Speaker 1: Pushkin, take a deep breath and go. So you're creating
Speaker 1: those little accents from down here. Yes, that's it one
Speaker 1: more time. This is the last episode of the show,
Speaker 1: and I think I've got my takeaways. One takeaway is
Speaker 1: that good coaches can have huge effects, and so it
Speaker 1: really matters who gets them. Another is that the people
Speaker 1: who get the best coaches aren't always the people who
Speaker 1: need them the most. The people who most need a
Speaker 1: coach are people in a position of weakness. Of course,
Speaker 1: coaches can make the strong stronger, but the real magic
Speaker 1: happens when a coach attacks a seemingly hopeless situation like
Speaker 1: this one. That's it, you do. Oh. My strategy has
Speaker 1: always been to hide my weaknesses, but it's hard to
Speaker 1: hide this one. My voice this Yeah, I'm Michael Lewis,
Speaker 1: and this is against the rules. This season has been
Speaker 1: all about the rise of coaches. For this final episode,
Speaker 1: I'm hiring myself a coach. It happens every time I
Speaker 1: publish a book. I'll be three days into a speaking
Speaker 1: tour and poof, I won't be able to speak. Last season,
Speaker 1: the producers of this show tried to get me to
Speaker 1: record two episodes in a day, only to find that
Speaker 1: I was incapable of getting so many words out of
Speaker 1: my mouth without my voice going. It's kind of funny
Speaker 1: because my wife and children often say that I never
Speaker 1: shut up, and I sort of wish that it could
Speaker 1: be true. So take a deep, silent breath in and
Speaker 1: hiss one. Two, he'd been strong, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, twelve.
Speaker 1: All right for maybe a man in his nineties with emphzema.
Speaker 1: I would say that was pretty good, But I'm not
Speaker 1: going to allow that with you. You must build that up.
Speaker 1: That's his name, is Eric Vitro. We're in his house
Speaker 1: in La. If you were there, you could see that
Speaker 1: Eric isn't just any old voice coach. His walls are
Speaker 1: decorated with frame records that went platinum and thank you
Speaker 1: notes from the singers who recorded them. I'm standing in
Speaker 1: front of his piano. Behind it is a wall that's
Speaker 1: more like a mural. The entire thing is filled with
Speaker 1: snapshots of this coach, with the world's most famous people,
Speaker 1: hundreds of them, lots of beautiful people taking on the
Speaker 1: very spot where I'm standing. These are all SuDS. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Cuba good. Yeah. Do you know Cuba. I don't know anybody.
Speaker 1: I didn't know he sang anything. Yeah, he's done Chicago
Speaker 1: Summertide or London and on Broadway one of the nicest
Speaker 1: ariana Grande John Legend, pink Seawan Mendez. And they look
Speaker 1: not just happy to be here, they look grateful, especially
Speaker 1: the actors who came to him to learn how to
Speaker 1: sing in a Broadway musical or a Hollywood movie. Emma
Speaker 1: Stone and Ryan Gosling for La La land Renee Zellweger
Speaker 1: for Judy, Natalie Portman for Everything. The Wall is an
Speaker 1: Awards show speech waiting to happen? Well, Ferrell say, oh,
Speaker 1: wouldn't he sing it? I worked on the movie with
Speaker 1: the Stuck Brothers where he's saying at the end, all right,
Speaker 1: all culminates with him singing time to sing by. I
Speaker 1: can't believe I had the balls to call you up
Speaker 1: and ask you to do this. I really can't. On
Speaker 1: a whim, I'd call the agent who turns my books
Speaker 1: into movies and asked him, who's the coach for actors
Speaker 1: who need to fix their voices? Say actors who don't
Speaker 1: normally sing but suddenly need to the answer came back
Speaker 1: immediately Eric Vetro. Hollywood agents all know just how vulnerable
Speaker 1: their clients feel. I was petrified. I didn't like singing
Speaker 1: in front of people. I always loved singing, but privately
Speaker 1: in my call in the shower, my own husband had
Speaker 1: never heard me sing. Even stars need help to shine,
Speaker 1: the brightest have a sixth sense of where to find
Speaker 1: that help, like this actress Emily Blunt. Rob Marshall had
Speaker 1: asked me to audition for other musicals he was doing,
Speaker 1: and I'd always said no because I was just frozen
Speaker 1: with fear about the thought. He eventually called my agent.
Speaker 1: He said, she's coming in. I know she can sing,
Speaker 1: She's perfect for this role. I really want her. Tell
Speaker 1: her to come and I have to hear everyone sing.
Speaker 1: What was the song? It was Moments in the Woods.
Speaker 1: It was her big song. This is ridiculous. What am
Speaker 1: I doing here? I'm in the wrong story. Into the
Speaker 1: Woods was the hit Broadway show that was then being
Speaker 1: turned into a movie. Emily Blunt had no idea if
Speaker 1: she could do the role, but she had a phone
Speaker 1: number for Eric Vitro. Eric told her what he tells
Speaker 1: everybody who calls, come to my house for the first
Speaker 1: lesson and we'll see. I mean, Eric's how is always spotless,
Speaker 1: it always smells heavenly, and he's sort of this weird
Speaker 1: juxtaposition of someone who's incredibly sort of refined and elegant,
Speaker 1: and then he wears sort of like rocker jewelry, like
Speaker 1: real thick chains, and sort of he's sort of an
Speaker 1: interesting image when you look at him. He's usually got
Speaker 1: a fabulous shirt on. And I remember thinking how cool
Speaker 1: this guy was and how how effortless he was sort
Speaker 1: of be around. So I went into his kitchen walk
Speaker 1: me through the first like fifteen minutes. We went into
Speaker 1: his music room and he I think we did some
Speaker 1: really embarrassing scales or something something that I was just
Speaker 1: horrified by the idea of. And I felt embarrassed having
Speaker 1: to do all of these strange mouth exercises, like he
Speaker 1: makes you do things like ni like stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Though You're like, how horrifying if someone were to see
Speaker 1: me do this in your life? Had you had that
Speaker 1: experience before it? Anybody ever, any kind of nothing, nothing,
Speaker 1: Because I didn't go to drama school. I wasn't put
Speaker 1: through the ring or of doing sort of trust games
Speaker 1: or physical sort of warm ups or anything I've never
Speaker 1: done it and or anything like that. Where did the
Speaker 1: fear and the inhibition come from in you? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Is it English? Maybe? Maybe it's like if you aren't
Speaker 1: the very best, that you're supposed to just kind of hide.
Speaker 1: Even if you are the very best, you're supposed to hide.
Speaker 1: You're not supposed to enthuse about your own talents where
Speaker 1: I'm from, you know, or try too hard. No, you can't,
Speaker 1: you can't. So even having a voice coach, that's almost
Speaker 1: like trying too hard. Well, that's interesting to me. Was
Speaker 1: there a little part of you that resisted that in
Speaker 1: any way? No? I feel like I desperately needed it.
Speaker 1: I mean I really really needed it. Emily Blunt got
Speaker 1: Eric Vitro's coaching for the next few years, and it
Speaker 1: had magical effects. I mean she became Mary Poppins. Do
Speaker 1: you ever lie awake at night just between the dark
Speaker 1: and the morning light? Such? My problem is obviously not
Speaker 1: the same as Emily Blunt's. I have no hidden talents
Speaker 1: and no one suspects that I do. I don't secretly
Speaker 1: hope to audition for Rob Marshall's next musical. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, well, I'd better come clean here. My problem
Speaker 1: with my voice isn't practical, it's spiritual. A long time ago,
Speaker 1: I basically decided that the last thing I should ever
Speaker 1: do is sing. Standing in Eric Vitro's house, I thought
Speaker 1: how nice it might be to walk through the world
Speaker 1: without being unsettled by the national anthem or terrified by
Speaker 1: karaoke night. As you're gonna put the straw in the bottle,
Speaker 1: you're gonna hum into the straw, which means air is
Speaker 1: going to be coming through the straw and it's gonna
Speaker 1: blow bubbles right into the water. Yes, now go, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it. You want to send that Eric through the straw? Yeah,
Speaker 1: sometimes out it's funny you feel like around my belly body, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: that's what I want. The first lesson at Eric's house
Speaker 1: was just so that he could see if there was
Speaker 1: any point in having a second lesson over the phone.
Speaker 1: He said, I could come over, but then it also
Speaker 1: might be a great waste of time. Now, by the way,
Speaker 1: I am the most positive, optimistic and supportive people you
Speaker 1: will ever meet. I really am supported with my students. However,
Speaker 1: I really think that whole phrase you can be anyone
Speaker 1: you want and achieve anything you put your mind to.
Speaker 1: I think it should be followed by within reason, because
Speaker 1: you know, that would be like me saying, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quit teaching and I'm going to become the
Speaker 1: greatest basketball player ever. Well, at my age, with my
Speaker 1: hype and my body type, I don't think that's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: I mean that would And if someone said you can
Speaker 1: do it, Eric, you can put it in and you
Speaker 1: put your mind to, they would be steering me down
Speaker 1: the wrong road, right, It would be ridiculous. I was
Speaker 1: waiting to hear how this story applied to me. Then
Speaker 1: he told me about the famous actor, the actor who's
Speaker 1: picture never quite made it onto the wall behind Eric's piano.
Speaker 1: He made a movie and made a big splash, and
Speaker 1: everybody wanted to hear him. You know, everyone's like, ooh,
Speaker 1: this guy's us. That's a good looking and a good actor.
Speaker 1: So he was getting a million offers, and one was
Speaker 1: a Broadway musical and they said, here's the deal, of
Speaker 1: the producers will pay for unlimited voice lessons. They just
Speaker 1: want you to prepare him for this. They trust you.
Speaker 1: You know, money's no object. How often do you really
Speaker 1: hear that? You know, money's not you. So I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this sounds like a great gig. That was until he
Speaker 1: got here. And when I met him, he was actually
Speaker 1: very nice, So that was ices on the cape. Oh,
Speaker 1: a great guy and just seemed fun to talk to.
Speaker 1: Then he started singing, Oh my, I was like, ah,
Speaker 1: it was a terrible and it's worse than what I
Speaker 1: just did. As he's telling me this story, I'm wondering
Speaker 1: what else is he trying to tell me? But here's
Speaker 1: the thing. You know, what are the qualities that you
Speaker 1: really need to possess to, you know, to be a
Speaker 1: successful artist and to have a long career. One of
Speaker 1: them is some kind of self awareness of who you
Speaker 1: are and what you should be doing. I kept waiting
Speaker 1: for him to elaborate. He didn't, But at the end
Speaker 1: of the session, Eric looked at his schedule and asked
Speaker 1: when I wanted to do the next lesson and whether
Speaker 1: it should be at his house or over FaceTime. So
Speaker 1: I had myself a coach and a new way to
Speaker 1: deal with what was a complicated problem. Who you got trouble,
Speaker 1: my friend? Right here, I say, trouble right here in
Speaker 1: River City White, Sure, I'm a billiard glare certainly. The
Speaker 1: Music Man was a musical turned into a hit movie
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty two. There are actually plans right now
Speaker 1: to revive it on Broadway, and you can see why.
Speaker 1: It's both from another era and totally of the moment.
Speaker 1: It tells the story of a con man played in
Speaker 1: the movie by Robert Preston. He rolls into a small
Speaker 1: town in Iowa and sells musical instruments to parents by
Speaker 1: persuading them that their kids are prodigies. He promises to
Speaker 1: teach them how to play, only he doesn't know a
Speaker 1: thing about music. The only person in town he doesn't
Speaker 1: fool is marrying the librarian played by Shirley Jones. She's
Speaker 1: a prim and proper beauty who teaches piano and sees
Speaker 1: through the Khan. But the music Man persuades her that
Speaker 1: he has this magical system. Oh, I now have a
Speaker 1: revolutionary new method called a think system. Well, you don't
Speaker 1: bother with notes. The music Man has found a new
Speaker 1: and better way to coach, not how to sing or
Speaker 1: how to play, how to get yourself into a state
Speaker 1: of mind in which all you want to do is
Speaker 1: sing and play. Oddly, this musical had exactly the opposite
Speaker 1: effect on me. A single song, did it? I tell
Speaker 1: you my phobia, I tell where it comes from it
Speaker 1: and it's that the latter Rose song. Oh, I couldn't
Speaker 1: figure out from your text what you were lucky about.
Speaker 1: So here's what happened. When I was in the third
Speaker 1: and fourth and fifth grade, I had the leads in
Speaker 1: the school players, and it was just I think it
Speaker 1: was more willingness to get on stage and sing, but
Speaker 1: I had them. And in fifth grade they cast me
Speaker 1: in the leading and without telling me that I was
Speaker 1: supposed to marry on stage a little girl, and there
Speaker 1: was this It was this awful sequence of events. Childhood
Speaker 1: is a fun house mirror. Everything in it gets distorted.
Speaker 1: I know a woman who became a meteorologist because a
Speaker 1: storm dropped a tree onto her house when she was
Speaker 1: ten years old. That tree kicked a little pebble off
Speaker 1: the top of a hill in her mind and started
Speaker 1: an avalanche. That kind of thing happened inside my head.
Speaker 1: Only my tree was a song called Light a Rose,
Speaker 1: Light a Rose, I'm home again, Rose, dude, get the side.
Speaker 1: Our fifth grade class was going to stage a version
Speaker 1: of the music Man. I thought I'd been duped into
Speaker 1: singing the musical's one love song to a girl in
Speaker 1: front of basically the entire world. But then these extremely
Speaker 1: ancient teachers told me who the girl was, the new girl.
Speaker 1: She had a birth effect, no fingers on her hands
Speaker 1: or toes on her feet. She was also wildly bizarrely aggressive,
Speaker 1: grabbing it boys, pitching fits. I knew I was meant
Speaker 1: to be kind to her, and I tried. A ten
Speaker 1: year old boy with a better character than mine would
Speaker 1: have just gone along with the whole thing, but I didn't.
Speaker 1: I told them that I wouldn't do the song, and
Speaker 1: instead of telling me that I couldn't sing, they wound
Speaker 1: up telling that poor little girl she couldn't have the
Speaker 1: role in the play. The teachers had exposed a weakness
Speaker 1: in my character. Of course, when I was ten, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have put it that way, or anyway at all.
Speaker 1: I just suddenly had this ugly new feeling a combination
Speaker 1: of anger and self loathing. There and then I refused
Speaker 1: ever again to sing in school plays. I told the
Speaker 1: music teacher I would never again meet her after school.
Speaker 1: It's funny how phobias start. It was a short skip
Speaker 1: from refusing to sing to feeling that I shouldn't sing
Speaker 1: to almost being afraid to sing. I know it's a
Speaker 1: very strange story and it's got no happy ending to it,
Speaker 1: but I'm done telling that story to my new coach.
Speaker 1: He has an idea. So it's possible that my voice
Speaker 1: is so bad that you're not gonna be able to
Speaker 1: do anything at all. So let's see how it goes.
Speaker 1: I think conquering that song that gave you such anxiety
Speaker 1: would be fun, would be buzzing conquer, you know. So
Speaker 1: what I want to do is I want to have
Speaker 1: you sing the melody, but instead of on the words,
Speaker 1: you're going to do it on wah wah wah. And
Speaker 1: I have known a lot of singing teachers, and some
Speaker 1: of them are just playing nuts. I talked to a
Speaker 1: lot of Eric's students. This is Bette Midler, another famous
Speaker 1: singer on Eric's wall. And there are a lot of
Speaker 1: quacks too. So you have to be very careful because
Speaker 1: you could be led down the garden path by people
Speaker 1: who say that this is the way to do it.
Speaker 1: When Bett found Eric, she was in a funk. It
Speaker 1: was two thousand and eight. She was about to open
Speaker 1: a new show in Vegas, at Caesar's Palace. The dry
Speaker 1: air was getting to her. But it wasn't just the air.
Speaker 1: Something wasn't quite right. She felt more than usually vulnerable.
Speaker 1: Her backup singers were called the Harlettes. One of the
Speaker 1: Harletts told her about Eric, so Bett called him up.
Speaker 1: He started coming to Vegas to help me, and he
Speaker 1: would come once a week or so and we would
Speaker 1: warm up, or he would call me on the phone.
Speaker 1: We would warm up on the phone, and he gave
Speaker 1: me the taps to warm up with it. And I
Speaker 1: was religious about it. She didn't just get through the
Speaker 1: show's run. She went two years without missing a single performance.
Speaker 1: The staff at Caesar's Palace told her that that had
Speaker 1: never happened, so they invented an award to give her.
Speaker 1: It's still Bette Midler's favorite award, and it's sort of
Speaker 1: changed her ideas about the value of a coach. There
Speaker 1: are some songs when I can hear him in my head,
Speaker 1: I can hear his voice, I can hear certain things
Speaker 1: that he said in my head. And if I can
Speaker 1: keep myself from dismissing it, if I can believe it,
Speaker 1: I just thank God for him every day. First of all,
Speaker 1: He's a sunbeam in the world. And I do think
Speaker 1: that a coach has to be You can't have someone
Speaker 1: who's going to be abusive. Yeah, they have. They have
Speaker 1: to You have to know they care about you. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: you have to trust them. And trust is absolutely imperative.
Speaker 1: If you don't trust your coach, you're not gonna make
Speaker 1: it ready to take deep breath. Okay, Nope, but that's okay.
Speaker 1: That's why you're here to improve. So yes, we're not listening.
Speaker 1: We're not listening to a friend who was standing in
Speaker 1: our guest copie and he heard me practicing. He I
Speaker 1: came a piece that I thought that was the garbage truck.
Speaker 1: No he didn't. It wasn't just the odd house guest.
Speaker 1: It was the Amazon delivery lady, the guys on the
Speaker 1: recycling truck, the neighbors. Anyone who came within about thirty
Speaker 1: yards of me singing assumed a worried expression. One day,
Speaker 1: I looked at my office window to see a deer
Speaker 1: staring back at me with a look of concern. Then
Speaker 1: there's my children. In happy families, children don't want their
Speaker 1: parents to change. They really don't want to see them
Speaker 1: trying to change. One day, my thirteen year old son
Speaker 1: Walker wandered in with his skateboard under his arm. He
Speaker 1: grabbed a tape recorder and supplied a running commentary just
Speaker 1: out of my earshot, and then I just walked down
Speaker 1: unless my dad going, and he's just run. Okay, it's
Speaker 1: going to be a next Michael Jackson. Somebody wants to
Speaker 1: steal kids. It's hard at the same time to be
Speaker 1: both a comic character in the minds of everyone around
Speaker 1: you and also a slayer of childhood demons. But something
Speaker 1: about this coach made me want to keep on going,
Speaker 1: just to see where he might lead. So you figure
Speaker 1: out what they have, You expanded the best, the best
Speaker 1: you can try to work, and then you worked all
Speaker 1: about funny out who you are. Isn't that life in general?
Speaker 1: But it's it's really true. But it's and I think
Speaker 1: it's the key to life, you know, and finding, you know,
Speaker 1: that combination of what you do best and what you
Speaker 1: love the most, right, what you enjoy the most, because
Speaker 1: that's what you're going to want to practice right. If
Speaker 1: you're doing a style of music that you don't like,
Speaker 1: you're not going to want to practice it right. So
Speaker 1: it becomes meaningless, like like they'll tell me, oh, so
Speaker 1: and so tried to get me to blank blink, Like
Speaker 1: I go, that's not what you want to do. Then
Speaker 1: you're you're really trying to fit up a square pain
Speaker 1: around the whole. Right, you've got to have some kind
Speaker 1: of love or passion for it, right has to. This
Speaker 1: entire season has been mainly about the effects that coaches have.
Speaker 1: We haven't talked much about why they do what they do.
Speaker 1: There's lots of reasons someone might decide their passion is
Speaker 1: to sing, but passion for helping others learn to sing.
Speaker 1: It's hard to explain sometimes, but you know, you feel
Speaker 1: like you are getting as much as you are giving,
Speaker 1: like to see the improvement, to see people get excited.
Speaker 1: All of that it comes back at you like a rush,
Speaker 1: like a rush of adrenaline. Really is what it is.
Speaker 1: Or to see someone complimented, or if you read a
Speaker 1: good review. I would never say, oh, I take credit
Speaker 1: for that. I don't feel that, but I know I
Speaker 1: had something to do with it. I was a part
Speaker 1: of it, and that just and it makes me so
Speaker 1: happy for that person. One day I asked Eric how
Speaker 1: he became a coach with a completely straight face. He
Speaker 1: said that it had all started in the fifth grade.
Speaker 1: This show can't seem to move on from the fifth grade,
Speaker 1: but such as life. By the time he got to
Speaker 1: the fifth grade, Eric loved music but didn't get much
Speaker 1: encouragement from his parents. Then his class stage of music,
Speaker 1: just as mine had. The most popular boy in aris
Speaker 1: class wanted to play the lead, but he didn't know
Speaker 1: how to sing. He knew because I was playing the
Speaker 1: piano in the morning, you know, for the kids to
Speaker 1: sing the Star Spangled Banner, America the Beautiful, And he said,
Speaker 1: I want to audition. And meanwhile, by the way, we're
Speaker 1: talking at like a ten minute skit. It wasn't a
Speaker 1: big thing. But to us, you know, when you're that
Speaker 1: age and you're in a school, you're surrounded by people
Speaker 1: who really matter to you, all those classmates, and there's
Speaker 1: so many hierarchies and levels and all of that going on.
Speaker 1: So he was popular, he was athletic, he was, you know,
Speaker 1: all the positive things you could be for boy in
Speaker 1: the fifth grade, and or I guess in any grade really,
Speaker 1: And so he said, can you teach me this song?
Speaker 1: And I said sure. So we walked home. My house
Speaker 1: was probably twenty five minutes from the school. He walked
Speaker 1: home with me and I sat at the piano and
Speaker 1: I taught him the song and we went over and
Speaker 1: over and over it. That bonded us forever. You know what.
Speaker 1: We didn't sit at the same table and lunch whatever,
Speaker 1: but whenever I would see him from that time on
Speaker 1: until graduating high school, we were walking down the hall,
Speaker 1: he'd give me that nod, I'd give him that nod,
Speaker 1: like we had that bond. It was amazing. It was
Speaker 1: a really special thing we had between us. And so
Speaker 1: Eric just started to help other kids who needed to sing.
Speaker 1: He didn't really think of it as a job until
Speaker 1: one day when he was in college, a classmate auditioned
Speaker 1: for a Broadway show. She offered to pay Eric to
Speaker 1: help her. After that, he built an entire career on
Speaker 1: word of mouth. People just heard about this guy's rare
Speaker 1: coaching gift and called him up. He never really had
Speaker 1: to market himself or push himself on others. They found him,
Speaker 1: what did it feel like You're gonna yawn? Credible space
Speaker 1: to back your throw all these strange sounds. I spend
Speaker 1: an hour every day making them. I ask him why
Speaker 1: I'm doing them, and he sort of explains but sort
Speaker 1: of doesn't, or rather all of his explanations boiled down
Speaker 1: to a single persuasive sentence. Just follow my lead the
Speaker 1: way everyone else is done, and I'll get you there.
Speaker 1: Practice really truly, bet Middler again, my fellow singer. This
Speaker 1: is ther only piece of advice to me. The more
Speaker 1: you do it, the better you're going to get. There's
Speaker 1: no question. There is absolutely no question you will improve.
Speaker 1: The more you do it, the better you get, and
Speaker 1: you find the secrets you find. Well, he told me
Speaker 1: to do it that way. I can't quite do it
Speaker 1: that way, but I can do it this way, and
Speaker 1: it's a pretty good sound, So I like him. My
Speaker 1: question to you is, how do you sound? How do
Speaker 1: you like yourself singing? That was a good question, and
Speaker 1: I was still avoiding the answer. Let's start with a tongue,
Speaker 1: making sure to connect to your breathing muscles. You're gonna
Speaker 1: take deep ruts in and you're gonna sing that. I
Speaker 1: try it. I try everything very good. Now try it
Speaker 1: with the lip bubbly and see if you can do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't worry about it. Don't worry about it, I promise.
Speaker 1: But I kept thinking of Bette Midler's question, how do
Speaker 1: I like myself singing? The truth is I feel totally
Speaker 1: disconnected from my own voice. I sing the way people
Speaker 1: talk when they're trying to get a foreigner to understand them.
Speaker 1: When it isn't working, I just do it again, louder.
Speaker 1: I also sing with the feeling that something's about to
Speaker 1: go drastically wrong, like I'm a five foot point guard
Speaker 1: driving for a layup with a pair of seven footers
Speaker 1: right behind me. So you're gonna go memo, memo, memo, memo, memo, memo, Mimo, memo, Mimo, Mimo, Mimo, memo, memo, Mimo.
Speaker 1: Now rolling your head, memo, Mima. The music Man is
Speaker 1: about a con man. He knows he's a fraud, but
Speaker 1: he's happy in the role. I'm less. So wow, even
Speaker 1: though Eric agrees to take me on as a student,
Speaker 1: I start with one foot out the door, and I
Speaker 1: think he kind of knows it. Okay. Good. Looking back
Speaker 1: on all this, I see our relationship had a bunch
Speaker 1: of stages. I can count five. You've already heard stage one.
Speaker 1: He was just feeling each other out to decide if
Speaker 1: there was any point of spending time together. Stage two
Speaker 1: was Eric gradually taking control. But I only notice this
Speaker 1: happening after I went back over the recordings of all
Speaker 1: our sessions. It sounded better, Yeah, really really noticeably sounded better. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean from a low baseline, but I noticed the difference. No,
Speaker 1: that's great. I didn't give you the acid reflux diet.
Speaker 1: Hot to look at you did? He had given me
Speaker 1: the acid reflux a diet the first session. This long
Speaker 1: list of stuff I was now encouraged to consume, plus
Speaker 1: a longer list of things I shouldn't touch. No spicy foods,
Speaker 1: no coffee, no alcohol. It seemed excessive. I mean, no
Speaker 1: carbonated beverages. You did? Then? Why are you drinking carbonated
Speaker 1: water in front of me? Oh my god? You caught it?
Speaker 1: So because you know it's all I have. It's I'm
Speaker 1: drinking up the remains. I hadn't bought any new ones,
Speaker 1: but it was what, Okay, your family can't drink the perree? Allright? Busting.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. It won't happen again. Could always take a
Speaker 1: bath in it. Yeah, that's what I'll do. I'll take
Speaker 1: a back, right, I'll send it to you. Do you
Speaker 1: have a dog, You could wash the dog with it.
Speaker 1: I found that once I got my coach talking, I
Speaker 1: could encourage him to keep going. Please do tell me
Speaker 1: how to wash a dog in sparkling order. Yes, I
Speaker 1: do very much want to hear what Joan Rivers once
Speaker 1: said about her dog. So long as he was talking,
Speaker 1: I didn't have to sing. I was creating a kind
Speaker 1: of alibi that crime against music. No way I could
Speaker 1: have committed it. I wasn't even present at the scene.
Speaker 1: Feel like you're sighing. Make sure you support by using
Speaker 1: your breathing muscles on that first note and put a
Speaker 1: slight cry so to be more of a mey memai
Speaker 1: may good. Now, I guarantee you if you start doing
Speaker 1: it every day, that will get better and better. How
Speaker 1: could it get worse? That is not true? All right now,
Speaker 1: I want to do one keeping a nice and forward,
Speaker 1: keeping your mouth loose and relaxed. Say yum yum, yum,
Speaker 1: yum yum yum. Actually, before we go out further. I
Speaker 1: know you're being funny, but I know there's always a
Speaker 1: little truth in every little bit of humor. What I
Speaker 1: want you to do is stop thinking of it as
Speaker 1: not good, because as long as you do that, you'll
Speaker 1: kind of keep it there, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: You'll always have a little bit of a sense. While
Speaker 1: I'm not really a singer, I'm not really good. I
Speaker 1: want you to start just thinking to yourself as a singer.
Speaker 1: You're putting in the time, the effort, you're practicing. Why
Speaker 1: wouldn't you get better? You know right? Anybody will get
Speaker 1: better is something they put effort in, time and energy,
Speaker 1: And so I want you to just start thinking to
Speaker 1: yourself like a singer. He didn't miss much. He was
Speaker 1: onto me. It's a defense mechanism, I know, but I
Speaker 1: want you to drop it, all right. I want to
Speaker 1: break through that defense because I really do think when
Speaker 1: someone feels a little bit better and they tell themselves,
Speaker 1: you know, self affirming thoughts, it really does make a difference.
Speaker 1: All right, I won't do it anymore. Yeah, I want
Speaker 1: you to really just think, yeah, this is better. His
Speaker 1: will was just stronger than mine. At some point I
Speaker 1: gave up and accepted that he was in charge. And
Speaker 1: at that point I entered stage three of the coaching relationship.
Speaker 1: Buy in actual, honest, buy in very good. And I
Speaker 1: heard by Groat on that first note, whoa to do
Speaker 1: that again? Who wa wa? Wa wa wa. Now aim
Speaker 1: high on that last note, though, don't let it fall
Speaker 1: back from your throat. I mean, who knows if I'm
Speaker 1: actually getting better? I can't tell, but he's giving me
Speaker 1: a feeling of movement. May may May May May may
Speaker 1: may may May. So far, that's the briant, the best
Speaker 1: you've sounded. Does it feel good? It feels really good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I want you to really embrace it. Feel what
Speaker 1: it feels like, listen to it because it sounds really good.
Speaker 1: At some point into all of this, like after maybe
Speaker 1: three months of weekly lessons and almost daily practice, it
Speaker 1: occurred to me that one anxiety had been replaced by another.
Speaker 1: I used to be anxious mostly about singing. Now I'm
Speaker 1: anxious mostly about letting him down. I think we'll call
Speaker 1: this stage four. So have you ever taken a ballet class? No?
Speaker 1: I haven't, but I've been close to one. Okay, So
Speaker 1: in ballet class quite often, you know, they talk about
Speaker 1: getting in touch with and what's the word of connecting
Speaker 1: to your center? Yep. We'll leave your abdominal muscles then, yep.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of tight and squeezing your butt cheeks together yep, yep,
Speaker 1: clanking in the back holding it. Ye, so that's why
Speaker 1: they stand so straight. Yep, yep, Okay, that's clenching in
Speaker 1: the bus and pulling your abdomino muscles can help you
Speaker 1: with support. Now, I prevertical in front of back to
Speaker 1: support because I don't want to be known as the
Speaker 1: butt teacher. And I'm not recording it. He wasn't recording it,
Speaker 1: but I was, Oh no, no no. So I can
Speaker 1: tell you if I if I was able to sing
Speaker 1: with my ass muscles, I'd be on Broadway, right, there's
Speaker 1: ever going to be a Broadway again. Yeah, well that's
Speaker 1: a that's a good point. Yeah. Anyway, Okay, getting back
Speaker 1: to your bus. So I want you to put one
Speaker 1: end on your abdominal muscles and you're gonna go to
Speaker 1: a normal hiss pulling your abdomino munz of it, and
Speaker 1: then you're going to add clenching your butt cheeks together. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I'll so. But it just hissed and clenched my
Speaker 1: butt cheeks while I'm doing it. You're going to do
Speaker 1: normal ping of your abdomino muscles. Then you're gonna okay, gotcha, wow,
Speaker 1: oh my god, it was like a howitzer. That's what
Speaker 1: you're gonna do that behind us, You're going to seats
Speaker 1: together and pulling your domino was gonna be liker. That
Speaker 1: was like a nuke. It was also extremely weird, but
Speaker 1: it was working, and it got us eventually to stage five.
Speaker 1: I still didn't really like the way I sounded, but
Speaker 1: I could see how one day I might like the
Speaker 1: way I sounded. I was starting to have this entirely
Speaker 1: new feeling because of this coach, and I sort of
Speaker 1: confessed it directly to Bette Midler. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you feel this way, but I found that once you
Speaker 1: start singing, it's really hard to stop. That's great, you know,
Speaker 1: do you know? You know you start saying you kind
Speaker 1: of don't want to stop. So I find myself one
Speaker 1: undering the streets after I've been doing a lesson singing,
Speaker 1: and then I realize people are staring at me. Oh really,
Speaker 1: Oh that's a sweet story. That's fantastic. I'm going to
Speaker 1: try that. Now. How has your progress been with you
Speaker 1: mentally thinking of yourself as a singer? Not bad? Good?
Speaker 1: So that interference is gone, and I'm trying to talk
Speaker 1: myself into this great great because I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: then it becomes I don't want to say, an experiment,
Speaker 1: maybe an exercise in not just singing in general, but
Speaker 1: how powerful the mind can be to creating what it
Speaker 1: is we want to create in our life. I agree. Okay, so,
Speaker 1: but one hand on your chest, one hand on your
Speaker 1: abdominal muscles. Take a deep, low breath and a long
Speaker 1: steady It's not often that someone persuades you that you
Speaker 1: can go to a place you've never been. It's intoxicating,
Speaker 1: even for people who've been on most everywhere. And actually,
Speaker 1: the most free thing about Eric is that he encourages
Speaker 1: you to not make it sound beautiful and perfect, just
Speaker 1: makes sense of it, like Emily Blunt makes sense of
Speaker 1: the song. Let me hear the story, Tell me a story.
Speaker 1: This is what's so elusive about coaching. How a gifted
Speaker 1: coach can get you to shift the focus of your
Speaker 1: attention so you're no longer singing a song. You're sort
Speaker 1: of exploring who you are or might be. It hit
Speaker 1: Bette Midler right away. You know what I have to
Speaker 1: tell you this, This is a good story. When I
Speaker 1: first care to Eric, I would come to Eric and
Speaker 1: you don't know me, Michael, but I am. I'm a
Speaker 1: very sad person. I mean, I can be hilarious, but
Speaker 1: like many comics I am, I am like a tragic soul,
Speaker 1: and I can be very hard on myself and very
Speaker 1: hard on people around me. I'm sorry to admit that.
Speaker 1: People I'm telling I'm letting you in. This coach knows stuff.
Speaker 1: Stuff you never know that he knows. He knows what
Speaker 1: you might be capable of. If you allow him to help,
Speaker 1: you might already be world famous and headlining a Vegas show.
Speaker 1: You also, at the same time might be hating yourself
Speaker 1: and making life miserable for your coach. And he came
Speaker 1: to my opening night, and you know what he told me,
Speaker 1: Like years later, he said to me, when that curtain
Speaker 1: went up and you came up, I didn't reckon you
Speaker 1: are you were so full of joy as life and
Speaker 1: color and fun and you're such a bust. Recognize she's
Speaker 1: laughing so hard that you might not have heard what
Speaker 1: her coach said to her. You were so full of
Speaker 1: joy and life and color and fun, and you're such
Speaker 1: a bitch. She loved that he said it then and
Speaker 1: obviously still loves it now. Oh my god, the poor guy,
Speaker 1: because I am intense and he is he just never
Speaker 1: let me go? So yes, he helped me over. He
Speaker 1: helped me, He helped me over an enormous he helped
Speaker 1: me climb an enormous mountain, an enormous mountain. You've given
Speaker 1: me something. That's why I had to come. I don't
Speaker 1: recall giving oh, yes, something beautiful. That's why I came back.
Speaker 1: In fifth grade, after Eric Vitro realized he had this
Speaker 1: gift for helping people learn how to sing, he began
Speaker 1: to collect voices. They were a gallery in his mind.
Speaker 1: He recalls the first acquisition when he saw a movie
Speaker 1: called The Music Man, Oh B on the huge but
Speaker 1: I never I didn't see it in the movie theater,
Speaker 1: but it was on television one night, and I had
Speaker 1: this little real to real tape recorders before there was
Speaker 1: VHS tapes or anything, and I recorded the whole thing
Speaker 1: so I could listen to it again. I thought Shirley
Speaker 1: Jones had such a beautiful voice. I used to play
Speaker 1: it over and over, her singing till there was you,
Speaker 1: the songs she sings at the end and at the footbridge.
Speaker 1: I thought it was so beautiful that was you. It
Speaker 1: may have been Eric's first experience of paying really close
Speaker 1: attention to someone else's voice, just studying it, and it
Speaker 1: was ironic that you became It was her teacher for years,
Speaker 1: for like ten years, you know, and we became very close.
Speaker 1: That was a rare false note for Eric Vitro. It
Speaker 1: doesn't feel at all ironic to me that Shirley Jones,
Speaker 1: star of the Music Man, would one day call Eric
Speaker 1: and ask for his help. It feels like his destiny
Speaker 1: to help her and maybe me too. So before we
Speaker 1: sing Lyda Rose, You're chosen song to heal the wound
Speaker 1: of your child? What are you going to think? What
Speaker 1: am I going to think? Well? I think probably the
Speaker 1: best spirit to sing it in is a slightly comic seduction. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's like an ironic seduction. Okay, So that's the tone.
Speaker 1: That's good, that's the overall tone, and and it's it's
Speaker 1: it's sort of like, yeah, Light of Rose, I could
Speaker 1: understand if you don't want to get married at the
Speaker 1: end of this, but I'm giving him my best shot. Okay, Great,
Speaker 1: So it's an irresponsible, uh love song? Great, all right,
Speaker 1: So let's sing through Light a Rose, Light a Rose,
Speaker 1: I'm home again Rose to get the sun back in
Speaker 1: the sky, Light a Rose, I am home again Rose,
Speaker 1: about a thousand kisses shine ding dong ding. I can
Speaker 1: hear the chapel bill chime, ding dong ding at the
Speaker 1: least suggestion, Oh up the question, light a Rose, I'm
Speaker 1: home again Rose, without a sweetheart to my name, Light
Speaker 1: a Rose? How everyone knows that I'm hoping you're the same.
Speaker 1: So here is my love song, not fancy or fine,
Speaker 1: Light a Rose. Oh, won't you be mind? I'm Michael Lewis.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Against the Rules. Against the Rules
Speaker 1: is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. The show's produced
Speaker 1: by Audrey Dilling and Catherine Girodo, with research assistance from
Speaker 1: Lydia Jeancott and Zooe Wynn. Our editor is Julia Barton.
Speaker 1: Mel o'bell is our executive producer. Our theme was composed
Speaker 1: by Nick Brittell, with additional scoring by Stellwagen Siphonette. We
Speaker 1: got fact checked by Beth Johnson. Our show was recorded
Speaker 1: by tofur Ruth and Trey Schultz at Northgate Studios in Berkeley.
Speaker 1: As always, thanks to Pushkin's founders, Jacob Weisberg and Malcolm Gladwell.
Speaker 1: So my last question and then we can get onto
Speaker 1: the lesson. If you want to get into the lesson,
Speaker 1: Is any anyone you ever worked with ask you so
Speaker 1: much about yourself as you Most of the time people
Speaker 1: are here just to learn, so they don't really ask
Speaker 1: that much about me. Yeah, the dury, little big You're
Speaker 1: always the most interesting person in the room, but you're
Speaker 1: paying attention to everybody else. I don't know if that's true,
Speaker 1: but I am paying attention, and you know, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you find this too. It's really more interesting to be
Speaker 1: the person listening to the other people because I know
Speaker 1: my own story. I've gotta feel the same way.