Andrew WK's lessons in loud

Attention-getting gonzo rocker Andrew WK takes his party-hearty brand of metal - and himself - rather seriously, discovers ELEANOR BLACK

If he didn't have so much hair, you would just about be able to see the jumble of ideas spinning inside Andrew WK's head as he dances around the whiteboard like a loopy science teacher.

Words tumble from his mouth, his arms rigid as he drives a blue marking pen into the plastic. The hot-status and much-hyped 22-year-old rocker who sings hilariously banal lyrics really loud has a reputation for being frightening, half-mad and often splattered with blood.

Usually it's his own, but he created a scandal in Britain by having pig's blood smeared from his nose to his chin on the cover of his album I Get Wet. Street posters upset the public.

He is physically imposing and wears clothes which look dirty, a white T-shirt and faded jeans identical to those worn in his frenetic video for the single Party Hard.

"I have a lot of clothes the same," he explains, his voice muffled by a mouthful of slick hair.

He insists on doing the interview in the smallest, darkest room of his Auckland hotel suite. The reason, he explains as he shifts the furniture for no apparent reason, is so he can use the corporate-function-style whiteboard stored here. It is equipped with a printer.

"I've never had one of these to use before," he says, pushing a button to see if he can make a copy of the piano keyboard he has drawn. The board is not plugged in, so he sits down, right leg pumping, eyes boring holes into everything they see, and shares his personal philosophy. It boils down to this: Life should be fun, his music is fun, but having fun is a serious business.

"This is the most beautiful, exciting music I've ever heard," he says with force, one hand banging into the palm of the other for added emphasis. "I'm going to play with as much violent, aggressive energy as I can possibly muster.

"And it's just the beginning of the beginning. There's untold uncharted regions we're going into ... I think this [music] is one of the most important and greatest things that has ever happened."

He's not smiling. Not until he is jumping around on the balcony for our photographer does he smile, twice. The rest of the time he talks in gushing streams, looking as though someone just killed his dog. He writes songs called Party Till You Puke and Don't Stop Living in the Red but doesn't appear to have a sense of humour.

Is Andrew WK for real? Is he making fun of us? Is he as mad as his hair or just putting it on?

Andrew Wilkes-Krier was raised in Michigan by his lawyer father and housewife mother. He started taking piano lessons at 4, proved a natural and by 11 realised he could make a lot more noise with his instrument if he added a drum beat and electric guitar.

The germ of his garbage-cans-banging-together sound was formed and, by 17, he was recording original material after a brief flirtation with several Detroit punk bands. At 18, he moved to New York, where he started playing at Starbucks outlets, and at 21 he recruited a bunch of former death metal dudes - Jimmy Coup, Donald Tardy, Gregg R, E Payne and Sergeant Frank - to give his music a harder edge.

Since his first EP, Girls Own Juice, was released in 2000 the British music press have been besotted with WK and made a number of wishful guesses about the meaning of the initials - Wild Kid, Want Kicks, and, the favourite, White Killer, the name of an American serial killer.

The man himself says the "W" is symbolic of strength and unity, being the shape of two arms locked together, while the "K" has something to do with the consumption of the universe.

But in the end, the explanation is dull - the name is a holdover from primary school, when WK ended up in class with another Andrew and the teacher needed to differentiate them.

Last year, Britain's ever-hyperbolic NME dubbed him the saviour of music, The Face likened him to Jesus Christ, and Kerrang! deemed his music "the smartest you could hope to hear". He is yet to blitz the United States, but WK's album is creating a groundswell in most of the rest of the rock world.

Predictions are he will soon be a big-name star - and not because his music is catchy and kitsch. WK says his oddball image is quite separate from his music, which he channels from some mysterious source, but the punters are unlikely to make the distinction.

Rather than baring his teeth and shouting, WK is polite, articulate and clearly blown away by his growing popularity. He knows how absurdly lucky he has been and is derisive of musicians who complain about their public lives.

"People who think it's cool to think this sucks [throws head to one side and scratches arm as if bored], it's like, 'No! Come on, are you out of your mind? You live in heaven on earth. You have everything you could ever want and on top of that you get to do much more. That gives you no real reason to ever complain for the rest of your life.

"You have an opportunity many people spend their whole lives trying to get. So what are you going to do with that? Sit there and whine and be lazy or, worse than that, are you going to be unkind? Your job is to make people happy that you're the one who gets to do that."

WK is big on taking responsibility. He feels responsible for sharing his music with as many people as possible, convincing them it is the greatest thing they have heard. He feels responsible for making other people feel good and for making the most of his shot at fame, fortune and unlimited fun.

He works non-stop, arranging his music, choosing the artwork for album covers and the typeface for liner notes, designing his website, and controlling every aspect of his gosh-what-a-freak image. It leaves him no time for girls - his only regret, especially as his goal for the next 10 years is to have a baby.

Jumping up to scribble on the whiteboard, he tries to explain his almost religious zeal: "I feel like I build doors. [He draws a lopsided rectangle.] I'll spend time doing all this carving to build this door so beautifully, so appealing that you want to walk up to it. [The rectangle is embellished with a couple of lines and a soggy-looking doorknob.] I might have to introduce you to the door. I might have to give you the key to the door. But you open it yourself."

If you choose not to open the door then you are missing out on a "simple explosion of energy and limitless possibility" which - he continues his lecture with a shrug - would be a shame. "I feel like every day of my life is a party, the biggest party at a carnival and I want to invite everyone in."

His definition of "party", a word figuring prominently on his album, is generous. This interview, set up like a maths lesson and timed to give other publications and news programmes a chance to experience him, is a party. "The word party is the most open, inviting, non-confrontational, all-inclusive, celebratory word that I could think of."

Back at the whiteboard, he draws a stick man standing on top of the world, surrounded by double-glazed walls. WK explains this guy has the option of living a small life, safe inside his walls but not meeting his potential, or building great things - cathedrals, pipe organs [a huge pipe organ descends from the stick man's heaven, threatening to squash him], movies, buildings, babies and music.

Andrew WK has made his choice, and it's more fun than he imagined.

* Andrew WK's debut album, I Get Wet is out now.