Ricky Nelson’s Legacy, Elvis, and Growing up with George Harrison with The Nelson Twins

Summary

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The Adam Carolla Show

Ricky Nelson’s Legacy, Elvis, and Growing Up with George Harrison

Guests: Matthew & Gunnar Nelson (The Nelson Twins)

Date: December 16, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the deep legacy of Ricky Nelson, the experience of growing up famous in L.A., stories about Elvis and George Harrison, and the enduring strength of family in the entertainment industry. Adam welcomes Matthew and Gunnar Nelson (the Nelson Twins) for an in-depth conversation about their new book “What Happened to Your Hair?”, their family’s multi-generational musical history, and personal anecdotes from Hollywood’s golden eras to the MTV generation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Reminiscing About the Valley & L.A. Upbringing

• Adam and the Nelsons swap stories about growing up in the San Fernando Valley, private school days, and the oddities of celebrity-run-ins as “just a local kid.”
• Adam reveals he went to junior high with “the cool gym coach Mr. Nelson,” who was actually the twins’ second cousin. [33:17]
  • Matthew Nelson: “Yeah, that’s our second cousin. Mr. Nelson the coach…was always cool. Man.” [34:08]

2. Nelson Family Legacy: Ozzie, Harriet, Ricky

• The family’s roots stretch back to showbiz in the 1930s with Ozzy Nelson’s orchestra.
  • Matthew Nelson: “Ozzy had the Ozzy and Nelson Orchestra and they had a number one record in ‘35.” [36:02]
• The evolution from big-band radio to pioneering TV sitcoms.
• Ricky’s meteoric rise as television’s original teen idol and early inventor of marketing music through TV performances.
  • Gunnar Nelson: “He was the first guy to utilize the power of television to market music…He wound up selling half a billion singles in his career.” [37:32], [40:59]

3. Nelsons’ Encounters with Elvis, Frampton & Iconic Musicians

• Stories about Elvis trying to poach Ricky’s guitarist, James Burton, and friendly football games between Ricky and Elvis’ teams (including the time Ricky showed up with the LA Rams as his squad). [46:18], [47:51]
• Unpacking how being “too good-looking” was both a blessing and a curse for musicians like Frampton and their own father, as audiences sometimes overlooked musicianship for image.
  • Adam Carolla: “In a weird way, I wonder if that hurts in that career...like nobody knew what a great guitar player Frampton was, ‘cause they’re so caught up in his blonde hair.” [42:34]

4. The Paradox of Teen Idols and Fame

• The legacy of “Tiger Beat” fame, and reflections on David Cassidy and the Partridge Family, with Gunner sharing how Cassidy found meaning in being people’s “first crush.” [53:29], [53:35]
  • Gunnar Nelson: “The thing that gave me peace about the whole situation was teen idols…are a lot of women’s very first crush…he found a little bit of nobility in that.” [54:06]

5. Inside the Evolution of Music Trends—From Hair Bands to Grunge

• The rapid and often manufactured shift from glam metal to grunge in the early ‘90s, driven in large part by music industry economics and changing fashion.
  • Gunnar Nelson: “It really wasn’t organic, like some people want to believe—the music industry…was run by like six guys. At a certain point, bands…were costing a million dollars a video…it got too expensive. So grunge was the economic answer.” [81:46], [82:46]
• Adam’s theory: music (and fashion) is always a pendulum, swinging from excess to minimalism.

6. The Tragedy of Ricky Nelson’s Death – Setting the Record Straight

• Nelsons recount in detail the tragedy of their father’s fatal DC-3 plane fire, the burden of media speculation about drugs, and the difficult decision to prioritize their bandmates’ families during legal action.
  • Matthew Nelson: “I found out my dad was dead on the car radio…Gunner saw it on TV. It was so horrifying…But what was even more horrifying was how the press handled him and unfairly cited drug abuse as the cause.” [95:34], [95:51]
  • Gunnar Nelson: “The news cycle was 24/7 about all these allegations…And on top of it, we couldn’t really talk about it, because if we did, the families wouldn’t get paid out.” [97:30]

7. Growing Up Surrounded by Legends—George Harrison, Dylan, Laurel Canyon

• George Harrison used to be “Uncle George from next door,” coming over for breakfast while renting the house adjacent to the Nelsons.
  • Matthew Nelson: “Uncle George… turned out to be George Harrison from the Beatles…He would come over and have breakfast with us because he missed his home.” [62:01]
• Bob Dylan and Mama Cass Elliot (their babysitter) were regulars around the house.
  • Dylan’s performance of “Garden Party” as a tribute to Ricky moved the family. [64:27]
  • Gunnar Nelson: “Mama Cass’s first single was ‘Dream a Little Dream of Me’. The first person to ever record that song was Ozzie Nelson…” [64:51]

8. The Reality of Sudden Pop Fame & Surviving the MTV Era

• The Nelson twins detail their swift rise when “Love and Affection” hit number one and how overnight they became teen idols with all the chaos and alienation it brings.
  • Matthew Nelson: “We went up in the elevator. The doors opened, and it was like a jet engine…Girls screaming, like the David Cassidy thing…last week we couldn’t get someone to help me buy underwear, and now this.” [75:27]
• Later, grunge killed the hair band scene virtually overnight—described as a “violent” shift orchestrated by label suits.

9. On Sibling Bond and Twinship in the Spotlight

• Twinship as a survival mechanism for the pressures of fame.
  • Matthew Nelson: “He [our father] really could have used a twin brother, you know, and there were times when frankly, I could kick Gunner’s ass a little bit and get him back in line, and vice versa. We pick up each other.” [91:44]
  • Gunnar Nelson: “The difference between us and the Everlys—we really do get along. Sometimes it’s that tension that makes really good art…I actually love the work.” [92:31]

10. Racing, Valley Village Connections, & Enduring Friendships

• Heavy gearhead talk: Adam and Matthew swap Laguna Seca and vintage racing war stories, linking over mutual childhoods in Valley Village and even the original Val Surf skate shop.
  • Matthew Nelson: “My best friend is Zach Brown, the guy that runs McLaren…he’s a Valley Village guy, grew up in North Hollywood…We raced at Willow Springs or Riverside or whatever.” [101:44], [105:25]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the burden of legacy:

  “There’s a little pressure there and stuff, but it’s an honor to have that kind of pressure…we’re apparently the only family in history with three generations of number one hitmakers in it, according to the Guinness Book.” — Gunnar Nelson [67:16]

• On dealing with sudden, overwhelming fame:

  “The difference television makes—it’s amazing how much more attractive you get when you’re on TV. It’s fantastic.” — Matthew Nelson [75:56]

• On the paradox of enduring image and artistry:

  “It’s all important. The image is seriously important. It’s entertainment…But you’re right. The look got in the way.” — Matthew Nelson [43:05]

• On family and surviving together:

  “If one’s having a weak day, the other one is right there… I just recently went through a divorce. I don’t know how I could have done that without my twin and my best friend being my lead counselor and all that stuff and keeping me sane.” —Gunnar Nelson [91:51, 93:11]

• Revelation about Ricky Nelson’s final flight:

  “He was doing post-Christmas shows…we were all set to go with them…He just uncharacteristically said, guys I don’t want you on the plane right now…He said, I don’t want you on my plane right now. Meet me in Dallas…If we’d been with him, we’d be gone.” — Matthew Nelson [93:46]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• News & Memorial on Rob Reiner: 02:13–12:03
• Flying Cars & Technology Rant: 12:10–18:01
• Parking/’Poor Tax’ Laws of LA: 18:07–27:02
• Nelson Twins Interview Start: 30:56
• Growing Up Nelson & Valley Roots: 31:07–36:33
• Ricky Nelson as TV/Rock Pioneer: 37:00–41:09
• Stories on Elvis, Frampton, Jordanaires: 41:32–47:51
• Garden Party & Music Industry Shifts: 56:22–59:07
• On David Cassidy & Fame’s Dark Side: 52:54–54:06
• Surreal Fame (MTV Era): 72:16, 74:01–75:56
• On Grunge, Economics, and Suit-Led Trends: 79:34–84:38
• Setting Record Straight on Ricky’s Death: 93:31–100:48
• George Harrison, Bob Dylan stories: 62:01–64:26
• Sibling Bond & Twins Making Art: 91:44–93:11
• Racing/Car Culture & McLaren Friendship: 101:44–105:38

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Conclusion

This episode is an engrossing walk through music, family, legacy, and fame—serving up hilarious, heartfelt, and at times sobering tales from both Adam Carolla and the Nelson twins. At the core is a deep affection for the good, the tragic and the outright surreal parts of growing up “in the business.” Through it all, the brothers’ warmth, wit, and bond keep the stories grounded in real emotion. Their new memoir “What Happened To Your Hair?” promises even more insider stories for fans of pop, rock, television, and American cultural history.

Find Nelson tour info, book details, and more at nelsontwins.com.

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Transcript

[Adam Carolla]

Hey, in this episode, Nelson, remember Nelson the band, Ricky Nelson's twins, Boys, Good dudes. They'll be on Mayhem's doing the news. And we'll do all that right after this. Hey, this is Adam Carolla from the Adam Carolla Show. Bowl season is here and betonline gives you more ways to play. The latest odds, breaking news, live scores and in game betting. So you never miss a moment of college football, Bulls, NFL playoff races. It's all there, all the time. Every bowl matchup, NFL late season games, all the way to NBA hardwood battles, college hoops tip offs. Bet online has you locked in all year long. And if you love UFC fights, head and NHL futures, Betonline is the place to get in on all of the action. And when it's time to switch gears, dive into Betonline's casino, packed with hundreds of the hottest slots, classic table games, live dealers and massive jackpots waiting to be hit. And don't forget the VIP program with exclusive level up bonuses, weekly cash boosts and and rewards design for serious players. Head to betonline today because at betonline, the game starts here.

[Show Announcer]

From Corolla One studios in Glendale, California, this is the Adam Carolla Show. Adam's guest today, Matthew and Gunnar Nelson. Plus the news with Jason Mayhem Miller. And with a holiday reminder that Gavin Newsom is the grift that keeps on grifting. Adam Carolla.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, get it on. Got to get on that church I gotta mandate. You get it on now. Thanks for tuning in. That's tone, friend. All right, should we do some news Mayhem?

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Yeah, we should get right into it. Kind of dark and sad here. Rob Reiner's troubled son has been charged with fatally stabbing the famed director and his wife Michelle at their Los Angeles homes, authorities say on Monday.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, so crazy. Yeah, crazy, yeah. Real dark.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Spinal Tap, one of the best movies ever made.

[Adam Carolla]

And Princess Bride and all the. All that, yeah.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Stand by an outspoken liberal, a man after his politics. Yeah, and, you know, real sad to see some family relationship go sour. His son was in and out of rehab many times since the age of 15 and doing at least 17 stints and treatment. Spent nights on the street and, you know, I don't know, had a troubled life, but, you know, was a television director and by all accounts, you know, a successful man on his own, apart from his father.

[Adam Carolla]

I forgot the sure Thing, which is a good movie that people kind of forget about, but it's a funny movie. It's very Rob Reiner Y. It's a little smaller than What? You know, the Princess Riding and Harry Met Sally and that kind of stuff. But the sure thing was John Cusack when he was normal and likable and young and it was just, it was good.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

This guy was the best director. Yeah, a really great director with, you know, such eye for detail and funny little timing and, you know, he gave a lot to the culture. He really did.

[Adam Carolla]

He. I mean. Well, first off, he was married to Penny Marshall. Did you know that?

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

I did.

[Adam Carolla]

And she died fairly youngishly not too long ago. But I went to school with their daughter Tracy, who went to. They lived in like. So my mom's house was in North Hollywood and my grandparents house was in a marginally better place in North Hollywood, probably about a mile, maybe a mile and a quarter apart. But when you walk there, you would go by Rob and Penny Marshall's house, the Reiners house. They had a big place on the corner in the San Fernando Valley, like kind of not Studio city kind of North Hollywood. What would be Valley Village. Now I got it. And their daughter Tracy, he. A daughter Tracy, who's 61 years of age because she was in my grade at Colfax. So she went to Colfax elementary and then later on she became friends. I hadn't seen her in a million years. I went to Moon Zappa's house and she was friends with, I guess, Moon Zappa. Yeah, and she. Oh, she was in. Oh yeah, she was in the movie too. What the hell's the movie? A League of Their Own. That's right, I forgot. Yeah, it's sad. Someone has to die before you start getting into all their work and you kind of go, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

He was. I mean, obviously, I guess we saw him initially and all in the Family and it just kept going. But so he was a guy who was like militantly against Trump, but a lovely guy to sit and have a chat with.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

It's funny because all this you see is like from the before times, before we got very like hyper politicized where you didn't care, you know, the politics of the guy who made the movie, you know. And everyone can universally agree that most of these films, that we love them like they're beloved to the culture. You don't have to dig in to 80 years of tweets, you know, to determine whether you like this piece of art.

[Adam Carolla]

I don't know what the story was. I heard there was an argument with the sun at like Conan o'. Brien.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Yeah, that's the subtle butt. Is that dmc? Says that, yeah, Conan o' Brien's party. They had a loud argument that other people overheard and then that carried over until the daughter found them at 3:30 in the morning.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, 3:30 in the morning or 3:30 in the afternoon?

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Oh, I'm sorry.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, I think the afternoon.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Yes, yes.

[Adam Carolla]

Sorry. God. I mean, first off, I mean, life is a little unpredictable, I would say. Also, it's gotta be weird to know that you're like. People go, okay, so everyone dies, right? All right, so you have a heart attack or you're in your hospital bed or you're sitting there at an intersection. A drunk driver just plow runs the red. But having your son kill you, that's not a good last thought.

[Matthew Nelson]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

You know what I mean?

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Yeah, I thought about that.

[Adam Carolla]

And I always pray that these people were asleep or something. I don't know how and I don't want to know, but the knowledge, you know, it's one thing.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

It's been reported that there was an argument before and I don't know, I'm not sure if they're sleep ace.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, here's what I do. I guess I just sort of hope that in a world where there are no good outcomes that the best outcome is somebody was not able to process. Like Phil Hartman. Phil Hartman got shot by his wife, right? I think he was sleeping when he got shot by his wife. I don't know, but I think he was sleeping. And getting shot by your wife sucks.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

But the best way is to go.

[Adam Carolla]

But at least if you're asleep, it's better than standing in front of her begging her to put the gun down. Nah.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

But what if you wake up for like a 16 second snooze bar of death, huh?

[Adam Carolla]

That'd be a good thing. Like, you click a snooze and I'm saying, sam. No, not Sam Cooke. Marvin Gaye was shot down at work by his dad. He looked at his. He was looking at his dad when his dad killed him. Phil Hartman didn't know what was going on and maybe never did. You know what I'm saying? You'd hope. Yeah, that's the way I'd like it. So whenever I hear these stories, I just hope for whatever the least brutal scenario happen. But it doesn't look like this. But that's just.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Let me tell you. I've been stabbed and you wake up when you get stabbed.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, yeah? Well, who stabbed you?

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Oh, man, Craig's Ryan got me pretty good. Yeah, it's a whole thing.

[Adam Carolla]

He stabbed you? What kind of knife?

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Switchblade Mm, Yeah, pretty good. I caught it like Steven Seagal, but still got through.

[Adam Carolla]

You caught it with your hand?

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

I caught his wrist and gave him a flip over like Steven Seagal. Meanwhile, I didn't know door was locked.

[Adam Carolla]

That you'd been stabbed?

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Oh, no, I knew I'd been stabbed.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, you knew you'd been stabbed?

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

He's trying to stab me in the heart and I blocked like that. And then it got stuck in my bone for a brief moment.

[Adam Carolla]

In your forearm?

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

In my upper arm. And then caught his hand and spin him like Steven Seagal and got away. But then guess what? Door was locked.

[Adam Carolla]

The door was locked?

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

So you couldn't get down?

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Got two in the back before I subdued him.

[Adam Carolla]

Two stabs in the back.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Correct.

[Adam Carolla]

From him?

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Correct.

[Adam Carolla]

Wow. He was on a mission, man.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. Actor Phil Hartman was asleep in his bed, was fatally shot by his wife, Bryn Hartman, and murdered. Suicide. Right.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

But, like, who knew he was asleep? You know what I'm saying? Like, do they have rem?

[Adam Carolla]

Well, I think a lot of it is where the bullet enters and that kind of stuff and how they do it. But if somebody shot me in the middle of the night, there might be a good chance I'd be asleep. So I think he was, but I just hope the Reiners were asleep somehow. I don't know.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Well, now I hope he gets in the yard and, you know, I take care of him. The.

[Adam Carolla]

What are you talking about?

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Yeah, Nick Reiner. I mean, look, he's going to go up for this. Like, there's no way to talk your way out of that? I don't think so. So this guy is already in custody and will remain there for the remainder of his years?

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, I mean, it's Menende esque, if you think about it.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

It's very bizarre. But.

[Adam Carolla]

But Rob. Rob was a menchie guy. He was youthful and he was energetic and he's like this. Said he'd come on this show. I don't know. He's been on once or twice probably, and he kind of knew where I was politically, but he still wanted to talk comedy and have a laugh.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

That's how it is, man. I feel like comedians can be that.

[Adam Carolla]

Way and all that. So he's going to be missed. And what a crazy. I mean, it just doesn't get any further.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

It's still like affecting us right now. Just happened. It's just, you know, you know, settle in right now. It doesn't even settle in yet.

[Adam Carolla]

All right, what else?

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

No, to lighten that mood. Except maybe telling you that flying cars are taking off.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh yeah.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Aeronautics are turning sci fi into reality. Beginning production on the world's first ever flying car. They left model A Ultralight, which will likely be available to customers by early 2026.

[Adam Carolla]

I have seen a lot of news on flying cars lately. Now flying cars go back to like the 40s and the 50s. And the thing about like early models of flying cars, like from the 50s, it looked like a VW bug with the back of a Cessna tail on it and the two wings. And it was like. It's not exactly a flying car.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Your era was that. My era was what was called a Moeller Merlin. They said it was just around the corner. You could look that up. They were saying since the 80s they're about to put this into production. But Alev actually did it in mistake of pre sale for 300 grand.

[Adam Carolla]

Stuff's been moving fast and I think it's. I'll tell you what a lot of it is. I think it's the advent of battery technology.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Yes.

[Adam Carolla]

That batteries are notoriously heavy. I mean they are bricks, man. And so you can't do an electric flying car with an old school battery. But the technology has moved fast. And on all the drone stuff and all the propeller driven stuff, and now there's all these like personal flying crafts, you know, where you get into it. It's not really a car, but it's like you can fly yourself around all these quad electric motors and everything and it's pretty cool. Like it's getting there. I don't know. I can't imagine in California them letting you do any of this shit. I know they're just gonna say no to all of it.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

You can only fly it in your field, you know.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

And even that is regular, heavily regulated. I didn't even ask for the guides to pull a clip or anything. It says that it can perform a vertical takeoff just like straight up into there and has 110 mile flight range and 100 or 220 mile driving range. So that's the numbers on it. And they already have 3500 pre orders. 3500 totaling a billion dollars.

[Adam Carolla]

And are they making them out here or whenever they're.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Yeah, you know, this, this article didn't tell me where the manufacturer was actually. Yeah, I would have Sumo be Silicon Valley facility. They have. But I don't know where the majority of the car parts will be made, you know, because usually they'll say something like this where they assemble a lot of the parts that are Made foreign?

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

What do you think? You'll get one. You're going to be in line for this. I think you could drop 300 grand on a flying car, get to work, and then 10 minutes.

[Adam Carolla]

The one I was looking at one online was cheaper, but again, it wasn't a flying car. It was like a personal flying timeout.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

You taking a jetpack to the studio.

[Adam Carolla]

It was kind of that this one had. It had a parachute that would fire. Like you could fire your parachute, but, you know, with computers, like, there's so much they can do now. You know what I mean? Obviously, it's so much safer than it would have been, but.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

So you mean like autopilot? Oh, here we go. We do have some.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, this is what I was.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Oh, this is what you're looking at.

[Adam Carolla]

Looking at.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Not bad. Yeah, I like this setup.

[Adam Carolla]

I mean, it's basically somebody saying, well, you know what a quad or a 4Runner is? Or like one of those ATVs, or like, you know, look, somebody invented a jet ski in like 1979. You know what I mean? They went, here's your personal watercraft. Like you have a jet ski for you to get around on a lake or an ocean or whatever. And then somebody came out with like a quad runner or those ATVs or whatever. This is basically that for the air, right? Just you. You can get around. It's this one I was looking at was not. I don't know, it was like $125,000 or something like that. You know, the flying time is going to be a little limited and there' be a lot of stuff, but I mean, you know, we're kind of there.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Yeah, we live in the future.

[Adam Carolla]

I'm trying to, but, you know, it's going to have to be this. I never really thought about this, but the Corollas. We had cars when I was a kid, but they were piece of shit cars.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Infamously a Bug, right?

[Adam Carolla]

We had. My mom had a Dodge Dart. My mom would buy Dodge Dart. My mom would buy. I'll put it to you this way. I just left LAX and left my car in the parking lot there for like four and a half days. It was 300 bucks is what I had to pay to park that car. That's what my mom paid for the car.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

For the car.

[Adam Carolla]

That was her car. Like a Dodge Dart. A VW square back was like a station wagon vw. Like, that's. That's what my mom did. So the point is, is in the future, like 50 years from now, there's gonna be some Corollas. I mean, I don't mean Corollas, but some version of us. And then we're gonna have the shitty old flying car. Like, we're gonna have the crappy one, the flying. You know, because it's not like we didn't have a car. We didn't have. It's not. We didn't ride a horse. We had a car. We just had a shitty old car all the time. But as technology moves on, now people have a shitty old 27 inch color TV, but that's more TV than we had. So someone's gonna have shitty flying cars, you know, like busted up, like duct tape on the.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

No catalytic converter. Muffler hanging on the 285 sign. I get it, I get it.

[Adam Carolla]

Drone cars will have to return to home tech, which will make parking at the airport obsolete.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Oh, so you just ship yourself over there to LAX and then get out.

[Adam Carolla]

Tell the car to go home.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

That makes sense. Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, man, I get it. Yeah, that. Yeah, because it's fucking nuts. And by the way, can I say this? There should be. You know what's illegal? It's illegal, okay? They tried this for a long time. Gift certificates. You would get a gift certificate back when everyone got gift certificates. And then you'd go into the Saks Fifth Avenue and try to use it. And they go, sorry, it expired. But I was always like, what do you mean expired? Somebody spent 200 bucks two years ago. But I still have. I haven't used it. How did it expire? You're still in business. It's against the law, by the way, to do that.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Is it? Yes.

[Adam Carolla]

Because this is the greatest windfall ever for a store. Or whether you sell pizzas or whether you sell slacks. You just tell everyone it expired. Honor that anymore. And then you go, okay. And you never buy yourself a gift card. Your boss bought it for you or something.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Percentage of people that never use gift cards at all. I'm one of those, too. I'll forget about it.

[Adam Carolla]

If you go into any executive or celebrity. If you go to Kimmel's office right now and open the thin drawer at the top, you'll see at least 17 grand worth of gift cards and shit on there. I wanted to do this. What about this? Every single executive, like, in the industry or talent or in music or whatever, you'd walk by their office, you see the platinum records, they're leaning against the wall. They're all on the floor. They're all on the floor. And there's a desk Filled with gift certificates that they'll never fucking use. And it could be for, you know, TGI Fridays, and it could be a go karting place. It's just that I just want to start a business where I just went to every single office in Hollywood and just went celebrity clean out. I'll take all the platinum albums off of the floor, and I'll take all here and I'll donate it.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

You know, I'm installing these.

[Adam Carolla]

I'll give you a write off. It'll be a tax write off, but yeah. So this should be legal. It should be legal to go. Just like it should. It is illegal to not honor a gift card. Yeah, but they don't tell people, no.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Matter how long, how many years it is. Because if I bust a chili's car from 1986, you know, if the company.

[Adam Carolla]

Is still around, somebody figured out, I think in California they made a law. There's one. You cannot tell people your shit's expired when the store's still open. Yeah, that's a consistent.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

You feel my whole back from a baby back ribs.

[Adam Carolla]

So somebody should do this with parking, because this shit happens to me all the time. You pull into Burbank, you leave at 8:00am on a Friday, and you come back Saturday at 9:30 in the morning. You're like, well, that's two days. And you're like, no, no, that's 25 and a half hours, bro. And they're like, yeah, but we charge you for two. It's like, okay, we're charging by the hour, we're charging by the day. Since when does getting 90 minutes into the next day, why is that two days? Why is that two days? And why is it legally two days? And then I would say if it's under 12 hours, it's not the end of the second fucking day. I've had my motorcycle towed. I had it towed on like a Friday night at midnight. I went there Saturday morning to go pick it up. Two days. I'm like, two days. It's been seven hours today. Friday it was. We got it on Friday today, Saturday. They fucked your shit up with that. It should be.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

You're delving into a whole nother area of poor tax of like, when you live in a crappy neighborhood, it's $6.75. Oh yeah, maybe. But then you lose that. And guess what? It's Tuesday.

[Adam Carolla]

Ha.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Street sweeping. $300 ticket.

[Adam Carolla]

Kablam every. I haven't got a parking ticket since I've been rich. I know I was poor. I've had Three motorcycles towed. Three. You barely have to park your car, all right?

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

You just like walk out and some dude in a nice vest runs up and gets in there.

[Adam Carolla]

Hello, Mr. Corolla.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Exactly.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, the street sweeper. The get up is devastating. I mean, somebody, what I want to yell at everyone in, like, the LA City Council, like, they go, you guys never stop talking about poor people and brown people and working people and stuff. Stop fucking them up with all the parking shit and all the regulation. Keep them bored between that. Keep them bored.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

That's what they're doing.

[Adam Carolla]

And the $6 an hour gas. Yes. These guys are driving fucking pickup trucks. It's the meanest thing to do.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

I recently ran into, I sponsored a young fighter. I had him use the truck, right? Thousands of dollars in parking tickets came to my house. Thousands. Because he was living in the hood and he's parking. I figure anytime he saw a fire hydrant, he parked in front of me. You know, it's just, there's nowhere to park in those areas. So guess what? This kid is just kept below the poverty line no matter what. Even if he worked the eight hour at a dump.

[Adam Carolla]

It's fucking brutal. It is brutal.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

So mean to the kids. So mean to the people.

[Adam Carolla]

I, when I was, I think I was telling this to Dr. Drew, but when I was doing earthquake rehab in Koreatown off of Wilshire and whatever, Western.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Okay, but I like that area. It's great. Tofu.

[Adam Carolla]

Okay, but let me say this. They had, all the apartments we were working on were from the 20s and the 30s. No subterranean parking, no parking. They would just build these big units, five stories, whole bunch of units. No parking. Because people didn't really have cars and it wasn't an ordinance. Now if you want to build a condo, they go, okay, we need two parking spaces for every thousand square feet or whatever the hell it is, for every bedroom or whatever that thing is. This wasn't that. There was no. We're rebuilding this place. We're doing earthquake rehab. We pull in, we had to park on the street. Yeah. And way down the street. But remember, street cleaner? Street cleaner would be like Tuesday between 10 and noon or whatever it is. So we, first off, the street cleaner didn't come half the time, but the meter mate came every time and handed all the fucking tickets out. So we'd be on a job site with about 25 dudes rehabbing, doing earthquake rehab. And the call would go out.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Oh, man.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, street Sweeper Day, Tuesday, 3 o'.

[Matthew Nelson]

Clock.

[Adam Carolla]

Everyone have to come downstairs off the roof, whatever and go walk out, go find their truck, trucks and go, move. And I couldn't find any place to park. Well, the street cleaner went down and I saw the wet tracks going down the street. And it was like no parking between, by the way, the big window between 10 and noon. Like, get your shit together, pick a time. But 10 and noon, and the street cleaner didn't come half time. But this time it did. And I saw the wet tracks going down the street. It was 11:30 in the morning. And I pulled back on to the side, hack the system. And the guy got the meter maid came in. So I started writing me a ticket. I said, you gotta be kidding me, man. We're trying to work on this building here. No parking between 10 and noon. And I said, read the rest of the sign for the street sweeper who just passed. And that's why there's fresh wet tracks down, so I can pull in because he's passed and he's like, got you on the technicality. Nope, nope, nothing, nothing between. Nothing between. You cannot park between noon or between 10am and 2.

[Matthew Nelson]

Boom.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Got you with the rules.

[Adam Carolla]

And I said, for the street sweeper who has passed, it's the only time I ever did. Only time I got all.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

It was a long reach on this meter maid. Or did you have the, you know, jab on it?

[Adam Carolla]

I think I had the jab. I thought that's why the only time I ever did this, I went, what's your name? Cause I want to talk, I want to talk to your fucking supervisor. Because like we're here working and you're basically harassing us. Yes, we're doing a job for the city. We're doing an earthquake rehab job for the city. And you're riding us.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

And right in front of Javan la, there'll be a sweet little lady buying plushie dolls. Okay, 4 o', clock, 4 o' clock, bus lane. There's a meter maid out there with the ticket book putting a ticket and there's a guy snatching the car immediately. I kind of like them for their cold hearted technicality.

[Adam Carolla]

That's such a bitch. All right, well, Nelson, as in Matthew and Gunnar Nelson are going to be joining me next. Good job with the news. Mayhem, sad as it is. Take a quick break. Be right back with Nelson right after this. Sisu. Well, if you're like me, you're a sucker for a good action movie in these days with Hollywood so bloated, lazy, self important. When something actually works, it really stands out. That's why I was so Excited to watch Sisu Road to Revenge. Screen rant called it the finish John Wick and that's dead on this movie's wall to wall action. It's a high octane revenge story about a man who goes after the people responsible for killing his family. It's fun, it's brutal. Doesn't waste any of your time with lectures on morality, stuff you didn't ask for. It's all action, baby. If you're looking for a straight ahead action movie that actually delivers, this one is worth your time. Am I right, Dawson?

[Show Announcer]

Sisu Road to Revenge is available now on Prime Video, Apple TV and Fandango. Sisu Road to Revenge. Get it now on digital Shopify.

[Adam Carolla]

The new year's coming up fast and at some point you've got to stop complaining and actually do something. A lot of you have skills, you've got ideas. What you're missing isn't talent, it's taking the first step. If you want to start 2026 off right, start a business with Shopify. Shopify gives you everything you need to sell online, sell in person and build the store you've been talking about for years. Instead of just boring people with dinner conversation, they've got built in AI tools that help you write product descriptions, edit photos and get your stuff looking professional even if you're not. The marketing tools are baked in the platform scales as you grow so you're not ripping everything out and starting over once things take off and they're gonna. This is about momentum. Stop waiting for permission. Stop waiting for the perfect time. Build something and get going now. Am I right, Dawson?

[Show Announcer]

In 2026, stop waiting and start selling with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com corolla. Go to shopify.com corolla that's shopify.com corolla Hear your first this new year with Shopify by your side, it's time to celebrate Christmas with the Ace man.

[Adam Carolla]

I mean holy, holy Christmas. And the best time of the year.

[Show Announcer]

Thursday, December 18th at the Sagebrush Cantino.

[Adam Carolla]

There's no roasting in the open fire.

[Show Announcer]

Join Adam Carolla and the crew.

[Adam Carolla]

I'm Ted Koppel.

[Show Announcer]

Plus special guest Brad Williams.

[Matthew Nelson]

And the food they decrease.

[Adam Carolla]

My true love came to me. I partitioned the parents. It's wonderful. And oh, breaking news.

[Show Announcer]

Plus an ugly sweater contest with your chance to win lunch with Adam and the staff lady.

[Adam Carolla]

How we for the Harley FA la la la la la la la la.

[Show Announcer]

A special Adam Corolla show Christmas at the Sagebrush Cantina on December 18.

[Adam Carolla]

Feliz Navida.

[Show Announcer]

Join us for the brightest season of the year. Get your Tickets [e-mail] Nelson the Nelson.

[Adam Carolla]

Twins, Matthew and Gunner are here. Not here, but they're in the middle of a tour, so they're coming to us via Zoom. Good to see you guys. It's been a long time.

[Matthew Nelson]

It's been a long time, Adam. It has. We're going to be kind of like the two headed parrot. We tend to talk over each other. So Gunner's actually in a recording studio doing the audiobook portion of our book release that comes out tomorrow. I'm glad we got this in before this. And I'm actually at his house right now defiling everything that I can see. We had to get in different podcast studios, but what are brothers for, right? Gun. I'll make sure your house is still here when you get back, but there won't be much left of it.

[Adam Carolla]

So you guys. Great. Well, you guys are in Tennessee now, right?

[Matthew Nelson]

We are in fact in Tennessee. We're in Franklin, which is a little south of Nashville proper.

[Gunnar Nelson]

It's a little less crazy.

[Matthew Nelson]

Gunner moved here a long time ago. I know we came to see you when you were on Lovelines ages ago. But he moved out here right after a tour with Sticks in Frampton that we did where he just decided there's no reason why I need to, I think. Wasn't there like a road rage episode, Gunner, that finally was your tipping point.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Yeah, it was kind of one of those things where we were going back and forth. We were playing most of our shows to the east of the Mississippi and then flying all the way back after every show to Los Angeles. Only because, Adam, that's where our family really came from. We've always been Los Angeles or in the area.

[Matthew Nelson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Hadn't really thought about it. And I flew back. I think it was on a. On a Monday. I arrived around, at LAX around 2 o' clock and got in my, my car to get home to the Valley. And it was a 405, middle of the day. Traffic absolutely stopped literally for no reason. And right in front of me, these two guys got out of their car and started beating the crap out of each other in the middle of the freeway. And it just had one of these moments where I went, what am I doing here? I can live anywhere, you know. And we'd been doing some writing with some guys in Nashville for. For about three or four years. And I just thought it was a really nice place. To me, it kind of struck me as Los Angeles before it started believing its own press releases. Everybody's really kind of down to earth and really normal. And as Matt mentioned, no state tax. So you got a lot of. Not only musicians who live here, but a lot of sports guys live here, too, so they can avoid that. And it's also an hour flight from 85% of populated America, so touring is really, really easy.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, well, I can't remember if I've ever asked you guys this, and I must have brought it up and I got a half answer at some point, but I can't remember who gave it to me, so I'm just gonna redo it, which is I. I grew up in the Valley as well. I went to Walter Reed junior high, and Mr. Nelson was the cool gym coach. We had Mr. Sapanzi. He was angry. We had Mr. Walters, he was angry. We had one other one. I don't think of it. We had a lot of angry gym teachers back then. But Mr. Nelson, who looked like Ricky Nelson, and all the girls loved him, was the nice one. And he looked just like your dad.

[Matthew Nelson]

That, in fact, is our second cousin.

[Adam Carolla]

That's your second cousin.

[Matthew Nelson]

He is indeed. Yeah, I remember he was a. I forgot where he went to where he was coaching, but, yeah, it was Walter Reed. That's right. You know, I was.

[Gunnar Nelson]

That's crazy.

[Matthew Nelson]

I was down the street for a little bit. I went one year at Crespi, which is right down the street. The Catholic school thing. And before that, it was Harvard. Before it was Harvard, Westlake. Before that, Buckley. We were like we talk about in the book. We were private school kids until the money was completely gone and our parents got, like this whirlwind divorce. So everything changed overnight. We actually wound up finishing our schooling at Palisades High. So we were kind of like, kind of going all over the place. Went over the hill, which, you know, it's amazing it took that long for that prayer to have the school burn down happen. But it did take effect. But, yeah, we were kind of all over the place. But you are correct, sir. Yeah, that's our second cousin. Was Mr. Nelson the coach.

[Adam Carolla]

It was uncanny how much he looked like your dad. I think he was probably younger, but he looked like your dad when your dad was 28 or something like that.

[Matthew Nelson]

Yeah, pretty much. And he was always cool. Man.

[Gunnar Nelson]

They're all chill.

[Matthew Nelson]

And as you can tell, it's kind of like the force is strong in these ones. I mean, we look like Nelson's. It's Very weird. You know, Gunner and I got a little bit of. Our mom was a Harmon, so Mark Harmon's our uncle, you know, ncaa Rusty Gibbs. And so we got a little bit of that too, especially in the coloring. You know, we kind of like, we look like, you know, very Nordic Nelsons. I mean, we came from Sweden, but our mother's genetics definitely kind of added their own little seasoning.

[Adam Carolla]

So Ozzie and Harriet were grandparents, right?

[Matthew Nelson]

Correct, yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

And you know, they started. I mean, they must have been out here before half the freeways were completed. I mean, they're, they're sort of, they're, they're like working in the industry in the 40s and the 50s. Right.

[Matthew Nelson]

30S actually. They started. The other big band was a big deal in the mid-30s. Ozzy had the Ozzy and Nelson Orchestra and they had a number one record in 35, I think. Wow. And they toured for like 14 years. They got famous on radio as a radio comedy duo. Because when they were singing, you know, Oz and Harriet, Harriet was a babe. I know it's weird saying that about your grandma, but Oz was smitten by her and she played hard to. She was so talented. She was the first lead singer, female, in a big band. So that's cool credit to get.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

And Ricky was Little Ricky, I guess, in the show. But then there was Little Ricky from Lucy as well. So there was a couple Little Rickys floating around.

[Gunnar Nelson]

There were Little Rickys.

[Matthew Nelson]

You know, from a physiological standpoint, Little Ricky was really more the whole I Love Lucy thing. Our dad, he was the irrepressible Ricky. So on the irrepressible Ricky, you know.

[Gunnar Nelson]

A great adjective there.

[Adam Carolla]

So I mean, your dad was one of the biggest stars around for a while. I mean, he was in movies, he was in tv, he was gold records, number one hits and a kind of a tiger beat, sort of good looking, sort of at the very inception of the kind of young poster boy, kind of magazine kid. Right. Like, I mean, he was really the inception of that stuff. Right.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Well, he wasn't just good looking, Adam, he was shockingly good looking. So that was a blessing and a curse for him too because like being on television, he was the first guy to utilize the power of television to market music. Really back in that particular day when rock and roll was brand new, no one was actually using television at all. And he had the benefit of growing up in front of America on the family show. And at that point he was really kind of considered everybody's little brother. Like, you know, Matthew was saying he's kind of a wise ass. And he was always getting the punchlines. David was the straight man in the comedy routine, and that really kind of worked. They went away for summer hiatus when our dad was 15, went to Europe as a family, came back, and all of a sudden Pop showed up for the first episode of that season. And he was stunning. And he'd started singing on the show. It was an episode called Ricky the Drummer. And he was.

[Matthew Nelson]

He.

[Gunnar Nelson]

He did some really great work on that. And it was just like this juggernaut, Grandpa Ozzie, man. He was a. He was a Renaissance man. He wrote, produced, edited, directed, and starred in all 435 episodes of those shows and still holds the longest record as live action sitcoms are concerned for the longevity of it. And, you know, he actually was supporting our father when he wanted to start singing. The story goes that there was a place down there on Sunset and Vine where all the kids used to go back in the day to listen to records called Wallace Music City.

[Matthew Nelson]

Yeah.

[Gunnar Nelson]

And our dad used to go down there in between the scenes he was filming and listen to records like all his other friends. And there was a little booth in the back where some genius had designed kind of like a karaoke system that would cut singles of the day minus the vocal. You could sing to them and they would give you a little demo record on a lathe. And there was a date our dad had had about a week earlier with the girl named Arlene. He went to Hollywood High School, and Arlene was kind of like the popular girl at Hollywood High and was playing hard to get with our dad. And he finally got a date with her. And he got in the car. She was a block of ice. To pass the time and kill the awkward moment, he turned on the radio and Elvis Presley was singing. And she started swooning to Elvis. And in desperation, he said the first thing that came to his head, which he wasn't going to do. He said, well, I'm going to make a record. And she just laughed at him. And he knew in that moment he was going to make a record. Just one to hand Arlene at school on Monday to prove her wrong. So he went down to Wallach's. He cut a copy of Fats Domino's I'm Walking and was playing it in his bedroom at the Ozzie and Harriet house. And Ozzy heard it playing through the wall. And he. It was loud enough. He was writing the episode for the next week. And he walked in and said, hey, Rick, what is that that's playing so Loud. And he goes, well, Pop, that's me and Ozzy. And it just went, wow, what a great idea for a show. Because at that point, writing all those episodes, he's getting short on material. So they wrote it into this episode, not really knowing what was really going to happen from doing that. He had an idea. I tried to get our dad a record deal. No one would give him a record deal or take him seriously because he was a kid and a comedian from that show. So he did a side deal with Verve Records, which was a jazz label at the time, for singles. He put them in the stores because at that time they were really talking like free milk and a cow. If you see someone singing on tv, the kids weren't going to go down and buy it. Ozzy proved them wrong. It sold a million copies the first week when that episode aired. And Ricky sang for the first time and he wound up selling half a billion with a B singles in his career.

[Adam Carolla]

Wow.

[Gunnar Nelson]

And There were only two artists in the 50s, believe it or not, rock and roll artists that had number one albums in rock and roll. It was Elvis and Ricky.

[Adam Carolla]

I have a vague memory of watching all those k Tel Record compilation 70s.

[Matthew Nelson]

Oh, I remember that commercials.

[Adam Carolla]

And they had a Nat King Cole one. And I think there was a Ricky Nelson.

[Gunnar Nelson]

All My Best. It was called All My Best.

[Matthew Nelson]

I remember that one. Yeah, I remember those records too. That's right. That was very much the late 70s, early 80s thing that was happening. I remember that.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, it was kind of surreal. And they, you know, they'd put Traveling man in there and then it'd go right to Garden Party, you know, and they'd play all these snippets. They'd have. I think Smokey Robinson had one.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Oh, yeah. Hey, dad, it's Smokey. I remember those commercials. Yeah.

[Matthew Nelson]

You know the reason why they did.

[Adam Carolla]

That, he said, turn it down. And he said, but dad, it's Smokey. Smokey.

[Matthew Nelson]

You know, a lot of those guys did that, our dad included. Because the record companies that wound up with the records later on the distribution rights, they had a stranglehold on everything. And the royalty was so bad that one thing that those guys that stole from all those artists didn't catch in their contracts was a right to re record. There was a restriction that only, you know, they couldn't re record the stuff, but the artist could. So that's why you see all those re recorded masters now. It's the only way these artists could get paid.

[Gunnar Nelson]

So that's how that all started was.

[Matthew Nelson]

All those Records, like, the whole, hey, it's smokey stuff. It was really more of a. These guys were broke and needed to eat. That was the only way to do it.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. And I mean, so your dad was such a matinee idol, and you kind of wonder. I mean, you're talking about touring earlier with Frampton. Frampton sort of had that, too. Like, nobody knew what a great guitar player he was. Cause they're so caught up in his blonde hair and his impish looks. He was such a look, in a weird way, I wonder if that hurts in that career. I mean, it's good. It gets you a lot of attention. But I don't know.

[Matthew Nelson]

We had the same thing. The same thing happened to us. Same thing happened to our grandfather. He was a matinee idol in his day, too. The thing that's the irony is it's all important. The image is seriously important. It's entertainment. That's what it is. You got to. You got to give a crap, you know, you got to do it that way. But you're right. And I think the one person that brought Frampton to the forefront again was David Bowie. David Bowie brought him out as a live guitar player on the let's Dance tour.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

[Matthew Nelson]

So that's what broke him. And, you know, I guess in the end of things, even with our dad, I just. I feel weird saying this. I wrote this in the book, too. The last time we were very close with our dad, we lost more. 18. And we loved. We loved music together. He admired what we were doing and vice versa. And we communicated that way. Last time we saw him play or one of the last shows was in Ontario, California. And it was a.

[Gunnar Nelson]

It was.

[Matthew Nelson]

It was a crap gig. It was, you know, a favor for somebody. It paid, but it was. He was embarrassed by it. It was like. Like an RV show. And they had a main stage there, and it was close to us. So we drove down to see him. And he was a little bit bummed that we got to see him like that. Because normally he was used to playing, you know. Well, he'd play a lot of places, but Universal Amphitheater was another place we saw was the last thing. And I just remember him feeling really shy about it. And we had this weird moment. And I said, well, Pop, what's going on? He said, well, I'm just embarrassed you're seeing me here. And, Pop, come on, man. There's a crowd out there, right? He said, yeah. I said, you getting paid? He said, yes, and go out there and kick their ass. And he got me this great smile. He went out there and he destroyed it that day. I mean, he was so good. He just was. He was always good looking. He always sang. And I remember he was out there, I was watching, I turned to my brother and I said, you know, man, God forbid something happens to him, they're going to call him a legend. And four months later was the accident. And I've always carried that with me a little bit. I'm not saying that I invoked that, but yeah, immediately afterwards, it was the legendary Ricky Nelson. Rick Nelson, Garden Party Traveling man was the first. This, you know, poor little fool was the first number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, 1957. I mean, people started realizing, man, he was there the whole time.

[Adam Carolla]

You know, I don't know who was behind it, but everyone just sounded like the Jordanaires.

[Matthew Nelson]

It was, it was the Jordan.

[Adam Carolla]

Was it the Jordan?

[Matthew Nelson]

A Jordan?

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, that was.

[Matthew Nelson]

Yeah, that was Elvis contract.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Yeah, right.

[Matthew Nelson]

They were under contract with Elvis.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, yeah, that was a Jordan Ayers. Wow.

[Matthew Nelson]

Yeah, that was. That was a Jordan Ayers on that. And they, they could record on Ricky's records. They just couldn't publicize it. But guys like you go, well, that has to be the Jordan Ayers. It didn't help.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Yeah, it's. It was.

[Adam Carolla]

It sounds like whoever was behind Elvis was behind your dad.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Well, don't forget the fact that his lead guitar player was the legendary James Burton, arguably the first guitar hero. And Elvis was trying to steal James from our dad's band since the very beginning. But Ozzy was smart. He had signed James to a seven year exclusive contract with our dad and our dad let him go right before Elvis picked him up, just in time to do the 69 comeback special that Elvis did. So that, that whole play at James thing that Elvis said, that was James Burton he was talking about, who was Ricky's guitar player.

[Matthew Nelson]

You know, they had a really interesting relationship, Elvis and our dad, because Elvis was a little bit older and he treated our dad like a little brother. But he loved him and they loved each other. It was, it was a cool thing. But they were definitely kind of, I'm not saying frenemies, but very healthy competition because they would knock each other off the number one spot. One day Elvis called our dad. He was at Roosevelt in Hollywood, I think, making a movie or whatever. And this is pretty early. This is, I think, 1960, 61. And he said, you know, he called the Nelson house. It was easier to do that those days and asked him to play a football game. Down at this local park with him and his boys just to kind of pass the time. And so our dad showed up and Elvis was there in full tcb, lightning bolt uniforms and helmets with our dad in jeans and T shirts. And the game ended pretty quickly, you know, because those guys just creamed our dad's team. And the next week it happened again. And by the third week, our dad was kind of getting sick of getting beaten up. And James Burton was with him in the car. And our pop said, you know, I'm going to teach this guy a lesson. Next week's going to be different. He made a few phone calls. The next week they showed up. Now, by this point, word has gotten around Hollywood that Elvis Presley and Ricky Nelson are playing football games. And it's getting serious. And so there was just a huge crowd. And it's that park that's down Gunner. What is that little street, that little canyon that dumps out onto Sunset? I'm trying to remember, like Beverly Glen or something. There's a little park down there. That's where they played or something.

[Adam Carolla]

And you're talking about cold water. The one that's down Coldwater Canyon.

[Gunnar Nelson]

I think it's down Runyon Canyon. Oh, Runyon. I don't know.

[Matthew Nelson]

It's on the other. It's on the. It's on the. Near Sunset Boulevard. I just know that it was completely packed out. Our dad showed up and Elvis was there thinking, this is going to be another piece of cake.

[Gunnar Nelson]

And it's going to be now. Remember, Elvis is there with like, his guys were the Memphis mafia. These guys were street hoods, no neck in the entire group.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Gunnar Nelson]

And you know, our dad had all his Hollywood high friends up until that point. But, you know, Elvis was teasing. Elvis was teasing him, saying, come on, Rick, let's do this thing. He said, hang on a second. My.

[Adam Carolla]

My.

[Gunnar Nelson]

My band or my. My team's coming in right now. And a bus pulls into the parking lot, and the entire starting lineup of the l. A Rams files off the bus. Elvis didn't know our dad used the Rams to be extras on the set of ozzy and Harriet because they took directions so well.

[Matthew Nelson]

Yeah, it was like NCLA players and all that. Oh, it was. And that was the last time for some reason, Elvis ever played football against Rick.

[Adam Carolla]

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[Show Announcer]

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[Adam Carolla]

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[Matthew Nelson]

You brought up in our Deathsaver, you.

[Adam Carolla]

Brought up a very interesting point that I never really thought of. Although I have thought about it in the sense that I played football since I was 7. I played tackle football with pads, starting at 7 at the Valley Dolphins, East Valley Trojans, before the Valley Dolphins even were the East Valley Trojans. I had a few friends like the Boyd brothers, Henry and James. I had a few guys that left the East Valley Trojans and went to the Valley Dolphins back then because they had cooler uniforms at the Valley Dolphins.

[Matthew Nelson]

Yeah, kind of the turquoise and brown.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, yeah. But I remember. So it's like I talk to people all the time. Like you're right, like, you know, an extra or something, or you're trying to direct somebody and you go, just walk in. Stop right here, about five feet in, look to the right, look to the left and then exit the same direction. And they go, okay. And then you go, here we go. And they come walking in, they walk right through the scene to the other side. And you go, what? What are you doing? And I go, oh, I don't know. And then I realized that guys who played football have to remember the snap count, have to remember what to do on every play. And even though people think they're big meatheads, they know how to hit their mark. If you're running as a wide receiver or tight end, it's eight yards up, stop, turn right, you know, out, you know, it's real precision. So I would use those people for extras.

[Matthew Nelson]

It probably helped our uncle Mark out a lot when he, when he was, you know, in his acting career, you know, wound up as Gibbs and everything. But he was a first string quarterback at UCLA for two years. He was a really good football player. And our grandfather on that side of the family won the Heisman at Michigan in 1940. Tom Harmon.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, really?

[Matthew Nelson]

Oh, yeah. So two year old American. So he was, he was quite the football player. It's funny, our grandpa Ozzie was a quarterback at Rutgers, but he was like. He said his biggest achievement in his life was being the first string quarterback when he weighed 155 pounds.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Matthew Nelson]

You know, and then he got to meet and hang out with our other grandfather. What a, what a, you know, what a cool thing. But yeah, the football's in the family. Gunner used to, he was actually really. He was a middle linebacker, I was a receiver and I would always catch the ball. But man, I just got tired of getting set up and hit by those middle linebackers. I mean, there was a one time I caught the ball and won the game and I was literally, I couldn't catch my breath for 15 seconds. I just went, screw this. I'm just sticking with the guitar, you know, this is a much easier way of doing it.

[Adam Carolla]

I was thinking in the tragic department. And the good looking guy not being taken seriously enough. David Cassidy always pops into my head, you know, Wanted to rock and roll, wanted to be the next Jimi Hendrix. Ends up on a sitcom, ends up being a Tiger Beat guy. Now he's singing sort of bubblegum pop songs. He's got the. And all they want him to do is do the bubblegum stuff and all he wants to do is rock. But in a weird way, the look got in the way to agree with him. Right?

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Yeah.

[Matthew Nelson]

Well, Gunner was the last interview that he ever did. Gunner was really good friends with David, actually.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, wow.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Yeah, we had a really great conversation. Both of us were. We were back to back, Matt and I, with our band. Nelson played at the Mohegan sun in Connecticut, which I think you've played there, I'm not sure, but I believe you have. And he was playing the night before. We played on a Saturday, he played on the Friday. And we got a chance to visit for a long time and he let me know that at the Atlantic City Steel Pier, a legendary venue on the east coast, Ricky Nelson held the attendance record there. They actually thought the pier was going to collapse at the time from so many kids showing up to see the show. And he held the record until years later, David Cassidy, in the middle of all that, played it and matched and possibly beat Ricky Nelson's record. We started talking about that. And the interview that we did was really insightful, I thought, because he was talking about exactly what you just said up there. And the way he looked at it. He said, you know, the thing that gave me peace about the whole situation was the fact that teen idols, so to speak, they are a lot of women's very first crush. They're a safe crush to have first. It's a virtual boyfriend sort of sort of thing. And he found a little bit of nobility in that. So I'm glad he was able to find peace in that. In our father's case, he had to completely reinvent himself with what's credited as one of the first country rock bands with the Stone Canyon Band, and do a song like Garden Party, which was about that whole thing. If memories were all I sang, I'd Rather Drive a Truck song he wrote.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Gunnar Nelson]

And fortunately for the two of us, when we started making music, it was during that whole kind of a Laurel Canyon scene that was going on back in the day with all those greats that were playing down at the Troubadour Club. And we had people like Linda Ronstadt and the Crosby, Stills and Nash guys and Dylan coming over to our house when we were kids. Everybody was writing songs and they were kind of taking their own life experiences and memories and putting them to music. And fortunately for the two of us, our father, he didn't give us a lot of advice, but he said, boys, if you're going to do this, don't do what all the other kids in junior high and high school do. You know, don't go play the parties playing cover songs. Learn to write your own songs. They're going to be horrible in the beginning. They'll hopefully get better, and you're not going to have anybody wanting to hire you to play their parties. But if you're lucky, one of your songs is going to connect with people and it's going to be a part of their life and their soundtrack. And we took that to heart. So we started playing the LA clubs there when we were 12. And Adam, do you remember places like.

[Matthew Nelson]

We played Wong's, Madam Wong's, which was. Yeah, Madam Wong's. You know, that was the. That was the place to play. There was an upstairs and a downstairs.

[Adam Carolla]

They had clubs out here. And they had weirdly underage clubs, too, like clubs for teenagers and stuff. And Garden Party, famously, is Madison Square Garden. And I think it tells the story of your dad sort of coming back and not being received the way he thought he should be received or booed off the stage.

[Matthew Nelson]

Man, was he really boot off the stage.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, what year was that? Because they talk about Yoko and all that.

[Matthew Nelson]

71. It was 71 now.

[Gunnar Nelson]

It was for perspective. There was A promoter named Richard Nader. And he was doing these oldies concerts. And you gotta think about it. 1970, 71. The Times had changed. Our dad had been playing with his new country rock band, Long Hair, Sequins, Bell Bottoms, the whole thing, for like four or five years exclusively. He wasn't doing, you know, the oldies circuit at all on purpose. He hadn't done that. But he'd always wanted to play the Garden. And he said, look, Richard, I don't look the same at all anymore. Like I used to. They're gonna hate me. And he got talked into it. And like I mentioned, my dad had always wanted to play the Garden. So he shows up with his country rock band, and he saw Chuck Berry just in time, his friend Duck walking across the stage. And the audience was a sea of poodle skirts and saddle shoes. And they wanted nostalgia. And so he comes out on stage, he said instantly he could feel the hate coming off that audience.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Gunnar Nelson]

He did not want a black and.

[Matthew Nelson]

White television Ricky anymore, you know.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Gunnar Nelson]

You know, and so. So he played a couple of songs, new spins on his old hits and stuff. And then he went into a song he just released, which was kind of a relatively new song at the time, which was Honky Tonk Woman by the Rolling Stones, and got booed off the stage by 22,000 people that night just for.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

For.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Not that. So he kind of took that experience, and about a week later, it kind of came to him all at once. It was like this gift, just the words. And I mean, I've got the lyrics on my wall at my house. And I tell Matthew, I mean, if the house were on fire, I'd grab my Martin D18. And those lyrics and everything else can burn. It's right there. Because you can see he was caught in the moment, writing that song, turning the page. He didn't want to get up. Coffee cup stain on it, little production notes on it. It's the coolest thing. But that was the statement. It was a middle finger in a velvet glove to all these people who had discounted him his whole life for, you know, looking like a cover boy and doing all that stuff. He really felt he had something to say. The final irony is he had a giant hit with that song, which was about not singing all of his old songs all the time. And because it hit, he had to sing that song about not singing all the old songs for the rest of his career.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, I always thought. I mean, I thought it was a great song, but it was kind of like he'd rather Drive a truck. Like it told the story, you know, and it was well crafted. And it's what he. It's the advice he gave you.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Yes. Don't call it exactly. Right.

[Adam Carolla]

Another song. Pull something out of your own life and experiences. Yeah. I don't know why. I've always thought that the David Cassidy thing was sort of tragic and I don't know why. It is a little tragic to me.

[Show Announcer]

Well, it is.

[Gunnar Nelson]

I mean, he was definitely in a gilded cage his whole life. Because you're right, he wanted to be in the Rolling Stones. You know, he really did have some legitimate talent because.

[Matthew Nelson]

Italian guy. Yeah.

[Gunnar Nelson]

But you, but you got to think what television back in that day was like. And I mean. I mean, you think, man, if you're. If you get cast to be Tracy Partridge, you would think that you would at least be able to shake a tambourine in time, you know?

[Adam Carolla]

Well, I mean, that was the other part too. Is no one else actually recorded or played or did anything and it was all.

[Matthew Nelson]

Well, his mom did, though.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, his mom. His mom could say his mom did. That's right.

[Matthew Nelson]

Yeah, she was Oklahoma and all that stuff. She was, yeah, she had a career. But the rest of them. Come on now.

[Gunnar Nelson]

But Bonaducey. I don't know.

[Matthew Nelson]

I don't know.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, the thing that was always funny about the Partridge Family is they had the one drummer who looked like a seven year old rabbi in season one. And then they replaced him with Hitler Youth the second season. And they never said a word about it. They didn't.

[Matthew Nelson]

They started this whole thing then with the vacation movies that did the same thing. Just shit.

[Gunnar Nelson]

The kids on the. Darren's on Bewitched did the same thing. This totally messed me up.

[Show Announcer]

I.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

It's.

[Adam Carolla]

It's. I guess back then it was called. It was tv and they just did what they wanted. They didn't have to explain everything to you.

[Gunnar Nelson]

I guess it actually really shows the listeners and the viewers out there how little Hollywood suits thought of the actual actors themselves. They were widgets, you know.

[Adam Carolla]

But we'd still do the same thing. It was always funny when Schwarzenegger, he'd like show up and he played a cop from the south side of Chicago. And he'd go, my dad was a cop and his dad was. And then no one ever go, they never do the part where he goes, well, growing up in Bavaria, we would have never put up with this. Like, they didn't even. They just went, he's a cop from Chicago with a super thick German accent.

[Matthew Nelson]

My dad Was in the Gestapo. His dad was.

[Adam Carolla]

So you guys must have run into everybody in this town growing up the way you grew up and with who you grew up and the people in your house and everything at the beginning.

[Matthew Nelson]

Yes, well, success has many parents, but it also has a lot of friends, you know, I mean, but we didn't. When you're really little, you don't know the difference between, you know, what fame is. You know, we just. Uncle George from next door turned out to be George Harrison from the Beatles. And he would come over and have breakfast with us because he was renting the house next door and missed his home. And, sweetheart, guy, he looked like skinny Jesus in the beard era.

[Adam Carolla]

One of my favorites.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Me, too.

[Adam Carolla]

One of my favorites. I sort of. I have him. I mean, McCartney's been around. Been so prolific and stuff like that. But if you just said, what do you want to listen to from the Beatles solo? Whatever, it's George Harrison.

[Matthew Nelson]

You and Gunnar can hang then. Cause that was his guy, too. Still is. You know, George is my.

[Gunnar Nelson]

I love them all, but George is my Beatle.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, me too. And I was listening to some of his stuff when he got together with Phil Spector, and I was like, I think Phil was still alive. But I was like, they need to let Phil Spector out of jail just for this. Just for what he did with George Harrison.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Well, My Sweet Lord was absolutely brilliant. I love that song. But it is awfully close to she's so Fine or he's so Fine. Pretty close.

[Adam Carolla]

I love. Let's See.

[Matthew Nelson]

There's so Many of us. Here Comes the Sun to me is, I think, one of the greatest songs ever written. You know, I'm talking. It's in the top five of all time for me. And I thought that was great, too, because if you watch all the making of things, like what wound up being Abbey Road and all that stuff, I mean, it was. It was almost like the Sync the Synchronicity album for the Police. They were really not kind of getting along, and they kind of would come together, but, you know, every once in a while, George would just kind of sit off on the side and stand up and go, okay. I wrote this song called Here Comes the Sun, and it was like, talk about a middle finger and a velvet glove.

[Adam Carolla]

That was great.

[Matthew Nelson]

You know, I loved it. He was just a man. A few words. And then the rest of the people around the house, I joke and say that, you know, Dylan would come over, whatever. My dad loved Bob Dylan and did a lot of covers with him. And Stuff, but I always make a joke. The homeless guy in the living room was Dylan. You know, he was just. He was just around and really cool thing happened because I went to go see him play a couple of times. And I know how much he inspired our father in his songwriting thing, especially with Stone Canyon Band. But just recently he had one of those shows, I think, where he really didn't sing his band, just did his thing or whatever. At the very end, he said, you know, I want to sing my. I want to sing my favorite song. He sang Garden Party. He sang our dad's tune.

[Adam Carolla]

Bob Dylan did?

[Matthew Nelson]

Yeah. And I just thought that was. So this just happened. This happened like a couple of months ago, you know, and, you know, it was an amazing thing. Did I just lose you here?

[Gunnar Nelson]

No, no, we got you, man. Pretend you can see us.

[Matthew Nelson]

Okay, that's good. I can do that. So that was kind of neat. And Mama Cass Elliot was our babysitter, you know, between the Mamas and the Papas and her solo career. And her first single was Gunner. What was that again?

[Gunnar Nelson]

It was Dream. A Little Dream of Me was Mama Cass's first single. And the first person to ever record that song was Ozzy Nelson with the Ozzie Nelson Orchestra. And he had had a conversation with Cass in our. In our kitchen when she was about to do her first solo record. And he suggested to her that she do that song. And she cut it, and it was a big old giant hit. So, I mean, all that stuff was going on. And to us, it was just kind of our normal, you know, especially. I mean, you grew up in la. You know what it's like. I mean, it seemed like if you grow up in the Valley, that at least you know somebody who knows somebody who's on a TV show or has a record out and. And it's just that kind of city.

[Adam Carolla]

Yep. Yeah. I was not quite part of the Laurel Canyon scene, which was its own scene in a really bizarre kind of interesting way. But, like, for me, it was like Bob Urich from Swat and shows like that. You know, he lived down the street. So, yeah, you would see that that Dream, A Little Dream was such a throwback song for when it was recorded. Because everyone else was doing some sort of Janis Joplin thing, you know, and she went back into this 40s kind of. Kind of throwback, croonery thing. I did not know that was Ozzy song.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Well, he didn't write it, but he.

[Matthew Nelson]

Was the first to release it. And I think he suggested it to her, to be honest. With you because they were around each other at the same time. Ozzy was like that.

[Gunnar Nelson]

He was.

[Matthew Nelson]

He had a law degree from Rutgers, which nobody knows. And he wound up negotiating the contracts. And we still own the show because of it. That we just now, as we got back in during the COVID thing and went through 35 millimeter reels of film going back. I mean, there were 435 episodes that. It's three cans at least per show. And we digitized it, spent a million bucks restoring the show in 4k high def. You know, we figured it's the last time we're going to do it. It's spooky how good it looks. But he insisted on shooting that thing on actual film. Film, because before that, it was like the Honeymooners. Like, Kinescope looked horrible. And he had just come out of seeing From Here to Eternity with our grandmother and says, why does television look so horrible? It was brand new. It was 1952 is when they aired it. And so, like, he and Desi were the first guys, but Ozzy was one of those dudes. He just had this knack. He knew what was going on, and everybody loved working with him. You know, there's some conjecture, oh, he was a stern task, but no, he wasn't. He just, you know, he was. He was not. He was actually.

[Gunnar Nelson]

He was like John Wooden in his approach. You know, he never raised. He never raised his. Never raised his voice. You just wanted to do your best work for him because you just kind of respected him. He was so competent at everything. And I know it's normal to deify your paternal ancestors and stuff, but he really was that brilliant. And as a result, the family still owns the show, which is kind of cool. So, you know, it's really kind of nice coming from that legacy. There's a little pressure there and stuff, but it's an honor to have that kind of pressure. You kind of try to keep your standards up and do your best. And as a result, we're apparently the only family in history with three generations of number one hitmakers in it, according to the Guinness Book. But that all comes from being raised in that house where, you know, it's kind of doing your best work and trying to represent was just kind of what you did.

[Matthew Nelson]

Well, we picked that up. But also, that was, as I said, that it was all that way in the beginning, you know, private schools and whatever. And, you know, my best friend at the school was Josh Brolin. You know, so Thanos was my best buddy. And then we hung out with some of the kids from Little house on the prairie, you know, and just kind of a surreal thing. That's just how it was for us. And then when Ozzy died, he was such a big influence on everybody in our family and everybody around it, you know, the show had been over for a long time, but, man, it was like the. The Nelson ship lost the rudder. And we talk about how it went from pretty cool to not even at all. You know, it was. Everything, everything shifted. Everything changed. It was like, it was surreal. It's like a twilight zone episode. And our parents had this crazy, horrible divorce. We had to live with our mother. And unfortunately we reminded her of our father. And she hated the music business. And here her boys wanted to be singers. You know, we started playing, we're like six, seven years old. And aside from the valley dolphins, all we wanted to do was play music. And yeah, we did. We started playing Wongs at 12, 12 and 13 years old because there was a booker there that fought for us to have a law passed where she could, you know, make sure she met us at the back door. We'd play our set and get escorted out. But we learned how to cut our teeth playing to people that weren't our fans, you know, older people. Gunner was playing drums and he was great and I was trying to catch up to him, but it was, it was good times because the music became honestly how we survived emotionally and mentally. It was our salvation.

[Adam Carolla]

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[Show Announcer]

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[Adam Carolla]

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[Matthew Nelson]

So we went from like everything was great to everything just sucked and navigated.

[Adam Carolla]

Now broke in like 1990, the end.

[Matthew Nelson]

Of 90 was love and affection went number one on our birthday. So September 20, 1990, the single went number one. And you know, we, we thought we were prepared for it. We were. We had fought hard to get signed to Geffen Records, which was the 800 pound gorilla back then, but they had such huge acts at that time. We were signed for a long time to a development deal and waiting to release our album. We finally caught a window and then they said, hey, we're moving you to another division now we're starting called dgc. And we thought, great, now we're going to the farm team before we even get released. And there are all these kind of like things we had to navigate. What really broke us because honestly they kept our signing under wraps. Like normally there's a signature and you know, Billboard or Hits magazine here, the new signing on Geffen Records or dgc. And there was nothing like that for us in case it failed. It wasn't going to be, you know, black eye to somebody that, you know, you signed those, you know, royalty larva, you know, so they kept it under wraps. We recorded our record for a modest budget. We recorded one music video and then we got a call to somebody said. Our manager said, hey, can you guys host a show? And we. Of course. You say yes to everything. Sure, we can host a show. And MTV had a show called Dial mtv. At the time it was a highly rated, you know, call in show. And before bots and everything. And so we flew to New York and we filmed a top 10 countdown show for a couple of days. And they didn't tell us. But our. Our video for our first song was the number one song, like the number one request in the country on the moment of its debut. And it exploded. We had no idea it was going to be like that. Right off the bat. We talk about in the book, the Sherman Oaks Galleria. I don't even know if it's still there. But back then that was the mall.

[Gunnar Nelson]

That everybody went to.

[Matthew Nelson]

Gunner and I went.

[Adam Carolla]

We heard about this in Ridgemont High, I think.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Yeah, I watched it last night. We did. We watched it.

[Matthew Nelson]

Yeah, we did. That's funny.

[Adam Carolla]

I used to go there. To that movie theater.

[Matthew Nelson]

Yeah, the movie theater there. And then across the way was the video arcade. I spent many a quarter in that video arcade.

[Adam Carolla]

Yep, in a hot dog on a stick somewhere in there. Right there.

[Matthew Nelson]

I'm so glad I never had to wear that uniform. We worked at Haage Dazs. That was actually a cool gig in high school. But man, wearing the hot dog on a stick thing, that blue and yellow. Awful.

[Gunnar Nelson]

But we. The licorice pizza was there too.

[Matthew Nelson]

That licorice pizza, yeah. I love that record store. They still Inventura Boulevard there. We know the owners, we're working with them. But yeah, we got her and I, when we went to New York, we went to the mall to basically stock up on stuff. I think I needed socks and underwear or something. And nobody would talk to us or help us in the stores. And then we went to the show in New York, the Dial MTV thing. We came back and it was our first in store signing thing. Like very Spinal Tap with Artie Fuffin. And the record guys met us at our house and they said, you guys, our band was there. They took us to the mall. And we're at the back of the mall waiting for the freight elevator to go up. And the guy comes down from the record store and he's actually profusely sweating and he's kind of scared. And so what's going on? He said, you won't believe this. I'm like, I'm thinking we're getting punished. So won't believe what he said.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Just wait.

[Matthew Nelson]

We went up in the elevator. The doors opened, and it was like a jet engine came out of. Girls screaming like, the David Cassidy thing, just. And Gunner and I looked at each other, went, holy crap, man. I mean, last week we couldn't get somebody to help me buy underwear, and now this. And it wound up with the cops shutting down the in store after about a half an hour when people realized they weren't going to get to us. Three layers, three levels of girls. The difference television makes. It's amazing how much more attractive you get when you're on tv. It's fantastic.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, I mean, MTV was incredible. And then also those in stores, like, you know, there'd been a few KROC events and in stores and things like that, and they'd have to shut it down, man. Like, it would get crazy. Was John Hyatt on Geffen back when you guys were on Geffen?

[Matthew Nelson]

He might have been. Last time we saw John Hyatt, we were racing cars against him in Nashville in those Legends cars. You know, I remember that, but I don't remember him being. I don't remember if he was on Geffen.

[Adam Carolla]

He was a couple ounce. But that was probably, I think, before you. You guys might have been Geffen.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Well, you know, of course, David Geffen was the Eagles manager, and before he started being a record impresario, that's kind of what he did. And he kind of worked with everybody, and that would make a lot of sense. But when we were there, David was really smart. He had three superstar A and R guys that ran that building, and they were all in competition with each other. They all hated each other. They hated each other. And so we were with John Kalodner, we call the Beard. He's the guy, and the dude looks like a lady video who turns around in the wedding dress with the beard. It was a real. He signed ACDC to their first deal he got.

[Matthew Nelson]

He put Aerosmith back together, you know, and did that whole thing. So he was a real thing. And the other guys was Tom Zutot and Gary Gersh. They all had, like. One of them had Guns N Roses, you know, it was. It was like a juggernaut label right there on Ventura. No, sorry. Sunset Boulevard. Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Hyatt was on from 82 to 86. Three seasons.

[Matthew Nelson]

Yeah, we missed him.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Yeah, we missed him. Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Who else was around there when you were around there on Geffen, at Geffen?

[Matthew Nelson]

Well, at the time. I remember there was one time we went in again, I told you, we were on a development deal. So we would come in with our Demos playing for Kolodner. He'd crap on two of the songs and keep one. You know, that's just basically the rhythm of it. But he was the kind of guy that you didn't walk in on. You had to make an appointment. It's almost like the medical system now. But I remember one time we went there and Terry Nunn from Berlin was one of those artists. And we're waiting in the little hallway there for our meeting, and she comes out and she's sobbing. And I guess she had gotten the boot that day. And he felt bad. And, you know, we were in the office with him. He said, hang on, I gotta make a call. And he called her and found her somewhere and said, okay, okay. He'll stay on the label kind of thing.

[Gunnar Nelson]

So we're like.

[Matthew Nelson]

Gunner and I are terrified going, wow. Because I love Berlin. You know, I grew up with that in high school. I mean, riding on the metro and all that, you know, Beautiful lady. But so it was acts like Berlin. There was, of course, Aerosmith, Whitesnake with the big album still of the night. The whole thing. That was big then.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Don't forget Peter Gabriel.

[Matthew Nelson]

Peter Gabriel.

[Adam Carolla]

All right.

[Matthew Nelson]

Cher was there. Let me see. Elton John was on the label at the time. And they had some fledgling kind of alt bands. Like, I remember Urge Overkill was one of their bands, which gave way, you know, the. The label that we were on was dgc. We were, I think, the first band to sell a lot of records on dgc. They had another band that got the nod. They got all the money. It was called Little Caesar. And it flatlined. It didn't work. We were kind of the surprise hit. And then after us, we were on the road when they bought some bands from. From Seattle off the Sub Pop label. One of them being Nirvana.

[Adam Carolla]

Wow.

[Matthew Nelson]

And that kind of broke. We went from, like. For some reason, you know, everybody had long hair and was living on a prayer. And the next day, everything smelled like Teen Spirit and was wearing flannel. It was like. It happened me to. At our label, we talk about it in the book. We went from, like, complete zeros to complete heroes to zeros. Like, it was awesome.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, well, it was so God trendy. And what have you done for me lately? And I don't know. I guess. Well, you guys tell me, because you kind of lived it. But I mean. Okay, I have a theory. So here's my theory. My theory is we go the other direction as a reaction to what we're doing now. I'll explain that. But it's sort of like fashion is this and then fashion is that. So you had this sort of Leonard Skynyrd. Everyone had a big beard and hair down to here and all that kind of stuff. And then that sort of gave way to haircut 100 and new wave and tight haircuts and suits and all that. And then that punky thing gave way to like the hair band. And then the hair band gave way to grunge, you know, because grunge is the opposite.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Sure.

[Adam Carolla]

And so this go. All right, what's the opposite of whatever we were doing for the last four years? All right, we're doing the opposite now. But then now I don't really think there is a thing like there's no hairstyle. Like I was saying to someone the other day, there is no hairstyle. Your hairstyle is whatever, whatever you want.

[Gunnar Nelson]

You could be Paul, you could be whatever, sir. The hairstyle of the day, we call it the broccoli cut.

[Adam Carolla]

So I mean, yeah, my son has a little of that.

[Matthew Nelson]

My gosh, I'm keeping my 11 year old from getting that crap. He's not getting. He's not.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, there is, there's always something 14 year old boys are going to do. But I like. I was at the airport earlier today and I saw an old dude with a comb over and I thought, I haven't seen a comb over in a while. And the reason is because they don't try it anymore. They just buzz it off.

[Gunnar Nelson]

They shave it.

[Matthew Nelson]

Yeah, I'm not ugly head. I don't have that option. You know the title of our book is what happened to your hair? Cause of course we did look like hot Swedish chicks. We were a lot. I mean, I get it, you know.

[Adam Carolla]

So you guys are crushing it. And then grunge comes in, which is the exact antithesis of Nelson. Right? I mean, aesthetically, well, what we found.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Out is that it really wasn't organic, like some people would want to believe. We've been in all of those meetings with all of the suits. And the fact of the matter is, and we write about this in the book, is that the music industry, at least back then, was run by like six guys. That's it. They're the ones that determine everything. What had really happened is at a certain point in time when bands like Whitesnake were costing a million dollars a video and getting paid. And it's in those days dollars, by the way. And we're spending $5 million making records. It got financially too expensive for the labels to make any money, much like Happened with the death of disco. The death of disco was the second largest paradigm shift in music industry history if you think about it. Okay, so everybody's like doing the disco thing and then overnight it was all about punk. And the reason for that was Donna Summer was Donna Summer was costing so much. And they said, hey, you know, there's a new movement over in England where you give these guys a dime bag of heroin and a Happy Meal and they'll do whatever you want and it'll cost nothing. And then of course, that's what happened. I think the same thing happened really with the whole hair band thing. I'm not saying that a lot of that music at that point needed to die, because it did. It did.

[Matthew Nelson]

But.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Yeah, but it was really kind of like a Wag the Dog sort of thing. And it's evidenced by, okay, great. Everybody's living on a prayer on Tuesday, you wake up the next morning, everybody is wearing flannel. It's overnight. It was violent because it stores.

[Matthew Nelson]

Yeah, because.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, I mean, look, the economics kind of drive everything, of course, whether we know it or not. But you know, like, you know, we thought it was a good idea to get a vaccination for Covid because the news was telling you to do it, or your mom was telling you to do it, or your neighbors didn't do it, but good. But the economics is what's driving the trend. We don't, we don't know it. And you know, Ozzy had a big band, Ozzie Nelson and you know, traveling around with a 43 piece orchestra.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Indeed. Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

And I've done enough shows in enough like 900 seat, thousand seat venues. And I see the picture up on the wall like Santana was there two years ago and a. There's, there's 18 guys in the picture. And I'm like, I'm just going out alone with a microphone and doing okay, but I ain't getting rich just alone out there. I couldn't imagine bringing a whole rhythm section with me, putting them up in hotel rooms, paying them all that stuff. So when you think about one of those hair bands and the pyrotechnics and that entire thing versus, versus the grunge. All you need is like a beat up cardigan sweater and you can go out, you can go out and play. It does make sense, like financially for sure.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Oh, it sure did.

[Matthew Nelson]

And I gotta tell you, we actually did have, I think 40 full time employees at a certain time. You know, we had three trucks that went out with us the whole deal. And the Reality of it is, Gunner and I have gotten our biggest breaks. Just two brothers, two guitars. Because it's the truth, and people love it. And I'm talking, like, the biggest crowds we've ever played to is that way. We're like the Indigo Boys at our power. So all that stuff is really kind of set dressing, and it's about being, you know, it's about being real. We didn't know. Like, for instance, we just do our thing and just keep going and probably played a lot of the same places that you have as well. But we got a phone call, it was about a year ago now. And it turned out that James Gunn, the film director, was a big Nelson fan, which we had no idea. And he wrote us into an episode of his show the Peacemaker. We actually wound up being this season's finale episode called Full Nelson, where John Cena's character, the Peacemaker, winds up at one of our shows and has his first kiss with his love interest at one of our concerts. And you never know when those winds come in. You don't know who's listening. But every once in a while, those things are pretty cool. We had no idea. But, you know, we'll write a song, play a song, and then 15 years later, somebody goes, man, that's my jam. I gotta put you into this. So it kind of keeps us going.

[Gunnar Nelson]

And I mean, I suppose back to what you were saying, though, you know, in our power, it really is about the two of us, and everything's kind of revolved around that. And we play these same places that you do, and I see those same pictures on the wall, and we've thought, how on earth did Ozzy pay for all of those people? And all of that transportation and the hotels and the food, and it just. It's enormous.

[Matthew Nelson]

Staggering.

[Gunnar Nelson]

And then yesterday I was watching, I remarked to our drummer, I saw Brian Setzer's Christmas show. His orchestra, sure. And it's somehow gotten bigger. Adam them. You didn't think it could.

[Adam Carolla]

Brian sets our orchestra.

[Matthew Nelson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Gunnar Nelson]

It was like a 20 pieces two years ago, and it was at least 40 pieces, what I saw. And I was just thinking, I can't imagine what the guarantee would have to be on a show like that just to break even.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Matthew Nelson]

And.

[Gunnar Nelson]

And then you've got a guy.

[Matthew Nelson]

Great show, though. It's a great show. I have to admit.

[Gunnar Nelson]

It's awesome. And then you've got a guy like Ed Sheeran who figures it out and does stadiums with just him and an acoustic guitar and a couple of pedals right. And you kind, you kind of go, well, gee, which one passed? Which one of those guys passed the IQ test?

[Matthew Nelson]

You know, it's funny that you say that. Gunner and I have also said this too. We kind of grew up in an era of like, you know, Steve Martin used to open for our dad down at the Troubadour stuff when he had like brown hair and we used to love it and our dad used to take out comics. That was his thing. You know, he would have somebody like Harry Anderson open for him a lot. Gary Mule Deer, if you remember him. I mean, it was so, you know, our dad would headline. And Gunner and I were sitting there going, man, wouldn't it be great just to have this great stand up comedian open the show for us? It makes so much sense. Everybody's in a great mood. You know, you make them laugh. And I remember thinking about, I read Steve Martin's book because we were preparing ours and how he, at that time, you were limited by technology and people couldn't see him anymore. So he had to start wearing the white suits, which made a lot of sense. You know, you could light him up and you know, oh, that must be that, that must be Steve Martin down there. But now they got the screen, so everything's different. People get to know you a little bit different, but fascinating.

[Adam Carolla]

The history doc was the Steve Martin documentary was really interesting. And when that guy turned into like from playing, you know, small coffee houses to a stadium band, Crazy Knottberry Farm, kind of forget. Yeah, oh, yeah. It's where he started. You grew up out here, I guess, probably Orange County. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Riley Auto Parts. Yeah, Riley Auto Parts. You know the jingle. These guys keep your car on the road. You don't want to end up stuck on the shoulder looking like a dope. Friendly, helpful service people who actually know their stuff, not just some kid who'd rather be on his phone. Now, these are experienced people I've always been to. O'Reilly used them, I don't even know. I mean, they've probably been around 100 years, but I used to use them back in the 80s when I was working on my trucks and now I use them for my race cars. So whether you're a gearhead or you don't know a lug nut from a donut, they'll walk you through it. No attitude, just real help. That's what the professionals at O'Reilly offer. Stop by O'Reilly Auto Parts today or visit us at o'reillyauto.com Adam that's o'reillyauto.com Adam.

[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

Drink Budo tea.

[Adam Carolla]

Stream Pluto TV streaming Pluto TV for free. Stream blockbuster hits like 21 Jump Street Ted, the Expendables, and so much more on Pluto TV. Stream now pay never. Yeah, so you guys seem to be very. You seem to get on well with each other, and it can be tough working with siblings. And is the twin thing. Does it feel like there's always someone who has your back on this planet, who knows, and who's just, like, a confidant that you cannot surpass with any marriage or any friendship or anything? Or is it crazy and weird and someone's finishing your thoughts, or there's animosity, or has it always just been this good?

[Matthew Nelson]

Is this a freak show or not? You know, here's the thing, man. There was a point in time, you know, we came in together, we went through all the stuff with our parents being completely insane. Lovely, but insane. We went through an amazing amount of fame very quickly, even though we thought we were prepared for it. And we've been doing that and preparing for it our whole lives and even saw around our family on both sides. But there's nothing that can prepare you for going from just being a dude that can't, you know, can just walk around them all. Not a problem. And then the next day, you can't go outside with your brother because you'll cause a riot, literally. And so for a couple of years, that was our lives. I remember there was one time, you know, you crack at that at a certain point, you're playing six, you know, arenas a week, and you're out there doing it. Your friends are getting married and moving on with their lives. You're doing. You're living the same day. It's Groundhog Day every day. You know, it's a lot emotionally. And I really think that the difference between our father and ourselves, because he went through his periods as well, he really could have used a twin brother, you know, and there were times when, frankly, I could kick Gunner's ass a little bit and get him back in line, and vice versa. We pick up each other.

[Gunnar Nelson]

I'd like to see you try.

[Matthew Nelson]

Yeah, I know. Well, I can use harsh language just like anybody else. Let's get in a car and see how it goes.

[Gunnar Nelson]

I will say, you know, we've said we've been through an awful lot in all seriousness, and we're really grateful that God put us in as twins, because it's really required that. That, you know, when you've got a Howard Stern that thinks he's going to be the first person who calls us out on national radio to show us what life is really all about. You cannot, you can't, you can't confront the two headed parrot because if one's having a weak day, the other one is right there. And fortunately we're. We're not like the Everlis. We really do get along. I'm not saying we get along all the time. And sometimes it's that tension that makes really good art. You know, Matthew, you know, he's had. He's got these incredible strengths that I don't have and vice versa.

[Matthew Nelson]

Vice versa.

[Gunnar Nelson]

And I actually really love the work, like when we're making music. I love the technical side of things. I love being a producer and the recording and the art involved in that. And I love it as Matthew, as much as Matthew hates it. Matthew wants to come in, do his job and get out and get on stage and play live. I'd rather be in the studio a lot more. So that really does really. One complements the other and that's cool. And sometimes I have a weekday and he's got a strong day and that's really good. When you got a national show to do and you know, you wake up and your brain is mush, which does happen, it's really a great, I think an unfair advantage and something that we've really relied upon and thank God we still do get along. And, you know, I. I'm. As one of the things I'm most grateful for. I just recently went through a divorce. I don't know how I could have done that without my twin and my best friend being my lead counselor and all that stuff and keeping me sane. Well, it was good because I'd already been.

[Matthew Nelson]

I'd already been through a California divorce so I could coach them all the way through it, man. So, hey, man, did.

[Adam Carolla]

When your dad passed, it was a 85 going into 86.

[Matthew Nelson]

Yes.

[Adam Carolla]

New Year's Eve private jet crash. Was it going to a gig, coming back from a gig?

[Matthew Nelson]

Pop was going to a show. He was. First of all, it was a. It was a DC3, so it actually had propellers.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, it was a prop plane. I did not know.

[Matthew Nelson]

Yeah, but. But a big one. I used to use them as a tail dragger. You know, the ones I used to use for airliners back in like the mid-40s. They made them World War II and restored plane that he got from Jerry Lee Lewis. Nice plane. And we were really excited. We'd never flown on it yet and he was doing Some post Christmas shows. We were all set to go with them. We were going to meet him. Him in. In Alabama, where he was doing a little stint for a friend of his, was from his band, had a little club, so he was doing a little. Little engagement there. And then he was going to go to play a New Year's Eve show in Fort Worth, Texas, in Dallas. And so we were going to just kind of fly in and go hang out with the band. And we got a phone call, bags packed and everything. And he just uncharacteristically said, guys, I don't want you. I don't want you on the plane right now. If you want to. You know, how's this? Meet me commercial? Fly commercial. Meet me in Dallas and we'll hang out and spend New Year's there. But, yeah, I just. I don't think it's good idea to be on the plane. I remember at first I thought, well, maybe his girlfriend just wants to spend more time with us. Not being around. I don't know what it was. It was just weird. And his. There was. And I said, are you sure about this, Pop? We really want to, you know, want to be with you in the band. He said, I don't want you on my plane right now. Meet me in Dallas. And so Gunner and I looked at each other and went, well, you know, we'll just meet you here. You know, our friends are here from college. It's their first semester in college, and we'll just hang with them and wait for you to get back, and we'll celebrate the new year with you when you get home. And, you know, we write about the whole episode in the book. It's pretty. Not only that part, but the aftermath of it. But I found out my dad was dead on the car radio when I was driving through Pacific Palisades, actually going to a friend's house. Gunner saw it on television.

[Adam Carolla]

Wow.

[Matthew Nelson]

And I have to call, like a football game because it was. It's so horrifying, the entire thing. But what was even more horrifying was how the press handled him and unfairly and erroneously cited drug abuse as the cause of a plane crash that was even worse, you know.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, yeah, I remember something about that.

[Matthew Nelson]

Yeah. The NTSB came out with their report, you know, eight. Eight months later. And what happened was our lawyers at the time, because, you know, of course the estate got sued, and guess who's the estate? You know, it was everybody, every band member, every wife. And we understand that their whole. Their families were gone. You know, we Lost.

[Adam Carolla]

So the whole band was on the plane and everybody died.

[Matthew Nelson]

Yeah.

[Gunnar Nelson]

So was.

[Matthew Nelson]

Everybody went. Except for the pilot and co pilot bailed out the front. But the plane actually did land. It didn't crash. It was on fire. And they managed to get it on the ground. But it was made out of. Half the plane was made out of magnesium because of World War II airplane. So you race. You know what that means. It's just like a match.

[Adam Carolla]

The wreck at Le Mans. 56 or whatever. 55. Trying to think. The Mercedes that just went. The Mercedes magnesium. It just turned into a roman candle. But yeah.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Yeah.

[Matthew Nelson]

So that's what happened. And Gunner and I were responsible for making the decision. There was a big lawsuit. We can't really say specifics because technically the gag order is still in place. But there was a settlement basically that we couldn't say who fixed the plane wrong and why the plane leaked fuel into the belly of the plane from the heater in the back of the plane. The NTSB had to say that eight months later. But if we didn't settle for that, the band members families weren't going to get their money. And they had kids and they had to live. And we understood and we felt horrible about our dad being gone, but also their families too. It was just the most cataclysmically horrible thing you could even imagine.

[Gunnar Nelson]

But at the same time, I want you to imagine that the news cycle was 24. 7 about all these allegations. So our best friend had just died that we were living with and who.

[Matthew Nelson]

Was our hero and we were supposed to be on the plane. Yeah.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Who was the nicest guy in the world and didn't deserve it and we can't say anything about it. It was really, really difficult. And probably one of the primary reasons why we decided to finally write a book after all this time is to really address that and set the record straight.

[Adam Carolla]

So the. The plane caught on fire and the scuttlebutt was like your dad was smoking crack cocaine or something. That started the fire. That started the fire. And that was just a rumor that started almost immediately. And there's nothing you could do to get the genie back in the bottle.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Correct. It was right around that time when the whole if it bleeds it leads thing was really going on. The Rock Hudson scandal had just broken like a month earlier where they finally come out that he was gay. And so it sold a lot of papers. And then. Then America's boy Next Door died in. In that circumstance. And apparently the story was there was a guy, a reporter from I think.

[Matthew Nelson]

It was a Washington Post, but I'm not sure. In my opinion it was the Washington.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Post, but was was walking around the wreckage or around the ropes and stuff and asked an NTSB inspector, hey, are you going to be checking for freebasing on the plane? The guy said, we check for everything. That reporter took that and wrote a whole story around it that caught the wire and the next thing you know, it's spread everywhere. So it was really, really a tough situation for our family. We weren't allowed really the chance to grieve. And when you're an 18 year old kid who's just lost his father and you're having to wade through a sea of reporters, every time you're going to your house and you have idiots pushing microphones in your face going, how do you feel about your father's death and all that drug abuse and stuff, it was the worst, man. It was really, really hard. But again, on top of it, we couldn't really talk about it because if we did, the families wouldn't get paid out. So, you know, it was kind of one of those things where the, the attorney said, hey, when the report comes out from the ntsb, it's going to tell the truth and people will know. But of course, when it did, the press buried that on like page 18 in little tiny print and there were no apologies, no retractions. And still to this day, Matthew and I play shows and when we meet people, we still have an occasional person that comes up and says, hey, tell me the truth about the crash. And the fact that that is even a partial legacy to a guy that just lived and died for rock and roll. Really, he was on his way to a show, played 300 dates a year up until the day he died. And he really loved, he loved his fans and he loved music. He deserved a lot more.

[Matthew Nelson]

But we also get a lot of, we get a lot of stories too, Gunner. When we meet people after shows and they always tell us these stories about how genuinely kind he was to them. Like when that little girl was getting crushed in the crowd at one of his shows and he stopped the concert, pulled her on stage, put her in a chair and like got her water, the whole thing. He shamed the crowd and she sat right next to him the whole show. And it turned. By this point, she was a grandmother telling us the story that he basically saved my life at his concert, but he was just a sweet guy. He didn't deserve it. He didn't deserve that kind of crap.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, we can't Help it. I don't know. We're so bad. We're just such a piece of shit society. And it is actually, it's weird. David Cassidy had a situation where people got crushed at one of his concerts. I think in Europe, maybe it was.

[Matthew Nelson]

We actually did too. Believe it or not. We're in that club. We had that happen where we had to stop a show and use water cannons to get people to back up. And it was crazy. Believe it or not. It's weird because something happens to that crowd and it's like. It's a mental situation en masse. It's a hive mind thing.

[Gunnar Nelson]

That's really weird.

[Matthew Nelson]

It can go really dark quickly.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, I'm glad you set the record straight as far as your father's incident.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Well, thanks for letting us. Thanks for letting us do that, man. I appreciate it.

[Adam Carolla]

Sure.

[Gunnar Nelson]

The bull.

[Matthew Nelson]

And here we were. I thought we're going to talk racing. I even wore my McLaren stuff. Ask me.

[Adam Carolla]

What do you got? You got a question?

[Matthew Nelson]

Well, I do have a question. First of all, I was sitting here doing this. My best friend is Zach Brown, the guy that runs McLaren.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, yeah, sure. He shows up at all the vintage races.

[Matthew Nelson]

Yeah, well, he's got some pretty nice iron, you know. And I asked him before he came on, I said, you know Adam. And he said, no, I don't, but I'd like to. So I'm gonna connect you guys. But he's a good dude.

[Adam Carolla]

I gotta tell you, man, that guy shows up at Laguna Seca for the Rolex Historics, like every year driving a Swap Shop 935 Porsche K3, which is a badass car. And I always have this, oh, I wanna go say hi to him. Cause sometimes I'll be driving Paul Newman's 935. And I. I was going to talk.

[Matthew Nelson]

To you about that too.

[Adam Carolla]

And I miss him. I miss him every time I've not caught. I'm there racing, he's there racing, and somehow he goes ships in the night.

[Matthew Nelson]

Zach and I used to go kart together. You know, he's a kid from the valley, grew up in Valley Village. And you know, there was a point in time where he shared my go kart with me.

[Adam Carolla]

Valley Village, that's where I grew up.

[Matthew Nelson]

We raced to Willow Springs or Riverside or whatever. And basically we became best buds. And he said he was going to start a motorsports marketing company. And I got him some financing for his first Atlantic recording studio. And wow, it was a dud on the Long Beach Grand Prix. So we've Known each other for a long time, and he's like one of.

[Gunnar Nelson]

He's like you.

[Matthew Nelson]

You know, we've watched your career take off, and we've known each other a long time. We met once, but I've always thought that you're like. I always get happy when people that I like do well. I'm not just kissing your ass. I just think you've done a great job. And you've. You know, you've. It's like. It's like every true racer, forget what's out here and just keep moving forward. And, you know, Gunner and I've done a bit of racing. I did a little more than him, and that's the only. I could definitely say that I'd be in a car somewhere if I wasn't doing this full time. My thing stopped at getting asked to do the 24 hours of Daytona in a GT2. And so we've got a lot to talk about. But I love your collection. I just got to be honest, because you and Zach, I don't know if you know about his car collection. Every car has to be something historically significant. It has to be a race winner or a championship winner. And he started his collection with his hero, Go Kart. Ayrton Senna's championship Go Kart is the pride of his collection.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, right.

[Matthew Nelson]

But he's got a lot of stuff, and I think you guys would get along great because he's. He still hasn't changed, man. He's just. He runs the motorsports world. And McLaren did great this year, but.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, yeah, F1. I mean, people watch Drive to Survive, they'll know who Zach Brown is.

[Matthew Nelson]

Yeah, not. Not the singer. Different guy.

[Adam Carolla]

I mean, different. Different guy. But he's all over that show. Or at least he has been in. In certain seasons. I don't.

[Matthew Nelson]

Yeah, well, a couple years ago, McLaren wasn't doing so great, and he kind of rallied it around. But, you know, he's been friends of Gunner and mine for a long time, and.

[Gunnar Nelson]

Well, we definitely have to make that connection with Adam.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, we got to. I. Every time I go to. To Laguna Seca for the Rolex Historics, I'm like, I want to talk to Zach. And then somehow.

[Matthew Nelson]

Well, listen, how's it. We'll. We'll meet you at Laguna Seca because he keeps inviting us to go and join him there, and it looks like. Looks like so much fun. And Gunner and I, we've been to vintage cars forever. Actually, one of my driving mentors was Stan Barrett. I don't know if you know that name? But that was Newman's stunt double. He was the guy that set the. He set the world record in the Budweiser rocket car. Do you remember that? In the seventies.

[Adam Carolla]

Salt flats. Yeah.

[Matthew Nelson]

Yeah. So we got. We got a lot to talk about, and I'm really glad that you donated your car for a visual aid when they sold that $18 million Rolex.

[Adam Carolla]

So, yeah, they flew it out to New York. All right, we'll connect off the air because there's a lot to get into. And I'd love to hit up Zach as well. I didn't know he was a Valley Village guy. I grew up in North Hollywood, and then it became Valley Village, where I grew up.

[Matthew Nelson]

Zach Brown, his day gig was Val Cerf.

[Adam Carolla]

Val Surf man. Yes.

[Matthew Nelson]

When I met him, he was working at Val Surf.

[Adam Carolla]

Then there's original Val Surf. I'd buy trucks for my skateboard at Val Surf.

[Matthew Nelson]

We did too.

[Gunnar Nelson]

We did, too.

[Adam Carolla]

All right, guys, the book is what happened to your hair? It is out, and Nelson's gonna be everywhere. So just where should people go to find. Go to Nelson twins dot com.

[Matthew Nelson]

Yeah. So find us. Yeah, we're actually. Yeah. Go there for watching where we are. I think. Obviously, the book is available on Amazon. I think it's number two in the segment right now. And it's not released yet. So that's pretty cool.

[Adam Carolla]

Pre sales, baby.

[Matthew Nelson]

Pre sales, baby. And I guess that's it. Just Nelson twins dot com. It's all there. And we will be hopefully seeing you in a. In a town near you. I don't know.

[Adam Carolla]

Thanks, guys. Well, Sagebrush Cantina, that'll be in Calabasas doing a live pod there with Brad Williams. He'll be upstage on stage Thursday night. Come on out, say hi. Bring an ugly sweater. You shall be judged. And then it's off to Kimmel's place Friday and Saturday. That's in Vegas, his club there. Two shows Friday, two shows Saturday. You go to AdamKroll.com for all the live shows. And until next time, this is Adam for Gunner and Matthews saying mahalo.

[Show Announcer]

You can leave us a voicemail at 888-634-1744 and get tickets to see the Ace man at AdamCarolla.com.

[Adam Carolla]

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[Jason 'Mayhem' Miller]

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