Conan O’Brien gets the most out of his guests on the Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend podcast. He bonded with Japanese Breakfast over her Coachella set. Chris Martin explained why Bruce Springsteen is to blame for his decision to stop eat dinner. Billie Eilish shared “heartbreaking” advice she once received from her idol-turned-friend Justin Bieber. And now, Questlove has spilled some tea about The Roots.
Questlove was O’Brien’s guest for the September 4 episode of the podcast, and their hour-plus conversation included insight into how Jimmy Fallon helped piece The Roots back together again.
Questlove explained that personal and professional responsibilities were stretching The Roots thin around 2009, so they wished “a Celine Dion situation would happen,” meaning a stable residency. Their version of that was joining up with Fallon, first on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon and then as the in-house band on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, which he said “is what we needed to actually bond and be friends again.”
The Grammy and Oscar winner then shared a story involving the Red Hot Chili Peppers around 2006 that had previously made him realize that he was no longer friends with his longtime bandmates
“We’re on tour with the Chili Peppers, and it’s a European tour. And they’re playing, like, soccer — I’m sorry, post-[Ted] Lasso, football stadiums,” he said. “You know, it’s like 80,000 to 120,000 [people] a night. Every three to four songs, those guys get into sort of a football magic circle huddle. By the fourth time they do this, I’m thinking like, ‘Oh, they’re gonna call an audible and change up the setlist.’ And then, I had the setlist in my hand, I’m like, Wait, they didn’t change anything. … Why do they keep having these little meetings every five songs, and nothin’ changes from what I know the show to be?”
He continued, “I see Flea in catering, and I’m like, ‘Dude, what are you guys talking about when you go into that huddle?’ And Flea is like, ‘Yo, man, it’s like, I don’t know, man. We’re just so full of gratitude.’”
While Questlove was initially “dismissive” of Flea’s reasoning, his manager put it into perspective: The Red Hot Chili Peppers “actually” liked each other, and The Roots has unknowingly transitioned from being friends to “just business partners” around 2006 or ’07.
“I realized, Ah, sh*t. We’re really not friends. We’re just nine strangers that just play the same songs every night, and that’s it,” Questlove said. “What wound up happening at Fallon is Jimmy has a way of disarming you. At least for the first six years, we were 13-year-olds in adults’ bodies, we could do silly things and not feel like we’re gonna lose our street cred because we’re doing silly sh*t.”
At one point, Questlove said, Fallon “talked The Roots into an eight-man human pyramid,” which perfectly illustrated how crucial Fallon would be to reconnecting them with each other and their individual humanity.
Watch the full clip above.