 all nonsense. I'm not wearing a mask and I don't care. It's the flu. All right. To we're live guys, we're just streaming. Okay, just just I don't want to. So so I run the gamut of knowing people who say it's all nonsense. It's just the flu and they're in total denial and won't wear a mask all the way to people who have had the shots or with people with shots of knowing are outside and won't take the mask off. Because they don't believe it's safe to take the mask off. So it runs the gamut. And I don't fault anybody for that. You know, what I say is read as much as possible, come to your own decision. I can't make your mind up for you, nor should I. You need to be comfortable in what you decide to do. So that you don't turn around and go, it's his fault that I'm feeling this way because I followed him. I mean, you got to come to the your own conclusions with this stuff. But I don't fault anybody for this. It's a very it's a tough decision to make and even tougher. When you have kids. Yeah. And you wonder what you're putting in their bodies. You know, it's one thing to put it in your own body. And it's another thing. In the case of my daughter who has immune disease and takes a lot of drugs, I'm responsible for the decisions that she makes to take these drugs. And every drug has some sort of side effects. You know, so those those concerns are warranted. So you're totally justified in your concerns. I just hope it comes out to the McDonald's Burger King. We put all this pollutants in our body every day as an example. Yet we're scared of a vaccine which you know, could possibly do something better than eating all this junk food. I also think I also think that I'm probably never going to take a subway in New York City and not wear a mask. Probably for the rest of my life. I seriously I'm not going to. However, what does this say about how great our immune systems are in general? I take the subway every day in New York done it all my life, probably subject myself to trillions of germs every single day in the subway and not got sick from it, not gotten sick from it. So our bodies have an amazing ability to fight off most things. This particular disease. No. Also, I go to music conventions like the NAMM show. I don't know. Do you guys know what the NAMM show is? You're there every year. Right. So you see, you know what the NAMM show is. So what happens when you go to a NAMM show? There's 165,000 people stuck in a large building, right? That's what we call NAMM Thrax. Yes, NAMM Thrax, NAMM Flu, whatever it is, but you get NAMM Thrax. Probably at least 50% of the time that I come home, I get a cold or some sort of health issue because I've shake, I've been shaking hands with millions of strangers and I'm up close and I'm taking photos. Those days are gone. I will always wear a mask at a future NAMM show. I probably will not shake hands. I'll probably wear gloves. Just because from a purely transmission standpoint, I don't want to just get a cold and you always get a cold because you're confronted with millions of people from around the world. But what was interesting for me is the last NAMM show I was at, which was in 2019, which was, I'm sorry, 2020, which was a month before COVID hit. It was a month before. So COVID hit around March. So this was January 2020. Were you guys at that NAMM show? Yeah. Okay. So always at a NAMM show, you notice when you go downstairs to the lower level, it's usually Asian companies, guitar companies, amplifier companies of products that most people never, ever hear of. And they're, they wear masks always. I mean, they've been wearing masks for years. And I always kind of thought, well, why would they do that? Like, why are they wearing a mask? And now I understand they're more, they're more prepared to understand that the transmission of these diseases can occur in closed spaces. And so I'm never going to look at them again with that same feeling of why are you guys wearing a mask? Yeah, it's the same. And I've been to Japan. I used to go to Japan before this whole COVID thing. I was there three times a year on business, one tour or another. And, you know, they're always wearing masks. And I was always going, why did he do that? You know, it was always kind of like curious on if the plane was full of them, you know, people wearing masks. And I get it now. No, it's also bowing instead of shaking hands. Yeah, I think, yeah, they very clean and conscious and hygienic people, they probably get less need to learn from that. They probably get less flu. I mean, they already established the fact that flu was down like 95% this year, because people aren't touching, hugging kissing. I mean, those days are probably gone. And probably for the better. I think so too, as well. So you know, it's a tough learning curve, for sure. Yeah, I was in Japan in March when it all kicked off. And so I was, maybe everyone's world was freaking out, understandably so. And they had hand sanitizer, they were the first countries that I saw hand sanitizer every doorway of it didn't matter if it was like a kiosk or a restaurant or a hotel, it didn't matter what it was. There was a big bucket of it like that. And the thing you're working here, they were, you know, they will, they will live up about it big time. You know, it's funny. H1N1, H1N1 when that came around, there was, it wasn't as crazy. I got my vaccine right away. And that was actually they turned out vaccine around pretty quickly, too. So let's talk about that book. Yeah, what are we talking about here today? Let's go. All right. Our guest. Yes, Twisted Sisters JJ French, his new book coming up. It's Twisted Business. Lessons from my life in rock and roll that will be coming out September 21. And correct me if I'm wrong, JJ, on Rosa Rosetta books. Yes. Right. Yes. And the CEO of the Extreme Leadership Institute, as well as Steve Farber, is he writing it for you? Farber is the CEO of Extreme. Oh, sorry, he's my co-author. Yes. I'm sorry. Okay, please, please talk about that. Well, um, well, yeah, the book will be out September. So I guess we'll have this, we'll do this again when the book comes out. But I do keynote speeches and motivational speaking. And I got into that world through this gentleman named Steve Farber, who is a leading advocate or leading, he's a leader in this world of public speaking, keynote speeches, motivational speaking, he's had a couple of best sellers. And he was a speaker at an event that my wife was a panelist on in Chicago almost 10 years ago. And I was very impressed by his delivery. I was at that conference to support my then girlfriend, now my wife, because she's always at my show. So I wanted to, you know, see her do this panel. And they had a lot of great speakers that weekend. And I had never really been exposed to the speaking world, you know, to the motivational speaking world. And in a loose way, since everyone knows who Tony Robbins is, and probably people have seen his infomercials, it's that kind of a world, you know, and you, you know, you write books and you suppose and you come up with theories on how to succeed in life and in business. And you turn that into a product, basically is what you do, you turn into a product and you sell that product. I don't mean to be crass about it. But the fact is, is that it is a commercial world of motivational speaking. And I was, and I saw this guy, he was amazing. And I asked him a question and he asked me why I asked that kind of a question and it had to do about dysfunction in the workplace. And so we went out to lunch. And then I told him the whole story of Twisted Sister and he was like, Oh, my God, you're such a great storyteller. And this is incredible. You should start public speaking. So he got me into the world of speaking. He invited me to do a keynote speech, speaking engagement at an extreme leadership conference. Six months later, which I did. And I got bitten by the bug and I started getting hired to do speeches. And what the speeches were about was essentially the my life history and the history of the band. And as you guys know, the band has been around a long, long, long, long time. Band started 49 years ago by me. And I've worn many hats. And I'm semi articulate. And I'm a good storyteller. And I've woven the stories into a presentation. And then Steve suggested I do a book. So we spoke to several publishers and came up with a concept for the book. And in the book, I basically start off the book by saying that, look, Twisted Sister was turned down more times in a bedsheet in a whorehouse and I've come back more times and Freddie Krueger and Michael Myers and Jason Bordes. And so in telling the story of the band's constant regeneration, rejection, coming back, I developed a business concept. And all of a sudden, I started doing speaking engagements, not for musicians, which I thought was going to be the primary focus or music conventions. I was getting hired by business groups, all sorts of business groups, like travel agencies, and banking organizations. And I realized accounting firms, insurance companies. So what are they all hiring? A heavy metal guy who used to be a drug dealer, drug addict, you know, and a transvestite, giving advice to college graduates when I'm a high school dropout. Well, the fact is, nothing beats success more than success. And especially if you learn it on the street. And I turned practical observations into learning tools. And that's what the book is about. So it's the twisted method of reinvention is really what I talk about in the book. And I make it easy to digest because I take the letters T W I S T E D for twisted. And I turn them into the rules of the road, which is tenacity, wisdom, inspiration, stability, trust, excellence and discipline. Why does that matter? Because most people who think that you succeeded in my business is a product of making a deal with the devil. It's sex, drugs, rock and roll and fairy dust, having to do with some sort of a compact that you make with some devil worshiping cult that allows you to succeed when everybody else fails. You know, that's the and we do a good job of selling that bullshit, by the way, because that's what we do. Hey, man, let's fuck a party, man. I'm playing and, you know, like I just happened to write a couple of hit songs and have a hit. And we all know it's bullshit. I mean, it is. And I can't speak, by the way, for any other band. I can't speak for scorpions, kids, white snake. I mean, everyone has a different pathway. And I understand that, you know, success is like snowflakes. Everyone's story is different. But I believe that what made us successful were the rules that I laid out in the book. So that's really the whole genesis of the whole thing. Right. Wow. Well, you've covered that perfectly. I mean, the thing I'm really taken away from this is you are the exception in a lot of ways because a lot of musicians, a lot of people in this business just don't know they're asked from a hole in the ground when it comes to the business side of things and continually make the same mistakes over and over again, right? And right until their later years, you seem like this is something that you jumped on relatively early, and you've been very savvy and very intelligent. I made I made my share of mistakes. I try not to make the same ones twice. But I learn new ones every freaking day. You know, but yeah, look, I've always been more of a businessman than a guitar player. Actually, I've always been both. And I started out, you know, as a drug dealer, when I was a teenager, I write about this in the book, I explain it, you know, and it's interesting, because I just interviewed Shep Gordon, Alice Cooper's manager, and he's on my podcast this week. And you know what, we should plug that to their JJ. Yeah. So I have a podcast called the JJ French Connection Beyond the Music, and it's it covers the gamut with with musicians and managers and actors and authors, people I find fascinating. Um, and this week and next week, I have managers, I have Doc, I have Shep Gordon this week, who is a super famous entertainment manager, Alice Cooper, among many, many, many, many others is a movie out produced by and directed by his one of his artists, Michael Myers, the actor who's Canadian, as a matter of fact, if I'm not mistaken. And it's called Supermensch. That's a story of Shep Gordon. It's a phenomenal movie. Obscene insight. And then I have Doc McGee next week. Doc McGee is a legend from Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, KISS. Both of them started out as drug dealers, which is interesting. All right, because I wanted to know what is it about drug dealing that leads you to management? Management? It's a business. It's a business in a way, right? Yeah, well, it is a business. Clients. It's a satisfaction. It's cutting edge. It's dangerous. I mean, look, I was dealing weed 50 years ago. I was ahead of my time. You know, I was legal in Canada. Look at what you did. I said 50 years ago, it's going to be legal someday. Oh, yeah. I only paid attention to me. So I started dealing when I was 15 years old. And I get into it in the book because, you know, I made me a very popular guy. And and also I could buy gear, which is really the whole point of it, which was I wanted to become a rock star. And I my parents had no money. So I started dealing weed and it became very successful very quickly. And when I was, you know, I was 15 in 1967 to put this in perspective for you all. That's the year that Sergeant Pepper came out. So I grew up in a very exciting time. And I was able to go to the film or East in New York and see all the acts you could ever want to see every weekend for three dollars, whether it was Jimi Hendrix or Janice Joplin or the Grateful Dead or the Jefferson Airplane, you know, or Led Zeppelin or Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck. I mean, it was just every single weekend you could go to see these great artists for three dollars. Crazy, isn't it? And if you couldn't afford the three bucks, they all played the Schaefer Festival in Central Park during the week for a dollar. Crazy. So for a buck, you saw Jimi Hendrix or Led Zeppelin or the Faces, Rod Stewart, Janice Joplin, the band, the Beach Boys for a buck. And if you couldn't afford the dollar, all you had to do was sit on the lawn outside because it was so loud, you know, the very low fence. So this was a great time to be a teenager. And it was a great time to be a hippie. And so I got all wrapped up into that. Plus I got involved in politics, left wing. It doesn't matter the point anti-war politics, all kind of kind of just wrapped itself all up in a time and a place. So if you talk about Canada, I'm sure Montreal, Toronto had its own hippie enclaves back in the 60s. And I bet every one of these acts I'm talking about, it came through there too. Oh, absolutely. Right. So it's not like Montreal was a huge, like right next to New York, man. Exactly. We got everything. Everybody that played Detroit played Montreal. So if Zeppelin was playing in, you know, in Detroit, they came over and they played Montreal. So we of a certain age, if you were to ask the guys in triumph and Frank Marino and Mahogany, Mahogany Rush and all the Canadian bands that are all of the same age that we're talking about Bachmacher and Rover Drive, you know. And guess who? These guys are all my age. We all live through the same thing. We all had unbelievable amounts of inspiration from all the artists that we could see because it cost nothing to see them. I mean, not to say three dollars wasn't worth more than three dollars back then, but three dollars is maybe worth thirty dollars today. You know, today you want to see an actor spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars. When you're spending a dollar or two dollars or three dollars and the act sucks, you're not that pissed off because like it's a dollar. So if you see a band, it's not great. Hey, man, he sucked last night. Well, no one's saying he sucked and boy, did it cost me a fortune. That's true. These days, if you go see a band, you spend four hundred bucks for tickets and they suck, that sucks. That sucks. Absolutely. If you had five three bucks or five bucks and the band sucked, you still might have had a great night out. Yeah, for sure. For sure, you were wasted with your friends. And actually, the albums cost more than the tickets back a hundred percent. The albums were three nine four nine five nine and nine six nine. You're right. So for a dollar or for three. I mean, I remember this, guys. The film worries raised their prices by 50 cents from three four and five to three fifty four fifty and five fifty. And there were riots on Second Avenue. It's almost beyond belief. Wow. Considering that the the the economics of today is touring bands, you know. So when you go see a band and you spend in three, four, five hundred bucks, I mean, they better not suck, you know, they just better not. And and I think the bigger bands understand it, which is why their production values are so high because they're trying to make sure that you feel that you've spent your money. Yeah, that's why they want you back again next summer. And I mean, except for the Rolling Stones and Bob Dillon, I mean, because Dillon's indecipherable. I went to see Dillon a couple of years ago with one of his producers, by the way, because I heard that he was so horrible live, you couldn't understand what he was singing. And I wanted to be able to understand what he was singing because I'm a huge Dylan fan, but never saw Dillon and he was playing down the street from my house. And I actually bought a ticket to that show with my wife and was sitting with one of his producers. And he was singing. He never turned around to the audience. He played with his back to the audience, never talked to the audience and was indecipherable in his songs, almost comical, almost like he was saying, fuck you, you idiots, you're just paying to see a guide and I don't care. And I have the audience bought into it because he's Bob Dillon. Hey, man, that's an artistic statement. He doesn't turn around, he doesn't talk to you and you can't understand what he's singing. That's great. After people went, are you fucking kidding me? I can't understand what he's singing and he sucks, you know. So but Dillon doesn't care because he's 83 years old and and millions of people want to see him. But frankly, I sat there and I know the Dillon songbook and he was halfway through one song and I'm going, what the fuck? And I hear, I hear, how is this? I went, oh, that's how he's 61. Oh, so OK. Or he sang another song and I heard like, Tangled Up and Bleed. Oh, it's Tangled Up and Bleed. But that was about it. It wasn't until the last song. Dillon songs are the ones that are being covered by other people. I find. Listen, I mean, Dillon didn't always do this, although there are people who say he's been terrible life for years. He didn't always suck live and watched The Last Waltz, which is one of my favorite movies. You guys, I'm sure, have seen that. I've seen one of the greatest concert movies ever made. And everybody was just at the top of their game. And Dillon was phenomenal so he can be great. So your decision that you make not to be great is the decision that you make, you know. So does. Does he think, well, I'm charging $200 a ticket. I should somehow give people what they want. Some people think yes. Some people think no. Listen, I saw Van Morrison once open for Fleetwood Mac 1971 tickets with 350, 450, whatever. So Van Morrison comes out. Never seen Van Morrison, big fan of Van Morrison, big, big fan on his albums. Loved him. He comes out, he's drunk with copies of Rolling Stone magazine and spends the entire set reading reviews of his albums. And I don't think he sang a song. He was like, oh, yeah, is this my album, Moon Dance. Let's see what they say about Moon Dance. Oh, they gave it five stars. Fuck them. Like and I'm thinking, OK, it's three dollars and this is funny shit. And maybe this is what Van Morrison does. He just reads reviews of his records. I had no idea. It was pretty bad. Pretty funny. Then I saw him a couple of years later at Carnegie Hall, I think, and he was phenomenally great as an artist. Why he decided to get drunk that night and read reviews of his albums and think that was a cool thing to do. I don't know. Twisted Sister has never had that. Mindset. Our mindset is you're the paying customer and you deserve the best show we can put on that night. And that's absolutely true, because I've seen you guys about five or six times. I've seen you guys Sweden Rock. I think I saw you. Yeah, so you're Sweden Rock with Portnoy. Many festivals over the years, you know, Spain and in Germany, you know, Bang Your Head Festival. I was right there. That's absolutely true. You don't. I actually told someone I said, this isn't a constant. This is a street fight. Look out. You know, this is not everything else looks pathetic, you know, compared to Twisted Sister. And I'm not saying that. That's absolutely the truth. Well, our reputation is based on that. And we have a very predatory view of it, which is we're out to kick your ass and we're out to kick every band's ass on the bill. And we're out to destroy every band. And and and we're not saying this because I want to do that, because my attitude is if you're better than us, then bring it, kick our ass, put on the best show of your life and it'll make the fans happy. That's what I say. I say, put on the best freaking show you can put on. And if you blow us off the stage, that's great, because that means that the public has gotten their money's worth. And that's not just that's not just lip service, because I was there. I was there that night. Yeah, absolutely. The Europe's techs would we're tuning up Europe's guitars and D went straight over and said, what the hell is that noise? What are you doing? Yeah. That was in Spain, I think I was there. Yeah. And and you know, heavy Montreal, there was a certain skepticism. We flew in from Belgium the night before hadn't gotten any sleep. We went on stage of four o'clock in the afternoon and from what I hear got the best reaction of the festival. You can you can tell me if I'm wrong. You can tell me. I know, I know. I mean, you guys blew everybody away. I think that was the highlight, you know, for the feedback that we got afterwards. It was definitely the highlight. Yeah. I mean, I have a video of it and I've got a video of 80,000 people going fucking crazy. Now, I wasn't there during the Metallica set and I wasn't there during the Slayer set and they may have well been very good, you know, because I didn't see him. But all I know is that we did the job we had to do. We flew in. They gave us an hour and 15 minutes and we killed in an hour and 15 minutes. And the video shows 80,000 people just screaming, singing, having a good time. That's what it's about. So our responsibility to our fan base is be the best we can be. And and and hopefully you will walk out thinking that we were one of the best bands you've ever seen in your life. That's what we do. Yeah, that's the whole point of what we do. I'm not embarrassed by that. So when people say, well, do you know, do you play songs for yourself or your fans? No, we play for our freaking fans. My God, you know, these people pay money. They travel. They park their car. They hire babysitters. They whatever they got to do and we're there. Sorry, they paid four hundred bucks. Yeah. Whatever they're paying. It's a big thing. God damn it. And they deserve to be entertained. We're professional entertainers. Someone said to me, you sick of playing. We're not going to take it. No. My God, why would I? I'm not working in a fucking mine somewhere. I'm not, you know, I'm not, I'm not, you know, I'm an entertainer. I go up on stage and my job is to entertain you. That's what my job is. That's my that's the professional responsibility. I don't get introverted about it. We don't sit there and go, let's do this for us. We always know what do they want, which is why we don't, which is why playing new songs and new albums is so problematic by classic rock bands, because the truth is most classic rock bands, fans really just want to hear the music from the first four or five albums. That's really seems to be the case, the truth. That's the truth. So so if and and we know that applies to Kiss and White Snake and Death Leopard and and Twisted and we live in this world where people are coming to these shows and they know the first five albums. If you've got 20 albums out, 30 albums out, that's great. And if you have a new album out and you think they want to hear your new songs, my position is you're freaking wrong. So what normally happens or what has happened, from my experience, is that a classic battle come out and I have a new album to promote and the tour starts and the first week or so they're playing five new songs from the album. And then the next week, they're playing four new songs from the album and then the next week, they're playing three new songs from the album. And by the end of the tour, they're playing one song. And here's the reason why. If you were to take a poll of all the kids in the audience, all the people in the audience and you said to them, here's the thing. Here's 17 songs we can play from the first four or five albums. And but we want to play some new songs. We got to replace some with others. Let's vote. You get no votes for the new songs. You just wouldn't because nobody wants to take a song out that they know. Yeah, and in very, very unusual cases, you do get a latter day watershed record like Aerosmith pump, Alice Cooper trash, where okay, you got a couple of hits that are going to be in the set forever more because for whatever reason, a latter day record just clicked with people. Can I ask you a question now? How old are those albums? Well, that's gone back 30 years now. My point being those bands were 20 years old at that point. Yes. But my point being is back then you could play new songs and people expect you to support your new album. These days, your fans want a new record. Fine. Do they really want you to take out a classic song to replace it with the song? More than likely not. You may you if you feel really good about a particular track and you want to make that track part of your life, by all means, give it a shot. We play the 17 songs that we want that we know you want to hear. Right. So you're there for an hour and 15 minutes. You know, I will tell you something. Heavy Montreal was it was a great show. But in Europe and you know this because the European festivals excel in lineups. Unlike America, we don't excel in metal lineups. But the German festivals are phenomenal. Sweden Rock is phenomenal. Hellfest in France. Phenomenal grass pop in Belgium. Phenomenal. But we play to show the Arrow Festival in in Nijmegen, Holland in 2008 and it was a one day festival. Okay, one day. It was in a huge field, two stages. And this was the lineup for one day. Oreo, Speedwagon, Kansas, Motorhead, Journey, Twisted Sister, Def Leppard, White Snake and Kiss in one day. Okay, every band was played one hour, except Kiss Me, I think an hour and a half. They closed. And could you and it was 79 euros. Did you imagine all those bands playing obviously given an hour, 10s, the 10 biggest songs what that was like for those fans is amazing. Yeah, you don't see that. You don't see that in America. It's a failure in North America. And I speak for Canada, too. It's a failure on the you know, the radio stations. It's a failure on pirating. It's a failure. There's just the whole infrastructure has failed. When you turn on the radio, even if Twisted Sister had a new album, they wouldn't even play it. There are so many bands that have legacy bands will call them. They'll never get that radio. Look, we're not going to take it. I'll tell you right now in Canada, it was like the biggest thing because not only did you have the video on much music back then, which was like MTV, you had the radio playing it over and over again. It was engraved in our heads. And not only did you have the guys like in the 60-year-old guys like me, but you had the girls, too, right? It just it was a mass appeal. And I'm sure it was even playing on AM radio. Everybody was everyone bought Stay Hungry in Canada, it seems. Yeah. And to give you an idea how big the record is, the Canada runs on a percentage of what American record sales are. So if you sell a million records in America, you sell 100,000 in Canada. Do you know that when we sold two million in America, we were at 700,000 in Canada? The proportion of Canadian fans who bought Stay Hungry, the fact that we only toured once is really a shame. We did one. We were firing Maiden. We did the main tour. Which was an amazing tour. I mean, fans really got their money's worth. It was fun. Well, I grew up in New Zealand and we came by once. You came by once and I I've still got it and I can send it to her if you want. But I've got the television broadcast special you guys did for Shazam TV with the music station. And they, you know, it was a proper TV show. It was a pro shot. It was like an hour special with the with an hour an edited version of the show about 45 minutes of the music interspersed with interviews from everybody. And I've still got that on cassette. I've actually put it on a DVD. And I've got that. And that's that's one of my earliest memories of metal, you know, was that on TV and taping that and getting into the band. The band were huge in New Zealand. That's the Shazam Twisted Sister Special was on TV, the music show. And it was awesome. It jumped out of the TV. It came alive. It was what did Canada and Australia have in common? Canada and Australia both had well, some. Well, here's in this particular case with that with that tour in Nova Scotia, there was some council person that wanted his band. And in Australia, there was some council person that wanted his band in the same on that same album and tour because they considered us to be like the worst moral, you know, disaster. I don't know about New Zealand, but we we loved you. So we had a really much else like a metal city. So we had nobody cares here about these kind of things. We had Nova Scotia. We the kind that listen, we've had the most pushback was from America. Not anywhere else. I mean, playing in Texas was we were endangered species in Texas. We were being followed, harassed by the cops, arrested D for obscenity. It was horrible what we went what we endured from harassment from law enforcement. But I got I got a business question now. Let's me and Giles, we talk about this. So I've been doing this show for, you know, 10 years. And Giles is a a band manager for many bands, goes out in the world. And this is to pick your brain here. This argument that artists are always feeling ripped off, you know, always blaming management for being ripped off, always blaming the record company for being ripped off. How much truth is that? Is it or just basically they haven't been paying attention to the bottom line or the contract? There's two levels of ripoff. One is contractual ripoff, which is just that's just the nature of the game. That's how it is. And, you know, like it or not. And the other is somehow that management's really taken from you. Now, I'd say most bands don't understand the record company deals that they sign. Oh, they don't. And they don't understand how small the percentages are. I mean, the Beatles are making a half a penny a single and six cents an album with royalties. I think the Jackson five, I think most Motown acts were making two, three, four, five cents an album. There are clauses all over the contracts that I do. I do a talk on this. I said, what happens if you sell a million? How much money do you make on a million selling record? You know, so if you take them, if you take, for example, this is by contract. There's nothing. There's no one stealing from you. This is just the way the contract is written. If you look at a contract back in 1984, and let's just say for the sake of this example, the band was the band made a dollar record, which is very high. But let's suppose the band got a dollar record and you sold a million records and you have a platinum album on your wall and friends go, oh, man, million records. It must be really rich. What does that really mean? Well, in the contract to begin with, the contract says it's 15% free goods, which means the record labels allowed to not pay you 15% of record sales because they supposedly sent it to the press for reviews, except if you're on a million selling record, you're not selling 150,000 albums out for review, but you can claim that you can. So they withhold royalties on 15%, which is 150,000. So now your million is now basically $850,000. On top of that, there's a there's a breakage fee of 10% because records haven't broken since Moby Dick was a minnow. But back when shellac records were made, it was in the contracts. That's another 10%. So that's 25% off the top. So right away, you're not being paid on a million, being paid on 750,000. Then there's a 20% container charge to make the record or the CD. So they subtract that. So automatically 45% of the money has 45% of the royalty bearing records are now gone. OK, now you're $550,000. Well, suppose you made a video and that gets subtracted. Suppose there's record recording costs, which are another $300,000 and then there's promotion costs for the record, which is probably 100,000 if the record's successful. You're down to what, $200,000? You take the $200,000, you send it to your business manager and your manager and they take out 20% for 5%. And maybe the band is left with 100,000, 150,000, five man band breaks it up. It's $30,000 each before taxes. You get the mathematics here, guys. Yeah, you get the mathematics. I hear it all day long. I hear it all week long about bands. This is really the this is the case. So contracts were designed to make the record companies money. Now, in defense of the label, label sign 100 bands, 95 fail. So they make their money off the 5% that succeed and they make a lot of money. So that's kind of like how the success. They front the money, right? They front. They take the risk. You money to do something. However, however, it is the only business in which you pay back the label and then you still don't own the product. That's the biggest problem I have with the theory of record labels. That the band, if the band wasn't charged back the cost of making the record, then I'd say, fine, okay. But if you're making me pay you back and I still don't own it, you know, Taylor Swift brought this to light to people and people say, oh, this is so terrible. Taylor doesn't own her music. No one owns their music. This isn't new. This is the way it is. It's the way it's always been. It's the Beatles don't own their albums and the Rolling Stones don't own their masters. A couple of artists do, but for the generals, generally 99%. Now, I'll give you an extreme example of non-payments, okay? How many records do you think ABBA has sold? Take a guess. 50 million. Okay. So here's the deal. ABBA is one of the biggest records selling bands in history. I've known it. I've read interviews of these guys for years. So I actually met a couple of the guys from ABBA when they were in New York 10 years ago. And I said to them, can you answer some questions for me? I've always been curious as to the history of ABBA. And they said, go ahead. So I said, number one, I've read that you're the second biggest corporation in Sweden next to ABBA. And one of them said, well, that's not true, but we made that up because it sounded good. I went, okay. I said, myth two. You're not allowed to take money out of communist countries. So you take commodities like oil and furs and then you have a trading company where you sell the oils and furs and they go, that's total bullshit. I said, number three, Bert Ward who played Robin in the Batman TV show in the sixties is the head of your merchandise company. And they said, well, that's pretty fucking funny, but never heard of that. Number four, you sold 300 million records. And this is the part that's crazy. Okay. What I'm about to tell you is maybe the craziest thing I've ever heard from an artist, you ask any band, if they've been ripped up by the record label, any band that sold records, they're going to say, absolutely. And they normally will list off about 10% of the records they haven't been paid on. So in other words, if you sold 20 million records, guaranteed the artists will say, well, we got screwed out about four or five million. If you ask a band that sold 50 million, they say, well, we got screwed out about 10. This is what the guys in ABBA told me. They said, we sold 360 million records, we only got paid on 280. So I said, what you're telling me is you haven't been paid on 80 million records. That's what you're telling me. You have not been paid on 80 million records. This is the equivalent of 160 gold albums by an artist in America. And they said, yes. And I said, how the fuck did you guys get the fuck like that? You're not dumb. And they said, no, but our management couldn't find a worldwide record label. So we wound up signing 30 licensing deals. And when you do licensing deals around the world, you can't keep track. It's like whack them all. Oh yeah, oh yeah. They make a record, they disappear, they make a record, they disappear. Look, I have a gold record from Mexico, okay? And it doesn't say half a million, a million. It just says thank you for selling a lot of records. That's really what it said. And it's like Muchos Gracias, De Los Porfavor, Muchos Records or whatever. I don't know. And I said to the record label, why is that? He says, because we don't know what we sell down there. We approximate what we think it'll sell and we charge the local guy X amount of dollars and then whatever he makes on top of that, he makes it top of it. So that's how we lose. So there's a lot. Now, what's the flip side of that? The flip side of that is of Led Zeppelin, a Bon Jovi, a Beatles where you're around long enough that you become the controller of the economy. And it's the same thing with a professional sports star. If you look at a baseball player for the first five years of his life, he's making okay money. If he happens to have phenomenal years, he's making okay money. How often do you hear he had a career year at the year his contract ended? You know what I'm talking about. If you have a career year, the day your contract ends, you know you're gonna sign a motherfucking amazing contract. And you may suck after that, by the way, but it doesn't matter because you lasted long enough to make a lot of money. And if your career, like when they sign these 10 year deals with these guys, in general, you follow sports, I can assume. So some of these guys get paid hundreds of millions and maybe they have five good years and then they're basically paid just because they signed the right deal at the right time. So Bon Jovi got screwed, Bon Jovi lasted long enough to redo his contract. Kiss got screwed, Kiss lasted long enough to redo their contracts. The Beatles got screwed, they lasted long enough to redo it, Led Zeppelin. Look, CDs did not exist back in those guys' days. So when CDs came out, they were able to renegotiate. That's how you'd make money in this business, long-term success. One gold record, or one, like here's my joke. If you have one gold record, that means you owe the record company a half a million dollars. If you have two gold records, that means you owe them a million dollars. If you have three gold records, you owe them a million and a half dollars. And on your fourth gold record, you file for bankruptcy to get out of your record deal. You know what, JJ, you know, Frank Barino, you mentioned it before, he lives not too far away. He just said, I just give up. He goes, he goes, they never paid me, they gave me advances, they never paid me. And I asked, he goes, I asked for the doc, you know, guys, can you pay me for the records I made? They go out, bring us to court. And he goes, oh, fuck it, I don't want to do this anymore. Well. Then he quit, then he quit, like since the 1980s, he quit. I don't, everybody has a different story to tell. And because I don't know the exact specifics of why that would be the way it is. Not saying it's not, I don't know. In my case, we're signed to Warner Music. It's a major corporation. We've renegotiated with them on a number of occasions. We're renegotiating with them again. We've renegotiated, renegotiated, renegotiated, renegotiated. Those renegotiations take a long time, they cost money. And we do it over and over and over again. But the other side of it is we license our music for commercials and TV shows. We've re-recorded our hit songs and we license our re-records, which is the one clause that the record label's left in by mistake. It's the only pro artist clause in the whole world. And it must have been by mistake. Well, they're catching up on that now because every contract I've seen recently is a re-recording clause in there now. Well, there's always a re-recording clause, but in my day, the re-recording clause, which was standard was you couldn't re-record for five years. Right. And Taylor Swift said that as well, I believe. And that's pretty standard. But I was probably designed back in the 30s when they figured who the hell would want that guy after five years. And again, let them re-record it because no one's gonna want them because no one anticipated classic rock bands. So we tell bands all the time, we record your songs and sell your re-records and keep 100% of the money. So this is what we do. But our label's been fine. I mean, you know, they've been as supportive as they can be. And I have a good relationship with them. We have a good relationship with our publishing company. But then again, we've been around for a long, long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it sounds to me, I mean, it's what we're taking away from this and what I guess everyone is, is that longevity and the length of time to build a brand that's worth something over a number of years becomes more and more valuable as a lot of the time in the 90s, we all thought it was over. But then who anticipated that by 2010, 2015, going up 2020, all of a sudden these classic rock bands are worth more money than ever. And now people are licensing music for commercials or movies and things like that. Music that wouldn't have gotten near a movie 25 years ago is now, you know, now you hear Ramones in movies and in commercials and things like that. And it was taboo back then too, Giles. It was taboo to put your, cause you were selling out, like, you know, if you put your songs. Now there's sports shoes and wine and then Iron Maiden have got beer and things like that. So longevity and weathering the storm and getting through stuff like the 90s, which for a lot of bands, particularly of, you know, Twisted Sisters was, it was not the greatest period. Think about this. KISS started in 73, Scorpion started in 67. ACT started in 72 or 73. Pre-started in 73. If you were to ask us all back in 1973, how long we were going to last as an act? Yeah. If we said 10 years, I'd be shocked. Right. We probably would have said five years. Elvis was a wash up, you know, in his 20s. In fact, I think I was asked that question in 1973, how long were the bands? I said, well, if we last five years, it'll be great. None of us anticipated that we're going to be here 50 years later. Now it just so happened we exploded in the 80s during our confluence of circumstances that will never be repeated again, which is baby boomer numbers, MTV hitting at the right place at the right time. But don't forget in the 80s, we were destroyed by the critics. They hated 80s rock. I mean, they absolutely destroyed us, Poison, Motley, Crew, KISS. We were awful. You didn't see us getting five star reviews in Rolling Stone magazine. Well, you don't see them. They destroyed new metal in the early 2000s, too. I mean, none of the easy targets. They really made the, and then they created the hair band thing, which is really disgusting because it really cheapened everything that we all stood for. And here we are in 2021. And last I looked, Motley, Crew and Poison sold out baseball stadiums and my Bon Jovi is huge. And God bless, God rest his soul. Motorhead would still be out there doing it. ACDC is obviously at the top of the game. No one expected it to happen like this. No one expected us to be around. No one expected Twisted Sister to return in 2003 and headline the biggest festivals in the world for the next 14 years. In fact, we, you can consider me smart. I, we had no idea. None. There's a world cared about. Do you think there will there be another Twisted Sister reunion? I once said never and I was wrong. However, and D and I have spoken about this a lot. When we reformed in 2003, we thought we were reforming for two years, not 14 years. You know, three years, two years into it, the offers kept getting bigger. Oh, we'll do it for another couple of years. Couple of years later, the offers are getting bigger. By 2007, I said, let's just stop because no one really cares. So we stopped and then the demands got even bigger. 2008, 2009, 2010, the shows got bigger. The money offers got bigger. And then, you know, we're always been headlining since we returned, which we never were headlined in the 80s anyway. Hard to believe. And just when you thought it can't get any bigger, it continues to get bigger. Finally, AJ dies in 2015, which I think, you know, I don't know, took the wind out of the sails for me. And then 2016 was the 40th anniversary of me, D and Eddie together, although I proceeded them by three years. And so we called it a day in 2016 and then D wanted to continue on. So he's out there doing solos and he's doing, you know, fine. I mean, COVID really screwed up everything in terms of long-term planning, but could we headline tomorrow a European festival for 100,000 people? Of course we could in a heartbeat. Do I want to personally? I don't think so. I don't know if I'll return if the band returns, if there's a real call for the band to return. And why is it? Because why wouldn't you want to do it? Because I'm enjoying doing motivational speaking. You know, you change in life, okay? And while it's hard to fathom why one wouldn't want to stand in front of 100,000 people. I mean, next to impossible to fathom why one wouldn't want to do that. You know, when my friends see these videos and they go, oh my God, it's the greatest thing. My only response to that, which is a legitimate question is how many times have you interviewed or seen an interview with a retired football player, baseball player, soccer player, hockey player? And someone says to them, so you miss it? Or do you watch it on TV? Or do you go to games and you expect them to go, I miss it terribly? Wish I could still keep playing. I go to the games regularly and follow my team. I wish that was the answer. But you know what you normally get? I haven't been to a game since I retired. I haven't watched a game since I retired. I haven't, I don't follow my team anymore. I mean, I never understood that response. I never understood it until now. Now I get it. For me, I have played over 9,000 performances. If you add in all the shows that we did in the early days, especially five shows a night, six nights a week, you know, the first two years we played, that's 1,900 shows in the first two years. For me, so after 9,000 performances, 9,000 getting up on stage and doing a performance, is it out of my system? Am I of a certain age to go, you know, I'm not into it anymore? Yeah. So that's why I'm not rushing back. So we've been offered. But those 9,000 have brought you to this place, right? Yeah. So and what? I mean. And maybe those one-offs maybe as a reunion, and I'm not saying you should or you shouldn't. I'm just saying that there is, you are where you are today because of those 9,000. The economy of scale becomes an issue. You know how much it costs to put together the show? And if you're not doing enough shows to offset the expenses of your crew, your gear, your travel, you can't do it. Like someone says, oh, it's really easy to show up and play. It doesn't work that way. Yeah. If you're a professional band, you perform at the peak of your ability to put on a show, which is expensive to put on a show. And it's time consuming and it's rehearsals involved. Also, people don't understand the volumes that we play at. These are like, these are concussive volumes, like almost like going to war. And you have to, you have to condition your body to do that. And the only way you condition your body to do it is to do it. Like for example, in heavy Montreal, here's an perfect example. We had flown in the night before, we got off stage at three o'clock in the morning in Belgium, okay? Went to the hotel, took a shower to get to the airport at five a.m. to catch a seven o'clock flight from Belgium into Montreal. We landed in Montreal at two o'clock in the afternoon or whatever time it was, get driven directly to the venue and had to be on stage at four, no sleep, none. Now, if you're 20 years old, okay, we're 60 something years old. It's very worrying. And by the way, the show we put on in heavy Montreal, would you know that we didn't sleep? Would you have any idea that we didn't sleep? No, we are professional machine accustomed to doing it. So we've now been off for four years. And I don't know if, I don't know how much training it would take to get back into that level of doing it. So when we returned in 2003, we'd been dormant for 12 years, but we're all much younger. Now we're substantially older and that plays a role into the whole thing. You know, I don't sit home and look in, look nostalgically at my pictures and go, oh man, I wish I could do that. The reason why is because I did that. And so I don't necessarily have to do that, but I don't discount the understanding of why people would think, how could you not want to do it? I get it a hundred percent. I just don't have the, and if I don't have the passion to do it, I won't do it. Cause I've never phoned a performance in my life, ever and never will. So if I go on stage, I mean, I'm intent to kill you. You know, I'm intent, you know, D, D's predatory as a front man. He's the greatest front man I've ever seen. I've stood shoulder to shoulder with him and I've watched him against every front man there is. There's not one that touches him in my opinion, not one. In terms of his abilities and his professional approach to performing, you know, he does a two hour warmup every single day. You know, from the day he was hired to be in the band in 1976, every single day, every single dressing room, he does two hours of warmup and he stretches and he prepares himself to be the best he can be. And it's a hell of a responsibility. And God knows, if I phoned it in and we sucked, then what? You know, people live, there's a reputation twist it has about being great live. So how many times have you seen the band? Many times. One time, he was in one time, one time. All right, so you've seen us six times. Would you say that every time was roughly the same level of intensity? Yes, I would. No change. No change. And I don't mean like, I don't mean that in a bad way. It was on, to use spinal tap as a reference, it was on 11 every time. Every time. Yeah, so you don't think we have pride in that? I'm enormous pride in that. And you do? Enormously. So therefore, I don't know. The answer to your question is there's no answer. We could. I'll never say never because I said never once before and I was wrong. So as the song says, never say never. You never say never, yeah. I mean, it could, it could. It's just not in my head right now. Yeah, that's understandable. We all grow as people and we want to pursue different things in our lives. What about your reaction to what happened yesterday in regards to Clive Palmer, who was ordered to pay, you know, and again, there's another business. A lot of people saying, oh, this was political, but I think it was a great decision by the courts because it sets a precedent that you can't just grab anybody's intellectual property and flip it around and use it to your advantage, right? Well, that's actually not true. He could have done that. Okay, so explain. Had he negotiated a deal with Universal. We don't own the song. So had he- Oh, no, and I meant without the authorization to do so. Yeah, no, he could have and saved himself a shitload of money. I mean, he was, from what I understood, he was negotiating with them and they gave him a price. Like they said, how much it would cost for you to do a parody? And then he said, I'm not doing it. And then one often did it and he probably thought he wasn't gonna be sued is what I think. So his arrogance and his flouting of the law is what got him in trouble. Not his political positions, which we don't support, but it doesn't really matter. And most people don't even understand how much artists do not control the use of their material. But when a song is played in a sporting event, you don't automatically assume that the team who's playing that song that day, you're a fan of that team. It's just understood. We're not gonna take it. I want to rock. Ain't seen nothing yet. You know, whatever the song is played, it's just generally stadium rock. You know what I mean? We are the champions. We will rock you. It doesn't mean the Queen sitting there rooting for, you know- The Montreal Canadiens. Exactly. It's just songs that are played. Generic songs that are used. The rights to play those songs are dictated by performance rights societies. And as long as you pay the licensing fee, you can play it. And you don't have the permit. By the way, just so everybody understands this. The musicians in all of these areas get paid zero. Let me repeat this again. Zero. I repeat this one more time. The artist gets paid zero. The only one who gets paid is the writer or the publisher. The artist gets paid nothing. So when a friend of mine is at a baseball game and he hears my song and he texts me, yo man, just heard I wanna rock. Ka-ching, I go, zero. Ka-ching, zero. No. So that's one issue. Okay. Now let's take the politician's position. Politician wants to use a song. Politician doesn't care whether the artist likes them, doesn't like them. If a politician is doing a speech in an area that pays licensing fees, they can use the song. The problem is when you use a song in a political arena, public thinks that you support the politician. That is the difference. And that's where it reflects badly if you don't like the guy. Palmer has a terrible reputation, horrible. So two things happen. One is he floated the law with his own apparent arrogance. And number two, we got blasted by it. We, you guys, he sucks. You guys, how could you support him? I'm never gonna buy your record again. We got it. We got hit. I got more hate mail from that, from his association with the band than I've ever gotten from any other association by anybody. And I'm like, we don't own the song. It's not our control. Try to explain this to somebody. You think they care? You think they really care? Look, universal music doesn't get the bad reputation. Warner Music doesn't get a bad reputation. They're corporations, they're faceless. Who do you blame? You blame the artist who's out there. That artist must be aware that this guy stands for this and this artist must be getting paid a lot so there's nothing but a bunch of whores. That is the negativity that gets thrown at us. That's what we had to deal with. So it's bad enough that Clive Palmer was a bad guy to many people, but that we got associated with it. So am I grateful? Could you legally stop him though? Universal stopped him based on the law. He violated copyright. Let's say he negotiated and he settled on a price with them and everything was cool with Universal and he puts it out there, but you guys are getting that negative associations. Could you stop him at that point? At that point, that's an interesting question. So when Donald Trump, who's not the world's most favorite politician, was using songs by Queen, what did Queen do? They took out a press release. When you use songs by the Rolling Stones, what did the Rolling Stones do? They took out a press release. When you use songs by Tom Petty. So here's the thing. The artist realizes that the fan doesn't understand the nuances of the deal. The artist just knows that the association is guilt. So the artist doesn't want to say there's nothing I can do about it because it makes the artist look impotent. The artist does not want to explain to someone they have no control because everybody thinks the artist has total control. So the artist does the next best thing, which is publicly embarrass the person. Hopefully that the person will stop using the song because of public embarrassment. In Donald Trump's case, there's not a single artist whose music he played that supported him. Neil Young didn't, obviously, Fleetwood Mac didn't, Queen didn't, the Rolling Stones did it. Adele, I think, you know, even us, he used our song. Now my singer appeared on Celebrity Apprentice, was a friend of Donald Trump. I mean, Trump helped him make money for his charity, put us in a kind of screwy position, you know? But D handled it masterfully, I thought. You know, he called up the Trump organization, said, look guys, I appreciate that, you know, I was on the show and I raised money for my charity, but this is not something that, you know, don't put us in the position where we have to take out a press release and say something bad, like just pull it off. And it was done kind of, it was done in a way that just, they stopped using the song, okay? But that's what happens in a situation like this. The band gets smeared and the band gets accused of being- That's fascinating, you know, it's a good topic, man. It's an interesting topic, you know, legality and, you know, morally and- So when the harassment goes, we're gonna sue you, man, we're gonna sue you. The fact is, if the venue's paying performance rights fees, there's really not much you can do. However, if you're a politician and you're playing the song and the artist says you suck, you're gonna stop playing the song, you know? Cause you don't wanna be told you suck either. So they stop. I've always realized it's a byproduct of publicity, the publicity machine, but most people have no idea how it works. I've written articles about this cause I started off at Ink Magazine writing, you know, business columns for ink. So I know the answers to these questions and I respond to them by educating people as to what the law. And by the way, the law pertains to the United States, I can't state that the law is the same in Canada or Mexico or in Europe or in Australia. Every country has different rules and laws governing the uses of these songs. Yeah, great topic. Right, Charles? Well, I think we've covered it. I think I've been on the floor. I could go on for another two hours, by the way. We've been on for an hour and 10 already. I could go on for another two hours. How about this? Give us your thoughts and probably not in your book about here you are at the PRMC back in the 80s with a agenda-driven group, the PRMC, which was Tipper Gore back then. Now you have cancel culture coming at you. I mean, if cancel culture would have been back then, I guess it was cancel culture back then as well, right? It just keeps coming back in different forms. What are your thoughts on what's happening today? On cancel culture in general. Yes, in general. In general, it's not good. It's not healthy in general. Because- That was a long-winded question. Who's doing the cancelling is the problem. Under whose moral guidelines are the cancels occurring? And if you allow X to do this to this, why can't Y do it to somebody else? I mean, look, Twisted was canceled in Texas. They really created an issue. They were getting banned and they passed laws to prevent, and you probably don't even know this. They were anti-rock laws passed in Texas. And the anti-rock laws shows you the disconnect between the reality and the myth. The law stated that if you had sex with children, dead people or animals on stage, you couldn't perform. Who fucking does that? Like, why would you think that that law would keep anybody out for crying out loud? I mean, it's almost beyond, it's almost spinal tappy in its stupidity and its ignorance and its blatant exposure of ultimate ignorance. You're not bothering to pay attention. So of course we weren't canceled by any promoter because for us as well, they don't sing about having sex with animals, dead people or children. And yet we were, so then we would be, people would come to the shows and we would be judged by panels of Christians, you know, as to whether we did or didn't. I mean, I sat there just, I was blown away at the fucking unbelievable ignorance. So again. But now it's coming, you see, it's different though. That's the right wing you're talking about. Now you're hearing it's coming from the left. What I'm saying is, what I'm saying is it's dangerous on both sides. Absolutely, absolutely. What I'm saying is it's just dangerous on both sides because it becomes a free speech issue. And I always believe this, if you don't like something, don't do it. If you don't want to buy something, don't buy it. If you just, you know, but if you tell me you don't want to hear the guy talk or listen, that's ridiculous. They have the right to say what they want to say. That's what we defend this country. That's what we consider free speech. And if you don't like it, don't buy it. You don't like a band, don't buy it. If you don't like the author, don't read it. If you don't like the music, don't listen to it. If you don't like the movie, don't watch it. If you hate the television show, fine. To have it unilaterally taken off. You know, this is an issue in terms of boycotting because then you hurt the financial ability of some. Now that's another issue too. Because let's say there's a company that has a product, you know what the product, you're not going to buy the product. That's your right not to buy the product. If enough people don't buy the product, then maybe they're coming to go out of business, but that's a personal choice one makes. And the product itself has a choice to make, which is do they want to be associated with the kind of people that would have that reaction. So it's a very tough issue, but I'm in general not supporting any, I don't support censorship. All right. Well, on that note, look, we could go on for another four hours. Okay. And we'll actually, we'll do it next time when we, your book is closer to the release date. That'd be great. You know, it's fun talking to JJ, you know, cause it's not a typical rocker conversation. We're getting it to other avenues and different conversation. It's good, I'm looking forward to the book because it just based even on this interview alone, I'm more interested than ever in reading the book cause I'm sure there's some fantastic stories and some great advice in there. Yeah. I just, what I say to bands is keep your eyes open, learn as much as you possibly can. And one of the things I tell young bands especially is it's always, it's great if you want to be the Beatles, but you better be better than the band next door because if you're not better than the band next door, you're never going to be the Beatles. So just concentrate on the thing around you and figure out how you're going to build up a following and do it incrementally. And it takes time to do it if you want to do it right. The idea that you can just kind of go on a TV show, win a song competition and be successful is all well and good. It's like winning the lottery, but at the end of the day, it's one of the worst things that can happen to you. You really have to develop a character and develop a feeling for what you're doing and not hope that you win the golden ticket. And Twisted didn't win a golden ticket. You know, Twisted started, it took 10 years to get our record deal. So it took a long, long, long time. And I just wish all these artists as much success as possible and just work real hard. And also, as you'll see in the book, I drug and alcohol were verboten in the band. I've never subscribed to that theory, although plenty of bands do, it's never been our way of doing it. We just worked really hard as a really old-fashioned. We worked really, really hard. Yeah. On that note, thank you so much, JJ. Thank you. Great conversation. And looking forward to having you again. Thank you, guys. I appreciate it, man. Yeah. Twisted Business. Twisted Business. And my podcast, JJ French. JJ French Connection, available on Spotify, Apple Tunes, Apple Music, rather, and podcast one. This week's guest, Shep Gordon. Next week, Doc McGee. I've had a ton of great artists, a ton of amazing interviews, and new ones come up every week, including Canadians coming up soon, named Richard Syrett, who has conspiracy radio. I don't know if you guys know Richard Syrett. Back in the day. Was it back in the day? Well, now. No, now. I listen to Richard Syrett. I listen to his show all the time. He puts me to sleep every night. I used to listen to Bell. What was his name? Art Bell. Yeah, so Richard Syrett's an interesting character. I became friends with him because he had somebody on his show who mentioned something about entertaining and devil-worshipping. And so I contacted Richard and he had me on his show. So I have him on my show, and he's not a music-related person, but he's a fascinating guy, and I love talking to him, and you guys know who he is, and believe it or not, he was a great guest. So hopefully... Is he an alien? Does he talk about alien or stuff like that? Of course we did. Of course we did, man. I took a picture. I was in Vegas. I took a picture of my wife. It just like that. And then we went back to our room, and I noticed there was this strange object behind her. I'm all about it. And it didn't look like a drone. I was like, I think I actually took a picture of a UFO, not knowingly. You're so out of date. It's all about the lizard people these days. Well, you know, and we just say this, Richard had a guy on who was a member of the Mars Space Force with 38,000 other international people up in Mars currently who travel back and forth based on molecular breakdown, but they run a gigantic base, a defense base in Mars. And he talks to the guy, he talks to the guy like it's a normal conversation. So what did you have for lunch? I said, well, we had bacon and eggs, and I got in the transporter and came back, and the guy has a book on, it's not kind of shit that I love. So it's that kind of stuff. Well, so Richard has plenty of that on his show. I'm a huge space guy, and I'm a huge Mars fan, and I'm just waiting to see what Elon Musk is gonna do next and see if we're ever gonna get there. But I think it's a waste of time going to Mars. I just think they're gonna live in a hole. You might as well live in a hole here. I mean, just. Smoke DMT, you'll go to Mars. Trust me. All right. All right. All right, guys. Take care, guys.