For Two Nights Only Read online

  But you went back to the piano. Eventually. Do you remember why?

  Because of McCartney. I quit piano and was learning to play guitar and got to the Beatles catalogue, and some of those songs you can get by with on the guitar, but for some it doesn’t cut it. I had no desire to do a caricature of a song, I needed to do the exact same version, exactly how they played it on the recording. Or if I could find it, on a live version. That’s where the great artists excel. And I don’t mean on stage, which is the way most people think that the great artists set themselves apart. Take a guy like Bruce Springsteen and put him on a stage and he’ll transform the crowd into these carefree, younger versions of themselves ready to run through the streets, he can do that. But you put him in a radio station booth, hand him an acoustic guitar and ask him to do a number live on the air and he’ll make you cry. It’s not about the stage. Yeah he can command a stage, but he can also play his heart out to a fat fucking DJ and a nerdy sound engineer. For years I collected tapes of every live recording I could get my hands on, whether it was something for BBC Radio or KCRW in California or someone’s own bootleg from a show. I studied them, I listened to how they played it against the studio version and heard the emphasis they put on different parts, and then I picked apart why those parts seemed to jump out on that particular version.

  Is there any way you can sum up what it is you heard?

  I’ve thought about it a lot, and I think it comes down to the fact that a great artist writes a complete song. In a performance he gives it that little extra, but he usually gives that extra at a different part than he did in the studio when he was recording it. That only works if the whole song is good, from start to finish. For example, if he really sings his heart out on the second verse as opposed to the opening verse it draws your attention to the second verse. You hear it in a way you never did before, and suddenly that becomes your favorite part of the song. Fact is, the second verse was always good, and the guy who wrote it always knew it, but he never let you know it quite so blatantly because on the studio version he downplayed it so he could give the chorus, or the first verse, or the bridge or whatever other part, the spotlight. But now that you know the chorus well enough, and he knows you do because you’re at the concert or you’re listening to him on the radio so you’re clearly a fan who knows the song, he can show you that he also knew what he was doing with that second verse. And I ate that shit up, I took all the pieces apart from all the recordings I heard.

  Where did you find them? As a kid, before the internet, how’d you get your hands on live recordings.

  Record shops. Back then bootlegs of concerts and random on-air performances made their way across the country. Copies of copies of tapes you could only get your hands on if the guy behind the counter knew your name. Alice in Chains at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago. The direct feed from the monitors for a Bruce Springsteen show in Jersey. Amazing stuff.

  Do you still have them?

  Of course. They barely play, the physical tapes have deteriorated, but I’ve got them. They’re in a box somewhere.

  But you don’t know where?

  Not really. I could find them, but they don’t play anymore so what’s the point?

  So you’re working on some Beatles songs…

  Right, I’m trying to learn the guitar and I get done with some Neil Young tunes and I’ve got some easy Credence songs down and I move on to the Beatles. But the thing about that catalogue is Paul wrote a lot of stuff on the piano. John probably too, though I think of him much more as a guitar man. I have this great visual of Paul McCartney sitting at the piano singing Let It Be or Hey Jude. I tried to play those on the guitar and they never came out right, you just can’t hit those chord changes the same way because, a note is a note, but if you want to replicate how they did it, you need to play it the way they did, on the instrument they did. And that’s why I went back to the piano.

  And you remembered how to play?

  When I went back? Yeah. It’d stuck with me. It’s not like it had been ten years, I only left it for a year, eighteen months maybe. When I sat back down in front of the keys I could do it all again. I don’t know how else to explain it, except that maybe it’s just muscle memory. The same way you never really forget to ride a bike. Growing up I always thought it was crazy how people would claim you can never forget how to ride a bike, which is untrue. I didn’t ride one for maybe ten years, and I find myself in the south of France with a girl, we were vacationing there–

  Where were you?

  Southern France, I don’t remember the town. It’s not important. What’s important is that I was renting a villa to get away from everything, this was soon after I’d moved to England. I was trying to escape the ridiculous media circus that seemed to follow me everywhere. There were years when I couldn’t go out to get a bite to eat without photographers showing up. The fans never bothered me, they were always courteous and respectful. They want an autograph, they want to tell you how great you are and then they actually want to get away. It always struck me as odd, the way they’d ask for an autograph and while I’m signing a napkin or t-shirt or receipt, they’d stumble over their words trying to tell me how much my music meant to them. As soon as I hand it back over they’re off. They’d scramble away faster than I would’ve liked sometimes, because for a while there it was pretty lonely. I didn’t have anyone I could really talk to, I mean I guess I still don’t because you can see how easily I rattle on. It’s not that I like the sound of my own voice, I sort of hate listening to myself talk, really, but I love music and to have someone tell you how great the music is that you make and how one song means so much to them, it gives purpose to everything you’re doing. I was always ready to stop and dissect a song with a fan to find out what they liked. I’ve never lost that desire to pick apart a song and discover what it was that made me feel something, and I always wanted to hear what it was that worked for the fans. But the fans get freaked out, sadly. I think I’m placed on a pedestal and they either don’t feel worthy, which is bullshit, or they just don’t want to look stupid in front of their idol.

  Why do you say it’s bullshit?

  Because it is. I’m good at something our modern culture values higher than other things, even though it’s less important. It’s the same with athletes. To me the heroes are the teachers and doctors, the not-crooked ones, because they’re doing something important with their time. They’re dedicating a life to something more than their own desires. My profession attracts people wholly consumed by themselves. I do this for me. It’d be precious to say I do it for the fans, but I do it for myself.

  But now you feel like you have to keep doing it for other people? For the gardener out there or the employees at the record company or at the venues?

  Yeah, but at the end of the day I pick up the guitar or sit at the piano because I need to, because I’m so fucking self-involved I need to sing about myself. I have a lot of respect for songwriters who tell stories about other people. I struggle with that. Maybe they’re telling stories about themselves and they just disguise it better than me, but I sing about myself. All the fucking time. All the fucking time. And people eat it up. They can’t get enough. And then when they meet me they can’t look me in the eye or speak a sentence without falling all over their words because they’re so taken aback. Taken aback by what? By a guy who’s good at writing songs? What a fucking unimportant profession, you know?

  Do you feel guilt about the success?

  I don’t know if it’s guilt, but I know I’m not comfortable with it. I make more money than I know what to do with and it’s from a selfish thing. And with it comes some crazy adoration. Can you even imagine what it’s like? The pressure? Of having that many millions of people think you can do no wrong? Sometimes you find yourself pushing to do wrong because it seems no one notices you’re human, because everyone is somehow able to justify anything you do. They make excuses for you. So you keep doing crazier shit so someone notices, so someone reprimands you. Maybe
you do something like touch a kid. Now I’m not defending that, but it’s interesting if you take a step back and look at it. Artists push the boundaries of what’s acceptable, they’re a mirror for how people should and shouldn’t live with power. If you push too hard in one direction, people should speak out against it. But they don’t always, and when people stop speaking out, be forewarned. Those with power will push towards despotism, and if no one is keeping them in check they will get there. I take it upon myself to try to set a good example. But I’m a selfish guy who writes good songs, given a lot of social leeway.

  If people give you an infinite number of passes for crazy behavior, that’s not their responsibility. It’s not on them to regulate what you do, that’s on you.

  I disagree. It’s on society. That’s how we set boundaries, as a group of people, it’s what we define as “culture.” That’s what their tacit approval can do.

  It sounds like part of what bothers you is the fact that this is all from a selfish thing.

  For sure.

  But your selfish thing gives lots of people joy. And meaning.

  But it doesn’t black out the nagging sense I have that all this is essentially undeserved. And comes with some baggage.

  He picked up his glass and shook it for me, before taking a drink.

  That you’re overpaid and overly adored I won’t argue with, but you did work for everything you have. All of it.

  What do you mean?

  You put in the hours gathering tapes of live performances, you studied those songs and logged god-knows-how-many-hours learning them. You demonstrated a work ethic few people have. That’s work.

  It’s fucking pointless work.

  Debatable. What’s not is that you did it. You had to dedicate significant time to learning other people’s songs, to mimicking them. Do you know where that work ethic comes from? Your tours, early on, were gruelingly long. Why?

  I don’t know where it came from, really. My parents were always in motion, I think I probably saw something of it in them. When my mom wasn’t cooking for her family she was cleaning the house. She would do the dishes at night, sit down for a half hour to watch television or read a book and then go to bed. Then she’d be up early to make lunches for everyone. Watching her, it just seemed you could always make yourself useful, you could always be doing something. Playing guitar, learning those songs, it never felt like work. It felt like I was using my time, and in a way I wanted. But it wasn’t just that, some overactive Midwestern work ethic. I honestly believe, to really push yourself, you need an adversary. You need someone who’s going to make you nervous that you’re not making yourself better, you’re not going to be good enough. I forced myself to have those. Every time I tried to play a Springsteen tune, I couldn’t do it at first. I couldn’t strum like him, I couldn’t fingerpick like him, so I had to get better. And if he could do it then it was possible and I knew I could get there. He was a benchmark. If that’s what it took to be a great musician, then I needed to be as good as him. Exactly like him. Then better. If my songs weren’t catchy enough, it was back to the Beatles’ catalogue to figure out what Paul and John were doing in those tunes. Dissect them, look at their chord choices, figure out how they spiced up a basic progression. Every day I wasn’t practicing, I was holding myself back from where I wanted to be. I knew early on I wanted this to be my life, I saw it in my head, and I needed to be better than anyone else who’d come before or would try to be my contemporary. You have to have someone who pushes you, and you have to want to meet that challenge and I decided history was my adversary. That drove me to work hard.. But I stand by the fact that, in the grand scheme, it’s fucking pointless work.

  He scooted back his chair and stood up, grabbed his glass and paced back and forth along the length of the table.

  Let’s talk about your piano teacher. What type of person was he? It sounds like you rebelled against the piano, but you still did it for eight years. What was it about his style that you responded to?

  Mr. Engelton. You know what I still like about him? He never spoke to the press. He could’ve, and probably gotten paid for it, but he didn’t. How much would you have given him to get dirt on my early life?

  We don’t pay people we contact for research purposes. It undermines the integrity of the information.

  Fine, you don’t. But there are plenty of shitty publications out there that I’m sure would’ve offered him good money to talk about the childhood me.

  What would he have said?

  That’s not the point. Mr. Engleton is great, that’s what I’m saying. Every week he taught me music, all of it, from classical to contemporary pop to ragtime. He gave it all to me and at the beginning I hated every second and probably was an asshole. I hope I wasn’t, I really do. A big part of me tries to remember those early lessons where I’m the diligent pupil and he’s enjoying it, but that’s probably not how it went. I didn’t want to be taking those lessons and I’m sure that came across.

  You sound nostalgic.

  I don’t look back fondly on the time. I look back fondly on him.

  Darin sat back down, and I looked at him patiently, with interest. It was another weapon in my repertoire. What had started as a mimicry of the television guidance counselors and heartfelt parental moments I’d watched every evening growing up had slowly morphed into my own persona. Not to say that what I was doing was disingenuous, but I’d taken the schmaltzy you-can-tell-me-anything look often used by those characters – slightly raised eyebrows to soften the face and widen the eyes; lips together in what’s neither downturned nor upturned – and made it comfortable for me. A realization arrived after many years of conducting interviews, and my role became clear: I was the mirror. If the person across from me grew excited, I upped my energy. If they became sad I dropped into a slower speech pattern, emphasized the end of each sentence to convey a mixture of compassion and hurt – “But how were you supposed to know that?” – and when the interviewee jumped from topic to topic, unsure where to land, the guidance counselor came out, abandoning all judgments and allowing a safe touchdown wherever that might be.

  The tactic worked for Darin, as it did for everyone else. He met my eyes and, with only a moment of hesitation, continued.

  Mr. Engelton had enormous hands, I mean fucking huge. His fingers were long to start, but on his right hand he had a grotesquely large thumb. Don’t print this because I’d hate for him to read it, this is off the record, but he got his finger stuck in a car door when he was in his early twenties and it fucked it up. He’d had it operated on but even then it still looked swollen. Like a thumb the size of two normal thumbs, molded into one. We only spoke about it once, when he noticed me staring at it. I tried my fucking hardest not to look at that thing but it’s a piano lesson, I have to watch his hands. I must’ve looked too long at it, because he told me the story about the car door. I was embarrassed when he finally did, I knew it had to be a sore subject for him. The injury forced him to stop playing for months, changed the path he was on. He would’ve been a concert pianist. He could’ve been a performer. Afterwards I was fine, I never fixated on it like I did before he told me. The mystery was more magnetic than the reality.

  With those big hands he could reach keys I couldn’t, and I often got frustrated at not being able to do everything he could. What he showed me to play always seemed impossible, though in talking to him later, as an adult, I realized that was the point. He wanted to show me there was no impossible, that if my hands weren’t as big as his it’d just mean I’d have to move faster, find another way to do it. He relied on the size of his hands, I developed speed. I began really listening to him and following his directions. I wanted to reward his trust. Those hours at the piano were no longer about the piano, or what my father wanted, they were about not letting Mr. Engleton down.

  Sounds like you really formed a bond with him. Do you think he felt the same way?

  Probably. He was a huge influence in my life, we met every week. Every Wed
nesday. I’d start on the bench by myself, with him standing behind me so he could observe and I wouldn’t feel like there was someone watching, so it was like I was playing alone. I always knew he was there, though, I could smell him. I remember he smelled like my grandpa, with a mustiness in his shirts. As if each one had been in a drawer for years until that particular day. I’d run through the piece three times and calm down and then he’d sit next to me and pick apart my playing. It was brilliant, now that I think about it, because if he’d started each lesson by judging my first run-through I never would’ve wanted to start again, but I was able to work out the motions on my own, to correct on the second attempt everything I’d screwed up on the first and improve again on the third. After a few kind words he’d sit beside me and explain how I could play the song better. See, at that point he’d actually heard me play through the song the best my skills allowed, not the best my nerves did. A lot of how I am now as an artist came from him. He encouraged me to play more forcefully, that was his way of describing it. He told me anyone can master the technical components of playing, and thousands do, but it was how some people were able to play that moved audiences. Precision alone, without emotion, puts them to sleep, he said. Inject passion into it, and no one hears the mistakes. Years later I found out he loved punk music.

  Do you still talk to Mr. Engelton?

  We write letters now and then. He’s getting old. Older. But he was integral in building the foundation of my success and I wanted him to know I was aware of it, that I knew I wouldn’t be where I am if it weren’t for him. Most people help me because they know already how successful I am, and they can see their investment of time or money returned to them tenfold. Mr. Engleton had no idea I’d end up like this, but he was patient and kind anyway. That means something to me. As a token of appreciation I bought him a Steinway piano after my second record went platinum.