Just getting a guitar and putting something together am you have to create an atmosphere am when you create the electronic, its little more complex. When are you playing a show, the energy you get from the stage is undescribable. And its just like this constant feedback, you know am like a cycle. An when youre in the studio with people, when you have good energy, people are having fun and feeling the music it inspires you to continue to go down the right place, Linmanuel Miranda, thomas kail, skrillex and diplo. Funding for charlie rose is provided by american express. Rose additional funding provided by 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 Alexander Hamilton is the unlikely founding father who wrote his way into the pages of early american history. Theodore roosevelt called him the most brilliant american statesman whoever lived. He is the subject of a musical hamilton which opened this week on broadway to rave reviews. Writer and composer Linmanuel Miranda takes the legacy to new heights using hiphop, r b and rap music. He calls the play the story of american then told by america now. And heres a look im past patiently waiting im passing every expectation every action. Im laughing in the face of casualties the first time im thinking past tomorrow youre not throwing away my stuff im not throwing away my stuff im to the throwing away my stuff we got to rise up we going to rise up we going to rise up rise up time to take a shot rise up rise up time to take a shot time to take a shot time to take a shot were not throwing away my stuff. Not throwing away my shot. I spoke to acker Lesley Leslie odom, jr. Who played aaron burr last night on this program. What brought you to hamilton . I was invited into hamilton sometimes you find that the best jobs you get in this career, in this business, you didnt audition for, you have no idea how you got there. So i just asked tomie last week, because i have this superstition, sometimes if i get a straight offer, i dont want to kind of ask how it came about. Rose tomie kail the director. The director, yeah, i dont want to ask how it came about because i think they might realize, why did we ask this guy. So i got invited about two years ago to do a reading of the show. And i had seen it at vasser. I had seen them do about a half an hour of the show at music stands, maybe 45 minutes. And was blown a what. So when i was invited to do the reading, i prepared like ive never prepared before. I mean i came in. I knew all my music. Because i knew what they were working on. You know it had powerful potential. I mean yeah, i knew how it affected me. You know, and you know, lin is only ayearolder than i am. So this is our music. You know, i recognized the rhythms and the sink passion and the the circumstances yncopation, the pulse of the piece, it has been in my ears when i was born. Rose people wondered when hiphop would come to broadway because rock had come to broadway. Yeah. And lin was so influential with that too, you know in the heights happening and being such a watershed moment for hiphop music and for also latin american ackers. I remember listening to in the heights on i listened to it before i saw it. And there was something about i have chills thinking about it. I told him and lak at one of my first rehearsals,s there was something about from the first moments of that album. I mean the need to communicate is something that has always moved me greatly. I remember i saw a show when i was a teenager called def poetry jam. The way those people came out and just, they needed you to get it. You know, they put something, theres blood in the pen. You know, they put something down on paper and they have theres an urgency an a fire in their belly for you to get it. It came full circle when i was listening to a rehearsal of us in hamilton listening back, and my part. We sound like that. I can hear that need in what were doing. Rose i hear all that you all of the need, all of the desire, all the energy, all the preparation to do justice to the text that you were given. How much of it was important to know aaron burr . Very. Because you not only play a character, you play the narrator. Yeah. You are there at every moment. Hamilton has a larger role but burr is also the continuity. Yeah. One of my favorite gifts that people give sometimes, fans will bring us books that they will find on arts, they will find on ebay. I will say the name steve and ronda hawthorne have given me more than anybody. They come by with these articles that they order and books that they order. And those have helped me a lot because i would not call myself a historian by any means, lin at this point is lin has read enough about all of the different people and the events surrounding it that hes been able to come up with his own opinion on the events, right. Cuz i think thats what makes a historian. You read ron chernows book and that is the only opinion you have if you havent read anything else. I have read enough on burr now to come up with my own theories. Rose because there are different opinions of burr, some good, some bad. And then i also, at the end of the day, the text in the show was my bible, right . I have to play what lin wrote. And lin has. Rose but you have to pour into what he has written, what you know. Right. Rose and what youve experienced and what you feel. And what i believe, you know, as far as what my job is as a performer. You know, thats another one of those things that this is intersected. It has come at the right point. That im ready to theres a certain amount of vulnerability that this show requires of me that i was not ready to embrace at any other moment in my life. Theres a certain amount of honesty that if im doing my job right, i bring to the stage every night. And that is, you know, that comes with time. Rose tell me who aaron burr was. I think quite simply aaron burr was a soldier. He was a father, a husband. A lover, a friend. A murderer. A politician. You know. I think he was all of those things. I think like like all of us, you know, when people say, you know, who is the person you want to have dinner with living or dead. Besides charlie rose, you know, i would say aaron burr. I would like to be there. Right . The room, to have him at this table just to ask, especially, our show with him looking back. So our show is after all of that stuff has happened. What do you what have you learned. Rose cuz he had an interesting life after killing hamilton. It ruined his life. Rose it ruined his life, first of all. It ruined his political life. Yeah. Rose but he had been vice president. And then he fled the east coast. Yup. He lost. Rose was indicted for treason. Yup. His daughter, he only had one child who he loved very much. She died. After the death of his only grand child. His grandson died. And he invited theodosia to come with him, she was in mourning. And he invited her to get on a ship, come stay with me for a while and she died on the ship. So he died completely alone. You know, he did have friends, though. Cuz he didnt have much money. There were people that supported him because of what he had shown of himself, the man he had shown himself ten throughout his life to his friends. He had friends. In the war, people saw acts of, you know, heroics that, you know, endeared them to him all the days of his life. Rose moments of herorism. Yeah, yeah. Rose hes intertwined with hamilton. We see that in the play. Theyre connected. Yeah. Rose what was the relationship . They came up together. And they ran in the same circles together. They tried cases as lawyers together. They fought in the war together. And so i think of them as friends. I think of them as if you would have told them when they were 19 years old, if you would have shown them a picture, this is going to be you in your early 40s. Youre going to do this to this guy, they never would have believed it. Rose this play hamilton this musical, people are talking about it as changing the american musical theater theatre. As a a significant evolution in the american Musical Theatre. I mean this is seen more than simply a successful musical its being given the heavyweight of cultural moment. You know, im a spiritual guy too. This work is, you know, its emotional, physical, there is a spiritual component. And i just cuz i have seen it from the inside, charlie. And i will tell you, there is a great deal of it that those guys andy, lak, tommy, lin have planned within an inch of its life. I mean those guys are meticulous and you know, were so happy we opened because it forced them to put their pencils down. They will keep perfecting it until somebody forces them. There is the part that they had nothing to do with. There is Something Else. Rose and what is that . Its whatever happens, its the space in between you and i. Its whatever happens between me saying it on stage and how it affects you. And what it does to you. That is the part that none of us have any control over. None. You couldnt pay jimmy fallon to go see to go see our show and talk about our show the way he did the next night. You cant pay for that. I hope that the audience comes and feels like their presence is vital. Rose earlier we had talked to the writer, composer and star of hamilton linmanuel mir ana and also its director thomas kail. She joined me in april. And heres a look at that conversation. You sit in a room for six years making something. And you have the wildest dream version of how you think a show will be received. And were experiencing that. So were just trying to hang on while we can. I started writing this in 2008 while i was still in my show in the heights i was on my vacation, my first vacation from the show and i picked up ron chernos book at random at borders. Just knowing that. Rose just wented and said i will take this one. It had great reyou haves in the back, i know he died in a dual so i knew it would be a bang ending. And fell in love with the story, really, the dekensian nature of hamiltons life, almost from the kpirs and second chapper. The point when you say dicens, dicens, dicens, what was the dicensian aspect of his life. Hamilton was born in neves, possibly out of wed lock. His father split by the time he was ten years old. His mother died in bed with him a few short years later. His brother was apprenticed to a black smith so he was by himself. He got sent to live with a cousin after his mothers death. The cousin killed himself. And then he got put in charge of a trading charter. He was a clerk for a Trading Company that traded sugar cane and rum and slaves. The key point of the triangle trade down there in stcroix. And he wrote his way off the island. There was a hurricane that had ravaged stcroix and he wrote a poem about it describing the carnage saying that he saw sights that would strike astonishment into angels. This poem was used for relief efforts for the island. And people took up a fund to get him an education in new york. Rose so here we have a character. Yes. Rose who, a great american. We know theres drama, that he dies at the end of a dual. And which he may not have, in fact, fired his gun. Lots of differing opinions. Rose speculation about that. So here we have that story. But you have translated into so much more. I mean tell me about the ideas that you wanted to pour into this to make it a new look at the founding fathers, the american experience, and a different way of presenting presenting it that would appeal to young people because youre peopled by young actors. Well, you know. From diversity. You speak to what we were really conscious of which is how do we eliminate any distance between our story and now. We know that the story was going to be set then. But we knew it was going to sound like now. And we knew that fundamentally thises with a country that was founded and created by immigrants. Somebody, somebody in all of our lines stepped off a boat or some form of transportation, put their foot down on this soil and went to work. And so as we started thinking about taking the inspiration from rons book, we thought, okay, here are a lot of events. But we have to tell a story. So we had all of the evented late out. We both read the book and made our own time lines and then compare. This really spoke to me, this moment feels like its essential. Then you have those things to build around. But it became so apparent early on as we were really designing how the show could function, that this idea of doubling characters, for instance, felt really right on. The character who played lafayette also plays jefferson, of course they both have this connection to france. They both have this relationship, one antagonistic one supportive. So how can we make the audience feel like who they are and what they understand is actually not so different from what these people were struggling with. Rose hiphop seems like a genius stroke now. But thats what you knew. Thats the first thing i checked, by the way. So i lead two chapters of this book and i go someone has already done a hiphop version of this. Because it felt to me the quintessential hiphop narrative. This is someone who grew up in hard times and wrote his way out of his circumstances. Wrote his way to a better life. And that is the hiphop narrative from the south bronx in the 70s to today. And so i googled hamilton hiphop musical. Rose and it was not there. And it was in the there and so thank god, now you google it, you will see my show. But that was the first thing that jumped out at me. Was this is this is a fundamental hiphop story. Rose the lyrics go, i am just like my country, im young, scrappy and hungry. And im not throwing away my shot. Charlie rose is rapping. laughter i hope were lolling. Rose were rolling on everything. But you performed that at the white house. Yeah. I performed the opening number at the white house, actually, the Alexander Hamilton, the opening number of the show, yeah. Rose before we see that, did is that what the president responded to when he said geithner should see this. Yeah, i told the a essentialed audience, this is my first time performing the song in public. They had asked me to perform something from in the heights and i said i have 16 bars about the first treasury secretary. And they allowed me to close out the show with that. And his response was, somebody got to get geithner in here bauz, you know. Rose he thoughtofgeithner as a hamilton or what . He had a quote at that time, because the economic crisis had just everything had just blown up. And he said geithners got the hardest job as treasury secretary since Alexander Hamilton. I think that was his quote on the record about what geithner had ahead of him. And this was very early in obamas administration, we performed in may of 2009. So you know, they were just figuring out how to do this thing. How to get us out of the hole we were in. So i think he was tickled by the fact that i had made a treasury secretary sing and he wanted to show the treasury secretary. Rose and. And that song was from burrs perspective. So he also performed it from burrs point of view. So it got a laugh about halfway through. Rose and where did that idea come, burr, aaron burrs perspective . Well, honestly, i look to Musical Theatre history. We have a great tradition thanks to Andrew Lloyd Webber of the antagonist narrating the story, juddas narrates jesus christ superstar. Cane narrates evita. That was immediately where i went. That set up very difficult task for me of figuring out who aaron burr is. Who is, as we say in the show, a villain in our history. He is known as the guy who shot. Rose but you think more of him. I do after learning a lot about his life. And i have to find my waive in because there are a lot of biographies of burr. Rose gore wrote a historical fiction novel. His his burr is a lot craftier than mine. But one of the things i learned about burr was he is an early feminist. I mean his daughter received an education greater than any man of that era. He was very close with his wife and with his daughter. He was as he was on the Mission Society with Alexander Hamilton for the abolition of slaves in new york city. In new york state. And so there are redeeming characteristics to this guy. I had to find my way into that because every biography either is insane insanely defensive of him orville find him. Rose but they would differ in the following way, which would you know better than anybody, on the one hand aaron burr was amazing. He was cautious, careful, laid back, alex aner hamilton wanted to charge forward at every moment. Yes. Hamilton left behind 27 volumes of written work. Burr left behind less than two. And i think that sort of tells you everything about how much burr reserves the right to change his mind about any position he had at any particular point. And the tragedy of the show is at the moment when burr is finally reckless and lets go, and hamilton is cautious and throws away his shot, one kills the other. And thats how they are remembered forever. One of the things and i think hamilton knew they would be bound forever, and whether that would whether that would insurance his legacy of someone who then had to be spoken about. He had become slightly obsolete at that point thment is someone that thought about death so off then his life and here he was towards the end, not empowered, not able to affect change in that way. And we talked very early on, and again to the credit of the writing and leslie odom who plays burr, we said we have seen a lot of stories about two enemies who shoot at each other. Lets make a story about two people who were very dear and complex friends and one of them kills his friend. Poor soldiers, lawyers, statesman together, you know, they. Rose admiring of each other. Yes. Rose you thought about playing burr. Yeah, every time i wrote a burr song i said man, i should play this guy, i mean, you know. Rose because he was the narrator or because because he gets all the best songs in the show. And as you will see, leslie is now you watch the show you cant imagine me playing the role because it really fits leslie like a glove. But he gets these wonderful vorites being the room of my where it happens, where he is talking about not being in power. And seeing hamilton trade away the capitol in exchange for a financial plan. And being like how am i not in this room. How am i not in the room where it happens. Rose take a look at this, this is you at the white house in 2009 performing the first rap song you wrote for hamilton, here it is. S are force, son of a whore and a scotsman drops in the middle of the forgotten spot in the caribbean the private is impoverished . Squalor, grow up to are a hebbor the ten dollar founding father without a father got a lot farther by working a lot harder by being a lot smarter by being a selfstarter by 14 they had placed him in cha