welcome to the program. we begin tonight with politics and we talk to mike allen, the co-founder of axios. >> i can tell you they started reporting privately. the bush family was very much against a trump presidency and it was based largely on trade. it was based largely on issues. now it's personal. >> we continue with a with a look at the 19th communist party we talked with professor graham allison. >> many western watchers have said china has got to become more like us. it's got to become more democratic. it's a market economy and it now is about 70% of market economy but it's a different kind of market economy it's a state-led market economy. he's actually moved recently to say we need to have a party member on the board of all these

companies like alibaba because we need to make sure they're in line with the party. so the party in his version of political reform is restoring the party as the vanguard for the society in every realm. so not the demonstrate awkization we would imagine. >> we conclude with zac brown, the front man of the zac brown band. >> he was alive ♪ i was defiant ♪ when he made me walk the line. >> mike allen, graham allison and zac brown when we continue. >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by the following:

>> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> we begin with politics and we are join by mike allen co-founder of, yes and editor of the axios am newsletter. great to see you. >> great to be at your table, charlie. >> rose: great to see you in new york. let me begin with general kelly. i thought that was a very very emotional moment. >> not just externally, we're hearing inside a huge impact on the staff. one of the insiders at the white house saying that general kelly is looking like the moral core of trump white house. people watching his surprise

appearance in the white house briefing room to say that discussions about conversations between families of the fallen and the president should be sacred. and of course general kelly talking from very harsh personal experience lost a son. the greatest man that he knew, general kelly said, lost a son in combat. so he's experienced this and charlie viewers in the most clinical term walking through what happens when soldier's lost. how is he brought back, how is the family known. i think he was trying to shock both the public and the press into saying this is not a normal like punching bag partisan sport. this is something that causes tremendous pain. >> not politics. >> who started it. it was the president of the united states who brought up the idea that perhaps general kelly when he lost his son had not

been called by president obama and of course everybody goes to the press office and says so was general kelly called when he lost his son and the press office said on background that he was not. so this is where the conversation began. but charlie, i got e-mails from my readers at axios am who said this is an unbelievably painful topic. i think it's a little bit what general kelly was speaking to. we don't care who started it. this is causing tremendous pain. but general kelly too took criticism on-line. he too did not acknowledge the fact that this had started in literally his house. >> rose: so the implications are what? >> implications are like charlie i have said how many times have we had this conversation nine months to the day, nine months to the day that president trump took office. i keep telling you there's going to be a fight that he is going to regret picking and i'm on

every single time. the last time i thought that picking on the female mayor of san juan puerto rico when her island had been wiped out. he's tripled down on that and as you is he saw yesterday the president said as to grade, the administration's response to puerto rico where 80% of the people remain without power one month on, you saw the president give himself a ten twice. so he gave himself a 20. doesn't regret that. this fight over the families of the fallen soldiers, the gold star families, general kelly among the hats he wears a fermenter four star marine general, now chief of staff, a gold star father. in the long run they may regret picking that fight. it's too personal and i think even for people who follow politics in the most casual way

they stay off. >> rose: they pick the fight or the woman raised the question, the congress woman picked the fight. >> that's a fair point. the congress woman who questioned -- >> rose: she said she was listening in. >> let's not dispute it, she was in the car. >> rose: also i thought drew the anger of general kelly. >> completely fair. >> rose: she shouldn't been listening in. >> if i look at the conversation on-line and the e-mails and text i get that's true a lot of people do think that. >> rose: secondly, there is this question, yesterday president bush made a speech. he talked not specific policies but attacking a sense of truth and what they thought was just to tell you what the president said, president bush basically

said -- >> he said bigotry and golden. >> rose: golden bigotry, discourse degraded by casual cruelty. this sets a national tone and provides permission for cruel tree and bigotry. he didn't mention trump by name. >> he didn't have to. it's completely obvious to everyone who he was talking to. the bush's whatever they said publicly i can tell you, they started reporting privately, the bush familiar here was very much against a trump presidency. and it was based largely on trade. it was based largely on issues. now it's personal. and now president bush paid a big price in 2000. you'll remember it's hard not to remember in 2000, remember he talked about a different kind of republican. he talked about republicans who would be compassionate conservativism. he paid a price for that in republican politics back in 2000. but now we're seeing that's where his heart is.

>> rose: in fact his father in 1988 talked about a kinder gentler america which was a reflection. here's what's interesting to me. is it possible that we're moving towards some kind of real national dialogue about where we are in terms of what's happening in the political dialogue in this country? at some point we'll be coming together so you have a perfect story. >> i agree with you that all the markers are there. all the hinges and triggers are there. but a dialogue has to have both sides and there's no sign that the president is going to engage in this. if he were going to he would have played his cards differently from the beginning. imagine after the president won election he was strong. he had surprised people and he had won big electoral victory, lost the popular vote of course.

but when the president was most politically strong after he won right after he was inaugurated and before he did the travel ban. imagine if he had gone and visited a mosque. imagine if he had gone to a bar. imagine if he decided to have this sort of dialogue but there's no sign that in the political math that this president is doing, that that's what he's looking for. >> rose: you got steve bannon out there encouraging primaries in which republican establishment will be challenged. you've got paul ryan saying today to me again, that identity politics has gone way too far number one. he also says that he thinks that the president may be overweighing who is in his, who is in his base. that he thinks that the president may be think that the basis for the right than they actually are. >> fascinating. he may think it's bigger than it is. like the calculus of this white house is that in these times and

karl rove said this in 2004 when he was running the reselection of president bush, at this time you don't need 50%. you just need your voters. it's the 38%, yes. it's not 28% and that's the danger for this president. that's why he moved so fast for the high flying cabinet members. he said he was going to drain the swamp. that's the kind of thing that could soak in with the trump voters. the feedback i'm getting from trump voters today is they're not shaken by this. they do not see a tipping point in this national conversation. like the most clinical people charlie will say to you and these are some of my friends who voted for president trump, they say we didn't vote for president trump for moral leadership. they said anybody who thinks that we voted for president trump for moral leadership

misunderstands the election. they voted for him for much more clinical reasons because they thought he would help the economy and it wasn't clinton and all these other words. could we have this disthat the low expectations for president trump individual a certain insulation from him against the kind of national conversation that you and i see brewing. >> rose: what percentage do you think the far right, far right and i even include white supremacists in that. what percentage are they of the trump constituency? >> it's more than we thought. >> rose: oh really? >> and i thought -- >> rose: more than 10, 15% do you think. >> i'm not going to put a number on it because i just don't know. i can tell you that i missed, the night before the charlottesville rally, like i missed the importance of that because there have been fringes in the south.

like you and i have covered it for a north decade. i went to school in western virginia so like we know that fringe. what we saw after charlottesville that fringe is probably less than it's portrayed but more than we thought. it's a sizeable enough part of the trump coalition that for whatever reason, he will not walk away from it. >> rose: interesting thing about david brooks' piece and david's been writing some sense where these times call for you to take a stand with respect to the current political discourse and some sense where the country is going. and some sense of the disengagement from the liberal order. i don't mean that in terms of the liberal right left frame but in terms of the west and after the war. the united states sort of leading the coalition of nations to help other nations in terms of the marshall plan and that whole thing and building these international organizations like the united nations, like trade organizations like nato all of these other organizations that

came forward there's some sense does the united states believe in those institutions does it work to support them or is it turning it back and will people be judged not only about the wrongness of the political debate but also in terms of where the country may have made a turn away from its traditional leadership role in the world. >> that's where you get people seeing only half in just the german chancellor angela merkel is the leader of the free world she's of course engaged in these institutions. just this week you see president xi of china who the "wall street journal" called him the most powerful leader since mao who is wanting. >> rose: economists calling him the most powerful person in the world. >> that's right. more so than the president. >> rose: china says we want to lead. we realize what we have done, we want to lead. we don't want to be the only

leader but we want to lead and we want to play a role not just in the pacific region but in the world. >> of course that's a wolf in sheep's clothing but it's appealing to many like potential allies, former allies and that's why president xi is strong and engaging in the south china sea and other places like you don't want in any way sugar coat what china is doing. i think it's very possibly the u.s. eventually will be headed toward a confrontation. >> rose: thank you so much. >> happy weekend, charlie. >> rose: china's 19th communist party congress began this week. it is president xi jinping first time which marks the end of his first five year term. in his opening speech he called for a national rejew nation and declared a new erika. essex pecked to solidify his

leadership. his name and political theory will be foremanly inscribed in the party constitution next week. his inclusion elevates him to the form leaders. joining me now is graham allison a professor at the harvard kennedy school. his latest article in the "wall street journal" is called behold the new emperor of china. i'm glad to have him here. it's good to welcome him, he's been looking closely at this 19th party congress. everybody believed it's very very important so i began with that. why is it so important. >> i think we're together to see defining moment in which either xi turns out to be more or less like the leaders that went before him, tao, a party man who is part of a collective leadership that's theory one. or three two he's crowned in effect as the emperor with no time limit. not only for second five year

term but without any obstacle to a third term. if the latter, we will see that he's consolidated his power to an extent that i think we're going to see a surge of initiatives both at home especially the economic reform area and also in tough thing the authoritarian structure which he's done and abroad as he tries to stand up more. if the first, actually he has to settle for just being more of the same. i think we'll filed a china that's a little, you know, more cautious. >> rose: we have seen someone who accumulated power. he's more power in his five years than tao when he left being president. >> absolutely. everybody would agree that he's transformed the collective leadership in a manner that nobody anticipated so than he's almost in control of things now but he's been consciously moving

the pieces and he's had this any corruption inquisition in effect run by his best body. which basically instilled fear in everybody and taken down even members of the standing committee. >> rose: he's taken down people who might be opponents for him. >> absolutely. >> rose: were they guilty of corruption. >> well i think if you said, since ping should be richest floor just been almost everybody who had power is rich in china. if you said who could we get for corruption i think is virtually everybody. >> rose: he has certainly accumulated more power. >> right. >> rose: there is a two teller limit right now. >> right now. >> rose: he could change that. >> it's a custom. it's not really written in law but there's a limit, two term limit that's plus there's a 68 year old retirement policy. so we will see in choice of to

either keep his buddy who runs the anti-corruption campaign who is now 69, he'll either keep him on the standing committee and erode the custom to retire at 68 or he will have an opportunity. secondly in general the custom at this point, he awe noints s possible successor. he's not going to pick anybody i believe there's not going to be a visible punitive successor. >> rose: how much opposition is there to him and is it in certain institutions like the military or some political leader. who is his competition. >> his two predecessors who actually appeared at this party congress at the meeting. they're sitting there.

each of them represent factions and they have members of their faction that are part of the current standing committee that are in a collective leadership of pushing back. because it wasn't by accident that the group that the communist party leadership shows collective leadership. all these people live through mao. having a single leader who turns out to be a madman, caused deaths in each of these people's family. so this is really personal for all of them. that's why they were so careful in instructing collective leadership and why many of them have been so unappeary that he's undone the collective leadership to have one man rule. now many chinese will say even in public he's not even the ceo he's the coe, the chief of everything. so he's trying to take and pretty effectively but because in taking other people down for corruption and since in principal everybody could be

had, everybody's pretty nervous. and so normally in a kind of palace politics, groups would sort of go against him. initially many chinese experts thought they would go after them and get rid of him. >> rose: xi jinping's thought on chinese on socialism with chinese characteristics. >> right. >> rose: that's his political philosophy for the country and for himself. >> that's a very important thing. you picked up on exactly the right thing. so there's only the only person who in the litany of the china and its communist parties have the thought of is mao. remember the red book. that's the thoughts of mao.

even for ping -- >> rose: made modern china. >> that's right. he wasn't going to call himself the thoughts he said i've got the theory. after that, no president of china was prepared to put his name on anything. they got the ideas but they know what's wrong. so in saying i'm putting out officially the thoughts of xi jinping, he's elevated to the level of mao. that's a very big sign. the idea of socialism in chinese characteristics is also fascinating. his first idea he's articulated is the china dream. it's a china restored to its natural place at the center of the universe. the sun around which all the other countries of ashu in the first instance orbit. >> rose: is it -- >> in that story china is going to be bigger, stronger, richer so by 2021 their first

centennial founding of the communist party will be at the low of the lowest european and the second centennial they're going to be richer than the americans. >> rose: are you talking about per capita. >> yes. per capita both for 2021 and an the u.s., yes.ger in total >> rose: in macro economics. >> yes. >> rose: right, right. so when you look at political reform he's basically saying don't expect us to. >> he's got his form of political reform but it's not the one you and i would like. western watchers have said china has got to become more like us. it's got to become more democratic but it becomes a market economy and is now about 70% a market economy but it's a different kind of market economy. it's a state-led market economy. he's actually moved recently to say we need to have a party member on the board of all these companies like alibaba and

continueson and wildlife buzz we need to make sure they are in line with the party. the party in his version of political reform it's restoring the party as a vanguard for a society in every realm. not the democratization. >> rose: right now it's the party rules. >> if you look at the three and-a-half hour speech on 20 different occasions he says the party leads the society. the next one the party leads the country. the next one the party leads the economy. the party leads the military. the most important one is to revitalize and relegitimize the party which has been corrupted and so the anti-corruption campaign is trying to make out a

legitimacy for this 70% that want to rule everybody else. why should you allow either rule this when i'm a member of the party when you're richer than i am. mpany or you're a military guyh or otherwise. you're trying to legitimize the party and that's a pretty far stretch. >> rose: when you look at populous support beyond the party, does he have a lot of populous support in china. >> he does and it's a fascinating thing. lots of company try to do polls that give you a pretty good indicator. can't do free polling the way you do here but it's right good out 80% of the people think he's doing great. what do they think? they think we're doing so much better in the economy than our competitors. if you're delivering the goods to me it's slowed to 6.8%. my god we're strag ling for 2%. if someone came along and said

that -- >> rose: that's primarily because of the rising middle class. >> yes. 300 million people have become middle class. they've got this fantastic consuming middle class. secondly you've got people being proud to be chinese. china we're standing up, we playing a bigger role. so i would say so far. and the anti-corruption campaign has been extremely popular because many people have been ex exploited by this corruption. >> rose: how about internationally where does he want china to be. he praised what china had done in the south china sea. we're going to continue to do that. does china want to play a more increasingly aggressive and significant role globally? >> i would say that's a great question. and i would give the answer which i agree with by the world's best china watcher until he died two years ago who you

had frequently on your show founder and builder of singapore. so i asked him, are china's leaders like xi and his buddies series about displacing the u.s. in the foreseeable future as the predominant power in asia. that seemed like a fair question. and he said of course. why not. who could imagine otherwise. how could they not aspire to be number one in asia and in time the world. >> rose: there's also the question where china is with the united states. how do they define the relationship today with the united states. >> they would say seriously competitive. they try to dress it up a little bit. but when they wake up in the morning and i described this in my book actually because i got from two extremely good sources very close to the horse's mouth of people that watch china carefully. when they da scribe to themselves what they think the u.s. is doing to them. they think the u.s. is trying to

contain them, try to restrain their growth and their natural resumption of the great rejuvenation of the natural strong predominant china in the region. >> rose: are we trying to do that? >> well, i would say maybe in half hearted way. i say to my chinese friends wait a minute, if we were seriously trying to do that, let me tell you a dozen things we would be doing. so you must either think we're feckless, we have an objective but we're so feckless doing the thing we're doing or that doesn't make sense to me. i don't believe that's what we're trying to do. i think we're more confused what we've been trying to do. we've been trying to integrate them into the international system in the hope if they are integrated and over time they become more democratic and when they are more democratic they would be more rule based and be a more responsible stakeholder. that's our story but that story looks shaky. >> rose: what do you say to

secretary tillerson where the u.s. china relationship has gotten out of whack and china went too far in the south china sea and we should be paying more attention to india. india has more population than china. india has a democracy and india has the capacity to become everybody's powerful -- >> when we talked the last time i was with you, the argument in my book is that with the rising power and graduately the ruling power we're going to be through a period of deep structural stress for a whole generation. the question of how we're going to manage it is the question we should be focused on now and for that i believe if we just keep doing what we've recently been doing it's going to turn out quite badly. i would say business as usual would likely produce history as usual and is war, actually war between the u.s. and china. i can imagine that happening. i can imagine actually god for

bid kim jun-un with the u.s. and nobody wants a war with china. >> rose: nobody wants a war with north korea and they tonight want them to have nuclear weapons. nor have they done a lot to stop them. >> nor have we stopped down with them. this is what we've talked about before. my view i'm a hundred percent subscribing to, if you would imagine, adult would sit down one or two americans with one or two chinese the way henry and joe sat down when you were doing the opening to china and talk about what do you really care about and what do i care b it's a huge convergence of interest. if you were going to build on those convergence of interest to find something to do in the north korean opinions law is something we don't like. we have to talk about the regis specially on the opinions law.

so they say and they're prepared to fight about the fact they're not going to have a unified korea that's a military alignment. we did that in 1950 and we beat you back to the 38th parallel. we say we're not abandoning south korea. it's a poster child. it's a democracy it's the 13th largest economy in the world. it's a success. so we're not abandoning south cree. what could we do deny the two of us. there's some space there if we were examining, henry said this, we never had people sitting down seriously talking about this subject at length with flexibility with the chinese. >> rose: i find that stunning. >> it's dumb founding. for sure it didn't happen in the obama administration and for sure it didn't happen in the --

>> rose: none of those, carl flemming and those people. >> basically you have to have somebody whom the president trusts personally and somebody with the chinese president. and they have to go without constraints. to explore options -- >> rose: i guarantee you that barack obama said i had that conversation with xi jinping and in california and other places. i guarantee you they had that conversation. >> i may say they began a bit of that conversation but my stone view i think from both american and the chinese side. if you go back to look at now the transcript of the henry conversation. to start off, the chinese were insistent that we were going to

have to somehow shift our focus when we thought of china from taiwan which we recognized which we had a military alliance with bay julia -- beijing and sell our life down the river. lo and behold we did come to recognize beijing as the capital of china even though beijing and taiwan are prepared to say there's only one china they disagree who it was. that's a bit of artful diplomacy. exploring that degree of flexibility for people who objected to that policy would call accommodations. >> rose: are you saying since the nixon administration, henry kissinger, that george bush 41 and jim bakker and chris never had that kind of conversation.

are you saying talking about bill clinton and ping and brezezinski. >> at that time we were not. the nuclear issue became a big issue in the clinton administration. we were not talking to china about korea hardly at all. tillerson, there's a few sides mentioning it today. i don't know if his relationship with trump is that secure and he would be loosed for such a discussion. the meetings that he has are like meetings where you sit with somebody for 45 minutes and i've got my talking points and you got your talking points. it's a quite different thing. but if you go back to kissinger, they sat 18 hours in the first

thing. just talking. so let me get you to help you understand on you you're seeing this situation. let me tell you how i'm seeing nald trump trump and xid jinping spent in florida. >> trump went down and gave an amazing interview to the "wall street journal." he told xi jinping said you can solve the korean problem. and he told me it's complicated. and i said why is it complicated. let me tell you and he told you there's a story between china and north korea. so trump is not a careful student of history. >> rose: what do you think about this. i recently talked with kissinger about this in a group of people. we talked about the idea of the trump visit. trauma is going when to china. >> first week of november. >> rose: this is that xi jinping -- >> he's already going to be emperor. >> rose: here donald trump

going to beijing but he's stopping places along the way. what should he be asking. >> i think he should say to xi there's a very real prospect this bastard is going to drag the two of us into a war that neither of us want and both know would be catastrophic but we should remember north korea only did this once before in 1950. in 1950 mao did not want a war with the u.s. the last thinged in world he want was to fight superman. this is five years after world war ii. >> rose: there have been no china. >> the u.s. did not want to fight china. low and behold we got dragged into this war and most of the american killed in that war were killed by chinese and most of the chinese killed in that were were killed by americans.

so this has happened. look and see what this guy is doing. he is going to continue testing icbms and he's going to be threatening to us and provocative and one day the two of us are going to find ourselves somewhere we don't want to go. so here's what i say d i'm going to give you two people and you give me two people. they go off for two days all by themselves and tell them no constraints. they come back and say anything. they can say i have to leave korea completely. they can say you have to take over the whole place. they can say you have to take over north korea and take responsibility for it whatever. i'm perfectly prepared to listen to anything. so go off and find two or three ways that would be lousy that i'm going to hate but it would be better than the alternative. >> rose: great to see you. graham allison. zac brown is here he's best known as the front man of the zac brown band. "new york times" called the three time grammy award winning

group country music's favorite bar band. their six studio album makes a return to what made them one of the best selling acts in country music. it is caldwell come home. rolling stones says the album is steeped understanding that made brown famous. here is zac brown performing the single my old man right here in our studio. ♪ he was a giant. i was just a kid. ♪ doing everything he did. i can still remember him and the lesson he taught me ♪ growing up and learning how to be♪ like

my old man. ♪ he was defiant. when he made me walk the line. ♪ my old man ♪ with callous on his hands and dusty overall.

♪ my old man. now i finally understand, i have a lot to learn from my old man. ♪ now i'm a giant. i've got a son of my own ♪ he's always trying to go everywhere i go. do the best i can to raise him up the right way ♪ some day wants to be like his old man.

♪ my old man. i know one day we'll meet again. as he's looking down ♪ my old man. i hope he's proud of who i am. i'm trying to fill the boots of my old man ♪

>> rose: i'm pleased to have zac brown at this table for the first time. welcome. >> thank you, sir. >> rose: you have a understanding of how a country music song works. is it formula or what. >> i think it's just capturing a real emotion. if you could take something and really makes you, to me great art whether it's music or painting or whatever it is, if it really makes you feel something then it's working. >> rose: how do you go about writing a song for you. what are you looking for to unlock that kind of emotional charge. >> sometimes ideas will hit like just in passing, you know. would you like see something or hear somebody say something and it will kind of ring a bell. you'll hear something that you know that you're going to believe in for a long time and then that's where you're writing

a song about. we did that on this new album, welcome home. this was the most personal album that we've written and we set it out to be that way about our family and about our lives and kind of the ups and downs. >> rose: which of these songs do you think will surprise people the most coming from you. >> we, the cover song we did on there is an old john prine song. all the records we write every one but one to honor somebody. >> rose: another song by another artist. >> that's right. >> rose: you pick it and try to give it a new -- >> that's right a new life and new breath. a song we think people should be. >> rose: what do you want for a career and life in music.

>> for me it's really dedicating your life to the music. where you just wake up one day and decide i want to go be a music or i want to figure out some way to make myself famous on the internet. this is life long. i love music, i can make a music since i could talk and sing. >> rose: how long have you known since you've want to be a musician. >> way back then. i was annoying all my siblings and everyone else. i remember summer camp i got the put the guitar down award. i carry my guitar every day to school with me. it always felt like home base wherever i was, if i had my guitar then, you know, i was entertained. >> rose: what is your camp ground. >> my camp experience as a kid helped me lot, transformed me in a lot of ways. we're building a sleep away facility for kids. sleep 300 kids every week for nine weeks during the summertime. different with different

abilities. kids who never been in the woods before or kids that have a dison order. mainstream kids that have a poverty of spirit. they may go to a wealthy school and come home and play video games and they don't know how good they have it. you put them on an equal playing field and teach them a different way to be. it comes from something outside a normal authority figure. you can really transform a kid and give them a new way to be or a new goal. some of kids might go back to an underprivileged kind of area. they're aware they can break a cycle maybe that might be around them. >> rose: are you evolving in a particular way in terms of what you want to say through the music. is it the same today essentially as it was say ten years ago. >> no. you know, i tended to be pretty free with how we do it. the last album before this one, it was a study in the range of

the band. we did songs that ended up on the seriously sinatra channel. we did like swing tune and did a rock tune ended all number one on the rock chart. we had three songs go number one on the country chart. and everything in between from reggae to all of my band mates are very diverse and very studied in different things. >> rose: what's the common element of all that whether it's reggae or whether it's sinatra or whether it's pop music sung by -- >> it's either good or it's not. it either makes you feel something or it doesn't. >> rose: is it talent you're born with or is it talent you are learn. >> i think it's a little bit of both. i think you're either born to really love something enough to sit behind closed doors for 20,000 hours and practice it. you're either born with the passion and the love to do it but you're not just born able to come out and shred up a guitar. you're not born with that. something drove you to love or motivated you to spend the time

doing it. so the word talent can be a little misused sometimes like wow this guise -- guy's really talented. what i think people are born with, they're either born with hustle or they're not and i've learned that working with other artists who have the talent and ability but they don't have the hustle. they're not willing to grind and spend the type doing it. and like you're talking about, if they're doing something they really love and the first person comes along and says you can't do that and they believe them, that's it. for some people the first time they're courageous and put themselves on a fence and open up their chest to someone, then they're met with that kind. you've got to be stubborn enough to know what does it for you. >> rose: does anybody ever tell you or was your route different in the sense that early on somebody said you're really good at this. >> yes. you definitely have some people who believe in you and recognize and say do you know what, you're

really good at this i hope you can do it. it helps you get through the times when people say you're not going to go do this, you need a plan b, go get a degree because if you fail what you're trying to do for something to fall back on. for me it's a waste of energy because i'm putting my energy into a way to work. i don't believe in a plan b although i created a lot of stuff i want to do aside from playing music. i definitely think you got to just be stubborn enough and hold fast to the things you love to do. >> rose: tell me about this picture. >> that was taken in nashville. one of the nice we were working in the studio diego the director of my film company took that picture and he's unbelievable. i found him on youtube. i found a video he made a youtube and was one of the most beautiful things i've ever seen. >> rose: my old man, where did that come from.

>> so, the leader of the band was one of my all time fate songs and that was my song for my bad. >> rose: leader of the band. >> leader of the band. i wanted to write a song worthy to sing to my dad and i tried a bunch of times. never hit it on the hid. it was never good enough. >> rose: for you. >> for me to sing to my dad. so i also inherited some parents along the way. my friend's parents who took me in and i've always been kind of a pin ball i've been living on my own since i could drive, since i was 16. >> rose: on your own meaning supporting yourself. >> meaning i had some help financially but i was living without any adult supervision from the time i turned 16. so the parents of my friends took me in. one of those was a man need rodney shelton and i gave him the nickname a long time ago old man. he passed away a couple years

ago. he had a back surgery that went back. he thought me a lot with knives and my hands and doing things. he was the over all's line in there was for him. when he passed away, that's when that song came to be. >> rose: hi death inspired you to write the song. >> he did but it's the song i've been waiting that's good enough to sing to my dad and it's for the dad that stepped in when they didn't have to do that. hopefully people will want to call their dad and connect with them after they hear it. that's the goal. it's definitely an emotional song. >> rose: i'll tell you an interesting story that happened to me. someone asked me who would i most like to interview and without thinking i thought instinctively my father. that's the one person i want to interview. for a month after that men of all ages would come over to me

and they would say what you said about your dad is exactly the way i feel about my dad. if i could have one more conversation, it would be with my dad. >> sure. now that i'm a dad it's written from that spur speculative too. my son's three years old and that's a full circle thing hoping that he wants to be like me like i want to be like my dad can. >> rose: we all want to please our dad too. you said this is a return to kind of minimalism for you. >> it is. >> rose: back to the basics. >> the last record was a great venture and all the thing we can do. this one we did commercially called the foundation. it was written intlierly all these songs were drafted for this album written to be margin and to kind of get back to that album for this project. >> rose: james taylor an inspiration for you. >> big time. when i was six grade seventh grade my mom had me listening to

james failure and light foot and great guitar players and great here sists. the james taylor greatest hits i played two of them until they snapped. i listened to them back in 7th grade. nirvana was out then but i was listening to this and some people said i was list anything to rocking chair music but it spoke to me. and james taylor is one of my top three all time. >> rose: this album zac brown band welcome home. it's great to have you here. >> thank you, sir. >> rose: keep it up, keep it up. ♪ i've seen northern lights paint the sky in shades of

green. ♪ ♪ my heart knows its way back home when the win sings that old familiar song. i've been all around the world, seen things that no one would believe, thought i was looking at a picture, some fancy magazine ♪ everywhere i've been, it kills me every time if a man could devise i could be in two places at one time ♪ two places at one time.

i've seen ♪ i've seen the morning a million times. ♪ and the santa rosa rains. my heart knows the way back home. when the wind sings that old familiar song ♪ i've been all around the world seen things no one would believe thought i was living in a movie on that giant silver screen. ♪ everywhere i've been, it kills me every time, maybe i'd

be satisfied if i could be two places at one time. two places at one time ♪ how can i keep what i got when i don't know what i'm missing. ♪ needing islands when i'm home, miss my family when i'm gone and i'm gone, i'm gone gone ♪ i've been all around this world, did things that no one would believe. never thought i would move so many people that gave this life to me ♪ everywhere i've been, how it kills me every time, if a

man could just maybe i would be satisfied, if i could be two places at one time. ♪ >> rose: for more about this program and early episodes visit us on-line at pbs.org and charlierose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh

access.wgbh.org >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. >> you're watching pbs.

hello and welcome to "kqed newsroom." i'm thuy vu. coming up on our program, in the wake of the devastating california wildfires, another hazard remains, toxic chemicals left lingering in the ash and debris. we look at the threats they pose to residents and the environment. plus artisan filmmaker ai weiwei on his new film, human flow. ai tackles the global refugee crisis and who he thinks is responsible for solving it. but first hollywood has been forced to take a hard look at itself as news of harvey weinstein's sexual misconduct spiraled into a scandal. virtually overnight women in hollywood and else where have gone on social media to share their stories of sexual harassment and abuse using the #me too. this week women in california politics joins the fray,