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EPISODE LINKS:
Dan's Twitter: https://twitter.com/DanReynolds
Dan's Instagram: https://instagram.com/danreynolds
Imagine Dragons Website: https://imaginedragonsmusic.com/

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OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
1:49 - Programming
20:50 - Johnny Depp and Amber Heard
25:44 - Las Vegas
30:45 - Spirituality
33:58 - Ayahuasca
44:16 - Depression and fame
48:01 - Introvert
1:00:39 - Advice from Charlie Sheen
1:13:18 - Making music
1:25:53 - Lesson from Rick Rubin
1:31:55 - Believer
1:39:26 - Father son relationship
1:40:42 - Dan's first song
1:44:54 - Cat Stevens and Harry Chapin
1:49:37 - Advice for young people
1:58:09 - LGBTQ
2:02:31 - Religion
2:07:13 - Meaning of life
2:10:22 - Dan sings

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When you imagine a song, is it the opening you imagine?

No, it's kind of a, it's just a, I never think opening.

I think soundscape of how I'm feeling right now.

So it could be the middle of the song for all I know when I'm doing that.

But my process for me is very much lyrics and melody and music really come at the same time.

By same time, I mean as I'm expressing maybe,

It's not that simple, but it's like, I'll hear it, like, it's like, here's all the orchestra and you're kind of just pressing all the buttons at once.

And melody and my voice is just 1 of those instruments.

The following is a conversation with Dan Reynolds, the lead singer of Imagine Dragons, 1 of the most popular bands in the world with over 75 million records sold and with 4 songs being streamed over a billion times on Spotify.

Given all that, Dan is 1 of the most down to earth, kind, thoughtful, and fascinating human beings I've ever met, grounded in part by his lifelong struggle with mental health.

The darkness, the love, and the creative brilliance are all there in this 1 humble mind.

For this reason, and many others, we became fast friends.

Plus, he recently started his journey in programming, which funny enough is where we start this wide ranging, deeply personal and fun conversation.

To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

And now, dear friends, here's Dan Reynolds.

So we were talking offline that you're not just getting into programming.

What's the most beautiful program you've ever written?

There's something, I really love completion.

It's the reason that I'm addicted to songwriting.

I like there being nothing and then having some blocks or tools and building them into what you want it to look like.

And then I find it incredibly rewarding to stand back and look at what you did at the end.

For me, it was as simple to begin with as just, you know, because it's object-oriented, like making a cube move.

Simple as that, understanding that, and knowing that I built that and made it do that is really rewarding.

And I think it's the thing that drew me into to wanting to learn more.

But as far as what is some grandiose, like some big piece of code that I've done, absolutely not.

I'm still at a level where it's more like, what is a tutorial that I followed?

Yes, I can say I'm at a level where I've done anything beautiful at all in code.

But you're also interested in potentially, like your heart is drawn to creating games.

I mean, I've been working over the last 2 years with actually a team out of Kiev on, and we can get into that, it's a whole other story, but on a computer game.

And really I've kept that kind of under wraps, But yeah, we're kind of getting to a point now where we have a prototype that we can play, and it's a lot of fun, and thankfully all the team members are in safe places now.

Things have obviously been on hold for a little bit.

But when that started is when I really decided, can you understand base level coding in C-sharp?

So I'm not an idiot talking to these people.

We've been doing that for a couple of years.

Is there any parallels between the final completion that you feel with programming, which I think is a little bit more definitive.

Like there's debugging, the code doesn't work, it's messy and so on.

There's the early design stages, you're not sure, like how to have functions and classes, how it's all gonna work.

And then it comes together and it's really done because it works and there's a cube moving on

Is there any parallels between that and music?

Because are you really ever done done with a song?

It's exactly the same thing for me, just in that it's art.

I really believe that we have not fully encapsulated artists.

Like when we say art, I think most people think, okay, the medium must be painting or drawing or music or writing.

But I really believe anytime you're creating something, engineers, for instance, you're creating something with tools that you have and it can be incredibly beautiful.

And so yeah, I think, and it's never done.

I feel like I look at songs that I've done, and I never felt you have to let go, or I have to let go.

And that's all I've, I'm just continually making myself let go.

But I look at songs that I've done and wish I had done more or kept going down that road and what would have happened.

And I'm really contained to because of what our band is and what our fans expect.

And there's so much more to it that it's like, I'm fitting in a box always.

You know, it's like this song shouldn't be longer than 3 minutes and 30 seconds.

And I don't know if I remember the chorus after I heard it.

Maybe I need to hear the chorus 3 times instead of those 2 times.

It's like there's certain, especially in pop music, it's really hard to...

Yeah, It feels like there's confines, even though people are like, well, there's no confines, but still everybody's writing a pop song that's a few minutes.

Or are they just kinda, the gut is like you said, chorus.

Should you have chorus once, twice, or 3 times?

Is that a gut thing or is that a rule thing?

I mean, it's obviously a rule I impose on myself.

Nobody's in my house saying, hey, Dan, if you don't do this, I'm gonna punish you.

There's no major label president that's like, Imagine Dragons needs to make pop music, Dan.

I do it because it's what I perceive to be enjoyable.

I grew up listening to a ton of pop music.

And then I ended up being in what is quote unquote a rock band, which I've never perceived it as that, but that's kind of what the world has called it, and that's fine, but.

a prisoner of a prison that you yourself constructed.

I'm a happy, I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm a happy prisoner of the prison that I have created for myself and I made that prison thinking that it was a mansion.

Rick was, you know, it was interesting to hear his outside opinion when we first met.

Because my biggest focus for so much of my life, My biggest fear was, and this stems from, I think, middle school is when it started, but everyone being in on a joke except for yourself.

The thought of thinking you're good at something and really you're terrible at it and you're surrounded by people who are saying, yeah, you're good at it, and then by themselves they're like, he's terrible at this.

Just kind of, and not just in regards to music or art, but anything in life, and I think maybe from having 6 older brothers, it stems from that too, like always feeling inadequate and like the annoying younger brother, you know?

But anyway, so Rick's, and that's something I've learned to let go of as I've gotten older and had life experiences, But 1 of the things that Rick said really early on that has stuck with me was he said, we were Zooming the first time we met.

He said, I'd really like to work with you because I feel like you're not confined to a sound.

And so it's exciting because I feel like your fans are forgiving more than other rock bands or bands.

Because most people when they hear, When they hear a band, it's like, there's a very specific sound with it.

It's like, they do folk music, or they do like California rock, or they do surf, or they do, you know, like there's...

Like They want them to do that thing and then they don't do it.

And sometimes that goes well, but a lot of times it doesn't.

And people, you know, critics and everybody is like, go back to the thing that you did good and do that.

Rick felt whether he was right or wrong that we could do, we hopped genres so much.

And that's been to our benefit and detriment, I think.

I mean, certainly it's not something I subscribe to because I create music, but I also grew up listening to a lot of different genres, like Cats, I would listen to like Cat Stevens, and the next song would be like Biggie, and then the next song would be Nirvana, and it was like, I like a lot of, and then Billy Joel, and then Enya.

I was a product and I was a product of the 90s, which if you listen to 90s music, it really was a lot of reason that people say, well, 90s were terrible.

I love the 90s, they were my favorite decade of music.

She had the 90s, had the boy bands, and it had Pearl Jam and Nirvana.

It had a lot of Women of the 90s is probably my biggest influence.

Kind of that like angry rock Women of the 90s.

Like, Lillanus Morissette, Jagged Little Pill is 1 of my favorite records of all time.

The lyrics were so intimate and I don't know if she was angry or not, sorry if she wasn't.

There was angst, yeah, it was like angstiness.

And that in hip hop of the 90s influences me and then my dad.

So anything my dad listened to, which my dad didn't listen to any of that.

My dad listened to like Harry Nelson, The Beatles, Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Billy Joel.

Do you mind if we throughout this listen to a few songs?

Because you mentioned hearing this, and I was actually, yesterday and the day before listening to a lot of his stuff, and it's just like, damn, he's good.

Like, I was getting, do you mind if I play?

I don't know, not to open this conversation with a love song.

There's something, I don't even want to talk over him because this is 1 of my favorite songs too, but I think people have a really good bullshit indicator.

And music, in my opinion, whenever I meet a young artist and say, well, I'm trying to make a new band and I wanna do something like how to be successful, I really think understanding that people have a really good bullshit indicator is the most important part of being an artist.

And I'll explain what that means, at least to me.

I think that in order to have success or be a leader or whether it's an art or anything, people need to believe that you believe what you're doing.

I think the best actors, really when they're doing their thing, it's like they, it's not acting.

They're in it and it's how they feel and they're expressing that sorrow or joy or whatever it is.

Harry for me, Harry Nilsson, I just believe it.

And whether he's the greatest bullshitter of all time or I don't think that's the case, I think he probably was singing that song and he just could transport himself to wherever he was.

And someone could be the best actor and sing that in the same timbre, same EQ, same compression, same everything, and there's some unknown there that I, I think hopefully it will be known at some point, it's some scientific thing, but there's something there that the energy or something that people can perceive it and say true or false.

And if it resonates as true, it's so much more meaningful and it lives on, and if it doesn't, that for me is what is good art or bad.

For people to dispute over, well, sonics should sound like that, that's silly to me.

It's like a song or even a painting, it's just the truthfulness of it.

Yeah, the truly great art has to go to that place where you really are feeling it.

Like you forget that you're being recorded, you forget there's an audience, you really are feeling it.

1 of the things that I love about the internet is it's brought the bullshit detector of the masses to power, which is beautiful, because then the masses uplift the really authentic.

And even if you didn't write the song, I think it helps a lot probably if you wrote the song.

But I was a little bit, maybe a lot, since we're in Vegas, a little heartbroken to find out that Elvis didn't write his songs.

But for example, Rocketman, Elton John, Like to find out that Elton John didn't really know where the words of Rocketman came from, meaning like the depths of it, it's interesting.

But nevertheless, he's super authentic because for Elton John and for Elvis, there's something in the fun and the darkness and the entertainment of it.

Like he goes to some place in his mind that might not be deeply connected from where the lyrics came from.

But he relates it to whatever is in his mind and goes to that place emotionally.

And that's why an actor, like I said, can be completely honest to me.

Maybe they didn't write the script, but I write, like I've always written all my own lyrics.

But I will say, I see people all the time who are performers like Elton John, for instance, who didn't write the lyrics that I believe that it means just as much to them as what I wrote, because they find the meaning in it for themself.

And I think you can perceive, and I'm sure you've seen art that doesn't move you, and maybe it moves someone else.

But for you, for some reason, you perceive it to be uninteresting to you and I feel like a lot of the time, I'm not saying that, of course sonically maybe it's uninteresting to you, but I think the majority of the time for myself, I can find inspiration in any sonic value or painting as long as I see it and I feel truth from the person that created it.

Yeah, but for me, the lyrics, maybe not the entirety of the lyrics, but a few words

And sometimes those words don't need to be connected with the other words.

They're allowed to float in the space of mixed metaphors.

They're allowed to just jump around and somehow it paints a picture without actually, What is it, glycerine by Bush?

Right, but it's also how the person says it, right?

It's like, it's the feeling of exactly, and the same person could say that word 10 other ways and you don't care, but someone says glycerine or whatever it is, and it's like, oh, you know what, I feel that.

No, I can't forget this evening or your face as you were leaving, but I guess that's just the way the story goes.

You always smile, but in your eyes, your sorrow shows.

So there's a lady possibly who's leaving him.

Do you think he's leaving her or she's leaving him?

♪ When I think of all my sorrow ♪ ♪ And I had you there but then I let you go ♪ ♪ And now it's only fair that I should let you know what you should know.

And the chorus is, I can't live if living is without you.

And if you really, there's been some incredible documentation on his life and the end of his life.

And so my answer to this is probably skewed based on what I've seen about his life too, but he was a real alcoholic at the end of his life and it destroyed his voice and ended up killing him as well.

And so when I hear that, I perceive it as someone who is destructive and in a destructive place in life and can't love someone properly.

And so they can't live with them, but they can't live without them type thing.

Which is really something that I really identify with and I think is, you know, 1 of the struggles of life is loving yourself enough, It's forgiving yourself for things and letting yourself love someone else.

And at least when I listen to that, I hear Harry being like, and maybe I'm wrong, but this is how I perceive it at least, is not loving himself and feeling like he's deserving of this person, like I have to let you go.

I hear that of course and people are like, oh well he's breaking up with her.

But there's so much more complexity and nuance to relationships than that.

And my wife and I went through really difficult separation.

And that's a story for another day or a different question or something, but the nuance of it makes me think of this when I hear this, which is, There's just more to being with someone or not being with someone than, hey, I think that person's really attractive, or hey, that person makes me laugh or not, or I love them and now I don't love them.

Love is such a complex, nuanced thing that A lot of times there's just more going on behind the scenes, I think.

Yeah, on a small tangent on that, just as a curious question, have you paid any attention to the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trials?

I have watched quite a bit of it because my wife really loves it and she watches it in bed at night.

So it's raw, to me it's really, because you've mentioned how complicated love can be, and I've never seen, I don't care about the celebrity nature of it, I don't care if it was, I don't care who it is, but it's just laid out in such raw form.

For the world to see the toxicity, but also the passion and the clearly sort of the drugs and the drinking, but also like the longing and the dreams, and I will always be with you, I will die for you.

The places, the rollercoaster of love, and it's all there at the end, past the end.

So it's like, I've also recently re-read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich about Hitler and Nazi Germany.

And it's interesting to look at the entirety of that process after it's all over.

That book in particular, written by the person that was actually there.

And so here we're seeing 2 people in the context of the courtroom, analyzing this rise and fall of a love affair.

You know, the truth is, I was telling my wife this actually just the other day, because she was asking what I thought about it.

There's a lot of parts in it that are just really funny.

But I look at it and I also see the internet, you know, someone's always the villain and someone's the hero, which is such a funny thing.

And we talked a little about this offline before we got on this, but I have a real firm belief in life that it's just more complex than you think, always, always.

And Johnny, for instance, is very charismatic and you love him and he's funny and the way he does things and he looks certain ways and he says things.

He's just, you really love him And I feel like, and maybe I'm wrong on this, but it looks like the internet has really been like, Johnny is the winner, Amber is the villain.

And I kind of look at it, yeah, and I kind of look at it and I feel like, Were any of you in their bedroom?

All I see when I look at that is 2 people with a lot of deep-seated hurt, anger, And that anger is so poisonous to both of them, and they're getting through it in the way that they only know how.

And I'm not saying we shouldn't be able to look at parts of it and laugh about it and stuff, and be virtuous or something, but Just that there's not a hero.

I think unless you've been living with Amber and Johnny, you don't know.

And just because 1 seems more charismatic in the moment or funnier or more believable even, doesn't mean that their truth is the truth.

And I feel like there's still love there too, which makes it all.

And maybe people say, well, it's cause anger or hurt or whatever, but the way that she looks and stuff, it feels, it just feels like there's so much hurt there that it hurts me to watch it.

I just feel like, oh, my heart just aches for them and for both of them, and I don't know either of them personally.

But it's, I've never seen sort of love laid out in this raw kind of way.

It makes me feel better about, like, it almost gives you, seeing people who have gone through a struggle in this sort of mundane kind of way gives you room to struggle yourself about the messiness of love.

Like you're supposed to, like relationship is supposed to be simple and whatever, but this like, oh man, this.

And for the record, like, I don't feel like it shouldn't be shown.

Like, I think it's actually really beautiful art, and I agree there's gonna be a lot of people who walk away from it and are changed in certain ways or look at things different.

I'm not saying it's changing the whole world, the Johnny Depp trial, but it's art.

It's just like you would look at a painting and it might affect you.

My only commentary is more that there's not, I think it's silly when people say who's right and who's wrong and who's the clear villain and who's the, like we love as human, we have to have an answer for everything, we have to put everything in a box.

And it's like, well, we're looking at this and we're deciding you're right and you're wrong.

And I just think it's silly unless it's your life.

So speaking of heroes and villains and highs and lows, you grew up in Las Vegas, and you said that Vegas is a performing town, a town of high stakes, drama, and eccentricity.

It's a town of high highs and low lows, and I'll be damned if my therapist didn't point that correlation out to me personally a long time ago.

So to me, Vegas from the outside is romanticized by certain movies.

And certain movies, so to me, Casino with Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Sharon Stone, leaving Las Vegas with Nicolas Cage, here in Lothing, in Las Vegas with, with the Johnny Depp play, Hunter Stompson.

First of all, what's your favorite representation of Vegas from a darker side?

And do you draw any wisdom insight from the darkness, the lows and the highs in those movies, or is it over-romanticized?

So I grew up in a really conservative Mormon family, and Vegas was established by the Mormons and the mob.

Those were like the 2 very different worlds that created what Vegas is.

And if you live in Vegas, it really shows in a lot of ways because Vegas has the, you know, the strip and the parties and the craziness, but it also has very like neighborhoods and big families and conservative people and liberal people living together in a really interesting way.

For me, Growing up here, for instance, was a lot of driving on the freeway, my mom being like, children, close your eyes, there's a naked woman on that billboard, and okay, mom.

On our way to church, you know what I mean?

But also being like, whoa, this is crazy.

Like, taking in whatever I could when I could.

Like I really love that I didn't grow up as a Mormon in for instance like Utah or something, like the typical place.

Because I saw both sides and I appreciated something from both sides.

And now as a person now who's not religious but just spiritually minded, I'm grateful for that divergent character, that juxtaposition, dual-edged sword that Vegas is.

And I try to apply that to everything in life, which is, like Johnny Depp and the Amber Heads, there's 2 sides to every story.

And there's something to be said for both.

Like I try to see people and even if, it's just, yeah, I try to apply that to life.

As far as a movie that personifies Vegas or something in that medium that personifies Vegas in a way that resonates with me.

I also, I wasn't even allowed to watch PG-13 movies growing up, so a lot of the movies that you're saying, I either didn't see, I didn't have cable television.

I wasn't like a pilgrim, but I had a really, really conservative upbringing.

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Dan Reynolds: Imagine Dragons | Lex Fridman Podcast #290