not saying that Kevin Shields is in the occult or... No, I'm just saying... You're saying, so give me the simple version of what you're alleging. Musicians are naturally... Or hinting at. Music is spiritual. Even in the Bible, you know, King David, you know, he plays, as Leonard Cohen sang, he played a, you know, he played a chord that pleased the Lord. He goes to Saul when Saul is troubled, and he plays him his harp, and the spirit leaves him. So are you suggesting that in the thread between mid-60s Psychedelia, which L.A. was the home of, in many ways more so than London, all the way into early 90s alternative music, that there's some sort of thread that gets into the mystical? Oh, totally. Well, the other one, Billy, we brought up New York earlier with Kenneth Anger and Harry Smith. When people say which band is actually into the occult that you wouldn't think as much as anybody, it's actually the Velvet Underground. Because the original drummer before Moe Tucker was Angus MacLeese. And Angus's son, I think Oshian, he was actually like, he's considered like a Buddhist saint, reincarnated or stuff. But Lou Reed loved Alice Bailey, who's head of the Theosophical Society. I mean, White Heat is named after her stuff. so let me pause you there so in your free association because you're sort of you're you're connecting these dots it's all free association with me yeah sure yeah but are you are you alleging anything in particular you're just saying i think there's a lot of energy and interesting connections here and i just want to explore is there is there more to this smoke than i think both i mean you would know as a musician i'm you know in terms of what goes into what goes on with people in terms of potential influences and stuff. Personally, I think, and I talked about this in a soccer interview, the dialectic, as they would say. My friend Stephanie always says, don't be pretentious and say dialectic, just say conversation. But between, you know, either taking drugs or being into the occult or, you know, certain mental breakdowns and stuff, it's a dialectic. Which hand is washing the other with a lot of this stuff? That's kind of what I'm poking at. I'm glad you're following that because that's what I'm after. I'm not trying to put anything on you. No, it's just, it can be hard to say Well it like were you into weird stuff and you did drugs or did you do drugs Yeah what came first The drug or the weird cord or the weird cord Then you want to take drugs to understand what the weird cord means John Balance from Coil said once he said when it comes to drugs he goes big misunderstanding is people think you need to keep taking them to have the same effect And he goes, once you've taken certain drugs, it's like opening up a port on an old 90s PC. He goes, that port's always kind of open on you just because you've done something that's chemically put you in a certain frequency. So I think that certainly, Billy, a lot of those guys, I mean, like we're talking about LSD, the history of it goes back to the CIA, goes back to Gregory Bateson trying to get into like the idea of possession and spirit possession. You're getting into Ram Dass and Ken Casey and Timothy Leary. They were at Harvard or not, I can't say Casey, but. so just so we're clear so that anybody listening what's clear we're we're willing to kind of walk through the the shadow of the thing and say there's more here but is it is it is intentional or is it the result of musicians opening up into energies i think it's the latter it could be the former but like i said i would argue the latter from my own experiences i certainly i want to hear about those yeah sure well if you want to ask me anything feel free but um i tend to follow uh fall more so uh like i'll i'll give you one illustration from my own life uh i take an lsd uh and and uh but not not to any great quantity but when my real interest in lsd in the in the late days and early 90s and this was street lsd i mean i was just buying from you know we knew these these lesbians you know who sold their thing was they were trippers they tripped almost every day and they'd sold LSD and we'd go to their house and their whole apartment was made like an LSD palace. It was quite interesting. It sounds like a Perlandia sketch. Yeah. Well, Fred Armisen, who most people would know from Saturday Night Live, and of course he's gone on other things, is his fellow Chicago. And we used to play with Fred. Well, there you go. And he was in a band called Trenchmouth and he was a great drummer. I don't know if he went to the lesbians who sold LSD, but it's possible. Probably did. But my point is, is my attraction LSD beyond the sort of like, ooh, wow, I'm seeing crazy colors was the first time I dared to listen to my own music high in LSD, where I was able to have an out of body experience to understand that I was actually communicating more through my music and more through the sound of my voice than I thought as I was doing it. And that was a mind-blowing thing to me because I realized I was conveying energies, intentions, and deeper subtexts within the language of music and then the language of the text than I consciously thought as I was doing it. Right. It was almost like I was speaking to myself and I went into a loop. Right. And it became this weird parlor game. And then where it got really crazy was I started coding my music with, like, references that would be so insider note I would think nobody would pick up on them. And then people would stop me and say, I understand what you're saying in the subtext of the music. So now I'm encoding my music with a secret language that I think is only for me. It's kind of meant to amuse me. And it became a parlor game with Pumpkins and, I guess, me and fans where I would code my music. Nothing nefarious, actually more kind of fun and winky. More Tolkien than Crowley. And people would be like, I totally got that. And in some cases, fans would say, I didn't really understand what you were doing until I took a tremendous amount of drugs. And then I actually heard what you're doing. And then they would report back to me. And it wasn't that far away from what I was saying. Right. In intentionality. So that was mind-blowing too, because, okay, now that you're dealing with different levels of subtextual information that aren't, you know, they go past the three-minute pop song. Right, right. That's fascinating. And that gets into something. There's a book on Brian Geis and William S. Burroughs. I know Brian is. Yeah, and he had a thing about drugs in the 60s. He was like the original, like 60s style occultist. And he's like, the main thing of the 60s is what you're talking about, where when people get turned on, he goes, he goes, I could be in a train station and I'm on hash or something. And I see another guy on the same drug. And he's like, whoosh, he's in my brain. I'm on his. And it's just and it's like that's you're opening up gates. That's what, you know, the can song, all gates open. Sure. So I think, again, to go back to where we kind of started this particular riff, I think whether you're dealing with the outward eventual madness of a Sid Barrett or, you know, Chet Baker, who was, you know, incredibly like yourself, handsome young man, you know, very skilled horn player who, you know, kind of reached almost like a mythical status because of his self-abuse. seem to open some sort of portal into a greater kind of sorrow. And whether you want to project that onto his playing or not, it seems to me as a musician to be there. And it becomes the tragedy of his story. Where Miles and Coltrane, they got off a heroine, but they still brought those experiences somehow into what they did. So I think where most people, and I'm not proselytizing, I'm saying where most people get caught up is maybe what they would project onto you that you're insinuating because I got some of this in watching your interview with Tucker Carlson is like, are you saying that there is this nefarious kind of hidden satanic thing? I do believe there is a satanic element. Sure. And we can talk about that, but I don't think it's particularly overt in my experiences in music. No, I agree with that completely. I mean, the devil is sly. I mean, the Bible talks about being able to transform himself into an angel of light and being able to deceive. Well, I would argue that in many cases, the most satanic representation in music over the last 20 years has been the pop stars because they are creating, they are knowingly creating a false image. Right. And they are servile to the false image to the point of jacking up their faces and jacking up their voices and deluding their audience that there's somebody that they're not. And they're all doing in plain sight. Right. And at some point, even the, you'll see the audience reach a point of cognitive dissonance where they know that the person they want to believe in an idolatrous way isn't that person. And they force the people to double down on the idolatry because that's the only thing they can do. Or as you know, as a fan of alternative music, alternative music is the exact opposite. It's about, well, warts and all. Right. It's, did you, did you forget to bring a tie or what are we doing here? Well, I always say it's the right t-shirt and the right mustache. All right. So let's just, I don't want to cut you off. So if you have something to add to that, but I wanted to kind No, I was going to say, there's a writer, Daniel Pinchbeck, who used to write for Arthur Magazine. It was kind of like Oz Magazine from the 60s, but from 20 years ago. And he's kind of a Timothy Leary of Gen X, as Colbert called him. Okay. And he's written and talked about the pop star thing in recent years, where he's just like, he's gone full vigilante citizen, where he's like, they love these intentional occult Illuminati references. And this is Daniel Pinchbeck. It's in my notes, by the way. This is Daniel Pinchbeck. You're doing a good job there. Daniel Pinchbeck is, you know, is mom, you know, the beats. Like, he's a pretty sophisticated dude. So, to your point, yeah, I mean, I don't think, of course, Billy. Like, it's all pretty obvious. Well, but maybe to much of the audience that just, you know, they're just fans of who they like. They wouldn't necessarily understand, let's call it, the motivations why a pop star would lean into cult imagery. It may not be as simple as, you know, they're suddenly joined a secret society and they're given the weird triangle thing. Right. You know, we've all seen those pictures. We're like, oh, my God, they're giving the triangle, whatever that's about. I mean, you know, weirdos like myself, sometimes we like I did a tour in 2019 around my albums, Quotillion. It was a solo album. And I dressed up in Freemason garb for the tour, having, by the way, no foreknowledge that my ancestors were actually OG Freemasons. Really? And there's actually a church built by one of my ancestors in the state of Illinois where I was born and raised and still live that's still standing that is a very famous Freemason church. Really? So I actually have OG Occult and my family was one of the original 100 Mormon families as well. So let's play that game for a second and we'll move on to other people. So for all I know, I'm actually born with, so it's called the genetic imprint of secret societies. I'm attracted to them. I actually have Masons pull me aside and say, sure, you don't want to join. Oh, yeah. So they're identifying something in me, or maybe it's just because I'm seen as, I have some power in the world. I don't actually have much at all. So, again, we're surfing on the wave of like, where does the game begin and end? And it's like something out of a Kubrick movie. I'll tell you, there's a buddy of mine named, I think his last name's Lyons, Nathan, Nathan Lyons. And he comes from a long line of pastors. And what he told me after my episode, he's a very nice guy. I knew him a little bit, But afterwards, he was like, oh. You're saying you talk Carlson episode? Yeah, after my- Because you said episode. My psychotic break. After my psychotic break, I met a lot of people. But Nathan told me, you know, because he's from a long line of pastors, and he goes, in America, he goes, because people move around so much, and they intermarry on every different level, and people don't stay where their family's from, he goes, we don't understand what it's like in other parts of the world. Where on a religious aspect, you go to some parts of the world, and it's like, well, I'm a witch doctor. My father was a witch doctor. His father was a witch doctor. And they founded the city of Witchdoctoria. And it's like people, if we knew more about our family history, is what he was pointing out. He goes, we would see kind of like the Back to the Future movies. It's like how similar the 19th century version of Billy Corgan is. In terms of interest, in terms of spiritual background. But I haven't forgotten that. When he told me that, he goes, if you knew more about your own line. He goes, people, they have either, you know. So, to be personal, on some level, are you trying to sort of reconcile your grandfather's story? Does that make sense the way I'm asking? Yeah, I mean, he is a super, yeah, he's a super intense guy, but he also has a lot of dark energy. And I'm a Christian, my mom's a Christian. Gramps would even say he's a Christian. But like, part of why he was so good is because he could do stuff that was like incredibly willful and incredibly dark. Yeah. And so it's kind of trying to figure out what is that? If I could put a capstone on this before we go into my free association game. Ultimately, I think almost all human dynamics revolve around two things, power and trauma. Sure. And attraction to power is very simple. It's like, I'd like to have more power. I'd like to have more agency. I'd like to have more control over my life. And most people's expressions, where they get lost in that is something has imprinted them in trauma. It might be ancestral as well. And it affects their ability to judge power and how power corrupts. And if you notice, most institutions that corrupt through power, they use people who are traumatized because it becomes the portal because they're like, oh, you want power? And it becomes a Faustian bar. Right, right, right. I just want to know if you agreed with that. Oh, totally, totally. Okay, so here we go. Yes. I'm just going to throw names at you and I, you take me wherever you want to go. Okay, let's start here. L. Ron Hubbard, but not L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics L. Ron Hubbard, L. Ron Hubbard as a sci-fi writer. L. Ron Hubbard as a sci-fi writer. Okay, I'll tell you an interesting story from a guy that he had a studio not far from where we're filming right here. And so L. Ron Hubbard, you know, he used to, according to my friend who died a few years ago, his name was Lucky Brown. And he was about 96. Another great name. Yeah, I know. He was one of the bad guys in the Alan Ladd movie, Shane. And he had a studio not far from where we are. And he used to know Errol Flynn and Errol Flynn's buddy, L. Ron Hubbard. Errol Flynn, the first celebrity convert to Scientology. And what he used to tell me is that... And a notorious whore. Yeah, well, it's something in common with some other people, but we won't get into that. So L. Ron Hubbard, he said, he goes, he started off as a script doctor in Hollywood. And he started working specifically with Spencer Tracy. And it was the fact that he could take Spencer Tracy's script that he wanted for himself, and he could put it in Tracy's voice. But what you'll notice really quick about Tracy is that Tracy, you know, there was that movie, the Scotty Bowers movie, Tracy was allegedly gay. It's interesting how often that comes up with a lot of Scientology adjacent talents. In other words, L. Ron Hubbard might have spotted early on that if you can help closeted gay actors and kind of provide a structure around them, there's a market for that. Well, I've heard that from people who were in the church and later left that there's a certain level of truth to that. And as a sideline, I was told I have no particular proof that I'm actually related to Spencer Tracy. Well, there you go. Look at that. So there we go. Hey. Okay. Philip K. Dick. Philip K. Dick. But, you know, there's an example, too, of a guy who in the 70s, he had like his Gnostic visions and stuff. And to going back to what we're saying about music or where guys get their ideas. Well, Dick, because I'm a huge fan, claimed that he got a download that he wasn't quite sure whether it was the CIA using some future weapon or was an off-planet intelligence. And he claimed he would get these massive downloads where they would show him colors and basically program his mind with geometric shapes. He talks about it in his, I think it's called his exegius. I can never say that word. I don't know if you've ever read that. I haven't read it, but that doesn't surprise. I mean, like, I'm familiar with that. What's been interesting, Billy, in the last few months, something I've come around on is when people would talk about simulation theory or like I had a download or whatever. However, the metaphor of the video game or the computer game for our world is actually incredibly apt in terms of if God created our world, but he's the programmer, but he allows all these things to happen. That was one of the things that went back to the Tucker interview with Nick Land. Nick Land, if he's a Satanist, what's going on there? But what he essentially believes is that if God created this simulated world, not unlike what Philip K. Dick said, why does bad stuff happen? If God's in charge, what is the economic role of evil that this is allowed to happen? And in a way, the video game metaphor or the computer metaphor that Dick's getting into, it is the most appropriate one we have. With God as the master programmer, people is essentially both NPCs where we have free will, but we kind of don't. We don't, you know, an NPC does whatever they think they're supposed to do. But also, you know, things are already kind of, it's a created world, but things exist outside us. Yeah. So when Dick getting into the computer language, I used to just poo-poo that as just like that downloads. But there is a strong metaphor, I think, that humans never had prior to computers. Another free association. I actually own two Phil K. Dick manuscripts. Well, there you go. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. Genesis P. Orridge. Oh, my goodness. Genesis P. Orridge, he's one of the through lines that I love because he'll take you from, as you know, Brian Geison. He's there in 67. And he interviewed Geison extensively. There's a book that's come out where all Genesis surviving interviews with Geison. Have you read it? I read about a third of it. I love that book. That book, it's like a secret history of the counterculture. Because Geison started as... In that book, Geison will take you from the 30s surrealists all the way to the 50s beats, the Rolling Stones. And towards the end of the book, towards the end of his life, Geison tried to create a super band, I don't know if you knew this, between Genesis P. Orridge and Ian Curtis. He was trying to... Never heard that one. Oh, it's in non-binary or just memoirs. He's like, got Geisen who's gonna... Now, I know Peter Hook from Joy Division. His son Jack plays in the Smashing Pumpkins for about nine years. So I will have to check your source on it. Oh, you could check. But really, really quick, well, Joy Division, that was actually one of the contentions for me getting into the topic of Rocking the Occult Noir. A friend of mine was like, Joy Division has no occult resonance, whatever. whatever. And I was like, I forget if it was Barney or Peter Hook, but one of them said they did, and one of them said they didn't. And I was like, Ian Curtis was friends with like Burroughs and Geisen. I didn't know that. Oh yeah. And he would do hypnotism and, you know, but that was the contention. Well, I don't know anything other than what I know, but certainly it seems obvious to me that Ian Curtis, who unfortunately hung himself when he was 24 years old on the eve of Joy Division's first American tour, there was some kind of neurodivergence or some kind of spectrum thing going on, or he was schizophrenic. There was something, there was certainly a brain issue going on. Sure. With the epilepsy and stuff like that. Yes. But I've never heard the occult connections with him. Well, really quick, before we go to the next one. Sure. With Orridge, he gets into something that has to do with today's tech, where his thing was Burroughs' idea of always using the latest tech for magical purposes. And that was, you know, that was Orge's thing with his groups and in the CCRU in the 90s. Orge is the through line between like 70s to today. Orge may go down as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century because for a person of, you wouldn't say he was highly skilled in the musical arts. He was highly skilled in the art of persuasion. And I don't even know what I would call it because, you know, he famously started doing a generic, you know, he wanted to look like the Pendrogyny Project. And full disclosure, and I talked about another interview, I knew Genesis a little bit. We used to communicate through a mutual friend. Would you, do you think, or is there information that Genesis considered himself a Satanist? I know he, I know he, he was, he was, he was interested in like, let's call it things of power, sex magic. But did he consider himself a saint? I think a lot of these guys would just describe themselves as Gnostics. Because what you get into, you get into the Gnostic reading of Genesis 3. So let me ask you this, because I call myself a Gnostic, but I got the feeling you're not a big fan of Gnostics. Tell me why. And I'll tell you why I think you might be wrong. It's just straightforward. And before I forget, if you can circle back later with Genesis, I want to tell you if you want that. No, please. Just go wherever you want to go. Oh, the connection between psychedelia and goth, which as you would know, it's a, you know, goth being a kind of dark psychedelia and psychedelia being a kind of colorful goth. The relationship. One of the funniest... Well, David Bowie, who you could argue is the most influential artist to influence what became the goth movement, was famously very invested in Geisen and Burroughs and the cut-up technique. So there is a direct connection between what you're talking about. Well, even with tech, I mean, I wrote about it a few weeks ago, the way the cut-up technique is a kind of proto-AI writing. Sure. Because you're cutting stuff up, you're randomizing it. I'm curious what you think about AI music in a second, too, but... But let's talk about Gnosticism, because I... Oh, go ahead, go ahead. Do you ever read, I believe it's Elaine Pagel's book about the Gnostics? I have it, but I haven't read it. I'd highly recommend it, but give me your dim view of Gnostics, and I'll give you why I think you might be misguided. My thing is just a pretty straightforward traditional Christian perspective on Genesis 3, where it's like, in terms of Eve in the garden, eating of the fruit, that that was all in all a bad thing. Whereas in the more Gnostic perspective, where everything kind of diverges is that that not only was God's will, but this was bringing knowledge to mankind, illumination to mankind. Everything kind of comes back to a reading of Genesis 3. Mine's just the more traditional one of like, that was bad, Satan's bad. Right. The reason I call myself a Gnostic, and this is my understanding of Gnosticism, and also has a lot to do with why the church went out of the way to murder all the Gnostics around 300 AD. I'm sure you know about that. But I've ultimately called myself a Gnostic at times because the way I see it is there's the apostolic church, which is, hey, there's this succession and here's the lineage, and that's more of what you're referring to. The Gnostics believe that Jesus laid out an interpersonal relationship with got. So even though somebody might consider this heretical, my interpretation, and again, I'm just some dude from Chicago, my interpretation. Well, no, but I'm, but I, you know, we live in a culture where you, you, you have to, you have to say, have some sort of PhD before you can say certain things. For example, when I've been attacked in public for taking certain positions about certain things involving entertainment, I'm like, but I've been in the entertainment business for over 30 years. I have a very unique perspective, like we talked about with you. if you stood behind the wizard's curtain, you see things and know things that you could only know if you stood behind the wizard's curtain. So for somebody to say, well, you didn't stand behind it long enough, or you didn't hang out with the right people, I think that's kind of a strange thing to make. So we live in a culture, the Western culture, where agency or bona fides is very important. But my take on Gnosticism is, and there is evidence, I believe, that Jesus in particular talked about the Gnostic experience about having a highly personal relationship either with Jesus Christ or with God itself or His self. And so when I see that when Jesus says, and I'm going to, I'm sure, butcher the saying, but, you know, if you want to know God, you know, you go through me kind of basically. You might know the phrase. I butcher it all the time. No one goes to the Father except through me. Right. I've played with people who are straight, hardcore. You must accept Jesus into the kingdom of heaven. If you don't accept Jesus, you won't get you. Like basically, you have to go through Jesus' door to get that. I interpret it slightly differently, which is he's saying, I figured out the way to illumination. So I'm the living embodiment, three-dimensional example, or four-dimensional, of how you get there. But you don't have to, like, it's not about me. I'm not a cult of personality. I'm the exact opposite of a cult a personality. I read it differently, so some people might consider that heretical. So I see Gnosticism as very similar to the art of being an artist, which is your own personal interpretation of the Godhead is what you're actually sharing into the world. And of course, if you're an infinite God and you're not a punitive God, well, isn't that the whole point? You're all going to find your way home eventually. So if you want to be a prostitute and live in a sewer, that's your choice. You want to be a weirdo and take a bunch of LSD. Eventually, you're going to figure out that there's really only one way to get here. And that's sort of an inner form of purity. But it's not the condemnatory version of purity. It's an awareness purity. But please. I mean, that's really interesting. I mean, from my understanding with Gnosticism... Does this make me a Satanist now? No, I mean... That was a joke. You have... In the Bible, from what I remember, what I understand, there's a couple different parts in Colossians and whatnot. It was dealing with theosophy, actually, which was a modern, kind of structured version of modern-day Gnosticism, about the Bible was strangely preemptive about a lot of Gnostic doctrines, even though they hadn't even quite come into being yet in terms of reincarnation, which, I mean, it's funny. Those ideas were around back then. One of the apostles says, when he says, who might Jesus be? They go, I think he's Elijah. So, these ideas were not totally foreign to the time. But from what I remember, the Bible goes through kind of preemptively considering Gnosticism was just not quite there yet, not quite forming in terms of like against reincarnation, against anyone but Jesus. But so my thing is much more the traditional way. I mean, you know, going back to the computer analogy, which a few weeks ago, Billy, I would never have used, but it's like, you know, what makes the Christian story amazing using video game terms is that it's like, you know, they have the term the avatar from Eastern religion, but also now people know from video games, is the idea of God putting himself in the game. Is that God will become flesh, that the creator, the programmer of the game is going to enter the game at some point and do it right. Sounds about right to me, but what do I... But what's funny is that people didn't have these analogies. Now we can just be like, oh, life's a video game, life's a simulation. People are like, oh, sure. They have a frame of reference. Well, in a way, the idea, and it's an emerging idea, certainly over the last seven to 10 years that we're all living in a simulation. And I'm sure there's historical antecedents, but I begun as a way of understanding my jagged trek through you know global culture and fame which is its own head I refer to myself and I not a person who talks about himself in the third person like many of my brethren and sistren do but my point is I started within the last seven to 10 years referring to myself as an avatar, that there is a Billy Corgan avatar, because it was the only way I could associate navigating digital media. Because up till digital When digital media showed up, my interactions with the mainframe of fame and the entertainment business was organic. Right. You know, you talk to a reporter, they put in a newspaper. Right. Now people are picking me on timelines. They're using memes. Right. I'm just using myself as an example. You can have a friend post as you. I'm sure you could find memes of your grandfather who we talked to. You know, the point is you become something that you are, but other than you are. Well, totally, totally. I mean, I was talking to a friend of mine who's an actor, Jim Cody Williams, and he was saying, he goes, fame on some levels he thinks almost modifies people genetically, just because he's been around so many famous, and he's just like... Someday when I'm on your podcast, we can talk about this, but I will raise my hand and I will say that I absolutely believe that the act of being in the public eye and receiving all that energy, both direct, like, say, from a concert or even indirect. Somewhere in the world, somewhere somebody's talking about famous people and maybe I'm in that mix at the moment. That does something to your DNA helix. I'm a firm believer in that. That may sound insane, but I'm telling you, it does something to you. No, I want to stay on this really quick. I mean, Robert Fripp has talked about that, about rock concerts. He's like... Robert's a lot smarter than I am, so I would follow his lead. No, no, he's smarter than all of us. But he would say he's just like, at a concert, he goes, the energy in the crowd. He goes, you could almost get the world to start turning a different way. If we understand, and of course it's in the Bible, the laying of hands has the effect of doing something to the physical system of a human being. Now stand in front of a crowd of 10,000 people. I mean, I have looked out, and I'm just saying this in a sharing thing. I've looked out in a concert, 10,000 people, and I'll play a parlor game, and I will try to find one set of eyes that is not on me, and I can't find one. Oh, totally. So even if, let's say, 80% of 10,000 people are looking at you, that's 8,000 sets of eyeballs that are directing whatever ray beam they have your direction. It does something to your physical being. Oh, totally. It turns you into a megalomaniac who talks over people. No, no, no. Well, that's just to your point. when you have that, when you have that many people thinking about you, I mean, it's not being a rock star, but when I, when the Tucker video was released and it was, it was a very big viral hit in terms of, for his show, like, like they were, they were texting me, like we're doing huge numbers on this, but it was also very divisive. We're getting a ton of good feedback. I'm sure you got a ton of negative feedback. Oh yes. Yeah. People, I had, I had had people. Could you, okay, here, could you feel that energy? Yes. Because what it is, I said it was almost like a Borgesian labyrinth where having done standup, there are some rooms where you were crushing or people are like, yes, I love this guy. This is interesting. And they're thinking about you and they find you fascinating or whatever. They dig it. And then there's some rooms that it's not happening where you are, but you're a bombing essentially, or they're, or they're just like, they're like, who is it? How did he get on the show? But how do you quantify when, when tens of, in your case, you know, I think at the time of this taping, over 2 million people have watched the Tucker Carlson interview. Can you quantify, just for the sake of our parlor game here, can you quantify what that feels like? Because you probably had not experienced that before. I realized at the end of the weekend what it was, Billy. I said it was, in stand-up terms, it was bombing and crushing at the same time. Can you see why we're all crazy? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Trust me. Yeah. No. And it was, to the point of the digital avatar, they're hating a version of you. I have friends of mine, and they were concerned. A close friend of mine, she didn't watch the episode. She was just reading the comments. She should never do. And she was like, are you crazy? She goes, people are saying you're crazy. And she goes, I know you. And I've known you for a long time. But I'm like, are you crazy? Like, in other words, they're getting ideas. It becomes a loop of secondhand reaction. Do you understand why I pointed out the avatar? Yeah. So now there's a Conrad avatar. Right. Which may or may not resemble the real Conrad sitting in front of me. Right. Right. It's just the guy. Well, that was the thing Harry Smith said as an occultist. He was like, and Kenneth Anger would say, to go back to Hollywood really quick, Kenneth Anger would say, he goes, the day the movies were made was an evil day. And Harry Smith said, he goes, filmmaking, he said, is graven images. And I had a friend of mine, a screenwriter. Don't lose your thought, but it's powerful magic. It is. It is. I mean, as my friend Rick Spence said, he goes, when you read something, you're conjuring it up in your mind. But with film, you're bringing something to light with light, as Stan Brakhage said. He goes, you were using light to bring something to light. Right through the eyes. Yeah. Into here. A friend of mine who's a popular screenwriter, and he was saying, he goes, what is a Christian movie? Like, can you do Christian movies? And I made a point that I made Tim Billy that I've made about Christian rock before. Yeah. Where, first of all, the idea of what is Christian rock, or what is even rock, is a very... Oh, don't even get me started on Christian rock. Right. No, don't get me started. Last time I talked about it, I got a bunch of hate. No, no. So, but I said to him, I said, the Bible is, Jesus is called the word. It is written. And as a Bible teacher, A.W. Pink said, he goes, if God wanted theater or visuals and not, you know, banned them, good. Well, overall, the satanically influenced rock bands have made a lot better music than the Jesus. Well, no, that was my point. I was saying to him, if the spirit of Dionysian excess was supposed to be done by Christians on a basic spiritual level, this would work. And the same thing to a certain extent with film, where if we were supposed to, not that there can't be films, I mean, like the Charlie Brown Christmas special is probably the best Christian film ever made, because it's so light and it's so atmospheric. but in terms of didactic Christian films or didactic Christian rock, if this was supposed to work, this would be easier. But on some fundamental level... Ah, interesting. If on some fundamental level, this can't work because... So it's not our fault we have limited choices. They're limited. That's being nice. No, now I'm being mean. But if Christians were supposed to make music that simultaneously was worship but also had a Dionysian aspect, it wouldn't be this dang hard. Same thing with filmmaking. If you were supposed to make Christian films that were this didactic, that had Christian lessons, the Bible would maybe be visual and image-orientated as opposed to the Word. So my thing is that I don't think it's possible. That's a hard take, Billy. That's a hot take. But I'm also like, this would be easy. I think you're running into a brick wall with a lot of this stuff. One thing to loop back on, I remember talking to Courtney Love once where she had befriended or was around Faye Dunaway, who was a huge star in the 70s and one of the most beautiful women in the world. And Courtney ended up talking to her about her experience in making Bonnie and Clyde. And the thing that I remember from the conversation that she related was, Faye Dunaway said, I would lay, I'm obviously paraphrasing, I hope it doesn't bother anyone, but I would lay in bed at night and I could feel them all thinking about me. Interesting. Oh, yeah. Are you aware of the films of Andrei Tarkovsky? Yeah. solaris and uh any thoughts on tarkovsky i mean the only one i have that's interesting and i mentioned this on the carlson podcast is the tower of babel speaking of um you know where's the modern tower of babel what's his name from um killing joke uh jazz called jazz coleman he has a thing recently about using the techno uh the singularity being a kind of modern tower of babel and people were sending me on that that's my feed he's like oh this is your tucker point But it's Jazz Coleman, who we were going to interview for Rock in the Occult. We talked to his manager. You know, cool guys. It's him bringing it up in a positive sense, that the internet is a kind of modern tree of life that is bringing all people together. It is undoing the Tower of Babel. I was going to say the Tower of Babel is in, briefly, it's in Solaris as a kind of point about... Well, I think I would point to the fact that with all systems of power, there's the power to corrupt and there's the power to illuminate. And the jury's still out on whether our singularity here vis-a-vis the Internet is going to work out. So far, the empirical data seems to be in the negative. And I think that's because of the corruptive power of those in charge. But that's another podcast for another day. But please, I don't want to add anything to that. No, no, no. Just as you remember, Billy, when the internet came out, it was supposed to be, well, two things about the 90s. When the internet came out, there was an era of optimism in the 90s. It was brief. Once people, if everyone could just communicate with each other, man, the differences. I bought hard on it. I was all in. I thought it was, this is the greatest thing. Peer-to-peer communication with the people who are listening to my music. What an incredible opportunity until they all started hating on me because I was too human. Right. Well, that's just it. The idea that if people could only communicate, there wouldn't be intolerance. If people could just know. The other thing, Billy, that people don't know about the 90s, because I was a little boy in the 90s, is that aesthetically how unlike the 80s were, how deeply uncool the 80s generally were in the 90s. In terms of the music, synth dance. But you have a deeper point there other than just... I do love me some 80s hair metal. Stanley Kubrick. Oh, my goodness. Okay, so Stanley Kubrick. I mean, interesting guy. I think I wrote about him a few weeks ago. I mean, yeah, two of his movies deal with AI, or one and a half, because remember, he was supposed to do artificial intelligence, and then Spielberg took it over. And then he did 2001 A Space Odyssey. Now, 2001, there's an occult influence there with Brian Gyson, because Gyson's dream machine is where the Stargate sequence comes from, where his eyes are closed. And that comes from Brian Gyson. And that's because Arthur C. Clarke was staying at the Chelsea Hotel with Gyson and Burroughs and everybody, Leonard Cohen. Isn't there some evidence to suggest that Arthur C. Clarke had some other kind of occultic thing himself? Am I wrong about that? He had a pedophile charge in the late 90s that the Daily Mirror leveled against him that was kind of covered up. That was, yeah. Well, there definitely seems, setting aside Mr. Clark, because I don't know anything about it, but there certainly seems to be some longstanding accusation that English power, which, you know, obviously is historically vast and deep and going back far. There seems to be some connection between secret societies, pedophilia behavior, Satanism, etc., etc. So it tends to raise a wry eye. because that you know even the people have talked about how orwell's book you know obviously animal farm but more so 1984 presages a coming society and orwell is usually posited as a visionary but other people say orwell's family was connected to secret services in in the uk and orwell basically had been given the heads up by somebody from the inside right where this was all going to go because up to then he was just kind of an interesting writer right well orwell eric blair you know he he goes to school you know orwell famously you know he loved his prole affectations but he came from a very nice background yes and with him to tying it in with kubrick um uh when kubrick was making we're talking about secret societies and pedophilia um with with tom erloin on on the substack we're doing a post soon on our first one on rock and the occult which is going to be about the rolling stones okay and it's going to go through sympathy for the devil. We're going to go through their whole background. Well, by the time this comes out, that may have been out. Oh, yeah. It will be. Great. So people want to check that out. But we go through their whole thing. And with the stones really quick, Mick Jagger was... And this will tie into some of the Parley Game questions. Mick Jagger, in 1967, Allen Ginsberg, remember LSD, Gregor Bateson. Allen Ginsberg... This is some gnarly, sordid stuff. These are all famous allegations. Famously was a member of NABLA. had allegations of being a pedophile. The feminist Andrea Dworkin was like, I thought he was doing it from like a libertarian perspective. She goes, no, he was a pedophile. So he introduces Mick Jagger to the member of parliament in labor, Tom Dryberg. Okay. He's one of the spies. And Dryberg is trying to recruit Mick Jagger into joining politics in 1967. He's like, come join the Labor Party. He's being introduced by Alan Ginsberg. Dryberg also had pedophile charges later. Okay. And Drybird was also Alistair Crowley's anointed successor at Oxford. He knew Evo and Roi, he knew George Orwell. So what's the subtextual? The subtextual thing is to your point about England. And, you know, you don't want to be careful with the accusations. It can be, you don't always know where causation goes. Sometimes it's, again, the dialectic. Why are these people all involved in this stuff? But back to the Rolling Stones, there was this weird thing between, you know, the counterculture, some of these people, and, you know, some pretty sordid stuff. that you know maybe well i've been at different times i've been approached by elements of the u.s government to be involved in things that were just way above my pay grade i've never talked about them in any depth publicly but i've had experiences where i would find myself in a room with people and think why are they talking to me it was something out of like eyes wide shut really oh yeah and what do they say like like i'm not going to tell you okay okay no because i haven't talked about it i can certainly talk about it in sort of like uh in a sort of a kind of a i was there kind of way. But it's similar to when I talked about experiencing a shapeshifter on Howard Stern. It became this thing where I was hunted in airports. Please tell me the shapeshifter story. All I can say is I've experienced supernatural things and I've experienced things where I've had elements of the U.S. government reach out to me because they somehow want to hook my influence, which is not that great, into whatever they're after. So having had personal experience of this, and of course there's lots of other insinuations, and I certainly would say sitting here a quite openly, it seems very, very obvious to me that there are elements in popular music where people have been compromised knowingly because they were offered kind of a Faustian bargain. Pick door number one and we're going to push you to the moon. Because in music, and this is certainly my area of expertise, there are people who are protected and they get every benefit of that protection. And I know it because I know the game, because I've lived it. And there are other people where they just, they decide to press a button and throw them off the ship. Now it might be because they're engaging in bad behavior. And we talked a little bit about that. But in other cases, I think just because they won't do the bidding that people want them to do. Well, totally. There's a couple of things there, Billy. First of all, as my friend Rick Spence would say, he goes, a good spy is someone that people would just offhand say, there's no way that guy would be doing it. So you would be a perfect guy because it'd be like, Billy Corgan, the rock star, that we're going to have him do stuff. But that, first of all, that makes you a great choice. The CIA did do this in the 50s. There was a big music critic named Henry Pleasance in the 50s. And the CIA hired famously, or not famously, because no one knows the story. They had Henry Pleasance work as undercover agent because being a traveling musician, he always had a good excuse. Billy's in China, Billy's in Germany, you know? And so that's one of the reasons they would pick you. The other thing with the shape-shifting thing, there's a history of that in pop music. In one of Barney Hoskins' books, great music writer, he talks about a boyfriend of the folky Judy Sill. and she's reading some like Rosicrucian manuscript and she becomes like this snake-like figure. And then I have a friend of mine who I think has worked with Current 93. He's open for Nick Cave. And I don't know if he wants me to reveal his name in relation to the story. We were talking about this kind of stuff. And you know the artist, of course, Diamanda Galas is it? Of course, yeah. Yeah. So he's like, oh, I've seen her shapeshift on stage or I've seen her disappear on stage. And I said, what do you mean by that? and he goes, she just became like pixelated. Like she was doing her like speaking in tongues, flipping out and he goes like, she just faded, like in front of my eyes, faded. And then Burroughs and Geisen too, people would say, yeah, those guys, like people would see them. So regardless of one thinks about it, as they, you're not alone, Billy. People have also, regardless of what they say, they've said they've seen this. Yeah, well, I've been told for over 30 years in public life that there's something wrong with me or I'm crazy and I feel like I'm the guy in the movie who's actually quite sane. Right. Kind of like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Right, right. And I think there are forces in the world that go out of the way to marginalize their other particular voices, in this case, the artist class, because they refuse to accept sort of the given narrative. And if you look at the history of popular rock music, say, over the last 10 years, you'll notice that there's not a lot of edginess actually going on anymore. There's a tremendous amount of edginess going on in the rap music community and other communities. But rock has been, rock is probably the greatest social change force. And of course I'm including, you know, folk and Bob Dylan and rock in general terms because it influenced the birds and the Beatles and all sorts like that. Rock was the greatest single social changing force of the 20th century. I would dare anybody to argue that. Maybe even more so than film. Totally, yeah. Right? Because we've talked a lot about film. And here we are 25 years into the 21st century and rock couldn't be less of an influence on the social political order. Does anybody think that that's kind of strange? Right. That somebody decided to push a button somewhere and make sure that people like myself don't say certain things anymore. Right. Well, to your point, Billy, and people always need to keep this in mind whenever you or myself, but especially someone such as yourself, says like, you know, the things you've seen, regardless of whatever you talk about in an interview or what I've talked about in an interview, there's always stories and there's always stuff we've known or seen. We are like, whether it portrays a confidence or it's just too spicy. So people need to always give us a little bit more wiggle room in terms of like, you've probably seen some stuff. I know you have, but you're like, yeah, I can't talk about that. but if you've seen it or if you've, you know, you'd be into this too. I know you've seen stuff like that. I interviewed yesterday because, you know, these interviews come out in different orders, but I interviewed a gentleman yesterday who just put out a film, Age of Disclosure, about the recent revelations from the U.S. government and official channels. Senator Rubio's in his film, James Clapper, former, you know, head of intelligence and all this stuff, talking about, yeah, there's UFOs and now it's a national security issue. It's all kind of like it went from 75 years of, no, no, no, no, there's no such thing. you're crazy to, oh yeah, now we got to deal with this, a national security issue. So I asked him, I said, I don't want you to betray confidence because I'm sure in doing your documentary that people told you things that are not in the documentary. And he said, yes. And I said, okay, without telling me what they told you, is what they told you, was it frightening too? And he said, yes. So that's all I need to know. So for people who can't give you wiggle room or can't give me wiggle room personally, because I've been in public life so long, I don't give a shit what people think. And I don't mean that in a, I actually don't mean it in a negative way. Right. Because, uh, if you run around and try to prove something that you intuitively know or have seen with your own eyes, you're invariably going to cross, come across somebody and say, oh, that's not real. And I just don't have time for that. Right. Um, so I'm, I'm in the camp of like, you can believe me or you can't, but I can say sitting here that, that I've been in the room with some of the most famous people in the world. I've been, you know, invited to the white house two times to have meetings that were, you know, essentially off the record meetings. Why? So if you want to call me crazy or wacky or talk about my- Can you say which presidency this was? It was during the Bush administration. Oh, wow. And I'm not a Republican. So that was even more shocking to me. I grew up in a blue state. Okay, let's wrap it up here. because you did briefly touch on AI. So I think AI is now the satellite hovering over everything you and I just discussed. No matter what we believe in, old Hollywood, new Hollywood, systems of power, secret societies, personality cults, whatever, AI is going to become, in my estimation, and you tell me what you think, is going to become the new everything all in one go. Sure. you're going to get fake music, fake gods, fake a lot of stuff. And there's a great percentage of the U.S. population, maybe not a majority in any near future, that will really want to lean in and enjoy the digital version of it all. Of course. So you agree with that? Yeah, yeah. I think, unfortunately, I mean, this ties into the spiritual aspect too, Billy, is that companies will come along, they probably know they already exist, that'll take the knowledge aspect of AI and just put a little bit of a new age spin of divination on it in terms of, well, give me your birthday. I want to know some astrological stuff. And not only, Billy, can I tell you something, if it's empirically true, I'll be a magic eight ball for you. I'll tell you if you should do it or not. And whatever the algorithm is, just put a little magic into it and people will make decisions. They already do increasingly based off of what this app that says, you know now it's time for a change you should break up with your girlfriend they'll do it based off of the algorithm which is just a set of instructions there are people in my life that are currently using ai to help them navigate their personal life well i mean this isn't this isn't new i mean this is divination one of the things well it's the uh have you ever been to the where the oracle of delphi was no but i knew of it yeah so it would be you know they chose they chose somebody to be the oracle and of course they later found out that they were sitting over a gas vent that cause psychedelic experiences. Do you know about that? I didn't know that part. Yeah. Yeah. I think the source of the whatever was the gas that was coming up that was causing psychedelic experiences, and it was ultimately toxic. And that's why a lot of them, as portrayed in one of the Fellini movies, they were kind of like anemic and all weirded out because they were getting poisoned while they were doing the divination work. Right. But they literally, the church of the Oracle Delphi's church was built over like a crack in the earth where these gases came up naturally. Right. Well, you get into the thing we were talking about earlier in terms of psychedelics, in terms of like, well, that just means there was a chemical response. Yes. Or the chemical response is opening themselves up, plus mixed with whatever talent there was to maybe give you some sort of edge. Okay. So last question for you. Do you believe that on the other side of that portal, there are good forces, bad forces, or a mixture of both? In psychedelics? or okay uh somebody right here could be the oracle delphi could be johnny from the new hipster band from new york when they open that gateway i think largely negative i mean can you can you illuminate why you believe why the bible is an oracle the bible is the word of god it's it's it's a way of getting to know god's will in terms of what you in terms of the way of going about your life. It is called the living oracle. It is an oracle. In the Old Testament, in the days of the ancient Israelites, they had systems of divination. I forget how you would pronounce it, but they cast lots. Sure. It goes way back. Yeah, it goes way back. This is nothing new under the sun or under the record. But to play with divination, to play with what they call the outside, the outside forces, is now largely frowned upon as something that you're largely inviting stuff that, And then Jacques Vallée talks about it in terms of his belief in the other world. It's like, these things largely don't mean people well. Whether they're aliens, demon spirits, they largely don't mean us well. So my attitude towards it is, you know, oracles and stuff, they are real. It doesn't mean every magic eight ball is something's going on, but you can tap into stuff. Even if it's 80% bunk, the 20% can be real. And a lot of it can be demonic. Well, Nietzsche did say, be careful if you peer into the abyss, because the abyss might peer back into you. Of course. Thank you, Conor. Great talking to you. Thank you, Billy. Thank you. Thank you, Billy.