In this episode, Greg Randolph talks with longtime friends and creative collaborators Kyle and Jay about the origins of their book concept. The idea was born from their shared love of pop culture and constant brainstorming sessions, even after they moved to different cities. Kyle pitched a unique idea to Jay: what if famous rock stars who supposedly died young actually faked their deaths to become secret agents? Jay loved the concept, seeing it as a billion-dollar idea, and they decided to develop it together, leading to the creation of the "Dead Rock Stars" universe.
Listen to the full podcast by clicking the button below. Partial transcript follows:
GR: Let me ask and I'll let either one of you take this one. How did the concept of the book ultimately come about?
KW: Well, Jay and I have been friends since 1996 when we were in college together.
We met in college and we have always bonded over pop culture, movies, books, stories, TV, all forms of entertainment. And, we just continued to stay connected and stay friends from college to graduate school to, early in our careers, and we would constantly call one another on the phone.
You know, what are you watching? What do you enjoy? And what's going on? Especially, you know, once we moved to different cities. And we stayed in touch. So, there'd be times we'd kind of, you know, in a fun sort of nerdy kind of way, we'd pitch one of their stories. Hey, what do you think about this?
What do you think about that? You know, and, and there was always, I think, a desire within us to tell our own story, to do our own thing. You know, we've watched so many movies, we've critiqued so many movies. We've been like., man, that was terrible. We could do better. We felt that way so often.
Then we were like, okay, finally, we're going to put our money where our mouth is. And so, I had this idea back in my head, I'd thought about it for years. And finally, I pitched it to Jay. I said, Jay, what about this idea of, you know, what if all these famous rock stars who tragically passed too soon, You know, what if they didn't really die?
What if they fake their deaths to become secret agents and they've been protecting the world from the shadows for decades? You know, he kind of paused and, you know, Jay, what did you say? What was your, what was your, your response?
JW: Yeah. Made you nervous. Didn't you? I wanted to pause; you were like, oh, he's going to hate it.
And that was like, Oh no, this is a bad idea. He didn't like it. I just kind of took it all in and I was like, Kyle, I don't, I don't think that's a million dollar idea. I think that's a billion dollar universe. I think that is the coolest thing you've ever brought up. And it actually kind of captured me a little bit.
Kyle's always had great ideas and that one, for whatever reason, wouldn't leave me for a couple of weeks. And I ended up kind of pitching him the idea to let me write the first couple of chapters and just see what happens. And then if he likes it, he can write a couple of chapters and we'll see where it goes from there.
And so that was kind of the birth of the dead rock stars universe.
