"About Today" with Matt from The National

By Allee Rosenmayer     11/13/08 6:00pm

Last Friday I got the chance to sit down with Matt Berninger, lead singer of The National, after the band's fully "get up and dance" concert in the Central Quad. Clad in all black, wearing sunglasses, drinking whiskey on stage and smoking a Marlboro, he seemed like the ultimate rock star - until I talked to him and found out he was a totally normal guy. Which is the ultimate rock star cliché, right?I asked him a few random and not-really-music-related questions, and what follows are excerpted answers. The full interview will be bouncing around the airwaves of RTV5 at some undetermined point in the future.

Rice Thresher: This question comes from a friend of mine. What would your animal be? Like your spirit animal?

Matt Berninger: A possum. It's ugly, awkward, but a really functional animal . I don't know, can I think of a different one? Maybe a giraffe. They have long necks, and they are just kind of charming. But that wouldn't apply to me, either. I don't know. A gorilla. Half man, half gorilla. Half guy . a guyrilla. Apparently you can do that now, with cloning. I'll go with that.

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RT: Where were you when Obama was elected? I know you guys were really big supporters.

MB: I was in my apartment with my wife and my brother, and we were just watching and soaking it in. We didn't go to a big party, we just had a moment of quiet happiness. We're very happy about it . We're all very, very excited. It's a mixture of euphoria and optimism. I think things are going to shift in a very positive way. I think it's a moment that in 50 years we'll look back on. I think Obama is going to be the glue that starts to bring a lot of the world together, if he can. It'll take a long time, but it's a big change for everybody.

RT: If you ran for president, who would your vice president be?

MB: Oh God . I think I would have my wife, you know. She's a lot smarter than I am and a much more eloquent speaker. Yeah, I'd pick my wife. We kind of pretend like our house is like the White House, but she's more of a Cheney, and I'm more of a Bush.

RT: What was your weirdest groupie or fan moment?

MB: That'd be hard to think of; we don't have that kind of crazy following. We're not like M?tley Crüe - we've never had underwear thrown at us. Maybe the weirdest thing was when we found out Michael Stipe was a fan. He came to a show, and that was the weirdest thing, to find out one of your heroes is a big fan. And then he threw his underwear at us.

RT: Since this is for a college publication, I have to ask: Who is the group lightweight? Who ends up with Sharpie on his face at the end of the night?

MB: Probably me. I'm the one that definitely turns in on a night on tour the earliest. You're talking about consumption, passing out, that sort of thing? We have fun, but none of us has ever had that kind of a situation. Maybe 'cause we're all in our 30s, nobody passes out anymore. I'm probably the one who falls asleep the quickest. So I'm the one with the Sharpie.

RT: What do you do to prepare for a show? Do you have any pre-show rituals or superstitions?

MB: We kind of make fun of each other for half an hour. We don't do any kind of huddle, like group bonding; we inspire each other through antagonism and snottiness. We have a superstition against a pep rally before shows, so we just do our own little thing. Off-stage we're kind of snotty to each other, but in a loving way. We don't do anything sweet and supportive for each other at all . maybe we should.

RT: I've read in some past interviews that you don't think The National is that great of a name. If you could rename the band, what would you pick?

MB: Yeah . our name is just such a boring name, and we picked it because we thought that'd be cool. But it didn't cross over to the cool factor, it just stayed boring. I guess we'd pick something to remember - "Fire Flower" or "Elephant Eyes" or something. One of my favorite band names is The The. They did the right thing: They went a little more boring, and then it was memorable. But we're stuck in the middle zone of forgettable. But we've realized that band names mean nothing after 10 minutes, so whatever. We're stuck with it; it's who we are.

RT: Last question. It's kind of hard. What were you for Halloween?

MB: I did not dress up. I went to a lounge with a lounge singer that's a friend of mine, and it was sort of a cocktail affair at a little club. I've kind of had bad experiences with Halloween. When I was a kid my parents would try to make all my costumes out of brown paper bags, so they'd make me go as Mr. Peanut. I was just a little kid with underwear and a brown paper bag over my head all night. It was kind of traumatic. What was I, a poor ugly kid with a brown bag over his head? So this year I just went to a bar and relaxed .

It's too stressful to try to be funny and creative and comfortable [with costumes]. I went as a drill bit one year. I got a gray foam thing and wound it into a spiral and put it on my head, so I ended up with three feet of foam on my head all night and no one understood what it was. I was just a guy with foam on my head.

Allee Rosenmayer is a Will Rice College senior.

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