Dinner at the Bar, a Ticket Across the World
Cal first felt like he’d hit the big time when he got a job at Inside Sports in New York City. There, he was able to do shots with Hunter S. Thompson and trade stories with Pulitzer Prize–winning journalists:
“I was only a kid. I was 22. Every night, everybody would go across the street to a bar called The Cowboy. At the time, I had no money. They would put out these little hors d’oeuvres, and that was where my dinner would be, if the guys with expense accounts weren’t going out later. . . . Inside Sports wasn’t a job, it was an experience. It was an event every evening. Who’s coming tonight?”
Inside Sports was an artistic success but not a commercial one. It went belly up, and Cal was out of a job and largely out of money:
“I didn’t know what to do, so I called up my mom and dad. I said: ‘You know, I think I’m going to take some time off and travel,’ and my mom, who’s always really supportive, said ‘Oh, Cal, that’s wonderful.’ Little did she know when I said it that I wasn’t coming back for 10 years. But I didn’t know it, either. I just bought a ticket to go over to Europe, left with a few guys, and that started a 10-year odyssey of ‘Cal going around the world.’”
The Magic of Goulash
“The trip down the aisle [on a bus or train, during his travels] was where all the stakes were. Because as I’m going down that aisle, I’ve got to look for an empty seat next to somebody who seems interesting. Somebody I can trust, somebody who might be able to trust me. The stakes are high because I know that at the end of that ride, wherever it was going, that person had to invite me to their home. Because I had no money to spend night after night in a hotel.”
The clincher question Cal used to get free room and board around Europe as a poor traveler was: “Can you tell me: How do you make the perfect goulash?” He would purposefully sit down next to grandmas, who would then pour out their souls. After a few minutes of passionate pantomiming, people would come from around the train to help translate, no matter the country. Cal never had to worry about where he was spending the night.
“During [one dinner party a grandma threw in Hungary to feed me goulash,] one of the neighbors says, ‘Have you ever tasted apricot brandy? Because nobody makes apricot brandy like my father. He lives a half an hour away. You’ve got to come to taste the apricot brandy.’ That weekend, we’re tasting apricot brandy, having a great time. Another party starts, another neighbor comes over to me. ‘Have you ever been to Kiskunhalas, the paprika capital of the world? You cannot leave Hungary without visiting Kiskunhalas.’ Now we’re off to Kiskunhalas. I’m telling you, a single question about goulash could get me 6 weeks of lodging and meals, and that’s how I got passed around the world. 10 years. 10 years.”
Aim for the Heart, Not the Head
“Lesson number one, when people ask me what [interviewing] tips would I give, is aim for the heart, not the head. Once you get the heart, you can go to the head. Once you get the heart and the head, then you’ll have a pathway to the soul.”
Be Different, Not Just “Better”
Cal was able to get ~30 minutes with Mikhail Gorbachev in his prime, even after a publicist allotted him 2 and a half. How? “Go to the heart with the first question.” Here’s the beginning of the story:
“So the publicist leads me into the room, and at this point I’m thinking, ‘Okay, if it’s 2 and a half minutes, just do your best.’ I look up and there he is, Gorby. He’s a little older than I remember, about 77 at the time. He was in town to speak about nuclear weapons and why they should be abolished. We sit down. I’m looking at him, and I just know he’s expecting my first question to be about nuclear arms, world politics, perestroika, Ronald Reagan. He’s just ready. So I looked at him and I said: ‘What’s the best lesson your father ever taught you?’ He is surprised, pleasantly surprised. He looks up and he doesn’t answer. He’s thinking about this. It’s as if, after a little while, he’s seeing this movie of his past on the ceiling, and he starts to tell me this story. It’s a story about the day his dad was called to go fight in World War II. See, Gorbachev lived on a farm, and it was a long distance between this farm and the town where Gorbachev’s dad had to join the other men to go off to war. . . .”
“Don’t panic. Let the silence do the work.”
This was Cal’s advice to me, when I mentioned that I sometimes panic and jump in if an interviewee freezes—seemingly stumped—after a question. Another quote that has helped me to be calm in such situations is from Krista Tippett, host of the public radio program and podcast On Being: “Listening is about being present, not just being quiet.”
A Question Cal Suggests Asking People More Often
“What are some of the choices you’ve made that made you who you are?”
“The Good Shit Sticks”
Cal once asked Harry Crews, novelist and author of A Feast of Snakes and Car, how he could remember anything, given how much booze and drugs he consumed. Harry kept no diary. His response was, “Boy, the good shit sticks.” This was what Cal recalled decades later, when he lost an entire box of research notes in his basement—they’d been soaked by a rainstorm and the pages turned black. Cal’s ultimate piece, written from memory and titled “Drinking at 1,300 Feet,” is incredible. It won a James Beard Award, which is akin to an Oscar in the food world. One of the starting lines in the piece is: “We all know the feeling of wanting to do something so well and so badly that we try too hard and can’t do it at all.”
So, You Want to Write a Book?
Cal described why he sometimes gifts Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude to would-be writers: “If you’ve never written a book and you’re going to tell somebody you want to write a great book, all right. Read this and know what a great book is.”
If You Were a Billionaire . . .
I asked Cal, “If you were a billionaire and could give 2 to 3 books to every graduating high school senior in the country this year, what would they be?” His answer (updated since the podcast) is: “For everyone: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. For females: West with the Night by Beryl Markham. For males: The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe. That’s a good start for a journey.”
✸ What would you put on a billboard?
“LISTEN.”
* * *
Joshua Skenes
Joshua Skenes (IG: @saisonsf, saisonsf.com) has become famous for his use of fire. As chef-owner of Saison in San Francisco (three Michelin stars), he has classical training and loves his high-end Japanese Nenohi knives, but nothing captures his imagination quite like the open flame. The back of his business card sports three words, stark on ivory stock: PLAY WITH FIRE.
Remember “the good shit sticks”?
Josh had to embrace Cal Fussman’s philosophy (page 495) when he moved his restaurant Saison in the early days. There was a sewage flood that overtook the entire restaurant the day of their move, and all of his hand-written recipe books were destroyed. Josh had to look on the bright side:
“But, we were moving to a new space, so there was a positive spin. I thought, ‘Fuck it—we’re just going to start over.’ It’s the same thing that we started with [before opening the first time]. It’s all up here [in his head].” He reinvented Saison with no original notebooks but also no baggage. It became the first restaurant in San Francisco history to earn three Michelin stars (alongside Benu).
✸ What’s the best decision you’ve made with your new restaurant space?
“We were starting over, actually. I think the best decision I made was just to say, ‘Let’s really start over. Let’s just completely empty our cup here and really think about what is valuable to me now. What’s honest. What’s sincere about what we’re doing? Let’s do that.’ That’s still the driver of Saison now.”
✸ Most-gifted or recommended books?
Cocktail Techniques by Kazuo Uyeda
The Dao of Taijiquan by T
sung Hwa Jou
Spirit animal: Polar bear
* * *
Rick Rubin
Rick Rubin has been called “the most important [music] producer of the last 20 years” by MTV. Rick’s résumé includes everyone from Johnny Cash to Jay Z. His metal artists include groups like Black Sabbath, Slayer, System of a Down, Metallica, Rage Against the Machine, and Linkin Park. He’s worked with pop artists like Shakira, Adele, Sheryl Crow, Lana Del Rey, and Lady Gaga. He’s also been credited with helping to popularize hip-hop with artists like LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys, Eminem, Jay Z, and Kanye West. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Behind the Scenes
Rick agreed to do the podcast only if we did it in his excruciatingly hot barrel sauna (see page 45). I’d joined Rick a dozen times for sauna and ice bath sessions, but never with electronics. Extensive homework ensued, and I thought of everything . . . except for the mics. They got so scalding to the touch that we needed to wrap them in towels.
Rick was introduced to regular sauna use by Chris Chelios, a friend and former professional hockey player. Chris had one of the longer careers of any NHL player, competing until he was 48. He played the most games of any active player in the NHL, and holds the record for most games played in the NHL by a defenseman. Chris largely credits his sports longevity, and general lack of illness, to daily sauna use.
Rick wears a T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops everywhere. If a restaurant requires a different dress code, he doesn’t go.
Rick and Kelly Starrett (page 122) were the first people to introduce me to the incredible ChiliPad (page 139).
Adele effectively scrapped the first version of her 25 album based on, among other things, Rick’s feedback. She “went back to the drawing board” and began again. The new and improved 25 became the world’s best-selling album of 2015.
The Cleansing Power of Cold
“Often, exercise will make me feel better, meditating will make me feel better, but the ice bath is the greatest of all. It’s just magic—sauna, ice, back and forth. By the end of the fourth, or fifth, or sixth round of being in an ice tub, there is nothing in the world that bothers you.”
20 Minutes of Sun in the Morning
Rick has lost more than 100 pounds since his peak weight. He has completely physically remodeled himself, can kick my ass in paddleboarding, and credits Dr. Phil Maffetone with many critical changes, including improving his circadian rhythm. Rick now typically wakes between 7:30 and 8:30 a.m., reversing a lifetime of nocturnal living. What did it? “When I was in college [at NYU], I never took a class before 3 p.m., because I knew I wouldn’t go. . . . [Before meeting Dr. Maffetone] I slept with blackout blinds, and I usually didn’t leave the house until the sun was setting. He said, ‘From now on, when you wake up, I want you to go outside. As soon as you wake up, open the blinds, and go outside, naked if possible, and be in the sun for 20 minutes.’”
TF: I now do my morning meditation outside and shirtless whenever possible. I tried naked but nearly got kicked out of a Parisian hotel, as my “private” courtyard turned out to be shared. Bonjour!
“The Best Art Divides the Audience”
I first saw Rick’s name in a cassette insert for the very first heavy metal album I bought: Slayer’s Reign in Blood. I asked him about signing them:
“When we signed [Slayer], there was this terrible fear. . . . They were doing their first album for a major label, [and the fear was that] they were going to sell out. . . . I always liked extreme things, and they were extreme, and I wanted to maximize it. I didn’t want to water it down—the idea of watering things down for a mainstream audience, I don’t think it applies. I think people want things that are really passionate, and often, the best version they could be is not for everybody. . . . The best art divides the audience. If you put out a record, and half the people who hear it absolutely love it, and half the people who hear it absolutely hate it, you’ve done well, because it’s pushing that boundary.”
✸ Advice to your younger self?
“To be kinder to myself, because I think I’ve beaten myself up a lot. I expect a lot from myself, I’ll be hard on myself, and I don’t know that I’m doing anyone any good by doing that.”
TIM: “Something that I struggle with is—on one hand—I don’t want to beat myself up, but on the other hand, I feel like the perfectionism that I have has enabled me to achieve whatever modicum of success I’ve had. I’ve heard stories about ZZ Top and La Futura, and how they worked on it with you from 2008 to 2012, and they realized the value of your wanting the art to be as perfect as it could be, or the best it could be, and taking whatever time and pains necessary to make that possible. I want to be easier on myself, but I worry that if I do that, I will lose whatever magic, if there is such a thing, that enables me to do what I do.”
RICK: “I think, ultimately, that’s a myth. I think that your take on things is specific to you [and not dependent on perfectionism]—it’s almost like you’ve won the war, and to accept the fact that you’ve won the war: You have an audience. People are willing to hear what you are interested in, what you’re interested in learning about, and what you want to share. You can do that without killing yourself. And killing yourself won’t be of service, neither to you nor your audience.”
Need to Get Unstuck? Make Your Task Laughably Small
How does Rick help artists who feel stuck? “Usually, I’ll give them homework—a small, doable task. I’ll give you an example. There was an artist I was working with recently who hadn’t made an album in a long time, and he was struggling with finishing anything. He just had this version of a writer’s block. But I would give him very doable homework assignments that almost seemed like a joke. ‘Tonight, I want you to write one word in this song that needs five lines, that you can’t finish. I just want one word that you like by tomorrow. Do you think that you could come up with one word?’”
The Beginning Is “heart work,” not “head work”
“So much of the job is more emotion and ‘heart work’ than it is ‘head work.’ The head comes in after, to look at what the heart has presented and to organize it. But the initial inspiration comes from a different place, and it’s not the head, and it’s not an intellectual activity.”
Learn from the Greats, Not Your Competition
“Going to museums and looking at great art can help you write better songs. Reading great novels . . . seeing a great movie . . . reading poetry. . . . The only way to use the inspiration of other artists is if you submerge yourself in the greatest works of all time. . . . If you listen to the greatest songs ever made, that would be a better way to work through [finding] your own voice today, [rather] than listening to what’s on the radio now and thinking, ‘I want to compete with this.’ . . . [For music,] search online for MOJO’s 100 Greatest Albums Ever Made, or Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, or any trusted source’s top 100 albums, and start listening to what are considered the greats.”
✸ Who do you think of when you hear the word “successful”?
Don Wildman. “He’s 82 years old, and he did 23 pull-ups on the beach the other day. He’s in the Senior Olympics. He retired . . . because he wanted to spend his days enjoying life and exercising. He’s one of the most inspiring, uplifting, great, successful people on so many levels.”
TF: Laird Hamilton, Gabby Reece, and Brian MacKenzie also bring Don up constantly (see page 92). I highly recommend reading an Esquire profile of him from a few years ago titled “The World’s Healthiest 75-Year-Old Man.” From that piece: “Wildman officially retired in 1994, at age 61 [after selling his company to what became Bally Total Fitness], not because he’d lost his passion for the business but because having a job—even one in the fitness industry—made it difficult to snowboard 100 days a year.”
The Soundtrack of Excellence
As mentioned before, more than 80% of the world-class performers I’ve interviewed meditate in the mo
rnings in some fashion.
But what of the remaining 20%? Nearly all of them have meditation-like activities. One frequent pattern is listening to a single track or album on repeat, which can act as an external mantra for aiding focus and present-state awareness.
Here are just a few examples:
Alex Honnold, free solo climbing phenom: The Last of the Mohicans soundtrack
Rolf Potts, author of Vagabonding and others: ambitones like The Zen Effect in the key of C for 30 minutes, made by Rolfe Kent, the composer of music for movies like Sideways, Wedding Crashers, and Legally Blonde
Matt Mullenweg, lead developer of WordPress, CEO of Automattic: “Everyday” by A$AP Rocky and “One Dance” by Drake
Amelia Boone, the world’s most successful female obstacle course racer: “Tonight Tonight” by the Smashing Pumpkins and “Keep Your Eyes Open” by NEEDTOBREATHE
Chris Young, mathematician and experimental chef: Paul Oakenfold’s “Live at the Rojan in Shanghai,” Pete Tong’s Essential Mix
Jason Silva, TV and YouTube philosopher: “Time” from the Inception soundtrack by Hans Zimmer
Chris Sacca: “Harlem Shake” by Baauer and “Lift Off” by Jay Z and Kanye West, featuring Beyoncé. “I can bang through an amazing amount of email with the Harlem Shake going on in the background.”
Tools of Titans Page 51
