By Mike McGuirk

IT'S EASY TO mistake Andrew W.K. for some kind of rock 'n' roll messiah; in fact, given his skull-crushing anthems, it's almost impossible not to. Especially when you hear the stories from his last tour – the time he signed a kid's electric bill and read that the bill was a cut-off notice, so he gave the kid money to cover the past due amount. Or the fact that last year after his set at Bottom of the Hill, he came out and just danced onstage to the music on the sound system and then jumped down and hugged everyone in the crowd.

I don't read a whole lot of rock writing, but every time I've read anything about Andrew W.K., it is written in this fawning, gurgling voice of total astonishment. "How does he do it?" they seem to be thinking. I always greet praise like that with the same response I give when I see some mithering little dink touted as the new Bob Dylan – specifically, a farting noise made by pushing air through my upper lip while pressing my lower lip against my teeth. The thing is that Andrew W.K. keeps living up to his hype. He even ups his own ante and then surpasses that. For me, anyway, for the Bulb Records faithful, and for all those frat dudes and nü-metal teenagers who make up his core audience. But I also think anyone, given the right kind of exposure, can get behind what Andrew's doing.

His new song, for instance, is perfect. "Tear It Up" works in a riff so mammoth, so gigantically, fantastically majestic that the biggest mid-tempo riffs of all time (say, Sabbath's "Sign of the Southern Cross") have no choice but to bow down in worship. The song is a hero's return set to Slade, with some contextual background thrown in lyrics-wise – it works the way a sequel is meant to.

Magic touch

I saw him in Detroit this summer at a big party for Bulb Records. Andrew's first EP, Girl's Own Juice, came out on Bulb, and he was in a number of Bulb bands before he got signed to Island. The show was at the Magic Stick, and Andrew was headlining after a mind-blowing set delivered by Wolf Eyes, a three-piece electronic heavy metal band that is often compared to Throbbing Gristle. When the first song finally kicked in – a pandemonium of squeals, shrieks, and electronic murder sounds – the shit went off.

Wolf Eyes broke the universe in half that night.

The thing is, Andrew W.K. came out and topped it. He played his set, and in between songs he would say something like, "OK folks, we're at about 75 percent here. We need to take it up a couple notches," and then, like, "Party 'til You Puke" would play, and the entire room would start doing aerobics. He invited people onstage, and pretty soon the whole room was up there, to the dismay of the club's security. There were so many people onstage that the band couldn't play. Andrew had this gleeful look on his face and, at one point, when the microphone was bumped out of his hand, causing him to flub a line, he laughed and said, "This is awesome," like he couldn't believe what a great party it had become.

The security guards began throwing people off the stage, and in a moment of utter teenage triumph, a fat kid wearing a giant Mudvayne T-shirt pinged a beer can off the biggest, meanest security guard's head. The other great moment came when Bay Guardian contributor Will York got thrown out of the building about five seconds later for protecting a guy from the same security guard.

We get wet

It's easy to believe in Andrew W.K. in that setting, but when I was on my way to conduct the interview for this article, I was assailed by more than just my usual pre-interview misgivings. I was going to meet him on his tour bus at this summer's Vans Warped Tour, and my big worry was that I would find out that Andrew was buying into all the crap that goes along with being an MTV favorite and that his personality was being destroyed by all the bullshit. I reached the Warped carnival area and promptly got lost amid 50,000 skate kids and sneaker endorsements. By the time I located his bus, I was rattled and sure that he was going to answer two questions and tell me he didn't have any more time.

The interview didn't go so hot as far as rock journalism is concerned, I guess. We talked a lot about movies, how he was on the swim team in high school, and how he likes the wintertime. At one point he asked me, "Are we supposed to talk about anything in particular?" and I was like, "I don't know, probably." But plans for the new record and all that usual interview crapola never came up. I figured I could make a good enough article out of something he said. I asked him some dumb multiple-choice questions that only confused things more.

Then it was over. He had somewhere to be and was about to go when this exchange happened:

AWK: OK, so ... do you know what the music's all about?

Me: Oh, yeah, sure ...

AWK: And you know that it's for real.

Me: Yeah, I get it. Don't worry ...

He looked down at the floor and said: "The important thing for people to know is that, without saying it so bluntly, it covers everything. Like, it's not coming from one place. It's going all places. What I hope that people can understand and like about it is that they don't necessarily need to understand it or know where it is coming from, because the only place it's coming from is a desire to make a really, really good song.... I'm going to use every instrument, recording technique, technology, I'm going to use everything I know how, in terms of playing instruments, to make that melody sound as huge and exciting as possible. That's what this music is.

"I'm going to try to make lyrics that are fun to sing and fun to say, that are exciting and just really cut and dried and straight. I want to leave nothing to be figured out. Not to be like an overbearing statement because the beauty of this has always been that it can be whatever you want it to be.... It's just saying in very simple terms, 'Life ... is pretty good.... This music makes it feel better....

"And I hope that through courage and strength and perseverance, not just in myself but with everybody, that we can earn the right to be less cynical, pessimistic, to be less know-it-alls when it comes to the world around us. That we can discover things and have mysteries and be curious and most of all to be delighted and to exist in the world. And to realize how fortunate we are to do that and to appreciate what comes our way rather than look at it with a sideways glance."

Then he asked me if I'd heard the new album, The Wolf, and I said no. He said he had to leave, but he wanted to play me a couple songs first. He went and got a CD-R. He apologized for the bad sound and started fiddling with the controls on the stereo in his tour bus cabin to get the mix right.

It was like hanging out with a friend who has his band's first demo. It was incredibly loud, and the songs were longer than on I Get Wet and with more instrumentation in between the giant hooks. He was very proud of this, yelling, "Who needs singing when the melodies are this good?" over the music. He banged his fist against the ceiling to the beat, screamed along, and lip-synched into an imaginary microphone. He played air drums. At one point, after a particularly crazy fill, he looked at me and said, "You can do that when you have Obituary's drummer."

The whole time I sat there astonished, involuntarily moving to the music with a giant grin on my face. I couldn't stop thinking about how lucky we are to have Andrew W.K. in the corporate music world. It's like having the greatest secret agent who ever lived behind enemy lines, fucking up the supply trains, killing bad guys left and right, and freeing the hostages.