JAY BABCOCK: WHERE ARE YOU?
ANDREW W.K.: London. For a few days, and then Japan. We’re in Europe for a few days.
HAVE YOU PLAYED L.A. BEFORE?
No sir. I’ve played San Francisco, that’s the closest I got to that realm.
WHAT CAN PEOPLE EXPECT WHEN YOU GET HERE?
Expect nothing, hope for the best. Come knowing that what you’re gonna see is quite simply the result of seven or eight people doing what they love to do, which is play these songs and really put an honest effort to include everybody, to have fun. I don’t know what people should expect. What usually happens is people come and by the end of the show they’re smiling. I don’t know why. I just hope that that’s what we can do. Please come to have fun, and be happy, and know that things are going to be okay. My goal is to make people happy.
YOU’RE GONNA BE PLAYING ON THE SUNSET STRIP, HOME IN THE ‘80S TO THAT POP METAL ANTHEM ROCK THING, WHICH YOUR MUSIC HAS A KIND OF FEEL TO IT.
If you say so, sir. I know about L.A. It’s a fascinating town. I was born in Los Angeles. I worked there on the album for many months, among other places. I mixed the album there, that was the most fun. I liked driving up and down the Sunset Strip, that’s very fun. To me... where do we even begin? This is gonna be good. If you have time. As far as I’m concerned, we’re just getting going.
DID RICK RUBIN WORK ON THE ALBUM?
No. He hasn’t been involved with Def Jam for years, he only recently, in the last few months, well after the album was finished, American was bought by Universal. I met him when the album was done, went to his house, hung out with him, he was very very cool, and very very kind. Incredibly kind, wonderful man. But no, and I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but he did not have any input on this record at all.
WHAT DO THE W AND K STAND FOR?
Who Knows.
WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR NOSE ON THE COVER?
Okay, well...My plan was, I had a little piece of a cinder block, and the backup plan, I had this blood I got from a butcher’s shop, mainly pig’s blood, I imagine it’s cow blood too, just some animal blood. We took some basic pictures, he had one more set of film, and then I said, Okay I wanna do this, so I hit myself in the nose against this wall with the brick. My nose bled a bit. I was very disappointed because my nose used to bleed a lot when I was younger, very easily, which is not uncommon, I guess. So I was imagining I’d be able to get a good bloody nose. It bled a little bit, and of course it hurt really bad. So I used the animal blood, put some in my nose...
NOW WHY DO YOU WANT THAT IMAGE TO COME TO PEOPLE FIRST?
For no reason. It just worked. There was a good thing about that picture. For me, I’ll always feel that time, that moment when it was taken and the mindset of whatever it takes. It works good. There’s no message, or a hidden attachment or meanings that go with it. I don’t like that! If I see a picture or painting, I go wow this is really cool, and then someone comes up and goes Here read this, this is what it’s really about, here’s the political agenda behind this picture. How BORING. I liked it just fine. And to be honest, I liked it a lot more when I thought it was what I thought it was. So I don’t want to attach anything to any of this. It is what it is. What you see is what you get. And what you make of it is what it is. There’s no wrong reason to like it. I don’t want to dwell in the world of summing up and calculated and attachments...
OKAY. WHAT DOES ‘I GET WET’ MEAN?
Well again, it means nothing but...
WELL IT’S A WEIRD THING FOR A MAN TO SAY--
The clear basis of it is: In the ocean of life, you can stand on the shore or you can dive in. I choose to dive in and get wet. I wanna be in the midst. I wanna be living. I wanna be in the midst of LIFE. We’re only just getting going here...Let me say this. The word ‘party’, to me, includes more people and more things and more possibilities, includes MORE than any other word I can really think of. It’s about celebrating everything you see in front of you, everything that you see behind you, and everything that ever has existed, could exist and does exist. It’s about being not mindlessly happy, but in fact solidly okay, and feeling good about everything. Everybody is invited to this party, unconditionally, without any guidelines, without any rules, things you have to think, be like, do, act like... You don’t have to drink alcohol or do drugs to be invited to this party. You can drink alcohol and do heroin and be the biggest junkie in the world and be invited as well. There’s nothing you need to do or not do except be yourself, to be part of this. This is for human beings. We’re celebrating the excitement of being alive and the potential that all humans have to do and be great things.
HOW OLD ARE YOU?
22.
22?!? WHERE IS ALL THIS PHILOSOPHY STUFF COMING FROM?
"Philosophy"? I see it as "the truth." The truth is that there’s nothing to be afraid of. The truth is that the world is big and mysterious and explosive, and that no matter how hard we try... Okay, let me explain it like this. When I, and most people I think, are young, the world is full of mystery and it’s exciting. Then you become a teenager and I think it’s just because chemicals are released in the brain, you realize that you don’t know everything and that you can’t control everything and everything is sorta out of your immediate grasp. The way a lot of people, including me, deal with that is holding on to everything for dear life. Cuz what you see is a big black hole. And you’re like, Wow that big black hole looks like Nothing. It’s just empty and black and you hold on for dear life to all these things. When in fact the black hole contains everything! Is everything. ALL THINGS. And through summing up, through the pursuit of knowing everything,.. I wanted to know everything when I was a teenager, and say, ‘Oh yeah, I know that, yeah yeah yeah,” ...I was on top of everything, everything was below me, not like I was better than it, but it was like nothing’s a surprise, everything was below me, that wasn’t always the case, but that was often the case. I felt most comfortable that way. I felt like I was holding on -- and not falling into that void. Well, the minute I let go a little bit, as I got older, because I realized I couldn’t know everything, I sort of let it go, falling into that void, and of course, it turns out that in that void is actually everything. And what an exciting thing to let life be big and exciting and that I don’t have everything figured out and I don’t wrap things up in two words, I don’t want to know the answer of everything or have it all explained to me either, I wanna let it wash over me like at the ocean, and come to me, be endlessly deep, deeper and more expansive on all sides than I can see, and I want it to exist above me. I feel that this music as well as everything else in life is much bigger than me--YET I can own it and it’s inside of me. I can possess it. It belongs to me. But on that same token, as much as it’s mine, it’s something I can’t control and keep to myself, or understand or possess entirely. [coughs] See what I mean? It’s no philosophy or a concept. IT’S THE TRUTH. It’s trying to be strong enough that I can let all my guards down, and let everything come in, and not have to put up walls to protect myself from everything, that I can see all things, and experience them all, as much as possible. It’s probably a fleeting effort. I think to truly be invincible is probably impossible until maybe the day you die, but at least...TRYING to let the world be as big and as open as it can be. And that’s TRUTH. That’s not a philosophy, that’s just the truth. That’s what we’re going for here, is the pursuit of the absolute truth, which by its very nature, I think, is GOOD. That includes the bad and the sad and the ugly, it also includes the happy and the excitement and the good feelings. And if you can live in the world where you’re strong enough and set up enough with things like food and shelter, health and safety then you can really truly enjoy all those elements, even the bad ones, as a sort of amazing emotional experience. A very rich, textured existence.
YOU’RE TRYING TO REACH AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN, RIGHT?
Yeah.
YET YOU’RE ONE OF THE FEW NEW ROCK ACTS THAT DOESN’T RAP.
Huh. Rap is a great, great, great thing. I feel like I rap in my own way. But the thing is, I really like commitment. So I know there’s no accident. And the whole premise of some things are groove-oriented, and... I just want a commitment, you know what I mean? I think rap is great, one of the greatest things in the world. I can’t do it well, unfortunately. Hope to.
DO YOU THINK YOU’RE BRINGING SOMETHING TO THE CULTURE THAT ISN’T THERE AT THE MOMENT?
No. I’m only reflected what is already there.
DO YOU THINK THAT THERE ARE OTHER ARTISTS WHO ARE DOING THE SAME SORT OF THING YOU’RE DOING?
I do not know. And I don’t know if that’s important. It’s a very good question. I just...don’t know.
DO YOU LISTEN TO THE RADIO A LOT?
Um, sometimes.
YOU’RE AWARE OF...WELL, BASICALLY WHAT I’M GETTING AT IS THAT THE WHOLE CURRENT GEN OF ROCK IS VERY MUCH CONCERNED WITH ANGST, ANGER, DEPRESSION, FEAR.  AND THERE’S NOT--
Well I do get a sense that there’s this feeling of, Nobody understands me and ... That seems okay to me because that’s people dealing with real feelings. Sometimes, especially in this country, we’ve strived so hard to make everything good and okay, that there’s these natural human responses, like anger and fear and feeling alone, all these feelings that aren’t really, that we don’t, that we almost have to create situations to feel that way, cuz otherwise you’d never feel that way, and the complacent merry-ness of existence is one-dimensional. Like I was saying: the truth contains all happiness and excitement as well as anger and depression and sadness and confusion, so sometimes you have to search for it and maybe that’s what people are doing. I think that’s excellent, I think that’s great. We need all those things. What I find in it is other things, but... We’re aggressively pursuing feeling good. We’re serious about having fun. This is not a reaction to anything. It’s a reaction to being alive. I think there’s people all over doing great things. I don’t think that anything needs to be saved, or fixed, or things need to be changed, I don’t believe that. There’s always great things happening, there always has been, there always will be. I think that there’s still new frontiers. That’s what I’m doing. I’m going into the future, blazing trails with everybody hand-in-hand, into unexplored, uncharted territory. New horizons. By simply the default fact that I have not existed yet. This is OUR time: what are we gonna do with it?
SOME OF THE LYRICS HAVE THIS WEIRD SLANG. THE USE OF THE VERB, ‘TO KILL.’ WHAT DO YOU MEAN WHEN YOU USE THAT?
“To kill” has many meanings and I’m not using it one way or another. To me, that song, the song ‘Ready to Die,’ is saying, Tomorrow may never come. Um...okay. Imagine this scenario. If we both died right now, and we went to someplace, if there is such a thing, someplace afterwards and we continued our conversation, we’d go Wow wow! I guess it’s all over now. We’re here now but, ... Well that was fun. That was a fun life. Man like, What was I so afraid of? All that stuff I didn’t do cuz I was so afraid. I wish I had done that, I wish I had put more time into that, not been so worried about, not spent my time on Earth dwelling in these other things. So: if tomorrow never comes I wanna know that I’m doing every thing I can today, and be ready to go. If that’s what’s happening. [inaud] grew up not doing stuff. Ready to die. A mindset that allows you to get all that you want out of life, as much as possible, and make all that you can. And just be ready, on a spur of a moment, to do whatever is necessary. [coughs] And other than that, it’s pretty clear. It’s the right time, here we come, join up.
“PEOPLE START KILLING WHENEVER SHE COMES.” WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?
I do not know. It means everything and nothing.
“GIRLS OWN LOVE.” WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?
It all kind of makes sense if you know that it’s about being incredibly frustrated about going out of your way to be kind to a girl, and she really could care less. That’s sort of where it all comes from. And that you never really get back anything that you’ve given... [inaud]. It’s about how frustrating it is to be what you think is a good person and have the other person prefer someone you think is not a good person. It’s very basic, real stuff. I love words. I can’t wait to use more words.
YOU CAN PLAY ALL THE INSTRUMENTS.
Yeah I wrote all of the parts, and played all of it at one point and then because of tuning issues and then timing, I just wanted it to be as good as it can be...Sometimes even then it wasn’t good enough, so I’d go back and do it again, more carefully. Whatever it took. Whatever it takes is the mindset. If I can’t do it, then get someone else, and if they couldn’t, then I’d go back somehow and make it right. The only thing I can’t play are the horns.
ONE-MAN BAND GIGS LIKE?
It was good. It was really frustrating for me.
YOU COULDN’T’VE BEEN UP THERE ONSTAGE DOING YOUR KICKS AND EVERYTHING...
Oh yeah. I was doing MORE than I do now, trying to compensate for there being nothing else onstage. I’d be so winded from running laps around the stage that I could barely sing. I was really frustrated but again my mindset has been always, I will do whatever it takes. To say No to a show didn’t seem like I’d be doing what it took. So I’d say I’ll play any fucking show, I don’t give a fuck, if it’s for ten people, eight hour busride. I’ve done all of that...for years! And I just knew that eventually, if I continued to work, that things couldn’t help but something would happen, even if it would be that I met someone else. Then there’d be two people, rather than one. I had patience enough that I knew that someday I’d have a band, and now I have an amazing band. It was just a matter of time. It was very frustrating but it was also very fun. It was a lot of fun.
YOU HAVE SEVEN PEOPLE NOW?
Yeah, live band, seven people. There will be more on the next record.
DO YOU HAVE MORE SONGS ALREADY FOR THE NEXT RECORD?
The second album is done in terms of songs for it. And I have some of the third album done too. It’s just that, where do I even begin, I stopped...it’s been perfect actually because I stopped as much as possible making... I usually just write songs by sitting and thinking, in my head, just writing them in my head, the melodies, and just remembering them when I get to a piano or something. The really good ones I just remember. I say, okay it’s gonna do this and that. So I’d been working on the second album like that for a long time. But I’ll get so ahead of myself that then again I’ll get frustrated. I don’t like that feeling. I really like to enjoy in the moment. I don’t wanna have to only be looking forward to things, like ‘when I have a band...’ So I’ve let myself put all my energy into what I’m doing now and not get too ahead of myself, where I lose patience.

I have a lung thing, where I cough. I was on tour for a month and just determined not to get sick. I came away with a cough but other than that I never... Whenever I started feeling sickly, I would do everything I could to not, that doesn’t constitute sick, ... I think it’s so mind-over-matter that really helped. I remember one morning I woke up I had a fever, I said I’m gonna lay in this bed and will it away. And I did and it worked and it was good. By playing shows everynight, moving your blood around like that, just expelling, you work stuff out, it helps. I have a caramel chocolate bar, gonna take a bit of it. You like chocolate?
WHITE CHOCOLATE.
White chocolate? Really. Ah, great! A lot of people HATE white chocolate. You know, it’s the cocoa butter, they take out the actual cocoa. I think whit chocolate is cocoa butter, cream, sugar -- cocoa butter is what they use to make chocolate cream. It’s fasicnating.
ANDREW, HOW MUCH COFFEE DO YOU DRINK A DAY?
Almost none. Very rarely. I didn’t drink coffee for years. Funny you should ask that--today I had coffee. But I never drink coffee--
RED BULL?
Never. I don’t like it...too sweet. I remember having Red Bull when I was in LA cuz it’s so prevalent there. No. I prefer room temperature water. I get on these juice kicks. Everyone used to think something was wrong with me cuz I would drink so much juice. Like a bottle. Like that really good juice. That was like a can of coke for me. Sick! A box of oranges a day.
DO YOU EAT MEAT?
Oh yeah. Everything.
YOU’RE A BIG GUY. DO YOU WORK OUT?
[inaud] to do what I do. Mostly just trying to be the best I can be. I want to be the best I can be for the music and for everybody else. I want to be strong enough that people can feel strong about me. First of all, if I cam across this music, I would dedicate my life to it. Which is a good thing, because I am. On that note, I want to be as strong as possible. Invincible. Anything I can do to further that, I feel furthers the whole thing. It’s not about being weak, you know what I mean?
LET'S TALK ABOUT MUSICAL INSPIRATION. YOU MUST KNOW THAT THE MUSIC YOU MAKE SOUNDS PRETTY MUCH UNLIKE ANYTHING THAT’S COMING OUT RIGHT NOW.
To me it sounds unlike anything I’ve ever heard. When I listen to the song I Get Wet, people compare it to sooooo many different things. I find that very exciting. I feel honored that--
THAT’S A GOOD SIGN--
Yeah. I’m glad you’re saying that. Cuz what I finally realized, maybe you’ll agree, is when people say ‘Ah you know what, it makes me feel like this, it reminds me of this, it makes me think about this,’ what they’re actually doing a lot of times, especially people older than me, they’re remembering when they felt really excited about music. They’re talking about times when they felt really good. People say it sounds like...the Clash. I know NOTHING about The Clash. I couldn’t sing you one song of theirs except the Rockin’ the Casbah song. I know nothing about that band. It was before my time. The stuff I grew up listening to was grindcore. Napalm Death, a band called S.O.B., when I was a teenager I was most passionately, aggressively involved with music, it was basically music that sounded like this: AGGGGGGGGGGGGGH. But again, all the while, I’ve been playing piano since I was little. So. To me, the world, I describe it as a treasure chest, or a buffet. If someone opened the treasure chest and said, Here this is yours, this is life, this is yours. Just open it and say Wow! Here’s gold. Look at this beautiful gold. I want this! I love this! Put it in my pocket. That doesn’t mean that I can’t say OOh diamonds, I want to have these too. And these pearls, and these rubies, and all the other stuff in the treasure chest. Just like at a buffet: I want to have white chocolate, I wanna have caramel chocolate, I wanna have steak, I wanna have cake, I wanna have green beans, I wanna have juice, I wanna have coffee, I want all these things. There’s no one telling me, You can’t have that and that. That can’t be a part of your world. By the nature of being human, everything that can be experienced by human beings, that can be made by humans, is acceptable to me. And I ENJOY it. I want to savor it all. And I want to be strong enough, and I’ve worked at being strong enough over the years to include all of it. Even the things that I don’t like now, I want to work so that I like it. Cuz I LIKE liking things. I feel better when I like things... [inaud] Just through patience, and over time, and really loving people, I’ve even been able to like things that I didn’t like. And you know what? The reasons I didn’t like em were usually pretty stupid. Base on insecurity, and fear, and all those things of my own. The point is, MELODY and EXCITEMENT and ENERGY exists all over the world, in all different ways. That’s what I love, that’s what I’ve been inspired by, that’s what been a part of my music and always will be. And that’s why I can like any song if I like that song. Nobody can tell me You can’t like that song or That’s stupid. If I believe in it and I like it, it’s mine. Even the person who made it can’t make me feel any differerent.
YES. BUT I’VE SEEN NAPALM DEATH. THERE’S NOT A LOT OF MELODY IN THAT MUSIC.
Are you kidding me?!?  54,3,2,1 dee-dee-din-di-di. That’s the first song off Harmony Corruption. I can see the whole thing. [rhythm sound] They had to pull [anti-melody] to say that, they calledit Harmony Corruption, YET I could sing you that whole fucking album.
RIGHT BUT IT’S NOT THE BIG POP HOOK.
It’s a melody. Notes in sequence is what constitutes melody.
[interrupted]
I GUESS WHAT I’M SAYING IS, THERE’S A REASON WHY NAPALM DEATH DOESN’T APPEAL TO THAT MANY PEOPLE.
Look at Slipknot! Where do you think they got that?
THEY’RE NOT THAT BIG, THOUGH. I THINK THEY HAVE A CULT AUDIENCE, A HALF-MILLION FANS IN A NATION OF 280 MILLION. I GUESS THAT’S BESIDE THE POINT--
That’s okay, that’s okay, the point is, the point is....
[LINE BREAKS UP.]

====

MONDAY TRANSCRIPT

WHERE ARE YOU NOW?
Tokyo.
WHERE WERE YOU BORN, ANDREW?
Born Los Angeles. Raised in Southeast Michigan. New York--five years. Dad was a police officer, growing up he was a private detective.
WHO'S WOLF EYES?
Wolf Eyes: Just a Michigan band....
YOU DID PRODUCTION WORK WITH THEM?
I tried to, yeah. A couple of years ago. They’re Michigan boys and they had one really amazing song called Fortune Dove. I wanted to try and make it good. I did the best I could. They weren’t really happy with it, but that was okay. I haven’t talked to them in ages...
WHO’S THIS ‘STEEV MIK’ CHARACTER?
[quietly] Steev Mik was what I changed my name to for a little while. It was a very dark time. A real dark time. And I had to become someone else in order to be who I really was, and come back to it. Imagine if you had a balloon and you were so close to that balloon that all you really knew was rubbery red, had a string hanging around the bottom. You couldn’t really see much about it. You had to let the balloon go, up it flew in the air, finally you could look at it from a distance. ...Got it back, cuddled it... [inaud] Two years ago.
WHAT DO THE SONGS ON YOUR NEXT ALBUM SOUND LIKE?
I don’t even know how to answer that question. I think it’s a good question, but I don’t know how to answer it. I can say it like this: when I sit down to play music, there’s not a... The only way I can describe it is as ‘More.’ Like if you had ice cream. What do you do: NOT make ice cream? If you’re making ice cream, you don’t sit down and think I really should look into a juju bean venture. You wouldn’t do that. Juju beans get stuck to your teeth, they don’t even taste that good, they’re too sweet. You should make more ice cream. There’s no other option. If you were the president of Baskin Robbins, you don’t build a juju bean factory.
OK, BUT IS AN ANDREW W.K. BALLAD ON THE WAY?
It’s just going to be MORE. There’s no limits, no rules. I guarantee that it’s a rich rich rich place.
ARE THESE REALLY 96-TRACK RECORDINGS ON YOUR ALBUM?
At least. At least half of them I’d record 24 tracks and bounce those down to stereo to 2 tracks and then I’d start again. So some of them have well over 100 tracks. Of course all of this is completely unimportant if it’s no good. It was all whatever it took to sound well. It’s important for that to be known. The recording process took about two years and the mixing process took about two weeks.
...It’s a very wild world we live in , and I intend to see it as such at all times, even on the darkest days. Some hotel rooms come with blackout curtains, so that the room is just black at night. I don’t want that. That’s what I DON’T want.
DID YOU COME OUT OF A SCENE, OR WERE YOU MORE ON YOUR OWN AND HAPPENING TO COME IN AND OUT OF OTHER PLACES?
The latter is almost a perfect way to describe it. With the ‘whatever it takes’ mindset, by default I would end up playing shows with all different kinds of people, in all different kinds of scenarios.
HOW ON EARTH DID YOU GET SIGNED?
I don’t know. All I can say is I worked really hard on my first recordings and trying to get them to as many people as I could. I don’t think I really gave out that many copies, it’s just... The right thing at the right time. I don’t know... I don’t think about that too much. Questions like that. All I do is stay focused literally as I said before, on writing the most exciting songs I can and doing the best I can within that. Everything else either follows or doesn’t. So far, so good. I guess there’s no reason, it’s unacceptable for me to complain.

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