>> rose: welcome to the program. we begin by looking at the upcoming summit on thursday and friday between the president of china and the president of the united states. we talked to the former prime minister of australia kevin rudd. >> the chinese at the end of the day are realists. i mean, they stopped trying to export revolution back just after the cultural revolution in the late '70s. that was the end of that. so when they observed western politics at play, particularly in this country, which is the most powerful country in the world, the united states, anyone who wins a presidential election, from their point of view, is someone to be respected. secondly, when you've come from totally outside the mainstream, like president trump has, including outside the mainstream of the republican party, they are, i think, more respectful

and certainly fascinated as to how did he pull this off. >> rose: we conclude with john mayer. his new album is called "the search for everyting: wave one." >> i'm still looking for the parking spaces that a haven't been settled on and they're harder to find, but i think it creates more longevity if you can keep looking and looking and looking. so every song on this record has another ten that stopped somewhere in the middle because they went up, or i don't want to do that again. >> rose: kevin rudd and john mayer coming up. >> 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. >> rose: president trump will meet with chinese president xi jinping at trump's mar-a-lago resort this thursday and friday. it is the first meeting between the two world leaders and is seen as an important step in u.s.-china relations. they're expected to address such issues as north korea, global trade, the one china policy and climate change. joining me to talk about this highly anticipated summit is kevin rudd, he was the prime minister of australia from 2007 to 2010 and again in 2013. he now service as the president of the asia society policy institute. i'm pleased to have him back on this program. what might these two countries expect? and what is the context they come to florida? >> well, let's start with the chinese because a lot of people watching your program will have

an idea about what might be on president trump's mind, but international politics is about the sound of two hands clapping not just one. so here in beijing -- and you're preparing for this visit -- what's on your mind if you're president xi jinping? i think the big factor in the back of president xi's mind is that he's got a big election coming up this year. it's not a democracy, china, everyone knows that, but an internal election within the communist party of some 86-, 88 million members, and, again, that's not a democracy either but it's intense politics about who will now join xi jinping and the bureau and the bureau standing committee for the next years. that's a big deal. >> rose: the standing committee rules. >> weekly meeting, a table probably a little larger than yours here, charlie, but they have submissions and basically

run the government of the country. so what he would like this year 2017 to be about is a quiet year internationally because he's got a lot on domesticall then i think the other thing on his mind is the economy. china's economy is not doing tog

field. you know, he made that argument, and that was a central part of his campaign. does he have a point? >> absolutely. and -- well, you simply look at the scope of the trade receive did. china exports here just under half a trillion dollars a year. the united states sells to the chinese a little over $100 billion a year. so it's a handy trade surplus for the cheese. >> rose: 300 billion. 350 billion in 2016. so i think the chinese in their heart of hearts and minds of minds know that if it were them this should be narrowed. so i think there is an opportunity for discussion about this. the second thing, is as i said before, the chinese ultimately

are political realists as well, and they know that this has s bn central to president trump's domestic election campaign. they've seen all the stuff about china, analyzed it a thousand times over. >> rose: and seen the people he's appointed, for example, as trade negotiate. >> well the trade and economics side of the house in the white house, a number of the key personnel are decisively skeptical about china. some would say decisively negative, given the benefit of the doubt, andly say decisively skeptical. but what i'm saying is even the chinese coming into this meeting have figured it out that when president trump has said the american middle class has lost its standing as we've helped create a middle class in china, or blamed -- >> rose: and that, in fact, is a line he uses. >> that's right. and my chinese friends actually explained this is where he's coming from, this is part of the reason he picked up that huge sway of votes out there between

one coast and the other. and that, when he says that american cities, american towns, american industries, american jobs are fading away because new cities and new jobs and new industries have been created in china because of the trade, whatever you think of the trade policy logic of the statement, that's his deep view. so going back to mar-a-lago, the chinese know that as well. so i think there is an opportunity for some progress to happen on the trade front in particular. >> rose: how about south china, those islands, any possibility that the cheese -- the cheese seem -- the chinese seem to be, and you have been there recently, they seem to be deep upping their commitment. it's not just the united states, the pacific nations have a stake there, but they seem to be showing no likelihood to pull

back. >> i think that's a right call, charlie. if there were anything else, i would tell you but i don't think there is, i go there a lot. but the question is now is it now handled? from one point of view, the chinese in the last several years have reclaimed three or four islands, fortified them, and it may well be that the opportunity now exists to actually 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 would work out that given still the overwhelming power of the united states pacific fleet the united states would prevail in a limited engagement in the south china sea. so the chinese would not want to lose any such engagement and certainly don't want conflict by accident by one ship running into another in the middle of the night as one tails the other or aircraft doing the same. so for those reasons, i think

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 our rules of engagement are such that you don't have one rule of engagement taking a vessel that way and the other one from the other navy this way. when you have a crash on the water, escalation politics takes in, national pride takes over. how many times have we seen that in history? >> rose: other than north korea, there have been a number overinstances in the last year or two having to do with iran and russia and the united states where they have been sort of challenges on the seas. >> certainly seen those in the gulf, and you've seen that with various air maneuvers, air force maneuvers by the russian air force. >> rose: all is necessary is to have a mistake and one side

or the other kills a series of soldiers of the other side. >> that's right, and then you have, you know, this sorry history that we know from international relations history of escalation politics where suddenly a whole bunch of other factors play in in terms of how it's portrayed in each other's domestic media, et cetera. the key science for the period ahead leaving aside the intrinsic issues of conflicting claims to the south china sea itself is how do you de-escalate in a way which preserves the status quo and minimizes the risk of conflict by accident? >> rose: brings me to north korea. you saw what the president said over the weekend to the "new york times." >> it was subtle. >> rose: not what i call subtle. ( laughter ) >> i don't think the president of the united states has the word subtle in his vocabulary. >> rose: or his behavior. but he clearly said to three of the financial "times" reporters, i hope to get the chinese to cooperate on this but we're

prepared to go it alone. >> you know, charlie, i think this is the big one for mar-a-lago. within both capitals, it's also the hardest one. it's tough. it's inherently complicated. what do we know? kim jong un, nuclear weapons program, missiles, miniaturized warheads, enough bombs produced in terms of fissile materials from hi3 reactors, so we're getting closer and closer to that technical threshhold where, once they cross it, they have the capability to either threaten directly south korea, japan, guam, alaska or further to the west coast of the united states. quite apart from the other allies in northeast asia as well. >> rose: the chinese should have probably seen this moment coming, you know, because, as the president said to me in an

interview, president obama, every time they fail, a they learn something, and they have been getting closer to where they want to be. the chinese had to know that that was coming, yet there have been small and new -- small nuances but not a lot of effort to figure it out. they have well-said reasons as to why they have certain interests there, they don't want to see, you know, south korea take over and become that close to their border, they don't want to see refugees pouring across the border and a lot of other considerations they have. but north korea having a nuclear weapon has been, you know, on a fast track. >> running down the railroad track toward us. yeah, i agree. what we also know from international relations is sometimes things happen out there which just look too awful that you rather just look the other way for a while and hope something else happened. i think one of the dynamics in beijing, given the extraordinary history between china and

north korea going back to the korean war, is that this has a whole layer of political complexity, when you look at it through the lens of that polybureau standing committee. these guys used to be our allies. we defended them against the american invaders to have the korean war so it's tough and hard and complex. but the objective truth doesn't change, the one you just spoke about and i did, too, in terms of missiles, range, accuracy and enough warheads to constitute a real threat. so the key question from mar-a-lago is what then is to be done. i think strategically there are three courses of action. they're almost as a matter of logic. one is you keep doing what you're doing in terms of current diplomacy on north korea which largely centers on a series of escalating u.n. security council sanctions, financial sanctions, cold sanctions, et cetera, in

hopes of induce ago change in north korean behavior, which the answer is fail, fail, fail. it achieved nothing. we need to call a spade a spade. that's kind of what's happened here. >> rose: it also raises the question can you trust any negotiations with the leadership in north korea? >> well, you know what the guy we just talked about ronald reagan used to say, trust and verify. he was a great communicator, president reagan. so the simple three words actually sum up the essence of how you do this, and they have been applied also to the question of the iranian nuclear deal as you know. so if current diplomacy is failing and you don't want to go down the unilateral military option which is the united states concluding one day, well, we'll simply have to act to take this out militarily, then if china doesn't want to see that happen, what's the third way through? is there a new diplomacy which

actually works? to which my answer is maybe, but for their system, it's really tough getting to that point. the ingredients of it, as you've probably seen it written before, is often what's 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, two trust and verify and sta establish they've destroyed missiles, warheads and fissile material, but, on the other side of the agenda, what's in it for them? what's in it for them? a formal peace treaty with the united states. diplomatic recognition, accepting the international legitimacy of north korea. then on top of that an external set of security guarantees for the north korean regime given the basis for their nuclear program is we think we're going

to be attacked one day and our regime will be overthrown by the americans or somebody, and, therefore, the nuclear option is the only one for us. so is there an agreement between china and the united states which can provide under international treaty law that sort of external security guarantee? martial plan for rebuilding the north. these are the ingredients which come into it. now, what i know about high-level meetings of the type that these two presidents are about to have with each other in mara lago is -- in mar-a-lago, the list i've just run through is a box of complexity. but if you could get to a point where, based on a good dynamic in the meeting, that president trump and president xi agreed as a matter of principle to look at the possibility of a new diplomatic approach, and then delegate the national security advisors to then drill down over several months, that would represent some progress.

>> rose: do the chinese have any interest in what might be exawlcalled g2, the idea that te are the two great economies and the two strongest countries in the world? >> it's funny you say that because it's kind of like an exercise in missed timing. back in the days, there was early flirtation with the idea of g-2 between the united states and china. the keys didn't want -- the chinese didn't want it because it would interfere with their position in the bricks, the g77 and all the other groupings including the relationship with the russians, et cetera, so it was pushed to one side. then chinese got interested. then president xi talked about a

new style or type of great power relations, a particularly phrase in chinese. so by that stage, president obama's administration having got a lot of reaction from southeast asia and around the world, they said no. so what's the future of this? i think it's limited, given the inconsistent interests of the two. but where it could get useful for both countries is just to have this list of here's the stuff that we can work on that's hard but we could get agreement which is in our mutual interests, such as a better deal on trade, such as avoiding the unilateral option on north korea, while not pretending this becomes a relationship on which you can base the entirety of the global order or global governments on. >> rose: there is so much more to discuss. i'm looking forward to what happens down there. thank you for coming. pleasure to have you here. >> the temperament will be important. >> rose: the temperament? yeah, if i've got 30 seconds

more -- >> rose: sure. -- i think it's the mood of these meetings which meters as well. the chinese place priority on questions of respect and face. sometimes, you know, in the west, we think that face is something only the chinese pay attention to, and, but, you know, it's equally a factor in western politics as well. none of us like to be publicly humiliated. so i think one of the things that's important for both presidents as they approach this meeting is being mutually respectful and frankly mutually inquisitive. i'm sure president xi would enjoy finding out from president trump how did you win? >> rose: yeah. and then maybe president trump will be interested to know how do you handle a party congress of the communist party. >> rose: and what are you going to do coming up and are you going to go for a third term yourself? >> president bush says we all have politics, you tell me what

yours is and i'll tell you mine. there is wisdom in that as well. >> rose: good to have you on the program. back in a moment. stay with us. >> rose: john mayer is here, the seven-time grammy award winner sold more than # 0 million records worldwide, shared the stage with b.b. king, carlos santana, and eric clapton. clapton calls him a master guitar player. mayer returns with his first album in four years, called "the search for everything." i am pleased to have john mayer at this table for the first time, welcome. >> thank you very much, charlie. >> rose: this is so good you had to release it in stages. >> i believe in the songs so much i believe they deserve to be seen without distraction either the barrier of entry of so many songs at once or other music coming in and sort of -- or there being so many songs -- songs that aren't that great, a couple of songs that are, and i felt like the boldest thing i could do is say i think i did it and take a look at these four at

a time, and the response to it has not only been positive pore the work, but positive for the format of releasing music that way, so i was not alone because i'm one-half consumer, one-half artists, and i remember seeing some really great records from great artists coming up on, you know, my spotify or apple and go, 12? this is a deep dive. maybe i'll just go for the singles now. i wanted to put music tout the way i myself would want to hear it. >> rose: is it hard to get acceptance for albums? i've had musicians come to me and say what's happened to albums is disgraceful, you know. >> mm-hmm. um, i think i have been known traditionally now as an artist -- as an album artist. >> rose: right. so i think i've probably engendered a little more trust with my audience about making records than maybe other artists have, so i'm okay being a dinosaur in this time, being the guy who makes records, but even then i've sort of broken up the

concept of a record. i want to ultimately have a record, but i think what this was was about making it small enough for people to -- it's just an easier point of entry into it but ultimately ends up with a record that has an arc, and we think about sequencing and the power of serializing one song before the next and the next. that still matters, i feel like. it may not matter now, but i think it may matter again, and what you want to do is sort of future-proof it so if and when people go back to albums, you never looked frightened. >> rose: the search for everything title -- >> yes. titles come to me and they stop the title searching game. ( laughter ) >> rose: yes. and they tend -- >> rose: they come to you, not somebody who says -- >> no, no, they come from me and for some reason it fits and i didn't have many titles in the bingo cage for this one, and when the search for everything came up in my mind, it sort of

middlimmediately cemented and i thought, that will be hard to beat, and it explained well looking back over my career and the different things i've done what this really sort of all is. you know, it sums up the music and sums up also personally for me in terms of my curiosity that sort of is where i lie. >> rose: and what does "still feel like a man" sum up? >> 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 hypermusical. so if you listen to it sort of across the surface of it, you go, oh, that's a nice little groove, but if you go down into it and figure out what's going on with the bass and the drums and these really very clean, tidy, sharp city cato

syncopations of things, it's almost like a parabolic curve. it looks like a curve from afar but it's really a lot of very very straight lines. you wouldn't imagine that beat could swing. when i first came up with this riff on the guitar, i thought, oh, this is new. i don't know if it's good or bad, i'm interested that it's new because this would have been my seventh record and it was my seventh record and you're looking for ways to still innovate. a little bit like a magician in a warehouse going, well, i've climbed out of the lockbox and i've gone under water, what's the next trick, you know? and i thought for having been thought of in the same sort of category of blue-eyed soul for such a long time that there is such -- there is something unique about the robotic syncopation. then the lyric felt to me -- every once in a while as a songwriter you get a lyric, and then the title "still feel like a man" and then you get

immediately frightened someone has already done it the thing that follows a grade yt -- a great idea is the intense fear it has already been settled on. then you do a trademark search -- not to say you couldn't write a song with the same title, i don't like to -- and it comes up open, clear. >> rose: clear. and then we go for it. >> rose: you go for it meaning you have a title, you have a title of a song and you have the music and then you will do the lyrics? >> in this case, i had -- it's a very rare -- most of the time, i get the best results when music and lyrics happen at the same time, they both climb up either side of the hill. that's when it's really, really good. a lot of times i have music sitting in a bin, and fewer times than most i have lyrics that are sitting in a bin. every once in a while, you get the title that has chords and words and sounds dripping out of it. i had that with daughters. i knew when i wrote the very

first part of the chorus for daughters -- fathers be good to your daughters, daughters -- it's a bit of a limerick. i had that. i thought this is going to sire an entire song. ♪ now i've started to see ♪ maybe it's got nothing at all to do with me ♪ ♪ fathers be good to your daughters ♪ ♪ daughters will love like you do ♪ ♪ girls become lovers and turn into mothers ♪ ♪ so mothers be good to your daughters, too ♪ >> so i had still feel like your man and i looked at the title and i thought, this is almost found in the couch cushions of r&b history, you find nobody had

yet put together still feel like your man. it was very proinvestigative and evoctive. >> rose: when you wrote it, were you thinking of someone? >> yes, sure, i think of the person that i left a relationship with. you know, i think of the last person that i parted ways with, you know. i process 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 people's mournings when they open up the computer. it's too easy to sort of spawn these other stories and then it creeps into other people's minds and makes bad -- you know what i'm saying? it reverberates. but i also made -- i have to watch disingenuousness. i'm on the alert for disingenuousness because i --

>> rose: and on the search for authenticity. >> right, i can't play dumb. >> rose: right. but i also don't want to sort of rattle somebody's cage on a morning when somebody picks up the story because they love proper announce, right? however, i can't sit here and say i have not done a duet with katy perry. i can't -- i won't let myself sit here and say, well, we don't -- that's a mum word. it's not a mum word. what's difficult to explain to people is that that's about where it ends as a proper noun, and it becomes what everybody feels when they end a relationship. what i do, and i've come to terms with this, you get to a certain age and you go, this is what i do, i write love songs. so it's very tricky. i would love to be able to write -- put these songs out in a complete vacuum where people can only think about songs in

their own context. >> rose: you said i want to leave this earth as a writer. >> i'm a writer. i'm a writer more than anything else. nothing brings me more joy than writing. if you give me is choice between being in the middle of an incredible blue guitar solo on stage or being in the middle of a writing trance knowing by the end of the night i was going to have something, i would rather be in the writing trance. the song is about processing the loss of somebody. it's difficult, and i think it's part of the package when you are in a relationship with someone that people know very well, i would love the luxury of people going, whoa, i don't know who this was but that would be really great, then you could get right into how i felt. but if i do a good enough job as a jong writer and i think i have on this record, i think it becomes a footnote and it's, like i said last night on stage, i said, there's a difference between writing a song because of somebody and for somebody.

and i feel like people usually revert to the language of, like, this is written for somebody. i don't go to people's doors and ring the bell and go, i wrote this for you. songwriters write because of but for the world. still feel like your man is not an ad hoc message, it's for the world. >> rose: has the process changed over the years? >> no. >> rose: same thing. the only reason the process has changed is because i am incapable of letting myself repeat myself and -- if you could lobotomize me i would write you another hundred killer songs, but because i'm writing with the rest of my catalog behind me, looking on, it gets harder to find negative space where you haven't written because, on the first -- i do two things very quickly. i go, someone else did that, and i've done that. and i would probably be better off and be more prolific if i

didn't do that, you know. but i'm still looking for these parking spaces that haven't been settled on, and they're harder to find, but i can it creates more longevity if you can keep looking and looking and looking. every song on this record has another ten that stopped somewhere in the middle because i don't want to do that again or -- >> rose: so you just simply threw it away. >> mm-hmm. they don't get finished unless they're good enough. >> rose: you read about painters, you know, who will go to bed having put something on canvas and get up in the morning and don't like it and will just throw it away. >> the good thing about being a song writer is if a 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 as a completely different song, but i was so in love with cracking the

"love on the weekend" code it eventually fit the piece of music i had. it's like a slot machine. your go, oh, i really want "love on the weekend" as a title. so every time you come up with an idea you throw that paint on it. so you can dismantle the painting without having to slash the canvas which makes being a musical artist a little more flexible. >> rose: the writing, i assume you have some innate ability, too, beyond just learned process, clearly. >> yes. >> rose: did you have the same thing as a guitarist? did you have some sense of music so that you adapted to the guitar and earned the praise of people like clapton and others? >> yes, my father was a piano player, still has a piano where he list, and that was my first introduction to music. >> rose: a piano. a piano. it's an interval instrument. it's a calculator. it looks to me a little bit -- it is a keyboard.

it's a an abacues to me. i would not show people how music works on a guitar. >> rose: you would show them on a piano. >> yes. >> rose: how good a piano player are you? >> really good in the key of c. ( laughter ) the guitar is instantly transposable. learn a scale here, you just move it up and the key moves. a piano becomes relative to the charps and flats, you can't put a capeo on a piano. the best thing i can do is use a digital piano and transpose it up but i'm still playing in the key of c. so i grew up quickly going, this goes bum bum bum and this goes binghamptobing, bing, bing and u subdivide it. it's a calculator.

( humming ) i knew early what that was. >> rose: self-learned? for the most part, self-learned from when i was younger, sitting at a piano and working it out, a lit gill tar lessons when i was a kid. my guitar teacher stopped teach meg to read music. >> rose: because? because i took off on this other thing. he would do 15 minutes of book stuff and 15 minutes of, like, you bring a song in and he'll teach you how to play the song. i would bring these bruce songs in and he'll teach know do it. i go, okay, got it. the curriculum gathered really quickly on this blues thing, but we weren't doing to book stuff and my parents at one point said, i think they were on to it and if i remember it correctly they were, like, play this, and they put the book in front of me and i'm, like, i can't play that. >> rose: where were you going? stevie ray vaughn, jimi hendrix, i wanted to be that

guy. that was my calling. still is. when i was 13 years old, i remember i thought, got it. i got my first guitar before i had lessons. parents say what to do? i say give them a guitar for two months and don't give them lessons. let them discover their nebulous take and then fold in on it. i found the mostcies distant room from my parents and played in the middle of the night and i immediately figured out chords. this is not revisionist history. i looked at it and went, okay. and that okay was so vertical, it went through everything in my lifetime i went, this is what i am. >> rose: two things you went through, one is obvious, the four years. but secondly, touring with the what's left of "the dead." what do you learn from that? a group that is so part of the

american culture for certain people? >> yeah, for lot of people. i think they're a lot more accessible than their fans would like -- like, they're a lot more accessible, but people like the barrier to entry. i get it now. if it's presented to you in the right sequence of songs, it's phenomenal stuff. i seem to see this sort of fraternal loving thing that feeds a bit off people not understanding it. you know, there's a value to looking at something and going, you wouldn't understand. and if you would like to make your way into it -- talking about learning something on your own -- you really do internalize it and you find your way to the top of this mountain where the rest of deadheads are and you go, welcome, you've made it. but i don't necessarily see deadheads working hard to recruit. i think they like the -- >> rose: you have to find them. >> you have to find them.

they like -- that's the requisite. for me as a solo act, i'm just wise enough now to understand what i haven't likedbout it my whole life which is being responsible for articulating your own ideas. i don't think that my own ideas are all 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'm not even sure how i feel or i didn't 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's not really who you are. i was starting to get really distant from wanting to do any of that, and when i joined up with dead & company, i realized i don't have to. i'm not responsible for giving the answer. i can tell you what it means to me, but i don't have to be the

physical, human representation of my own ideas. i now understand i can't help you understand me unless i give a "new york times" interview and the guy says i talk too much. you know, i can't -- >> rose: is this the most recent "new york times" interview? >> yeah, i can't -- and i think i have to be done with this mission statement i give myself before i sit down with somebody that i'm going to leave and you're going to have a map of who i am. it's just not ever going to happen. so when i'm with dead & company, they're a part of my life. the band is part r part of my life, i'm a part of their life. the fans are part of my life. i'm a part of their life. i'm a part of the band. i play guitar. bob sings, mickey plays the drums. i'm not there as a star. i'm there to help that crowd go to that place. and when you say what remains of

the grateful dead, on a personnel level, that is accurate. i think the spiritual side to have the grateful dead is accessible and will always be accessible if you get those people together making that noise. >> rose: that part of it is with jerry, i assume? >> yeah, jerry is the most alive dead person that's ever lived and died. i mean, i get the sense that -- they are keeping him alive. they keep him alive. he is just behind the veil. i've never seen -- >> rose: because they're maintaining the capacity of people to remember. >> to remember and visit the place that he settled with that band. so he's a settler. >> rose: yeah. and he set up camp, and then he left. but you can still go there. and i think that speaks to how incredible the music is. you can still visit. it just takes people -- and it is now sort of a little bit of

an oral history. it's a musical hand-me-down, and i think guys like bob weir are expecting it to be that. and looking at me as someone they're sort of grooming -- i mean, this is never going to be over for me as long as i live. >> rose: you will always be part. >> i will always be part of it and continue doing it. this is a part of my life for the rest of my life. >> rose: when you left for four years in montana, where were you doing and what was the point? >> well,ates bit of a reductionist thing. it's not your fault for sort of putting it in those words. >> rose: no, you put it in the right words, then, help me. >> born and raised -- okay, so, 2010, i go, oh, i'm at the end of this idea, this pop star, flat iron hair, sort of leather jacket thing. this isn't working. >> rose: not working or you're tired of it? >> i would say nobody dreams past their third record. when you're a kid in high school, you're not dreaming about your fourth record and

you're not quite sure to say i don't have plan for this, you're not sure how to ask anybody and you're not sure how to say i need to take a break. people go, he's a mastermind, he dropped into the top of the mountain and knows what he's doing. it's sort of what i call in a tidy fashion i came to the end of an old idea. >> rose: and didn't know where to go? >> didn't know where to go. >> rose: you simply didn't want to go where you were going. >> no, i just didn't know where to go next. >> rose: right. i like organization. and you can have organization on your first record, you can state your case and the world can understand it. >> rose: right. but you start throwing other things into it, personal life, the misrepresentation of who you are as a person, where the you're a smart person, you look at the misrepresentation of who you are as your job to sort out, and i wish i had known that it wasn't, but you want to get engaged. i am a people pleaser. if you told me that one of the people on my way in here didn't like me, i would get up from

this table right now and start shouting who it was. >> rose: it's a little bit like people who walk into a room and they know the one person who doesn't approve or like them. they can see 99 people who love them but they don't go to them, they go to the one person because they want to figure it out. >> we want to make it okay. there is no possible way -- because we mean well. there is nothing more dangers than being a person who means well. >> rose: the time you took a break -- >> i didn't take a break. >> rose: what tid you do then? 2010 i come off the record and want to make a completely different record so i made born and raised. >> rose: right. i'm living in new york city and i'm completely alone so it's great. i made born and raised in l.a. moved to montana where i wanted to move anyway. then i had a vocal situation that prohibited me from singing on tour. i made another record out there because i went, i just want to

make records. >> rose: that's just what i do. >> that's what i do. i like it guys like stephen king can write short ones or big ones. george clooney is who everybody ascribes to be, which is make a big one, a black and quite one. and i thought this should be a black and quite one. it sort of gets flattened and reduced so people -- >> rose: but what is the picture people have drawn that is not true. >> for me? >> rose: yeah, of you. that's a huge responsibility to be honest about because there is probably stuff in there i don't deserve to say should be. that's a really good question. that i moved to montana and wrote sort of country songs, although that's not far that far off. womanizer bothers me. that's always bothered me and i think if you really look into all of the times where i sort of went -- it all sort of went dim for me and my mouth kept going

and my brain wasn't there, i think it's -- see, i have been me my whole life. i've watched me. you make these decisions in life, do the right thing, give yourself a pat on the back, you get the sense throughout your life if you do the right thing you're going to be known as a person who does the right thing, but there's nothing like the hollywood machine getting your information wrong. i give a lot of information. i would be much better off if i have short answers. it'sless tnt to wire up, right? >> rose: yes. and when they inevitably get it wrong because i'm putting out so much information, this idea of womanizer comes in. to say i'm bristling at it is an understatement. it is a complete distortion of who i am and breeds this idea that, well, if you've got this so wrong, then i'm going to be as wrong as you think i am. i don't know where that came from. >> rose: so since you say i'm this, i'm going to be this? >> if you say i'm this, i'm going to subvert this. if you say i'm this, i'm going

to parody this. does that make any sense. >> rose: yes, of course, it does. you're influenced by what people say about you and you decide in some way i want to do a parody or in some way i want to go to some extreme of what you're saying just to say -- >> and i think the intent is to make people go, oh, h he's not that. he's playing off of that. but that's asking a lot of people's attention span to be able to notice that and possibly intel jedges to be able to know that if you have paparazzi on the way to a restaurant and sitting with somebody not entirely doctornated into this world, you should say, go outside and take a picture of them. it's everybody's first idea when they feel a little captured by somebody is to fight back and part of the fighting back is intellectual, this idea of you can't contain me, i'm going to overintellectualize what you're doing. we're talking about

hyperextending myself way beyond what should be taking place because all i want to do is get back to where it's clean. here's who i am, what i do, i promise you i'm this and not that, i mean well. you can get lost in it. >> rose: the reason they wanted to characterize you as a womanizer was -- >> well, there was a period of time where i was sort of moving -- i could different it's hard to explain. it's hard to explain. i'm still unpacking it in my own life. it's just a situation where you fall into -- i dated a lot of big names. that's the elephant in the room. i dated a lot of big nails, right. i think people get the size of the name mixed up with the number of people that i have been with. >> rose: so if you date just a few big names, seems like you're out there with a lot of women? >> i think so, and i can't blame anybody for thinking that.

took me a long time to realize people tonight google search me. people do not think about me all day. people take a glance at you and that's the takeaway. >> rose: they're not going to say, let's see what john did today. >> they're not completists so they didn't see he made born and raised and paradise valley and did this -- >> rose: right. they see the spikes and because the music i was making did not entitle me, rightfully, to the kind of press i was generating or being involved in -- >> rose: because it was about your personal life. >> it was bigger google searches. what ends up happening is i'm not that, i'm not that, i'm not that. there was a correction that needed to happen for me, there was a market correction that needed to happen, but i think what sent me into a tail spin and hurt me -- and i never said hurt me because i wouldn't admit to it -- the best thing i can do now is to say ouch. the best thing a smart person who tries to mastermind his way out of everything is to say ouch, because ouch will lead you

to the truth and the truth will lead you to -- >> rose: and ouch is better than it hurts me? >> no, same thing. ouch, this hurts, i hate this, this makes me feel bad. i wouldn't admit to it. so i would just become more militaristic about you can't -- >> rose: a little bit like don't let 'em see you sweat. >> yeah. i mean, now i know -- whenever you yell the loudest is when you're about to cry. the person who yells the loudest and say they can take anything is the second before they're about to crumble. that's where i was, you can't get me, and they really can. >> rose: how long ago was that? >> seven years ago. >> rose: and today? i have a really good handle. >> rose: past all of that stuff? >> past all of it, and understanding that, again, people are not john mayer completists. it might take a second to review a little bit -- you may have to sort of go over it again with

people. does that make sense? expecting not everybody is on your mark every time you wake up and do something. >> rose: is some of that in this album? >> not really. it was in "born and raised" a lot. that was a wounded sort of thing. but i got a lofto music out of going into myself. this is a different dive. this is a dive into being a certain age. this is a loss in laismghts there is always one relationship lossively like that takes you wit, you know what i mean? it's not just somebody -- you're not just parting ways with somebody. there's a always one that kind of takes you down. >> rose: you lose something? i lose something. >> rose: right. and this is is this idea of being as absolutely beautiful as you can be, like, look, let whoever this sort of intelligentsia rock outlets and journalists say it's pablum or light as bland, i'm going to be as beautiful as i can be about

being sad. listening to this song called emoji of a wave and going, that's what this feels like, which as an artist or musician, you don't get all the time you come close. you get, well, i'll get them next time, 80% of how that feels. there are songs on the record that i get it, i'm good enough of a musician to translate 100% of how something felt and that's more valuable than anything you can have. >> rose: artists not only express how they felt but say it in a way so that all the fans -- >> if you do it right -- >> rose: it speaks to something they feel but can't express. >> right. >> rose: that's where the connection comes. >> that's when people say i feel like i'm looking into a mirror or i feel like you said something i was going through at this exact time in my life. >> rose: i hope you will come back. a real pleasure to be here. >> i would love to. >> rose: thank you for joining us. see you next time.

for more about this program and earlier episodes,. nice to see you (singing) ♪ i still feel like your captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org ♪ she says come over ♪ i'd like to get to know you ♪ but i just don't think i can sphoot. ♪ 'cause i still feel like your man ♪ ♪ still feel like your man ♪ still feel like your man ♪ still feel like your man ♪ i still feel like your man

>> rose: on the next charlie rose, the great chef and the great actress from india. >> one of the things that i realized, you know, i was not prepared but i did realize something is that what i have been given is great, i work for it but it's a gift, it comes once in a lifetime and when it comes in a lifetime, you've got to grab it with both hands but make the most of it and the first number one thing i said to my agents is even if it means not getting paid or working in smaller films, i don't want to be stereotyped. >> rose: so what did you do? so i consciously steered away from every project that would be -- and it happens. i don't know if it happens as much as now because i definitely don't get scripts like that anymore, but you get these stereotypical indian roles, you know, and mostly it was about the women trying to get married, and their whole life was centered around having the perfect arranged marriage, and that's not who i am.

i'm 32 years old, i'm not married, and my parents don't force me to marry, and i don't believe all of india is the way one person sees the stereotypical vision. so i try to stay away from just the pretty girl in the film, the cardboard cutout. >> 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.

kacyra: it kind of was, like, the bang that set off the night. rogers: that is the funkiest restaurant. thomas: the honey-walnut prawns will make your insides smile. [ laughter ] klugman: more tortillas, please! khazar: what is comfort food if it isn't gluten and grease? braff: i love crème brûlée. sobel: the octopus should have been, like, quadripus, because it was really small. sbrocco: and you know that when you split something, all the calories evaporate, and then there's none. whalen: that's right.