"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast welcome back to the Apple Insider podcast I'm Victor and this week William is off William is out in the world doing wonderful things we have a very special guest Jimmy destri who is the keyboard player the original keyboard player for the band Blondie and we met up we were in the WC Studios to talk about how iTunes and Spotify and digital distribution has changed things for him as an artist we talked a little bit about his path from Blondie to where he is today we talked about what it's like using digital music now and we talked a little bit about uh some of his experiences because he went to high school with Jimmy iovan and Steve Jobs Impressions that he got from Jimmy going across there so I hope you'll join us I hope you'll sit back and listen this is going to be a fun one welcome to this segment of the Apple Insider podcast I'm Victor and joining me is Jimmy destri Hi Victor Jimmy tell tell my listeners a little bit about your background I was boy from Brooklyn New York and uh I happened to be at the right place at the right time because um when uh the whole art scene started there New York was pretty much peeling in uh going down the tube boobs it's when Jerry Ford said and not many people will U remember this maybe they will uh cuz it is a podcast and you reach everybody uh Jerry Ford said to New York Dro dead New York was broke it was the time of cojak and you know French Connection and the Seedy Subways and everything was wrong if you could imagine New York at that time you would have to imagine those smoking vents deep on the water where he said no life can live and sure enough life could live there but because the New York was so uh poor uh the Ramones and Talking Heads and and television and Blondie and some other bands were all renting lofts in the bowy now where you couldn't get a building for less than $4 million and we were getting lofts for $300 a month so uh Chris sold weed and I you know worked in a hospital Clen worked at the post office and we all pulled our money together we lived in this Loft and um in the early days we were vying for nights at cbgbs I mean we played mothers in Maxis Kansas City and we just kept playing uh hilly at cbgbs was a little rough with us because you know I have television and I have to remon and you they draw a crowd and sure enough the only people that were coming to hear us were other bands so uh um and and the band you were in was blondie just yeah to make sure you said it it was Blondie yeah people think it's Death Leopard or something yeah thank you for reminding everyone uh and Blondie uh was considered a joke we were considered like you know pretty girl with a bunch of musicians and this isn't artistic like television you know and it's not deep like Talking Heads and it's just out not out and out crazy like the Ramones and she's know Patty Smith and everything and then um one guy thought differently and that was the guy I was with yesterday Craig Leon he and his friend Richard GD came to see us live and they were blown away by the songs you know they could hear through the bad sound and everything else at CB's and they heard a couple of songs and he said we should bring them in the studio and of course they looked at Debbie and they went this is a gamble but it's worth it you know because she was the first uh trailblazing woman in a band beside Stevie Nicks Fleetwood Mack and but Debbie was right out front and it's the reason why we called the man blondie you know to get that recognition because we were songwriters you know and we didn't mind everybody addressing her as Blondie hey blondie you know of course she's got blonde hair she's the lead singer so uh from there we did a record with Richard and Craig called ex offender and that record uh got us a record deal didn't take off everybody downtown liked it got us a record deal never hit the radio and we did uh a whole album and there was one song called In the Flesh that was a take on the girl groups and it was a very lilting ballad and that record was picked up accidentally in Australia and the single was in the sun backed with with In the Flesh and we wanted in the sun played but he played the flip side and the bside went to number one in Australia just freaky so we went from playing CB stage to Big theaters in Australia without even knowing how to step on a stage that big I mean it was really and some people were just like what's this they were expecting you know maybe in you know another girl group but no we came out we you know and that was not too well received so by the time we got to England and England being a trend setting country they had listened to some other songs on that first album and uh Larry utol the president of Private Stock records a little label we were on said yeah let's make another record with them and we made a second record called a par uh plastic letters and plastic letters was much darker and deeper and it hit somebody Square in the head Terry Ellis of christas Records heard some of that album came to see us and signed us on the spot he gave us the money to buy out of our other contract and he signed us on the spot because you know the second record was dark and edgy and he's a guy who had Jethro and Perl harm and right so Ian Anderson and those guys yes which were you know pulled back into some sort of Darkness you know and whether it waser Shade of Pale yeah well but even beyond that I mean Gary Brooker amazing songwriter you know uh I saw him open for Jeth T actually yeah I think they were better actually but um so that just uh you know we we went out with den den which was the second single off the second album and that became number one in England then Germany then France then to their own chrin Australia and we came back home and the opposite happened we were just abandoned a bar because nobody in America what a big change from playing large stadiums and well no it wasn't stadiums theaters uh and uh it took a change of producers um because part we just wanted to go straight pop and really I'm not saying my art put me there no it's we wanted to be successful so uh we got Mike Chapman who had written 41 number one singles and he said we are the only band that he didn't write for and we had parallel lines and we had one way or another and then we had heart of glass and everything blew up just blew up and we had a very very successful career for two years and I think the strain of it you know it was more fun throwing dollars into a pot in The Loft than it was sing whose publishing is this MH and you know that I get 133% of this song or you know right it it just became ridiculous and we took a Hiatus and as Craig said we never broke up it's just like should we do it this year no no cuz the royalties were spoiling us and we were just we didn't have to see each other we didn't want to because of the 133% on this song and you know like the middle ative one way or another I brought that song in Nigel wrote it I wrote the middle a and he had a big argument with me about no no it's my song man so I just went take it you know and the song became huge became in every commercial uh so we didn't speak to each other for 5 years and then uh we got back together and it just became a nightmare when we reunited in um after 16 years in 1997 we decide we talked for a while then we decided to go into studio in 98 we had Maria went number one around the world it was the first band to come back and have a hit of that whole ilk of bands mhm uh and then we had two other number ones in England and Europe and we came back home and we were fighting again because it was again you know Jimmy wrote the three number ones Jimmy is not sharing his money sharing his money I mean yeah I didn't take a bit of Heart of Glass which I basically put together so without you know throwing stones it just became and we were all guilty of this it just became ridiculous trying to exist in a ban that you know was getting aoristic to the eth degree and uh at two 2006 they didn't tour in 2004 I did my last tour in 2004 they didn't tour in 2005 2006 we were um inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and I was asked by my wife can you go back to them and I said I really can't honey I really can't do that you know I think I reached the Pinnacle of my career with this statue so you know I know two things I I know music and I know addiction because I've I've had a little bout of it myself and I had a lot of friends die a lot of close friends die I'd like to study that and I went back to college and I got a degree as a therapist and and I specialized in alcohol and drugs and I started working privately and then in a facility sebr house which is wonderful and then I started to realize how much of a business that is you know and that whole AA keep on coming back thing means keep on going to treatment your insurance is going to pay for it it's okay you have a disease for the rest of your life that's all a sham so I I got really disgusted with that and I started playing music again and I literally didn't play I had to actually warm up my hands uh I started playing music again because it was burning in me so um about last year I I've been looking for bands to produce I found an amazing band called satellite mode we're going to start working in late May and I'm just getting back into it and my little trip down here to mfest was sort of to introduce myself again you know uh next year I'm going to play here and uh that's about it up to date let me ask you I mean yesterday when we were talking when I was listening to you and Craig you were talking a little bit about the different instruments that you've used over time and one of the things that we talk about on this podcast is the intersection between art and Technology MH so obviously very early on these things were analog instruments uh you might have a click track but there was no synchronization between any of these things yeah how has all has changed it's changed for me because I come from a different direction I had to learn to play an instrument today you could have an Apple laptop and literally download instruments and parts and sequences and well you could do that before the Apple laptop but it makes it so much easier in Pro Tools you could have a studio in your you know your spare room or in your own bedroom a lot of kids have that you know the good thing about it is it brought music to the masses I mean if you could afford a laptop which even if you're poor a lot of people save up to get and become DJs and whatever and find their way out of the street with that uh the other thing about it is the possibilities are endless like you see all those mugs out there there are patches for them in in Protools and in any kind of apple download so uh I love Apple I think it's a great company uh and they make music available to everybody on the other hand did you notice yesterday when we were doing the uh the conversation with Craig I said there must be musicians here and anybody a musician and two people put their hands up mhm the rest of them are either aficianados fans I hope and either that or people working on laptops so that's where it's g i don't mind that I hope I wasn't too long winded no no I I asked for that uh you know there's there's all of these attempts to bring these traditional instruments together with the with with the laptops you know there's been uh in garage band for a long time there were lessons where you could you could learn to play guitar and that didn't really catch on very far it's one of those things where people thought it was a good idea because they could take they could just skip that and go right to a sequence they could pick up and use or write to a guitar part that they could s and you know so who wants to sit in front of a mirror checking your fingering and then going to a teacher twice a week nobody wants to do that anymore you know I taught myself how to play piano my sister got all the lessons you know and I wasn't I was playing stickball and finally I said hm you know let me try this out you I've always wanted to be a musician because I come from the Beatles age you know uh today anybody can make a w record anybody and I don't mind that at all because jeez look at look at uh the Beasty Boys I mean they're brilliant well they started as a punk band yeah but they were horrible as a punk band they were they were really really bad but they had a vision and they strove for it the guitar playing is God awful but with their vocals it works perfectly I they were really exciting to see live they were their records are exciting uh even Beck you know he he even said it himself two turntables and a mic microphone you know and one Rift brilliant song yeah brilliant song but um it's not as if Beck is rehearsing musicians every day and getting the set tight whatever he needs to go for he'll do on a computer use live stuff and so it he and those are older examples there's more out there than are countless and you know don't even know what do you think about how publishing and distribution has changed through iTunes and yeah uh I like iTunes because iTunes is direct payer and apple really watches that uh when I had uh royalties coming into me from this subdivision label of chrysis and this label and that label and this publish entity and you know you had to audit and you had to make stay on your toes and make sure you got your money and sometimes you would lose some money and you have to say well the legal fees to collect this money would be more than the money itself and you'd have to let it go but iTunes pays less but pays everything every place there's a download iTunes will will pay you know I think it's 68 cents to the dollar but hey I'm not sure if that figure is right but my royalties is at have actually gone up from mechan not Mechanicals but from uh downloads interesting yeah it's it's uh it's a new thing it's it's a you know uh we were dead we were sort of broke after the first turnaround because you know we all thought we were going to last forever and we all bought these lavish homes and stuff like that then CDs came out and gave us a second wind you know we paid bills and we started Living normally again you know and uh then iTunes and that really covered our asses to be you know pretty blunt currently there's there's a fight between Spotify and Apple going on where Spotify is is upset with apple uh their their complaint is around having to pay Apple part of their subscriptions and they're upset about uh not being able to sell those subscriptions through the app store without Apple taking a cut it's sort of one of the things that we're watching and thinking about is is what's the right way you know what's the right way to distribute what's the right way to consume is it much of a cut it's not much of a cut though isn't it uh for I mean us sold it's like a 30% of the sale price of the app and for a subscription is something like 15% yeah well you're using a giant yeah you're using a giant to get it done and for someone who used a beautiful blonde to get it done any means to an end I mean I don't think they should be fighting I think Spotify would do a lot better to team up with apple and negotiate you know because you are you're using a GI you're using the most uh the richest company in the world who hasn't that company really doesn't uh mess with your content doesn't do with with all the iPhones and everything they're not Facebook and they're not you know Instagram and and not you trust apple and Tim Cook said it himself you know you know we're the biggest company in the world but we don't know what our users where they are you know and that's wonderful I mean uh if you're going to use a giant you have to pay for it you know you mentioned fa Facebook who who own Instagram what do you think they have as a responsibility to their users absolute privacy and it's responsibility knock off the ads the real fake News ads and they have to start really respecting your priv not sell your information I mean in the early days of Facebook we would talk about things uh with people with friends not just me I mean everybody and um people who talk about bicycles a lot would start getting ads for bicycles you know that kind of thing it's an invasion and and I don't trust Zuckerberg I know he's a little bit on the Spectrum but his Spectrum isn't focused on coding anymore it's focused on more just more you know and he was a real in Washington it's just so their responsibility has to be more privacy because he's got I actually have a question yeah sure Scout okay so do you think that if people paid for Facebook they would get their privacy good question 13 years old great question uh yes I think they paid for Facebook if if they paid a nominal fee they would get a guarantee and they would have to they would demand it you know I wouldn't pay for any service where I didn't read the service agreement and I don't think they'd mess with that because if say just 400,000 of the 9 billion people that are on Facebook uh sued them it would be National international news for example like it's inter national news now that they don't protect your privacy you know yeah every repeated incident that they have we talk about it here right now they're saving up a a war chest in preparation for paying a fee to the uh FTC I think because they're violating their consent degree from the last time yeah yeah from be from after Zuckerberg was on the hill mhm yeah yeah they don't change you can't really write off $3 billion as a as a business expense it's not a cost of doing business anymore it's a way of I know cost of doing business that that was hilarious yeah well I I do think we have to watch out I think the people understand now and thank you news agencies for getting this out like all the other stuff they've been getting out you know it really gave me a high high high respect for journalism again you know I mean unfortunately people are so in sconed in their like cement or like cement boots in their opinions that you know two reporters can't bring down a president like they did in the Nixon era yeah only wish they could and this is one of the things that that Apple news has been trying to do is vet articles and push the ones that are verifiable to the top what do you do with the ones that aren't that's a good question they they're also beginning to charge money for the news so that you can uh make sure that that Outlets have some form of getting paid the same way that iTunes is paying artists maybe paying less but at least paying directly it's paying directly yeah which turns out to be more that's that's the great thing about it you're buying a service from iTunes we guarantee your royalty because it's all digitally encoded one of the things that makes news agencies suspect of of Apple news and participating is that like you said Apple protects privacy that Apple doesn't want to give the subscriber information to those news outlets and they're so used to having that yeah that that it makes them skeptical when they don't so Tim Cook and the Gang are sort of backing away and maybe they're thinking that they don't need the news agencies maybe they're thinking that they could become the next CNN well I don't they're producing dramas they're producing f contv um I don't know that they're producing any news programs at the time at this time allthough summer documentary MH with uh with Apple news and Apple news plus what they're doing is they've gotten Wall Street Journal on board MH and I think their their plan is that more will follow yeah good good for them you know uh I think there have been benevolent company I I don't think they're very much into all the nasty stuff they they're very much a hardware and content company well they're going to be a Content company Hardware software and some content it's apple and great phones you know it's Galaxy makes great phones they make great phones and they're always one uping each other which is good for the people it's good for people buying phones I mean uh I never had God wish I invested in apple I mean I never had a bad experience with that company person and I know a lot of people swear by it and and that's all you need I walk I a lot of people out there walking around grumbling about Facebook MH you know a lot of people out there walking around grumbling about Volkswagen you know sure you so and these are huge companies never really get it with apple uh I get some jealousy because they're the richest company in the world but everybody's got one in their pocket yeah so of course of course I mean all right uh who's going to be the competitor to them they have such an infrastructure you know if he gets out of hand whatever gets out of hand I trust that something will be done they've opened up so many different fronts right they've got the TV plus that sort of fits as a competitor to not not as much cable or HBO as much as uh because HBO is a part of their agreements currently anyway but more uh Netflix mhm competing with other streames Disney for example Disney's plus streaming service that's come out right is one they're going to compete with um when it comes to computers obviously we know who they compete with or phones like you said Samsung but there we keep hearing Rumblings about them building their own car so there they're competing with Tesla I don't know you know that's a whole other bow of wa they they have around 70 vehicles in California that are self-driving license for self-driving mhm technology is there but you trust somebody to drive a self-driving car I mean it it nobody could react like a human well the the it's a ways off but when a vehicle can react like a human the the possibility or the potential for for drastically reducing car accidents mhm seems like a win sometimes The Logical turn is the wrong yeah you know my my concern is the knock on effects of that if if you reduce car accidents to you know 1% of what they are today that would be wonderful yeah then I'll be all for it but I just it's itchy about it except except that you know when you do that where you think about all the KnockOn effects right what comes after that well a result of that if you reduce all of the car accidents in in the country you also reduce all of the organ donation in the country yeah of course so and you reduce the employment of firefighters and whatever and Long Haul truck drivers and yeah yeah and all of that so there's a ton of changes going so but like if when we know that we apples might be doing something with self-driving cars you would kind of assume that Tim Cook has one cuz at every Apple conference when they're announcing a new phone he always has it says I use this like when the Apple watch came out I have this it was kind of cool so you can kind of assume that he has a self-driving I I think it's a little early for that I think that's probably uh a few years away they're still doing the research kind of work but you're right when when it comes he'll have one well there a couple years ago before the Apple Watch series 4 came out he was talking about having the ability to uh to real time scan the glucose in his bloodstream bloodstream and that was something that then came you know was announced 6 months later as as a partnership that they've done with one of the glucosemeter companies well that's all wonderful stuff I got to say though uh Tim Cook probably arrives in a limousine yeah at this point he's a public figure uh and uh he's very powerful man I would say I I suspect he no longer drives himself yes uh although although Steve Jobs drove himself around up until the the days where he got too sick to drive anymore he drove himself and parked wherever the hell he wanted you know and he had a car without plates on it for like 6 months there was a rule in California that allowed him as long as the car was was uh purchased or or at least 6 months before you could go for six months without a plate and so he just changed cars every six months oh and I I was at Apple One Day visiting some of the uh the hardware evangelists and people there and his his Mercedes was parked in handicap spot at an angle at an angle uh I I went to high school with Jimmy iavan and I know him forever and uh he's told me some Steve Jobs stories that make your hair stand on end as far as his behavior but we got it we got to hand it to the guy you know he was a human right he was human he was very human and he was very fraught with you know his own padillos his own uh dis dissocia of whatever disorder he had uh God he was just a misanthrope but he gave us so much he really did he gave us so much you know one of the things that I there are a lot of people out there who have tried to figure out what lessons to take away from him and the one that I keep coming back for is is advocating for the consumer advocating for the end user yes yes absolutely having the consumer in mind when he in that scene in his in the Steve Jobs movie uh when Michael fast binder says to uh Lisa the actress playing Lisa I'm going to put a thousand songs in your pocket that's not thinking about himself that's thinking about people walking around wanting music and yeah of course it's going to sell because it's good for them you know his and and he did have at Apple when he was alive that it is true he did have a big poster of Alan touring and he went way back Beyond you know uh IBM and everything and and uh the big one they had at NASA or whatever they call it to the invention of the thinking that led to the computer in in Fenley park or Finchley park with Island touring and wow you know it's jobs jobs was an incredible individual I read that uh bio of him by Isaacson Walter Isaacson great bio yeah great bio you know it's it's so good that you were able to talk to Jimmy iven about things like this because a number of people said that when they read the Isaacson book the people who knew jobs that they didn't really feel like it captured him the way they knew him I feel like each person around him had a different experience really funny quick sharp humor you know even though it was nasty mhm you know like that's a good idea go start your own company but but like that was a bad example but in just his dayto day he was he was funny you know he was nasty as hell but he was also funny and I guess Jimmy got a buffered down version of Steve because Jimmy was a mogul himself MH you know Jimmy into scope records everything he's done you know and he helped develop iTunes with Steve Jobs so they you have it yeah here we are well this has been amazing thank you so much for making so much time for me no no problem Victor enjoyed it I enjoyed it yeah and I want to thank WC for being so kind and and letting us use their Studios yes thank you so much on a Saturday afternoonyou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast welcome back to the Apple Insider podcast I'm Victor and this week William is off William is out in the world doing wonderful things we have a very special guest Jimmy destri who is the keyboard player the original keyboard player for the band Blondie and we met up we were in the WC Studios to talk about how iTunes and Spotify and digital distribution has changed things for him as an artist we talked a little bit about his path from Blondie to where he is today we talked about what it's like using digital music now and we talked a little bit about uh some of his experiences because he went to high school with Jimmy iovan and Steve Jobs Impressions that he got from Jimmy going across there so I hope you'll join us I hope you'll sit back and listen this is going to be a fun one welcome to this segment of the Apple Insider podcast I'm Victor and joining me is Jimmy destri Hi Victor Jimmy tell tell my listeners a little bit about your background I was boy from Brooklyn New York and uh I happened to be at the right place at the right time because um when uh the whole art scene started there New York was pretty much peeling in uh going down the tube boobs it's when Jerry Ford said and not many people will U remember this maybe they will uh cuz it is a podcast and you reach everybody uh Jerry Ford said to New York Dro dead New York was broke it was the time of cojak and you know French Connection and the Seedy Subways and everything was wrong if you could imagine New York at that time you would have to imagine those smoking vents deep on the water where he said no life can live and sure enough life could live there but because the New York was so uh poor uh the Ramones and Talking Heads and and television and Blondie and some other bands were all renting lofts in the bowy now where you couldn't get a building for less than $4 million and we were getting lofts for $300 a month so uh Chris sold weed and I you know worked in a hospital Clen worked at the post office and we all pulled our money together we lived in this Loft and um in the early days we were vying for nights at cbgbs I mean we played mothers in Maxis Kansas City and we just kept playing uh hilly at cbgbs was a little rough with us because you know I have television and I have to remon and you they draw a crowd and sure enough the only people that were coming to hear us were other bands so uh um and and the band you were in was blondie just yeah to make sure you said it it was Blondie yeah people think it's Death Leopard or something yeah thank you for reminding everyone uh and Blondie uh was considered a joke we were considered like you know pretty girl with a bunch of musicians and this isn't artistic like television you know and it's not deep like Talking Heads and it's just out not out and out crazy like the Ramones and she's know Patty Smith and everything and then um one guy thought differently and that was the guy I was with yesterday Craig Leon he and his friend Richard GD came to see us live and they were blown away by the songs you know they could hear through the bad sound and everything else at CB's and they heard a couple of songs and he said we should bring them in the studio and of course they looked at Debbie and they went this is a gamble but it's worth it you know because she was the first uh trailblazing woman in a band beside Stevie Nicks Fleetwood Mack and but Debbie was right out front and it's the reason why we called the man blondie you know to get that recognition because we were songwriters you know and we didn't mind everybody addressing her as Blondie hey blondie you know of course she's got blonde hair she's the lead singer so uh from there we did a record with Richard and Craig called ex offender and that record uh got us a record deal didn't take off everybody downtown liked it got us a record deal never hit the radio and we did uh a whole album and there was one song called In the Flesh that was a take on the girl groups and it was a very lilting ballad and that record was picked up accidentally in Australia and the single was in the sun backed with with In the Flesh and we wanted in the sun played but he played the flip side and the bside went to number one in Australia just freaky so we went from playing CB stage to Big theaters in Australia without even knowing how to step on a stage that big I mean it was really and some people were just like what's this they were expecting you know maybe in you know another girl group but no we came out we you know and that was not too well received so by the time we got to England and England being a trend setting country they had listened to some other songs on that first album and uh Larry utol the president of Private Stock records a little label we were on said yeah let's make another record with them and we made a second record called a par uh plastic letters and plastic letters was much darker and deeper and it hit somebody Square in the head Terry Ellis of christas Records heard some of that album came to see us and signed us on the spot he gave us the money to buy out of our other contract and he signed us on the spot because you know the second record was dark and edgy and he's a guy who had Jethro and Perl harm and right so Ian Anderson and those guys yes which were you know pulled back into some sort of Darkness you know and whether it waser Shade of Pale yeah well but even beyond that I mean Gary Brooker amazing songwriter you know uh I saw him open for Jeth T actually yeah I think they were better actually but um so that just uh you know we we went out with den den which was the second single off the second album and that became number one in England then Germany then France then to their own chrin Australia and we came back home and the opposite happened we were just abandoned a bar because nobody in America what a big change from playing large stadiums and well no it wasn't stadiums theaters uh and uh it took a change of producers um because part we just wanted to go straight pop and really I'm not saying my art put me there no it's we wanted to be successful so uh we got Mike Chapman who had written 41 number one singles and he said we are the only band that he didn't write for and we had parallel lines and we had one way or another and then we had heart of glass and everything blew up just blew up and we had a very very successful career for two years and I think the strain of it you know it was more fun throwing dollars into a pot in The Loft than it was sing whose publishing is this MH and you know that I get 133% of this song or you know right it it just became ridiculous and we took a Hiatus and as Craig said we never broke up it's just like should we do it this year no no cuz the royalties were spoiling us and we were just we didn't have to see each other we didn't want to because of the 133% on this song and you know like the middle ative one way or another I brought that song in Nigel wrote it I wrote the middle a and he had a big argument with me about no no it's my song man so I just went take it you know and the song became huge became in every commercial uh so we didn't speak to each other for 5 years and then uh we got back together and it just became a nightmare when we reunited in um after 16 years in 1997 we decide we talked for a while then we decided to go into studio in 98 we had Maria went number one around the world it was the first band to come back and have a hit of that whole ilk of bands mhm uh and then we had two other number ones in England and Europe and we came back home and we were fighting again because it was again you know Jimmy wrote the three number ones Jimmy is not sharing his money sharing his money I mean yeah I didn't take a bit of Heart of Glass which I basically put together so without you know throwing stones it just became and we were all guilty of this it just became ridiculous trying to exist in a ban that you know was getting aoristic to the eth degree and uh at two 2006 they didn't tour in 2004 I did my last tour in 2004 they didn't tour in 2005 2006 we were um inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and I was asked by my wife can you go back to them and I said I really can't honey I really can't do that you know I think I reached the Pinnacle of my career with this statue so you know I know two things I I know music and I know addiction because I've I've had a little bout of it myself and I had a lot of friends die a lot of close friends die I'd like to study that and I went back to college and I got a degree as a therapist and and I specialized in alcohol and drugs and I started working privately and then in a facility sebr house which is wonderful and then I started to realize how much of a business that is you know and that whole AA keep on coming back thing means keep on going to treatment your insurance is going to pay for it it's okay you have a disease for the rest of your life that's all a sham so I I got really disgusted with that and I started playing music again and I literally didn't play I had to actually warm up my hands uh I started playing music again because it was burning in me so um about last year I I've been looking for bands to produce I found an amazing band called satellite mode we're going to start working in late May and I'm just getting back into it and my little trip down here to mfest was sort of to introduce myself again you know uh next year I'm going to play here and uh that's about it up to date let me ask you I mean yesterday when we were talking when I was listening to you and Craig you were talking a little bit about the different instruments that you've used over time and one of the things that we talk about on this podcast is the intersection between art and Technology MH so obviously very early on these things were analog instruments uh you might have a click track but there was no synchronization between any of these things yeah how has all has changed it's changed for me because I come from a different direction I had to learn to play an instrument today you could have an Apple laptop and literally download instruments and parts and sequences and well you could do that before the Apple laptop but it makes it so much easier in Pro Tools you could have a studio in your you know your spare room or in your own bedroom a lot of kids have that you know the good thing about it is it brought music to the masses I mean if you could afford a laptop which even if you're poor a lot of people save up to get and become DJs and whatever and find their way out of the street with that uh the other thing about it is the possibilities are endless like you see all those mugs out there there are patches for them in in Protools and in any kind of apple download so uh I love Apple I think it's a great company uh and they make music available to everybody on the other hand did you notice yesterday when we were doing the uh the conversation with Craig I said there must be musicians here and anybody a musician and two people put their hands up mhm the rest of them are either aficianados fans I hope and either that or people working on laptops so that's where it's g i don't mind that I hope I wasn't too long winded no no I I asked for that uh you know there's there's all of these attempts to bring these traditional instruments together with the with with the laptops you know there's been uh in garage band for a long time there were lessons where you could you could learn to play guitar and that didn't really catch on very far it's one of those things where people thought it was a good idea because they could take they could just skip that and go right to a sequence they could pick up and use or write to a guitar part that they could s and you know so who wants to sit in front of a mirror checking your fingering and then going to a teacher twice a week nobody wants to do that anymore you know I taught myself how to play piano my sister got all the lessons you know and I wasn't I was playing stickball and finally I said hm you know let me try this out you I've always wanted to be a musician because I come from the Beatles age you know uh today anybody can make a w record anybody and I don't mind that at all because jeez look at look at uh the Beasty Boys I mean they're brilliant well they started as a punk band yeah but they were horrible as a punk band they were they were really really bad but they had a vision and they strove for it the guitar playing is God awful but with their vocals it works perfectly I they were really exciting to see live they were their records are exciting uh even Beck you know he he even said it himself two turntables and a mic microphone you know and one Rift brilliant song yeah brilliant song but um it's not as if Beck is rehearsing musicians every day and getting the set tight whatever he needs to go for he'll do on a computer use live stuff and so it he and those are older examples there's more out there than are countless and you know don't even know what do you think about how publishing and distribution has changed through iTunes and yeah uh I like iTunes because iTunes is direct payer and apple really watches that uh when I had uh royalties coming into me from this subdivision label of chrysis and this label and that label and this publish entity and you know you had to audit and you had to make stay on your toes and make sure you got your money and sometimes you would lose some money and you have to say well the legal fees to collect this money would be more than the money itself and you'd have to let it go but iTunes pays less but pays everything every place there's a download iTunes will will pay you know I think it's 68 cents to the dollar but hey I'm not sure if that figure is right but my royalties is at have actually gone up from mechan not Mechanicals but from uh downloads interesting yeah it's it's uh it's a new thing it's it's a you know uh we were dead we were sort of broke after the first turnaround because you know we all thought we were going to last forever and we all bought these lavish homes and stuff like that then CDs came out and gave us a second wind you know we paid bills and we started Living normally again you know and uh then iTunes and that really covered our asses to be you know pretty blunt currently there's there's a fight between Spotify and Apple going on where Spotify is is upset with apple uh their their complaint is around having to pay Apple part of their subscriptions and they're upset about uh not being able to sell those subscriptions through the app store without Apple taking a cut it's sort of one of the things that we're watching and thinking about is is what's the right way you know what's the right way to distribute what's the right way to consume is it much of a cut it's not much of a cut though isn't it uh for I mean us sold it's like a 30% of the sale price of the app and for a subscription is something like 15% yeah well you're using a giant yeah you're using a giant to get it done and for someone who used a beautiful blonde to get it done any means to an end I mean I don't think they should be fighting I think Spotify would do a lot better to team up with apple and negotiate you know because you are you're using a GI you're using the most uh the richest company in the world who hasn't that company really doesn't uh mess with your content doesn't do with with all the iPhones and everything they're not Facebook and they're not you know Instagram and and not you trust apple and Tim Cook said it himself you know you know we're the biggest company in the world but we don't know what our users where they are you know and that's wonderful I mean uh if you're going to use a giant you have to pay for it you know you mentioned fa Facebook who who own Instagram what do you think they have as a responsibility to their users absolute privacy and it's responsibility knock off the ads the real fake News ads and they have to start really respecting your priv not sell your information I mean in the early days of Facebook we would talk about things uh with people with friends not just me I mean everybody and um people who talk about bicycles a lot would start getting ads for bicycles you know that kind of thing it's an invasion and and I don't trust Zuckerberg I know he's a little bit on the Spectrum but his Spectrum isn't focused on coding anymore it's focused on more just more you know and he was a real in Washington it's just so their responsibility has to be more privacy because he's got I actually have a question yeah sure Scout okay so do you think that if people paid for Facebook they would get their privacy good question 13 years old great question uh yes I think they paid for Facebook if if they paid a nominal fee they would get a guarantee and they would have to they would demand it you know I wouldn't pay for any service where I didn't read the service agreement and I don't think they'd mess with that because if say just 400,000 of the 9 billion people that are on Facebook uh sued them it would be National international news for example like it's inter national news now that they don't protect your privacy you know yeah every repeated incident that they have we talk about it here right now they're saving up a a war chest in preparation for paying a fee to the uh FTC I think because they're violating their consent degree from the last time yeah yeah from be from after Zuckerberg was on the hill mhm yeah yeah they don't change you can't really write off $3 billion as a as a business expense it's not a cost of doing business anymore it's a way of I know cost of doing business that that was hilarious yeah well I I do think we have to watch out I think the people understand now and thank you news agencies for getting this out like all the other stuff they've been getting out you know it really gave me a high high high respect for journalism again you know I mean unfortunately people are so in sconed in their like cement or like cement boots in their opinions that you know two reporters can't bring down a president like they did in the Nixon era yeah only wish they could and this is one of the things that that Apple news has been trying to do is vet articles and push the ones that are verifiable to the top what do you do with the ones that aren't that's a good question they they're also beginning to charge money for the news so that you can uh make sure that that Outlets have some form of getting paid the same way that iTunes is paying artists maybe paying less but at least paying directly it's paying directly yeah which turns out to be more that's that's the great thing about it you're buying a service from iTunes we guarantee your royalty because it's all digitally encoded one of the things that makes news agencies suspect of of Apple news and participating is that like you said Apple protects privacy that Apple doesn't want to give the subscriber information to those news outlets and they're so used to having that yeah that that it makes them skeptical when they don't so Tim Cook and the Gang are sort of backing away and maybe they're thinking that they don't need the news agencies maybe they're thinking that they could become the next CNN well I don't they're producing dramas they're producing f contv um I don't know that they're producing any news programs at the time at this time allthough summer documentary MH with uh with Apple news and Apple news plus what they're doing is they've gotten Wall Street Journal on board MH and I think their their plan is that more will follow yeah good good for them you know uh I think there have been benevolent company I I don't think they're very much into all the nasty stuff they they're very much a hardware and content company well they're going to be a Content company Hardware software and some content it's apple and great phones you know it's Galaxy makes great phones they make great phones and they're always one uping each other which is good for the people it's good for people buying phones I mean uh I never had God wish I invested in apple I mean I never had a bad experience with that company person and I know a lot of people swear by it and and that's all you need I walk I a lot of people out there walking around grumbling about Facebook MH you know a lot of people out there walking around grumbling about Volkswagen you know sure you so and these are huge companies never really get it with apple uh I get some jealousy because they're the richest company in the world but everybody's got one in their pocket yeah so of course of course I mean all right uh who's going to be the competitor to them they have such an infrastructure you know if he gets out of hand whatever gets out of hand I trust that something will be done they've opened up so many different fronts right they've got the TV plus that sort of fits as a competitor to not not as much cable or HBO as much as uh because HBO is a part of their agreements currently anyway but more uh Netflix mhm competing with other streames Disney for example Disney's plus streaming service that's come out right is one they're going to compete with um when it comes to computers obviously we know who they compete with or phones like you said Samsung but there we keep hearing Rumblings about them building their own car so there they're competing with Tesla I don't know you know that's a whole other bow of wa they they have around 70 vehicles in California that are self-driving license for self-driving mhm technology is there but you trust somebody to drive a self-driving car I mean it it nobody could react like a human well the the it's a ways off but when a vehicle can react like a human the the possibility or the potential for for drastically reducing car accidents mhm seems like a win sometimes The Logical turn is the wrong yeah you know my my concern is the knock on effects of that if if you reduce car accidents to you know 1% of what they are today that would be wonderful yeah then I'll be all for it but I just it's itchy about it except except that you know when you do that where you think about all the KnockOn effects right what comes after that well a result of that if you reduce all of the car accidents in in the country you also reduce all of the organ donation in the country yeah of course so and you reduce the employment of firefighters and whatever and Long Haul truck drivers and yeah yeah and all of that so there's a ton of changes going so but like if when we know that we apples might be doing something with self-driving cars you would kind of assume that Tim Cook has one cuz at every Apple conference when they're announcing a new phone he always has it says I use this like when the Apple watch came out I have this it was kind of cool so you can kind of assume that he has a self-driving I I think it's a little early for that I think that's probably uh a few years away they're still doing the research kind of work but you're right when when it comes he'll have one well there a couple years ago before the Apple Watch series 4 came out he was talking about having the ability to uh to real time scan the glucose in his bloodstream bloodstream and that was something that then came you know was announced 6 months later as as a partnership that they've done with one of the glucosemeter companies well that's all wonderful stuff I got to say though uh Tim Cook probably arrives in a limousine yeah at this point he's a public figure uh and uh he's very powerful man I would say I I suspect he no longer drives himself yes uh although although Steve Jobs drove himself around up until the the days where he got too sick to drive anymore he drove himself and parked wherever the hell he wanted you know and he had a car without plates on it for like 6 months there was a rule in California that allowed him as long as the car was was uh purchased or or at least 6 months before you could go for six months without a plate and so he just changed cars every six months oh and I I was at Apple One Day visiting some of the uh the hardware evangelists and people there and his his Mercedes was parked in handicap spot at an angle at an angle uh I I went to high school with Jimmy iavan and I know him forever and uh he's told me some Steve Jobs stories that make your hair stand on end as far as his behavior but we got it we got to hand it to the guy you know he was a human right he was human he was very human and he was very fraught with you know his own padillos his own uh dis dissocia of whatever disorder he had uh God he was just a misanthrope but he gave us so much he really did he gave us so much you know one of the things that I there are a lot of people out there who have tried to figure out what lessons to take away from him and the one that I keep coming back for is is advocating for the consumer advocating for the end user yes yes absolutely having the consumer in mind when he in that scene in his in the Steve Jobs movie uh when Michael fast binder says to uh Lisa the actress playing Lisa I'm going to put a thousand songs in your pocket that's not thinking about himself that's thinking about people walking around wanting music and yeah of course it's going to sell because it's good for them you know his and and he did have at Apple when he was alive that it is true he did have a big poster of Alan touring and he went way back Beyond you know uh IBM and everything and and uh the big one they had at NASA or whatever they call it to the invention of the thinking that led to the computer in in Fenley park or Finchley park with Island touring and wow you know it's jobs jobs was an incredible individual I read that uh bio of him by Isaacson Walter Isaacson great bio yeah great bio you know it's it's so good that you were able to talk to Jimmy iven about things like this because a number of people said that when they read the Isaacson book the people who knew jobs that they didn't really feel like it captured him the way they knew him I feel like each person around him had a different experience really funny quick sharp humor you know even though it was nasty mhm you know like that's a good idea go start your own company but but like that was a bad example but in just his dayto day he was he was funny you know he was nasty as hell but he was also funny and I guess Jimmy got a buffered down version of Steve because Jimmy was a mogul himself MH you know Jimmy into scope records everything he's done you know and he helped develop iTunes with Steve Jobs so they you have it yeah here we are well this has been amazing thank you so much for making so much time for me no no problem Victor enjoyed it I enjoyed it yeah and I want to thank WC for being so kind and and letting us use their Studios yes thank you so much on a Saturday afternoonyou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast welcome back to the Apple Insider podcast I'm Victor and this week William is off William is out in the world doing wonderful things we have a very special guest Jimmy destri who is the keyboard player the original keyboard player for the band Blondie and we met up we were in the WC Studios to talk about how iTunes and Spotify and digital distribution has changed things for him as an artist we talked a little bit about his path from Blondie to where he is today we talked about what it's like using digital music now and we talked a little bit about uh some of his experiences because he went to high school with Jimmy iovan and Steve Jobs Impressions that he got from Jimmy going across there so I hope you'll join us I hope you'll sit back and listen this is going to be a fun one welcome to this segment of the Apple Insider podcast I'm Victor and joining me is Jimmy destri Hi Victor Jimmy tell tell my listeners a little bit about your background I was boy from Brooklyn New York and uh I happened to be at the right place at the right time because um when uh the whole art scene started there New York was pretty much peeling in uh going down the tube boobs it's when Jerry Ford said and not many people will U remember this maybe they will uh cuz it is a podcast and you reach everybody uh Jerry Ford said to New York Dro dead New York was broke it was the time of cojak and you know French Connection and the Seedy Subways and everything was wrong if you could imagine New York at that time you would have to imagine those smoking vents deep on the water where he said no life can live and sure enough life could live there but because the New York was so uh poor uh the Ramones and Talking Heads and and television and Blondie and some other bands were all renting lofts in the bowy now where you couldn't get a building for less than $4 million and we were getting lofts for $300 a month so uh Chris sold weed and I you know worked in a hospital Clen worked at the post office and we all pulled our money together we lived in this Loft and um in the early days we were vying for nights at cbgbs I mean we played mothers in Maxis Kansas City and we just kept playing uh hilly at cbgbs was a little rough with us because you know I have television and I have to remon and you they draw a crowd and sure enough the only people that were coming to hear us were other bands so uh um and and the band you were in was blondie just yeah to make sure you said it it was Blondie yeah people think it's Death Leopard or something yeah thank you for reminding everyone uh and Blondie uh was considered a joke we were considered like you know pretty girl with a bunch of musicians and this isn't artistic like television you know and it's not deep like Talking Heads and it's just out not out and out crazy like the Ramones and she's know Patty Smith and everything and then um one guy thought differently and that was the guy I was with yesterday Craig Leon he and his friend Richard GD came to see us live and they were blown away by the songs you know they could hear through the bad sound and everything else at CB's and they heard a couple of songs and he said we should bring them in the studio and of course they looked at Debbie and they went this is a gamble but it's worth it you know because she was the first uh trailblazing woman in a band beside Stevie Nicks Fleetwood Mack and but Debbie was right out front and it's the reason why we called the man blondie you know to get that recognition because we were songwriters you know and we didn't mind everybody addressing her as Blondie hey blondie you know of course she's got blonde hair she's the lead singer so uh from there we did a record with Richard and Craig called ex offender and that record uh got us a record deal didn't take off everybody downtown liked it got us a record deal never hit the radio and we did uh a whole album and there was one song called In the Flesh that was a take on the girl groups and it was a very lilting ballad and that record was picked up accidentally in Australia and the single was in the sun backed with with In the Flesh and we wanted in the sun played but he played the flip side and the bside went to number one in Australia just freaky so we went from playing CB stage to Big theaters in Australia without even knowing how to step on a stage that big I mean it was really and some people were just like what's this they were expecting you know maybe in you know another girl group but no we came out we you know and that was not too well received so by the time we got to England and England being a trend setting country they had listened to some other songs on that first album and uh Larry utol the president of Private Stock records a little label we were on said yeah let's make another record with them and we made a second record called a par uh plastic letters and plastic letters was much darker and deeper and it hit somebody Square in the head Terry Ellis of christas Records heard some of that album came to see us and signed us on the spot he gave us the money to buy out of our other contract and he signed us on the spot because you know the second record was dark and edgy and he's a guy who had Jethro and Perl harm and right so Ian Anderson and those guys yes which were you know pulled back into some sort of Darkness you know and whether it waser Shade of Pale yeah well but even beyond that I mean Gary Brooker amazing songwriter you know uh I saw him open for Jeth T actually yeah I think they were better actually but um so that just uh you know we we went out with den den which was the second single off the second album and that became number one in England then Germany then France then to their own chrin Australia and we came back home and the opposite happened we were just abandoned a bar because nobody in America what a big change from playing large stadiums and well no it wasn't stadiums theaters uh and uh it took a change of producers um because part we just wanted to go straight pop and really I'm not saying my art put me there no it's we wanted to be successful so uh we got Mike Chapman who had written 41 number one singles and he said we are the only band that he didn't write for and we had parallel lines and we had one way or another and then we had heart of glass and everything blew up just blew up and we had a very very successful career for two years and I think the strain of it you know it was more fun throwing dollars into a pot in The Loft than it was sing whose publishing is this MH and you know that I get 133% of this song or you know right it it just became ridiculous and we took a Hiatus and as Craig said we never broke up it's just like should we do it this year no no cuz the royalties were spoiling us and we were just we didn't have to see each other we didn't want to because of the 133% on this song and you know like the middle ative one way or another I brought that song in Nigel wrote it I wrote the middle a and he had a big argument with me about no no it's my song man so I just went take it you know and the song became huge became in every commercial uh so we didn't speak to each other for 5 years and then uh we got back together and it just became a nightmare when we reunited in um after 16 years in 1997 we decide we talked for a while then we decided to go into studio in 98 we had Maria went number one around the world it was the first band to come back and have a hit of that whole ilk of bands mhm uh and then we had two other number ones in England and Europe and we came back home and we were fighting again because it was again you know Jimmy wrote the three number ones Jimmy is not sharing his money sharing his money I mean yeah I didn't take a bit of Heart of Glass which I basically put together so without you know throwing stones it just became and we were all guilty of this it just became ridiculous trying to exist in a ban that you know was getting aoristic to the eth degree and uh at two 2006 they didn't tour in 2004 I did my last tour in 2004 they didn't tour in 2005 2006 we were um inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and I was asked by my wife can you go back to them and I said I really can't honey I really can't do that you know I think I reached the Pinnacle of my career with this statue so you know I know two things I I know music and I know addiction because I've I've had a little bout of it myself and I had a lot of friends die a lot of close friends die I'd like to study that and I went back to college and I got a degree as a therapist and and I specialized in alcohol and drugs and I started working privately and then in a facility sebr house which is wonderful and then I started to realize how much of a business that is you know and that whole AA keep on coming back thing means keep on going to treatment your insurance is going to pay for it it's okay you have a disease for the rest of your life that's all a sham so I I got really disgusted with that and I started playing music again and I literally didn't play I had to actually warm up my hands uh I started playing music again because it was burning in me so um about last year I I've been looking for bands to produce I found an amazing band called satellite mode we're going to start working in late May and I'm just getting back into it and my little trip down here to mfest was sort of to introduce myself again you know uh next year I'm going to play here and uh that's about it up to date let me ask you I mean yesterday when we were talking when I was listening to you and Craig you were talking a little bit about the different instruments that you've used over time and one of the things that we talk about on this podcast is the intersection between art and Technology MH so obviously very early on these things were analog instruments uh you might have a click track but there was no synchronization between any of these things yeah how has all has changed it's changed for me because I come from a different direction I had to learn to play an instrument today you could have an Apple laptop and literally download instruments and parts and sequences and well you could do that before the Apple laptop but it makes it so much easier in Pro Tools you could have a studio in your you know your spare room or in your own bedroom a lot of kids have that you know the good thing about it is it brought music to the masses I mean if you could afford a laptop which even if you're poor a lot of people save up to get and become DJs and whatever and find their way out of the street with that uh the other thing about it is the possibilities are endless like you see all those mugs out there there are patches for them in in Protools and in any kind of apple download so uh I love Apple I think it's a great company uh and they make music available to everybody on the other hand did you notice yesterday when we were doing the uh the conversation with Craig I said there must be musicians here and anybody a musician and two people put their hands up mhm the rest of them are either aficianados fans I hope and either that or people working on laptops so that's where it's g i don't mind that I hope I wasn't too long winded no no I I asked for that uh you know there's there's all of these attempts to bring these traditional instruments together with the with with the laptops you know there's been uh in garage band for a long time there were lessons where you could you could learn to play guitar and that didn't really catch on very far it's one of those things where people thought it was a good idea because they could take they could just skip that and go right to a sequence they could pick up and use or write to a guitar part that they could s and you know so who wants to sit in front of a mirror checking your fingering and then going to a teacher twice a week nobody wants to do that anymore you know I taught myself how to play piano my sister got all the lessons you know and I wasn't I was playing stickball and finally I said hm you know let me try this out you I've always wanted to be a musician because I come from the Beatles age you know uh today anybody can make a w record anybody and I don't mind that at all because jeez look at look at uh the Beasty Boys I mean they're brilliant well they started as a punk band yeah but they were horrible as a punk band they were they were really really bad but they had a vision and they strove for it the guitar playing is God awful but with their vocals it works perfectly I they were really exciting to see live they were their records are exciting uh even Beck you know he he even said it himself two turntables and a mic microphone you know and one Rift brilliant song yeah brilliant song but um it's not as if Beck is rehearsing musicians every day and getting the set tight whatever he needs to go for he'll do on a computer use live stuff and so it he and those are older examples there's more out there than are countless and you know don't even know what do you think about how publishing and distribution has changed through iTunes and yeah uh I like iTunes because iTunes is direct payer and apple really watches that uh when I had uh royalties coming into me from this subdivision label of chrysis and this label and that label and this publish entity and you know you had to audit and you had to make stay on your toes and make sure you got your money and sometimes you would lose some money and you have to say well the legal fees to collect this money would be more than the money itself and you'd have to let it go but iTunes pays less but pays everything every place there's a download iTunes will will pay you know I think it's 68 cents to the dollar but hey I'm not sure if that figure is right but my royalties is at have actually gone up from mechan not Mechanicals but from uh downloads interesting yeah it's it's uh it's a new thing it's it's a you know uh we were dead we were sort of broke after the first turnaround because you know we all thought we were going to last forever and we all bought these lavish homes and stuff like that then CDs came out and gave us a second wind you know we paid bills and we started Living normally again you know and uh then iTunes and that really covered our asses to be you know pretty blunt currently there's there's a fight between Spotify and Apple going on where Spotify is is upset with apple uh their their complaint is around having to pay Apple part of their subscriptions and they're upset about uh not being able to sell those subscriptions through the app store without Apple taking a cut it's sort of one of the things that we're watching and thinking about is is what's the right way you know what's the right way to distribute what's the right way to consume is it much of a cut it's not much of a cut though isn't it uh for I mean us sold it's like a 30% of the sale price of the app and for a subscription is something like 15% yeah well you're using a giant yeah you're using a giant to get it done and for someone who used a beautiful blonde to get it done any means to an end I mean I don't think they should be fighting I think Spotify would do a lot better to team up with apple and negotiate you know because you are you're using a GI you're using the most uh the richest company in the world who hasn't that company really doesn't uh mess with your content doesn't do with with all the iPhones and everything they're not Facebook and they're not you know Instagram and and not you trust apple and Tim Cook said it himself you know you know we're the biggest company in the world but we don't know what our users where they are you know and that's wonderful I mean uh if you're going to use a giant you have to pay for it you know you mentioned fa Facebook who who own Instagram what do you think they have as a responsibility to their users absolute privacy and it's responsibility knock off the ads the real fake News ads and they have to start really respecting your priv not sell your information I mean in the early days of Facebook we would talk about things uh with people with friends not just me I mean everybody and um people who talk about bicycles a lot would start getting ads for bicycles you know that kind of thing it's an invasion and and I don't trust Zuckerberg I know he's a little bit on the Spectrum but his Spectrum isn't focused on coding anymore it's focused on more just more you know and he was a real in Washington it's just so their responsibility has to be more privacy because he's got I actually have a question yeah sure Scout okay so do you think that if people paid for Facebook they would get their privacy good question 13 years old great question uh yes I think they paid for Facebook if if they paid a nominal fee they would get a guarantee and they would have to they would demand it you know I wouldn't pay for any service where I didn't read the service agreement and I don't think they'd mess with that because if say just 400,000 of the 9 billion people that are on Facebook uh sued them it would be National international news for example like it's inter national news now that they don't protect your privacy you know yeah every repeated incident that they have we talk about it here right now they're saving up a a war chest in preparation for paying a fee to the uh FTC I think because they're violating their consent degree from the last time yeah yeah from be from after Zuckerberg was on the hill mhm yeah yeah they don't change you can't really write off $3 billion as a as a business expense it's not a cost of doing business anymore it's a way of I know cost of doing business that that was hilarious yeah well I I do think we have to watch out I think the people understand now and thank you news agencies for getting this out like all the other stuff they've been getting out you know it really gave me a high high high respect for journalism again you know I mean unfortunately people are so in sconed in their like cement or like cement boots in their opinions that you know two reporters can't bring down a president like they did in the Nixon era yeah only wish they could and this is one of the things that that Apple news has been trying to do is vet articles and push the ones that are verifiable to the top what do you do with the ones that aren't that's a good question they they're also beginning to charge money for the news so that you can uh make sure that that Outlets have some form of getting paid the same way that iTunes is paying artists maybe paying less but at least paying directly it's paying directly yeah which turns out to be more that's that's the great thing about it you're buying a service from iTunes we guarantee your royalty because it's all digitally encoded one of the things that makes news agencies suspect of of Apple news and participating is that like you said Apple protects privacy that Apple doesn't want to give the subscriber information to those news outlets and they're so used to having that yeah that that it makes them skeptical when they don't so Tim Cook and the Gang are sort of backing away and maybe they're thinking that they don't need the news agencies maybe they're thinking that they could become the next CNN well I don't they're producing dramas they're producing f contv um I don't know that they're producing any news programs at the time at this time allthough summer documentary MH with uh with Apple news and Apple news plus what they're doing is they've gotten Wall Street Journal on board MH and I think their their plan is that more will follow yeah good good for them you know uh I think there have been benevolent company I I don't think they're very much into all the nasty stuff they they're very much a hardware and content company well they're going to be a Content company Hardware software and some content it's apple and great phones you know it's Galaxy makes great phones they make great phones and they're always one uping each other which is good for the people it's good for people buying phones I mean uh I never had God wish I invested in apple I mean I never had a bad experience with that company person and I know a lot of people swear by it and and that's all you need I walk I a lot of people out there walking around grumbling about Facebook MH you know a lot of people out there walking around grumbling about Volkswagen you know sure you so and these are huge companies never really get it with apple uh I get some jealousy because they're the richest company in the world but everybody's got one in their pocket yeah so of course of course I mean all right uh who's going to be the competitor to them they have such an infrastructure you know if he gets out of hand whatever gets out of hand I trust that something will be done they've opened up so many different fronts right they've got the TV plus that sort of fits as a competitor to not not as much cable or HBO as much as uh because HBO is a part of their agreements currently anyway but more uh Netflix mhm competing with other streames Disney for example Disney's plus streaming service that's come out right is one they're going to compete with um when it comes to computers obviously we know who they compete with or phones like you said Samsung but there we keep hearing Rumblings about them building their own car so there they're competing with Tesla I don't know you know that's a whole other bow of wa they they have around 70 vehicles in California that are self-driving license for self-driving mhm technology is there but you trust somebody to drive a self-driving car I mean it it nobody could react like a human well the the it's a ways off but when a vehicle can react like a human the the possibility or the potential for for drastically reducing car accidents mhm seems like a win sometimes The Logical turn is the wrong yeah you know my my concern is the knock on effects of that if if you reduce car accidents to you know 1% of what they are today that would be wonderful yeah then I'll be all for it but I just it's itchy about it except except that you know when you do that where you think about all the KnockOn effects right what comes after that well a result of that if you reduce all of the car accidents in in the country you also reduce all of the organ donation in the country yeah of course so and you reduce the employment of firefighters and whatever and Long Haul truck drivers and yeah yeah and all of that so there's a ton of changes going so but like if when we know that we apples might be doing something with self-driving cars you would kind of assume that Tim Cook has one cuz at every Apple conference when they're announcing a new phone he always has it says I use this like when the Apple watch came out I have this it was kind of cool so you can kind of assume that he has a self-driving I I think it's a little early for that I think that's probably uh a few years away they're still doing the research kind of work but you're right when when it comes he'll have one well there a couple years ago before the Apple Watch series 4 came out he was talking about having the ability to uh to real time scan the glucose in his bloodstream bloodstream and that was something that then came you know was announced 6 months later as as a partnership that they've done with one of the glucosemeter companies well that's all wonderful stuff I got to say though uh Tim Cook probably arrives in a limousine yeah at this point he's a public figure uh and uh he's very powerful man I would say I I suspect he no longer drives himself yes uh although although Steve Jobs drove himself around up until the the days where he got too sick to drive anymore he drove himself and parked wherever the hell he wanted you know and he had a car without plates on it for like 6 months there was a rule in California that allowed him as long as the car was was uh purchased or or at least 6 months before you could go for six months without a plate and so he just changed cars every six months oh and I I was at Apple One Day visiting some of the uh the hardware evangelists and people there and his his Mercedes was parked in handicap spot at an angle at an angle uh I I went to high school with Jimmy iavan and I know him forever and uh he's told me some Steve Jobs stories that make your hair stand on end as far as his behavior but we got it we got to hand it to the guy you know he was a human right he was human he was very human and he was very fraught with you know his own padillos his own uh dis dissocia of whatever disorder he had uh God he was just a misanthrope but he gave us so much he really did he gave us so much you know one of the things that I there are a lot of people out there who have tried to figure out what lessons to take away from him and the one that I keep coming back for is is advocating for the consumer advocating for the end user yes yes absolutely having the consumer in mind when he in that scene in his in the Steve Jobs movie uh when Michael fast binder says to uh Lisa the actress playing Lisa I'm going to put a thousand songs in your pocket that's not thinking about himself that's thinking about people walking around wanting music and yeah of course it's going to sell because it's good for them you know his and and he did have at Apple when he was alive that it is true he did have a big poster of Alan touring and he went way back Beyond you know uh IBM and everything and and uh the big one they had at NASA or whatever they call it to the invention of the thinking that led to the computer in in Fenley park or Finchley park with Island touring and wow you know it's jobs jobs was an incredible individual I read that uh bio of him by Isaacson Walter Isaacson great bio yeah great bio you know it's it's so good that you were able to talk to Jimmy iven about things like this because a number of people said that when they read the Isaacson book the people who knew jobs that they didn't really feel like it captured him the way they knew him I feel like each person around him had a different experience really funny quick sharp humor you know even though it was nasty mhm you know like that's a good idea go start your own company but but like that was a bad example but in just his dayto day he was he was funny you know he was nasty as hell but he was also funny and I guess Jimmy got a buffered down version of Steve because Jimmy was a mogul himself MH you know Jimmy into scope records everything he's done you know and he helped develop iTunes with Steve Jobs so they you have it yeah here we are well this has been amazing thank you so much for making so much time for me no no problem Victor enjoyed it I enjoyed it yeah and I want to thank WC for being so kind and and letting us use their Studios yes thank you so much on a Saturday afternoon\n"