Elliot Storey and Jeffrey Storey

00:00 My name is Elliot Storey. I am 16 years old. Today is Wednesday, May 4, and I'm speaking with Jeff, who is my dad. I am recording this interview in Santa Monica, in my home.

00:22 My name is Jeff Storey. I am 50 years old. Today's is. What's the date? May something or other. May 3.

00:30 May 4.

00:30 May 4. May the fourth be with you. And I'm speaking with my daughter Elliot. I am recording this interview in our home in Santa Monica, California.

00:43 Okay, cool. Let's start off with you telling me.

00:50 About.

00:53 One of your happiest memories. What is one of your happiest memories?

00:58 One of my happiest memories is I was in a band in college called neither trumpets nor drums. And we played. We were in this thing called spring Sing at UCLA. We auditioned for spring sing with a song called to sit back and smile at you. It was a beautiful song. It was myself, my friend Seth and my friend John. And we all just played acoustic guitars and sang harmonies. Really beautiful harmonies. And we played that song at spring sing in front of 5000 people. And I was so nervous before and just wanted to make sure I got all my parts right. It was a complicated song, but we really, really played it well. And at the end, the whole stadium just roared. I'll never forget it. And it was. It was so special. And from that moment on, we decided to be in a band together. And John was going to move back to Georgia after his first year at UCLA. And right after that night, he said, I'm going to stay here. It was great. And I've continued to play music with those guys to this day. Not in a band, but, you know, we still get together.

02:12 Wow. Can you tell me about someone who has a big. Who has had a big influence on your life? And what lessons did that person teach you?

02:23 Well, that would be my dad, Roger, your grandfather, who was a really, really extraordinary guy, no longer with us. That what, you know, he was a city manager. He was very well educated, you know, soft spoken, tall, six foot four guy. A leader. Somebody that really believed in doing your duty for your society and for your community and dedicated his life to making the community that he lived in a good place. He was. He read all about history and the history of governments. He went to the Kennedy school government, you know, in the middle of his career at Harvard University. He's just a great guy with an amazing moral and ethical compass that I looked up to so much and haven't totally lived up to how he lived his life, the principles he lived by. But they're definitely the biggest influence in how I look at my own life and how I measure my own life.

03:41 That's awesome. How has your life been different than what you'd imagined?

03:53 Well, life throws you a lot of curveballs, and in life, you have to make decisions about the things that you're most passionate about doing and your ability to support yourself and your family. And everybody always tells you, when you're young, do what you're passionate about. Do what you're passionate about. Well, I did what I was passionate about several different times and always loved it, enjoyed it, but it didn't always earn me income to survive. And so a lot of my life I've had to compromise the things that I'm most interested in, most passionate about nature and music and writing and thinking and, you know, you know, just all the things I'm really passionate about, all which you can make careers out of. But the path that I went on, I had to sacrifice some of that in order to, you know, I went in, in tech and I work in the digital world and do things to make money. And I think when I was younger, I was a little more naive in thinking that I would never have to do that. So, yeah, you know, and that, and I think life throws you challenges that you have to adapt to and deal with. And, you know, we're all just very, very fortunate to be here. We're very fortunate to have roofs over our heads and water flowing out of the faucet and a stove that works and food on the table and, you know, all those things we take for granted. But I think when you're, when you're young, when you're first starting out in life, at least for me, I had very grandiose expectations and didn't quite realize, you know, it's a struggle.

05:41 Interesting, interesting. Can you remember a time in your life when you felt most alone?

05:52 Well, I mean, honestly, it was, you know, I went through a divorce with, you know, your mom, and I think, you know, had to go from, you know, you and I living together full time to that wasn't the case for a period of time. And that was very isolating and difficult. Extremely difficult. It took a while to kind of get back, back into a sense of, you know, of community and family and things like that. So, yeah, I definitely felt most alone during that period.

06:33 What is your favorite memory of me?

06:37 Well, I have so many of them. I don't have a favorite. I have so many amazing memories. I think I'll say the one memory that you and I have talked about a lot when you were really little, which is this one day I was working, you know, I picked you up from school, took you home. You were really little. You were, I think you were four. And you fell asleep and I was working, working, working, and I accidentally let you sleep for maybe 3 hours. And I couldn't believe it. I was so mad at myself. So woke you up and it was literally the evening. And so when night rolled around, you were not tired at all. And so I tried to get you to sleep and it didn't work. And finally I said, you know what? This is totally my fault. I said, elliot, get up, we're going out. And we got this little balsa wood plane. We went to a park in Irvine in the middle, maybe three in the morning or something. We flew the plane around and then we came back home and went into the hot tub in the apartment complex we lived in and just had the best time ever. You were so excited and happy because it was literally the middle of the night and we were the only two people in the entire city that were up and awake. And it was such a special memory. You remember that?

08:06 Yeah, I definitely remember that. Yeah. I'll never forget that.

08:10 Yeah. We had this little torpedo thing that we were shooting back. Yeah, the hot tub. It was great.

08:15 That's amazing. Yeah. I'll never forget that. It's cool. Do you have any regrets?

08:24 So many regrets. Who doesn't have regrets? You know, I think. I think when you live your life, you have to decide everything that doesn't go as you intended or the things that you didn't do that you wish you had are lessons to learn and grow. That's really the only way to look at it. If you dwell on the things you didn't do and say, oh, God, I wish, why didn't I do this? Or why didn't. If I only knew then what I knew now. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's an easy thing to sort of fall into, but. But you have to look at life as failure is an opportunity to grow and get better at that thing and do it again and do it better. That said, yeah, I mean, geez, I just wish I had to date, had worked harder at the things I was most passionate about. It's probably.

09:30 Yeah, that's good.

09:33 And paid very close attention to your friends and family and the relationships that are meaningful, much more so than what you do for your job or whatever, like really thinking and caring and investing in your relationships.

09:56 What are your hopes for me and for my children.

10:04 My hopes for you are you become the person that you most want to be. My job is to get you all ready to enter adulthood with the tools and spirit necessary to take the world by its horns and take whatever that the world throws at you, you know? So my hopes for you are happiness and love and fulfillment and being the best person that you can be, you know? But mostly it's just love and happiness. Those are my hopes for you, obviously. I also want you to be successful and have a roof over your head and, you know, success, whatever that is, is a very subjective thing. But I obviously want you to be able to live a life that is where you. Where you're able to do the things that you want to do, right. That you have the means to do that. That's important to me. But bottom line is just love and happiness. And then if you have kids, wow, that would be so great. I would hope that I would be able to hang out with those kids a lot. I think. I think my hopes, if you had a family and kids would be that you would live close enough or, you know, we would live close enough to one another that I could spend lots and lots of time with them.

11:33 Yeah.

11:34 What do you think of that babysitter right here?

11:37 I would probably say the same. Probably some of the kids. Grandpa. Grandpa dad.

11:43 Yeah, that would be grandpa Jeff.

11:45 Yeah, grandpa Jeff. Okay. Okay.

11:50 Lastly, I think I'd be a really funny grandfather.

11:52 Yeah, I think so, too.

11:53 We have a pretty good line of grandfathers that are hysterical.

11:57 Definitely.

11:58 Yeah.

11:58 Lastly, tell me about one of your most difficult memories.

12:05 Well, you know, I'll give you two of them. I mean, one was obviously my dad passing away, that, you know, I just wrote a song about that. And, I mean, that was very unexpected because my dad was so healthy, and he worked out and he had a good diet, and he really took care of himself, and he got cancer. And my mom thinks that that cancer was from being exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam. And the government actually pays her a stipend because he was exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam. But whether or not that really correlated with the fact that he got cancer and died in his early seventies, I don't know, you know, but, yeah, that was. That was really, really sad and unexpected to lose a parent. There's. There's nothing worse than that. You really have to rethink yourself and kind of who you are, and it's just such a huge loss, you know?

13:14 Mm hmm.

13:16 So I miss my dad all the time. I think about him a lot. And I wish so badly that he was still alive and could see everything that's happening with you and with the rest of the family. And he is missed.

13:30 Yeah, I miss Grandpa Roger.

13:34 And then the other one was when I was a young person. You know, I had. I had a best friend in high school I've told you about before, my buddy, Dave Sykes. And we were just great friends. And, you know, after, you know, college, who went to college and remained friends, but, you know, we were in different places and, you know, he eventually committed suicide, and that was very, very difficult for me and his. And I, you know, you know, this whole story. But his brother was in a pretty successful local band called lawsuit, his brother Paul. And so Paul and I became really close, a lot of it having to do with just the fact that we both, you know, knew Dave so well and processed a lot of his suicide together. And just. We also got along great. We were musicians and we had a great time together. Paul was an awesome guy. Hung out a lot, and. Yeah. And then Paul eventually, you know, committed suicide as well. And that just. That really destroyed me. That was one of the most difficult things that's ever happened in my life. Never totally got over it, but it's one of those things that you just. You just. You process and cope with it, and you have to eventually move on, you know?

14:58 Totally.

14:59 So can't you ask me one more question that's a little more uplifting?

15:03 Yeah, totally.

15:04 Yeah. Okay. What is it?

15:07 Oh, well, I guess that's the end of the interview. But thank you so much, dad. I appreciate you being my interviewee, and I love you.

15:17 Well, thank you, Elliot. I love you, too. You're the best.

15:20 Okay, thanks.

15:21 See ya.