Mike Comite
Appearances
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
There's this video. I've watched it more times than I'd like to admit in the last decade and a half. Kind of like a retired football player watching old game tapes from his glory days, who pauses and rewinds that one play where he tore his ACL over and over to see where his career went sideways. It happened at Bonnaroo, this music festival with some of the biggest acts in the world.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
That year Dave Matthews' band and Jay-Z were playing. It was 2010. The band I was in was invited to play on one of the medium-sized stages, which is a huge deal for us. There'd be over 2,000 people watching. It'd be the biggest stage we'd ever played on. But then I saw that Weezer was also playing Bonnaroo. It felt like some kind of fated opportunity.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
We were actually covering a Weezer song in our set. And so I had this big idea. Our front person, Julia, was a musician who had blown up on YouTube. She had thousands of followers on social media. What if we got them all to tweet at Weezer's lead singer, Rivers Cuomo, to see if he'd come sing with us? I asked Julia, and she was game for it.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
And shockingly, it worked, better than we could have hoped. Rivers didn't come sing with us. Instead, he invited Julia to come play her ukulele and sing with Weezer during one of their songs on the main stage. Julia's visibility at Bonnaroo would be multiplied tenfold. If this went well, who knows where it could lead. Maybe Weezer would bring us on tour with them as their opener.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
Our agent immediately submitted us to their team for some of their upcoming shows. Or maybe Rivers would write a song with Julia, play on our record, or she'd play on theirs. The possibilities kept me up at night. I was 22. I'd only been playing music professionally for a year at that point. But I was convinced this would be the moment that would transform our careers.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
The day of the show, Julia split off from our group to rehearse with Weezer on their tour bus. I felt a little sting finding out I wasn't gonna meet them too. Weezer went on a little before sunset. Me and the rest of the band sat way back in the crowd on some bleachers while Julia was somewhere backstage. There had to be at least 20,000 people between us and Weezer.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
I couldn't believe that a dumb idea I'd cooked up in rehearsal had led to this. The song Julia was going to play on was called Trippin' Down the Freeway. Weezer started it a few songs into their set. Julia's offstage for the first half of the song, but after the guitar solo, Rivers brings the band down to a vamp and has Julia come out, kind of dramatically.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
Julia walks onstage strumming her uke, but something sounds off. They are not in the right tuning.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
For a split second, I'm convinced I'm having a nightmare. I try telling myself to wake up. Nope. Weezer is still on stage, having a conversation mid-song about Julia's tuning through the PA system. Rivers pivots. He turns to the crowd and starts talking about how Julia had ended up on stage with them that day. About Twitter, about Julia's fans.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
He's making fun of her? I start clenching my jaw from the stands.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
I'm mortified. I can't believe how mean he's being to her. Just so passive-aggressive. At this point, our crew member who's been sitting next to me, excitedly filming Julia's big moment, quietly stops recording and puts down her camera. This isn't her video. Someone else posted this one to YouTube. I couldn't help thinking I'd been the one to suggest she do this in the first place. This was on me.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
After an excruciating 62 seconds of improv, Rivers wanders across the stage to where Julia is trying to retune with another band member.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
I'm just going to sing, she says.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
Rivers counts off and starts singing, and Julia jumps in.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
Julia looks so small from where we're sitting, but I can tell she's holding her ukulele by her side as she sings. They finish the song, Rivers thanks Julia, and she walks off the stage. I'm sitting in the bleachers, shocked by what just happened. Weezer keeps playing a bunch of my favorite songs, and I can't enjoy them.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
The next day, Rivers tweeted at Julia and thanked her for playing despite the mishap. A few weeks later, Weezer's manager officially turned us down for the opening spot on tour. In the music business, you need some moment to pull you out of obscurity and propel you forward. And it felt like for us, Weezer had been it. Instead, we'd blown it. And that was the beginning of the end.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
After Bonnaroo, Julia and I stayed busy touring, just the two of us for a while. But then things slowed down. Julia and her management were about to part ways. I started getting nervous about being able to support myself. So I tapped out of touring with Julia and got a full-time job where a lot of struggling musicians and actors end up. At the Apple Store.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
And so this is when I started watching and re-watching that video, the Weezer performance. I've been doing that for the last 14 years. Each replay, I keep hoping that it won't be as bad as I remember. But it always is. I'm still stuck on, what the fuck happened? And in particular, was it our fault? On stage, Rivers had made it seem like it, but I've gone through the details again and again.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
Julia had received tuning instructions from Weezer's road manager. Were those incorrect? Had Julia done the math wrong tuning her uke? Had I? I'd helped her with that. I found a video of Julia rehearsing with Weezer on their tour bus. She was in the wrong tuning there, too, but no one had noticed? Julia might know what went wrong, but I never really talked to her about that show.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
Only once right after. It was uncomfortable. She was clearly upset, had been crying. She asked to let it go, so I did. But she must remember something from that day. So I called her. When is the last time you thought about the Weezer performance?
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
Julia lives in Austin, Texas now. She's still releasing music, but her career has shifted more towards life coaching and guided meditation. Her memories of the Weezer incident were not as vivid as mine. She didn't remember how she and Weezer got in touch. She didn't remember what year it happened. She definitely did not have the email from the road manager about the tuning.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
And she never puzzled over why her tuning was off. Because for her, that whole show was a totally different experience. When Rivers was saying all that stuff about her on stage...
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
I feel like I've just been stewing in it for so long. Being like, that dude was an asshole to my friend. Oh!
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
I watched this video twice. Probably more often than I should. I feel like I'm responsible for it in a way that's like if I had just not said anything in that rehearsal that day, we could have just gone about our days and rehearsed and just had our set at Bonnaroo. And then you would have come to Weezer set and sat in the bleachers with us and we just would have enjoyed Weezer together.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
Mike, don't you dare. But instead you went on stage with him. And this thing that could have changed your career, in my view, had this effect that this like you seem so sad afterwards and devastated. And I was like, oh, my God, if I had just said nothing, this wouldn't have happened to you.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
I'm glad. Julia was so much more at peace with the day than I was. She said the band, our band, wasn't sounding good to her anyways. She thought opening for Weezer was a long shot, even if she had been in the right tuning for Trippin' Down the Freeway. But also, the moment Julia remembered most from that performance wasn't the mistake.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
It was the part of the video that I usually skip over, the moment where it works out, right after Rivers asked Julia if she wants to sing.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
You can't see any of this in the video I'd been replaying all these years. That one was shot from way back, near the bleachers, where I watched the show. I almost couldn't believe what Julia described, but changing up the wording of my YouTube search, I found another video from that day, filmed close to the stage.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
You can see everyone's faces, and even when the tuning mistake becomes apparent, they're smiling and they're laughing. Julia and Rivers dance. They're having a great time. Watching it, I felt this wave of relief. It's what I was missing all these years. Julia was okay, and I believed her that the band didn't break up because of a tuning mistake.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
And this moment wasn't why I stopped playing music for a living. After Julie and I talked, I finally heard back from Weezer's former road manager. She found the email they'd sent us before the performance. And the instructions were wrong. There would have been no way for Julie and me to tune correctly with them. I had the full answer now, but I was surprised by how little it mattered to me.
This American Life
850: If You Want to Destroy My Sweater, Hold This Thread as I Walk Away
I was over it.