Last week Win Butler from Arcade Fire opened up for a two hour lecture at the Red Bull Music Academy taking place all month long in Montreal.

Win walked listeners through his start in music, dissecting Arcade Fire’s discography, the people who have left much influence on the songwriter as well some social commentary where he takes stabs at Spotify and Trump.

If you don’t have 2 hours to spare, here are some notable takeaways:

On Bowie

“David came to some of our first shows, and he sings on Reflektor, and…talk about meeting your heroes. [He was] just such a deep, deep source of inspiration on so many levels. And I think when he passed away, I don’t think anyone was really prepared
 
Montreal vs NYC
“When I got to Montreal, culturally, it kind of had everything I thought that New York was going to have, but Montreal actually had the stuff that New York was going to have, which was, which maybe it was in New York, but when I was there, I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t find it anywhere. I went to shows every night. When I was in New York, all I found was like people not from New York, being like, “I want to be in a famous band.” I was like, “Your band’s not going to be famous.” I felt like I was in a never-ending showcase of, like industry showcase. I was like, “No, that’s not what I was looking for.” Then when I got to Montreal, it was like, all of our first shows were at weird modern dance shows and there’d be a band playing or someone’s loft and we’d play records and dance afterwards. Rent was so incredibly cheap.”
 
On meeting (his wife and bandmate) Régine
Yeah. When I met Régine, I was still looking for a drummer. It was two years later. She was going to McGill at the time and I would hang out outside the drummers rooms trying to find a drummer. She saw me in the cafeteria. It’s a very small program and I pretty clearly didn’t go there. We were talking. I was describing to her what I was looking for. She was like, “Oh, you’re not going to find it here but I might know someone.” Then a couple of days later just by complete chance I saw her singing jazz at an art opening at Concordia and she was just the real deal, like a real singer. I talked to her and I was like, “We have to play music together.” Eventually we hung out and pretty much the first time we hung out we wrote the beginnings of a song called “Headlights Look Like Diamonds” and maybe two or three other songs basically in an hour and a half and that was that.
 
On Trump
Fuck Donald Trump.
Please register to vote today everyone, please. I know that it’s not ideal, but Hillary Clinton will be a great president. Donald Trump is a complete fuckin’ nightmare and a clown and a joke. It really is an extremely important election. You don’t have to hang out with Hillary, but Jesus Christ, vote for Hillary Clinton and just everyone register. It could not be heavier. The consequences can’t be more dire.
  
Expect a follow up to 2013’s Reflektor sometime next year, but Win gave no further insight to the release.