Weekender interviews Andrew WK about partying, partying and partying
February 20, 2003
After a miscommunication with Andrew WK’s management, the Weekender finally was able to get hold of the man who is set to rock the Holmes Student Center’s Duke Ellington Ballroom. His show starts at 7 p.m. Friday with The Lawrence Arms and Infrared opening. Student tickets are $10 while general public tickets sell for $13.
This is the full transcript of an interview conducted by phone with Andew WK earlier this week.
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W: First off, I own your album “I Get Wet.” It’s the happiest, loudest, chock of music I have.
AWK: We are very, how do I say, like, violently set on having fun. It’s very determined. It supposed to be a spirited outlook on happiness.
W: My friends and I have determined your music rivals Billy Idol in terms of fist pumping ability.
AWK: Oh, thank you. I really like the “Rock the Cradle,” love song. You know that that tune?
W: Uh… No.
AWK: You don’t know “Rock The Cradle” love? It was uh, I don’t know what album its on, but its the only song of his I know real, real well. I know his big hits, but this is my favorite one. And the ending is really great, it kind of breaks down and it starts into a Cullata, where a variation of the chorus repeats and fades out. And it goes. This is a solid beat “Rock the cradle of love, rock the cradle of love, that’s right!” The bass just holds down going ‘ding ding ding ding ding.’ Yeah, that’s a good tune.
W: I’m very flattered, thank you.
W: Also, like many students, I thoroughly agree with your Party Hard stance.
AWK: Thank you. Well I agree with you. It’s not MY stance; it’s our stance. So consider me supporting you. I feel like we are young, I will be young until I start getting older. In that time, when I’m still young I’m going to do things now that I can’t do… A lot of people get hip joint problems. I don’t have any of that so I’m very, very glad.
W: Sometimes my lower back hurts at night…
AWK: Do you get lower back stuff?
W: Yeah, kind of
AWK: I used to get that, I could never really figure out why, but it was literally waking up on the wrong side of the bed. I think that kind, where it will just come out of nowhere. But, in general, we are in good health. Now is the time we really should be really excited about that and realize it, and know that it can go, you know what I mean? I’m all into getting older, I love people that are older than me, and I think its great and I don’t have anything against that. I don’t think people are old are stupid, I don’t think that there is a cut off age at what you can do or what you like, that’s all ridiculous. So I’m not like that, I don’t believe in that. I don’t believe that an older person who is older than a younger person can’t like music that a younger person likes. I don’t think that but I’m just saying, we are very thankful to be young
W: I’d like to compliment you for playing DeKalb. Cause I know you aren’t on a tour, you are just coming out here.
WK: Its very special, you are very welcome, thank you for having us, cause I mean… Hold on one moment. Uh, I apologize about that. Hold on a moment. Hold on a second. I had to guzzle some water. Ugh. I had to guzzle fresh water.
But yeah, the whole thing about this is that it’s not like, I’m not showing up in the world saying, okay, here I am, ya know, it’s my turn. Its like here we are, its our turn. Now how can we swing this in union? Know what I mean?
W: Yeah.
-WK: And so if I wasn’t invited by you, than I really wouldn’t be able to go so I’m very happy to have the opportunity, we are taking time to organizing so we can do one show. We will be on tour, but this is a special situation where we just want to come out and play to have this concert – you know, to a party just for the night. I’m very excited and I’m glad to be doing this in the middle of winter, because it’s cozy inside. You can do this outside. That would be kind of fun.
W: It’s kind of cold…
AWK: Snow angles, you know parson brown. You know that’s part of it. The song? “In the meadow you we build a snowman, and pretend that he is parsons brown?” You know, just like so…
W: Anything you would like to say to your Dekalb fans, because there are quite a few of us.
AWK: Awwww. I’m very happy to be coming. Know that as much as you may appreciate it, I appreciate it to. There’s people that just know that, know what I mean? Sometimes I feel stupid to say this stuff, repeat it over and over again. But I figure that you can’t say the truth enough times. Hold on, I gotta guzzle fresh water. *Gagging Nose* Well, I had an Air Bubble.
W: I hate those.
AWK: Sorry about that. So, we take nothing for granted but we obviously know. Kind of like we learned it awhile back. Some people might not know it yet. Or they might know, and not know that they know it. See, knowing something, knowing that you know something is two different things. Everybody almost knows everyone but I certainly don’t know that I know everyone. I know that I know some stuff, and the stuff that I don’t know, I plan on knowing eventually. So at this point, we know its a group effort, we know its going to be really really fun, but if we know its that way. I’ll do what I can, I’m very very very very sure you and everyone there will do what they can and it will be a milestone. Maybe for that weekend, maybe for that month, maybe for a lifetime. You never know…
W: I know you like to party. So what are you top then things needed to party, and to party hard?
AWK: Uh. *belches* It all varies, you know what I mean? It really does vary cause it can go on day by day. But right now, if I was to have a party, like tonight? And basically we kind of are. There are some friends over, some ladies of mine, and they are a jovial bunch. Um, I would make sure that there was, first of all, various things to drink out of. Like, I want options. We live in a world that has so much stuff. I don’t want to live it in so I want to try to enjoy and provide and facilitate the uh, the uses of all the stuff. I don’t just want to have one kind of soda, or one kind of alcohol, or one kind of whatever. I want to have a lot of options so people can choose and not only a lot of things to drink, but things to drink out of. Not just glasses or cans, but chalices, goblets, mugs, canteens
W: Thermoses?
AWK: Thermoses, yeah. Flasks, you know what I mean? Peatree. Beakers, the things you use in science class. Just fun stuff, it will be fun to see what lines up. Oh, a, a grail. A really really fancy glass, so stuff like that.
W: A Holy Grail?
AWK: They say the Holy Grail was actually made out of clay or something, it really wasn’t that fancy…
W: But still, but still, it would be impressive to drink out of the Holy Grail.
AWK: Yeah, that would be cool. Maybe we could do a recreation of the Holy Grail and drink from it that would be awesome. So yeah, stuff like that. And I’d want lots of different kinds of music and I always thought it would be really cool, you just have sort of have a mindset? ‘Yeah, I’m gonna go crazy, everything’s going to start being really intense?” You, and one other friend or a couple people could start spinning around in a room with music really loud and going “WHOO WHOO WHOO WHOO WHOO,” and throwing stuff and it would be really insane. If you have ten or twenty people doing that, playing different kinds of music all at once, that would be really cool. Noisemakers, maybe a car alarm. Kazoos, car-alarms going off, um, dogs that are like, really excitable dogs. Throw some dogs in there “makes barking noise,” running around “panting,” because you can get dogs going crazy so easy. “Barking noise.” freak the dogs out, so get dogs going nuts. Let some birds loose in the room. Spin things around, “woah woah woah!” Throwin’ pillows around, have some stuff you can break. And start smashing things. (faster) Make sure you don’t try to hurt anybody. Grab some food, start mashing the food, squeezing the food, then get the goblets and then. (Makes noises for ten seconds) Yeah, so it’s something like that.
W: Definatly. It’s like an Explosion of Fun.
AWK: Yeah (laughs) exactly.
-W: On the cover of “I Get Wet,” and in parts of the “party hard,” music video, you are bleeding from the nose. And it looks absolutely wicked. I heard you slammed yourself into the wall for a CD cover. Is this true?
AWK: I didn’t slam myself into a wall, uh, I did that a couple times by accident.
AWK:The nose shatter was about “this would be cool.” I’m not sending a message, it doesn’t mean anything its not this that or the other. People can think whatever they want, that’s why I was so excited. “Aww, this is a nice picture.” It doesn’t mean anything. People say its like a drug thing, or a sports thing, or its a sexual thing and all this stuff. But really, all I had was a bloody nose. A bloody nose is a very basic idea I thought. And I took a small piece of a cinder block, like a broken cinder block, it was big enough to hold in my hand, and I just whacked my nose. And after it happened, it hurts pretty bad, and to really get it to bleed, I had to blow my nose a lot and that type of thing.
W:EWWW.
AWK: The time I really hurt my nose was actually during couple of concerts where I got in the head. But this wasn’t so bad because it was calculated. So I decided to do it. I wouldn’t recommend… I don’t want to do it again.
W: I heard you played a show with Nelly?
AWK: Yeah. We are going to, it’s coming out.
W: Do you have any thoughts on removing the Band-Aid from his face?
AWK: No, no. I really like that, it’s funny that you bring that up. I was like ‘woah, whats that about, what does that mean.’ There was one time where I had hurt my nose and I wore a thing just like that, several years ago, over my nose and I saw he was doing that and I was like ‘woah.’ And like Wow. I wonder what that means? And than I heard him talk about it. And I gained a lot of respect and thought it was really cool.
W: Isn’t it a sign of respect or something?
AWK: His brother is in prison or someone like that. I’m sorry that I don’t know the exact details. Someone he cares about is in a bad situation and it’s his way of showing constant support and he’s there with him, and he hasn’t forgotten about him, and he’s showing… Know what I mean? I thought that was really cool. I really like him, and the way he raps. The way he sings when he raps.
W: A buddy of mine from San Francisco said your live show was one of the best he’s ever seen. He’s seen a ton of great metal bands: Slayer, Gwar, Dreamtheatre.
AWK: Wow.
W: What makes your show so special?
AWK: I don’t know. I certainly don’t think its just me, a lot of it has to do with everyone who’s there. It’s probably the majority of what it is. We could be up and do whatever we want to do, and that doesn’t make it good. It’s definitely the people that come there. I can give them as much credit as anything, that’s whats going to make the concerts good. Because we’ve played concerts in really cool places with really good lights, and all that kind of stuff, and they haven’t been as good as concerts in a basement. I would say there is some kind of unspoken, I don’t want to get too wishy-washy, but there is agreement that everyone knows about. There’s this understanding for everybody there, and when that is at its peak, at its pinnacle level, it makes for an ecstatic transcendental… I don’t know exactly what that means. It’s like bigger than you. It’s a group thing with a bunch of people doing something. A bunch of people thinking and working towards the same thing in a confined area for a confined amount of time and every now in then it just goes BOOM. It happens all the time, all over the world, and it happens in a concert. It’s like a great basketball game. And you feel like you know everyone in that arena, and it’s the buildups they have and get going. It’s completely divine, beyond one person. There’s no way one person can create that, so it’s certainly not just me.
W: You are a towering beast of a man. I’d say you could probably take on anyone in the music industry… minus Suge Knight. That being said, If you could beat up any current band, who would it be?
AWK: Maybe I could beat up Christina Aguilara. I’m not a good fighter. I’d like to try a contest, like a game of basketball. I don’t want it to be a game of wits because I don’t know how witty I am. A jumping contest for height. Maybe.