Conrad Flynn | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Summary

Podcast Summary

The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Episode: Conrad Flynn | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan
Date: December 31, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this thoughtful and winding conversation, host Billy Corgan sits down with writer and cultural commentator Conrad Flynn to explore the intersections of rock music, the occult, hidden histories of Hollywood, family legacies, creativity, and the shadowy influences that circle the heights of fame and power. The episode moves from personal anecdotes and family histories to sprawling discussions of music, secret societies, spirituality, digital avatars, AI, and whether art channels deeper universal mysteries.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Who Is Conrad Flynn? Defining a Non-Traditional Path

• Conrad’s Career Arc ([01:21]–[03:11])
  • Self-described as “a guy with a very limited resume but great references.”
  • Writer, former standup comedian, “personality”, moving between substack essays, podcasts, and planned projects (e.g. an occult/rock podcast).
  • Struggles with the ambiguity and pressure of digital creator life.

  “I'm essentially a guy with a very limited resume but great references. Where other people like, oh, I know Conrad. I back Conrad. But in terms of what I actually do...my closest friends...are like, I don't know what you do.” — Conrad ([01:35])

  • Regards creative identity as dynamic and partially defined by others’ expectations.

2. Rock, the Occult, and Hollywood’s “Other” Side

• Interest in the Occult and Entertainment ([03:11]–[05:58])

  • Thematic focus on the intersection of rock music and occult imagery, tracing its roots to family anecdotes and the history of Mercury Records (Coven, Black Sabbath).
  • Billy and Conrad discuss the tradition of staged “dark” themes as music marketing (e.g., Coven’s early “satanic” rock).
  • Both reflect on their insider-outsider knowledge of show business, expressing fascination with both the mystique and the humdrum reality of entertainment.

• Ambiguity, Social Media, and Picking Sides ([06:08]–[06:37])

  • Conrad values ambiguity in his analysis, resisting pressure to “pick a lane” in social or media discourse.

• Generational Changes in Music Discovery ([06:37]–[07:23])

  • They reflect on the explosion of access to music in the 2000s (Napster, Pitchfork) and how genre boundaries dissolved.

3. Family Histories: Between Hollywood Glamour and Underworld Roots

• Conrad’s Ancestry ([07:23]–[11:24])

  • Grandfather Robert Conrad: Old Hollywood tough guy with Chicago roots and subtle ties to the underworld (mob connections, James Dean lookalike, stuntman origins).
  • Maternal grandfather Harry Flynn: Press agent, worked with prominent press figures like Walter Winchell, slight brushes with the occult (e.g., Bewitched, Monkees).

• The Veil of Hollywood: What’s Real? ([11:24]–[16:52])

  • Discussion of Hollywood’s culture of secrecy; stories of famous figures (Bill Cosby, P. Diddy, Judy Garland, Shirley Temple) masking abuse and vice.
  • The moral: For “the uninitiated,” the scale of behind-the-scenes dysfunction might seem shocking, but for insiders, it’s often “an open secret.”

  "Hollywood has a long history for looking the other way...in a form of plain sight." — Billy ([13:38])

• Societal Impact of Hollywood Revelations ([13:40]–[14:39])

  • The unraveling of public figures’ personas (notably Bill Cosby) changes how society perceives celebrity and trust.

4. Rock, Power, and the Machinery of Myth

• Cycles of Success and Anoedynes in Fame ([18:17]–[19:36])

  • Importance of having both a “chip on your shoulder” and privileged access to succeed in Hollywood.
  • The complex psychological drivers behind success—resentment, privilege, delusion of being underestimated.

• Uncovering Hollywood’s Darker Motivations ([19:36]–[22:20])

  • Conrad’s personal drive to investigate both his family’s dual nature (light/dark) and the “underbelly” of cultural mythmaking; the persistent mutual dance of light and shadow.

• Is There Value in Exposing the Dark Side? ([22:00]–[23:54])

  • Tension between exposing reality and “not spoiling the fun”; the role of light as the “greatest disinfectant.”

5. Hollywood, Secret Societies, and the Manson Nexus

• Hollywood Coverups and Power ([25:09]–[31:36])

  • Deep dive into the book Chaos by Tom O’Neill: Hollywood celebrity parties in the ‘60s (“Diddy parties”), the PR manipulation of the Manson murders (emphasizing the “Helter Skelter” narrative over the mundane reality of the scene’s abuses).

  "The Helter Skelter thing was very much played up...not also the parties...let's just focus on this specific motivation and block out all the other stuff." — Conrad ([31:00])

  • Speculation that Hollywood systematically covers for its own, preserving power through narrative control and scapegoating.

• Hollywood’s Economy of Party Culture ([32:06]–[33:56])

  • High-level parties as a mechanism for the famous to satisfy (and securely contain) appetites, and possibly as tools of power, blackmail, and social management—comparable to historical precedents like Weimar Berlin.

• Intelligence Agencies, Occult Influence, and “Weird Scenes” ([34:12]–[42:47])

  • Theories around CIA/social engineering of pop culture (e.g., “Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon” and Harry Smith’s ties to both music and the occult).
  • The role of figures like Gregory Bateson in connecting the study of possession, cybernetics, and mind control/brainwashing—the roots of media, tech, creativity, and social manipulation.

  "There is a connection there, but there's a lot to unravel." — Conrad ([42:44])

6. The Mystical Power of Art and Creativity

• Are Artists “Natural Portals?” ([43:06]–[47:38])

  • Discussion of whether artists are merely attracted to the mystical or are themselves channels for deeper energies.

  "The nature of creativity, especially music. Music is unseen....Where do ideas come from?" — Conrad ([43:06])

  • Billy shares personal stories of using LSD to access subconscious messaging in his music and discovering fans who—on drugs—decode his musical “secret languages.” ([51:36]–[53:14])
  • The mysterious transmission of “hidden” emotions and meanings through sound, frequencies, and performance.

• Occult Underpinnings in Alternative Music ([47:56]–[49:31])

  • Exploration of how rock, psychedelia, and even alternative icons (Velvet Underground, My Bloody Valentine, Creation Records) tangentially reference or channel occult or mystical themes.
  • Links to drone music, Brian Eno, Velvet Underground’s Alice Bailey references, and the role of drugs in opening “ports” in the psyche.

• Creativity, Drugs, and Channeling the Unknown ([49:35]–[54:33])

  • Debate: Is the occult/mystical element in music intentionally cultivated, or does it emerge as artists open themselves (especially through drugs) to unknown energies?

  "Once you've taken certain drugs, it's like opening up a port on an old 90s PC. That port's always kind of open on you." — Conrad ([49:35])

7. The Devil in the Details: Pop Stars, Image, and False Idols

• Satanic Imagery in Music ([55:01]–[56:42])

  • Billy argues that modern pop stars, through construction of false images, are more “satanic”—in that they knowingly propagate idolatry and delusion—than are openly “dark” acts.

  "The most satanic representation in music...has been the pop stars, because they are...creating a false image." — Billy ([55:11])

• Occult Symbols, the Industry, and Personal Connections ([56:42]–[58:11])

  • Both share family histories and personal anecdotes about secret societies, the draw of “forbidden” imagery, and being courted (directly or indirectly) by secretive or influential organizations.

8. Power, Trauma, and the Faustian Bargain

• The Root of All Drama ([59:54]–[60:36])
  • Billy posits that all human dynamics come down to power and trauma, with institutions exploiting the traumatized through the promise of power.

  "Most institutions that corrupt through power, they use people who are traumatized. Because it becomes the portal." — Billy ([60:31])

9. Name Drop Lightning Round: Personal Takes on Esoteric Icons

• L. Ron Hubbard ([60:51]–[62:15])
  • Origins as script doctor, possible blueprint for giving “structure” to closeted actors, early Hollywood anecdotes tying into the foundation for Scientology culture.
• Philip K. Dick ([62:33]–[64:25])
  • Dick’s Gnostic visions and “downloads” from mysterious sources; computer/game metaphors for the universe.
• Genesis P-Orridge, The Occult, Gnosticism ([64:34]–[73:54])
  • Winding through the legacy of Genesis P-Orridge (and the boundary-blurring magician/artist tradition), up to reflections on Gnosticism, art, and individualized spirituality.
  • In-depth debate about the positive/negative readings of Gnosticism and spirituality through the lens of Christianity.

10. Fame, Energy, and “Avatar” Identity

• The Collective Gaze and Its Psychological Effects ([74:40]–[78:11])
  • Billy and Conrad swap thoughts on how receiving the focused attention of millions changes a person at the genetic/energetic level (“it does something to your DNA helix”—[75:36]).
  • Fame as impossible to simulate—creating an “avatar” version of the self, multiplied across memes, media, and public perception.
  • Both remark on the “crushing and bombing” simultaneity of going viral ([78:00]).

11. Hollywood as Ritual and the Limits of Christian Rock/Film

• The Power of Moving Images and Sounds ([78:36]–[81:01])

  • Kenneth Anger and Harry Smith’s view of cinema as “powerful magic”—conjuring images as “graven images.”
  • The difficulties of authentically merging spirituality with Dionysian art forms (Christian rock, didactic film).

• Faye Dunaway and the Energy of Fame ([81:01])

  • Famous anecdote: Dunaway sensed collective focus upon her.

12. AI, Divination, and the Next Spiritual Frontier

• AI as Oracle and Divinatory Tool ([95:12]–[96:56])
  • AI poised to become the new “oracle”—a fusion of information, pseudo-divinity, and decision-making tool.

  "They'll do it based off of the algorithm, which is just a set of instructions." — Conrad ([96:15])

  • Discussion of ancient oracle traditions (Delphi), their psychotropic origins, and their comfort/danger.

13. The Dangers and Realities of Opening Gates

• Portals, Divination, and Outside Forces ([97:42]–[98:52])
  • Final thoughts on what lies on the “other side” of spiritual/psychedelic/divinatory exploration: Conrad emphasizes a largely negative, potentially demonic influence, echoing Jacque Vallée’s caution.

  “Be careful if you peer into the abyss, because the abyss might peer back into you.” — Billy ([98:52])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Fame and Energy

  "I'm a firm believer in that. That may sound insane, but I'm telling you, it does something to you." — Billy ([75:36])

• On Hidden Hollywood

  "Hollywood has a long history for looking the other way." — Billy ([13:38])

• On Artistic Transmission

  "Once you've taken certain drugs, it's like opening up a port on an old 90s PC. That port's always kind of open on you." — Conrad ([49:35])

• On Pop Music's Occultism

  "They love these intentional occult Illuminati references...they're all doing it in plain sight." — Daniel Pinchbeck, paraphrased by Conrad ([56:30])

• On Power and Trauma

  "Almost all human dynamics revolve around two things. Power and trauma." — Billy ([59:54])

• On Opening Spiritual "Doors"

  "These things largely don't mean people well...the 20% could be real and a lot of it can be demonic." — Conrad ([98:09])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:21] — Introduction to Conrad Flynn & the challenge of defining new creative identities
• [03:11] — The fascination with rock, occult, and show business gimmickry
• [07:23] — Robert Conrad: Tough guy legacy, Hollywood stuntman origins, mob ties
• [13:38] — The shadow of Hollywood: Secrets, scandals, and “the uninitiated”
• [25:09] — Manson, Chaos, and the myth-making industry
• [43:06] — Are artists natural conduits for mystery? LSD, subconscious language, and music
• [55:11] — The “devil” in pop stardom and the construction of false identity
• [60:31] — Power, trauma, and the Faustian bargain of fame
• [74:40] — The fame "avatar": How digital life morphs celebrity identity
• [81:01] — Faye Dunaway, collective attention, and the energy of fame
• [95:12] — AI, divination, and the future of spirituality and power
• [98:09] — The real risks of opening spiritual/psychic portals

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Tone & Style

• Language: Candid, intellectual, digressive, self-aware, with a skeptical curiosity about hidden truths.
• Style: Free associative, exploratory, mixing humor with seriousness, occasionally dark but always grounded in lived experience.

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Summary

This episode is a sprawling, deeply listenable journey through the personal and cultural shadows of fame, art, and hidden power. Conrad Flynn and Billy Corgan uncover familial and societal layers of Hollywood myth, trace occult influences in rock and technology, and debate the existential risks and rewards of “opening the gates” – creatively, spiritually, or digitally. Their dialogue is festooned with memorable stories and conspiratorial side-alleys, peeling back the veils between the visible and invisible machinery of creative culture.

Transcript

[A]

I'm essentially a guy with a very limited resume but great references.

[B]

We're gonna have a blues jam into satanic infinity.

[A]

I'm totally damn for that.

[B]

I'm a firm believer in that. That may sound insane, but I'm telling you, it does something to you.

[A]

The metaphor of the video game or the computer game for our world is actually incredibly apt.

[B]

Can you see why we're all crazy?

[A]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Trust me.

[B]

Yeah. Conrad Flynn, thank you very much for being on the Magnificent Others. I want to do a little bit of promo before we start, which is you have a substack. The. The Flynn effect. Not affect. Effect effect. I just discovered your substack yesterday, so I'm a substacker myself. So how you finding the substack experience?

[A]

It's. It's very good. I was warned, Billy, ahead of time, that you feel a lot of pressure to post a lot. And. And so I'm having the classic writerly thing. If you post or you put something out there and at first you feel good, and then.

[B]

And you see nobody cares.

[A]

Well, that. That can happen. That always happens.

[B]

That's my life.

[A]

Yeah. No, no one cares. But then, like, regardless of how it feels, in a few days, it's like you never did it. And the pressure to be like, you have to put something else out there.

[B]

Well, this is the dopamine of social media. Right. They kind of get you into a system where you're somehow serving some invisible master. But overall, I've had a positive experience.

[A]

Sometimes the master is visible on social media, like, oh, this is what we're doing.

[B]

But I think you're doing some cool work on subsequent. So I Please go check out his substack. I find you hard to define. You know, you don't have a. He's the rock singer of so and so. So can you give me your elevator pitch of who you are?

[A]

That's a funny thing to like. Cause other people will be like, you know, your resume or your whatever. I'm essentially a guy with a very limited resume but great references. Where other people like, oh, I know Conrad. I back Conrad. But in terms of what I actually do or I've done, even my closest friends, Billy, are like, I don't know what you do. So I'm a writer. I used to do stand up comed.

[B]

How funny are you?

[A]

Depending on how. When I'm. I'm about a seven or eight.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

When I'm really feeling it, I can be a nine.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But I'm a unique seven.

[B]

Unique eight. All right. I have to come watch you do some comedy sometime. If you're in this world of new media where you're sort of figuring out who you are, you're a writer, but you're also personality, obviously, you're appearing on podcasts, talking about your work, which we'll get to in a second. But what is your aspirational goal of where you want to take this?

[A]

You know, Billy, that's a good question. I think with. With a lot of this stuff, it is so amorphous, as you're saying, where it's like, you can be a writer, but then you do a few podcasts, and then people want televisual stuff, and so then, you know. So I'll probably have to do a podcast. I'm working on one now with. On getting one off the ground with my buddy Stephen Thomas Erlewine, who's the great American rock critic. He worked for AllMusic for a number of years. And so we're likely gonna do one on rock and the occult called Running with the Devil, tentatively with Sue Kalinsky and Greg Johnson. He created the Osbournes. I'll probably do that. I love writing. I love cultural commentary. But as you know, Billy, you kind of see where this stuff goes. There's. As soon as you try to define yourself, people are like, well, now we want you to have a talk show. And then, you know, yeah, I think.

[B]

The sky's the limit for what you're after. And you talked about a little bit about your interest. Is it too narrow to say your current interest is where rock meets the occult, or is it wider than that?

[A]

I mean, it's wider than that, but it's always an interesting subject for me. I mean, my grandfather, both of my grandparents, worked in show business.

[B]

So, you know, what goes on behind the wizard's curtain?

[A]

Exactly, exactly. You know that the wizard is just a normal guy, but also the wizard be weird. You know, there's stuff that goes. There's stuff that goes on in Oz that's. That's strange. So, as you know, we were talking before we started taping. Billy. I loved the fact that entertainment, it is mystifying. You are dealing with images and iconography and larger than life people, but at the same time, it's super. And as you know, as a musician, there's a lot of just, like, chilling out. There's a lot of waiting. There's a lot of humdrum.

[B]

There's the two hours of the gig, and there's the 22 hours of waiting for the gig.

[A]

Right so. Exactly. So trying to. Exploring, you know, cultural connections, literature, politics, how these things intersect.

[B]

But why. Why music in the occult as opposed to the wider net of the occult?

[A]

I'll tell you because you know, my great grandmother, Jackie Hubbard, Jackie Smith, she got married many times. She worked for Mercury Records, Chicago, in.

[B]

Chicago in the 50s, 60s or 40s and 50s.

[A]

Okay. Mercury Records is always known heavily for their gimmicks. They hired. You would know this as a baseball guy. They hired the Chicago White Sox. They at one point had a little person or dwarf as a player to shrink the strike zone.

[B]

That would be. Bill Veeck was the White Sox owner. But I think that. Not to correct you, but my memory serves me is that maybe that little person who batted actually was for the Cleveland Indians.

[A]

But it may have been. No, no, that might make more sense. But. So she would do Mercury Records would do these promos with my great great grandmother and Mr. Mercury, they took that dwarf and they put him on and make him Mr. Mercury. So Mercury Records always had these gimmicks. And the first like satanic occult rock gimmick actually was through Mercury Records, which was. It's Coven's 1969 debut album, which is the album that has the song called Black Sabbath and it has a bassist name, Oz Osborne. So Lester Bangs was like this May when the album came out. Lester Bangs was like Black Sabbath is like the UK answer to Coven. So ironically, there is some.

[B]

And Black Sabbath actually covered Coven's song Evil Women, I think.

[A]

Is that.

[B]

Does it ring a bell?

[A]

I'm not a. I a little bit familiar with Black Sabbath, but I'm not sure if on that one. I know. Yeah, you. You would be the guy to ask about that.

[B]

I'm pretty sure. Evil Woman, I'm pretty sure was done by the band Covenant. Yeah.

[A]

I'm not going to doubt your Evil Woman.

[B]

Don't play your games with me.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So sorry to interrupt, but I get the feeling from looking at your work, you are. You are a deep music fan. You do really like music.

[A]

Oh, yeah. No, you're not.

[B]

Because I watched some of your interview with Tucker Carlson. At times it comes off if people, the uninitiated, they might think you have a crusade like a. Like a Tipper Gore crusade against rock music or something. And I don't think that's not the nature of your work. I think you're just looking at the association.

[A]

I love looking at things and saying with a lot of stuff that I. Billy, I like saying something could be this thing or it could be Another thing.

[B]

And leaning certain, you know, in the social space, you're going to have to pick a lane. Oh no, you won't be able to stay ambiguous.

[A]

Yeah, they'll drag you into it. But yeah, I grew up in the era of, of the 2000s where, you know, there was the, the MP3, the, you know, the, the I was later than Napster, but the, the Soul Seek era. And so, you know, that era of, of teenagers that could listen to whatever music they wanted to and they had all music. We had Stylus magazine up Pitchfork, my friends at Pitchfork, your great best friends at Pitchfork. And you could, you know, someone could talk about an album. And unlike in the 80s or 90s or 70s where that meant you had to go to a store and that there was like a huge lag between reading about something. So Billy, like you could go through like I remember being 15, 16 and just going through entire genres in a few weeks just because it's like, you know, sure, it's time to learn. We're here to learn at the feet of the master.

[B]

So yeah, just talk briefly and not in any way that to gloss over. But you, you, as you mentioned, you grew up in this kind of Hollywood. Your grandfather.

[A]

Robert Conrad.

[B]

Robert Conrad, because I hear Conrad, Flynn Conrad.

[A]

Okay, well, we made it intentionally confusing.

[B]

For people, certainly for my generation, was a very well known actor and kind of a legendary Hollywood tough guy.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah, I seem to remember him appearing, I don't know if it was on Johnny Carson or something, and being a kind of physically intimidating presence.

[A]

Well, that's because Gramps grew up in Chicago, a fellow Chicago guy. And he'd always play up his south side of Chicago roots. My grandmother, whom he married when he was a teenager, she was from Wynet.

[B]

Which is close to where I live. It's a little more tawny up there.

[A]

Yeah, it's a lie. Gramps would say a lot more tawny. It's a lot nicer. It's the joke. It's the other side of the tracks. And it was a lot nicer on those sides.

[B]

Absolutely, absolutely.

[A]

But she was a Cubs fan and he was a White Sox fan. So as you know, Billy, this was an interfaith marriage at the time.

[B]

I love that.

[A]

But Gramps is a, you know, he was a super tough dude and he was like a little bit of a gangster in high school where he went to school with the Spilotro brothers who were his best friends. Okay, those are at Martin Scorsese's casino. Those were those mafia guys.

[B]

Well, I, I I, I, I grew up with some of the grandkids of.

[A]

Those, you know, the deal.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, they, once, they, once they got into trouble in the 60s and 70s Chicago, they all moved to the suburbs. And I went to school with the grandkids. And when the grandkids would get in trouble, they would threaten you and say, you don't want to mess with my, my father, my grandfather, because something, you might end up in a cornfield. That's, that's kind of, by the way. That's, that it sounds like a joke, but it was real.

[A]

Dude, that's, that's my grandfather too. Like, he, he would, if, you know, he'd say stuff and I'm just like.

[B]

What are you doing?

[A]

Like, this is, this is just some. But y, he was a bit of a tough guy and yeah, he moved to, he won a James scene lookalike contest in the 50s, which was a big deal. And so he comes out to Hollywood, he breaks into Warner Brothers, he climbs the Warner Brothers fence, which something.

[B]

He was the last contracted Warner Bros. Actor. Yeah, Jack.

[A]

Well, what ended up happening was, But.

[B]

I think it's worth, because of your work, it's worth pointing out that he was at the tail end of the studio system, what we would commonly call now old Hollywood before New Hollywood came in and everybody got stoned and started making weird movies. Right, right, right.

[A]

No, he was part of the normie guys. Yeah, Normie and not Normie. But yeah, he got signed by Jack Warner and he and his co star and Hawaiian Eye Connie Stevens were the last people signed. But what would end up happening was he was a stuntman on the show Maverick at first and his buddy Nick Adams had gotten to work on it and the stuntman accidentally punched Gramps. And so Gramps, sorry, the actor on Maverick had punched Gramps. And Gramps, having been a former pro boxer, he punched the actor on Maverick, which as you might imagine, shut down production that day. Because if the star of Maverick has been punched by stuntman, that's going to shut down production.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So.

[B]

And on the totem pole of oh yeah, he would have been under the star.

[A]

Well, what ended up happening though was Jack, they told Jack Warner like, hey, Maverick's down for the day because stuntman punched him. And so Jack Warner said, who did this? And he saw Gramps. And out of pure Hollywood showbiz magic, Jack Warner was like, sign that guy to a contract.

[B]

I love that.

[A]

So sometimes it's the guys you do punch.

[B]

Yes. And then your other grandfather, Harry Flynn.

[A]

Was a press agent yeah, he worked for Walter Winchell, the big 50s publicist. He worked with him at times. If you've ever seen the movie the Sweet Smell of Success with Tony Curtis, the Burt Lancaster character is very much based off Winchell. And so, I mean, the rock and the occult. My grandfather worked on Bewitched and Ajahmo Cheney, Treboth's Light. Very. The lightest of occult touches. But he also was the publicist for the Monkees, so. And they mentioned him on an episode at one point. So there is, as you know, Billy, you go back over your career or people you work with, and you will find, like, funny connections that are just like, oh, I guess it was destined that I always be interested in this.

[B]

Well, what strikes me about it, other than just the obvious familial. Familial connection, is that if you grew up in that world, certainly somebody sat at a table and told you as a young person, hey, by the way, what you're seeing isn't real. Yes, I had to learn that the hard way. But if you're out here long enough or in Los Angeles, you learn that there's a public veneer and then there's the reality. It's well documented and every generation has its abuses and excesses. I mean, people are talking as we tape this about the P. Diddy documentary that's just come out. And people. People ask me if I've seen it. And I was like, well, I was around it in the 90s, you know, I went to some of those parties and I never saw anything too crazy. But I'm saying is I was in that atmosphere multiple times. And so I don't feel like I need to hear about it because I sort of saw it right firsthand. And I. I wasn't surprised by some of the revelations. And on the other hand, I'm not surprised that if those types of excesses were going on, I don't know, I didn't see anything. But. But I do know that Hollywood has a way of covering up if somebody's making somebody enough money.

[A]

Totally.

[B]

So when we talk about dark behavior, the occult, hidden agendas, secret societies, whatever you want to talk about, Hollywood has a long history, whether it's communist influence in Hollywood or whatever.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Walter Winchell exerting tremendous power. Louella Parsons had a hopper covering up for all number of things, whether it's unwanted pregnancies. Poor Loretta Young claimed that she had a child that they had a hide and she later adopted, but it was really her daughter because she claimed she'd been raped by a top Hollywood star.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Et cetera. Recently there was a revelation that I believe it was Natalie Wood was raped by a top Hollywood star. I don't want to say the name because I don't want to get sued, but it's certainly out there. The point is, Hollywood has a long history for looking the other way. So maybe to the uninitiated, that's a funny word to use in this context. For the uninitiated, it might seem shocking to them that certain things could go on in. Let's call it a form of plain sight.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But in Hollywood, you'd be surprised.

[A]

Totally, Billy. I mean, I still think people underestimate the influence of the Bill Cosby revelations a few years ago had on people because there were so many things in entertainment as, you know, where it's like with the 90s world, you saw it, but you kind of lived it. You kind of. It's kind of an open secret. You kind of don't care just. Cause it's like, it's not my business when people learn that someone that was from decades considered the epitome of the good sitcom dad, and that's actually like a whole history of sitcom dads getting into trouble. A friend of mine's working on.

[B]

Should do a podcast on that.

[A]

Oh, a friend of mine's working a documentary. I can't say about who, but she's like, oh, yeah, it's all about the sorted, sordid life of the sitcom dad. And I'm like, sitcom dads get up to. They probably party more than any rock star sitcom dads. But yeah, when people found that out about Bill Cosby and you know, that. That put a face to the whole idea that it's like, oh, my goodness, if this isn't real.

[B]

If Bill Cosby.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Can engage in these types of behaviors.

[A]

And people kind of knew about that.

[B]

Obviously went to jail over it. So it's not alleged.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Go ahead. I didn't mean to.

[A]

No, I was going to say that's like 30 Rock joked about it where there were jokes about, you know, don't go to a Cosby thing, he'll drug you. And it's like people already go over the deep end too much in terms of reading too much.

[B]

Well, even there were people joking openly about Harvey Weinstein. Weinstein. Weinstein, Yeah. I certainly heard, right, you know, those stories behind the scenes. And I've heard. I'm sure you have, too. I've heard innumerable stories about people who haven't been outed for bad behavior. Well, the point is. Sorry, no, the point I'm after is, is it doesn't surprise me that all sorts of things can happen in this town and within the corridors of power, whether we're talking about D.C. or Hollywood or the London financial districts. And you grew up in this. I learned about it, but you grew up. And so I guess the point I'm making in mutuality is neither. Neither one of us is surprised when we hear these types of things.

[A]

Totally. Totally, Billy. I mean, I'm sure you have moments with your kids where you're not trying to, like, open their eyes to the reality of Hollywood just to be watching some movie, and you're like, oh, that's so and so's boyfriend. Or, you know, that's. You know, that guy. He famously cheated musician I knew out of some. And it's like, you're not trying to blow their little minds. They're just. They're probably just trying to watch a Pixar movie. But. But, like, you just. You have trivia. I mean, we're both trivia dudes. And so, you know, so. So you naturally just want to share, like, oh, yeah, by the way, that guy's, like, the dirtiest dog in the industry. And so if you tell that enough to your kids.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, it isn't so much that they want to blow the lid off something, just so much as they just are very much aware.

[B]

Well, recently one of my kids asked me about Judy Garland dying at a young age, and they wanted to know why. And they're like, kids. My kids are, at this point are 10 and 7 and a baby. But they love the wizard of Oz like I do. So when they look at the wizard of Oz, I'm not in a big hurry to tell them, like, what Judy went through in her personal life. Right, right, right, right. You know, and it's. It's well documented, and, you know, I read the books. I've. I met Liza Minnelli and sat and talked to her for 20 minutes once about her mother. So. And I've talked to other people who, you know, were associated in the Garland world. So anybody can put those pieces of information they want together. But there's no mistaking the fact that Judy Garland was abused by Hollywood.

[A]

Oh, totally.

[B]

And she went on to be one of the biggest stars in the history of Hollywood. So if those types of excesses go on with some of the biggest stars. Shirley Temple talked about when she was basically underage, one of the moguls whipping out his, you know, what in front of her and expecting her to do something with it when she was like 12 years old. And she was one of the biggest stars in the world. Right, right, right.

[A]

And that's the thing, Billy, too. The wizard of Oz, I wrote about it on my substack a few weeks ago. You know, even the. The writers of the Wisdom of Oz, L. Frank Baum was a big. He's through his mother in law, Matilda Jocelyn Gage, big time spiritualist. His mother in law was like one of the most foremost feminists of the 19th century. She came up with the term patriarchy. She hated Christianity and she was really into the occult, deeply into the occult. So there's something there too, in that. A lot of times people think that this is a recent Hollywood.

[B]

Not at all.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Frank Baum from Chicago, another Chicago guy.

[A]

Chicago has its fair share of woo. People underestimate that.

[B]

Well, my theory on Chicago and Chicago's connection to the entertainment business is when you grow up in such austere conditions, Hollywood becomes the Emerald City. At the end of a particular. It does. It was for me, sure. You know, our aspiration was to get out here and make our dreams come true. And we did. And then of course, it turned into a nightmare. But that's for another podcast.

[A]

But no, you make a great point about Chicago, where Chicago is one of those cities that because there's so many talented people there and they do have the benefits of a rich cultural history with music and Second City and all those things, but not being the Emerald City gives you that crucial chip on your shoulder.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

So that. But that's that to me.

[B]

I'm sure you saw that with your grandfather.

[A]

Oh, yeah, well, he had multiple chips on his shoulder. I think Quentin Tarantino in one of his books. Books or interviews, he says, Napoleon didn't have a Napoleon complex. Napoleon had a Robert Conrad complex. So, like that, you know, I mean, I don't talk too badly about Gramps, but Gramps was intense about that kind of stuff. But. But yeah, that having that sense, I hate to say resentment, but just a sense of. I'll show them. While also having a lot of advantages yourself.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

I mean, you see that a lot in the San Fernando Valley with certain directors and writers who grew up in the valley, that their. Their fathers work in the industry. They have all kinds of what you might call privileges. But from their perspective, they're like, yeah, but my grandfather is. Or my dad isn't like a movie star. I'll show them. With no sense of irony of like, dude, you live In Studio City. I see your dad is a commercial director. Things are going well for you. So. But in a way, Billy, that is the crucial element is to have the building blocks to do stuff yourself, but to almost delude yourself into, like, no, they've all doubted you. You know, that's, that's, that's, that's a crucial key for a lot of people.

[B]

Okay, so, like, anything that drives us, there must be a consistent line for you to wake up, you know, week after week and sort of plume the depths of this type of information, which in many ways just shockingly is not more explored. And we can certainly talk about the reasons why. But what drives you to kind of get into the underbelly of the greatest myth making machine in the 20th and 21st century, which we will loosely call Hollywood?

[A]

Well, I mean, part of it, it has to do with both sides of the family being into it, hearing all the stories, but also it has to do with the very Persona of my grandfather, because I love my grandfather, Bob Conrad, Harry Flynn's great. Harry's just pretty on the nose, good guy. But Bob Conrad, who I'm named after, his first name was Conrad. It was actually Conrad Falk.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

His grandfather's name was Conrad. So he would call himself Two and me Three. Like, you know, I loved Gramps, but Gramps also had an incredible dark, masculine energy. Like, he was, he was a former gangster. Like, he rolled with those guys. You know, people always say, Billy, like, I fell in with the wrong crowd. But people never say I'm the wrong crowd. Okay, no, you, you started hanging and bad stuff, sort of. In other words, everyone always deflects to, like, you know, I was hanging out. I was hanging out with bad people. Gramps could be like, the problem. And so. But he was also an all American hero. Like, you know, Chuck LaBella, your producer, my friend, he was like, you know, my dad wanted to be Bob Connor. And a lot of my buddies, like, they're like, oh, yeah, my dad loves your grandfather.

[B]

American dreams. Yeah, Literally the embodiment of the American dream.

[A]

He is all those things, and all those things are true. And this is a key thing about entertainment where it's like, it can be gnarly, but there's also an on the nose thing of, like, he was these things and he was this good character. But he also. So a friend of mine, the late film critic Bill Weaver, he said, like, Han, he goes, if they were making fight club in 1961, he was like, your grandfather would have been Tyler Durden, he goes, he had the look, but also the negative vibe. So in other words, Billy, it's when you grow up with your mom being this very sweet Christian woman who I love very much. She wants me to text her right now. She doesn't know I'm doing an interview. But then her dad is like, this Tyler Durden figure that is like. Like incredibly gnarly Luciferian Mafioso Chicago dude who was also, like, a great hero, too.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It isn't. How do you get into that? But, like, how do you not? Especially when people only know the good side of them or people, you know, I could not be interested.

[B]

But is the idea that it light is the greatest disinfectant? It's long past the time where Hollywood's sort of true inner motivations, good or bad, be all sort of laid on the table. Like, what is the through line for you?

[A]

Well, part of it is just because.

[B]

You know at some point and you probably already had it, don't spoil the fun.

[A]

Oh, well, that's just it. Like, I was. I've worked on trying to do TV shows or trying to do projects that get into, like, the background of how people make it in Hollywood. And that's always interesting, too. And that is wholesome. And, you know, I think you and I, we both have in common. We both love Disney. Like, I'm down for the wholesome stuff, too.

[B]

Too, you know, another Chicago guy.

[A]

Oh, yeah, there we go. People, by the way, they were like, you need Billy Corgan's podcast next. Like, I held off doing other ones, and I'm like, look, Billy likes. He likes Disney. He likes pro wrestling. I, too, used to be a little boy. I'm like, we're gonna get along. Like, we have a lot of things in common. We're gonna appreciate that. This will be. This will be fun.

[B]

I guarantee you. No one's gonna talk to you like I'm about to talk to you. We're gonna take a river raft down a very interesting. The river sticks.

[A]

I'm always game for that.

[B]

Trust me.

[A]

Trust me. I'm always game for that. My uncle said, he goes, the Flynn effect is rambling and weird digressions. So you're.

[B]

You're. We're going to have a blues jam into a satanic infinity.

[A]

I'm totally game for that. We were saying about. We were saying before that Disney.

[B]

Disney.

[A]

No, it was about.

[B]

Sorry, I interrupted. I'm the worst interrupter.

[A]

But no, no, the critics of the.

[B]

Show hate me interrupting, But I just like talking to people.

[A]

No, no, trust me. I'm something of an interrupter myself.

[B]

Okay, well, we get on.

[A]

No, no, no. It'll come back to me, I'm sure. But it was about my grandfather. Oh. About Hollywood. Part of it, Billy, is that, oh, Hollywood can be really, really wholesome in the sense of how people, you know, make it, you know, the La La Land version of the story. And I've done things, I'm interested in that too, where people start out. Where was your first apartment? You know. But then that isn't the whole story of it either.

[B]

But is it? Sorry, but is it? You want to get to the bottom of. Just give me like a, like we're in a pitch meeting. Like, where does this go? Are you okay with the rambling? Maybe. Is that.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

A different way to ask?

[A]

I like, I like getting to the bottom of stuff and I like. Because it's, it's all part of the same thing.

[B]

Are you into a greater mystery and you're cool with wherever the mystery takes you?

[A]

Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

I'm just trying to understand because I, I, I'm fascinated by people's motivations.

[A]

Total. Well, I'll say this my part of it. And I talked about this with Tucker, the weird stuff where it's like my grandfather knowing the mafia guys my grandfather met Jimmy Hoffa with week before he died, his best friend was Jay Sebring, who was murdered by the Manson family. You know, all that.

[B]

I actually went to that house once.

[A]

Oh, really?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

When did they build Those? It, like 20 years ago.

[B]

Yeah, it was when a. When a fellow music artist was working there, which I thought was a bit dark, but I went up there to see. Visit somebody. And, and, and I'm a very, I'm a Christian. And, and, and as am I. And it was. I knew this, and this is one of the reasons I want to talk to you. But, but, but, but I'm sorry. You know, you can call me whatever you want when you're in a house where a bunch of people were tortured and killed. And that's the same front door. And it was, the energy in it was very dark.

[A]

Oh, I don't doubt that. And to your point earlier about Hollywood, there's the book. You read the book Chaos by Tom o' Neill from a few years ago.

[B]

I saw you reference that book, but I've not seen it.

[A]

Oh, it's very good. So I met with Tom a few times because I have.

[B]

Can you summarize it, if you don't mind?

[A]

It's essentially in 1999. Tom was a Writer, I think, for Premier magazine. It's gonna be a great plug for Tom O'. Neill. And he was doing a story on the 30th anniversary of the Manson murders. And he ended up looking at it, and looking up, he wanted to interview Vincent Bugliosi, who was a good friend of my grandfather. My grandfather played him in this NBC show called the DA which was like the precursor of Law and Order. So my grandfather went to the. He went to the Manson court case.

[B]

Gave me the trial.

[A]

The trial many times. There's one thing, Billy, where one of the. One of the Manson girls is reprimanded by the judge for making eyes with my grandfather. And he tells. He says he's like, squeaky. I ask that you stop trying to. To get something going with Robert Conrad. But my grandfather was researching the role, as was Peter Falk researching Columbo. His show did a lot better than the da But. So one of the thesis of o' Neill's book is that between the arrest of Charles Manson in August of 69, right around black Sabbath formed famously like that to that month, there's the story of one of the guys looking at. At a horror movie and going, people will pay a lot of money to be scared. And it's like, yeah, that, you know, that's the same month that the Manson murders happened and then Manson's arrest in November. Essentially what o' Neill gets at is that Hollywood was doing some kind of Cosby, more Diddy parties, 60s versions of Diddy parties in 1969. But to have come out with that in terms of, yeah, these parties are pretty regular. You had a lot of celebrities going to them, a lot of drugs. We're not ready for these revelations in 2025. Like, people are constantly going down conspiracy rabbit holes because we found out what we found out about Bill Cosby and all these other allegations from years ago. If people had found out in 1969, like, yeah, your favorite stars, not only do they do drugs, but a lot of them are bisexual. A lot of them, like, go to orgies. Like, we would have. The United States government may have, like, shut down Hollywood or put, like, John Wayne in charge of it.

[B]

Okay, so, like, is there empirical evidence for that or is that just a supposition?

[A]

That's. You'd have to read o' Neill's book. But, like, like, as someone who. My whole thing is like, I. I am a do your own research guy. And I'll. I'll get me PDFs and Kindle books guy, but I also have enough family Stories that it can. It's always made my research interesting because I could always verify it by asking my grandfather.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

So that. That's always been my thing too.

[B]

But is the point of it that so. Sorry, I'm just trying to understand the kernel of this. It's so.

[A]

Okay, yes, this stuff has always gone as you've seen.

[B]

Okay, but what about 69 sticks out in your mind? Or what stuck out in Mr. O'.

[A]

Neill's mind is that there was a great deal of COVID up in terms of the true motivations that his thesis, and I hope I'm doing Tom justice with this, was that the Helter Skelter thing was very much played up. The race war thing that Manson was trying to do, that a lot of it was pretty humdrum. Like these people were going to sex parties. These people were essentially going to datey parties. Someone got murdered in part because Charles Manson realized, Remember Charles Manson was having the Beach Boys perform his songs on the Mike Douglas Show. He was. Neil Young had bought him a motorcycle. That's in books.

[B]

I never heard that one, though that's.

[A]

Verified he was a dude in the scene. But he realized at some point, and when people know this, anyone who works in the entertainment industry understands the motivations. He realized he was always just gonna be a dude that's like, hey, dude, thanks for bringing the drugs, thanks for bringing the girls, thanks for bringing the boys. But this is where you get off on the trip.

[B]

Yeah, you're not on. You're not. You don't belong at this party.

[A]

You're not actually going to guest on the new album. You're not actually going to be in the new band. And when people think I'm next and they realize they're not, it's surprising, I hate to say it. In show business, these kind of things don't happen more often where people flip out. So Manson was essentially, according to o', Neill, a pimp, among other things, who was increasingly in show business. Increasingly again, the Beach Boys loved him. You know, he's in the scene and then he goes to a Doris Day party, you know, Terry Moore's mom. And she says, like in ONeills book, she's like, I'm not signing this dude. He's a freak. I don't want, you know, famously like, oh. And then when that happened, there's a.

[B]

There's. Sorry. There's speculation that one of the reasons Manson went to the house where Jay Sebring was murdering and sharing Tate was that he mistakenly thought Melcher was there. Something that's it's never been sort of proven, but that's always been the supposition. It was almost like a confusion or something.

[A]

I mean, if I could use a kind of risky analogy here, the way to think about the Manson murders is like, Kanye west famously had a meltdown a few years ago, went off the rail. Like, Charles Manson started putting swastikas everywhere. Imagine if Kanye west had never made it in 2004, and he was just merely one of Diddy's buddies who was like, getting songwriter credits. And in 2001 or 2002, Kanye west was told, dude, thank you. You've done a great job.

[B]

You're not in this club too much.

[A]

Cuckoo in the Cocoa Puffs. Like, you're. And then he. And then. And then at a Diddy party, if, like some dude showed up and started murdering a few celebrities, that is to me, the equivalent of what the Charles Manson case was. It was a dude that was always a little bit like, just make sure he's sedated today. He's cool.

[B]

But is your. But. Okay, but I'm saying is, is it. Where does that extend into your greater work? Is it? Is it. They use that as a sort of smokescreen. Like, oh, it was some lunatic over here, and we can continue with our bacchanal over here. Like, is there a greater.

[A]

Yeah, that's it.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

It's trying to. Is that we now, again, Charles Manson be crazy. The Manson family is crazy. That all is true.

[B]

But so when you say played up, it was like.

[A]

Let's just say it was exclusively this.

[B]

You set a narrative this way.

[A]

It was exclusively Helter Skelter, Race War store stuff, not also the parties. Let's just focus on this specific motivation and block out all the other stuff.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

That makes a certain sense to me. But is that. I mean, I think it's. I'm not a moralist, but is. Is that just opportunistic and self preservation?

[A]

Oh, totally. I mean, it would have. Who knows? I mean, that's the great.

[B]

You know, it's like famously in Hollywood, when the Hayes Code came in, right? It was a way to kind of like, on one hand, control the people that were working against the movie industry, which was like, Catholic, right? A lot of Catholic organizations were coming out saying these movies, they're too immoral.

[A]

Right?

[B]

But they call the pre code days. You know, people showing up with. You could see their boobs through their negligees in 1933, which, you know, if you grew up in fort movies, you watch the Pre code movies. You're almost shocked at how there was obviously hints of same sex behavior and all sorts of prostitution and you know, all, any, any manner of unsundry things. But the point is, is at some point, you know, the mogul sat around said we've got to figure a way to get the heat off of us and if we got to throw a few people over the bus, under the bus. So are you making that same connection?

[A]

Exactly, Billy. No, that, that is exactly it. So it was, it was like. Let's just say it was this. It freaked everybody out. But you know, it's, it's to party and have those kind of access to people. Yeah. But also with, with diddy parties and stuff. I mean if you're a really big star, a really big star, it's. The problem is never meeting people or meeting young, willing young women or young men. The problem is making them go away. The problem is getting them the next day to not follow up with like hey, you said you'd read my script or hey can check out the demo. And so, so the purpose of those parties and they're not even unique to Hollywood. I mean, you know, Weimar Republic, Germany had them too with what's his name, Eric John Hanneson, the, the fortune teller being like he would have these wild parties and film people and blackmail people. The. For Hollywood those parties are helpful I think because they systematize. We'll bring people here, it's anonymous, but they go away. You don't have that because.

[B]

In your estimation are they feeding some darker machine that's in place or is it just, is it generation to generation?

[A]

I think it's both. I mean there could be some darker thing at force there, 100%. But from an economic, like the social economic perspective it's very helpful for the very famous to be able to have as much sex as they want, which eventually becomes insatiable for them but also not have to worry about like yeah, there's this girl that won't stop calling me because she says I let her on. But I don't know. That's one of the economic reasons for those parties is they know you show up here, you see this athlete, you see this, you just know there's no follow up. Don't ask him for his email, you're out of here. That's why those parties, you could stop them and like an encampment, they'll just show back up because they are helpful to the super famous, I think.

[B]

Is there any evidence in your mind? Because it's certainly Been speculated. You know, the, the. There's the one gentleman who wrote the book about possible CIA influence on the psychedelic rock musicians, whether it was the Doors or Crosby, Stills Nash, stuff like that. There's, you know, the idea that there.

[A]

Was weird scenes in the canyon is the book.

[B]

Yes. So there's that. But then also this idea that. Because to people that look at. And we'll use the, you know, P. Diddy as an example. You know, one person would look and say, say, well, I can understand why these. These abuses or alleged abuses or actually proven abuses happened, but I tend to look at it from the standpoint of like, well, if. If there's all these rumors and whispers around certain camps and nobody's doing anything about it, why are they being allowed to run so free when ultimately you would say that's probably bad for business.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Is it ultimately, like has been alleged with the Epstein issues? Is there some kind of. Kind of compromise situation? Do they almost want characters to run free to create a compromise situations? I know that's a totally different subject, but I think it sort of runs parallel to the idea that. And we certainly had a situation in Chicago with another star where, you know, the rumors were around for a decade.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And nobody ever seemed to do anything about it. And of course we would museum. Why is nobody stepping in and doing about it when there's all this talk in plain sight?

[A]

Right. I think there's certainly. I'm very, very open to that. I mean, yeah, like I said, the Weimar Republic, it had Hannesen, who was the Nazis. He was this guy that was a. He was an occultist and a mystic and he was like a popular personality, but he would also do fortunes for the Nazis. And as my friend Rick Spence told me, he's this historian, he's got a podcast, strange as it seems, that goes into a lot of this stuff. And he was like. Hannesen was essentially the Epstein of the 30s for Germany, where you would go to his parties. His venue was literally called the palace of the Occult. And popular politicians, maybe they go to some orgies there and they would take pictures, film it. And now we've got blackmail the on and now what do you know? So this kind of stuff, like with Epstein, it's not new. With regards to your question about weird scenes inside the Canyon, something the only thing I didn't get to with Tucker that was really interesting. That actually tied my interest in rock and the occult along with the tech stuff, you know, about Kenneth Anger. Of course.

[B]

Of course, yeah.

[A]

Kenneth Anger, FILMMAKER Jimmy.

[B]

Jimmy Page did a soundtrack famously for what's the movie?

[A]

Lucifer Rising.

[B]

Lucifer Rising.

[A]

One of the stars of Lucifer Rising, by the way, was my mom neighbor going up Bunker Spreckles.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

He was supposed.

[B]

What a great name.

[A]

He was the. What's his name from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. When he checks in hotels he'll use Bunker Spreckles cuz he's like the surf king. But he was supposed to be Lucifer and he was the boy next door for my mom. So again, as to my interest in this stuff, my mom's boy next door is literally Kenneth Anger's pick for Lucifer. So. But so Kenneth Anger. Kenneth Anger gets into a lot of this stuff. Billy. This is actually like the through line. If you want a through line between six.

[B]

I'm look. That's what I'm looking.

[A]

Yeah, I'll give you, you one. So this is a really good through line between 60s rock and earlier stuff and even weird CIA stuff. And typically the CIA stuff. I. I don't have the family background in it, so I tend to back off. But this was just. This is too neat to not actually go into. So Kenneth Angers, his mentor in a lot of ways was the filmmaker Harry Smith.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Who? He was the one that did compile the American Anthology of Folk Music.

[B]

That Harry Smith interesting?

[A]

Oh yeah, no, that was his mentor. He was a big filmmaker. He lived at the Chelsea Hotel. Leonard Cohen would visit him for spells and stuff.

[B]

Harry Smith is one. Although he wasn't particularly a musician, he went on to be one of the most influential people in music in the 20th century because he set the folk boom and Bob Dylan into motion.

[A]

Right. As you know, Billy, that is like without being a musician. He is like forefather for everything.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

So he also, before Jimmy Page put Do it that will on records, he put that I think on those anthologies.

[B]

Did not know that about Harry Smith.

[A]

Oh yeah, no. Harry Smith believed that Aleister Crowley was his father. Father.

[B]

He like legit, legit father.

[A]

Yeah. So with, with Harry Smith, he was from the Pacific Northwest. He came from a long line. And again, this sounds crazy, but you can read it in the bios. My friend Mike McGonagall.

[B]

Just, just don't worry about qualifying. We'll just go down the rabbit hole.

[A]

All I love to do is you put foot inside.

[B]

It's a conversation about these things. Because I think my point would be so much of what we would touch on hopefully in our chat today is it's speculative, but it's speculative because there isn't enough Information. So you do end up connecting dots. And you can say you can lean into this association or you cannot, but there is a tremendous amount of association that goes on with occult secret societies, satanic forces, Marxists, Communists, the US Government. There's a lot, a whole lot of smoke there. And somehow it seems to center around, down not just corridors of power like Washington D.C. but somehow out here in Hollywood.

[A]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[B]

So.

[A]

No, no, that's exactly true, Billy. So Harry Smith, his mentor in turn was the filmmaker Maya Darin, who did Meshes in the Afternoon, the godmother of indie cinema. Okay. And what was interesting with her is her. She was sent to Haiti by Gregory Bateson, her grad school teacher, to study voodoo possession. Okay. So you have this tree from. From anger to Harry Smith to his mentor and collaborator, Darren and Gregory Bateson, he's like the Esalen Institute. He's like one of the godfathers of Silicon Valley. He. One of the godfathers of cybernetics.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

How does the mind steer.

[B]

Esalen Institute ends up becoming a very influential force on the west coast, particularly up, like the Big Sur area. Basically the precursor of spirituality media, Silicon Valley. Is that, Is that accurate for you?

[A]

Yeah. So, Billy, this is one of the big things that I never got to, which was I was like blown away when I was reading it was Rapid Eye magazine from the 80s, like the industrial post punk. Yeah. And so they have this whole article about this. And I was like, this ties both together. So it was Bateson, brilliant scientist, his dad came up with the term genetics, who sends Darren to Haiti with a camera to go study. How does voodoo possession work? In other words, what's going on in the mind? And Bateson was also an expert on schizophrenia. And so you get the idea. What's the difference between possession and schizophrenia? And famously, scientists, you know, they're like, some people say it's the same thing. Other people's, you know, one's from the Dark Ages, the other one's actually real.

[B]

I literally just had this conversation with Linda Blair, who of course famously starred in the Exorcist. This exact topic.

[A]

Well, there you go. She should be. Next time I'll have her here too. It's a weigh in. What do you think about possession, Linda? No, but so Bateson, again, the scientist, the great scientist sends down, who's the queen of all this? Like, she studied dance under. I think it was Katherine Dunham, the godmother of black dance, who herself was from Haiti. So they're sending Billy to Haiti to study possession. The scientists are not the weirdos. Well, the weirdos too, but the scientists. And so Darren goes and she ends up becoming a participant observer. She makes a movie about possession, but she also writes a book, and she's possessed no less than seven times. And so. So what's interesting about that is that that ended up becoming huge in the 1950s literature on brainwashing. There's a book, Battle for the Mind by William Sargent, that talks about this. And he's like, this is how brainwashing works. In other words, Billy, the schizophrenia movement of the 50s, there are some connections there between them studying possession. And then Gregory Bateson, by the way, he's like. Some people credit him as being the founder, the guy that suggests the idea of the CIA to build on Donovan. He tells Bill. He tells Bill Donovan because he worked. Bateson worked in the OSS in World War II during black chocolate.

[B]

That's the precursor to the.

[A]

He did black propaganda, meaning he would intentionally do psyops. He's the king of, like, we're losing the war, we're losing the war. That's what you tell them to depress the idea. So it's Bateson who tells Bill Donovan, you know, we should continue doing this after the war's over. And Bateson also is one of the first guys to do lsd, and he's the first guy to give Allen Ginsberg lsd.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And the first person, Billy, to give Allen Ginsberg LSD sets off a lot of things in motion.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So in other words, between, you know, Kenneth Anger to Harry Smith to Maya Darin, you know, you're also not far away from the Jack Parsons world through people like Marjorie Cameron. There is a scene and, you know, people can help us in terms of untangling what the implications of this are. But to your point, yes, the CIA, there is a bit of involvement there, seemingly in terms of. Of cybernetics. How do you steer the mind? And there is a connection there, but there's a lot to unravel. But, you know.

[B]

Okay, so before we jump dump. Before we. Exactly. Before we jump into our sea of free association here, I have one good question. I think a lot of good questions. Do you think artists are attracted to the mystical writ large, or is it that they are natural portals to channels high and low?

[A]

I think obviously artists are attracted to stuff because the nature of creativity, especially music. Music is unseen by, like, no one sees music, you know, in terms of where do ideas come from? Where do songs come from?

[B]

This is a point I try to make to fans of mine all the time. Because, of course, they want to criticize whatever comes out of the effort. And I say, you know, I'm okay if you don't like what I do, but understand, I always start with a blank page.

[A]

Right? Right.

[B]

And if everybody starts with the same blank page, how is it that a certain artist is able to consistently produce nothing or something from nothing where most people can never get past the nothing.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So that's kind of what I'm trying to.

[A]

No, that's exactly true. It's a mysterious process. There's a great book on the subject. I've always been interested in this. But a great book that I can recommend to people is Matthew Ingram's the S Word, Spirituality and Alternative Music. And it. And it goes. I was going to get you a copy, but he was doing another print of them. It goes from the 50s till today. And it covers Brian Eno, it covers my buddy Valentine, all kinds of stuff, by the way. That's one of my interests. I know that we have a shared thing in terms of my interest in this stuff. Billy. A lot of people would take the heavy metal route, heavy riffs. My thing was always like, Kevin Shields guitar tone. Fascinating. It's like on Loveless, it's almost spooky.

[B]

Can I give you a piece of insider information?

[A]

Please do.

[B]

So, Alan Molder, who mixed and produced Loveless, the infamous My Bloody Valentine, one of the greatest albums ever made, he mixed my album Siamese Dream shortly after Loveless had come out.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So I was fresh in the. In the aftermath of asking the guy who actually made the record with Kevin what it was like. And later I became friends with Kevin and the entire band. And we used to go visit them at. They had a house somewhere in London. But the thing I think you would find fascinating because this will. This will ping your Spidey sense here. I said, what's it like to work with Kevin? He says, very interesting. He'll sit, at times upright, words to eight hours, playing the guitar part over and over again and manipulating the frequencies until he got exactly what he wants. And then he does it in one take.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

Okay. So intuitive. I'm going to say my take as a musician and say your take from your perspective. But what I'm saying is, the way I read that is musicians are uniquely attuned to what frequencies do to the human system, which in my estimation is hardwired because a musician understands intuitively that these frequencies, these chords, these drum beats, will arouse something in a common way amongst people, in a global way. Not Just a particular tribe.

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

So, you know, we all know in music that the happy chord is D major. Right, right. So a lot of the Pumpkin songs that were very popular were written actually in C sharp major, which is a bit darker. So you get a similar effect to D major, but it's slightly darker. So when I hear this story about Kevin sitting there and manipulating frequencies for eight hours till he gets exactly what he wants, to me, he's looking uniquely at this frequency is going to convey something that goes beyond just the chords I'm playing. So I think that's what you're doing.

[A]

Totally. That's it. And he was obsessed with this book called Hypnagogia by Andreas. Italian last name. Starts with an M. Starts with an M. I forget it. But it's like when people, you know, they'll get into the.

[B]

Really.

[A]

The heavy metal aspect of it, but they. People overlook the drone. And as you're talking frequencies and stuff.

[B]

The drone is in these notes, by the way. But keep going.

[A]

Oh, no, no, I love it. So with Kevin, that was always my thing. It's like I wanted to do a project about rocking the occult that was focused not on the 70s or 80s, not on metal per se, but about early psych 66 and then 1991. I mean, Alan McGee famously got into the occult in a big way. He got into a hole, you said. He almost lost his mind. But so it's like. That's interesting to me because you don't associate Billy Creation Records with that stuff, which I love.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

But One of the Senses, for those.

[B]

Who don't understand the subtlety of what you're saying. You're not saying that Kevin Shields is in the occult or McKinney.

[A]

No, I'm just saying.

[B]

You're saying. So give me the simple version of what you're alleging.

[A]

Musicians are naturally hinting at music is spiritual. Even in the Bible, you know, King David. David, you know, he plays this. Leonard Cohen sang. He played, you know, played a chord that pleased the Lord. He goes to Saul when Saul is troubled and he plays him his harp and the spirit leaves him.

[B]

So are you suggesting that in the thread between mid-60s psychedeli, which LA was the home of, in many ways more so than London.

[A]

Right.

[B]

All the way into early 90s alternative music, that there's some sort of thread that gets into the mystical?

[A]

Oh, totally. Well, the other one, Billy. We brought up New York earlier with Kenneth Anger and Harry Smith. When people say which band is actually into the occult, that you wouldn't think that as much as anybody, it's actually the Velvet Underground, because the original drummer before Mo tucker was Angus McLeese and Angus's son, I think Ossian, he was actually like. He's considered like a Buddhist saint, Reincarnator stuff. But Lou Reed Reid loved Alice Bailey, who's head of the Theosophical Society. I mean, White Light, White Heat is named after her stuff.

[B]

So. Let me pause you there for a second. So in your free association, because you're sort of. You're connecting these dots, it's all free association with media. Sure. But are you alleging anything in particular, or are you just saying. I think there's a lot of energy and interesting connections here and I just wanted to explore. Is there more to this smoke than.

[A]

I think both. I mean, you would know as a musician, I'm, you know, in terms of what goes into. What goes on with people, in terms of potential influences and stuff. Personally, I think as. And I talked about this in soccer interview. The dialectic, as they would say. My friend Stephanie always says, don't be. Don't be pretentious and say dialectic. Just say conversation. But between, you know, either taking drugs or being into the occult or, you know, certain mental breakdowns and stuff, it's a dialectic which hand is washing the other with a lot of this stuff.

[B]

That's kind of what I'm.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Poking it, but in the same. Glad you're following that, because that's what I'm after. I'm not trying to put anything on you.

[A]

No, it's just. It can be hard to say. Well, it's like, were you into weird stuff and you did drugs or do you do drugs?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What.

[B]

What came first, the drug or the weird cord? Or the weird cord. Then you want it. You want to take drugs to understand what the weird chord means.

[A]

John Balance from Coil said once, he said, when it comes to drugs, he goes, big misunderstanding is people think you need to keep taking them to have the same effect. And he goes, once you've taken certain drugs, it's like opening up a port on an old 90s PC. He goes, that port's always kind of open on you. Just because you. You've done something that's chemically put you in a certain frequency.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

So I think that certainly, Billy, a lot of those guys, I mean, like, we're talking about lsd. The history of it goes back to the CIA, goes back to Gregory Bateson, trying to get into, like, the idea of possession and spirit possession.

[B]

You're getting into Ram Dass and. Oh yeah, and Timothy Leary. They were at Harvard or say Casey. But so just so we're clear, so that anybody listening is clear, we're willing to kind of walk through the shadow of the thing and say there's more here. But is it intentional or is it the result of musicians opening up into energies?

[A]

I think it's the latter. It could be the former, but like.

[B]

I said, I would argue the latter from my own experiences.

[A]

I want to hear about those.

[B]

Yeah, sure. Well, if you want to ask me anything, feel free, but I tend to fall more. So like I'll give you one illustration from my own life. I take an LSD and, and, but not, not to any great quantity. But when my real interest in LSD in the, in the late 80s and early 90s and this was street LSD. I mean, I was just buying from, you know, we knew these, these lesbians, you know, who sold their thing was they were trippers, they tripped almost every day and they'd sold lsd and we go to their house and their whole apartment was made like an LSD palace. It was quite interesting.

[A]

It sounds like a Pro Andia sketch.

[B]

Yeah, well, Fred Armisen, who most people would know from Saturday Night Live and of course he's gone on other things is this fellow Chicago. We used to play with Fred in the.

[A]

Well, there you go.

[B]

He was in a band called Trenchmouth and he was a great drummer. I don't know if he went to the lesbians who sold lsd, but it's possible.

[A]

Probably did.

[B]

But my point is my attraction LSD beyond the sort of like, ooh, wow, I'm seeing crazy colors was the first time I dared to listen to my own music. High in lsd where I was able to have an out of body experience audience to understand that I was actually communicating more through my music and more through the sound of my voice than I thought as I was doing it. And that was a mind blowing thing to me because I realized I was conveying energies, intentions and deeper subtexts within the language of music and then the language of the text. Then I consciously thought as I was doing was almost like I was speaking to myself. And I went into a loop, right? And it became this weird parlor game. And then where it got really crazy was I started coding my music with like references that would be so insider. No, I would think nobody would pick up on them. And then people would stop me and say, I understand what you're saying in the subtext of the music. So now I'm encoding my Music with the secret language that I think is only for me, it's kind of meant to amuse me.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And it became a parlor game with pumpkins and I guess me and fans where I would code my music. Nothing nefarious, actually. More kind of fun and winky.

[A]

Right.

[B]

More Tolkien than Crowley.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And. And people would be like, I totally got that.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And in some cases, fans would say, I didn't really understand what you were doing until I took a tremendous amount of drugs and then I actually heard what you're doing and then they would report back to me. And it wasn't that far away from what I was saying.

[A]

Right.

[B]

In intentionality. So that was mind blowing too, because. Okay. Now that you're dealing with different levels of subtextual information that aren't, you know, they go past the three minute pop song.

[A]

Right, right. That's fascinating.

[B]

Fascinating.

[A]

And that, that gets into something. There's a book on Brian Geysen, William Espero's partner.

[B]

I know Brian.

[A]

Yeah. And he had a thing about drugs in the, in the 60s. He was like the original, like 60s style occultist. And he's like the main thing of the 60s is what you're talking about where when people get turned on, he goes, he goes, I could be in a train station and I'm on hash or something and I see another guy on the same drug and he's like, whoosh. He's in my brain. I'm on his.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's just. And it's like that's. You're opening up gates. That's what, you know, the can song All Gates Open.

[B]

Sure. So I think again to go back to where we kind of started this particular riff, I think whether you're dealing with the, the outward eventual madness of a Sid Barrett or, you know, Chet Baker, who was, you know, incredibly like yourself, handsome young man, you know, very skilled horn player who, you know, kind of reached almost like a mythical status because of his self abuse.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Seemed to open some sort of portal into a great kind of sorrow. And whether you want to project that onto his playing or not, it seems to me as a musician to be there.

[A]

Right, right, right.

[B]

And it becomes the tragedy of a story, Right. Where Miles and Coltrane, they got off a heroine and. But they still brought those experiences somehow into what they did.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So I think where most people. And I'm. I'm not proselytizing, I'm saying where most people get caught up is, is maybe the, the what they would project onto you that you're insinuating because I got some of this in watching your interview with Tucker Carlson is like. Like, are you saying that there is this nefarious kind of hidden satanic thing? I do believe there is a satanic element, and we can talk about that, but I don't think it's particularly overt in my experiences in music.

[A]

No, I agree with that completely. I mean, the devil is sly. I mean, the Bible talks about being able to transform himself into an angel of light and being able to deceive.

[B]

Well, I would argue that in many cases, the most satanic representation in music. Music over the last 20 years has been the pop stars, because they are creating. They are knowingly creating a false image.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And they are servile to the false image to the point of jacking up their faces and jacking up their voices and deluding their audience that they're somebody that they're not. And they're all doing in plain sight.

[A]

Right?

[B]

And in some. At some point, even the. You'll see the audience reach a point of cognitive dissonance where they know that the person they want to believe in an idolatrous way isn't that person. And they force the people to double down on the idolatry because that's the only thing they can do where, as you know, as a fan of alternative music, alternative music's the exact opposite. It's about, well, warts and all, right?

[A]

It's. Did you. Did you forget to bring a tie, or. What are we doing here? Right.

[B]

Well, I always say it's the. The right T shirt and the right mustache. All right, so let's just. I don't want to cut you off, so if you have something to add to that, but I wanted to kind of jump in.

[A]

There's a writer, Daniel Pinchbeck, who used to write for Arthur magazine. It's kind of. It's kind of like Oz magazine from the 60s, but from 20 years ago. And he's kind of a Timothy Leary of Gen X, as Colbert called him. And he's written and talked about the pop star thing in recent years where he's just like. He's gone full, like, vigilante citizen, where he's like. They love these intentional occult Illuminati references. And this is. Again, this is Daniel.

[B]

This is my notes, by the way. You're doing a good job there.

[A]

Daniel Pinchbeck is, you know, his mom knew, you know, the beats. Like, he's a pretty sophisticated dude. So to your point. Yeah, of course. I mean, I don't think of Course, Billy, like, it's all. It's all pretty obvious.

[B]

Well, but maybe too much of the audience that just. Just, you know, they're just fans of who they like. They wouldn't necessarily understand, let's call it the. The motivations, why a. A pop star would lean into cult imagery. It may not be as simple as, you know, they're suddenly joined a secret society and they're giving the weird triangle thing.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You know, we've all seen those pictures. We're like, oh, my God, they're given the triangle. Whatever that's about. Whatever that's about. I think mean, you know, weirdos like myself, sometimes we, like. I did a tour in 2019 around my albums cotillion. It was a solo album, and I dressed up in Freemason garb for the tour, having, by the way, no foreknowledge that my ancestors were actually OG Freemasons.

[A]

Really.

[B]

And there's actually a church built by one of my ancestors in the state of Illinois where I was born and raised and still live. That's still standing. That was. Is a very famous Freemason church.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Wow. So I actually have OG a cult, and my family was one of the original 100 Mormon families as well. So let's play that game for a second and we'll move on to other people. So for all I know, I'm actually born with. So let's call it the genetic imprint of secret societies. I'm attracted to them. I actually have masons pull me aside, say, you sure you don't want to join?

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

So they're identifying something in me. Or maybe it's just because I'm seen as I have some power in the world. I don't actually have much at all. So again, we're surfing on the wave of, like, where does the game begin and end? And it's like something out of a Kubrick movie. Right.

[A]

I'll tell you, there's a buddy of mine named. I think his last name is Lyons. Nathan. Nathan Lyons. And he comes from a long line of pastors. And what he told me after my episode. He's a very nice guy. I knew him a little bit, but.

[B]

Afterwards he was like, you say you took Carlson episode?

[A]

Yeah, after my reset episode.

[B]

My psychotic break.

[A]

After my psychotic break, I met a lot of people, but Nathan told me, you know, because he's from a long line of pastors, and he goes. In America, he goes. Because people move around so much and they intermarry on every different level, and people don't stay where their family's from. He goes, we don't understand what it's like in other parts of the world where on a religious aspect, you go to some parts of the world and it's like, well, I'm a witch doctor. My father was a witch doctor. His father was a witch doctor. And they founded the city of witch doctors. And it's like people, if we knew more about our family history is what he was pointing out, he goes, we would see kind of like the Back to the Future movies. It's like how similar the 19th century version of Billy Corgan is the 18 in terms of interest, in terms of spiritual background. But he made. I haven't forgotten that when he told me that, he goes, if you knew more about your own line, he goes, people, they have either, you know. Yeah.

[B]

To be personal on some level. Are you trying to sort of reconcile your. Your grandfather story? Does that make sense the way I'm asking?

[A]

Yeah, I'm. Yeah. I mean, he. He is a super. Yeah, yeah. He's a super intense guy, but he also has a lot of dark energy. And I'm a Christian. My mom's a Christian. Gramps would even say he's a Christian. But, like, part of why he was so good is because he could do stuff that was like, incredibly willful and incredibly dark.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. And so it's kind of trying to figure out what is that, you know.

[B]

If I could put a capstone on this before we go into my free association.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Association game. Ultimately, I think almost all human dynamics revolve around two things. Power and trauma.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And attraction to power is very simple. It's like, I'd like to have more power. I'd like to have more agency, I'd like to have more control over my life. And most people's expressions, where they get lost in that is something that's imprinted them in trauma. It might be ancestral as well. Well. And it affects their ability to judge.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Power and how power corrupts. And. And if you notice, most institutions that corrupt through power, they use people who are traumatized.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Because it becomes the portal. Because they're like, oh, you want power and it becomes a Faustian bar.

[A]

Right, right, right.

[B]

As long. I just want to know if you agreed with us.

[A]

Oh, totally, totally.

[B]

Okay, so here we go. I'm just going to throw names at you and I. You take me wherever you want to go. Okay. Let's start here. L. Ron Hubbard, but not L. Ron Hubbard. Dianetics. L. Ron Hubbard. L. Ron Hubbard as a sci fi writer.

[A]

L. Ron Hubbard is the sci fi writer. Okay. I'll tell you an interesting story from a guy that he had a studio not far from where we're. We're filming right here. And so L. Ron Hubbard, you know, he used to. According to my friend who died a few years ago, his name was Lucky Brown and He was about 96, another great name. Yeah, I know he was, he was one of the bad guys in the movie, the Alan Ladd movie, Shane. And he had a studio not far from where we are. And, and he, he, he used to know Errol Flynn. Flynn. And Errol Flynn's buddy, Iran Hubbard, he used to, you know, Errol Flynn, the first celebrity convert to Scientology. And what he used to tell me.

[B]

Is that in a notorious.

[A]

Yeah, well, it's something in common with some other people, but we won't get into that. So L. Ron Hubbard, he said, he goes. He started off as a script doctor in Hollywood and he would work. He started working specifically with Spencer Tracy and he, it was the fact that he could take Spencer Tracy's the script that he wanted for himself and he could put it in Tracy's voice. Okay, but what you'll notice really quick about Tracy is that Tracy, you know, there was that movie, the Scotty Bowers movie, Tracy was allegedly gay. It's interesting how often that comes up with a lot of Scientology adjacent talents. In other words, L. Ron Hubbard might have spotted early on that if you can help closeted gay actors and kind of provide a structure around them, there's a market for that.

[B]

Well, I've heard that from people who were in the church and later left that there's a certain level of truth to that. And as a sideline, I was told I have no particular proof that I'm actually related to Spencer Tracy.

[A]

Well, there you go. Look at that.

[B]

So there we go. Hey, okay. Philip K. Dick.

[A]

Philip K. Dick. You know, there's an example too of a guy who, in the 70s, he had like his Gnostic visions and stuff. And to. Going back to what we're saying about music, well, where guys get their ideas.

[B]

Well, Dick, because I'm a huge fan, claimed that he got a download that he wasn't quite sure whether it was the CIA using some future weapon or was an off planet intelligence. And he claimed he would get these massive downloads where they would show him colors and basically program his mind with geometric shapes. He talks about it in his. I think it's called his exegesis. I can never say that word. I don't know if you've ever read that.

[A]

I haven't read it, but that doesn't surprise. I mean like I'm familiar with that. What's been interesting, Billy, in the last few months, something I've come around on is when people would talk about simulation theory or like I had a download or whatever. In other words, the metaphor of the video game or the computer game for our world is actually incredibly apt in terms of if God created our world, but he's the programmer, but he allows all these things to happen. That was one of the things that went back to the Tucker interview with Nick Land. Nick Land, if he's a Satanist, why is he, you know, what's going on there? But what he essentially believes is that if God created the. This like simulated world, not unlike what Philip K. Dick said, why does bad stuff happen? If God's in charge, what is the economic role of evil that this is allowed to happen? And in a way the video game metaphor or the computer metaphor that Dick's getting into it is the most appropriate one we have with God as the master programmer. People is essentially both NPCs where we have free will, but we kind of don't. We don't. You know, an NPC does whatever they think they're supposed to do, but also, you know, things are already kind of. It's a created world but things exist outside.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Yeah. So when Dick getting into the computer language, I used to just poo poo that as just like that downloads. But there is a strong metaphor, I think that humans never had prior to computers.

[B]

Another free association. I actually own two Phil Kiddick manuscripts.

[A]

Well, there you go. That's great. Yeah, yeah, that's.

[B]

Genesis P or oh.

[A]

My goodness, Genesis Pijoric. He's one of the through lines that I love because he'll take you from as you know Brian Geyson, he's there in 67.

[B]

He interviewed Gyson extensively. There's a book that's come out with all Genesis surviving interviews with Guyson.

[A]

Have you read?

[B]

I read about a third of it.

[A]

I love that book. That book, it's like a secret history of the counterculture. Because guys started as in that book. Geising will take it from the 30s. Surrealist. Yes. All the way to the 50s. Beats the rolling Stones. And towards the end of the book, towards the end of his life, Gysen tried to create a super band. I don't know if you knew this between Genesis P orridge and Ian Curtis. He was trying to.

[B]

Never heard that.

[A]

190. Oh, it's in non binary Orige's memoirs. He's like got geising.

[B]

Now I know Peter Hook from Joy Division. His son Jack plays in the Smashing Pumpkins for about nine years. So I will have to check your source on it.

[A]

Oh, you could check really quick about Joy Division. That was actually one of the contentions for me getting into the topic of rocking the culture is a friend of mine was like, Joy Division has no occult like resonance, whatever. And I was like, I forget if it was Barney or Peter Hook, but one of them said they did and one of them said they didn't. And I was like. Ian Curtis was friends with like Burroughs and Gyson.

[B]

I didn't know that.

[A]

Oh yeah, he. And he, he would do hypnotism and you know. But that was the contention.

[B]

Well, I'm, I'm, I, I don't know anything other than what I know, but certainly it seems obvious to me that Ian Curtis, who unfortunately hung himself when he was 24 years old on the eve of Joy Division's first American tour. There was some kind of neurodivergence or some kind of spectrum thing going on or he was schizophrenic. There was something, there was certainly a brain issue going on.

[A]

Sure. With the epilepsy and stuff like that. Yes.

[B]

But I've never heard the occult connections with him.

[A]

Well, really quick, before we go to the next one with Orage, he gets into something that has to do with today's tech. His thing was Burroughs idea of always using the latest tech for magical purposes. And that was, you know, that was originally with his groups and in the ccru in the 90s. Orig is the through line between like 70s to today.

[B]

Orange may go down as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century because for a person of. You wouldn't say he was highly skilled in the musical arts, he was highly skilled in the art of persuasion and, and I don't even know what I would call it because you know he, he famously started doing generic. You know, he wanted to look like androgyny project and, and full disclosure. And I talked about another interview. I, I knew Genesis a little bit. We used to communicate through a mutual friend. Would you. Do you think, or is there information that Genesis considered himself a Satanist? I know he, I know he, he was, he was, he was interested in, in like, let's call it things of power, sex, magic and. But, but would he, did he consider himself a Satanist?

[A]

I think a lot of these guys would and just describe themselves as Gnostics because What you get into, you get into the Gnostic reading of Genesis 3.

[B]

So let me ask you this because I call myself a Gnostic, but I got the feeling you're not a big fan of Gnostics. Tell me why and I'll tell you why I. Why? Why I think you might be wrong.

[A]

It's just, it's a straightforward. And before I forget, if we can circle back later with Genesis, I want to tell you. If you want the.

[B]

No, please, just, just go wherever you want to go.

[A]

Oh, the. The connection between psychedelia and goth, which as you would know is, you know, it's, it's. It's a, you know, psych. Goth being a kind of dark psychedelia and psychedelia being a kind of colorful goth. Their relationship one of the funniest.

[B]

Well, David Bowie, who's you could argue is the most influential artist to influence what became the goth movement.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Was famously very invested in Gysen and Burroughs and the Cut Up Technique. Technique. Well, so there is, there is a direct connection between what you're talking about.

[A]

Well, even with tech. I mean, I wrote about it a few weeks ago, the way the Cut up technique is a kind of proto AI writing.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

Because you're cutting stuff up, you're randomizing it. I'm curious what you think about AI music in a second too, but, but.

[B]

Let'S talk about Gnosticism because I. Oh, go go. Do you. Have you ever read, I think Believe it's Elaine Pagel's book about the Gnostics?

[A]

I have it, but I haven't read it.

[B]

I'd highly recommend it, but give me your dim view of Gnostics and I'll give you why I think you might be misguided.

[A]

My thing is just a pretty straightforward traditional Christian perspective on Genesis 3 where it's like in terms of Eve in the garden, eating of the fruit, that that was all in all a bad thing. Whereas in the more Gnostic perspective where everything kind of diverges is that not only was God's will, but this was bringing knowledge to mankind, illumination to mankind. That everything kind of comes back to a reading of Genesis 3. Mine's just the more traditional one of like, that was bad. Satan's bad.

[B]

Right. The reason I call myself a Gnostic and this is my understanding of Gnosticism and also has a lot to do with why the church went out of their way to murder all the Gnost around 300 AD. Oh yeah, I'm sure you know about that, but I've openly called myself Agnostic at times. Because the way I see it is there's the apostolic church, which is, hey, there's this succession and here's the lineage. And that's more of what you're referring to. The Gnostics believe that Jesus laid out an intrapersonal relationship with God. So even though somebody might consider this heredity medical. My interpretation. And again, I'm just some dude from Chicago. My interpretation. Well, no, but I'm, but I'm, I, you know, we live in a culture where you, you, you have to, you have to say, have Some sort of PhD before you can say certain things. For example, when I've been attacked in public for taking certain positions about certain things involving entertainment, I'm like, but I've been in the entertainment business for over 30 years. I have a very unique perspective. Like we talked about when with you, if you stood behind the wizard's curtain, you see things and know things that you could only know if you stood behind the wizard's curtain. So for somebody to say, well, you didn't stand behind it long enough or you didn't hang out with the right people, I think that's kind of a strange thing to make. So we live in a culture, the Western culture, where agency or bona fides is very important. But my, my take on Gnosticism is, and there is evidence, I believe that, that Jesus in particular talked about the Gnostic experience, about having a highly personal relationship either with Jesus Christ or with God itself or his self. And so when I see that, when Jesus says, and I'm going to, I'm sure butcher the saying, but you know, if you want to know God, you know, you go through me kind of basically you might know the phrase I butcher it all the time.

[A]

No one goes to the Father except through me, right?

[B]

I've played with people who are straight hardcore door, you must, you must accept Jesus into the kingdom of heaven. If you don't accept Jesus, you won't get. You like, basically you have to go through Jesus door to get that. I, I interpret it slightly differently, which is he's saying, I figured out the way to illumination, right? So I'm the living embodiment, three dimensional example or four dimensional of how you get there, right? But you don't have to like, it's not about me. I'm not a cult of personality. I'm the exact opposite of a cult of personality. I read it differently. So I don'. If some people might consider that heretical. So I see Gnosticism is very similar to the art of Being an artist, which is your own personal interpretation of the Godhead is what you're actually sharing into the world. And of course, if you're an infinite God and you're not a punitive God, well, isn't that the whole point, right? You're all going to find your way home eventually. So if you want to be a prostitute and live in a sewer, that's your choice. You want to be a weirdo and take a bunch of lsd, eventually you're going to figure out that there's really only one way to get get here. And that's sort of an inner form of purity. But it's not the condemnatory version of purity. It's, it's an, it's an awareness purity.

[A]

But please, I mean, that's really interesting. I mean from my understanding with Gnosticism.

[B]

Does this make me a Satanist now?

[A]

No, I mean that was a joke you have in the Bible. From what I remember, what I understand there's a couple different parts in Colossians and, and whatnot. It was dealing with Theosophy actually, which was a modern, kind of structured version of modern day Gnosticism about the Bible was strangely preemptive about a lot of Gnostic doctrines. And even though they had, it hadn't even quite come into being yet in terms of, you know, reincarnation, which I mean it's funny, those ideas were around back then. One of the apostles says and says who, who might Jesus be? They go, I think he's Elijah. So these ideas aren't, were not totally foreign to the time, but from what I remember the Bible goes through kind of preemptively considering Gnosticism was just not quite there yet, not quite forming in terms of like against reincarnation, against anyone but Jesus. Y But so my thing is much more the traditional way. I mean, you know, going back to the computer analogy, which a few weeks ago, Billy, I would never have used, but it's like, you know what, what makes the Christian story amazing using video game terms is that it's like, you know, they have the term the avatar from Eastern religion, but also now people know from video games is the idea of God putting himself in the game is that God will become flesh, that the creator, the programmer of the game is going to enter the game itself some point and do it right.

[B]

Sounds about right to me. But what do I.

[A]

But what's funny is that people didn't have these analogies. Now we can just be like, oh, life's a video game, life's a simulation. People Are like. Oh, sure, like they have a frame of reference.

[B]

Well, in the way the idea. And it's an emerging idea certainly over the last seven to 10 years that we're all living in a simulation. And I'm sure there's historical antecedents, but I've begun as a way of understanding my jagged trek through global culture and fame, which is its own head. I refer to myself, and I'm not a person who calls, you know, talks about himself in the third person like many of my brethren and sister and do. But my point is, is I. I started within the last seven to ten years referring to myself as an avatar. That there is a Billy Corgan avatar, because it was the only way I could associate navigating digital media.

[A]

Media.

[B]

Right. Because up till digital. Digital media showed up, my, my, my interactions with the mainframe of fame and the entertainment business was organic.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You know, you talk to a reporter, they put it in a newspaper.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Now people are picking me on timelines. They're using memes.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I'm just using myself.

[A]

You can have a friend post as you.

[B]

I'm sure you could find memes of your, of your, of your, your grandfather who we talked to. You know, the point is you make them shirtless, you become. Right, you become something that you are, but other than you are.

[A]

Well, totally, totally. I mean, I was talking to a friend of mine who's an actor, Jim Cody Williams, and he was saying, goes fame on some levels, he thinks almost modifies people genetically just because he's been around so many famous.

[B]

And he's just like, well, someday when I'm on your podcast, we can talk about this. But I will raise my hand and I will say that I absolutely believe that the, the act of being in the public eye and receiving all that energy. Energy both direct, like, say from a concert or even indirect.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

Somewhere in the world, somewhere, somebody's talking about famous people. And maybe I'm in that mix at the moment, right. That does something to your, to your DNA helix. I'm a firm believer in that. That may sound insane, but I'm telling you, it does something to you.

[A]

I know. I want to stay on this really quick. I mean, Robert Fripp has talked about that about rock concerts.

[B]

He's like, Robert's a lot smarter than I am. So I would follow his lead. I know he's smarter than all of.

[A]

Us, but he, but he would say he's just like at a concert, he goes, the energy in the crowd, he goes, you can almost get the world to start turning a different way.

[B]

If we understand. And of course, it's in the Bible, the laying of hands has the effect of doing something to the physical system of a human being. Now stand in front of a crowd of 10,000 people. I mean, I've looked out, and I'm just saying this in a sharing thing. I've looked out in a concert, 10,000 people, and I'll play a parlor game and I will try to find one set of eyes that is not on me. And I can't find. Find one.

[A]

Oh, totally.

[B]

So even if that. Even if, let's say 80% of 10,000 people are looking you.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You know, that's 8, 000 sets of eyeballs that are directing whatever ray beam they have, your direction, it does something to your physical being.

[A]

Oh, totally.

[B]

It turns you into a megalomaniac who talks over people.

[A]

But no, no, no, no. Well, that's just to your point. When you have that. When you have that many people thinking about you, I mean, it's not being a rock star, but when I. When the Tucker video was released and it was, was. It was a very big viral hit in terms of. For his show, like. Like they were texting me. They're like, we're doing huge numbers on this. But it was also very divisive work. I'm getting a ton of good feedback.

[B]

I'm sure you got a ton of negative feedback.

[A]

Oh, yes.

[B]

Yeah. People.

[A]

I'd have people.

[B]

Could you. Okay here. Could you feel that energy?

[A]

Yes. Because what it is. I said it was almost like a word. Jesse and labyrinth, where, having done stand up, there are some rooms where you are crushing. Where people are like, yeah, Yes, I love this guy. This is interesting. And they're thinking about you and they find you fascinating or whatever. They dig it. And then there's some rooms, but that is not happening where you are. You are bombing, essentially.

[B]

Or they're just like.

[A]

They're like, who is that? How did he get on the show?

[B]

But how do you quantify when tens of. In your case, you know, I think at the time of this taping, over 2 million people have watched the Tucker Carlson interview. Can you quantify, just for the sake of our parlor game here, can you quantify what that feels like? Because you probably had not experienced that before.

[A]

I realized at the end of the weekend was Billy. I said it was from stand. In standup terms, it was bombing and crushing at the same time.

[B]

See? Can you see why we're all crazy?

[A]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Trust me. Yeah. No, and it was as to the point of the digital avatar, they're hating a version of you. I have friends, friends of mine, and they were concerned where they're a close friend of mine. She, she. She didn't watch the episode. She was just reading the comments she should never do. And she was like, are you crazy? She goes, people are saying you're crazy. And she goes, I know you and I've known you for a long time, but, like, are you crazy? Like, in other words, they're getting ideas of. It's. It becomes a loop of secondhand.

[B]

Can you understand the why I pointed out the avatar?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So now there's a Conrad avatar. Right. Which may or may not resemble the real Conrad sitting in front of me.

[A]

Right, right. It's just the guy that. Well, that was the thing. Harry Smith said as an occultist, he was like. And Kenneth Anger would say to go back to Hollywood really quick, please. Kenneth Anger would say. He goes, he goes, the day the movies were made was an evil day. And Harry Smith said, He goes. Filmmaking.

[B]

He.

[A]

He said his graven images. And I had a friend of mine, a. A screenwriter.

[B]

Thoughts. Don't. Don't lose your thought. But it's powerful magic.

[A]

It is, it is. I mean, as my friend Rick Spence said, he goes. He goes, when you read something, you're conjuring it up in your mind, but with film, you're bringing something to light. With light, as Stan Brackage said, he goes, you. You were using light to bring something.

[B]

To light right through the eyes.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Into here.

[A]

A friend of mine who's a popular screenwriter, and he was saying, he goes, what is a Christian movie? Like, can you do Christian movies? And I made a point that I made, Tim Billy, that I've made about Christian rock before, where first of all, the idea of what is Christian rock or what is even rock is a very simple.

[B]

Oh, don't even get me started on Christian rock.

[A]

No, don't get me used to it.

[B]

Last time I talked about it, I got a bunch of hate.

[A]

No, no. But I said to him, I said, the Bible is. Jesus is called the word, it is written. And as a Bible teacher, Aw. Pink said, he goes, I've got God wanted theater or visuals and not, you know, banned them. Good.

[B]

Well, overall, the satanically influenced rock bands have made a lot better music than.

[A]

No kidding.

[B]

Than the Jesus.

[A]

Well, no, that's. That was my point. I was saying to him, if, if, if the spirit of Dionysian excess was supposed to be done by Christians On a basic spiritual level, this would work. And the same thing to a certain extent with film where. If we were supposed to. Not that there can't be films. I mean, like the Charlie Brown Christmas Special is probably the best Christian film ever, ever made because it's so light and it's so atmospheric. But in terms of didactic Christian films or didactic Christian rock, if this was supposed to work, this would be easier. But on some fundamental level.

[B]

Ah, interesting.

[A]

If on some fundamental level this can't work because.

[B]

So it's not our fault. We have limited choices.

[A]

They're limited. That's being nice. No, now I'm being mean. But if Christians were supposed to make music that simultaneously was worship but also had a Dionysian aspect, it wouldn't be this dang hard. Same thing with filmmaking. If you were supposed to make Christian films that were this didactic, that had Christian lessons, the Bible would maybe be visual and image orientated as opposed to the Word. So my thing is that I don't think it's possible. That's a hard take, Billy. That's a hot take. But I'm also like, this would be easy. I think you're running into a brick.

[B]

Wall with a lot of this stuff. One thing to loop back on. I remember talking to Courtney Love once where she had befriended or was around Faye Dunham away, who, you know, was a huge star in the 70s and one of the most beautiful women in the world. And Courtney ended up talking to her about her experience in making Bonnie and Clyde. And the thing that I remember from the conversation that she related was Faye Dunaway said, I would lay. I'm obviously paraphrasing. Hope doesn't bother anyone. But I would lay in bed at night and I could feel them all thinking about me. Interesting.

[A]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[B]

Are you aware of the films of Andrei Tarkovsky?

[A]

Yeah. Solaris and any thoughts on Tarkovsky? I mean, the only one I have that's interesting, and I mentioned this on the Carlson Podcast, is the Tower of Babel. Speaking of, you know which, the modern Tower of Babel, what's his name from Killing Joke.

[B]

Jazz Coleman.

[A]

Jazz Coleman. He has a thing recently about using the techno, the Singularity, being a kind of modern Tower of Babel. And people were sending me on that. That's my feed. Cause like, oh, this is your Tucker point. But it's Jaz Coleman who we were going to interview for Rocking the Occult. We talked to his manager, you know, cool guys. It's him bringing it up in a positive sense that the Internet is A kind of modern tree of life that is bringing all people together. It is undoing the Tower of Babel. Well, I was gonna say the Tower of Babel is in. Briefly, it's in Solaris as a kind of point. A bit about.

[B]

Well, I think I would point to the fact that with all systems of power, there's the power to corrupt and there's the power to illuminate. And the jury's still out on whether our singularity here vis a vis the Internet, is going to work out. So far, the empirical data seems to be in the negative. And I think that's because of the corruptive power of those in charge. But that's another podcast for another day. But please, I. Don't you want to add anything to that?

[A]

No, no. Just as you remember, Billy, when the Internet came. Came out, it was supposed to be. Well, two things about the 90s. When the Internet came out, there was a era of optimism in the 90s.

[B]

It was brief.

[A]

Well, once people. If everyone could just communicate with each other, man, the differences.

[B]

I bought hard on it. I was all in. I thought, this is the greatest thing. Peer to peer communication with the people who are listening to my music. What an incredible opportunity. Until they all started hating on me because I was too human.

[A]

Right. Well, that's just it. The idea that once. If people could only communicate, there wouldn't be intolerance. If people could just know. The other thing, Billy, that people. People don't know about the 90s because I was. I was a little boy during the 90s. Is that aesthetically how unlike the 80s were, how deeply uncool the 80s generally were in the 90s in terms of the music. Synth, bass.

[B]

But you have a deeper point there. Other than.

[A]

Well, I used to joke to a friend, I would say the Smashing Pumpkins song is called 1979, not. Not 1980.

[B]

I do love me some 80s hair metal. Stanley Kubrick.

[A]

Oh, my goodness. Okay, so Stanley Kubrick, I mean, interesting guy. I think I wrote about him a few weeks ago. I mean, yeah, two of his movies deal with AI or One and a Half, because he was. Remember, he was supposed to do artificial intelligence and.

[B]

That's right, Spielberg.

[A]

That's right. Over. And then he did. He did 2001 A Space Odyssey now 2001. There's an occult influence there with Brian Geyson. Cause Gysen's Dream Machine is where. At the. Is where the Stargate sequence comes from, where his eyes are closed and he's getting. That comes from Brian Gyson. And that's because Arthur C. Clarke was staying at the Chelsea Hotel with Geyson and Burroughs and everybody. Leonard Cohen.

[B]

Isn't there some evidence to suggest that Arthur circumstances Clark had some other kind of occultic thing himself? Am I wrong about that?

[A]

He had a pedophile charge in the late 90s that the Daily Mirror leveled against him that was kind of covered up. That was. Yeah.

[B]

Well, there definitely seems setting aside Mr. Clark, because I don't know anything about it, but there certainly seems to be some long standing accusation that English power, which you know, obviously is his historically vast and deep and going back far.

[A]

Right.

[B]

There seems to be some connection between secret societies, pedophilia behavior, satanism, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, so there's. It seems it tends to raise a wry eye because that, you know, even people have talked about how Orwell's book, you know, obviously Animal Farm, but more so 1984 presages a coming society.

[A]

Society.

[B]

And Orwell is usually posited as a visionary. But other people say Orwell's family was connected to secret services in the UK And Orwell basically had been given the heads up by somebody from the inside where this was all going to go. Because up to then he was just kind of an interesting writer.

[A]

Right. Well, Orwell, Eric Blair, you know, he goes to school, you know, Orwell famously, as you know, he loved his pro affectations but he came from a very nice background.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And with him tying it in with Kubrick. When Kubrick was making. We were talking about secret societies and pedophilia with Tom Erlewine on the substack. We're doing a post soon on our first one on rock and the occult which is gonna be about the Rolling Stones.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And it's gonna. We're go through Sympathy for the Devil. We're gonna go through their whole background.

[B]

Well, by the time this comes out, that may have been out. So just.

[A]

Oh yeah.

[B]

Oh, it will be great. So people wanna check that out.

[A]

But we go through their whole thing and with the Stones really quick, uh, Mick Jagger was initial tie into some of the Parliament questions. Mick Jagger in 1967. Allen Ginsberg. Remember LSD Gregory Bateson, Allen Ginsburg. I mean this is some gnarly sorted stuff. These are all famous allegations. Famously was a member of nambla, had had allegations of being pedophile. The feminist Andrea Dworkin was like, I thought he was doing it from like a libertarian perspective. She goes, no, he was a pedophile. So he introduces Mick Jackson to the labor of member of Parliament in Labor. Tom Dreiberg, he's one of the spies. And Dreiberg is trying to recruit Mick Jagger into joining politics in 1967. He's like, come join the Labor Party. He's being introduced by Allen Ginsberg. Dreiberg also had pedophile charges later. And Dryberg was also Aleister Crowley's anointed successor at Oxford. He knew Evelyn Waugh. He knew George Orwell.

[B]

What's the subtextual?

[A]

The subtextual thing is, to your point, about England, and, you know, you don't want to. You gotta be careful with the accusations. It can be. You don't always know where causation goes. Sometimes it's again, the dialectic. Why are these people all involved in this stuff? But back to the Rolling Stones, there was this weird thing between, you know, the counterculture, some of these people, and, you know, some pretty sordid stuff that, you know, maybe.

[B]

Well, I've been. At different times, I've been approached by elements of the US Government to be involved in things that were just way above my pay grade. I've never talked about them in any depth, public, publicly, but I've had experiences where I would find myself in a room with people and think, why are they talking to me? It was something out of, like, Eyes Wide Shut.

[A]

Really? Oh, yeah. And what did they say? Like.

[B]

Like, I'm not going to tell you.

[A]

Okay, okay.

[B]

No, because I haven't talked about it. I can certainly talk about it in sort of like, in a Sort of a. Kind of a I was there kind of way. Well, yeah, but it's similar to when I. When I talked about experiencing a shapeshifter on Howard Stern. It became this thing where I was hunted in airports. Please tell me the shapeshifter story. All I can say is I've experienced supernatural things, and I've experienced things where I've had elements of the US government reach out to me because they somehow want to hook my influence, which is not that great, into whatever they're after. So having had personal experience of this, and of course, there's lots of other insinuations, and I certainly would say sitting here quite openly, it seems very, very obvious to me that there are elements in popular music where people have been compromised. Compromised knowingly, because they were offered kind of a Faustian bargain pick door number one, and we're going to push you to the moon.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Because in music, and this is certainly my area of expertise, there are people who are protected, and they get every benefit of that protection. And I know it Because I know the game because I've lived it. And there are other people where they decide to press a button and throw them off the ship. Now, it might be because they're engaging in bad behavior, and we talked a little bit about that. But in other cases, I think just because they won't do the bidding that people want to.

[A]

Well, totally. There's a couple things there, Billy. First of all, as my friend Rick Spence would say, he goes, a good spy is someone that people would just offhand say, there's no way that guy would be doing it. So you would be a perfect guy because it'd be like Billy Corgan, the rock star, that we're gonna have him do stuff. But that. First of all, that makes you a great choice. The CIA did do this in the 50s. There was a big music critic named Henry pleasance in the 50s. And the CIA hired famously. Not famously, because no one knows the story. They had Henry Pleasance work as undercover agent because being a traveling musician, he always had a good excuse. Billy's in China, Billy's in Germany, you know, and. And so that's one of the reasons they would pick you. The other thing with the shape shifting thing, there's a history of that in pop music. In one of Barney Hoskins books, great music writer. He talks about a boyfriend of the folky Judy Sill, and he's. She's reading some like Rosicrucian manuscript and she becomes like this snake like figure. And then I have a friend of mine who I think has worked with current 93. He's open for Nick Cave. And I don't know if he wants me to reveal his name in relation to the story. We were talking about this kind of stuff and you know the artist, of course, Diamond Galass is in. Yeah. So he's like. He's like, oh, I've seen her shape shift on stage or I've seen her disappear on stage. And I said, what do you mean by that? And he goes, she just became like pixelated. Like she was doing her, like speaking in tongues, flipping out. And he goes, like, she just faded, like in front of my eyes faded. And then Burrows and Gysen too. People would say, yeah, those guys. Like, people would see them. So regardless of one thinks about it as they. You're not alone, Billy. People. People have also, regardless of what they say, they say they've seen this.

[B]

Yeah, well, I've been told for over 30 years in public life that there's something wrong with me or I'm crazy and I Feel like I'm the guy in the movie who's actually quite sane.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Kind of like Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And, and I think there are forces in the world that go out of the way to marginalize or other particular voices, in this case the artist class, because they refuse to accept sort of the given narrative. And if you look at the history of popular rock music, say, over the last 10 years, you'll notice that there's not a lot of edginess actually going on anymore. There's a tremendous amount of edginess going on in the rap music community and other communities. But rock has been. Rock is probably the greatest social change force. And of course, I'm included including, you know, folk and Bob Dylan in rock in general terms, because it influenced the Birds and the Beatles and all stuff like that. Rock was the greatest single social changing force of the 20th century. I, I would dare anybody to argue that.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Maybe even more so than film.

[A]

Totally. Yeah.

[B]

Right. Because we've talked a lot about film, and here we are 25 years into the 21st century, and rock could, Couldn't be less of an influence on the, on the social political world. Does anybody think that that's kind of strange, Right. That somebody decided to push a button somewhere and make sure that people like myself don't say certain things anymore?

[A]

Right. Well, to your point, Billy, and people always need to keep this in mind whenever you or myself, but especially someone such as yourself says, like, you know, the things you've seen, regardless of whatever you talk about in an interview or what I've talked about in an interview, there's always stories and there's always stuff we've known or seen. We've, we are like, whether it betrays a confidence or it's just too spicy. So. But people need to always give us a little bit more wiggle room in terms of, like, you've probably seen some stuff. I know you have, that you're like, yeah, I can't talk about that. But if you've seen it or if you've, you know, you'd, you'd, you'd be into this too. I know you've seen stuff like that.

[B]

I, I interviewed yesterday because, you know, these, these interviews come out in different orders, but I interviewed a gentleman yesterday who just put out a film, Age of Disclosure.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

About the recent revelations from the US Government and official channels. Senator Rubio's in his film, James Clapper, former, you know, head of intelligence and all this stuff, talking about, yeah, there's UFOs and now it's a national security issue. It's all kind of like it went from 75 years of no, no, no, no, no, there's no such thing, you're crazy to oh, yeah, now we got to deal with this national security issue. So I asked him, I said, I don't want you to betray confidence because I'm sure in doing your documentary that, that people told you things that are not in the documentary. And he said, yes. And I said, okay, without telling me what they told you is what they told you. Was it frightening to. And he said, yes. So that's all I need to know. So for people who can't give you wiggle room, or can't give me wiggle room personally, because I've been in public life so long, I don't give a. What people think. And I don't mean that in a, I actually don't mean it in a negative way.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Because if you run around and try to prove something that you intuitively know or have seen with your own eyes, eyes you're invariably going to cross, come across somebody say, oh, that's not real. And I just don't have time for that.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So I'm, I'm in the camp of like, you can believe me or you can't, but I can say sitting here that, that I've been in the room with some of the most famous people in the world. I've been, you know, invited to the White House two times to have meetings that were, you know, essentially off the record meetings. Why. So if you want to call me crazy or wacky or talk about my.

[A]

Say, which presidency this was, it was.

[B]

During the Bush administration.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

And, and I'm, and I'm not a Republican, so that was even more shocking to me. I grew up in a, in a blue state. Okay, let's, let's, let's wrap it up here because you, you did briefly touch on AI So I think AI is now the satellite hovering over everything you and I just discussed. No matter what we believe in old Hollywood, new Hollywood, Hollywood, systems of power, secret societies, personality cults, whatever AI is going to become in my estimation, and you tell me what you think is going to become the new everything all in one go.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

You're going to get fake music, fake gods, fake a lot of stuff. And there's a great percentage of the US population, maybe not a majority in any near future that will really want to lean in and enjoy the digital version of it all.

[A]

Of course.

[B]

So you agree with that? Yeah, yeah.

[A]

No I think, unfortunately, I mean, this ties into the spiritual aspect too. Billy, is that companies will come along, they probably are. Know they already exist. That'll take the knowledge aspect of AI and just put a little bit of a new age spin of divination on it in terms of, well, give me your birthday. I want to know some astrological stuff. And not only. Billy, can I tell you something? If it's empirically true, I'll be a Magic 8 ball for you. I'll tell you if you should do it or not. And what. Whatever the algorithm is, you know, just put a little magic into it and people will make decisions they already do, increasingly based off of what this app that says, you know, now it's time for a change, you should break up with your girlfriend. They'll do it based off of the algorithm, which is just a set of instructions.

[B]

There are people in my life that are currently using AI to help them navigate their personal life.

[A]

Well, I mean, this isn't. This isn't new. I mean, this is divination. One of the things.

[B]

Well, it's the. Have you ever been to the. Where the Oracle Adelphi was?

[A]

No, but I knew of it.

[B]

Yeah. So it would be. You know, they chose. They chose somebody to be the Oracle. And of course, they later found out that they were sitting over a gas vent that caused psychedelic experiences. Do you know about that?

[A]

I didn't know that part.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, I think the. I think the source of the whatever was the gas that was coming up that was causing psychedelic experiences, and it was ultimately toxic. And that's why a lot of them, as portrayed in one of the Fleeney movies, they were kind of, like, anemic and all weirded out because they were getting poisoned while they were doing the divination work.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But they literally. The Church of the Oracle, Delphi's church, was built over, like, a crack in the earth where these gases came up naturally.

[A]

Right. Well, you get. You get into the thing we were talking about earlier in terms of psychedelics, in terms of, like. Well, that just means there was a chemical response. Yes. Or the chemical response is opening themselves up, plus mixed with whatever talent there was to maybe give you some sort of edge.

[B]

Okay, so last question for you. Uh, do you believe that on the other side of that portal there, there are good forces, bad forces, or a.

[A]

Mixture of both in psychedelics or.

[B]

Okay, somebody right here could be the Oracle of Delphi. Could be Johnny from the new hipster band from New York. When they open that gateway.

[A]

I think largely negative.

[B]

I Mean, can you, can you illuminate why you believe?

[A]

Why the Bible is an oracle? The Bible is the word of God. It's, it's, it's a way of getting to know God's will in terms of what you. In terms of the way of going about your life.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

It is called the living oracle. It is an oracle. In the Old Testament, in the. The days of the ancient Israelites, they had systems of divination. I forget how you would pronounce it, but, you know, they cast lots the.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

You know, it goes way back. Yeah, it goes way back. This is nothing new under the sun or under the record here. But to play with divination, to play with what they call the outside, the outside forces, is now largely frowned upon as something that you're largely inviting stuff that. And then you. Jacques Vallee talks about it in terms of his belief in the other world. It's like these are largely. These things largely don't mean people. Well, whether they're aliens, demon, spirits, they largely. They don't mean us. Well, so my attitude towards it is, you know, oracles and stuff, they are, they are real. Doesn't mean, mean every, every magic eightball is. Something's going on. But you can tap into stuff, Even if it's 80% bunk, the 20% could be real and a lot of it can be demonic.

[B]

Well, Nietzsche did say, be careful if you peer into the abyss, because the abyss might peer back into you, of course. Thank you, Connor. Great talking.

[A]

Thank you, Billy.