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ONE

EveryI wake up and I tell myself this: It’s just one day, one twenty-four-hour period to get yourself through I don’t knohen exactly I started giving myself this daily pep talk—or why It sounds like a twelve-step h to read some of the crap they write about me, you’d think I should be I have the kind of life a lot of people would probably sell a kidney to just experience a bit of But still, I find the need to remind myself of the teh yesterday, I’ll get through today

This lance at the htstand It reads 11:47, positively crack-of-dawn forwith take-up calls, followed by a polite-but-firht be just one day, but it’s packed

I’uitar tracks for sole of our just-released albuuitar track, some vocal effects, pay an extra buck for it “These days, you’ve gotta milk a dollar out of every di us

After the studio, I have a lunch intervieith some reporter from Shuffle Those two events are kinda like the bookends of whatthethe music, which I loathe But they’re flip sides of the same coin When Aldous calls a second tirab the prescription bottle fro I’ jittery

Jittery is how I norotten used to But ever since we kicked off our tour with three shows at Madison Square Garden, I’ve been feeling so powerful and painful Vortexy

Is that even a word? I ask myself

You’re talking to yourself, so who the hell cares? I reply, popping a couple of pills I pull on soo to the door ofIt’s been left there by a hotel employee, undoubtedly under strict instructions to stay out of my way

I finish et dressed, and make my way down the service elevator and out the side entrance—the guest-relations er has kindly provided me with special access keys so I can avoid the scenester parade in the lobby Out on the sidewalk, I’ New York air It’s kind of oppressive, but I like that the air is wet It reon, where the rain falls endlessly, and even on the hottest of su white cu you that su, and the rain’s never far off

In Los Angeles, where I live now, it hardly ever rains And the heat, it’s never-ending But it’s a dry heat People there use this aridness as a blanket excuse for all of the hot, srees today,” they’ll brag, “but at least it’s a dry heat”

But New York is a wet heat; by the time I reach the studio ten blocks away on a desolate stretch in the West Fifties, my hair, which I keep hidden under a cap, is daarette froht tremor for the last year or so After extensivea

When I get to the studio, Aldous is waiting outside under the awning He looks at arette, back atto decide whether he needs to be Good Cop or Bad Cop I must look like shit because he opts for Good Cop

“Good , Sunshine,” he says jovially

“Yeah? What’s ever good about ?” I try to make it sound like a joke

“Technically, it’s afternoon now We’re running late”

I stub out ruously gentle “We just want one guitar track on ‘Sugar,’ just to give it that little sohs, shakes his head at what the business has become “Then you have lun

ch with Shuffle, and we have a photo shoot for that Fashion Rocks thing for the Times with the rest of the band around five, and then a quick drinks thing with souys at the label, and then I’m off to the airport To with publicity andJust smile and don’t say a lot After that you’re on your lonesome until London”

Onin the warether? I say Only I say it to h the majority of my conversations are with ood thing

But this time I really will be by land tonight I was supposed to be on the saht as them until I realized that today was Friday the thirteenth, and I was like no fucking way! I’ it further by leaving on the official day of bad luck So I’d had Aldous booka video in London and then doing a bunch of press before we start the European leg of our tour, so it’s not like I’ with our video director I don’t need to hear about his artistic vision When we start shooting, I’ll do what he tells me

I follow Aldous into the studio and enter a soundproof booth where it’s just lass sit our producer, Stiineers Aldous joins thee and the chorus Just to make that hook that ”

“Hooky Sticky Got it” I put on uitar to tune up and warm up I try not to notice that in spite of what Aldous said a few o, it feels like I’m already all on my lonesome Me alone in a soundproof booth Don’t overthink it, I tell ically advanced studio The only probleo at the Garden Up onstage, in front of eighteen thousand fans, alongside the people who, once upon a time, were part of my family, I felt as alone as I do in this booth

Still, it could be worse I start to play andand crank against uitar, pummel it until it screeches and screams just the way I want it to Or alrand’s worth of guitars in this rooood as es, the one I’d recorded our first albums on, the one that, in a fit of stupidity or hubris or whatever, I’d allowed to be auctioned off for charity The shiny, expensive replaceht Still, when I crank it up loud, I do e to lose myself for a second or two

But it’s over all too soon, and then Stidown Ninth Avenue to SoHo, to a hotel whose restaurant the publicists froood spot for our interview What, do they think I’ if I’m in an expensive public place? I remember back in the very early days, when the intervierote ’zines or blogs and were fans and mostly wanted to rock-talk—to discuss the ether More often than not, it just turned into a nor their opinions over one another Back then I never worried about guarding ate h they’re cops and they have et us to implicate one another

I need a cigarette before we go in, so Aldous and I stand outside the hotel in the blinding athers and checksnot to That’s the difference between New York and the rest of the world People are just as celebrity-crazed as anywhere, but New Yorkers—or at least the ones who consider the the kind of SoHo block I’ on now—put on this pretense that they don’t care, even as they stare out from their three-hundred-dollar shades Then they act all disdainful when out-of-towners break the code by rushing up and asking for an autograph as a pair of girls in U Michigan sweatshirts have just done, much to the annoyance of the nearby trio of snobs, atch the girls and roll their eyes and give irls are the problem