Speaker 1: Pushkin on Broken Record. We've interviewed some amazing singers, Alicia Keys,
Speaker 1: Brandy Carlyle, Ozzy Osbourne. There's something really magical about a
Speaker 1: great voice, but even the best of them need a
Speaker 1: coach sometimes. That's where Eric Vetro comes in. He's worked
Speaker 1: with Ariana Grande, John Legend, Pink Seawan Mendez. He taught
Speaker 1: Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling to sing for Lala land
Speaker 1: Renee Zellwegger for Judy. But could Eric help. Michael Lewis,
Speaker 1: the author of books like The Blindside and Moneyball, has
Speaker 1: long had a phobia about his voice. He knew he
Speaker 1: needed a coach, but was afraid to get one until now.
Speaker 1: Michael just wrapped the latest season of his podcast Against
Speaker 1: the Rules, and it focused on coaches in all walks
Speaker 1: of life, how good coaches can have huge effects, and
Speaker 1: how people who get the best coaches aren't always the
Speaker 1: people who need them most. Can Michael Lewis learn to sing,
Speaker 1: like really sing? You're about to find out. We hope
Speaker 1: you'll enjoy this episode and then listen to others from
Speaker 1: Against the Rules Season two. Take a deep breath and
Speaker 1: go so you're creating those little accents from down here. Yep,
Speaker 1: that's it one more time. This is the last episode
Speaker 1: of the show, and I think I've got my takeaways.
Speaker 1: One takeaway is that good coaches can have huge effects,
Speaker 1: and so it really matters who gets them. Another is
Speaker 1: that the people who get the best coaches aren't always
Speaker 1: the people who need them the most. The people who
Speaker 1: most need a coach are people in a position of weakness.
Speaker 1: Of course, coaches can make the strong stronger, but the
Speaker 1: real magic happens when a coach attacks a seemingly hopeless
Speaker 1: situation like this one. That's it, you do have? Oh.
Speaker 1: My strategy has always been to hide my weaknesses, but
Speaker 1: it's hard to hide this one my voice. 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 epizema.
Speaker 1: I would say that was pretty good, but I'm not
Speaker 1: going to allow me with you. You must build that us.
Speaker 1: So 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 suits. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Cuba Gooding. Yeah do you know Cuba. I don't know him,
Speaker 1: but I didn't know he sang anything. Yeah, he's done
Speaker 1: Chicago Summertide or London and on Broadway one of the
Speaker 1: nicest ariana Grande John Legend, Pink Sean Mendez, And they
Speaker 1: look not just happy to be here, they look grateful,
Speaker 1: especially the actors who came to him to learn how
Speaker 1: to sing in a Broadway musical or a Hollywood movie.
Speaker 1: Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling for La La land Renee
Speaker 1: Zellweger for Judy, Natalie Portman for Everything. The Wall is
Speaker 1: an Awards show speech waiting to happen, will Ferrell say, oh,
Speaker 1: wouldn't he sing it? He dos? I worked on the
Speaker 1: movie with the Stuck Brothers where he's saying at the end,
Speaker 1: all right, all culminates with him singing time to say
Speaker 1: by I can't believe I have the balls to call
Speaker 1: you up and ask you to do this. I really can't.
Speaker 1: On a whim, I'd call the agent who turns my
Speaker 1: books into movies and asked him, who's the coach for
Speaker 1: actors who need to fix their voices? Say actors who
Speaker 1: don't normally sing but suddenly need to the answer came
Speaker 1: back immediately, Eric Vetro, Hollywood agents all know just how
Speaker 1: vulnerable their clients feel. I was petrified I didn't like
Speaker 1: singing in front of people. I always loved singing, but
Speaker 1: privately in my car, in the shower. My own husband
Speaker 1: had 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 lesson,
Speaker 1: and we'll see. I mean, Eric's house 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 to
Speaker 1: sort of be around. So I went into his kitchen,
Speaker 1: walked me through the first like fifteen minutes. We went
Speaker 1: into his music room and he I think we did
Speaker 1: some really embarrassing scales or something, something that I was
Speaker 1: just horrified by the idea of. And I felt embarrassed
Speaker 1: at having to do all of these strange mouth exercises,
Speaker 1: Like he makes you do things like NNI like stuff
Speaker 1: like that that you're like, how horrifying if someone were
Speaker 1: to see me do this in your life? Had you
Speaker 1: had that experience before anybody ever taught you any kind
Speaker 1: of nothing? Nothing? Because I didn't go to drama school,
Speaker 1: I wasn't put through the ring or of doing sort
Speaker 1: of trust games or physical sort of warm ups or anything.
Speaker 1: I've never done it and or anything like that. Where
Speaker 1: did the fear and the inhibition come from in you.
Speaker 1: I don't know, is it English? Maybe? Maybe it's like
Speaker 1: if you aren't the very best, that you're supposed to
Speaker 1: just kind of hide. Even if you are the very best,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to hide. You're not supposed to enthuse about
Speaker 1: your own talents where I'm from, you know, or try
Speaker 1: too hard. No, you can't, you can't. So even having
Speaker 1: a voice coach, that's almost like trying too hard. Well,
Speaker 1: that's interesting to me. Was there a little part of
Speaker 1: you that resisted that in any way? No? I feel
Speaker 1: like I desperately needed it. I mean I really really
Speaker 1: needed it. Emily Blunt got Eric Vitro's coaching for the
Speaker 1: next few years, and it had magical effects. I mean
Speaker 1: she became Mary Poppins. Do you ever lie awake at
Speaker 1: night just between the dock and the moring light? Such?
Speaker 1: My problem is obviously not the same as Emily Blunt's.
Speaker 1: I have no hidden talents, and no one suspects that
Speaker 1: I do. I don't secretly hope to audition for Rob
Speaker 1: Marshall's next musical. On the other hand, well, I'd better
Speaker 1: come clean here. My problem with my voice isn't practical
Speaker 1: it's spiritual. A long time ago, I basically decided that
Speaker 1: the last thing I should ever do is sing. Standing
Speaker 1: in Eric Vitro's house, I thought how nice it might
Speaker 1: be to walk through the world without being unsettled by
Speaker 1: the national anthem or terrified by karaoke night. As you're
Speaker 1: gonna put the straw in the bottle, you're gonna hum
Speaker 1: into the straw, which means air is going to be
Speaker 1: coming through the straw and it's gonna blow bubbles right
Speaker 1: into the water. Yes, now, go mm yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1: You want to send that Eric through the straw. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's funny you how you feel it deep in,
Speaker 1: like around my belly body. Yeah, exactly, that's what I want.
Speaker 1: The first lesson at Eric's house was just so that
Speaker 1: he could see if there was any point in having
Speaker 1: a second lesson over the phone. He said, I could
Speaker 1: come over, but then it also might be a great
Speaker 1: waste of time. Now, by the way, I am the
Speaker 1: most positive, optimistic and supportive people you will ever meet.
Speaker 1: I really am supported with my students. However, I really
Speaker 1: think that whole phrase you can be anyone you want
Speaker 1: and achieve anything you put your mind to. I think
Speaker 1: it should be followed by within reason, because you know,
Speaker 1: that would be like me saying, all right, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quit teaching and I'm going to become the greatest basketball
Speaker 1: player ever. Well, at my age, with my hype and
Speaker 1: my body type, I don't think that's gonna happpen. I
Speaker 1: mean that would And if someone said you can do it, Eric,
Speaker 1: you can put do anything you put your mind to,
Speaker 1: they would be steering me down the wrong road, right,
Speaker 1: It would be ridiculous. I was waiting to hear how
Speaker 1: this story applied to me. Then he told me about
Speaker 1: the famous actor, the actor who's picture never quite made
Speaker 1: it onto the wall behind Eric's piano. He made a
Speaker 1: movie and made a big splash when everybody wanted to
Speaker 1: pire him. You know, everyone's like, ooh, this guy's hots.
Speaker 1: That seemed good looking and a good actor. So he
Speaker 1: was getting a million offers and one was a Broadway
Speaker 1: musical and they said, here's the deal, of the producers
Speaker 1: will pay for unlimited voice lessons. They just want you
Speaker 1: to prepare him for this. They trust you. You know,
Speaker 1: money's no object. How often do you really hear that?
Speaker 1: You know, money's no obje 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 ice on the cape. Oh,
Speaker 1: great guy and just seemed fun to talk to. Then
Speaker 1: he started singing, Oh. I was like, ah, it was terrible,
Speaker 1: as worse than what I just didn't. As he's telling
Speaker 1: me this story, I'm wondering what else is he trying
Speaker 1: to tell me? But here's the thing. You know, what
Speaker 1: are the qualities that you really need to possess to,
Speaker 1: you know, to be a successful artist and to have
Speaker 1: a long career. One of them is some kind of
Speaker 1: self awareness of who you are and what you should
Speaker 1: be doing. I kept waiting for him to elaborate. He didn't,
Speaker 1: But at the end of the session, Eric looked at
Speaker 1: his schedule and asked when I wanted to do the
Speaker 1: next lesson and whether it should be at his house
Speaker 1: or over FaceTime. So I had myself a coach and
Speaker 1: a new way to deal with what was a complicated problem.
Speaker 1: You got trouble, my friend, right here, I say, trouble
Speaker 1: right here in River City White. Sure, I'm a Billiard glare. Certainly.
Speaker 1: The Music Man was a musical turned into a hit
Speaker 1: movie in nineteen sixty two. There are actually plans right
Speaker 1: now 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 con 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 the 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 talking 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 a little girl, and it was this
Speaker 1: awful sequence of events. Childhood is a fun house mirror.
Speaker 1: Everything in it gets distorted. I know a woman who
Speaker 1: became a meteorologist because a storm dropped a tree onto
Speaker 1: her house when she was ten years old. That tree
Speaker 1: kicked a little pebble off the top of a hill
Speaker 1: in her mind and started an avalanche. That kind of
Speaker 1: thing happened inside my head, only my tree was a
Speaker 1: song called Light a Rose, Light a Rose, I'm home again, Rose, Dude,
Speaker 1: get the side. Our fifth grade class was going to
Speaker 1: stage a version of the music Man. I thought I'd
Speaker 1: been duped into singing the musical's one love song to
Speaker 1: a girl in front of basically the entire world. But
Speaker 1: then these extremely ancient teas told me who the girl was,
Speaker 1: the new girl. She had a birth effect, no fingers
Speaker 1: on her hands or toes on her feet. She was
Speaker 1: also wildly bizarrely aggressive, grabbing it boys, pitching fits. I
Speaker 1: knew I was meant to be kind to her, and
Speaker 1: I tried. A ten year old boy with a better
Speaker 1: character than mine would have just gone along with the
Speaker 1: whole thing, but I didn't. I told them that I
Speaker 1: wouldn't do the song, and instead of telling me that
Speaker 1: I couldn't sing, they wound up telling that poor little
Speaker 1: girl she couldn't have the role in the play. The
Speaker 1: teachers had exposed a weakness in my character. Of course,
Speaker 1: when I was ten, I wouldn't have put it that
Speaker 1: way or anyway at all. I just suddenly had this
Speaker 1: ugly new feeling a combination of anger and self loathing.
Speaker 1: There and then I refused ever again to sing in
Speaker 1: school plays. I told the music teacher I would never
Speaker 1: again meet her after school. It's funny how phobias start.
Speaker 1: It was a short skip from refusing to sing to
Speaker 1: feeling that I shouldn't sing to almost being afraid to sing.
Speaker 1: I know, it's a very strange story, and it's got
Speaker 1: no happy ending to it. But I'm done telling that
Speaker 1: story to my new coach. He has an idea. So
Speaker 1: it's possible that my voice is so bad that you're
Speaker 1: not gonna be able to do anything at all. Well,
Speaker 1: so let's see how it goes. I think conquering that
Speaker 1: song that gave you such anxiety would be fun, would
Speaker 1: be buzzing conquering, you know. So what I want to
Speaker 1: do is I want to have you sing the melody,
Speaker 1: but instead of on the words, you're going to do
Speaker 1: it on wah wah wah. And I have known a
Speaker 1: lot of singing teachers, and some of them are just
Speaker 1: playing nuts. I talked to a lot of Eric's students.
Speaker 1: This is Bette Midler, another famous singer on Eric's wall.
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of quacks too. So you
Speaker 1: have to be very careful because you could be led
Speaker 1: down the garden path by people who say that this
Speaker 1: is the way to do it. When Bett found Eric,
Speaker 1: she was in a funk. It was two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: She was about to open a new show in Vegas
Speaker 1: at Caesar's Palace. The dry air was getting to her,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't just the air. Something wasn't quite right.
Speaker 1: She felt more than usually vulnerable. Her backup singers were
Speaker 1: called the Harlettes. One of the harlettes told her about Eric,
Speaker 1: so Bett called him up. He started coming to Vegas
Speaker 1: to help me, and he would come once a week
Speaker 1: or so and we would warm up, or he would
Speaker 1: call me on the phone. We would warm up on
Speaker 1: the phone, and he gave me the taps to warm
Speaker 1: up with it. And I was religious about it. She
Speaker 1: didn't just get through the show's run. She went two
Speaker 1: years without missing a single performance. The staff at Caesar's
Speaker 1: Palace told her that that had never happened, so they
Speaker 1: invented an award to give her. It's still Bette Midler's
Speaker 1: favorite award, and it's sort of changed her ideas about
Speaker 1: the value of a coach. There are some songs when
Speaker 1: I can hear him in my head, I can hear
Speaker 1: his voice, I can hear certain things that he said
Speaker 1: in my head, and if I can keep myself from
Speaker 1: dismissing it, if I can believe it, I just thank
Speaker 1: God for him every day. First of all, he's a
Speaker 1: sunbeam in the world. And I do think that a
Speaker 1: coach has to be you can't have someone who's going
Speaker 1: to be abusive. They have they have to You have
Speaker 1: to know they care about you. Yes, yes, you have
Speaker 1: to trust them. And trust is absolutely imperative. If you
Speaker 1: don't trust your coach, you're not gonna make it. Ready
Speaker 1: to take a deep breath. Okay, Nope, that's okay. That's
Speaker 1: 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 copage and he heard me practicing. He I
Speaker 1: came a piece that I thought that was the garbage truck. No,
Speaker 1: he did not. 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 out 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 nice Michael Jackson. Somebody wants to
Speaker 1: deal 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 best you
Speaker 1: can try to work and then you were it's 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. If you're
Speaker 1: doing a style of music that you don't like, you're
Speaker 1: not going to want to practice it right, So it
Speaker 1: becomes meaningless, like like they'll tell me, oh so and
Speaker 1: so tried to get me to blank blink, like I go,
Speaker 1: that's not what you want to do. Then you're you're
Speaker 1: really trying to fit up a square pain around the whole. Right,
Speaker 1: you've got to have some kind of love or passion
Speaker 1: for it, right has This entire season has been mainly
Speaker 1: about the effects that coaches have. We haven't talked much
Speaker 1: about why they do what they do. There's lots of
Speaker 1: someone might decide their passion is to sing, but a
Speaker 1: passion for helping others learn to sing. It's hard to
Speaker 1: explain sometimes, but you know, you feel like you are
Speaker 1: getting as much as you are giving, like to see
Speaker 1: the improvement, to see people get excited. All of that.
Speaker 1: It comes back at you like a rush, like a
Speaker 1: rush of adrenaline. Really is what it is. Or to
Speaker 1: see someone complimented, or if you read a good review.
Speaker 1: I would never say, oh, I take credit for that.
Speaker 1: I don't feel that, but I know I had something
Speaker 1: to do with it. I was a part of it,
Speaker 1: and that just and it makes me so happy for
Speaker 1: that person. One day I asked Eric how he became
Speaker 1: a coach with a completely straight face. He said that
Speaker 1: it had all started in the fifth grade. This show
Speaker 1: can't seem to move on from the fifth grade, but
Speaker 1: such as life. By the time he got to the
Speaker 1: fifth grade, Eric loved music but didn't get much encouragement
Speaker 1: his parents. Then his class stage a musical, just as
Speaker 1: mine had. The most popular boy in aris class wanted
Speaker 1: to play the lead, but he didn't know how to sing.
Speaker 1: He knew because I was playing the piano in the morning,
Speaker 1: you know, for the kids to sing the star Spangled Banner,
Speaker 1: America the Beautiful, And he said, I want to audition.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, by the way, we're talking at like a
Speaker 1: ten minute skit. It wasn't a big thing. But to us,
Speaker 1: you know, when you're that age and you're in a school,
Speaker 1: you're surrounded by people who really matter to you, all
Speaker 1: those classmates, and there's so many hierarchies and levels and
Speaker 1: all of that going on. So he was popular, he
Speaker 1: was athletic, he was, you know, all the positive things
Speaker 1: you could be for boy in the fifth grade, and
Speaker 1: or I guess in any grade really, And so he said,
Speaker 1: can you teach me this song? And I said sure.
Speaker 1: So we walked home. My house was probably twenty five
Speaker 1: minutes from the school. He walked home with me, and
Speaker 1: I sat at the piano and I taught him the
Speaker 1: song and we went over and over and over it.
Speaker 1: That bonded us forever. You know what. We didn't sit
Speaker 1: at the same table and lunch whatever, but whenever I
Speaker 1: would see him from that time on until graduating high school,
Speaker 1: we were walking down the hall, He'd give me that nod,
Speaker 1: I'd give him that nod. Like we had that bond.
Speaker 1: It was amazing. It was a really special thing we
Speaker 1: had between us. And so Eric just started to help
Speaker 1: other kids who needed to sing. He didn't really think
Speaker 1: of it as a job until one day when he
Speaker 1: was in college, a classmate auditioned for a Broadway show.
Speaker 1: She offered to pay Eric to help her. After that,
Speaker 1: he built an entire career on word of mouth. People
Speaker 1: just heard about this guy's rare coaching gift and called
Speaker 1: him up. He never really had to market himself or
Speaker 1: push himself on others. They found him. What did it
Speaker 1: feel like? You're your incredible space about your throat? All
Speaker 1: these strange sounds. I spend an hour every day making them.
Speaker 1: I ask him why I'm doing them, and he sort
Speaker 1: of explains, but sort of doesn't, or rather, all of
Speaker 1: his explanations boiled down to a single persuasive sentence. Just
Speaker 1: follow my lead the way everyone else is done, and
Speaker 1: I'll get you there. Practice really truly, Bet Middler again,
Speaker 1: my fellow singer, This is ther only piece of advice
Speaker 1: to me. The more you do it, the better you're
Speaker 1: going to get. There's no question, There is absolutely no
Speaker 1: question you will improve. The more you do it, the
Speaker 1: better you get, and you find the secrets you find. Well,
Speaker 1: he told me to do it that way. I can't
Speaker 1: quite do it that way, but I can do it
Speaker 1: this way, and it's a pretty good sound, so I
Speaker 1: like it. My question to you is how do you sound?
Speaker 1: How do you like yourself singing? That was a good question,
Speaker 1: and I was still avoiding the answer. Let's start with
Speaker 1: a tongue, making sure to connect to your breathing muscles.
Speaker 1: You're gonna take deep ruts in and you're gonna sing.
Speaker 1: Try that. I try it. I try everything very good.
Speaker 1: Now try it with the lip bubbly and see if
Speaker 1: you can do it. Yeah, don't worry about it. Don't
Speaker 1: worry about it, I promise. But I kept thinking of
Speaker 1: Bette Midler's question, how do I like myself singing? The
Speaker 1: truth is I feel totally disconnected from my own voice.
Speaker 1: I sing the way people talk when they're trying to
Speaker 1: get a foreigner to understand them. When it isn't working,
Speaker 1: I just do it again louder. I also sing with
Speaker 1: the feeling that something's about to go drastically wrong, like
Speaker 1: I'm a five foot point guard driving for a layup
Speaker 1: with a pair of seven footers right behind me. So
Speaker 1: you're gonna go memo, memo, memo, memo, memo, memo, Mimo, memo, Mimo, memo, Mimo, memo, memo, mimo.
Speaker 1: Now rolling your head memo mema. 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 dually taking control. But I only noticed this
Speaker 1: happening after I went back over the recordings of all
Speaker 1: our sessions. It sounded better. Yeah, it really really noticeably
Speaker 1: sounded better. Yeah, I mean from a low baseline, but
Speaker 1: I noticed the difference. No, that's great. I didn't give
Speaker 1: you the acid reflux diet. Hot to look at you did?
Speaker 1: He had given me the acid reflux diet the first session.
Speaker 1: This long list of stuff I was now encouraged to consume,
Speaker 1: plus a longer list of things I shouldn't touch. No
Speaker 1: spicy foods, no coffee, no alcohol. It seemed excessive. I mean,
Speaker 1: no carbonated beverages. You did? Then? Why are you drinking
Speaker 1: carbonated water in front of me? Oh my god? You
Speaker 1: cough it so because you know it's all I have.
Speaker 1: It's I'm drinking up the remains. I haven't bought any
Speaker 1: new ones, but it was what Okay, your family can't
Speaker 1: drink the perrier? All right? Busted? I'm sorry. It won't
Speaker 1: happen again. Could always take a bath in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I'll do. I'll take a bath in it, right,
Speaker 1: I'll send it to you. Do you have a dog,
Speaker 1: You could wash the dog with it. I found that
Speaker 1: once I got my coach talking, I could encourage him
Speaker 1: to keep going. Please do tell me how to wash
Speaker 1: a dog in sparkling order. Yes, I do very much
Speaker 1: want to hear what Joan Rivers once said about her dog.
Speaker 1: So long as he was talking, I didn't have to sing.
Speaker 1: I was creating a kind of alibi that crime against music.
Speaker 1: No way I could have committed it. I wasn't even
Speaker 1: present at the scene. Feel like you're sighing. Make sure
Speaker 1: you support by using your breathing muscles on that first
Speaker 1: note and put a slight cry so to be more
Speaker 1: of a mey memai may good. Now, I guarantee you,
Speaker 1: if you start doing it every day, that will get
Speaker 1: better and better. How could it get worse? That's not true?
Speaker 1: All right now, I want to do one keeping a
Speaker 1: nice and forward, keeping your mouth loose and relaxed. Say
Speaker 1: yum yum, yum, yum yum yum. Actually, before we go
Speaker 1: out further. I know you're being funny, but I know
Speaker 1: there's always a little truth in every little bit of humor.
Speaker 1: What I want you to do is stop thinking of
Speaker 1: it as not good, because as long as you do that,
Speaker 1: you'll 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 broad on that first note, whoa do that again? Wow?
Speaker 1: Wa wa wa wa wa? I aim high On that
Speaker 1: last note, though, don't let it fall back from your throat.
Speaker 1: I mean, who knows if I'm actually getting better, I
Speaker 1: can't tell, but he's giving me a feeling of movement.
Speaker 1: May me may me, May May May may may. And
Speaker 1: so far that's the briant, the best you've sounded. Does
Speaker 1: it feel good? It feels really good? Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: want you to really embrace it. Feel what it feels like.
Speaker 1: Listen to it because it sounds really good. At some
Speaker 1: point into all of this, like after maybe three months
Speaker 1: of weekly lessons and almost daily practice, it occurred to
Speaker 1: me that one anxiety had been replaced by another. I
Speaker 1: used to be anxious mostly about singing. Now I'm anxious
Speaker 1: mostly about letting him down. I think we'll call this
Speaker 1: 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, lean your abdomino muscles in Yep'm
Speaker 1: kind of tight and squeezing your butt cheeks together yepkay, yep.
Speaker 1: Clenking in the back, holding it ye, So that's why
Speaker 1: they stand so crazy. 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 back to support
Speaker 1: because I don't want to be known as the butt teacher.
Speaker 1: And I'm not recording this. He wasn't recording it, but
Speaker 1: I was, Oh no, no no. So I can tell
Speaker 1: you if I if I was able to sing with
Speaker 1: my ass muscles, i'd be on Broadway. All right, there's
Speaker 1: going to be a Broadway again. Yeah, well that's a
Speaker 1: that's a good point. Yeah. Anyway, Okay, getting back to
Speaker 1: your bus. So I want you to put one end
Speaker 1: on your abdominal muscles and you're gonna go to a
Speaker 1: normal hiss, pulling your abdomino muscles in, and then you're
Speaker 1: going to add punch in 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. You're going to do a
Speaker 1: normal plenty or domino. You're going to add okay, gotcha? Wow,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it was like a howitzer. That's what
Speaker 1: you're gonna do that hit behind us. You're going to
Speaker 1: free your butt seats together and pulling your domino gonna
Speaker 1: be like your neck. That was like a nuke. It
Speaker 1: was also extremely weird, but it was working, and it
Speaker 1: got us eventually to stage five. I still didn't really
Speaker 1: like the way I sounded, but I could see how
Speaker 1: one day I might like the way I sounded. I
Speaker 1: was starting to have this entirely new feeling because of
Speaker 1: this coach, and I sort of confessed it directly to
Speaker 1: Bette Midler. I don't know if you feel this way,
Speaker 1: but I found that once you start singing, it's really
Speaker 1: hard to stop. That's great, you know, do you know what?
Speaker 1: You know? You start saying you kind of don't want
Speaker 1: to stop. So I find myself wandering the streets after
Speaker 1: I've been doing a lesson singing, and then I realize
Speaker 1: people are staring at me. Oh really, Oh that's a
Speaker 1: sweet story. That's fantastic. I'm going to try that. Now.
Speaker 1: How has your progress been with you mentally thinking of
Speaker 1: yourself as a singer? Not bad? Good? So that interference
Speaker 1: is gone, and I'm trying to talk myself into this
Speaker 1: great great because I think that, you know, then it
Speaker 1: becomes I don't want to say, an experiment, maybe an
Speaker 1: exercise in not just singing in general, but how powerful
Speaker 1: the mind can be to creating what it is we
Speaker 1: 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 almost everywhere. And actually, the
Speaker 1: most free thing about Eric is that he encourages you
Speaker 1: to not make it sound beautiful and perfect, just makes
Speaker 1: sense of it, like Emily Blunt makes sense of the song.
Speaker 1: Let me hear the story, Tell me a story. This
Speaker 1: is what's so elusive about coaching. How a gifted coach
Speaker 1: can get you to shift the focus of your attention
Speaker 1: so you're no longer singing a song. You're sort of
Speaker 1: exploring who you are or might be. It hit Bette
Speaker 1: Midler right away. You know, I have to tell you this,
Speaker 1: This is a good story. When I first care to Eric,
Speaker 1: I would come to Eric and you don't know me, Michael,
Speaker 1: but I am. I'm a very sad person. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can be hilarious, but like many comics, I am
Speaker 1: I am like a tragic soul, and I can be
Speaker 1: very hard on myself and very hard on people around me.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to admit that people I'm telling I'm letting
Speaker 1: you in. This coach knows stuff. Stuff you never know
Speaker 1: that he knows. He knows what you might be capable of.
Speaker 1: If you allow him to help, you might already be
Speaker 1: world famous and headlining a Vegas show. You also, at
Speaker 1: the same time might be hating yourself and making life
Speaker 1: miserable for your coach. And he came to my opening night,
Speaker 1: and you know what he told me, Like years later,
Speaker 1: he said to me, when that curtain went up and
Speaker 1: you came up, I didn't recogne you are. You were
Speaker 1: so full of joy as life and color and fun,
Speaker 1: and you're such as I didn't recognize. She's laughing so
Speaker 1: hard that you might not have heard what her coach
Speaker 1: said to her. You were so full of joy and
Speaker 1: life and color and fun, and you're such a bitch.
Speaker 1: She loved that he said it then and obviously still
Speaker 1: loves it now. Oh my god, the poor guy, because
Speaker 1: I am intense and he is. He just never let
Speaker 1: me go. So yes, he helped me over. He helped me,
Speaker 1: He helped me over an enormous he helped me climb
Speaker 1: an enormous mountain, an enormous mountain. You've given me something.
Speaker 1: That's why I had to come. I don't recall giving oh, yes,
Speaker 1: something beautiful. That's why I came back. In fifth grade,
Speaker 1: after Eric Vitro realized he had this gift for helping
Speaker 1: people learn how to sing, he began to collect voices.
Speaker 1: They were a gallery in his mind. He recalls the
Speaker 1: first acquisition when he saw a movie called The Music Man.
Speaker 1: Oh b on the huge but I never I didn't
Speaker 1: see it in the movie theater, but it was on
Speaker 1: television one night, and I had this little real to
Speaker 1: real tape recorders before there was VHS tapes or anything,
Speaker 1: and I recorded the whole thing so I could listen
Speaker 1: to it again. I thought Shirley Jones had such a
Speaker 1: beautiful voice. I used to play it over and over,
Speaker 1: her singing till there was you. The songs she said
Speaker 1: at the end and at the footbridge. I thought it
Speaker 1: was so beautiful that was you. It may have been
Speaker 1: Eric's first experience of paying really close attention to someone
Speaker 1: else's voice, just studying it, And it was ironic that
Speaker 1: you became It was her teacher for years for like
Speaker 1: ten years, you know, and we became very close. That
Speaker 1: was a rare false note for Eric Vitro. It doesn't
Speaker 1: feel at all ironic to me that Shirley Jones, star
Speaker 1: of the Music Man, would one day call Eric and
Speaker 1: ask for his help. It feels like his destiny to
Speaker 1: help her and maybe me too. So before we sing
Speaker 1: Lyda Rose, You're chosen song to heal the wound of
Speaker 1: your child? What are you going to think? What am
Speaker 1: I going to think? Well? I think probably the best
Speaker 1: 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'm home again Rose, About
Speaker 1: a thousand kisses Shine Ding Dong Ding. I can hear
Speaker 1: the Choppel Bill chime, Ding dong ding. At the least suggestion,
Speaker 1: I'll pop the question. Light a Rose, I'm home again,
Speaker 1: Rose without a sweetheart to my name? Light a Rose?
Speaker 1: How everyone knows that I'm hoping you're the same. So
Speaker 1: here is my love song, not fancy or fine, light
Speaker 1: 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 Jane Cott and Zooe Wynn. Our editor is Julia Barton.
Speaker 1: Mio o'bell is our executive producer. Our theme was composed
Speaker 1: by Nick Brittell, with additional scoring by Stellwagon Sinphonette. We
Speaker 1: got fact checked by Beth Johnson. Our show was recorded
Speaker 1: by tofer 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 they when you get onto
Speaker 1: the lessons. If you want to get onto the lesson,
Speaker 1: is anyone you ever worked with ask you so much
Speaker 1: about yourself as you. Most of the time people are
Speaker 1: here just to learn, so they don't really asks that
Speaker 1: much about me. Yeah, the dirty little secret is 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 about I've got to feel the same way.