The Story Of O

09/05/2006 10:00 PM, LAUNCH
Lyndsey Parker

When it comes to supercool buzz bands, they just don't come any supercooler than the noisy New York garage/art-rock trio the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, who've just released their much-anticipated sophomore album, Show Your Bones. Fronted by the fierce and fabulous Karen O--whose acrobatic stage antics, possessed-by-Satan banshee wails, and sister-from-another-planet costumes (like the groovy silver lamé spacesuit she was rockin' at the Y! Music studios) make her perhaps today's most thrilling rock performer--and rounded out by the spare but compelling guitar of Nick Zinner and unexpectedly jazzy drumming of Brian Chase, the group simply oozes scenester coolness the way Karen oozes sweat during her demanding live performances.

So of course, one would expect a hot, hyped band like the YYYs to also ooze major hipper-than-thou attitude. But we're pleased to report this is not the case: When Karen, Nick, and Brian came to Yahoo! to perform in our studio, they were sweet, down-to-earth, and refreshingly 'tude-free (they didn't even complain about the fact that they'd only had about two hours of sleep the night before). Karen was especially friendly and effervescent, giggling girlishly throughout her interview with managing editor Lyndsey Parker and lapsing frequently into a very un-NYC-ish, Valley Girl dialect (seriously--count the number of times she utters "like" in the Q&A below).

What follows is a transcript of Y! Music's interview with Karen O, in which the rock 'n' roll anti-diva discusses the time her stage exploits got way too out of hand, how "Christian Joy" plays a major role in her life, and why she doesn't even remember some of the YYYs' best gigs. Read on for details...

YAHOO! MUSIC: Describe how the Yeah Yeah Yeahs began. I understand that it was sort of a lark at first, not meant to be a serious band.

KAREN: Well, basically the way the Yeah Yeah Yeahs started was I'd just moved to New York to go to school at NYU, and I had a "rock 'n' roll friend" named Helen. And she started taking me out, like, to bars and dance clubs, and that's how I met Nick, because he was a serious scenester at the time. And so me and Nick met and we hit it off pretty well, and we just started off by playing kind of slow and sad music together, I guess--which you can kind of see sort of traces of in "Maps" and those sort of songs. But our main interest was starting, like, the sleaziest, most outrageous, rock-ish kind of band that we could. Because in New York City there is, like, a certain kind of skepticism. When you go to shows, most of the time it's really disappointing. Maybe actually 99 out of a 100 times! So all we wanted to do really was, like, start a band that just sort of rocked the boat a little. Just something that would squash that sort of New York self-consciousness.

YAHOO! MUSIC: There is still a lot of hype surrounding New York.

KAREN: Right, right. Well, at the time that we started up it was before the huge sort of breakout of, like, the Strokes. We were lucky in a sense that we had absolutely no expectations, you know? I think bands there now, because there is so much hype surrounding New York, have expectations to get signed, and they have, like, a manager and a lawyer after being a band for, like, two months. And for us, our main sort of aspiration was just to play in New York City clubs. It was my first rock band ever, so I was just, like, "Wow! Playing in New York City clubs? I don't know...it sounds really scary!" So, like, once we started doing that, we were really happy, you know? And we didn't really ever sort of think that it would ever get bigger than that.

YAHOO! MUSIC: Well, obviously it did get bigger. How did you deal with the success? Did it trip you out?

KAREN: Uh, yeah, yeah. It just gets weirder and weirder. Like, every day! It is strange, because we started off so lightheartedly. And then it just really kind of messes you up when everyone starts taking you seriously--when you don't take yourself seriously, you know? It took us a while to sort of get over that. Like, you know, we sort of blew up in the press. I think we were one of the most, like, hyped bands in New York City after the Strokes, as far as like the press goes. That was hard, because we didn't even have an album out before we started getting all this attention. And so a lot of people just thought that we were, like, just a fashion band. And it's still kind of hard to clear that up for people, to let them know that the fashion is just part of the package. It's time to focus some more on music, you know? Like, it's been difficult just to get the press focusing less on me and, like, my "sexiness" [laughs] and like, what I'm wearing, rather than the actual music we're making and stuff.

YAHOO! MUSIC: Does all the attention centered on you feel strange?

KAREN: Yeah. We've lost a lot of magazine covers because they just wanted me and only me. Whenever we have a choice, we try and represent with the three of us, as opposed to, like, just me. I mean, we're all working so hard; like, it's just three of us, and it's a really big sound that we make, and we're all working our butts off up there. So, like, it's only fair for all of us to be represented, you know?

YAHOO! MUSIC: If you don't mind talking a little bit about your fashion sense, I would really love to ask you about how you decide what to wear. You've got some fantastic outfits.

KAREN: The whole fashion thing is, like, based on having a really short attention span, and sort of realizing that the kids that we're playing to have a really short attention span too. And, like, the best way to catch people's attention is with what's on the outside first. And so I have a personal designer who is actually, like, a very close friend of mine. Her name is Christian Joy.

YAHOO! MUSIC: Great name!

KAREN: Yeah, isn't it? She does all my outfits. The very first time that she made a dress for me, I opened up the bag and I looked at it and it was, like, this totally tattered-up prom dress with paint and roses and nails hanging off of it and stuff like that. This was really early on; we were maybe only four months old as a band. And I remember looking at it and praying to the rock gods, "Please, let me live up to this dress tonight!" And it was a great show that night, too! So Christian and I, we are just trying to make it a bit more interesting. And like, both of our attention spans are so short that we're just constantly changing it up, going through all these themes. Like, next we were going through '70s Bowie. I just want to keep on moving, moving, moving, you know?

YAHOO! MUSIC: Sometimes at your shows there are tons of girls dressed up like you. It reminds me of Madonnabes who wore the "Boy Toy"-style outfits to Madonna concerts in the early '80s. How do you feel about girls dressing like you?

KAREN: Oh, it's totally rad. I mean, they know exactly what they are, what they're doing, which is really amazing. Like, when Christian comes on tour with us, we sort of take notes, because those girls are teaching us, you know? It's really cool, because we like our shows to have certain "event" kind of feel, and when everyone dresses up for the night, it really feels like there's a sort of electricity in the air. And the girls, they're just kind of making what I do their own. I don't feel like it's a sea of Karen O clones or anything like that. I feel like it's just a bunch of cool girls who want to dress up for the event. So that's good.

YAHOO! MUSIC: Going back to how the Yeah Yeah Yeahs started out, weren't you called "Unitard" at first, and it was more of an acoustic thing?

KAREN: Yeah, Unitard was just me and Nick--me on acoustic guitar and Nick on slide guitar. I started writing music, like, when I was 19--just, like, for college credit [laughs]. I don't really play the guitar, but I would start writing songs right away, these little sort of sad, melancholy songs. I played them for Nick one night when we were hanging out, and he has, like, the same sort of bleeding heart-and-soul-type thing going on as I do. It was just immediate chemistry, as far as making music together. It's much harder to sort of have that sort of chemistry when you're playing much more personal and sadder songs, you know. With just that chemistry alone, we just figured that whatever we did after that, we could do pretty much anything. Because it's, like, way harder to click with someone on such a personal level than it is to, like, get a rock band together. So it was just like a jumping-off point. And, of course, we decided to go to the complete opposite end of the spectrum, which is, like, the sleaziest, loudest, noisiest band we can possibly make!

YAHOO! MUSIC: Why did you never add a bass player to the band lineup?

KAREN: I love bass, I really do. Bass is ace! But for us, it's more, like, a dynamic thing. Really early on, Nick and I tried a bunch of different people in the band, and, like, it just wasn't working out. Then we got Brian in sort of as a fluke, almost, because the drummer that was drumming for us at the time couldn't make this one gig. It was our first gig! Brian subbed in for the drummer at that show, and we clicked so well, just the three of us. So we just didn't want to mess with that dynamic and that, like, chemistry of three of us. So it's more than not wanting bass. We have tons of toys that make sort of bass sounds! Nick's guitar doesn't even sound like a guitar, you know. So that kind of compensates for a bass, I think.

YAHOO! MUSIC: Well, the three of you certainly make a big sound! Going back to the fact that press jumped on you right away--that seemed to happen overseas first, namely in the U.K., which seems to happen for a lot of American bands lately. Why do you think that is?

KAREN: I think the reason why we were more popular overseas at first was because, especially in England, they are way more fanatical and, like, way more sort of obsessed with the spectacle of things. And we are a very sort of spectacle-oriented band, you know? We like to do things in a really big way. From the very beginning, we've copped the attitude that we are the biggest band in the world. We were just hoping that that attitude would be contagious! And so I think that's something that England grasped onto right away--how cocky we were. It was weird, though: A year ago around this time we went to Europe to do a tour, and we'd just gotten really popular over there. And it was strange, because we weren't used to having, like, a lot of fans. People were coming to shows and just flipping out completely. It like, freaked me out, because we weren't popular in the States at all yet. I thought, "I wonder if we ever got popular in the U.S., if this is what it's going to be like?"

YAHOO! MUSIC: I can see why people flip out at your concerts--you're flipping out yourself! Your performances are extremely intense. How do you prepare yourself to get into your stage persona?

KAREN: Uh, let's see. Lots of stretching and a bottle of champagne! [laughs] What else? Costumes, like, really help. My onstage persona really is a persona, you know, and really the moment I step onstage, it kind of kicks into gear. That's what came out at the very first show that we played, and it's been there ever since. And, like, it's been getting crazier and wilder. And more violent, actually. Like, the amount I was hurting myself onstage was escalating to the point where I fell off the stage headfirst in Sydney, Australia. I had to go to the emergency room. I should've died, really. I should have broken my neck! I almost broke my neck and my back. It was really, really, really horrible, but I was really sort of tempting fate for a while with that. I'd almost fallen really bad, like, eight or nine times in a row before that. I should've paid attention, but I didn't. So, yes, I am really crazy onstage. And I don't know what it is. I guess I'm really frustrated in my personal life or something! [laughs] I don't know. But it's totally different from the way I am in person. Like, fans run up to me, yelling, "Woo! You're crazy!" And then they don't recognize me because I'm not, like, totally going insane. They kind of confuse the persona with who I actually am.

YAHOO! MUSIC: Do you sort of go into another world onstage? Like, you get offstage and don't exactly remember what you did, or maybe you do remember and think, "I can't believe I did that"?

KAREN: Oh, yeah, that happens all the time! [laughs] I really tend to almost black out, you know? But that's a positive thing, just to get so much outside of yourself. It's, like, the ideal way to do shows for me, just to not remember what happened up there onstage at all.

YAHOO! MUSIC: Do you have any role models that you think are fantastic performers?

KAREN: There's a band called Blonde Redhead that was influential to me, and in New York there was a band called Jonathan Fire*Eater--who are now the Walkmen without the lead singer, although actually, it was Jonathan Fire*Eater's lead singer that really hooked me onto that band. Just his persona and his presence. And Darby Crash from the Germs, he was amazing. I mean, anyone that has completely their own thing going on, kind of going completely against the tide--or even against their own band--is like, really interesting to me.