- They were witnessing a nightmare.
It wasn't even a train wreck.
It really was more a--
it was like an existential shattering of a human soul.
- Yeah!
[cheers and applause]
[in slow-motion] Yeah!
[indistinct slow-motion chatter]
[dark electronic music]
[in slow-motion] - [growls]
[audience gasps]
♪
[grunts]
- [screaming]
♪
[mud splashes] [slow-motion yelling]
♪
[grunting and yelling continues]
[struggling vocally]
♪
- Super excited to bring this guy up.
His album-- the album "Get Wet,"
one of the best party-rock albums of all time.
You guys, a rabble-rouser of the seventh degree--
give it up for Mr. Andrew W.K., everybody.
[cheers and applause]
- When I was 16,
I wanted to be a fashion designer,
in case you didn't get that impression already.
But I wrote a letter to a company
that was actually based in Japan
called Comme des Garcons.
And I want to work for this company,
and I was 16, so I figured that what you do
is you write a letter to Japan, and then they hire you.
And they actually wrote back
through their New York offices and said,
"If you really want to work here,
"in two more years when you're 18,
write back and we'll see what we can do."
So I waited two years and then wrote back
and then said, "Yeah, I still want to work there."
So then I moved to New York, and I was given a job
in the basement office of Comme des Garcons
on Wooster Street.
[scattered cheers and applause]
And, uh...
was fired two months later.
For stealing and other petty offenses.
When I was fired, I was crying quite a bit,
which the woman in charge asked me not to do.
And I decided that I wasn't meant to do fashion.
So, at that time, I was living in the living room
of two folks from Michigan who I didn't know really
and looking through the want ads every day
in the back of the "Village Voice"
and came across a job for a musician.
I thought, huh, I've never thought about doing that.
Now, I had taken piano lessons and played piano
and made music, but that to me was like reading.
I never really thought--
you know, once you learn how to talk,
you don't necessarily become professional,
unless you're gonna be a stand-up comedian
or something like that.
[sighs]
Anyway, so--
This is easier than I thought,
'cause that wasn't even supposed to be a joke.
So I thought, well, at the worst-case,
I mean, the job paid $700 a week,
which was more money than I'd ever imagined
you could really make doing anything.
It was a lot more than I was getting paid at the internship
at the fashion place, so I said, "Okay, I'll try it."
Now, I figured, having never auditioned
for a musical job before,
that I would go in and I would have a meeting
and they would give me songs to learn
and we would talk about the band.
I'd only been in high school bands
and things like that, and we did have original songs,
but I think we once learned someone else's song
and played it very poorly,
and it took about two or three months of practice
before we got it, and then we never played it again.
Went back to the original songs,
'cause no one could judge those.
So I dressed up as most professional musicians
did at the time, which I envisioned to be
a sport coat with the sleeves rolled up,
and I got myself psyched up
and really tried to use the power of visualization,
which I'd just been learning about at that time,
that you could kind of picture how things would go.
I learned actually doing piano recitals
to picture the recital going well,
and then when it goes terribly wrong and you mess up,
much like the way I feel now on this stage,
you'll at least be able to compare it
and really realize how poorly it's going
compared to what you visualized.
So, uh, I visualized that I would get to sit in a room,
maybe with a piano-- kinda like I imagined
it would be like a ballet studio for some reason
with mirrors along one side and a railing.
And this nice gentleman
who was gonna give me the stack of songs to learn,
"Come back in two weeks. We'll review.
We'll go over this, as much time as you need."
And I make my way down there on the subway,
you know, all by myself.
I didn't have any friends really at that time.
I had two roommates that I was irritating,
but I don't think they would have
considered themselves my friends.
And then found my way to this place,
which was in Greenwich Village.
It said on the sign-- it said "Cafe Wha?"
in kind of bold colors.
And I really didn't like the name.
And I thought, "That doesn't-- this is not a--
this is a bad omen."
So I listened to a deeper voice that said go in,
and I went inside and went down some stairs.
There was actually a very nice women there,
that I explained I'm answering this ad.
And she had a slight look of concern
mixed with fear.
And she seemed to say,
"Okay, well, you know what, come over here,
"and you can take a seat in the back,
and I'll go tell the manager you're here."
And I thought, "This is great.
He'll pull me into his office and we'll talk."
In the meantime, it was a packed house.
It was very much like this.
In fact, I haven't felt as much like I did that night
until this night.
And I really mean that.
I mean, my heart is racing so much so
that if I just sit still,
I just could be-- seem to pulse.
It's a very intense feeling.
And so it was a packed house.
It was a live music club.
And it was a very boisterous audience.
Standing room only. People were singing along.
I cannot exaggerate how fantastic the band was
that was playing.
I mean, world-class.
And again, it was really in a place
really about this exact size,
uh, in the most eerie of ways.
There were a lot of mirrors, much like this,
and helped make the room
somehow seem more claustrophobic in a strange way.
And I found the one only person seat
for this whole club.
Sat down, ordered a Sprite.
And just waited for her to come and tell me
when the manager was ready.
So I'm watching this band,
and then this gentleman who had been more like the sideman
stepped up and took over the mic,
speaking with the audience.
And it was very strange for me at this time
to watch this guy.
I was just fascinated by his confidence,
because in my eyes
he had absolutely no reason to be confident.
He looked like the friends I had in high school
that were really into computer repair,
which was a higher lever of computer enthusiast.
And was playing a Fender Stratocaster guitar
with the strap at that height,
that certain height that just doesn't seem like
it can't possibly make it easier to play.
So I'm watching this guy command the crowd,
and I'm really amazed by his almost overconfidence.
It turns out, of course, he's the host,
and actually he's the manager. He's the manager.
How amazing is this that the manager of the club
is playing in their world-class band?
So he's bantering with the audience,
he's talking about how great everyone has been so far,
what an amazing lineup--
"And I understand that there's a young man
"somewhere in this audience tonight
"that's gonna come up on stage here
and audition for us."
And the first thought was:
shoot, someone else is gonna get this gig.
This other kid. This other guy.
And I'm not even gonna get a chance.
And then he asked again
if the young man would please show himself.
And that's when I realized it was me.
And, uh...
I just realized, I could sit there
and not acknowledge myself
and wait until they passed over,
'cause he did want to keep the show moving,
or, um, I could go up there.
And at that time, that really surpassed
any asking out a girl for the first time.
It certainly surpassed having been fired from that job.
I could tell this was the most underwhelming
overwhelming thing that was about to happen.
And I was about to actually just cop out,
'cause it was gonna be--
you know, it wasn't gonna go well.
It was a living nightmare.
And there was a very clear voice in my head.
It wasn't my voice.
It's kinda like the voice
that when you're reading a book silently.
It's just this voice that doesn't actually have a sound,
of course.
But somehow it's saying these words to you.
So I don't really understand how exactly that works.
So who--
whose voice that is,
but it's right-- it's very intimate.
You can't-- can't shut it out,
and it said, "This is what you're supposed to do."
So I said okay.
So I got up and went on the stage,
and as soon as I stood up,
there was one of those prison spotlights,
and so then I couldn't see anything,
except that I was very lit up.
And right away, the host's face just sank,
'cause he saw that I was 18 years old
and probably gonna be really amazing
or really, really bad.
And I managed to be both, I think.
I walked up and I kinda scooted through the stage.
It was very crowded. Once you get up there,
you realize that everyone's kinda overlapped
on top of each other.
And the keyboard player specifically
was not happy about me
taking over his, at least,
three racks of triple-tiered keyboards,
and then a whole nother triple tier,
and then the ones that you can't play behind you.
That's always been-- you know, I can play one barely.
So this idea of nine was--
again, I just was very intimidated.
And all the while this is happening,
I can't believe that it's happening,
and I still think about just fleeing.
And I'll try to run through this part quick
because it's just very painful to think about.
So the host is here, and he says--he says,
"Okay, so what do you got for us?"
And I--you know, my mouth was so dry.
It was like all the moisture had gone to my--
the palms of my hand and behind my knees.
I could barely speak, and the mic was way too loud.
I said, "I didn't think it was gonna be like this."
And before I could even finish uttering that,
the whole crowd-- the tension, it just--
they were having the greatest night of their lives,
and it was just cut off.
They were witnessing a nightmare.
It wasn't even a train wreck.
It really was more, uh--
it was like an existential shattering
of a human soul.
And this guy hosting realized that,
and he says, "Okay, well, let's go all-in."
He said, "Well, how could you come to a thing
"and not have anything prepared?
What song can you play?"
I said, "I don't know--" I really was thinking
maybe I would play scales or something backstage.
I didn't have the nerve to say that.
I said, "I didn't think it was gonna be like this.
On every level."
He said, "Well, name a song that you can play."
And this is the part that I almost wasn't gonna tell you.
'Cause it's just-- out of all the songs--
some that I would know,
like "Happy Birthday" or something.
I could've played that.
A song I've never played, still don't know how to play,
haven't even tried to play, especially after this.
Hadn't heard it earlier that day.
Had no particular relationship to the song,
no special memories about the song.
I said "Rocket Man" by Elton John.
And at that point, I almost felt like looking back now
the voice in my head was like,
"What--where-- where did that come--
"What the hell are you doing?
That's not how this is supposed to go."
So he said, "Okay, 'Rocket Man!'"
And then all of a sudden, it dawned on me
that this band knew every song.
They knew "Rocket Man."
They had it memorized.
No one gave them the sheet music.
They--I could have called out any song,
they'd go, "Okay, one, two, three, four."
Pachelbel's "Canon in C."
"Mary--" ugh.
So they kick into it
and it sounds just like the album
except that there's no piano playing.
And I say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait.
What key is it in?"
You know, I normally have the music,
and even then I need a lot of practice.
He said, "Well, it's on the same key as the album."
I said, "Well, I don't know what key's that in."
And then I think some of the other band
was starting to get irritated.
It was starting to make them look bad.
And then, uh--
So he said, "What key do you want to play it in?"
And I said, "C. C major."
But the problem is-- if you're even slightly familiar
with "Rocket Man," whatever key you start in,
within the first few seconds, it's changing and modulating
and moving to about 18 different keys.
It's probably one of the more complicated songs
to try to just fake your way through.
And I faked my way through it
by turning the volume down on the keyboard.
One of the great things about keyboards versus real pianos.
Just turn that down and have a ball.
And then I realized I didn't know all the words,
so he said, "I'll feed you the words one line as we go."
I mean, and at this point, my face was so red and hot.
The way it feels right now.
When your ears are so hot that they hurt
without even being touched.
You can leave a thumbprint on your cheek.
But eventually, I got to the line where he says--
where it's, "And I think it's gonna be a long, long time."
Which was the one line I really did know.
So I was excited, and as I started to sing that,
he said, "And I think it's gonna be a long, long time
till you ever perform at Cafe Wha? again."
[audience awws]
And in part, I was relieved, of course, like--
"Good, let me get out of here. Gee whiz."
And at that moment, the crowd kind of--
it was just so bad, something had to give.
'Cause he wasn't letting up on me,
and I don't blame him.
But someone yelled, "Hey, let him finish."
Or, "Let the"--you know, "You're doing great, kid!"
And-and the feeling that some other person
that I didn't know that had no reason to--
they cared about me.
They were shouting for me.
And, like, a whole sea change-- the whole vibe changed to,
"Come on, you can do it!" Like an underdog.
But the thing-- I really couldn't do it,
so it wasn't like I won the game
or scored this three-pointer and brought it all home.
Finished the song very, very badly,
left the stage, but there was still
something kind of satisfying about it, I guess.
The bass player, he put his hand on my shoulder
and said, "It's gonna be okay."
Sorta like, you know, "You're gonna live through this."
And I walked down the stairs,
and I went back, and then, you know,
very slowly walked out.
But the feeling was that if I could not make it through that,
I could not make it through anything.
[cheers and applause]
♪