Face Value

The current generation of rock seems preoccupied with angst, anger, depression, fear. Is your music a reaction to that?

I hear some of that music -- ”Nobody understands me“ and that sort of a thing -- and it 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, but that complacent merriness of existence is one-dimensional. The truth contains happiness and excitement as well as anger and fear and feeling alone. These are natural human responses, and sometimes we almost have to create situations to feel that way, ‘cause otherwise you’d never feel that way. I think that‘s excellent.

The verb ”kill“ shows up a lot in your lyrics. What do you mean when you say that?

”To kill“ has many meanings, and I’m not using it one way or another. The song ”Ready To Die“ is saying, Tomorrow may never come. Imagine this scenario: If we both died right now, and we went to someplace afterwards and we continued our conversation, we‘d go, ”Wow, guess it’s all over now. That was a fun life. But, man, all that stuff I didn‘t do ’cause I was so afraid, I wish I had done that, not spent my time on Earth dwelling on these other things.“ So if tomorrow never comes, I wanna know that I‘m doing everything I can today, and be ready to go.

How about the song title ”Girls Own Love“ -- what does that mean?

It’s about being frustrated about going out of your way to be kind to a girl and she really could care less, and that you never really get back anything that you‘ve given. 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.

The music you make sounds unlike anything that‘s coming out right now.

People compare it to sooooo many different things. When people say, ”Ah, you know what, it makes me feel like this, it reminds me of this,“ what they’re actually doing is remembering when they felt really excited about music. They‘re talking about times when they felt really good. 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 say, ”Wow! Look at this beautiful gold. I want this! Put it in my pocket.“ That doesn’t mean that I can‘t say, ”Ooh, diamonds, I want to have these, too.“ Everything that can be experienced by human beings, that can be made by humans, is acceptable to me. I want to savor it all. ’Cause I like liking things.

How much caffeine do you drink a day?

Almost none. I prefer room-temperature water. I just want to be the best I can be for the music and for everybody else. Whatever it takes. I want to be strong enough that people can feel strong about me. 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?

Andrew W.K. performs at the Whisky, Wednesday, March 13.