So, I’m the same age as Noel and Liam. And they’ll make $50 million each by the end of the tour. Goddammit, I don’t have enough saved. Nowhere near enough saved.
I like this song, but can you imagine if you really did live forever? They’d be fine. I wouldn’t. I’d have to figure something out. I’d have to reel in my spending.
The thing about their dream is it’s not vague. It’s well defined. They spent their twenties saying, “Let’s be the biggest band in the world.” They weren’t saying, “Maybe I could be a writer? Some kind of comedy writer? What if I live on a boat with just my guitar and I could write? No, that’s weird. But the rent would be cheap, I bet. I could work less and write more, maybe?”
So the verses and the chorus are all G major, then you do that little move to B minor, then the thing where you go to G, A, D, and it just keeps circling. Like, how many times have either Jeff or I played that absentmindedly on a guitar, back in our twenties, while talking late at night? We weren’t focused! Lazy? Lazy!
I love this line, “The sink is full of fishes, she’s got dirty dishes on the brain…” So great. How did the one brother not get sidetracked into advertising and marketing and working as a copywriter or creative director?
Because it could go either way, you could write that line and be like, “Dude, I have the best line for that new song we’re trying to figure out!” Or it could’ve been like, “Dude, we open on a kitchen sink full of dirty dishes. Everything’s normal, until you realize the sink is full of fish that are just peacefully swimming around the dishes in there. We cut to this beautiful woman, she’s in some amazing location, the south of France, or the Amalfi Coast… but there’s just one problem: She’s got dirty dishes on the brain. We see her kind of fretting, distracted by her thoughts. She can’t enjoy the moment! Voiceover comes in: ‘Dirty dishes on the brain? Next time, use Dawn dishwashing detergent. And get on with your life.’”
So after this concert, they just get into the cars that are waiting for them right behind the stage, right? But my question is, are they then stuck on the 134 back to the hotel, in the same traffic as everyone else?
I bet the $50 million is just their cut of the gate. I bet that’s not including merch. So, health insurance is like seven hundred dollars a month, wait, let me do this on my phone so I get it right.
Dude, you know what I just realized? The next show is in Mexico City. I bet they just go over to that little airport in Pasadena and fly tonight. Probably have a jet there waiting. Google Maps says it’s just a fifteen-minute drive from the stadium.
Okay, so I’m figuring this out, and the amount one of them makes on this tour would cover 71,428 months of my health-insurance premium. So even if you didn’t live forever, even if you just lived for 5,952 more years, your health insurance is paid, no problem, basically put it on autopay. And that’s not even touching the merch money or any money from additional dates they add.
“I live my life in the city, there ain’t no easy way out” is such an awesome lyric. Except now they’re at the level where there’s always an easy way out of the city.
I wonder if the tour manager lets them know every way they’ll be leaving each show. Like, “Okay, so next week, the I-5 traffic in Seattle won’t be a problem because we’re not going back to Boeing field after we land on the day of the show. We’ll move the plane to Portland while you’re playing and have a helicopter take you to the Portland hotel from the Seattle stadium. We’ll already have your bags in your rooms.”
You’d have to scroll ahead 5,952 more years in your Google Calendar and put a reminder that says, “Cancel autopay for health insurance?”
For some reason, I always used to think about starting some kind of business where I have a boat, like I take people out on the ocean in a boat, and that’s how the boat pays for itself. Were my dreams never big enough maybe?
I need to get started on another book. It’s been so long. There’s always that thing, though: Would anyone even give a shit at this point?
Hey, that’s not the attitude! Listen to the song, man: Wake up the dawn and ask her why a dreamer dreams she never dies…
Right?
Maybe?
