#1656 - Adam Duritz

Adam Duritz (0:15)

Hello, Adam. Hello, Joe.

Joe Rogan (0:16)

How you doing?

Adam Duritz (0:17)

I'm pretty good.

Joe Rogan (0:18)

It's good to see you. It's nice to meet you, man. It's nice to be, I've been a fan of your work for a long fucking time. And it's always weird when you meet someone, that you listen to their music, or you've seen their stuff, and you're like, oh, you're just a normal human being.

There you are.

Adam Duritz (0:32)

A little whacked out, but yeah.

Joe Rogan (0:34)

But it's, you know, like, I remember watching Mr. Jones on MTV, and I love that fucking video, man. And I love that you dancing in that, was it like a living room or something like that?

Adam Duritz (0:47)

Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan (0:47)

I'm like, I want to be that free.

Like, you seem so loose.

You were so in the moment. I remember thinking that. I remember talking to a friend of mine that night after a show. I was at a bar. I was like, you ever see that Mr. Jones video? I go, when that dude's dancing, I go, I want to like figure out how to get there.

Adam Duritz (1:06)

Shit, I want to be that free.

You know, it's a weird thing. I used to, I'm gonna take this off for now.

Joe Rogan (1:11)

Okay.

Adam Duritz (1:11)

I used to be, for me, you know, life is often very awkward and uncomfortable, but not on stage. You know, like on stage, I always felt like, well, this is the one place, everything I do is fine. So when I started, you know, making videos, at first it was just like, this is apps, this is easy. Because all I gotta do is do the stuff I'm gonna do, you know, and there's nothing wrong I can do. I can just be as free as I want.

And that lasted about a year and a half, maybe two years.

Something about like getting really famous out of nowhere and then, you know, all the kind of backlash that comes with it. I noticed a couple years later, I was a lot more self-conscious. I'm still on stage, I never think about anything. When I'm playing it, nothing bothers me. But in front of cameras, I got really self-conscious in front of cameras after sometime in the middle of our second record. I just noticed that I started to suck on, not suck on video, but definitely not like that Mr. Jones video.

Joe Rogan (2:13)

You became aware that so many people were watching and criticizing you, or what was it?

Adam Duritz (2:19)

I think it was that. Because at first, I just didn't care. And I just thought that there's nowhere in the world I'm more comfortable than here, so I'm fine.

And then I think on our second album, when we got a lot of backlash, and you get a little too big, and you annoy the shit out of people, especially in a band, because you get a really successful song, they're going to play it on the radio every five minutes. After a while, it's like, God, who wouldn't get sick of it? And then you get some backlash after that. People say some terrible things. And then I started thinking about, what do I look like on film? Then I got really self-conscious. You know, does this pants, does this song make my ass look big?

I noticed that I got kind of crappy just in front of cameras, not the rest of the time, and not like cameras when I'm on stage at a concert. Like you play a big festival, there's lots of cameras. It doesn't bother me there. It's just kind of sometimes on TV and in filming, I got kind of self-conscious. And I had never been that way.

Joe Rogan (3:16)

The press stuff, like that kind of stuff?

Adam Duritz (3:18)

I think so. I mean, I don't really know what caused it exactly.

The only reason I would say I think you're right about that is that it happened then. And that was the first time I'd experienced that because no one said anything bad about you when they don't know you exist, for one. And then, on our first record, we couldn't buy a bad review, you know? But by our second record, we weren't even getting, it was like, forget him, he's fucking this chick, so I don't have to forget his music. And then like, he got fat, whatever it would be. You start, when a national publication calls you fat, you know, it's like, shit.

I remember getting a review in England once and somebody called me, Poncy is a fishmonger's cat, which I suppose fishmonger's cats eat a lot.