♪ announcer: from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: president trump will meet with chinese president xi jinping at trump's mar-a-lago resort this thursday and friday. it is their first meeting, an important step in u.s.-china relations. they are expected to drop -- expected to address such issues like global trade, one china policy, and climate change. joining me is kevin rudd. he was the prime minister of australia from 2007 to 2010 and again in 2013. he now serves as the president president of the asia society policy institute.

i am pleased to have him. what might these countries expect, and what is the context they come to florida? kevin: let's start with the chinese. a lot of people watching the program have an idea of what might be on president trump's mind, but international politics is about the sound of two hands clapping, not just one. if you are in beijing, what is in your mind if you are president xi jinping? i think the big factor in the back of president xi's mind is he has a big election coming up this year. it is not a democracy, china, everyone knows that. but an internal election is 88 million members, and that is not a democracy either, but it is intense politics about who will now join xi jinping and the politburo standing committee for

the next five years. this is a big deal. charlie: members really rule china. kevin: it is like the standing cabinet. table probably a little larger .han yours, charlie they have submissions, they run the government and country. so what he would like this year, 2017, is a quiet year because there is a lot domestically. and the other thing on his mind is the economy. china's economy is not doing too bad. it was widely criticized the last couple of years, but growth is reasonable around 6%, maybe a bit stronger as the global economy starts to recover. but he also doesn't want any bad economic news either. there is a reason for that, going into the party congress, he will maximize his political authority to get personnel into positions he wants. he does not want economic bad

news either like a trade war with the united states. that would be bad news from his perspective, so i think he would come to mar-a-lago with the view that, let's calm things down, let's try to manage this as rationally as we can, and see what it is like to respond to what is top of mind for the u.s. president. charlie: one of the things he wrote, and what amazed me, it might be true because it matched something from history, the chinese and the chinese leadership, they are kind of looking at donald trump with a certain amount of admiration, because they know what he did in this surprising election, and as politicians -- you were one. end ofthe chinese at the the day, are realists. exportopped trying to revolution just after the cultural revolution in the late 1970's. that was the end of that. when they observe western

politics in play particularly in this country, the most powerful in the world, the united states, anyone who wins the presidential election from their point of view is someone to be respected. secondly, when you come from totally outside the mainstream like president trump has, including outside the mainstream of the republican party, they are more respectful and certainly fascinated as to, how did he pull this off? charlie: it reminds me of gorbachev had some of the same feelings about reagan, who he grew to like and have relationships with, but he could not understand this relationship reagan have with the american people. kevin: yeah. i was not in the united states at the time, but the whole story of the reagan democrats, etc., i mean this was a palpable phenomenon in the country. president trump obviously is vastly different.

i am just talking about this from a chinese perspective. i don't come here with the view that president trump is illegitimate or anything like that. he's the president of the united states of america. he is the person they are required to deal with, and there are serious questions of trade investment, north korea, south china sea on the agenda. but there will also be an opportunity for these two leaders just to start getting the measure of each other, starting to get to know you. in politics, charlie, and you are the seasoned veteran, politics is not the pomp and circumstance. -- it isn't all that complicated. it is about the folks, leadership, and to some extent it is national interest and whether i can do business with you. whether i like you, whether i have some respect for you. why first up, all

other results to one side of mar-a-lago, donald trump is spending a day and a half with the chinese president, i think it is a good thing. it is a good thing that president xi has decided to make the trip over as well. charlie: the president will make the case as he has articulated during the campaign, through the transition, and since, that he thinks china is not playing on a level playing field. he made that argument, and that was a central part of his campaign. does he have a point? kevin: absolutely. and well, you simply look at the scope of the bilateral trade deficit. china exports here just a little under half $1 trillion a year. united states sells to the chinese $100 billion a year. it is a handy trade surplus for the chinese, $350 billion in 2016. the chinese know that it was them, this should be

narrowed. there is an opportunity for discussion about this. the second thing as i have said before, the chinese ultimately politicalcal -- are realists as well. they know this is being central to president trump's domestic campaign. they have seen all of the stuff about china. they have analyzed it 100 times over. charlie: and they have seen the people he has appointed as trade negotiators. kevin: the trade and economics side of the house in the white house, a number of the key personnel are decisively skeptical about china. someone say decisively negative, -- some would say decisively negative, but i will give them the benefit of the doubt and say decisively skeptical. even the chinese coming into this meeting have figured it out that what president trump has said, the american middle class has lost its standing as we have helped create a middle class in china or blame --

charlie: this is a line that he uses. kevin: that's right. my chinese friends, i have explained this is where he comes from. the reason he picked up that huge swathe of votes between one coast and the other. and when he says that american cities, towns, jobs are fading away because new cities and new jobs and new industries have been created in china because of trade. whatever you think of the trade policy logic statement, that is his deep view. going back to mar-a-lago, the chinese know that as well. i think there is an opportunity for some progress to happen on the trade front in particular. charlie: about south china, those islands? any possibility that the chinese -- the chinese seem to me -- you have been there recently -- they

are deepening their commitment. it is not just the united states. the pacific nations have states there. they seem to be showing no likelihood to pull back. kevin: i think that is a right call, charlie. if there was anything else, i would tell you. but i just don't think it is. i go there a lot. so the question is, how is it now handled? from one point of view, the chinese and the last three or four years have reclaimed three or four islands. they have fortified them, and it may well be that the opportunity now exists to take the temperature down. you see, china does not want a war with the united states. there is a big reason for that. i think the realists in beijing can work out that given the overwhelming power the united states pacific fleet, the united states would prevail in a limited engagement in the south china sea. the chinese would not want to lose any such engagement. they certainly therefore don't

want conflict by accident by one ship running into another in the , or one tale night of the aircraft doing the same. there may be some appetite on china's part to say, well, let's just take the temperature down. maybe even decrease our deployments both sides if that can be arranged. make sure the rules of engagement are such that you don't have one rule of engagement taking a vessel, that one from the other one, the navy going this way. you know what happens when you have a crash up there or on the water, escalation politics takes in, national pride takes over. how many times have we seen this in history? charlie: other than north korea, there have been a number of instances in the year or two having to do with iran and the united states, having to do with russia and the united states, where there have been sort of challenges. kevin: certainly have seen those in the gulf, and you have seen

it with different air maneuvers, air force maneuvers. charlie: always necessary to have a mistake, one third of the other kills a series of soldiers from the other side. kevin: that is right. and then you have this sorry history that we know from international relations, we are seeing escalation politics, a bunch of other factors playing in, portraying each other's domestic media, etc. the key signs for the time ahead, leaving aside the intrinsic issues or conflicting claims to the south china sea itself, is how do you deescalate in a way which preserves the status quo and minimizes the risk of conflict by accident? charlie: that brings me to north korea. you heard what the president said to the financial times. it was subtle. [laughter] not what i would call

subtle. but it clearly said to three of the financial reporters, i hope to get the chinese cooperate, but we are prepared to go it alone. kevin: you know, charlie, i think, this is the big one for mar-a-lago, and within both capitals, it is the hardest one. it's tough, it's inherently complicated. what do we know? korea nuclearorth weapons program, miniaturized warheads, enough bombs in -- being produced to disarm material from his reactors, so we are getting closer and closer to that technical threshold where, once they have crossed it, they have the capability to either threaten directly south korea, japan, or even guam or even alaska or the west coast of the united states, quite apart

from other allies in east asia as well. charlie: when interests me -- part of it -- the chinese should have probably seen this moment coming, because the president said to me in an interview, president obama, every times -- every time they fail, they learn something and they have been getting closer to where they want to be. china had to know that was coming. there have been small and nuanced, small nuances, but not a lot of effort to figure it out. they have reasons as to why they have certain interests there. they don't want to see south korea take over and become close to their border. they don't want to see refugees pouring in across the border. a lot of other considerations they have, but north korea having a nuclear weapon has been on a fast track. kevin: running down the railway towards us. i agree, but we know from international relations, sometimes things happen out

there which just look too awful, that you would rather run the other way for a while and better something else happened. and one of the dynamics in beijing, given the extraordinary history going back to the korean war is that this has a whole layer of political complexity when you look at it from the lens of the politburo standing committee. these guys used to be our allies. we went and defended them against the american invaders, that is the domestic political narrative. it is tough and complex. the objective truth does not change. the one you had just spoken about in terms of missiles, range, accuracy, enough warheads to constitute a real threat. the key question for mar-a-lago again is, what needs to be done? strategically, there are three courses of action, and almost a matter of logic. one is, you keep doing what you are doing in terms of diplomacy on north korea, which centers on

a series of escalated un security council sanctions, financial sanctions, coal sanctions, etc., in the hope of inducing a change in north korea and behavior. the answer is, including washington is, fail, fail, fail, achieve nothing. that is something that we need to call a spade a spade. that is what has happened here. charlie: it raises the question, can you trust any negotiation with leadership in north korea? kevin: well, you know what the guy we just talked about, ronald reagan, he said? trust and verify. and i think -- he was a great communicator, president reagan. those simple three words sum up the essence of how you do this, and they have been applied to the question of the iranian nuclear deal as you know. so if counter diplomacy is failing, and you don't want to go down the unilateral military option, which is united states

concluding one day, we will just have to act and take this out militarily, then china does not want to see that happen, what is the third? is there a new diplomacy which actually works? to which my answer is, maybe, but for their system, it is really tough getting to that point. the ingredients, you have probably seen it written before. it is often described as the grand bargain. a whole bunch of elements on the table including, on the one hand, getting north koreans to stop current testing. number two, trust and verify, and establish they have destroyed their existing arsenal of missiles and warheads and material. but on the other side of the agenda, what is in it for them? a formal peace treaty with the united states. we have not had one since 1953. it is a tricky armistice at the moment. diplomatic recognition, the u.s.

accepting the neo-legitimacy of north korea, then the security guarantees for the north korean regime, given the basis for their nuclear program is, we think we are going to be attacked one day, and our regime will be overthrown by the americans or somebody. therefore, the nuclear option is the only one for us. is there an agreement between china and the united states which can provide under international treaty law that security guarantee, marshall plan for rebuilding the north? these ingredients come into it. what i know about high-level meetings of the type that these two presidents are about to have with each other in mar-a-lago is the need to little list i have run through is a box of complexities, but if you could get to a point where, based on a good dynamic, president trump and president xi agreed to marry

-- as a matter of principle to look at the possibility of a new diplomatic approach, and then delegate national security advisers to drill down over several months, that would represent some progress. charlie: do the chinese have any interested in what might be called g-2, the idea that these are the two great economies and two strongest countries in the world? kevin: it is funny you say that, because it's kind of like an exercise in mistiming. back in the day of the obama administration, there was flirtation with the idea of a g-2 between united states and china. the chinese did not want to do it because it would offend their position within the bricks, the g-7, e-7, including their relationship with the russians. so it was pushed to one side.

then a few years later, the chinese kind of not interested. -- got interested. then you had president xi talking about what is called a new style or a new type of great power relations, a particular phrase in chinese. by that stage, president obama's administration, having got a lot of reaction from the world, and they said no. so what is the future of this? i think it is limited given the inconsistent interest of the two, but where it could get useful for both countries is just to have this list of, here is the stuff we can work on, the -- it is hard but we could get agreement, which is in our mutual interests like trade, such as avoiding the unilateral option on north korea. while not pretending this becomes a relationship in which you can base the entirety of the global order or the global governance on. charlie: there is so much more

to discuss. i'm looking forward to what happens down there. thank you for coming. pleasure to have you. kevin: temperament will be important. charlie: temperament? kevin: as long as i got 30 seconds more, it is the mood of these meetings which really matters. it places priority on questions of respect and face. sometimes in the west, we think face is something only the chinese pay attention to, but is equally a factor in western politics as well. none of us like to be publicly humiliated. the important thing for both presidents as they approach this meeting is being mutually respectful and mutually inclusive. i am sure president xi would enjoy finding out from president trump, how did you win? and then, maybe president trump would be interested to know how do you handle a party congress in the communist party?

charlie: whether you will go for a third term yourself? kevin: president bush always used to say to me, we all got our politics. you tell me mine, i will tell you yours. there is a bit of wisdom in that as well. charlie: thank you again. kevin: good to be on the program. charlie: back in a moment. stay with us. ♪

♪ charlie: john mayer is here. the seven-time emmy award winner has sold more than 30 million records worldwide. he has shared the stage with bb

great, carlos santana, and eric clapton. clapton called him a master guitar player. he returns with his first album in four years. it is called "the search for everything to her coat i am pleased to have him at the -- "the search for everything." . i am pleased to have him at the table. it is so good that you had to release it in stages. john: i believe in the songs so much i deserved they should be seen without distraction from either the barrier of entry with so many songs all at once, or other music coming in and sort of -- or there being so many songs -- songs that are not that great, a few that are, and the boldest thing i could do is say, i think i did it. take a look at these four at a time, and the response has not only been positive for the work but positive for the format of releasing music that way, so i was not alone. i am one half consumer and one half artist.

i remember getting great records from artists on my spotify or apple, and i go, 12? this is a deep dive. maybe i will just go for the singles right now. i would like to put music out the way myself would hear it. charlie: is it hard to get acceptance for albums and not -- i haveians saying, musicians coming and saying, what has happened to albums is disgraceful. john: i think i have been known traditionally now as an artist, as an album artist, so it has engendered more trust with my audience about making records then maybe other artists have. i am ok being a dinosaur at this time, being a guy who makes records. even then, i have sort of broken up the concept. i want to ultimately have a record, but i think what this was was about making it small enough for people to -- it was just an easier point of entry but ultimately we end up with a

record that has an arc. we think about sequencing. we think about the power of serializing one song before the next and the next. that is what matters. it may not matter now, but it may matter again, and what you want to do is future-proof it so if and when people go back to albums, you never looked frightened. charlie: "the search for everything" is the title. and theyles come to me stop the title searching game. charlie: they come to you? john: they come from me. i did not have many titles in the bingo cage for this one, and when "the search for everything" came up in my mind, it sort of immediately cemented, and i thought, that will be hard to beat. it explained very well, looking back over my career and all of the different things i have done, what this sort of all is. it sums up the music and

curiosity that is where i live. -- i live. charlie: and what is still feel like a man to sum up? john: it sums up musically first, trying to make a pop song that can be on par with anyone else's pop song, but also being in a sneaky way really hyper musical. if you listen to it across the surface of it, you go, that is a nice little groove. if you go into it and figure out the bass and drums and really, very clean, tidy, sharp staccato syncopation's of things, it is curve orrabolic something. it looks like a curve, but it is really a lot of very, very straight lines. you would not imagine that could swing. when i first came up with this riff on the guitar, i thought it was new.

i don't know if it is good or bad -- i am not interested if it is good or bad. it is new. this was my seventh record, and you are looking for ways to still innovate, a little bit like a magician in a warehouse. going like, well you climbed out of the black box, gone underwater, what is the next trick? i thought of being in the same category for blue-eyed soul at the same time, there is the robotic syncopation, then the lyric. it felt to me -- every once in a while as a songwriter, you get a lyric, you feel good about it. the title, you feel like you are a man. then you get frightened someone else has already done it. the thing that follows the great idea is intense fear it has already been settled on. you do a search on spotify or wikipedia, and you -- it is like

a trade mike -- trademark search. not that you cannot write a song with the same title. i don't like to. it comes up open. clear. then we go for it. charlie: you go for something when you have a title and a title of a song and the music, then you will do the lyrics? john: in this case i had -- it is very rare. i get the best results when music and lyrics happen at the same time. they sign up either side of the hill. that is what is really, really good. a lot of time i have music sitting in a bin, and fewer times than most, i have lyrics sitting in a bin. every once in a while, you get the title that has chords and words and sounds gripping out of it. i had that with "daughters," the course, -- chorus, it is a bit of a limerick. when i had that, this is the sort of going to sire an entire song.

>> ♪ darling, baby got nothing at all fathers be good to your daughters doctors will love -- daughters will live like you do girls become lovers who turn into mothers so fathers be good to your daughters too ♪ john: and so i had that feeling, and i looked at that title, and i went, this is almost like found in the couch cushions of r&b history, you find nobody had yet put together, "still feel like your man." it was very provocative and ivanka did. -- evocative. charlie: were you thinking of someone? john: sure. i think of the person i left a relationship with. i think of the last person that i parted ways with.

i processed that very deeply. i get to process that with music, and i was in a relationship that, you know, i don't mean to play coy about not using proper nouns. i like to look out for other islet to look out for other people's mornings when they open up the computer. it is too easy to spawn these other stories, and it creeps into other people's minds. i have to watch disingenuousness. i'm on the alert -- charlie: and on the search for authenticity. john: but i don't want to rattle somebody's cage.

i can't play dumb. but i also don't want to sort of radel somebody's cage on the morning they picked up a story because they love proper nouns. i can't say and i have not done a duet with katy perry. i will not let myself sit there and say, -- it is not a mum word. what is difficult to explain to people is that about his where it ends as a proper noun, and it becomes what everybody feels when they end the relationship. what i do when i come to terms with this, you get to a certain age and say, this is what i do, i write love songs. it is very tricky. i would love to be able to write -- to put the songs out in a complete vacuum where people can think about songs only in their own context, and hopefully if i have done a good job writing, i can. charlie: you said i don't want to leave this earth as a writer. john: i am a writer more than anything else. nothing gives me more joy than writing. if you give me the choice between being in the middle of an incredible blues guitar solo

on stage or writing, i would rather be in the writing trance. the song is very much about processing the loss of somebody. it is difficult, and i think it is part of the package when you are in a relationship with somebody people know very well, i would love the luxury of saying, i don't know who this was, but that would be great. then you can get right into how i felt. but if i do a good enough job as a songwriter, and i think i have on this record, it becomes a footnote. like i said last one on faith, there is a difference between writing a song because of somebody and for somebody. i think people usually revert to the language of, this is written for somebody. like, i don't go to people's doors and ring the bell and say, i wrote this for you. songwriters write because of, but for the world. it is an ad hoc message and for the world.

charlie: has the process changed over the years? john: no. the only reason it has is because i am incapable of letting myself repeat myself. if you could lobotomized me, i would write another 100 killer songs, but because i am writing with the rest of my catalog behind me looking on, it gets harder to find negative space where you have not written. i do two things very quickly. i go, someone else did that, and, i have done that. i would be more prolific if i did not do that. you know? but i am still looking for parking spaces that have not been settled on, and they are harder to find, but it creates more longevity if you can keep looking and looking and looking. every song on this record has another 10 that stops in the middle because i don't want to do that again.

charlie: so you sort of throw it away. john: they don't get finished unless they are good enough. charlie: you are like a painter who will go to bed, put something on canvas, get up in the morning and don't like it. they will just throw it away. john: the good thing about being a songwriter is -- is the painter could take the paint off the canvas and file it away and use that same portion of paint again, which i can, so a song like "love on the weekend" was written three times. it is a completely different song,, but i was in love with cracking the code that is a piece of music i had. it is like a slot machine, and you are just trying to get three sevens, and i really want "love on the weekend" for the title. every time you get a new idea, you through the paint. you can dismantle the painting without having to slash the canvas up, which makes being a

musical artist more flexible. charlie: you have this innate ability beyond just processing. with guitar, did you adapt and earned the praise of people like clapton and others? john: yes, my father was a piano player. still has a piano where he lives, and that was my first introduction to music, a piano. it is an integral instrument. it is a calculator. it looks like -- it is a keyboard. it is an abacus. it is where i would go to show someone how music works. i would not show them on a guitar. it is the very graphic -- charlie: you would show them a piano over a guitar. john: it is the graphical representation -- charlie: how good of piano player are you? john: i am good in the key of c.

guitar, learn a skill here, just move it up. on the piano, it becomes relative to the sharps and flats. you can use a pno and transpose up, but you are still in the key of c. so this goes, bum bum bu, and this goes ding ding ding, and you calculate, and then it sounds like this, a triad. i knew what that was. charlie: but it'ss all self-learned? john: yes, for the most part.

my guitar teacher stopped teaching me how to read music. charlie: that is odd. john: i took off on this other thing. 15 minutes of book, 15 minutes of, you bring a song in, he will teach you how to do a song. i would bring in blues, and he would teach me. the curriculum gathered quickly on this blues, but we were not doing the book. if the player had the book in front -- charlie: where did you think you were going? john: stevie wonder, jimi hendrix, that was my calling. when i was 13 years old, i went, got it. i remember the first night i had a guitar. it was before i had lessons, which i now tell my parents who say, what do i do, i want to give my kids, give them a guitar for a month, let them discover their own nebulous take on things, then fold in the theory. i found the most distant room

for my parents, play in the middle of the night and figured out chords. i will never get looking at -- this is not revisionist history. i went, ok. it was so vertical, it went through everything in my life. this is what i am. ♪

♪ charlie: i want to talk about two things you went through. one of them is obvious, but the effectively touring what is left of the dead. what did you learn from that? a group that is so part of the american culture, certain people? john: for a lot of people, i think they are a lot more accessible than their fans would like -- they are a lot more accessible to people like the barrier to entry. i get that now. it is it is presented in the right sequence, it is phenomenal. i seem to see this sort of fraternal, loving thing that feeds off of people. there is a value to looking at someone and say, you would not understand. if you would like to make her way into it, this is what you are talking about, you really do internalize it, and you find

your way to the top of this mountain where the rest of the people have welcomed the new. i don't necessarily see deadheads working hard to recruit. i think they like the you have to find them. that is the requisite. for me as a solo act, i am just wise enough now to understand what i have, which is being responsible for articulating your own ideas. i don't think that my own ideas are that important from time to time. i take the best 14 and put them on a record, but the idea of repeatedly trying to articulate how i feel when i am not even sure how i feel or did not have an answer for a question someone asked me, over the years, you begin to sort of create the best

persona you can come up with, but it is really not who you are. i got distant and wanting to do any of that. when i joined up with the company, i realized, i don't have to. i don't have to give an answer. i can tell you what it means to me, but i don't have to be the human representation of my own ideas. i understand i can't help you, i can't help you understand me unless i give a new york times interview and the guy says, i talked too much. charlie: the most recent one you did. john: i think i have to be done with this mission statement i give myself that before i sit down, i believe, you will have a map of me. it will never happen. so with dead and company, they are a part of my life, the band is a part of my life, i am a part of their life. the fans are a part of my life. i will part of their life. i am a part of the band.

i play the guitar, bobby weir sings, nicky plays the drums. i am there not as a star. i am there to help that crowd go to that place. when you say what remains of the grateful dead, on a personal level, on a personnel level, that is accurate. i think of the spiritual side of the grateful dead is accessible and will always be accessible if you get those people together, making that noise. charlie: that part of it is with jerry i assume. john: jerry is the most alive dead person that has ever lived and died. i get the sense that they are keeping him alive, they keep him alive. he is just behind the veil. i have never seen -- charlie: they are maintaining the capacity of people to remember. john: and visit the place he

settled with that band. he is a settler, and he set up camp, then he left. but you can still go there. that speaks to how incredible the music is. you can still visit. just takes people, and it is now sort of a little bit of an oral history. it is a musical hand-me-down. and guys like bob weir are expecting it to be that way, looking at me, grooming. this is never going to be over for as long as i live. charlie: you will always be part. john: this is a part of my life. charlie: when you left for four years in montana, where were you going, and what was the point? john: it was a bit of a reductionist saying. it is not your fold for putting it in those words.

charlie: you put in those words. john: "born and raised" -- 2010, i go, i am at the end of this idea, popstar, flat iron hair, this is not working. i don't have a dream. charlie: not working or you are tired of? john: nobody dreams past their third record. you are not dreaming about your fourth record. you don't say, i don't have a plan for this, you don't have had to ask anyone, or say, i should take a break. people go, he is a mastermind, he dropped into the top of the mountain, he knows what he is doing. so in a tidy fashion, i came to the end of an old idea. charlie: didn't know where to go. john: didn't know where to go. charlie: or did not want to go where you were going. john: i just didn't know where to go. i like organization. and you can have organization in the first record. you can state your case, and the world can understand it. you start throwing other things in it, personal life, the misrepresentation of who you are as a person.

if you are smart, you look at the misrepresentation, and it is your job to sort out. i wish i had known it was not, but you want to get engaged. i am a people pleaser. if you told me one of the people in here did not like me, i would get up and start shouting for who it was. charlie: it is like the one person who does not approve of them, you can see 99 people who love them, but they don't go to them. they want to go to one who doesn't so they can figure it out. john: there is no possible way we could be -- we mean well. there is nothing more dangerous than being a person who means well. charlie: help me understand. the time you took a break -- john: i did not take a break. charlie: what did you do? john: i want to make a completely different record, so

i make "born and raised." i am in new york city, completely alone, but i did not move to montana until 2011. i move to montana where i want to move anyway, then i had a focal situation that prohibited me from singing on tour, and i made another record because i just want to make records. that is what i do. i love it. guys like stephen king have a short one or a big one. george clooney is who everyone should aspire to be in their career, make a big one, make a black and white one. this was to be black and white. it sort of gets flattened and reduced so people can sort of -- charlie: what is the picture that people have drawn that is not true? john: for me? "womanizer" bothers me. that has always bothered me. if you look into the times where

it sort of went dim for me, and my mouth cap going and my brain wasn't there, i didn't -- i have been me my whole life. i have watched me. you do the right thing, give yourself a pat on the back. you get the sense that if you do the right thing, you are going to be known as the person who does the right thing. but there is nothing like the hollywood machine getting your information wrong, and i get a lot of information. i would be better if i had short answers. it is less tnt to wire up. so when they get it wrong because i am putting out so much information, this idea of womanizer comes up. i'm bristling at it. it is a complete distortion of who i am and breathe this idea that, you have got this so wrong, then i will be as wrong as you think i am. i don't know where that came from. charlie: you said you would be this? john: if you say i am this, i will subvert this.

i will parody this. charlie: you are influenced by what people say about you, and you will make a parody, or i will go to some extreme of what you are saying just to say -- john: the intent is to say, oh, he is not that. he is playing off this, but that is asking a lot of peoples attention span to be able to notice it. the best example, and you have heard this before, if you have paparazzi on the way to the restaurant, and you are sitting with someone not indoctrinated in this world, you should say, take a picture of them. go outside and take a picture. it is the first idea when you feel captured when you fight back. so you have this idea of, you can't contain me. i will over intellectualize what you are doing. we are talking about hyper extending myself beyond what should be taking place, because

all i want to do is get back to where it is clean. here is where i am, what i do, i promise i am not this, i promise i mean well. charlie: and then wanting to characterize you as a womanizer is simply because -- john: there was a time when i was sort of moving -- it is hard to explain. it is hard to explain because i am still unpacking it in my own room. it is just a situation where you fall into -- i dated a lot of big names. that is the big deal. i think people get the size of the name mixed up with the number of people that i have been with. charlie: so date a few big names, looks like you are out there with a lot of women. john: i can't blame anyone for

thinking that way. people do not google search. people do not think about me all day. people take a glance at you, and that is the take away. charlie: they will not say, let's see what john did today. john: they are not completists. they see the spikes. and the music did not entitle me to this kind of press that i was generating or being involved in with other names. just bigger google searches. so i start going, i am not that, i am not that, i am not that. there was a correction that needed to happen, a market correction, but what sent me into a tailspin and hurt me -- and i never said hurt me, because i would not admit to it -- the best thing i can do is to say ouch. for someone that tries to

mastermind their way out, ouch, because ouch will lead you to the truth. charlie: because ouch is better than it hurts me? john: i would not admit to it. i would just become militaristic about, you can't -- when you yell the loudest, that is the second before they are about to crumble. that is where i was, you cannot get me. charlie: how long ago was that? john: seven years ago. charlie: of the day? john: i have a really good handle. charlie: past all of that stuff? john: people that are not john mayer completists, they may take a second to review. you may have to go over it again

with people. expecting everyone is on your mark every time you wake up -- charlie: did you do some of that in this album? john: not really. it was in "born and raised" a lot. i got a deeper thing. this was a different dive. this was into things a certain age, and there is a loss in relationship. there is always one relationship loss that takes you with it. it is not just somebody -- you are not just parting ways with somebody. there is always one that takes you down. charlie: you lose somebody. john: i lost somebody. this is this idea of being as beautiful as you can be. let whoever of the intelligensia rock.

i will be as beautiful as i can be about being sad. i was listening to the emoji of a wave, that is what this feels like. as an artist, musician, you don't normally get it all the time. come close. say, we will get it next time. 80% of how that feels. there are songs i listened to on the record that say, i did it. i am good enough musician now to translate 100% how something felt, and that is a possession as an artist that is more valuable than anything you can have. charlie: and what artists can do is express how they felt but say it in a way so that all of the fans -- john: if you do it in a way -- charlie: that is where it goes. john: people say i am looking into a mirror. you said something i was going through, this exact time in my life. charlie: it has been a real pleasure to have you here. thank you for joining us, see you next time. ♪

>> i'm alisa parenti, and you are watching "bloomberg technology." u.s. ambassador to the u.n. nikki haley says if the world body won't act on syria, the u.s. will. she spoke today. her comments came as the investigation into the attack continues and world leaders grapple for a response. president trump today condemned the chemical weapons attack calling it, quote "an affront to humanity." president trump: i will tell you that it's already happened, that my attitude toward syria and assad has changed very much. if you look back over the last few weeks, there were other attacks using gas.