Andrew WK: Interview
Words by Tamlin Magee // Photos by Stewart Ruffles
We were SO hyped up for this show - Vice, typically, released a bunch of flyers and really obvious hints as to who their special guest at an Old Blue Last show was. Only a dunce couldn’t have figured out it was Andrew W.K. from the flyers, the dropped hints et al.
Excited, I got in touch with his agent straight away and got a prompt reply - he’d love to meet you, and he’s totally excited about the interview. Grinning, I hastily prepared some questions and met up with him at The Griffin, Shoreditch (THANKS, The Griffin).
The show itself was great, high-energy party music with an overall good vibe, as expected. He was joined on stage briefly by David Tibet, an old friend, who has been collaborating with Andrew WK.
Anyway, massive thanks to Andrew WK, Aleister X and Bad Brilliance for sharing a drink with Disappear Here. A note before you get on with the read - we were talking 80s cartoons when Andrew told us that he isn’t big on “favourite” questions, he just loves a lot of stuff. He does like He-Man and Warner Brothers cartoons though.
A preemptive apology for obvious references to partying.
DH: If you could sacrifice your partying power so the rest of the world could party hard 24/7 would you do it?
Andrew: Well in a way I feel like that’s a bit of what I already do. Any time you give energy and perform you’re puttingit out for other people to absorb or to work with. The idea of partying or going out and being social, or hanging out with people in a celebratory way was something I really struggled with when I was much younger. And actually, performing was the way I found I could participate in that kind of atmosphere and feel comfortable and feel useful. But I usually felt pretty awkward, and unsure of what I was supposed to do, am I supposed to act like these people? I mean, I didn’t like partying, so making a party, that I could do. Like when we had birthday parties I liked decorating for the birthday party, creating the atmosphere, hanging out by the DJ booth at parties, or watching the lighting guy or the people who were making the festivities so all these people could lose themselves. That seems more like my calling. Giving my energy in that way is suited for me, and we can all contribute our energies for the greater good, but you have to do what feels good to you first.
[BAD BRILLIANCE AND Aleister X ENTER THE ROOM]
Andrew: Aleister X and Bad Brilliance are two of the artists that are on the label, Skyscraper Musicmaker. We’ve come together to announce The Damned Mixtape which they both participated in very heavily. The first release on the label that I started, which is based here in London, which is so exciting and meaningful to me, because London for me and England in general was where I really began my musical career as an artist. I’ve been doing music but when I really came to release records and go all out it started in London so to be able to have this label here and to introduce like what we were talking about, giving out more energy and hopefully create this joy, this is an exciting place to base it from. New York and London have a nice match.
DH: The initial early recognition of your music was very London based?
Andrew: Yeah, well when I was doing Andrew WK - I’ve been doing all kinds of music since I was five years old on piano.
DH: So you’re classically trained, right?
Andrew: Yeah, well traditionally trained. But there became a time when it was my decision to do, like, I could either go to college or go to fucking art school, and I was interested in science, and other things but it seemed like music would allow me to do all these different things one way or another. And that’s why I said ok we’ll do this, Andrew WK music.
DH:I know David Tibet quite personally and -
[Andrew gets excited]Andrew: That’s right! Check this out, you’ll appreciate this. He called when we were driving on our way back from a welcome break to go to Marks and Spencers, I had to find out how great Marks and Spencers is.
DH: The wraps there are amazing.
Andrew: The wraps, the salads, they got baps, they’ve got buns. Anyway, David, Joe who works at Cargo records the label, said you know what, you should call David right now. So I called David, and he said yes, thank you for calling, and he said I found out you’re doing an interview with a man named Tamlin, I’ve been familiar with him since he was born because I’m really close friends with his Dad, he told me about your Dad and the backstory and why they’re connected and I said that’s such a great connection. That’s such a great synchronicity, it’s really beautiful. It’s really significant. And then right then, David said “Where are you right now?” and I said “Well we’re at this Marks and Spencer” and then he hung up. And then next thing, he was there, around the corner, he’d stopped at the same place on the road so we thought that was very significant.
DH: I was gonna say does David secretly party hard, but I know he does when you see him on stage swaggering around with a bottle of wine and that.
Andrew: It’s no secret, yeah! He played with us last night at ATP, and I got him a bottle of red wine, like I better have wine ready for David he said “No no, I only drink lager now.” So he switched to the pure lager diet.
DH: I feel like I kind of have to ask you your thoughts on the whole Andrew WK conspiracy thing. That you’re not the same Andrew WK now as you used to be.
Andrew: I don’t have much to say about that. I mean I don’t even know where to begin with trying to defend that I exist, I just trust that since you’re here, and you can see me, am I the same person I am five or ten years ago? No. But neither are you, and neither is anybody, so. If I look different, then I understand but, well I don’t really talk about it anymore. I used to get very angry when people said I was fake, and that I was made up by someone else. It started out at the very beginning, especially in London, some of the press reacted that way. A very paranoid way.
DH: That’s strange because you got so much good press when you brought your first album out.
Andrew: The NME has been very supportive, actually all those magazine that were supportive of me continued to be supportive as far as I’m concerned. But, some people from the beginning just had very particular ideas about figuring out where I came from and it’s not something that I blame them for. I think it’s natural to have curiosity and sometimes curiosity manifests itself in different ways. And for them it was really thrillingt to take those points of view. But I don’t have to believe them. It doesn’t really matter because either way I think people are going to have a good time with the music, I want people to feel good about it.
DH: What about your motivational talks? A friend of mine said he saw you give a talk at Madame Jojo’s. He wanted me to ask you to tell me about ‘definitive statements.’
Andrew: Oh yeah. Well, a definitive statement is one that is stated without intention of changing or being flexible. So, saying the world is round is a pretty good definitive statement I think, that you can commit to and feel certain about, and states an agreed upon point of view.
DH: What relation does that have to your talks?
Andrew: Well, saying a definitive statement like ‘I’m bad at playing music’ that would be definitive statement but I would be really careful with using it especially if you wanted to play music and that was your dream. A definitive statement like, ‘That girl’s an amazing person’ that’s a great definitive statement I think. So it’s choosing to use the power of language which can seem sort of light in one way because these are just words, how can they have any real power or meaning, but you understand these things. We’re experiencing the world in a large part using language, we’re using words in our head when we’re describing our experiences to ourselves, and using them outwardly when we’re describing them to others. Being aware of your language and choosing it wisely I think is a good idea, and when we choose to use definitive statements let’s make sure as much as we care to or we can that they’re empowering and that they’re full of energy that puts us and other people in the direction that they’d like to go.
DH: Positive energy?
Andrew: Whatever energy you want. I will always go for a good vibe though. So that’s all, sometimes I’ve heard my friends say ‘Oh my Dad’s an asshole, he never understands what I do.’ So it’s that, if we have any control over at least our experience perhaps that’s when we’re perpetuating that condition. If you said my dad HAS been a real jerk, and now we’re figuring out a way, every single day it’s getting a bit better. These are old ideas that make sense, but I found them really fun to think about.
DH: I’d like to talk a little bit about Baby Dee, and Current 93, how did you find yourself involved with that crowd? The music you’re known for making is very aesthetically different.
Andrew: Absolutely. That’s one of the things that appealed to me about it.
DH: You do vocals on the latest Current 93 album right?
Andrew: I did a whole bunch of stuff on that album bass, piano, guitar, and that’s coming out soon, it’s very exciting. It’s a great honour to have been able to work with Baby Dee and David, I was actually fortunate enough to meet them both through Will Oldham and Matt Sweeney, and Matt is one of my oldest and closest friends, he used to be my manager when I first started out in New York, and he and I for a long time had been really interested in Current 93 but were a little overwhelmed by the quantity and depth of the work. And it’s just so intense, it’s a little bit impenetrable at first, it’s overwhelming, in a good way. But it came time to actually take that step and go into it, and that happened to coincide with the time that David reached out to Will Oldham, and through Will he had met Matt, and David just, he seems to have a talent for bringing people together, and also a talent for finding common ground between disparate personalities. I think that he saw that, and he saw us working together, and he was able to really embrace it. I think he likes to push himself out of what’s comfortable and familiar, and that’s how we’re able to relate because that’s sort of been my personal way of living as well.
DH: I’m being careful on the favourites questions here. What are some of your favourite Current 93 tracks?
Andrew: Well actually, I do have a favourite. The first album I heard ever by them, I was hanging out with this girl, my girlfriend at the time in New York, and she wanted to go over to this guys house and hang out. And I was just not, I really did not want to go, I just had this horrible bad vibe and was in a bad state overall at that time. I grudgingly went and was just sitting in this guys room on the floor, and we were talking, and I was just waiting for it to be over, and trying to ignore everything they were saying. But I heard this music, and for about ten minutes I noticed that the song wasn’t changing, it was this amazing sound that just kept going and going, and then for about another five minutes everything changed, I suddenly felt really good, this guy must be really cool, he must be because he’s listening to this music, and I asked him what is it, and he said oh well this is Current 93. So I’m like, my god, this is Current 93? I’ve heard about this band for years, I almost thought the name had something to do with the year 1993, and there was also a magazine in my hometown of Michigan, that was called Current and it scheduled local events, and somehow I associated this band with that, Current issue 1993, so the whole thing was suddenly revealed to me, this beautiful music in this guys house. And that song was Where The Long Shadows Fall.
DH: That’s a great song.
Andrew: Oh yeah. So for the next five years I tried to track down that song, which you can understand was very difficult, because there’s album covers without titles, and albums that look the same, and never was really able to find it again. Until, much much later. But the fact that I got to hear it that day, it had a lot of significance to me in terms of going out of your comfort zone, taking risks, even just having to go hang out at this guys house that I never realy particularly liked. It started a path.
DH: Do you prefer cheetahs or pumas?
Andrew: What are those?
DH: Cats, you know. Big cats.
Andrew: Oh! POOH-mas. This is a favourite style question, so it may be a challenge. Cheetahs have a nice speed to them, right? They’re quite quick. And pumas, they’re more hefty right, and black? Maybe, well a puma has a really big tail I think, that gets quite fat. That’s kind of appealing I think, a pumas more strong and a cheetahs more light.
DH: You don’t have to pick. Pumas are more cuddly though.
Andrew: Yeah, pumas have a teddy bear like quality. I feel like a cheetah wouldn’t WANT to be liked, by me. I feel like a puma might appreciate a humans love, companionship and attention. A cheetah seems more like, it’s gonna bolt. It’s gonna run quickly. Its instinct is to preserve itself… through escape.
DH: We’ve always wanted to know the difference between pumas, jaguars and panthers.
Andrew WK: What about a panther, they’re a black one too.
DH: Bageera’s a panther right?
Andrew WK: I’m not sure.
DH: Which end do you squeeze your toothpaste from?
[Aleister X rolls his eyes behind his sunglasses, but we see him.]
Andrew: Out of the new tube, I start by squeezing it at the top. And you think well it’s brand new, of course it doesn’t matter, then that indentation begins to form there, and then your habit will form to continue it, then all of a sudden you realise wait a minute, now I’m going to try to make up for this by squeezing from the bottom, then the balance is already skewed. I think most of the time I did squeeze from the top. It just seems more natural for some reason.
DH: You could delve into an existential approach going with that as a metaphor. For life.
Andrew: Well if it feels more natural to do something from the top, then you’re supposed to take that one more second to think twice and to contradict that natural impulse and start from the bottom, and then I guess that’s a good kind of awareness to develop… For your toothpaste tubes.
DH: Can you guys, Bad Brilliance and Aleister, tell me a bit more about your musical involvement with each other?
Andrew: None of us are involved formally, it’s kind of like it is with David, there’s no primal reason really to any of us being involved, yet we found ourselves involved.
Aleister: I feel very blessed, and also, lucky to be working with Andrew, who really understands me. and the music I started to make, and the music we’ve made together. And the music that we’ll continue to make. We see eye to eye.
Andrew: When I first heard Aleister X’s music, it struck me as the most dark, depressing negative music I’d ever heard, yet the feelings I had when I listen to it were as excited, happy and joyous as I’ve ever felt, and I was really struck by that, and perplexed, how could this song that’s saying the most sort of, dark lines and lyrics and words and feelings, how could it make me feel so overjoyed? Which is really what I want to get from music, that rush of feeling so strong. It’s a triumphant feeling, like he figured out a way to take - because I was a very dark, negative person when I first wanted to make music and I wanted to find a way out of that feeling - and I feel like he used one of the same results, wanted to experience joy and create joy, almost absorb all the negativity in the world into his music, and then it manifested and transmuted into these uplifting feelings.
Andrew: So, Bad B, tell them your tale?
Bad Brilliance: Which one?
DH: The best one.
Bad B: Oh my god.... There’s so many good ones.
Andrew: Well tell them about how we met!
Bad B: We met on MySpace. You know. A lot of people meet like that.
Andrew: Tell them the whole story, unless you want me to tell it, because it’s a good one. Do you want me to tell it? Are you gonna tell it right?
Bad B: Is there a way to tell it?
Andrew: It starts at the very bottom, right?
Bad B: OH. Yeah. Um, Andrew was interviewing this very good musician friend of mine. This guy White Williams. I dunno. Um, I don’t know if people know him in the UK. I dunno. Maybe you should tell it.
Andrew: Ok, then you can tell something else. I had been asked to interview some groups that were playing part of C and J festival, an online music magazine called StereoGun, and I thought that was fun, I like interviewing people, I like doing television - it was a video film thing. We went to this venue in Manhattan and I got to meet some new artists and one of them was this man called White Williams, and a man named Joe, who turned out had been coming to my concerts when he was a bit younger. And I even remembered him, a bit, some of the shows in Cleveland I recognised his face. And I thought it was extremely exciting and significant that this young man now was doing his music, and doing well, and that we could meet each other in this way. So I was in this really excited state of wow, there’s really a lot of young people coming up and, it was one of the first times I had felt that there was a next wave of people now. It was a really euphoric sense of possibility, I felt renewed by it and inspired. So I was hanging out in this venue and meeting these different groups and these different people, I passed this guy on the stairs, just going from one room to the other, and this guy made me stop dead in my tracks, just seeing him. That’s very rarely happened to me, I mean in New York, of all places, it can happen a lot where you see the most intense person you’ve ever seen as one after another on the sidewalk, but just something about this guy - I felt like I recognised him, but I’d never seen him or met him before. There was something about his presence that really struck me, so anyway, I didn’t say anything to him, I didn’t talk to him or see him again. A couple days later, these amazing photographs were put on my myspace page, and I check it all the time and update it, I’d never seen better photos. And they fit a style and a sensibility and an aesthetic that I had dreamed of but never had really seen anyone do, you get like this dream state feeling. And interestingly enough, a few months prior to this another man had been taking these amazing photos and I had reached out to him, and said these are incredible photographs and I would love to work with you on an album cover or something, and it turned out that that person hadn’t taken those photos and it was kind of a scam, but, I was actually friends with this guy through another guy, and it was a fake name, and it was very confusing. It made me think twice, like maybe this guy who posted these new photos, they really aren’t his. So I wrote to him and said, did you take these photos, and he assured me that he did - he gave me his number and I called him immediately, we started talking on the phone, he said yeah I live in New York, and I said yeah, that’s neat. He said ok, meet up with me in McDonalds in Times Square, I thought that’s great, that’s right by where I live. So I was so excited I went over to the McDonalds in Times Square and realised, he didn’t tell me what he looked like, and I didn’t really tell him what I looked like. I was hoping because he saw my MySpace page he would recognise me. But I was really looking out to see who it would be, and of course, it was the guy who I had passed in the stairs a few weeks earlier.
DH: YOU know what he looks like underneath then.
Andrew: Yeah. He doesn’t know what he looks like underneath. I thought it was very significant, that there was a psychic connection leading up to it, and it was similar with Doug [Aleister] to the way people have come together when it happened, it happened very organically and naturally and there was a very magical quality to it which I think you’ve got to respect and be aware and cherish. I had the good fortune to work with the people I most wanted to work with in the entire world, when I first heard Doug’s music, someone said to me, if I could work with anyone in the world, who would it be, and I said this guy. I’d wanna work with this guy. There’s nothing settling, there’s nothing, I don’t need to reach to give me the most joy in my life, and I’m extremely greatful for it and feel very very blessed. So that’s how we met.
DH: Good story! Well told Bad Brilliance!
Bad B: My take is different. It’s really some more, no, I mean I saw him at the venue and it was really exciting that my friend was being interviewed, but in New York there’s so many people and characters and you just never know what anybody actually - when you see P Diddy at an event you don’t know what he’s thinking, he might be like, I need to find the bathroom, or I wanna get the fuck out of here, or I love this, or that girls hot, like you never know what the person is thinking. Or what they’re interested in. So I kind of just trained myself to not to really approach anybody at an event. The whole purpose of the event is to approach people but that’s not, whatever reason ends up that you shouldn’t approach them there, it’s much better to just email them or something.
Andrew: You can still make a connection there though which is interesting.
Bad B: That’s true. Through something else, not through dialogue.
DH: It’s not necessarily your motive but if the opportunity is there and it feels right, then you will.
Andrew: You can pick up on things, for sure.
Bad B: Well, I was looking through my photography and I’d had some photos of people with long hair, that I had photographed, and I thought that maybe Andrew WK would be into this, or maybe it would weird him out a little bit. So must of these images, it was actually really strange and really shocking when I got a response.
Andrew: How long was it until I responded?
Bad B: It was the next morning.I posted the images at 5 a.m. And then I woke up, and there was a response. It was just like, it was spine chilling. Then we went up to McDonalds.
DH: You’re dressed a bit McDonalds. Is that part of it?
Bad B: Yeah, that’s a big part. Actually I posted from two different MySpace accounts, one message from my Bad Brilliance account, and I think he deleted that message.
DH: [To Andrew] DID you delete that message?
Bad B: He actually read that message, the message was a few photos that he didn’t post.
Andrew: I just looked at it.
Bad B: He just looked at it, but he didn’t post it.
Andrew: I might have not wanted anyone to see it for some weird reason, I don’t know why. I don’t remember the specifics of that. The feeling I felt was that this person was a great visual artist. With both Aleister X and Bad Brilliance, there’s no relation but in terms of something that I’m excited to get involved in. They’re both extremely self-sufficient, they’re both able to do everything, to do what they want to do with what they’re making, so they can take the pictures, they can make the artwork, they can make the music, they can come up with their image and presentation, their concepts, so for me someone who also is not just running a record label but is also involved in other things, to be able to contribute to someone who doesn’t NEED someone to contribute is more thrilling, because they don’t NEED me, so any idea is just going to add to what’s already there, it’s icing on the cake. It’s just like adding power - you’re not just trying to get it up to level zero. It’s already way beyond zero. It’s very thrilling to be able to participate to something that isn’t taking from you. I get a lot from it.
DH: Is there more pressure involved though, when you think they don’t need me, but they’ve asked me to contribute?
Andrew: They didn’t ask me, I asked them. That’s a very important thing. To make clear, I asked them if I could work with them, I asked them if I could be involved in their music, and that is a big difference, I never really realised that but it’s true that it should be understood that they didn’t come to me like “Can you work with me? Can you help me?” they never did that. They don’t need it - they don’t need anybody else. That’s why it’s an honour to be able to work with them.
DH: So have you heard Party Hard by Donaeo?
Andrew: I did a dance mix. “When it’s time to party we will boogy boogy boogy boogy boogy boogy”
DH: I mean that house track by Donaeo? A track called Party Hard?
Andrew: That’s such an honour. That’s fantastic. To me that’s as good as it gets. I’m a big big big dance music fan. A lot of the elements I try to include were taken from the feeling of dance music, four on the floor, kick drum, even if it’s just a rock beat. [Starts drumming on the table] The energy that dance music creates, that feeling that you can go forever, that’s what I get out of it, and I love it even more now, than I ever did before. There’s a lot of things exciting about it to me.
DH: I’m gonna have to be terribly rude, but I’m going to have to cut this short because I need the toilet really quite badly.
Andrew: Sure sure, as long as you think you’ve got enough, as long as you’re happy with it.
DH: Very happy with it! Thanks!
Posted Tue, May 19, 2009