Thank you Mr. Chairman and friends. The topic of my presentation is energy access and climate change, a developing country perspective. I'm going to take the case study of India and show how the benefits from energy access can lead to climate change benefits. There is a clashing position on climate change as all of you know. I categorize them as supporters and skeptics. What do the supporters say? There are serious consequences if you don't address the climate change issue, the rising sea levels, extreme weather and impaired health. And it affects the natural system, forests, ecosystem and biodiversity and natural weather related disasters quadruple in every last 40 years and economic cost of disasters is significant and double in every decade. And what is the position of skeptics? They say it's not a scientific inquiry. If I look at the IPCC reports carefully, it's filled with ifs, maybes and likelys. And there is no relation with human activities, particularly Dr. Glassman's study in 2009. His thesis is based on the data that has been used by the IPCC itself and he has concluded it's not the human related activities that contributes to climate change and it is the sun's moments. So and in the morning also it has been mentioned climate models cannot be verified for its complexity and predictions are exaggerated. And GH's theory is not the only explanation of warming trend and it's high cost. Whatever you are going to invest today and if you say you are going to get the benefits 80 years or 100 years and if you take the discount rates and estimate the present value it's not that significant. That's what the skeptics say. And timing of bringing climate change into focus and many a question. It's because in 1980 China has started development path and in 1990s India started and the climate change issue came into focus only in 1980s. And there is a Himalayan blend. You might have read the former IPCC chairman he had categorically mentioned that by 2030 Himalayan glaciers will be disappeared and and later when there was an uproar that statement has been taken back. So what the skeptics say is there should not be any action on climate change. What the support us it's a overaction. I belong to the category of climate realists and see that we should follow sustainable development approach that is a bottom-up approach instead of focusing on climate change which results in poverty reduction and energy access. You take the bottom-up approach the poverty taken to consideration energy access which automatically leads to climate change benefits. Take the case of India. In 2000 by 2010 nearly 450 million people have no access to electricity and additional 500 million have access to unreliable electricity and 700 million people still use traditional fields. There are two reasons. It is non-accessibility and affordability. What is the result? It's a loss of natural resources, significant loss particularly fuel would and it prohibits economic opportunities as well as growth and social inequity between gender, groups and regions and declared environment local, national and global. Have a look at the facts and figures about India from 1950 to 2010. In 1950 70% of the total energy is used by the household sector and by 2010 it is 38% whereas the services some 7 to 19% and transport 5 to 11%. There is a significant change in the sectoral consumption from households to transport and services and the total energy from 85 million tons of oil equivalent has reached 720 million tons of oil equivalent. This is the primary energy. What is the look at the household energy? In 1950 the total 57 million households, 97 million households, 97% were using biofuels which has been reduced to 67% and whereas LPG, there is no use of LPG in 50, 27% are using LPG and there are others and kerosene 1.2 to 2.7. Look at the energy accessibility indicators for cooking. If we categorize urban areas into megacities, metros, other cities and small towns, only 67% of the households in all the urban areas are cooking with gas fuels. It can be LPG or biogas and in rural areas accessibility is only 11%. That means literally 140 million households in rural areas still need gaseous fuel for cooking and in urban areas 29 million households. Then what about the lighting? If you look at the lighting statistics, 92% of the household villages they are electrified but only 55% of the households in those villages they have electricity connection. Energy affordability indicators look at the rural and urban, poor and non-poor. Solid fuels, basically fuel wood, charcoal and agricultural waste, 66% of the non-poor, they use solid fuels in rural areas and in urban areas 32%. If you look at the total, 75% in rural areas and 47% in urban areas still depend on solid fuels for cooking. So what are the losses? I calculated losses, productive time for adults, particularly girls and women, they walk long hours to obtain fuel wood, per annum 150 billion hours are being spent for obtaining fuel wood, cut it and cooking and for children it is 78 billion hours and there is also resource utilization and its opportunity cost because 70% of our total imports oil is imported and 3.7 billion US dollars in terms of kerosene and 3 million hectares of forest and plantations are being cut to supply fuel wood to this household and it also has an impact on health 1.2 billion, zero to billion hours is being lost due to health problems and 78 billion hours particularly for children. Pollution nearly 700 million tons of casserole emissions. So what is the outcome? If you look at 60 years, we have transformed from unlimited renewables to limited non-renewables. It's a locally available resources to transport it and imported energy carriers from basic service focus that's a lighting community transportation to luxury service. It's a personal transport and air conditioning. The focus initially was in the rural households and decentralized and now it's urban service, it's a centralized. It is a loss, loss, loss scenario, loss to the individual, loss to the government and loss to the society. What can be done? We have to change the system. If we really think the existing system is not beneficial to society and if we really want to change the system, what should we do? The first thing what we have to do is understand the system. What is meant by understanding the system is understanding the actors in the system. Who are these actors? I categorized actors into four levels. There is a meta level, there is a macro level, there is a meso level and at the micro level. Each actor has an influence on the system. The influence can be large or small. It can be a positive influence or a negative influence. They certainly affect the system how it works. At the meta level, you have IPCC, multilateral institutions and the powerful nuclear lobby. And at the macro level, you have governments, national environmental agencies and research and development organizations. And at meso levels, you have utilities, private sectors. And at the micro level, you have energy and users, NGOs and sustainability concern groups. We have developed a business model, entrepreneurship based and how to provide basic energy services. This present people are talking about social entrepreneurship. Actually, this actor analysis for the past 10 years I'm working in this particular aspect. Wherever I go in villages, urban regions, interact with the various stakeholders, particularly when I was looking at the energy efficiency. How to do it? The first thing is household.  Even they are ignorant, even they know about the vast options. They are unable to pay for this one. Even if they are able to pay, they are indifferent what can be done. You have to convert them from laggard to innovators. Capacity building for the non-governmental organizations. And mailing newspaper articles. And entrepreneurs. This is a new link in the actor chain. You have to introduce entrepreneurs into the system. I don't think academicians can tell them how to do it. They need mentors. And there are business organizations, the dream merchants, energy service companies, equipment manufacturers and private utilities. They should be bring into the system to supply modern energy services. And we have to convince them it can be profitable. And the financial institutions, which is an oxygen pipe, it is a local new business model. And global local benefits will reach the global benefits. And finally, the government. At present, it is a controller and it should be converted from controller to facilitator. I have estimated the cost and benefits both for cooking, water heating and lighting. For cooking, it is 10,040 billion. And lighting, 823. And this is for each household. How much does it benefit? How much are the time saved per household? Per household. Productivity business. They can start a new business. Existing business. If you have modern energy service and the new business. Lighting, TV, education, improved health, energy savings and carbon saving every year, 43 million tons. So if you do it, then the outcome is from non renewables to renewables from transported and imported energy carriers to locally available energy resources and subsidy driven to business oriented. You need not have to bring subsidy here and growth focused to low carbon development oriented. It's a win, win, win scenario. A win for the individual because he obtained the modern energy services and significant benefits are there. There's a win for the government. There's a significant reduction in the subsidies, avoided capacity cost and avoided peak load benefits and for society and there is a resource savings as well as emissions. So this is the implementation at the different actors. You have government, you have energy service companies, you have entrepreneurs, you have financial resources under the supply side. Whatever is the fossil fuel subsidy at present, the government guy is giving nearly 15,000 crore per annum. It can be diverted for constructing the infrastructure for biogas and the banks, market and financial business houses and the local bank and finally the government. So this is aligning the actors. At one level, you have an energy security actors and at the another level, you have climate security actors. What one has to do is you have to design policies to map the energy security and climate security together. So that developing concern to climate change. You start with provision of modern energy services. There is an increase in quality of service, improved health, education level, there is an employment benefits, there is an overall development. Finally, it leads to climate change benefit. You start with provision of modern energy carriers and it leads to climate change benefits. So it's not just about economics, it is about the values. It's not about climate, it's about the actors behavior. It's a systems failure, not the pupils failure. It's neither purely a technological nor purely an economic issue. Energy is a social issue. Thank you.


As you might have noticed, I am a solution architect. And I'm going to talk to you about a journey. And it's a journey about solution, solution that I designed the last few years to improve our DevOps chain. But as you know, all solutions start from a problem. And this is where I introduce my colleague Simone. Hi, everyone. I am Simone, and I am a problem architect. So I like to raise problems. Well, making this journey with Matteo in the last few years has been quite an adventure, I would say. And yeah, we are here today because we would like to share this adventure with you. But let's start from the very beginning. So let's roll back in time. Let's go to just a few years ago. We were not DevOps butterflies. We were a really small team. Our workflow was really bare bones. So we had like an issue board. We mostly organized our work there. We split it in tasks. And then, unrelated, we had a subversion repository. We will check out the code from the repository. All the development and the testing was done locally on our own machines. We will just take care of regularly deploying the artifacts that we were producing to our QA environment, which consisted of multiple virtual machines. And that was it. And on the other side, completely separate from us, there was this operations team that would pull the packages that we published and manually take care of deploying and making releases to the production environment of our customer. And this workflow was really problematic for us because there were multiple teams involved and where there are multiple teams, there are communication issues, everything was manual, mistakes were bound to happen. And in fact, they happened. They happened a lot. There were a lot of integration mistakes, last minute bug fixes, and all of these impacted our workflow because we had subversion, okay, and we had these release cycles. What we did was, okay, we know that we will have trouble during the release. We have to organize ourselves. We split the team in two parts. One part will work on a next development branch on new features, because for the customer, new features can never really stop. The other part of the team will stay on the main development branch, which in subversion is called the trunk. And just keep committing these bug fixes. And at some point, hopefully, we will be able to merge the two. The problem is that this feedback loop lasted like several months at some point. And when we finally had to merge, we had a lot of problems. Merges in subversion are never easy by themselves, but in those months, the code base changed so much that sometimes it was really hard to make these merges. It will take us multiple days, and we introduced even more regression, making the merges. Sometimes we even lost features by mistake. So we knew that this could not really continue, and we would not be able to succeed and scale with this approach. And that's where I knocked on Martel's door. I didn't really knock because, you know, it was in the desk next to me, so I didn't have to knock. But I told him, okay, we need to find something better. We need to evolve. What can we do about this? Well, we know that we have to evolve, but how? What were our necessities? We have a source control tool that does not work very well, and we have a bad workflow. For this reason, we choose to migrate to Git and adopt the branching strategies to reduce the mistakes and improve the release and feedback loop. I have a great different solution, and in the end, for several reasons I choose GitLab because, first of all, it's free, and we can install on our server, continuous integration and continuous delivery are built in to GitLab, and it provides collaborative tools for collaborative coding. And now that we have GitLab in our tool chain, we start to evolve the status quo. Phase one, we want to choose our branching strategies, and we choose GitFlow because it's the most famous, and it has a common line that could help the developer transition to the new tool. And now that we had the new tools to organize our daily job, and we could discuss the issue on the project board, it is a reference to the issue in commit message, we could not notify via Slack when someone pushes comments or something important happened on Git repository. We also automated the published flow and with GitHub Runner and CI Script, the tar version with the project code base, and we stole on the QI server a Chrome script to pull the new version of Docker image from the Docker registry. And with this I think I solve all your problems, Simone, right? Well, I have to admit it's a nice improvement on our initial situation, very well done, but we almost immediately face some limitations. In fact, okay, you have a full Chrome job, and it regularly updates our environment, but it's still very far to a real, true continuous delivery. So it's not always aligned with our developments. And also having these virtual machines costs us a lot of time to maintain them, to duplicate environments, to create new ones. All the times we spend there, it's time that we cannot spend improving our process, our methodology. So yeah, we have feature branches, we are more organized than before, but we are not making any code reviews, we are not making any... I got it, I got it. We have to evolve again. And I think we can solve most of the technical limitation by evolving our infrastructure. We can install Kubernetes cluster managed by Rancher and move all our tools application on this cluster. And with this infrastructure solution, we can implement a full continuous delivery. And now that we have this I Kubernetes cluster, we also can install Sonocube for software quality and Minos to speed up as a cache layer to speed up our pipeline. And the immediate advantage of this solution are that we can create a new environment very quickly and with low effort. And during the second phase, we also version our environment setup in a Git repository. And now that we have resolved all our previous problem, we can focus on merge request and code review. I think that's all. Well, okay, let's say that we improved also the methodology. We automate more, we are able to work better, we are able to iterate faster, we get more customers and that is really nice. But we start facing new problems now that we have new customers. We start facing some challenges with scaling and growing as a company because now there are some customers that start using our software and maybe they don't always use the same version of the software. So some customer for some reason stays behind. And this is where the branching strategy which was felt falls apart because you know, Gitflow is really nice, it's really structured, but it does not cover all use cases. Specifically in this case, it does not envision a way to keep supporting multiple versions of the same software. So we have our software that is at the 2.0 version, a customer is stayed on the 1.0 version, asks us for a bug fix because we are supporting that version. We can open a not fix branch and make the bug fix, but then it's unclear how to merge the bug fix to the main development branch. Maybe because the code does not exist anymore in the latest version. And even if we can merge it, it's unclear how to increase the version number. So there is something wrong there. We need to keep the not fix branch open forever, but that's definitely not ideal. And also wherever we are making a release, there are a lot of manual steps that we have to make. We have to open branches, make manual changes to change all files, version numbers, remember to merge the branches, push the text which we regularly forget and we mess up the releases. So we need to find a way to make the release process less involved and scale for different versions. How do we do that? Yeah, you are telling me that the branching strategies that we chose does not fit very well with our needs. But it's not a real problem. We can change the branching strategy and we adopt the GitHub flow that has two variants. The first one is called environment branches and in this variant we have the master branch and one branch for each environment. And for example, when we merge from master to staging branch, the CI pipelines update the QI environment. The advantages of this approach are that we release our software with a single command and we do not take our release commits because the branches reflects the history and the status of the environment. Okay, that's a lazy movement but what about the releases? Yeah, for a project that need to support multiple releases we can adopt the release branches with GitHub flow and in this strategy we have one branch for each supported version. When we fix a bug, we open a branch from master, fix the bug, merge the fix on master and then cherry pick the commit from master to the release branch. And in the both variants, the feature branches still exist. And with this branching strategy I'll solve all our problems. Well, maybe you solved my problems but you didn't solve the problems of the other 20 other guys. Who? Well, Matteo, while we were busy solving all these problems and finding these solutions, the company has grown. We are not three guys in a room anymore but there are a lot of people that works for our company and they are split across multiple teams and they're facing problems too because we are consultants, we work with a lot of text-texts and we are split across a lot of projects, okay? We care about having a CI pipeline for all of them but how do we maintain these pipelines? So yes, we succeeded in establishing a common set of stages and jobs that all our pipelines have to define. So we know that all our software has to, all our software pipelines have to install the dependencies, link the code, run the unit tests, the end-to-end tests, some quality checks, then build, publish, deploy, usual stuff. In practice then the pipelines for different text-texts are implemented in different ways. And this is an issue because it's a lot of burden on the developers and also even when two projects even use the same text-texts there are inconsistencies across the two pipelines sometimes because someone maybe implements a job in a different way from another. And when I find a bug on a CI pipeline I have to go back on all the others and fix the bug. So all the time that we were spending earlier on manually deploying and publishing our packages I now spend maintaining these pipelines. So I think we need to solve that and go back to actually developing the features. Yeah, you're right but this is a common problem for the developer. We have duplicate code in different repository and to solve this problem we can move all this CI script in a single centralized repository. And with all script in this repo we can define a reusable and templates organized by technology and stages. And in this way we can import the right template in our CI script and customize them if needed. The project CI script are now simple and easy to maintain since most of the time we upgrade the base CI script and all projects exploit them for free. For example, all projects that are deploying Kubernetes could import and extend the template job that you can see on the left. And in the extended job on the right is enough to set a few variables to get a working deployed job without any knowledge of Kubernetes. And in some cases is enough to get, is in some cases important template is enough to get a working job. We try to keep this script as readable as possible. And to do that we define some high level function. So I, as you can see, I can go through the comments and easily understand what is happening. So in this case I, this job template, upgrade the project version, install the dependency, persistent environment URL, and finally deploy the project on Kubernetes cluster. But to do that we define mesh function that hide the complexity of the comment. This is not an idea, but we, I came up with this idea by reading the GitLab how to develop source code. Now that we have these CIScript, these CIScript are very useful for us. And another example is when in the last year we developed a reactantive application and reactantive application had three technology stack, the node stack and the two native stacks. And we could reuse all the node CIScript and implemented only the two native CIScripts for the native parts. But another problem is that all our GitLab runners are deployed on Kubernetes and it is impossible build an iOS application without a Mac operating system. To solve this issue again is enough to install a GitLab runner on a Mac server. And with that I think that our evolution is completed. Well, I admit that, okay, we solved all our problems very good, we improved a lot in the last few years, but I think that if there is something that we really learned is that we are never really done with this journey, okay? So the mindset that we acquired is that there is always some part of our workflow and now we make things that can be improved or made easier or just automated so that we can focus our effort on more important stuff. And in fact, this is what we are doing still today. So just for once, I'm the problem architect, but just for once I present a solution. So this is something that we did in the last few weeks. So automated releases, GitLab gives you the possibility to publish releases for your software so you get this nice changelog with the links to the artifacts and it's very cool. We wanted to automate making the releases when we publish to the environment branches for example. So what we did was just creating a changelog bot which pulls the relevant part of the changelog depending on the version we are releasing and invokes the GitLab API to create the new release. And this is all very cool because it's another part that we do not have to think about. So yeah, I think this is the really important thing. So just to wrap up some takeaways. What we learned. We learned that how the company grows impacts not only how we are organized and our methodology, but also which technological solutions work well or don't work well for us. The important thing is that whenever we find that something is not working anymore, we are not afraid to try alternatives, find something better as for the branching strategy. What was really nice for us looking back is that the GitLab supported us from the very first phase of our evolution and worked very well for every problem we threw at it so there was nothing we were not able to do with GitLab and we are thankful for this. And also we drew a lot of inspiration both from the GitLab blog and the GitLab source code itself so yeah, I'd say that we made the right choice. So yeah, just to finish a few words about ourselves. We already presented ourselves, I'm Simone, here's Matteo, maybe we may be the solution and problem architect at WLD, which is the company we work for. It's located in Lugano in the south of Switzerland. It's a beautiful city by the way. You know, there are not only architects in a company, there are also a lot of developers that put a lot of effort in actually adopting all the solutions that we think about. So we just wanted to have this slide to share some moments that we have with them which we think are really nice and funny and thank also them. It's also thanks to them if we are here today. If you want to know more about us just find us later in the crowd. There is also the CEO somewhere there so you can ask whatever you want. So yeah, now we're really done. So long and thank you so much for the fish. So I want to thank both Simone and Matteo, like this is the journey that we're all on. The way you guys represented this is perfect. I'd encourage you if you guys are not doing this in your company, think of it as a problem solution, right? Challenge one another, go through that evolution. This is a culture question. So, you know, they've done an amazing job implementing and using a tool that happens to be GitLab. That process is the one that we want you to walk away with. That culture is a part that we want to be a part of if at all possible. We're honored that we were able to help you guys through this. Well, it's just honored you guys here to share that. So with that, we have a couple of minutes. We want to open up if anyone has any questions. I've got the mic, but if you can learn from anyone, I think they've been on a journey that would be well worth it if you have questions. If you have, ah, perfect. Hi. So obviously me being here, I totally am with you. Like all of this sort of stuff, changing the mindset and making sure that you're constantly asking questions. Totally with you. It's very hard to convince people who aren't in that mindset to get in that mindset though.  You made the question. No, well, I think that, I will answer. I think that on one side, we are very lucky, okay, because all our company employees are very young, okay, and enthusiast about software. So whenever a new solution is proposed that promises to improve their workflow, improve, you know, the results than they can obtain from their effort, they are always quite on board with it. So I think that's the key thing. And then there is the other side, okay, so which is the customer, because of course we are consultants, so sometimes we always have to, we also have to convince customers, that's harder because maybe they are less prone to, you know, change their tools or change the way they organize their workflow and you know, sometimes it has taken also several years to convince them to make the switch, but if you show that there are objective improvements, then usually people get convinced then and try new things, that's I think the key. It's just showing them not asking you to trust you, not asking, yes, not asking them to trust you because you know, that's a leap of faith, but if you just, if you can show the numbers, then it becomes obvious what to do. So in a way, it's like we're gonna go ahead without you anyway, as soon as you realize it's the best way forward, you're gonna be on board. Yes, we are lucky because we have a lot of customers, so some jump on board earlier, some later, but you can show across one another, okay, look what we did for these other customers, it worked very well, this is the tools we are using, this is what we are achieving, this is the speed at which we are releasing, it's working, so maybe try this as well and yeah. So, thanks. You're welcome. Firstly, thank you, I thought that was very well presented, especially as English isn't your native language. You're welcome. What has been the biggest blocker through this whole process? What's been the biggest challenge? Well, probably putting up with all the requirements required work to switch the tooling, so the work we did on the infrastructure part, the Kubernetes part was really demanding, you know, we did it voluntarily of course, but sometimes we even spent, you know, holidays tinkering around and ducking and trying stuff on with Kubernetes and deployments and so that was the really demanding part. Once it's set up then it's more graceful for developers to adopt the tools and just use them as tools, but setting that all up is very demanding if you do not go to a cloud provider, we don't yet, we have our own machines on premise, so you have to manage the whole stack and for a small company it's quite an investment, so that I would say was the most important. And that's why we work with a ton of different people because that is the biggest, the Kubernetes piece, it's amazing, but it is a non-trivial adoption piece to a cloud native journey. There's other ways to do it, the fact that these guys did that, so their journey, most people skip over that and like I'll go to a managed service. I will say bravo in learning that because you're gonna know how that operates and knowing the guts of how that works, really, really critical. So if you're looking to do it, be willing, if you're a leader, be willing to set aside that time for your team to learn it, it's certainly well worth it and the trade-offs, totally wonderful on this journey but that may be the biggest piece and that's pretty consistent when we talk to customers. It's not the GitLab and the CI CD piece, it's definitely how do you run your operations the Kubernetes piece. Other questions? Thank you, so maybe just a quick question on this part on Kubernetes, so you almost started from scratch in knowledge on Kubernetes, maybe, years ago. I imagine my, I have a team, I'm sharing a team, some are, they have knowledge on Kubernetes, some don't, how do you, how do you think that these people with no knowledge of Kubernetes should start or what's the hint for really getting to it quite quickly or efficiently? Well, disclaimer, not everybody, not all the developers that work with us, no Kubernetes, okay. For us, the important thing is that a lot of them don't have to, okay, so it's not necessary that they understand everything that is going on on Kubernetes, so we do a lot of knowledge sharing to make sure that they understand the principles behind the cloud native, what is Kubernetes, how it works on an high level of abstraction, but then there are some responsible people that actually get events dirty and work on the deployment scripts and they find the services, the invasions and so on, so it's like a pyramid of knowledge, but I think it's fine, then people can decide where they want to stay, if you want to stay at the top and just know everything and put the ends in the infrastructure code or they just want to be users of the infrastructure and just reuse the templates, we define the setup a few variables and that's it, that's why it's working for us, it's scaling because we don't have to teach everybody all the concepts behind Kubernetes which are quite a lot and takes a lot of time to get started and productive.


This is the VOA Special English Technology Report. More than 350 students from 75 nations were in Sydney, Australia last month for the Imagine Cup finals. This is the 10th year Microsoft Corporation has organized the competition. Each year, the company invites students to use their love of technology to solve some of the world's most difficult problems. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard welcomed the competitors to Sydney and congratulated them. We look forward to seeing the fruits of your creative work this week in years to come. He said, The world does have tough problems. We are fortunate to have people like you who have a passion to solve them. Enjoy the Imagine Cup. Microsoft's Daniel Lewin also spoke at the opening ceremony. He said, programs like the Imagine Cup and the Dream Spark program that you've all participated in are the foundation upon which young entrepreneurs, students like yourselves with big dreams can make a difference in the world. This year, more than 250,000 students registered for the Imagine Cup. 106 teams were invited to the finals. Pip Marlowe is with Microsoft Australia. She was especially pleased at the number of women competing. On July 10th, Microsoft announced the winning teams at its World Festival and awards ceremony. A team from the Ukraine won the Imagine Cup's top honor. The team's EnableTalk software program helps people who are totally or partially unable to hear. It changes sign language hand movements into speech. This is done using special gloves and a smartphone application or app. The gloves capture the sign language hand movements and send them to a smartphone app. The app compares those images to stored hand language signs and plays the words represented by the signs. The QuadSquad team will receive $25,000 to develop its idea. A team from Drexel University in the United States won first place in the game design for phone competition. The Drexel Dragons designed a game to help students better understand mathematics. And Team Tang Tai from Thailand was honored for a game that helps teach young people about the problem of deforestation. And that's the VOA Special English Technology Report. Transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our reports are at voaspecialenglish.com. I'm Mario Ritter.


All right, one of my favorite drum kits of all time you had, which was on the back and black tour, it's in the videos. It's a sonar kit, I want to say a natural finish. And I was always curious if you sold that kit or if you still have it. I've still got it. I've still got that one. You still got it? Yeah. All right, welcome to the second flashback episode today. Every Thursday, doing a little flashback episode, bringing an old school let there be talk to you from years ago that you may have missed because you're a new listener or watcher, which by the way, subscribe to the YouTube channel and hit like so you don't miss any of this amazing content. Right now, we're going to go back to November 3, 2020. When I had the honor of sitting down with one of the greatest drummers of all time, and I would say somebody that has probably some of the fiercest mystique on the planet, Mr. Phil Rudd. Phil Rudd, drummer of ACDC on and off, I would say now. He's not in the band in the current touring formation. And a lot of people had their ideas on why that was. Oh, he had legal problems, couldn't get into the United States. And I knew that wasn't it. I've said it before, if you have legal problems, you don't even know how hard it is to get into Canada. Even if you got like a drunk driving, you can't get into Canada. And he went in and made a power trip back in 2020. So nobody knows and nobody ever will until somebody in the camp says what's going on, which they will not. ACDC is a tight-lipped organization. And that's what made it even more of an honor to sit down with all of the members back in 2020, including Phil Rudd. Phil Rudd is one of the most amazing drummers because he is definitely the king of feel. Nicknamed No Phil Phil, which is amazing. What people don't understand is people like Phil Rudd, Ringo Starr, guys like that that are king of the feel and groove, and also able to just be in a band and just kind of almost be invisible and let the music do the talking. Phil is unbelievable, man. And it's total proof. Whenever you see a different drummer in ACDC, it's not even close. And I do the Bond Scott Bash once a year and every drummer sits back there and they're all some of the best drummers on the planet. And they even say, man, Phil is something else, you know? I'm talking about guys like Dave Lombardo, Josh Freeze and Steve Gorman, killer drummers. Everybody always is shouting out high praise for Phil Rudd. It's a great episode. It was back in 2020. He had not really done many interviews that I know of. Really, I don't think maybe five. I never, ever hear Phil Rudd talk. Man, it was a great day. He takes a couple of shots here and there. People, it's pretty amazing. He holds no punches. And towards the end, my good friend Bill Burr pops on and they talk helicopters and boarded his face light up when he could talk about helicopters. That was a topic you could tell that was deep, deep and dear to his heart. So anyway, thank you guys for checking out the flashback episodes. Enjoy this one. And don't forget about the tour dates coming up, March 8, 9, I will be in Fort Collins, Colorado, headlining four shows at the Comedy Fort, one of my favorite clubs. And then the following weekend, I will be in Minneapolis at Acme, a club I've been trying to do for 10 years and I cannot wait to do. So there you go, get your tickets at deandelray.com. Hope you enjoy this flashback episode. I love you guys, keep the candles lit. Here he is, Phil Rudd. Well, well, well, what do we have here? It is a special Election Day podcast. And I'm gonna tell you right now that I vote for my guest today, Phil Rudd of AC DC. I vote for him as the greatest drummer of all time. And I mean that, when you think about what this man has done, his groove, his feel, his influence on zillions of drummers out there. Yeah, you have all kinds of drummer wars, Neil Peart, Bonzo, all these guys. All these guys, I say. Those are the two guys that people always bring up in battle. And I always like to drop the Phil Rudd card. And then people look at you for a minute and then they go, you know what? You could be right. It's unreal. It's unreal the last few weeks here on Let There Be Talk. It has been a, it has absolutely been a dream come true. It's, I still am speechless that when I try to talk about it, I just kind of say, well, I guess I got lucky. I wanna thank Jay and Kim over at Columbia Records for fully believing in this podcast and bringing these guests to the show. They know how much it meant to me and I will never be able to repay them. And I cannot thank the band ACDC enough for doing this. These guys are deep in their career. They don't need to be doing a podcast. They could just drop the record. The planet goes crazy and be done with it. But like I've said before, these guys are solid, solid humans. They are not the big rock star. They are the rock stars, but they don't play that game. And that is why I think one of the number one reasons why the people love this band so much. And to sit down and talk to Phil Rudd is just, it's just insane to me. This guy for all of these years, I hear it over and over. I just heard Lars Ulrich a couple of weeks ago say that Phil Rudd was the greatest drummer of all time. And I hear every drummer that I ever hang out with. Steve Gorman from the Black Crows, Brad Wilk, Dave Lombardo, all these guys that I've had on the show and that have played at the Tribute to Bond Scott with me, Ronnie Crawford, drummer after drummer after drummer after drummer has said Phil Rudd is the man. And I want to thank Phil for doing the show. It was beyond an honor to have you on, buddy. And I want to thank all of you once again for tuning in, the ACDC family out there, all of you, the chat boards on my Instagram, on my Twitter, everywhere, giving me some big love. It's been a very, very cool ride and it's sad that it's winding down. Who knows? I'd love to get Stevie Young on, but I'm not gonna get greedy. To be able to talk to each member from that back in black era is unreal, man. It is unreal and I hope you guys enjoy this one. And by the way, I thought of a very cool thing to do and I met Bill Burr nine years ago. We bonded over ACDC and music. He has been a mentor to me in my comedy and he has done numerous cool things for me and I'm always trying to find something cool to do for him. So I wanted to invite him on for the last 15 minutes or so because Bill loves Phil Rudd as much as I do and I really wanted to have him on. So hang in there. The last 15 is really cool hearing Bill ask Phil Rudd helicopter questions and drum nerd stuff. So it was great to have you on, Bill. I love you, you know that. And right on. Before we do get into it, I'm sure there's a lot of drummers listening today and you probably got some aches and pains over the years of playing drums. You got some creaks in your joints. You're gonna need some CBD. CBDlion.com is the place to go. The cleanest CBD in the world. These guys are third party tested.  This ain't that stuff just sitting on a counter at a flea market. This is real deal CBD. I've been using it for a year now on my severely shattered neck and it has helped 100%. Also I do have a little trouble sleeping especially during the election time. CBDlion.com. They got the tinctures that help you sleep. They got the, they have the lotions. They have pet tinctures, which are great. If you got a cuckoo pet, use the code Dean. D-E-A-N get 20% off every time. Not one time all the time. Use the code over and over and over. It helps them, it helps you, it helps me. CBDlion.com. Use the code Dean. Also don't forget to subscribe to the new podcast. I have a second podcast called The Grail with Dean Delray and that is on iTunes, YouTube, all those spots, SoundCloud, Libsyn, all over the place. And that's going to be where you can find all my handmade podcasts featuring all kinds of cool creators and makers. Guitar builders, motorcycle builders, denim makers, boots, watches, cars, everything. Guitars, guitars, guitars, drums. I've had some drum people on. All right, enough babbling. I read the reviews.  Once again, here we are, ACDC, new records out. November 13th, power up. See the new video soon, Demonfire. Spread the word. Let's welcome to the show Phil Rudd. Oh, let me tell you, man. This is a, I got goosebumps right now. This is a dream come true to talk to you because I'm obviously a giant ACDC fan and I got to talk to Brian and Angus and Cliff, but I've always wanted to talk to you. I feel you are the special sauce, the secret weapon. You are the ACDC Groove, man. How are you buddy? I'm good, I'm good, thanks to you. Now, I have the first question I have for you and I've always wanted to know this. Who were your guys? Who were the drummers that you were rocking to when you started out? Well, Ringo, Charlie Watts, Cosy Powell, M. Pace, just those 60s guys, the British rock guys, and Ringo was sort of a special kind of a dude. Cosy Powell? Cosy Powell, he was great, man. He was great. Oh, he was great, he was great. He had a really great attitude, Cosy, really great. So what is it for you on the drums? Are you sitting around? You see the Beatles on Ed Sullivan? Is it that like everybody else on the planet back then? No, I heard Tim Soldier. I mean, that was probably the start of the whole thing for me. I think Steve Marrick, Steve Marriott and the boys, you know, they were pretty good. And that kind of was it. That's what really motivated me, you know. Just love the way that song starts. And so was it drums right away or did you want to be a singer or guitar or bass or anything? Or was it drums? It was drums, yeah. I want to live into that, whatever that Steve Marriott thing was, you know, at the start of Tim Soldier, I just wanted to get in there, you know. So it was great. It's a great feel at the start of that track. It's a great track though on Tim Soldier. So what do you do? Do you ask your parents for a drum kit? Do you get a job? You go out and search one out. How does this happen? Well, I had to get a job. And they, my main sign up for me is I could buy a kit. So I was away from there. I went pretty good. It's funny to think about Ringo Starr because he's so underrated, right? It's just a feel, mate, you know. It's a feel when you see him playing with Carl Perkins and Eric Clapton on that Carl Perkins birthday show they did. Oh, he's just, mate, he's just hot. He's just on it, you know. I can't show that to people, you know, but you don't get it, you know. I said, well, you know, listen to this.  Because he really has got something happening, Ringo. He really has got something extra special going on, you know. And Charlie Watts, I mean, Charlie Watts, I always say there's three bands to me that without the drummers, they just are not what they are. Zeppelin with Bonzo, ACDC with Phil Rudd, and Charlie Watts with the Stones. I mean, those three, and they all three are totally different. That's just how you go up, you know. We're all, we all just come from a sort of organic place and where it grows on us, you know, sort of grows on us as we go along. How long until you get into a band, once you get your drums, how long until you get into Buster Brown? Is it pretty fast or are you taking lessons? How does this happen? I was, I was only a couple of years, I think, before I joined Buster Brown. I don't know, it lasted for a small, small couple of years. And then, you know, I'm telling the ACDC, you know. What? What a life, man. You're like, yeah, I think I'll pick up drums, play a couple of years, and then join this band and we'll become the biggest band in the world in about 15 years. That is wild. The guys knew where they were going. I wouldn't be really sure what I was doing, Angus and I, they knew where they were going, you know. Yeah, yeah. I was just kind of there, you know, and I just tried to keep up. Do you remember what brand that first kit was? The first kit was a Lovewood, a ring out kit that I bought, like, because I had a, I'm a premier kit that I painted a few times, you know. So I had Lovewood kit and then a slinger line kit that was my first sponsored kit. And then I got that with Sonar and because they make such fantastic hardware, you know, they've been obligated on anyone else since.  That's just all there is to it. I mean, when I think of Phil Rudd, I think of straight up Sonar, you know. Well, yeah, well, you can't, you know. When I think of doing a gig, I think of Sonar too, mate, you know. And that's nothing else. Everything else falls to bits under you. There's a lot of hard-hidden guys around, but I don't know. So I've seen it go through a lot of equipment. I especially think about, like, let to be rock. When you think about the pounding on that, like in the film, you know, when they're bringing in another Snare and everything, you're just thinking about the drilling of that. Oh, yeah, it is, it's great. I mean, it really is great. It's life at the Colface, you know. And, you know, it's great, really, really good. Yeah, it's just part of it. You know, it's part of the whole commitment. So, you know, I don't know, madness, really, I suppose. Let's talk a little bit about your audition in ACDC. I had read that you went in and auditioned, got the gig on the spot. Do you remember what songs you played at the audition and what it was like? Oh, the band, they just had the first album come out of High Voltage. And so they were playing a few tracks off that. I hadn't been really doing much for a few months. And when I heard about it, I just went round there and there was a kid around there and had a bit of a bash on that. And we'd send the hook up pretty well from the start. I was pretty energetic and kind of, you know, charging on there. So, I kind of liked most of the thing, you know. And, yeah, it's just got on that basis. It was really. Once you get in the band, do you go out and tour some of the High Voltage stuff or do you go in and do the TNT record right away? We were touring it. When I first joined the band, it was only a few weeks in and we did that big festival in Melbourne, Sunbury, it's a famous Steve Purple show in the mud. But, yeah, so, but we were recording the album just about every year for the first few years there. And so, as I came together, I would play and use new songs often. People have still done a few covers, you know, to make up the numbers. So, yeah, as a repertoire sort of got bigger, we sort of grew with it. When you first come in, I know you were, I'm not sure if this is correct, but from what I've read over the years that you were pretty tight with Bon, is this right? Ah, yeah, Bon was a friendly guy, you know. I took him home for Christmas once and that sort of thing, everyone loved him. It was great, you slept on the couch and I think it just happened in a minute. But, yeah, he was a good guy, he was pretty chilled, you know, because he was from Adelaide, so we'd be recording in Sydney and I'd drive home to Melbourne for Christmas. Just getting too complicated, it sounds like it, but I'd say, you know, we'd have a break over Christmas and sometimes Cliff would sometimes come down to Melbourne or Bon would come down and sort of hang out with me and the family and stuff. Bon was, he was a good guy to have around at Christmas time. He was a party guy, you know. He was just a good buzz, you know. He was just a good buzz, you know. That, I mean, that chemistry of by the time you guys kind of really get it going and get, you know, get over to London and do the Let It Be Rock record, it's a punch in the face, man.   Well, yeah, we were, we weren't really hot in the early years. We still work hard when we go out. We still work pretty hard. But at some, we were, and we were doing, and Melbourne, we were doing four gigs a day sometimes. Whoa, really?  Oh, yeah. We, of course, saw it pretty good because the management was paying us a wage while we, while we do as many gigs as they could find. Oh, wow. So you were kind of like salaried and then they would just say, here's your jobs? For a while, yeah, for a while. Yeah, yeah. We had support, no, we had support from the record company and, you know, and the guys, of course, Angus and Malcolm support the whole thing a lot, you know, if that's what I've seen. That's just amazing. So it was, it was pretty good, you know, we were pretty determined little bunch, you know, so, you know, yeah. What can you tell me about the differences between Mark Evans and Cliff? Because the bass and drums need to lock up. What do you think, what is the difference between these two type of players? Wow. I mean, yeah, I mean, Cliff's a great bass player and that's probably bad, ish. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. I love that one. There's the difference right there. Amazing. Wow. Was it a case of just kind of once you got out on the road and you were really playing that the caliber of the band rose above Mark Evans playing? Is that what you're saying? Well, I'm not saying that you said that, but that's fair, you know, that's fair. That's fair, I would say, you know, because we were all, you know, like, I wasn't sure if I was going to get the shot by that night to the end of the day.  Well, you know, we don't know what's going on, so there's a meeting tonight and so, you know.   That guy's incredible. Do you remember some of the other guys that came in and auditioned or was it just Cliff, pretty much? Oh, we went through quite a period there trying to find a base player.  We had George, did a few gigs with us, you know. We've got to keep him, you know, but he wasn't really interested in going back on the road again after his life in New Year's Beach, you know. So, one guy was going to speed you because it took so long to get it to sort of get the idea of anything. Sadly, he passed away recently, but it was, I'm not sure if it was any of that far, but we just had different people fill in. Of course, Mal played bass for a while because he was a wicked bass player as well, you know, Malcolm. Oh, really? Oh, yeah, he was. Yeah, that's quite something, you know, Malcolm.  And so, we eventually found a club, a club that we shot pretty wide to find him, I guess, and not a lot of big reserve of, you know, guys.  So, you can't be too clever.  Well, if you're going to slap him, you've got to go through different structures, I'd say. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. It is an interesting style that you have. It is unbelievable. And I know one thing about it for sure is whenever I would jam AC-DC with people, they right away would be like, wow, what is he even doing here? It seems easy, but it's completely hard. And I think it's because you were just born with that swing. That's what it is. It's the feel. Yeah, well, I'd like to think so, you know. So, that's the whole idea, you know, just to make it swing.  And we're all about that. Angus is especially about that, you know. It's all about the feel. And it's got a rock, you know. So have you heard all the album, do you know? Have you just heard Shot in the Dark? Or have you heard the other tracks off the album yet? Oh, no, I've heard the whole record, absolutely. Yeah, what do you think? I really like Real Eyes, Big Time. I loved Demon's Fire. Shot in the Dark, of course, it's great. And what's the one, Witches? I think it might be. I'm still waiting for a copy of it. I know. I love it, I love it, man. It's great record. It's so great to have you back in that seat, you know. There you are. You do the rock or bust record and then you get into some trouble and we don't have you. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about some of your time. I did read once that this letter that recently sold, Bon wrote a letter to his sister and it went up for auction recently. And there was a section in there where it said that Phil was having a rough time on the tour, a little depressed and stuff. And I was always wondering if that was maybe a little bit of overworked because Rock can just get to you. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we all had ups and downs and I've had a few down buzzes as I've gone along but I'm in a pretty good shape at the moment. Yeah, yeah. Hey, it looked fantastic. And like I said, it's great to have you back in. It was a bummer when you weren't there for the rock or bust tour. Let me ask you about the filming of the movie, Let It Be Rock. Do you remember that? Because I think it's one of the greatest concerts ever shot. It's kind of underrated. I think it's fantastic and it really captured this time of you guys just being a fierce, fierce machine. Yeah, no, I do remember making it. It was an interesting time. It was a good show, of course. Thanks for that. I love the Porsche 928 on it.  Well, not really. I'm not really a Porsche guy.  It was like, let me in. Was that your car or just borrowed? No, it was just borrowed from Porsche. Not real careful about where I could drive it and everything I meant because I took off in it with the town. Yeah, so it was pretty cold those days when we were doing that filming.  That's right.  By the time you get to highway to hell, it's completely a different ball game when this record drops out. What did you think about that whole mud land coming in just killing it on that? Were you just like, we're on another level now? Well, you can't doubt much commercial viability because you make stuff much more radio-friendly. The boys are more traditional with their brother George. And that's personal choice. Everyone's welcome to have that. Aren't they? Yeah, they are. Sorry, I'm a diapers. So Mutt was really good to work with. The guys enjoyed working with him. And Mutt respected Angus and Malcolm hugely what they were trying to do and what they wouldn't do. They wouldn't do this. They wouldn't play fruity notes and make nice sounds. And they get on the production bandwagon and just sort of let that whole thing get lost and all. They were trying to keep the band a good blues-based sort of a thing with some of those really records. Sounded pretty good. There was some great guitar sounds.  Night Prowler? I mean, this has got to be one of the greatest ACDC songs of all time. There's a lot of stuff out there I guess that people have never heard because it's a vast catalog that we've got. And everyone has highlights. What do you remember about the Eddie Cramer sessions? Brian said that, or not Quiff said that Eddie Cramer came up to you and said, hey, try some rolls and fills and stuff. And you said, ah, you got the wrong drummer there, buddy. He just wasn't the right guy. And I mean, that's the thing I can really put it. He just wasn't the right guy for ACDC. We were just trying to get rid of the guy. We've managed to. When the Brian auditions come down, I talked to Brian about it quite a bit. But do you remember some other guys that came in and audition? And was the decision a banned decision? Or was it just the brothers that decided on Brian? Oh, the brothers were making the decision. But they look around and they don't know what it's all about.  You know, he was just amazing. He still does, mate. He's amazing, that guy. He's just amazing. He really is. When you hear the vocals of, like, shoot the thrill or have a drink on me or hell's bells, those are insane vocals, man. Insane. They are. They're insane for anyone to do, for a well-traveled, old, bugger-like Brian. It's amazing what he does, you know. He really is. We had a great time in Amsterdam. We had a weather ball in three weeks of jamming it up and planting his stuff in a sculler. And then COVID hit. So we had to park it up. God, it's such a bummer, right? What do you think about, what do you think about, I personally love Flick of the Switch. And this is kind of the time where you leave the band after it's recorded. But what do you think about the choice of not using Lang again once they got to Flick of the Switch and that whole thing? I don't really know, I don't do anything to do with it so it depends who you use.  So sometimes you can't just sort of cut and paste it here like, but I think we came out pretty good in the end. And I ended up doing a couple more with George. And of course, there was the Rick Rubin period. I'm not going to do that too much about that. Yeah, when you come back, they do the Rick Rubin record and no one cared for that as him producing. Is that correct? No, no, no one. We didn't really get on with Rick Rubin, I think. Pretty sure we didn't. He was, I mean, he's Rick Rubin, right? But I mean, that's not much good to us. And I'm like, you know, sort of, it's not some good sounding records. I don't know about that. He just didn't have the boy's vision, you know? Brendan O'Brien, he's got that pretty well covered. Oh, my God. I mean, you know, like the Rocker Bust record and the new record, it's really like sonically.  He's killing it with ACDC. Right, yeah, I agree. I agree. My son, everyone's pretty happy. So, yeah, I've watched it so far. It's coming out in a couple of weeks, isn't it? It's coming out on the 13th. There's been. Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Or is it at Malcolm's funeral that Angus talks to you about coming back? No, he didn't.   I went to Europe and was doing a bit of playing and stuff and did an album.  So when I caught up with Angus at the funeral, we were sort of chatting away and, you know, and somehow he just sort of seemed to think that I was up for an album. He started writing one. It's going to be the next day when I shoot, you know. So we started writing straight away, so. And then we got to get the old call. We were going, take your bag and then see you in three weeks. I wrote it like that. Here we go.  That was the big news. This guy can't be in the street, guys, fills it. Mike, you got the wrong guy. I'm not even here. I love it. I love it. What about back in 91 when they're on the Razor's Edge tour, I had read that when they got to New Zealand, they kind of called you up to come on down and hang out. They was kind of sniffing around to get you back in back then. You don't come back until 93, but they were asking around 91, correct? I think so, you know. I think so. I wasn't really there. So I got the idea that they were, you know, you're thinking about that. This is nice. Oh, God, yeah.  That's really what it's about. You know, it's wild to think about anybody else back there.  Were you paying attention to the group while they were out with the other drummers? Were you listening to it, checking it out at all?   Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was, yeah. I mean, I've done really well, you know, with the Rays' age, you know, which was great for them and not so great for me, but that's all right. I mean, it was, it was, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I mean, I can't really recall my whole life up and down since, you know. I get it, I get it, man. Let's talk a little bit about your body playing drums all these years. How's that? You all good? Your ears, everything? Great, great. I haven't got a, I haven't got an ache or a pain or anything. You know, and my body's in great shape. When I hadn't been going to the gym as much as I was, but yeah, that's just been way easier, I suppose.  So I kind of get my match fitness up then.  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Playing drums like you play for two and a half hours. It's definitely a, it's a hard gig, man. It is a hard gig and high volume the whole time. I mean, that shit's on 110 dB. It's supposed to be easy though, Dave. It's not supposed to be easy, man. It's supposed to be hard and you, and that's the point. You know, we don't play stuff that's easy. It sounds easy to play, but it's not what you play. It's how you play it on the cell. All that is a clear shape of the books. Let's talk a little bit about recording of the new record. Did you go up there and you guys just started tracking live and burning through the stuff? How did that go down? We were putting stuff down from the first day and we had a day of getting some sales together, a drum day and sort of, I mean, went in and once we had the cans all set and all set to go, we just had to knock them, knock the ideas down. So, Angus had plenty of ideas and he was getting together with Brendan and coming up with a few shapes and sizes for the day ahead. Well, we go, it was pretty good fun. It was pretty good fun. I've never enjoyed playing like I do now. I love playing more now than I ever had. So, I'm not sure where that come from, but I feel I really enjoy getting out and playing with the guys. Cliff was telling me that you guys really like this studio. It has a great sound and it's like all glass front, so you're not like in a box. And he said it's really got a good vibe in there. You feel the same way? Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm shoved in a box, but that's like a little room around the kit and I shoved me through a hall in the back door and I'm living out for a cup of tea for a couple of hours, but it is a good studio to work in. And we've been working with our engineer, Mike Fraser, for so long now. He's always got our stuff up for us. Yeah, that guy's amazing, right? I mean, he obviously knows how to get amazing drum tones. He's amazing. He is amazing. What he isn't on this is a 22 bass drum? Yeah, 22 inch bass drum, pretty standard. So they sound great, those sonal bass drums, man. They got so much weight, it is great. They are fantastic. Where is Sonar made? Germany, but all the good stuff's made in Germany and the other stuff's made in China. That's hilarious. The new record, I tell you, the video is fantastic. Oh my God, shot in the dark video. How great does this video look? Pretty crisp, both. It was pretty sharp. Where'd you guys shoot it at? In Amsterdam. Wow. What's going on out there? You're in New Zealand, right? You live out there, you got a studio and stuff. You got a band that you were doing. No, just a son with a family. And I don't do anything, I don't do anything. I'm a hard wood, just get down to the family. And I still do a little bit of flying and I've got a couple of cars and stuff. I've gone down quite a bit over the last few years. What kind of cars you got? Ferrari and then McLaren. Which Ferrari, 488 or something? 599. 599. So it's a beast, mate, it's a beast. Which McLaren you got? I love that. What is it, the 702 or that one? Oh my God. It's a 540C, it's a Semenyac, it's so quick. I took this mate of mine, it was a cop for a ride, you know. And he should have arrested himself after that. You know, I'm sort of not as nuts as I used to be, but I've got five kids, I've got four grandchildren. It's a couple of them around here somewhere, obviously. They're the girls. Very well nailed down to that family now at this point. Any of them play music? Not really, they're all sort of doing the fitness and gyms and stuff like that, you know. But yeah, lifting weights and all that sort of stuff, you know. I do all the muscles. Let me ask you this, you got any vintage drum kits? Do you collect drums or is it just straight up sonar and that's it? Mate, I haven't got any room to collect anything.  I've got stuff stacked up, I don't know what to do with it. Drums and Christ, I've got so much drum stuff, so I don't know what to do with it all, mate. And I've got cases full of snare drums of all sorts and I'm not so much into vintage stuff, you know. I like the old Loewych snare drums, you know, John Monning used to use, you know, and Ringo, of course, you know. And it was always a classic sounding snare drum, but apart from that I've always used the old Grinch, old Grinch, Cromover Brass, and the guys like those for a certain clock, they get out of it, you know. And live, I've got my own sonar snare drum, so I've been shot at, you know, it's just great. I love those old black beauties, you know. Yeah, yeah, I've got a few of those. I've got them in there, so I've got them in there, and I've got one sonar made for me, it's made out of bell bronze. It weighs about 25 kgs, you know.   There's more novelty stuff, you know. I like stuff that works, you know. It's like cars with brakes, I like drums with punch, you know. Like, you know, this is for... Are there any songs in the ACDC catalog that you would love to see in the set list? I mean, I'm into like, Squelor or Soul Stripper, some really classic, deep tracks. Are there anything that you would like to see in there? I don't know, I love Squelor. I've got that on my turntable all the time, right on Squelor. I play them all the time, they're just such fantastic tracks, you know. Don Scott is just, he's just something else, isn't he?  I don't know, it's... But we always try to record stuff that we could play live. It wasn't much good putting out an album full of songs. If you went out and you didn't play half of them live, because you'd have to still play, you know, don't find more stuff to play live.  Whereas we're the kind of, you know, more real, try to be more real to make, you know. When you look back at the Bonn era, what's your favorite Bonn era record out of that run? Well, Powerade, I think, was the, you know, it was Chris first album as well. And it was just a great album, you know. But it's got a couple of things on there that other people really like, but we don't necessarily play them live, because, you know, we're kind of, we sort of, our aim is to kind of beat you up when we play live, you know what I mean? We're not trying to be nice to you, you know, we're trying to beat you up, so that's it.  There's Melz here to follow that, right. What was Malcolm like, man? I mean, he's such a, he's so great. He's the band leader and stuff like that. But what was he like? Just a pure rock and roller, huh? Well, he was really determined. He was really, really determined, you know. And, you know, that's probably the one thing that we're describing best, if that's me, determined.  He was a, he was a great guy. He knew exactly what he wanted, you know. And that was a great thing about Angus and Malcolm. They knew where they were going, you know. You have to have that. You've got to have a direction. They wouldn't be moved from that direction, they wouldn't do, you know. So, and here we are with our Amnianth album. Amnianth album by now, so. And it's still, still sounds great.  It's unbelievable, man.  There's no better rock and roll band ever in the entire history of just straight-ahead rock and roll. It's AC DC, the songs, the guys, the logo, the tours, the stages, everything about it is perfection. So I was the first to say that to Angus. Well, it's just, it's just, it's amazing, man. I mean, rock and roll hall of famer, you're in the rock and roll hall of fame. Yeah, I am. The first time I saw you guys was 1978. It was a Oakland Coliseum on the Powerage tour. And it was cheap trick, AC DC, Journey, the Worcester Colt and Ted Nugent. Do you remember these Day in the Green shows? I do, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we made a pretty, pretty good impact of some of those shows. I went, they were filling the place up by 10 o'clock in the morning so they could see us and it was pretty good. And they were great, those stadium shows. They really, you know, they propelled a lot of, they just got a lot of people to. I mean, that's got to be mind boggling to come over to America because you're over in 77 and you're doing clubs like the Whiskey of Gogo and the old Waldorf in San Francisco. And they're, they're really small clubs. You come back a year later and you're playing a summer run on these massive baseball parks. That had to be a rush for you. It was, it was, we were kind of, we were up for it, you know? So, you know, yeah, we were up for it. It was a little good, we were at that well. We're still up for it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I hope that you guys are able to tour somehow on this power-up record. This power-up record is, it's smoking, man. And I think if we could see these songs live, it'd just be even more insane, you know? Because like Demons Fire is a classic riff rock and AC DC song. I would love to see this song open up the show with it, you know? Well, I think we'd all like to get out there and let a couple go. I'd love to see how that plays out. Yeah, absolutely. All right, let me check this here. Oh, I was gonna ask you, are you a comedy fan? I am called a comedy fan, yep. Yeah, well, who do you like? Like, Rowan Atkinson, a lot of the black adder and Paulie Tows, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, call us out of that. Brooklyn Nine-Nine? Oh, yeah, I love that show. Wow, that's great. I know a friend of mine, Chelsea Peretti's on that show. I'm a comedian. Oh, right. Yeah. Oh, cool. Yeah. They're great, they're great. I love that show, I love that show. Oh, wow, that's awesome. Do you watch any live comedy on Netflix? Not too much, not too much. I sort of, I love the black adder. I'd rather watch the black adder again than I guess I shouldn't say that, but I'd rather watch something old that I know I like and something new that I'm not sure if I will or not. Is that good? Well, I brought my buddy on right here. He's one of my best friends and he is an incredible comedian. I work with him all the time here in the States. His name is Bill Burr and I wanted to have him on the last part of the show here because he is a helicopter pilot also. And yeah, and he flies us to the gigs, which is very wild and he wanted to talk some helicopters with you. So let's bring him on. How are you, Bill? You got your face there? I think so, whatever. I gotta click on the video. Oh, there we go. There we go. There we go. Now, Bill and I do a tribute to Bond Scott every year and it's a massive show we do in Los Angeles. Bill plays some drums, but he is the one of the number one comedians in America, a fantastic human and a helicopter pilot. So he said, I gotta talk to you, Phil, about some helicopters. So let's get this going. Right. Yeah, I was wondering when you learned how to fly and what you flew. Good, I do. How are you, Matt? How are you? I'm good. When I came to settle in New Zealand, I started to fly helicopters because they're all over the place here. They were chasing deer around doing live recovery at that time. And it was a pretty exciting time in the helicopter business because you see what those guys do to get live recovery? Yeah, I thought that you guys, don't you guys do, you like herd animals with helicopters down there, right? Well, they catch deer. Well, they chase deer through the bush and net them with a net gun. And the guy jumps out and ties it up and they hook it on and fly it out of the bush, all that sort of stuff. I took Brian and Cliff out. They both got a deer with my mate, the guy who taught me to fly. They were at a bull mate. Well, what's that, a e-fly bill? Yeah, I fly Robinsons. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, like most of my, I only have like about two and a 60 hours and I got them all pretty much in the R-22, but I just got into a deal with some other pilots. Have you seen that Cabri G2? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So it's basically the guys in France bought an R-22, took it apart, kept all the stuff that worked and then improved on everything else. So it's like a three-bladed main rotor system, fully articulated. So no low G pushover, none of that stuff. And you can actually auto rotate between 30 and 50 knots, which blows my mind because my entire time learning how to auto rotate has been in the 22, which is you just dropped like a stone until the last second. That's a little bit. I've done, I had an R-22 for a while and a couple of years I had, I learned to learn to know Robinsons, of course, like most people do. What are you flying these days? I haven't got them a share at the moment, but I have a D-model for a couple of years, he's 500 and recently I had a No-Tar MD-520, which was a No-Tar helicopter with no rotor. It's a lot of fun to fly, sort of. Yeah, no complaints on the neighbors with that. All right, can I ask you a couple of geek drum questions and then I'll get out of the way. All right, one of my favorite drum kits of all time you had which was on the back and black tour, it's in the videos, it's a Sonar kit. I want to say a natural finish. And I was always curious if you sold that kit or if you still have it. I've still got it, I've still got that one. You've still got it? Yeah. Now, do you keep all of your kits throughout the years? No, not really, I mean, I don't have drums, I don't have warehouses full of drums if I did that. I've been around for a long time, Bill, you know, I've got to... So I was, what was it about that kit that made you keep that one as opposed to other ones?  I mean, it was just gorgeous. I was just, there's never been anything like that signature series. That was a signature series Sonar kit with the eminy or the bingo inside and out, you know? And it was beautiful, it is beautiful. The crime still, the crime is still brand new. It must be 40 years old. They were gorgeous with those white heads on them too. I mean, it was just absolutely gorgeous. And then the last drum question I have was I learned so much through your playing. I really did. And like a lot of young kids coming up when they look at you or like Charlie Watts and guys that are just playing for the song, you think what you're doing is easy until you play about five years. And then all of a sudden, you just have that thunder clap moment of how difficult what you do is and how little margin of error there is when you play the way that you play. And I noticed with your style early on, it was like, say like on jailbreak, there was a lot of fills, it was a little busier.  And one of my favorite albums of your drumming is when you sort of, it seemed like you combined both for those about to rock album where it was the busiest I had heard your bass drum, but it still never got in the way of, and I was just wondering when you're just playing that two, four thing, how do you always seem to know when to add that extra eighth, not to play a quarter to do like and three or one and two just, and it just, it makes the hair, to this day, I've listened to some of these songs for 40 years, it makes the hair on my arm stand up. I was just curious as to what, is that just an instinctual thing as you're playing or do you work that out before you record it? It is pretty instinctual because I've got a really bad memory. It's like I can't remember. I can't remember. So I just wing it, basically I'm winging it, and I'm trying to sort of shoot a few shots where the guys are looking for them and stuff, but I'm basically, I'm just winging it. There's no, there's no science. Was the style that you have, was that something that you came up with, feeding off of what Malcolm and Angus were playing, or was it something that they had input on to say and just play it more straight ahead, or was it, how did you come up with that style? No, they always liked it sort of more straight ahead, because it's not playing something, they didn't want me pissing around doing something else, and I thought, that's wrong, of course. So you just carry on. My thing is a different thing to their thing. So some of the parts, you don't have to play the same parts, which is, yeah. I think your playing on landslide, on flick of the switch is so radical. And the tempo and the speed and the violence of that plane is just fantastic, man. I mean, that is the cliff, or the fill rod of Let There Be Rock landslide, these straight ahead fierce rockin' tunes. Thanks, Steve. I mean, we all listen to it in different ways. I mean, I would listen to that song for a cross of 90 years now. But I'm loving the spellbound, but I can't remember everything. Spellbound was like, what I loved about that one is just as far as like the tone of it, was ACVC's a lot of positive stuff. And that was the one thing that kind of dealt with like a depression a little bit and life going a little bit rough. And I always felt like that was like a hidden gem. Did you guys ever play that one live? I don't believe so, no, I don't think I don't. No? Do you ever get any input on the set list? Not really, you know? It's sort of like that's kind of like, you know? Let's just look at it and hope you can make it to the end. I'm not looking for trouble. Well, yeah. I think I'd say at this point, I think I know what you're doing. Dean, do I got time for one more geek drum? Yeah. I hope I'm not annoying you with this. I almost called you a Mr. Rudd. That's the level of respect that I have for what you've done over the years. On shoot to thrill, the breakdown that I've never been able to get to that song without hitting rewind at least three times back to when it goes down. I ruined so many cassette tapes doing that. And of course, I'd go out and buy them again.  You just riding on the floor, Tom, and just accenting on one rack, Tom, or you got two? I just got one, I don't even use one on the studio. I got off that sort of multi-rack thing quite a while ago, you know? It was, I couldn't reach out to that stuff anyway. Right? Yeah. Lee, did you ever see that kid when he has in the jailbreak video? There was this moment in time on one bass drum mount, they would, in a triangle formation, they'd put those taunts. In the line, kid. And they used to fucking, used to go out of the floor all the time. I was wondering why that those things didn't catch on. I knew they had to be something. Look, not 12. I just wanted to come on real quick. Dean was so nice to let me come on.  I'm just applying what you do to a song to tell in jokes and everything.   Well, don't watch it around the kids. I'm not the best joke writer, so I gotta let them fly a little bit. I'm so excited for the new album. So excited you guys all got back together again. And I hope this COVID stuff goes away so I can see you guys live as soon as possible. Cheers, guys. All right, all right, fly safe. And I'm so psyched you still got that drum kit. Dean, thanks for letting me pop on. Phil, thank you so much for doing the show. It's unreal. I mean, like I said, I wanted to talk to you my whole life. That's why I asked you the crazy questions and stuff. But it's just, you're Phil Rudd, man. And everybody, I mean, Lars Ulrich last week was saying Phil Rudd is the God. And that's how all the pro drummers feel. Everyone we play with all say Phil Rudd. It doesn't matter who it is. So it's amazing to talk to you. And thank God you're here playing on this brand new record, Power Up. And it's incredible to see it. And thank you for doing the show, man. You're welcome, Dean. Thanks, Mike. It meant the world. That's it. Thank you so much. Thanks, Dean. Cheers, Mike, for the pleasure. See you later. All right, Phil. Come on in safe, buddy. I'll see you. See you, Bill. See you, buddy.