let your freak flag fly. don't miss the grooviest trip at sea. ♪ >> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: welcome to the program, tonight. david payne has written a powerful memoir, and it is being highly praised by reviewers who say it is a powerful look at divisions and pain within a family. david: the only way that i felt that i could fairly and honestly tell the story was to be harder on myself than on -- at least myself, as on anyone else. i think that with my brother, his generosity and the fact that i needed something from him and

that i -- that he offered it with such simplicity and sweetness at the end, that, it was just important for me to acknowledge the ways that i had been ungenerous toward him regarding his mental illness and the fact that he had stopped working and that that had created estrangement in the family. i had resented that. charlie: he is the author of five novels, including his breakout debut. after three decades of writing novels, he has written a memoir about his family. it is called "barefoot to avalon." it is a searing account of his complicated relationship with his brother and his father. the "new york times" calling it a brave book with beautiful sentences on every page. the "san francisco chronicle" says that "barefoot to avalon" is a book that is as much of

anything a study in the power of exhaustible candor. the reviews say that the dense, sprawling sentences may demand patience, but they illuminate a riveting family history and as k complex questions about social prestige, mental health and the ties that bind. it has been called one of the most powerful and penetrating memoirs ever read, fiercely honest, deeply engaging, natalie heartbreaking. james kaplan calls an analogy to to a brother beyond death. a dream of a memoir, a blazing map of familiar love and loss. gorgeously written. not since a previous debut novel, "lie down in darkness" has there been a more eloquence, courageous depiction of the tentacles of madness and ambivalent love for a father dragging down a southern family, even as it tries to rise. says hes week magazine"

has the makings of a young charles dickens, a consummate storyteller in love with language and all of the variations of lights, people, and a probable situations. "the atlantic monthly" calls it earnest and unflinching. defining the relationship and their lives. pat conroy says he burns as brightly as any other writer of his generation. for all of that, it is a remarkable book. an interesting time to think about family, i'm pleased to welcome david payne to this table for the first time. welcome. david: thank you. an honor to be here. storye: it is a powerful of your brother and your father and your mother. and your granddaughter. all of them, i knew. why did you write it? david: my brother, it was such a poignant and difficult story, the end of his life, he had bipolar one disorder. and he had lived at home with our mother for nine years.

he and i had become estranged, there was difficulty in the family. my life was under pressure in terms of my career. and i needed help moving home from vermont to north carolina. after all of these years of estrangement, i was speaking to my mother and she said, why are you ask your brother to come and help you? and i called, not an hour later, the phone rang and it was my brother calling to offer his help. he can to vermont and during the -- came to vermont and during the move he died on the highway. helping me move. charlie: you sought in the rearview mirror? rearviewsaw it in the mirror. charlie: the book begins a couple of days before that. what is it that you are telling

us? it is not just his story, it is your story. the story of a southern family. the story of memories. it is the story of coming to grips with the flaws, dreams. david: it is about how we lost each other as a family. it is about how the long history of mental illness and alcoholism and all sorts of difficulties played through multiple generations of our family and finally, in this last moment, we were able to reconcile and have it these eight days that me and my brother had together before i lost him. charlie: remind me of the conversation between you said, as i remember, he said, it is ok, david. david: there is a passage toward

the end where my brother, i was saying good night, we were getting ready to leave the house in vermont where i left, and i tapped on the side window of the ford explorer he was driving and i said, ready? and he said, whenever you are. looking at the winston glowing on historic, i almost say something about my pristine ashtray, thanks george, i choose instead. it is a big deal. no seriously, i say, i cannot of done this without you, you are a good brother. these are words he is not heard -- has not heard from me in quite some time. he contemplates them for a beach and then he raises the winston to his lips. it is ok, david, he says. the truth is i do not make that much of it at the time, it is hours later that we are meant to start and i'm dirty, stressed and tired and on the verge of leaving everything i've taken as my life. i simply squeeze his shoulder,

turn away and whistle. unfamiliaroff, the rigs downhill. only later did that nag me that he did not say, you are a good brother, too, or you have helped me in the past and so i hope you elp you or any of the other countless things that he might have said. what he says is, it is ok, david, not resentfully but like somebody at the end of a long contest who has been on the receiving end of something and is ready to forgive it. charlie: you are on scathing in your clear and precise and penetrating analysis of yourself, and what you think of as your failure. david: the only way that i felt that i could fairly and honestly tell the story was to be harder on myself than on at least a myself as anyone else.

i think that with my brother, his generosity and the fact that i had, that i needed something from him, and that he offered andith such simplicity , it wass at the end just important for me to acknowledge the ways i had been ungenerous toward him regarding his mental illness and the fact that he had stopped working and that that had created estrangement in the family and that i had resented that. he had lived with his mother. that is our mother. charlie: the denial you to do -- she did not what you to do this book. david: did not want me to do this book, that's right. my mother and i, she said that very early in the writing she said, i think for you to write this book is exploitative. she and i did not speak about the book for almost two years,

and then when i showed her the final draft, she wrote me a very, very beautiful notes that said, i finally have come to understand that you have written with your most authentic self and it is not exploitive of your brother and she gave me her blessing before she died on the book. charlie: pay attention to the title and the book story. this is a picture of your brother. the title is "barefoot to avalon, a brother's story." this describes a daily race. david: avalon shore on the outer banks in north carolina, when he was 16 years old, he wanted to woodberryall at forest a boarding school and i , was a runner in those days. so every morning we would get up and we would do a four mile run, two miles down to avalon pier. and two miles back. and in the third mile, i would always leave him behind and leave him to make his own way in the final mile.

the very last week of summer, when i made my kick at the end, he kicked up beside me and we were in this grueling sort of hell of a race and he pulled away and beat me on that particular day. he went back to boarding school, he got a starting job on the team, and toward the end of that season, we got the call from the doctor telling us about his first psychotic breakdown with bipolar one disorder. charlie: what was the breakdown? david: he was out on the football field, he basically became catatonic. they called the coach, the coach called my mother. she came up to virginia to come and pick him up. my brother kept in the hotel room, kept going to the window and thinking that he saw our father, our dad, in the parking lot where he actually was not. and so, that was the first

break. charlie: i think on page 76, you talk about the cover photo. what is powerful about this book is your language. david: in the photo you can tell that the boy is an athlete of some kind, 6'7" inches, 215 pounds, he is lean wasted, brought across the shoulders and -- broad across the shoulders and the chest. more man than boy. but there is still a spindly, coldish something in his legs that mark them at the triple point. i sat my brother was the best looking boy i ever knew. among the best looking i ever saw. as i studied this old photo, i think perhaps it is not clark gable i have been searching for but those clean-cut, all-american boys on lawns and beaches posing for the camera with their girls and cars, before they went away to world war ii. george is smiling extensively confident like theirs, but a

little further back, i see something that is prepared for disappointment and it strikes me that george on this day in 1975 is going off to war, and inward award that is no less real that will last 25 long years for the rest of his short life in georgia will not return from it. this picture is the last glance i will ever have of him, which i guess is why i kept it and put it out in every place i ever lived in. here is to looking at you, he is saying with that grin and little squint. this one is for you. my reply in kind, enjoy it while it lasts. audeui. charlie: what you mean? david: enjoy life for you have it because it will not be that long. charlie: help us understand the relationship. it was obviously influenced by your parents, influenced by the lives you have had in the dreams you have had, but because it is so powerful, how would you characterize it? david: there was a sibling

competition that went on between us from the early, early days and he and i -- football was part of the thing that we had a competition over. but i'm afraid that i did not always understand the, when he first developed bipolar disorder, we did not really understand what it was. we thought it was, we did not understand it was a form of mental illness. we thought it was some kind of malingering. we had different ways, and this was in 1975, so it was a long journey for us to try to

understand exactly what it was that was wrong with my brother. i think that during part of that i judged him for things that were not true of his condition. and so, that is why i hold myself accountable to. charlie: what informed you when you set out on this journey to write this book? you had written five novels. you clearly where a student of literature. you wanted to be a poet in the beginning. you turned to novels. david: i think that each one of my books had felt as if it moved closer and closer from fiction toward the boundary line of nonfiction. and each one got closer and closer to the truth of my life and my family. and i realize that what i was trying to get at, was, who am i? who is my family? who are my people? who do i come from? how did we come to be the we

who we are? how did i come to be the person that i am? charlie: did you answer all those questions? david: i asked them, i can't say that i answered all of them. but i answered them, as many of them, as i could. i think that in order to answer them, i had to be honest in a different way than i had been in fiction. ♪

♪ charlie: is it simply to say to those who know you and those who knew your family, and those who live within a family, that this is one man's account of life inside a family? that has been read so many times in the life experiences of family that deal with conflict, dreams, memories, .ragedies, alcohol, infidelity all of those things that make up the fabric of so many families. david: i think so many of those things we tell ourselves, we weave stories of happiness and perfection and ease, and often times i think we leave out the dark truth at the base of our

family stories. and so, i think i wanted to try at least in my case, to tell the truth, a little bit more aggressively than i had done. charlie: because of what? because that is a writer's responsibility? what? david: i think what a writer is supposed to do is to ask, what is the human condition and what is the deepest account we can give of our presence here? not to lie about it into whitewash it, but to write about the darkness and the difficulty and the conflict and the competition as well. and so, that had never been spoken of in our family and i thought it needed to be. charlie: there had been these

explosives and powerful conflicts, exchanges which brings me to your father, who i knew as well. your father was tall and handsome and he married the most beautiful young woman in town, and to note that and you thought, my god, they had everything. they are going to be fantastic. that is what a young boy growing up in a small town believes. david: so it appeared. charlie: so it appeared. behind the walls and the doors of the house, -- david: behind the walls and the doors of the house, my mother, an 18-year-old, young girl who wanted to escape her family got pregnant and married, at 18, and married a boy who did not want to marry her. thatput him in a position

so somewhere at the heart of our family from the very beginning, there was a sense of, there was a sense of resentment, a sense that something had been extracted from my father that i think you never for gays and people looked at them and saw the perfect exterior and the beautiful girl, but something had been extracted from my father. charlie: he had to become an adult earlier that he might have wanted to, had to get married and all of the responsibilities of that, he was not ready for it. it is not a reflection on her, it is a reflection on him. david: i think that is an older way of looking at it, but we have different opinions. charlie: you tell me, i am asking. i am just asking. that, i do not think don't think that my father necessarily at 20 years old, for him to be trapped into a life

that he did not consent to live, to be trappeinto that life and to be forced by social pressures to take on that life and burden himself to the end of his days was a reasonable, demand ofligation to my father, even though, had he said no, i would not be here. charlie: what did it do to his life? he is a central character. david: i think my father became a kind of wanderer. he did not accept, he did not accept the ethical obligation to take on this family, and so he left the family. he abandoned the family and he became like a wanderer. he was like the ancient mariner. he moved like night to land and

had strange powers of speech. was a dark ander ,ragic story, but he was also he was a very talented, great raconteur, probably part of what your member about him. i think that something that i said about my family, which is choosinger than people to affirm their relationship to each other in love, they chose to extract something from the other person that the other person was unwilling to give and that was at the center of our family and that was at the center of what went wrong in our family. charlie: there's a passage on page 66 that i would love for you to read.

this is where he is reading to you. david: my father says, do you know what i read you this? no, sir. i stand there with the pressure in my lungs and chest, the cinch knowing to a dead certainty that i'm going to fail the test. what do you think it means, david, to measure out your life with coffee spoons? a moment passes, now a second, and suddenly it is as if a draft waft blows through the doors and windows and they open. measure out your life in gallons, bushels, hogsheads, do not be dissuaded by the woman or the women on the sofas, even as she is your pregnant girlfriend or your wife or mother and you love her. ask your overwhelming question and do not let anybody stop you, god speed, goddamn you, go and may you have the victory i thought i would have that

-- but stepped aside to give you. this is your fate, written in the manifest, not in ink, but in the blood of our parental sacrifice. charlie: and when you heard him say that? david: i think my father was telling me some part of my life got taken away from me, do not let yours be taken, go live the biggest life you can possibly live and do not measure it out in coffee spoons, measure it out in something bigger and that is why i wanted to write this book, to speak as much of it as i possibly could. charlie: there was huge rage in him? david: there was. charlie: and it was impressed to you and your brother. david: it was. charlie: there's a moment where you are thinking about your own relationship with euros on and -- your own son and you are talking to him. the fact that he is not want to eat something -- does not want to eat something. david: i see myself repeating the same abusive actions toward

my young son that my father repeated toward me, and i say to myself, this can't continue any longer. the same thing that i swore that i would not repeat, i have repeated and that really is the herening of the book, was, , i signed my name in blood upon this contract with my children in the future. charlie: what is it about your life that we should know that is reflected here? david: my suspicion, though i don't know, my suspicion is that my life is not very much different from most other people's lives. i think that other families have these same issues of mental illness and strife, and difficulty and love and gratitude. --is just that we do not

charlie: there's not some but within the families can write a book like this that gives expression. to give expressions of that everybody can feel. feel. david: i hope that that is true. i hope that i have done that. listen to 15 just critics, it is clear that you have done that. is also, what do you hope it accomplishes other than giving a huge magnifying glass to you and your brother the point hely and read, the brilliant point that you have to be true to your own self. it is your life and you have to define your own life and you cannot let anyone else define your life. david: what i wanted to do was to say, while i was here, and while i contemplated my life as

a man, this is what i experienced, this is where i -- what i live. and i believe that is my fundamental testimony as a writer, just as your fundamental testimony is what you do when you sit here every night and give back to the world what you give to the world. my experiences are what is in this book. charlie: has writing this book changed you? david: i think i changed in the course of writing the book. i would not say that writing the book itself changed me. i think probably the close to eight years of therapy i spent during the course of writing the book probably change. charlie: you have been through divorce. david: i have been. charlie: are you in a good place in your life now? having put this down, having dealt with it, having given expression to it.

david: it is like having dropped a weight. my relationship -- i was saying to someone earlier tonight, i was describing the scene with my son and how i had to yell at my son is a way my father had yelled at me, and i remembered leaving a cub scout banquet with my son when he was 10 years old and one of the boys at the banquet was cutting up and knocking people's hats off, and my son said to me, what is his problem? know.said, i don't i suspect there is something going on at home, don't you? and he looked to me and said, i used to be mad like that, deny? i?'t and i realize that in the course of writing this, the whole thing had changed. that all of that -- the conflict

and resentments and the forces that had forced me to deal with to write the book, they had passed away. charlie: your father committed charlie: your father committed suicide. david: he did. charlie: how hard was that? david: i never saw it coming. it was deeply sad. i never saw my father committing suicide that way. i don't know what to say about it even to this day. he and i were -- had been estranged for two and a half years, i had not really talk to him, so i don't know the specifics. charlie: estranged of? david: estranged because of his abandonment of me and my childhood. because of the -- it had been many years since my father and i had been close. so we do not really talk that much. so, i did not know what

particular circumstances were at the time of his suicide. charlie: your mother was close to your father? david: she was. she was. my mother died, i believe i told you, on february 10 of this year. she has stage four lung cancer. she spent five months living at home with me in hillsboro, and in the last month, as well, so that was a difficult passage, but it was a wonderful thing to have that final time together. charlie: what do you think of all these people saying all of these amazing and wonderful things, comparing you to everybody from dickens to others? a writer, that is what you wanted to be.

not be, but do. life is about -- david: with all of t estrangement with my father, my father was the one who said, don't measure out your life and coffee spoons, and he was the one who read me prufrock and said, live the biggest life that you can possibly live and i think that that is what i set out to do, and i think some part of him, because he did not get a chance to do it, i think you wanted to free me and my other brothers, as well, to have a chance to do that. and so, it has been my ambition since i was 15 years old or 16 years old. charlie: you ever asked yourself, what would george's life had been if he had not been living with bipolar disorder?

david: i think he had a pretty damn good life. i think he married, he was a successful stockbroker. he loved his wife. and then, things crash for him in the last nine years of his life. so, i think -- charlie: mid 30's. david: that's right. and that is way too early for that to happen. but he had a taste of sweetness. in his life. he had a taste of it. charlie: and your mother? david: she was left by many, we had her memorial service not long ago, and she was a -- the rock of our family. she was the rock and the lioness. i think that she had a lot of her father's strength, and i remember in your father, i remember those men.

they were quite a special breed. your father was very special to me. when i was writing my third novel, i did extensive interviews with him, and he gave me fabulous notes on the tobacco industry in north carolina at a time long before i was alive. charlie: he once walked with me through a family cemetery. and he could tell a story. as everybody. he could tell you everything about them. extraordinary, talented memory. david: i was glad that i could go back and interview those men, men like your father and my grandfather and capture what the socially those of that time was like. because it is so different now. charlie: i want you to do something that will be hard for you, i assume, although you have been asked to do before.

page 141. david: was george already psychotic when he called me at my dorm at avery at unc? had he looked down and seen the white caps on the ocean far below him? the weibo, our father, fell in boston and kept falling through atlanta. where he had no job, no money, nobody to lean on, and a list pending on his property. down and down until he landed in those washouts in shenandoah, up there with his father and his father's people come from. the same place where george and i ended on november 8, 2000, the first exit outside of lexington. when i looked down at my feet, and see by magic, black and terrible, the zip disk line checked and spattered in the gravel with george's blight upon it, and i gaze up at the sky and say, please god, do not make me carry this, still make me be

responsible, let my brother be alive, i require it of you. i compel you because if he is not, and if i'm responsible, and the universe is intolerable and i return my tidbit. that the sky was empty and return no answer and here i am still holding and george is gone and i still miss him as i sit wondering who i am and who we were and how different we were from other families and their stories. outside of the bell curve, out of hailing distance altogether. we are only as fingerprints and snowflakes each unique, but from the middle distance, more or less the same as every other. charlie: the book is called "barefoot to avalon, a brother's story." david payne, thank you for coming. david: thank you for having me. ♪

charlie: miles davis is one of the most celebrated jazz musicians of all time. don cheadle stars as him in the new film that is called miles ahead. in marks his directorial and screenwriting debut. hollywood reporter calls the film and adventurous music saturated depiction of one of the genre's undisputed greats. here is the trailer for miles ahead. [applause]

>> [indiscernible] ♪ >> miles davis, i'm from rolling stone. i'm here to hear comeback story. ♪ >> you have new material. >> my material, my session tapes. >> you have a contract year. we actually on that tape. [appl] >> you own, how much money do you have? ok, 19,000. but that is a start. ♪ >> your black? >> it's all about improvisation. ♪ >> i need you. i love you. ♪

>> call him right now until you're coming over. >> i can take it over there, they will kill me. >> if you don't do what i say, i will kill you. ♪ >> a long time to be able to play like yourself. >> i gave up everything for you. i deserve better than this. ♪ >> hold it, buddy. >> you're looking at it. ♪ >> you trying to kiss me off? ♪ >> [indiscernible] >> go, go, go. ♪ >> this is madness, i'm not dying over this. >> down college as man, that is a made up word. it is social music. charlie: i am pleased to have

don cheadle back at this table. good to see you. that is really something. don: thank you. charlie: as i said before, i do chance you're a series of interviews with him and i could just hear him again. it's just the way that he talked and the way -- i sent him once what is it about your music and he said, the sounds. amazing. don: and so much of it, it in so many different genres. some a different iterations of him he was. keeps reinventing himself over and over. charlie: what was your introduction to miles davis? don: really early in my life. i started playing saxophone when i was 10 years old in elementary school and i played alto. so i was trying to find this alto players that i wanted to

try to emulate and of course charlie parker. cannibal adams to play with mouse was another hero of mine. i would run home and listen to solos and try to -- it was a time when records had three speeds, 45 -- 78. i would let the record on and you could put it on 78 and it would actually play it almost an octave lower so i could hear what was happening in the solos. i was a kid that would run home and try to write the solos out and figure it out. charlie: like diagramming sentences. don: like oh, that is what he was doing. that is how he moved around that. i was learning what was going on. charlie: that is the introduction. when did you say, i'm going to make a movie? don: it was something that kind of came down. i told the story billion times. but, 2006, miles davis was inducted into the rock 'n roll hall of fame and they were interviewing events welborn, his nephew, who plays the drums with him. and they said, are you going to do movie about his life? and he said yes, and on she will play him. so, he made a proclamation and then they called me and i met

with the family and they had been trying to do a movie that predated me, 20 years. about his life, at least 20 years. they try to centered around different storylines. what they pitch to me was all right, but it kind of was closely related to a lot of these movies that we have seen before, a lot of biopic's, and a similar fraction. i say, i don't want to do that with this person. obvious that, with this artist. he was all of the innovation and changing it, and not doing what came before. i wanted to do something that i thought was more daring and impressionistic, and wild. >> i think we got off on the wrong foot. i need a little background. >> i could write some -- in a magazi, but i would rather hear it in your own words. ♪

charlie: how would you define his spirit? don: restless. charlie: -- don: indefatigable, never stopping, always searching. before he died, he was working with prince. so, i can only imagine what he would be doing today if he was alive. here probably be working with kendrick lamar. charlie: you think you would be

connected with those guys and have -- hip-hop and rap. don: he was always turned down the vanguard of all of the sounds that were happening. he did not want to do what he had done years before. when you hear the music, it is great because we can hear a lot of the outtakes now, and they're not trying to cut things off and make them pristine. they let you hear the outtakes in the beginning and the engineer in the booth. and you hear miles play these beautiful ballads and the last note is kind of ringing. and on the drum set, and he says plant it that, immediately, no reverie, no language. it was not just beautiful, he says play the next on, let's go. charlie: there are so many things that he is attributed with, you play with his back to the audience. what was that about? don: miles and always say, does the conductor face the audience when he contacts the orchestra? i'm conducting. i'm directing my band. i am trying to get something out of them. and like he said, miles paid

into practice in front of people. so, he was always searching for something and then still me that he would walk around the stage a lot of times trying to hear acoustics, different places where the sound would come back to him, and was always putting his fingers to his years in trying to hear different sounds. he was always searching for, and also, it was miles. charlie: what is the dark side of his life? don: it's well-documented, there is a lot of it, he don't with addiction. he dealt with abuse. he dealt with racism. and being in places where he was challenged, clearly challenged by the powers that be around him.

this is somebody who defined himself over and over again, and really tried to push back at that. but he was dealing with america at that time, with music that was looked at as being for junkies, negro music. he was always kind of trying to fight out of the boxes that people are trained to put him into. charlie: he loved boxing. don: he absently loved boxing. he approached music like boxing. we would talk about the way he attacked notes like a boxer. and where the power came from and where the breath came from. charlie: take a look at this year. this is when you and mcgregor is trying to get miles to talk about his life. this may be the scene that was in the trailer, but here it is, anyway. >> so, you study piano, to? ♪ >> no, just woke up black, new how to play. >> your black? >> is it cool? ♪ >> i love chopin. oliver play at the house, classical music. chopin.

stravinski. broke down their compositions. revolutionaries. innovators. pushing. chopin thought about improvisation. doing that on stage every night, on-the-fly. and write it down. it just came out of him. i wanted to quit every night. you know, old people come up to me and they say, why don't you play like you used to? i say, tell me how i used to? ♪ it takes a long time to be able to play like yourself. there is nothing like you used to. if you don't live on there is dead music, you know. just dead.

charlie: you were good. we'll talk about francis davis. don: love of his life. charlie: use flashbacks? don: and hopefully in a way that does not feel like we are stopping the movie to go back and collect something and come back in time. all of those moments, we felt that they were reverie and dreams and just really something that he used to move forward even though he never looked back, you obviously do. she was the love of his life, they both kind of describe her as the one that got away. she is definitely one that he had the most about not being able to work it out with her. charlie: take a look at this, roll the tape, this is meeting with francis taylor. >> [indiscernible] ♪ >> thank you.

>> sure thing. see you later. ♪ >> hi. >> i'm miles davis. >> i know. francis taylor. >> this is my phone number. now you don't have to stare. [laughter] >> goodbye. >> bye. charlie: he had style, didn't he? [laughter] charlie: what was the hardest part?

you talk to me during a break about distress of dointhis. acting. music. directing. writing. don: it was a lot. something that a few years ago i was trying to find another director actually to take that part of it on. everyone that i talked to after a kind of pitch the idea and shown the script they said, this is yours. what i direct this, this is your vision. you have to director on vision. charlie: i want to make it to the end of it. don: but ultimately, it was the only way that we were going to get it made.

was if i were all of those hats, so i did it. charlie: how did he view his life? did he believe that he had shown the world his talent, that he had been able to be what he was born to be? don: that's a good question. i don't know. and it would probably depend on the day that you asked him. i know that he never rested on his laurels. i don't think that he ever felt as if the work was done, and that he did not have something else and something more that he wanted to bring forward, so, it was just a constant search. i think was clearly, someone is born to do something. he fulfilled his role. in this life. and gave rise to so many musical styles and so many people that play with miles went on to be leaders in their own right and create a whole different library of music that we look at, he is the root of this huge tree that just the limbs go on forever. charlie: what did he think of kinda blue? don: it's so funny because you read about it and people are

always talking about it as being the ultimate, nation of his mastery. and he said the record is cool, but not really the sound i was going for. and you say, what he made it wasn't a fan you are going for? [laughter] don: he said he was tried to capture the sound that he is to go when he was walking home and he would hear choirs in these little churches all along the roadside, back in the woods, and he also said that he was trying to do something that reminded him of african columbus -- colin buzz, and a sound that they had in the head, and a couple of days they cut out the minute was cool. i liked it, but it was not what he was trying to do. charlie: are you still doing how house of lies? don: we just finished our fifth season. we went to cuba. charlie: i know. i was just in cuba, too. and they still talk about you being there.

don: we had a great time. we do not tear down the city too much. we had a really good time. charlie: they still talk about it. cbs this morning went down and did a piece about shooting. how was the? don: it was amazing. this land sort of stopped in time as far as we understand what time means. the people were just very open and very welcoming and warm. you know that they need an infusion of something. we don't need to go supplant their culture and try to imprint our whole thing on there. charlie: give them an opportunity. to be all that they can be. don: absolutely. charlie: without losing any of their soul. don: exactly. charlie: exactly. finally, this is a flashback of miles leading a recording session, i want to see this to simply because it is also about his genius. here it is. >> that is in the forte. coming in. >> that's it, i want him to hit it. ♪ >> oh yeah, man.

are you guys listening to him? ♪ >> hold that over. >> let's do it. thanks, man. >> record this. >> all right, take three. >> be strong. let's go. >> 1, 2, 1, two. ♪ charlie: miles davis. i should also take note of fact that you are still in the marvel cinematic universe as they say. don: yes. charlie: they call you up. [laughter]

charlie: thank you. don: thank you, charlie. charlie: thank you for joining us, see you next time. ♪

mark: let's begin with the check of your bloomberg first word news. the justice department has withdrawn its legal action against apple in an effort to help it unlock the iphone of one of the san bernardino shooters. the government said that it used out side help to unlock the phone and no longer needs apple's assistance. cory will have more, coming up. in washington, authority saying a man was shot by police after he drew a weapon at a checkpoint at the u.s. capitol visitor center. >> the suspect was taken into custody and transferred to hospital for treatment. his condition is unknown at this time.