BORN TO BE ALIVE
From The Village Voice:
By now, you’ve seen this image everywhere: a greasy-haired, fucked-up, metalhead-looking kid with blood pouring out of his nose and running over his mouth and chin, and a worn, yet somehow gloriously undefeated look in his eyes. Maybe you were jarred awake one recent Sunday night, in the middle of 120 Minutes, and found yourself staring—in amazement or disgust—at that same fucked-up mug, attached to a tall, lean body adorned in sweat-soaked white jeans and T-shirt, banging his head like it was 1985 and commanding you to “Party Hard.” Or maybe you’ve read the already legendary interview in NME, where he’s quoted as saying, “This is not a fucking game. This is as real as death,” and where he attempts to prove his authenticity to a roomful of journalists by repeatedly cutting open his face. And perhaps you’ve made the following assumption: Andrew W.K. is just another fame-starved, no-talent punk who thinks that—with the right shock-value gimmicks and a mammoth hype-machine behind him—he can pull one over on everybody, act out his adolescent fantasies, and snort cocaine off of strippers’ tits in the back of his limo all the way to the bank. Not such a far-fetched idea—it’s happened before, hasn’t it?
But Andrew W.K. hasn’t always had such a large audience for his antics—and he didn’t always have Universal Music Group’s bank account behind him, either... (continue reading)