The Big Lie

I'm Aina Garten, and each week on Happy Hour, I invite new and old friends for a drink and a fun conversation at my kitchen table in New York City. On this week's episode, I'm joined by Nathan Lane. We talk about his critically claimed run in death of a salesman, taking his dog to therapy and winning an Emmy for only murders in the building. New episodes of Happy Hour are available every Wednesday. You can watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Cheers. Megan Rapinoe here. This week on Why Are You Like This, I am talking with Shrinkings and Ugly Betty's Michael Uri. We dig into his Plano Texas upbringing and how Vanessa Williams had a huge impact on his career. I'm also weighing in on the Indiana Fever GM Amber Cox's comments on their fan base. Check out the latest episode of Why Are You Like This, wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube. How much have you spent on your pet's medical care this year? Maybe more than your own? 25 years ago, it was very rare to hear of a pet having an MRI. Now it's kind of standard if a pet presents with an issue. A corporation's and private equity have seen all of this and have rushed into the sector. Why Are vet bill is so high, that's this week on Explain It To Me. Listen to new episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. This episode contains language that may not be suitable for everyone. Well, let's just jump right in and let's just start with you introducing yourself. Oh God. And it's not a trick quite, it was like a very simple just what's your name. You just started off with the hardest question. This is Gavin Bain, but for years he went by another name. It all started in 1998 on his first day of college in Dundee, Scotland. And he met another student named Billy Boyd. I was running late. I was skateboarding and I saw this guy standing outside the campus just nonchalantly. I mean, I'm Russian. This probably sums up both of our personalities. I'm Russian. I'm thinking, God, you've messed us up already, you know? And he's just standing there. And he's got like a bag of jeans on, hair, corn rolled, a Hanson t-shirt. I don't know why he's wearing that. But he's just got his head for one's on and I can, I can a skid past him and stop. And I'm like, hey, if I got the time wrong, why aren't you insane? And he's got Nirvana. I can hear that that's blasting. He's got it so loud. And he looks at me and he's like, what do you want? He's so offended that I've interrupted Nirvana. And then I kind of rush off in and I'm like, oh, man, first person on me looks really cool and I've just made an enemy out of the first person. But then I get lost. I go into the wrong class. After a while, he managed to find the right classroom. He was 45 minutes late and the only seat left was next to the guy he'd met out front. And when we were in close range, he was looking at my bag and I was looking at his bag and I had rage against the machine, Cypress Hill, Whitton, Climb Badges on my backpack. And he had the same, but he had corn and he had some other metal bands mixed in with Tribe Core Quest. So it was like, together, we covered the entire gamut of the coolest bands in the world at the time. And he had lent biscuit. So yeah, we just kind of cracked it off. We started to talk in quotes from kind of rap films from the early 90s. Yeah, we were just, it was just straight in with a flow. And by lunchtime, we were freestyling quietly at first. And then by the end of lunchtime, we had performed our first gig in a way. Everyone was kind of gathered around us and we were, we were rappers. And on the way home, I turned to him and said, hey, do you want to be a rap group? And he was like, apps are fucking lit, we were a rap group. They practiced all the time, competing with each other, to make up the smartest and funniest lyrics they could on the spot. So we created a game called Porcupine, and that was a way for us to battle rap each other. But then also, like, through each other words. And then we just start freestyling off the word. And why did you call it Porcupine? Because some people think that's a hard word to rhyme with. But when someone throws a hard word like Porcupine, it can make the game funner. But also, we would use it as, like, that would be the last word to try beat the other person with. You couldn't win the game unless you ended with something to do with a Porcupine. They started performing gigs in bars near their college in Dundee. And their friend Oscar joined the group. And often says their main influence was, quote, the best white rapper we could think of, M&M. M&M released his major label debut album, The Slim Shady LP, in 1999, not long after Gavin and Billy had met. One reviewer wrote that his lyrics are so clever that he makes murder sound funny. One night, Gavin, Billy and Oscar stayed out very late, and ended up going back to Gavin's room. Oscar got on the computer. I mean, the internet was kind of early days, so he just randomly found this thing that was on a website called undergroundhippop.com. And it was just this kind of flyer, this poster for, are you the next M&M? And as soon as we saw it, we thought, yeah, of course we were. A record label was holding open auditions in London. Gavin, Billy and Oscar took a 13-hour bus ride there, playing Porcupine most of the way. But when they finally got to the audition, the line to get in went around the block twice. It was quite apparent there's just no way we're going to get in, because there's far too many people here. And so what we decided to do was to go and ask if we could battle people for their spot. So knowing hip-hop people, once you get challenged to battle, you can't say no. If you say no, you essentially step aside and let us just take your spot. So at first most people would say yes, and then we started battling, and eventually after you beat like 10, 15, 20 people, the C's part, you know. And by the time we got to the front, there was so many people behind us kind of written for us, like, oh my god, these guys actually are like M&M. So the feeling outside is that these three scotch kids are just going to walk this. And so our confidence is so high. Well, as soon as we get in and we're going past these dance studios, and it starts to become very commercialized, and we start to feel like, you know, so we're kind of shrinking as we got closer and closer and closer. When they got to the audition room, they handed the sound guy their CD. And remember, there were X's on the floor for them to stand on. In front of a table with three English talent scouts from the record label, A&R's, sitting behind it. And then we said to press play, and the guy presses play, but he hasn't turned the volume up. So by the time the beat comes in, it's already like halfway into the song. So we're like, no, no, no, please put it back to the start. And now we're just like shaking because it's all going wrong. So then we start to wrap. And as soon as we start to wrap, you know, you're hyper aware, the situation, you're so focused on everything. You're looking around the room. And when you're a rapper, you're constantly making eye contact with people because you feed off their response. And the three of these A&R's were just like kind of looking at each other at the side of their eyes and kind of trying to stop themselves from laughing. And then about like 30 seconds in, 30, 40 seconds into my rap verse, they just kind of put their hand up to the sound guy and say, cool, cool, cool, that's enough. And then they just were kind of like laughing and one of them said, is this a joke? You know, the Dave put you up to this. And we said, no, this is serious, they said, this is a cool comedy act, but not quite what we're looking for. You know, Scotland is grounds keeper Welley, it's Braveheart, it's Sean Connery. You know, it's junk ginger people and skirts. Scotland is not rap. We can't sell that. Gavin says they all went straight to a pub after that. And while they were there, they decided to go and try to see someone else before they left London. I just thought they don't get it, but so then let's go, let's go somewhere to someone who gets it. And there was a guy called Dave Loeb, who ran wordplay and the biggest hip-hop magazine in Europe, hip-hop connection. So I thought, let's go and see Dave Loeb and we'll ask him, you know, so we go there, it's kind of like this secure, you got a guy to pass a security gate. So we wait for ages, eventually a guy could bring in records, comes up the road. He goes in, we sneak in, we get to their office. this bellies trying to flirt with the lady on reception to buy us time to get in until he walks past and eventually he walks past and we're like, "Dave, you know," and we kind of like just don't want to leave. We're like, "Look, it's taken a lot to get here. We're not leaving until you give us like five minutes." So eventually we go into his office and we're like, "Here's our songs. Let's know what you think." And he's like, "All right, you know, so he starts playing the CD and he plays the first beat and he's like, "Oh, God, yeah, and you can see he really loves the beat." And then as soon as one of us starts rap and he's like, "Nah, skip to the next one." And then the same thing, he's like loves the beat and then skip to the next one as soon as vocals come in. And the third one, he loves the beat again, as soon as we start rapping, pulls the CD out and he said, "Don't make me say it." And I said, "No, say it." And he's like, "You fucking sound like the rapping of the simple claimers." And the pro claimers are great. They're an amazing Scottish group. They sing that classic song, "I will walk five hundred miles." And they're Scottish heritage, but he's meaning it and they're a bit of a joke, you know, like no rapper would ever listen to that, you know. Gavin says that he and Billy didn't say a word to each other for the whole thirteen hour bus ride back home. I kind of was really just trying not to cry. And a part of me was like, they are right though. You know, I saw that if your job is in marketing at the time and hip hop was all about your credibility, what you've gone through, you know, like what street you come from, you know, like the branding of rap in America was so powerful. And Britain didn't quite have that yet. And Scotland definitely didn't have that, you know. So they were right. They can't sell it. So I understood that. But then that left me with the predicament of, well, then we can never do this. When Gavin got back home, he started spending more and more time alone. And he wasn't sleeping well. And then one night he was watching TV and a movie came on. I filmed that, I'd seen loads from the 80s called The Secret of My Success. And there's a scene where Michael J. Fox is character. And he's trying to get this job, but that he's a little small town boy. And he's trying to make it in the New York City. And he's just getting turned down everywhere. You know, it's because he doesn't fit. They can't, he doesn't fit in their world. And then he, he goes into this one office to get changed because he's not wearing the right thing. And he's trying to like go to this meeting that he's got. And then this office, the phone rings and he picks it up. And the person says is that, you know, so and so. And he goes, yeah. And he, and he starts to just pretend he is. And he gets so empowered that, that he can be that person. And I think like, well, why don't we just become someone else? If being Scottish was the problem, then they become Americans. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is criminal. We'll be right back to listen without ads. Join criminal plus. Hi, it's Phoebe. In just a few weeks, I'm going to be heading back out on the road with a brand new live show. But this tour is very different from the ones we've done before. Because this time, I'm telling the story I've never told before. My oh, you'll get to hear about my wild family and the secrets I kept for them. It's a show about not giving up on people. Get your tickets now at this is criminal calm slash live. I hope to see you. Everyone's talking about the prospect of a democratic wave in the midterm elections. But here's something that matters just as much. The battle to control state legislatures. That's the most important thing we should be focusing on right now. The GOP has a trifecta in 23 states, which means they control the governor seat plus the state house and the state Senate. For Democrats, it's 16 states, meaning that the opportunity to pass the policies that the majority of our state supports, things like increasing minimum wage, legalizing marijuana, codifying abortion. If Democrats flip just a handful of state legislatures, the majority of Americans will now live in the state under full democratic control, which could have big policy implications. That's all on the table with the democratic trifecta. This week on America, actually, we're in Wisconsin and we talked to Francesca Hong. We have an opportunity through Wisconsin to actually start improving the brand for Democrats. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Gavin Bane started recording himself, wrapping his lyrics with an American accent, just to see what it sounded like. So the first few times, sober that I tried to record myself in the American accent, it didn't sound good, it sounded fake. The way the tongue moves isn't the same is when you switch to another accent. So I was struggling with that and then I was thinking too much when I was sober. So then I took certain uppers with certain donors to knock myself off center so I could stop being hypocritical about myself and allow myself to flow. And it sounded so good. It sounded real. It sounded like this kid is from California and he sounds like Eminem. I liked the song so much that I took it to a party. My friend Brian was throwing this big party and he used to throw like really cool parties. So he'd have like DJs and everyone he was in a hip hop in the area would be there. And so I go into the party and I gave our DJ at the time, Skinny, I gave him the CD and I was like, I'll play this. It's a new American rapper. I just heard play this, you know, and he played it right after an Eminem song. And everyone was dancing and loving the Eminem track and then he played that song. And nobody, like no one batting an eye. They were like, is this the new Eminem track or something? Like they just thought it was Eminem or they thought it was an American rapper. And so I'm watching the room and I look at Billy and he looks over to me because he knows they're my lyrics and he's just like main blonde. He's like, oh my god, it sounds real. And then Gavin told Billy about his idea to pretend to be Americans. Gavin says that Billy said no, but he did want to see what it sounded like and he experimented with recording some of their songs in an American accent. A few weeks later their friend Brian who had thrown the party where Gavin played the song died in an accident. Gavin and Billy drove to the funeral together. On the way there they listened to the radio and then one of their songs came on with them rapping in American accents. Gavin says they each thought they were playing a trick on each other. But when they got to the funeral, Brian's brother told them that before Brian died he'd entered the song into a national radio competition as a surprise and that it had won. We'd beaten every single rock band, every single folk act, every pop act. We won it and the song was getting airplay and Billy finally kind of turned around and said, okay, let's do this for Brian. And so we were on our way. Someone from Sony had heard the song on the radio and had gotten in touch to see if they could meet with Gavin and Billy in person in London in two weeks. So we had two weeks to perfect the accent and so we made this agreement that we would speak to each other all the time in American accent. Everything we did, we did an American accent. We would have sex in American accents. Wait, what? Which our girlfriend's thought was really fucking annoying. And that does seem very bad. I'm surprised they stayed with you. I'm surprised as well. But you only, did you know anything about Americans besides the movies? I mean, what did you think of America? We were, yeah, no, we were like, we'd just grown up watching American movies. We loved American stand-up comedy. And we just took a whole bunch of different characters and we matched them together. Gavin says they wanted to study interviews with American rap stars and skaters. But all they could really get their hands on in time was a DVD of friends and a few American movies. Gavin started watching back to the future over and over again until they could say Michael J. Fox's lines along with him. He also watched a lot of Goodwill Hunting and studied Matt Damon's character. Billy studied Matthew Perry's character in Friends, Chandler. They watched as many episodes as they could. Gavin says they paused it whenever Chandler said something funny and then tried to repeat it. They came up with new names for their American personas. Gavin Bain became Brains McLeod, and Billy Boyd became Cillable. They called their group Cillable and Brains. They decided they would be from California. They picked a city called Hammett, where Billy actually had family. Billy bleached his hair. Gavin tried out a trucker hat. They both started wearing more colorful clothes. And at the end of the two weeks, they got back on the 13-hour bus ride to London. The first place they went was Sony Records to meet with Dougie Bruce, the scout who had heard their song on the radio. And as soon as he sits down, he's like, "I don't like boys." You know, he's got this broad, glass weed in accent. The first person, the first A&R that interviews us, is Scottish. We're screwed at that point, because when someone's Scottish, speaking to someone's Scottish, you start to kind of like, you join, you know? And so we were talking, and we were both finding it very difficult not to say Scottish words. And then eventually, he said something. He said, "I" and Bill went straight back with "I can," which is "I know" in Scotland. Two Americans would never know to say "I can." It's in the way that Bill said it. And as soon as we said that, he looked straight at Billy, and then he looked at me, and it was like, "He knows." You know, so we felt like everything that we were saying, he was like, "Where are you boys actually from?" And the way he said, actually, it was like, "He knows." This is, this is, you know, we're done here, basically. And when we left that outside of the Sony building, I grabbed Bill, and I said, this isn't going to work if we're half-assed, like we need to be in, all in, like 24/7. We need to become the characters if this is going to work. Let's just be the craziest version of who we want to be, turn it all up to 11, and let's just go, you know? And so as soon as we went to do a show that night, we kick in the door, you know, we start stomping around, like we own the place, we did this crazy stage show, chasing each other around, we're vomiting on the front road, and then when we came off stage, this guy came up to us, and he was like, "Where are you guys from?" Now earlier in the morning, when Dougie Briss asked us, "Where are you guys from?" We both answered at the same time because we hadn't even got our story in line. We were just so excited that we didn't even, you know, run through what our story is. So in the morning, I said, Huntington and Belly said, "Hammett, at night, with Chris Ralker, Island Records," Belly says, "Hunktonton," and I say, "Hammett at the same time?" And this guy is just looking at us like, "Two!" And he didn't, he didn't care. And he was like, "Right, here's my, here's my card." He slid his card to us, and he's like, "Come and see me on Monday morning." When you say you were like banging and stomping, is that something you thought like Americans did? Like they just kind of take the room? Yeah, like, yeah. If you watch, if you've grown up watching rap music videos, we just basically became like our favorite rappers in those videos, you know? But then in person with people, we would switch to characters from like friends, you know? And so we'd play a, build, play a version of Joey, and I would play a version of Ross or Chandler, because those are likeable characters, you know? So we knew that when we're around people don't be banging around, and also those characters are actually closer to our personalities. I mean, it really feels like two opposite ends of the spectrum to be Eminem on stage and Chandler off the stage. I don't really know how those two meld. You know, every artist I've ever met, has been one person on stage and off stage, a completely different person. I had seen loads of interviews with members of Slipknot and members of Korn and all these kind of dangerous rock bands, but actually they were like real sweethearts when the masks were off, you know? Gavin says that on Monday morning, after going over their story again, he and Billy went to Island Records to meet with Chris, this guy who'd given them his card at their show. Know that we're American? He was selling himself to us. So it was a big change, you know? And so he was like, "Tell me everything about you guys." And that's a different question from where you're from or what do you do or you know, because you kind of feel like you're being examined. So Bella and I just started telling a story like, look, we're from this kind of cookie cutter, neighborhood in Hemant. And you know, we met each other at the San Diego bands tour because we had known a lot about that tour specifically because of bands that played. We were really interested that. We had the DVD about it. So we actually knew some things that happened and we knew that there was a battle rap competition that happened in the parking lot and that. So then we kind of incorporated that. And I said that yeah, we met at that at the San Diego walk tour and then we moved to Huntington Beach, slept on the beach under the pier. You know, like, this is just like versions of celly-paper songs now coming out, you know? And then we got this job in this skate store and then, you know, we became a rap group, we came over here, ran out of money and now you're going to give us a record deal and let the fun continue. And the way it just flowed off the tongue as cutting each other off, it was like we were rapping. Gavin says Chris seemed to believe the story completely. Gavin remembers that even told them it was beautiful. And he was like, you've got to do that thing that you did the other night, you know, because basically we had this thing that if anyone heckled us from our audience, we would just like pick that person out and then we would, you know, just tear into that person with freestyle. So we called all the A and R's into the main kind of open area. And he was like, all right, do that thing though. Go and he was basically telling us to go around the room, just rapping into everyone. And I was like, oh my god, you know, so like this is it. And so we just started doing it, you know? Look at this guy and the fake Adidas. Look at his beard. Who does he think he has Jesus? You know, and just move on to the next person. And eventually we get to Chris, everyone's like fallen around laughing. We get to Chris and we start making fat jokes and Chris quite fat. And Chris was not laughing at this point. He started to look furious that the joke couldn't have been turned on him. But there's all of his staff for it and tears laughing. And then he they realized he wasn't laughing and they all stopped. And then he just burst out laughing. And we knew that we've got it. Then we just felt like god, this is easy. But Gavin says they couldn't just sign with the record company. First, they needed a lawyer and a manager. Chris got them a meeting with one of the biggest music managers in London, a man named Jonathan Shallad. Now this guy is the Simon Coe like the the nicer version of Simon Coe, you know, so he just gets straight to the point and he's like, what do you want? And at this point, we had no money. We had no money left. So as soon as he said, what do you need? I don't know why I said it. Maybe it was like a lane in another movie. But I said, we don't go to bed. And in American accent, we don't get a bed for anything less than 70K. And barely looked at me like, what the holy crap, you know. But Jonathan Shallad said okay. And all of a sudden we had 70,000. For a couple of days after that, we kept going to the bank machine to see if the money was in. And every day that it wasn't in, we felt like, okay, this isn't really real. And then the day that the money was in, we'd both never seen that money in our bank accounts. And I think that changed something a little bit because my head started to be like, hmm, what if, is this a crime? And then belly was like, what if, is this our money? You know, that didn't stop us from immediately going out and getting bloated or drunk and having the best week of our lives, getting home at every single day. Jonathan Shallad's office helped get them set up in a big apartment and arranged for them to play at showcases around London, trying to see what kinds of offers came in. And it worked. After about three months, they made a deal with Sony, they went into the office to sign the contract. Gavin remembers it was in a big boardroom, with staff there to help them celebrate. There was champagne. And people kept coming up to them to ask them about the stories they'd heard about them. A big part of the story was that we became very close friends with D12 and Eminem, which is quite a stretch. But when you're like kind of improvising and acting, the whole point is the same as freestyle is to make little links and then let them grow and let them grow. So on that day, we're in Sony and this girl comes up and she's like, no way, you guys are from Huntington Beach? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, she's like, that's where I'm from. I'm like, "Oh, no." And she's like, "I heard you worked in a skate store. What, watch one?" I'm like, "Oh, no." And I say, "Slamset, skate." And she's like, "No, wait, I work there as well." And I'm like, "Oh my God, no." And I'm just dying inside, so I'm smiling. I'm like, "No way, yeah, that's cool." But like, I'm dying now, and I'm starting to sweat. I'm looking around for a bell. Like, I need help here. By this time, Gavin and Billy had developed a system for whenever anybody started asking questions about their lives in America. They called it lead and recover. - So the lead recovery system is that one listens and one answers. And so if I'm answering and bells listening, and I start to start or make a mistake, bell jumps in, and either takes the person who's asking questions and takes them on a different direction, or if it's getting real bad, can just throw a hand grenade in or do something to kind of distract so that they forget what they were asking. So but then on this day, people are pulling bell this way and we're not together. So we're not in ear shot of each other. So I'm now done. I can feel the breathing, my breathing starting to, you're about to tell that I'm worried here. And I'm holding on for dear life. And then bell turns and looks and sees my face and he knows. And so bell knocks, I'm a riot carry poster, frame, like with a record in it off the wall and it cracks. And then everyone turns and I sneak out of the room and go to the toilet, went to it down at the toilet, vomited, kind of washed my face. But by the time I went back in, the bell hit can't just got everyone going again and she kind of forgot that lane of questioning. Gavin says they sign the contract as syllable and brains for 50,000 pounds up front and 300,000 more when they released more material in their album. Did you have a plan? Did you say, okay, we'll go for this long or we'll make this much money and then we'll tell people who we really are. I remember in Dundee and Scotland saying, look, this is what we do. We go down, we get a record deal. You know, we blow up overnight. Get number one record, obviously. As soon as I hear someone singing my words back to me, I'm good, I can walk from it. And then we go on Jonathan Ross's TV show 'cause Jonathan Ross is like the king of late night TV here. And so we'll go on Jonathan Ross's show and then we'll just go, you know what Jonathan? We're not American. We've never been to America. We're Scottish. And then we'd make a point to be like, we always had talent. Why did we need to do this? Not long after they signed the contract, Gavin and Billy got an appearance on the UK version of one of MTV's most popular shows. Total request live. Nice coming on guys. Guys are great. Boys, you're a spanking new music. Spanking. How would you describe your sound? Spanking. Spankingly new. Spankingly new. Comedy, humor, new thing. Well, you did a performance for us to try and drag this back from the edge of despair. Your mom's is what it was called. What was it called, my mom's? Just your mom's. And general, my mom's. And general, don't bring my mom into it, not on my own show. Let's take a look at it. It's very entertaining. And then on live TV, the host asks them another question. So, were you guys from. When it's Ordon. Really, I can tell them. We were retarded by aliens when we were kids and we traveled around the source, just never since then. Gavin says that when he got home that night, he Googled syllable and brains to see what people were saying about them. And there was this website and these forums that were like, what's Gavin building? All these people who knew us in our life were online going, wait, I know, like, what's going on? One comment read, I had a fight with Gavin Bain in a chip shop once. Wasn't an America though. This was Dundee, your man's a Scott. Gavin says he and Billy got called into Sony's offices the next day, but when they got there, nobody said anything about them being from Scotland. Instead, Gavin says they got the news that MTV wanted them to come back soon and that there was even some interest in them hosting their own show. They started working on show ideas and going to meetings with TV producers. Gavin says Sony decided to wait to release syllable and brains for a single until something happened with the TV show. And in the meantime, syllable and brains was touring as much as they could. There was a lot of drinking every single night. Waking up the next morning, having two hours of not drinking and then back on it. And Bill and I at this point were starting to do backflips off drum risers. We kept trying to upper stage show and it was kind of getting dangerous. By the end of the tour, they were exhausted. Gavin says he went to bed as soon as they got home at 6 a.m. And we've got like, you know, I think I sleep for one hour and then my phone goes at 7 a.m. And it's one of the managers at Jonathan Shouts' office and he goes, I've got good news and bad news for you. The bad news is you're not coming off tour. The good news is you're going on tour with your best friends. And I'm thinking, who's our best friends? And I'm like, who? And he's like, M and M and D 12. And so I'm like, I'm just like, oh my god, no. Like, how are we going to pull this off? We'll be right back. (gentle music) A couple of hours after Gavin Bane and Billy Boyd heard they'd be going on tour with M and M and his group D 12, a tour bus picked them up to take them to the first venue. They were excited, but Gavin says they also spent the whole ride trying to figure out what to do. You know, anyone sees us for five minutes around them, they're going to see unfamiliarity. Like, this will be over as soon as we walk out in front of them, this will be over. So it was just like, let's just see how it goes. Maybe we can hide, maybe we can stay away from them. And so then we hold onto that. We think, all right, we'll just hide from them. We will not be in the same place they're in. We come out of our tour bus, we walk, right? And there's D 12 on stage, sound checking. And we're like, shit. And then we turn to go, but all of the load-ins happening, so we can't get past the load-in. The other side, all of our management team is there. Next to them is a camera crew who are there for MTV, filming D 12 and M&M over on this promotional tour. So there's nowhere to go. So like the clock was just ticking in my head, like ticking their sound checking purple pills. And we know when the song ends, and it's just a countdown to them walking past us. And so we're being better, like looking at each other, not saying a word, but we're having a crazy conversation with our eyes. And as soon as the song finishes, I look at Belle and we kind of like, fuck it, let's go. And then we just stomp on the stage, like we own the place, we're like, what up? You know, it looks like high five in them. I high five bizarre, and I'm like holding him. I'm like, kind of wrap my hands into his kind of belly and back so that he can't pull away from me. So it looks like he's hugging me tightly. And I'm like, ah, you know? And I think from a distance, it probably just looked like this was a warm embrace from friends. But up close, we could see their faces were like, they were going through, who are these guys again? But Gavin says they just went with it. They high-fived again, and agreed to meet up after the show. Gavin and Billy had never performed on such a large stage in front of such a huge audience, almost 5,000 people. Gavin says he'd never sweated so much as he did when they went on stage that night. And that once they got going, he never wanted it to end. They ended this set with a song they hoped would become their hit single called Losers. ♪ Always in a warm place at the wrong time ♪ ♪ When gone handed out brains, I said in a wrong way ♪ ♪ I'm shallow, that pulls the kiss to pedal ♪ ♪ Shuffle follows me like it's my shadow ♪ ♪ People see me, they stay in my weirdo ♪ ♪ 'Cause I be sticking tight in my mind, my ear ho ♪ ♪ In my first week when I was three ♪ The crowd went wild for them. There was everything they dreamed of. And then after the show, Gavin and Billy's lawyer pulled them aside. And he was like, you're Gavin and you're a belly, and I know it all. Gavin and Billy's lawyer had been asking them for their American passports for months and months. They always told him they couldn't find them and that they'd get them to him later. And then he saw the posts on the hip-hop forum after their appearance on MTV, saying that they were actually Gavin and Billy from Scotland, not syllable and brains from California. And so he was really angry and he was like, "You need to come with me, we need to speak to the label. I'm going to pull you off the tour, we'll go to the label, we'll talk it through." And we're just like, "Get lost." And you're like, "What are you smoking? We're just making out these completely crazy." But then he says this thing to us where he's like, "I think he got Bill on this when he was like, "Look, you didn't need to do this. You're so good. Why are you doing this?" And I just laughed and Bill walked into the changing room. And Eminem was about to come down the hallway with the whole camera crew from MTV. And Tim, our lawyer was like, "Okay, so your best friends with this guy? Okay, let me ask him quick." And he was going to stop Eminem and ask him. And I was trying to call his bluff. And I was like, "Yeah, yeah, ask him." And then he got closer and closer and closer. And I just like freaked out and I just like ran in the dressing room, which to Tim said, "You're right." So that was very close, but Tim didn't go to the label and we didn't get caught. It just went on and on and on. Billion Gavin kept touring and playing packed shows. And their MySpace page started filling up with messages from fans. They got an endorsement deal with a soda company. Gavin had developed a stomach ulcer. And it just, it was getting so big, you know, to the point where within two years, this is two years now, we haven't released a record. We've got all this stuff going for us and we haven't released a record. The amount of money that's been spent on us at this point is over a million. Gavin was barely talking to his family. He says it took him out of character. His girlfriend, in Dundee, had broken up with him after a visit during which he'd mostly spoken in an American accent. And he and Billy were drifting apart. Billy was going back to Scotland more often to visit his girlfriend. And then he found out she was pregnant. Gavin says everything changed after that. Billy had had enough. So basically we have this big fate. And it's one of those fights you can't come back from, I'm afraid. So essentially the grip was over. We didn't get caught. And the fact that the grip was over was kind of a bit of a blessing because there was a clause in the contract that if the band breaks up before the record comes out, then you don't have to pay the money back. And so we essentially got away with not having to pay that money back. I mean, how did you announce it to the fans? We kind of just didn't. We just kind of went away. We went quiet. Billy went back to Scotland. And eventually got a job on an oil rig. Gavin stayed in London and tried to make it work without Billy. But Sony stopped taking Gavin's calls. He says it was hard to give up his American persona. He worked odd jobs. For a while, he worked for an American skate shoe company. He spoke in an American accent when he applied and they thought he was American. And then a couple of years after syllable and brains split up, Gavin heard that one of his closest friends from childhood had cancer. And he decided to put on a show. And then do it as a comeback show and make that money. And then give Ivan the money for his treatment. But right before Gavin was about to go on stage, he heard that his friend had died. And so when I walked out on stage, I kind of just looked out and my band were playing the intro of the song. And I was, I was missing keys to go into the first lyrics. And I tried to, I tried to go into lyrics. I just couldn't get anything out. I was just like crying. And so I stopped the music and I turned to the crowd. And I said, I'm not brains. I'm Gavin. And I've never been in America. And so we got through that show. I came off but I just went to the dressing room and kind of couldn't really deal with everyone wanting to ask more questions. So I head in there until everyone was gone and I snuck out the back. There was about 200 kids. And I was thought they wanted more answers. Like what happened, you know? And I just kind of started to apologize. And then they started to wrap my lyrics back to me. They cared only about the lyrics. Billion Gavin didn't speak for years. But in 2012, they briefly got back together to record and finally release a syllable and brains album. They called it "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels". Gavin went on to have his own music career. He's working on an album right now. So yeah, I'm just having a lot of fun. And you're doing it all now in a Scottish accent? Yeah, our whatever accent hits me. ♪ Criminal is created by Lauren Spore and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Cicicco, Lily Clark, Lena Silicin, and Megan Canaine. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Semonetti. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at ThisIsCriminal.com and you can sign up for our newsletter at ThisIsCriminal.com/newsletter. Gavin Bain has written a book about syllable and brains. It's called "California Schemen". A movie about their story with the same title is coming out this year. We hope you'll join our membership program, Criminal Plus. Now on Patreon, it's the very best way to support our work. You can listen to Criminal This Is Love and Phoebe Reeds' Mystery without any ads. Plus you'll get bonus episodes behind the scenes photos and videos and you'll be able to talk directly with us and other criminal listeners. Learn more and sign up at patreon.com/criminal. We're on Facebook at ThisIsCriminal, an Instagram and TikTok at Criminal_Podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com/criminalpodcast. Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.