It's Monday afternoon and I'm in a recording studio in London with a few members of my band, my engineer George, and trusted collaborator Ben. We're listening to quick versions of new songs, but my mind is wandering a bit. I've only just arrived from a weekend holiday, so I wasn't part of the morning's work leading up to this, and I'm largely not taking part in the current discussions. Primarily, I'm here for moral support.
When the song ended and I came to my senses, everyone was looking at me.
“How about it,” one of them said, “are you ready to play the piano?”
“Me?” I say. “Um, okay.”
I was asked to do it because I don't play much piano. It's looking for a skeletal, raw, unrehearsed sound – the sound of someone who doesn't play much piano. If you want something that's confident and complete and in time, we have a piano player who can do that, but he's not here.
I'm given two A4 sheets of paper with the chords for the intro, verse and chorus scribbled down, and sit at a grand piano in the other room, headphones on, and wait. I can hear snippets of conversation behind the desk, as someone tries to teach others about the song they're about to hear.
“OK,” George finally said, “two bars from the top.”
I count to eight and play the first chord, which is a simple inversion of B minor, then I move onto the second chord, stare at my fingers, and the music stops.
“That sounds great,” a voice comes through the headphones. “Shall I put it on top again?”
“Sure,” I replied, trying to reconcile that it sounded great with being told to try again four seconds later.
This happens two more times, and each time the gap between when the music stops and when someone speaks gets longer, as if they're trying to compose themselves before giving the next instruction.
“Again?” George said at last.
“We're almost there,” says the guitarist, but he's clearly not there yet.
It becomes clear that I've mistaken the intro for the start of the verse; instead of moving to the D on the second line, I circle the chord twice. When this clears, I make a little progress, only to be stopped again. There is a long silence afterwards. I can see everyone's faces through the glass, cryptic, perhaps upset, as if they are trying to think of how to break the bad news. Finally, I hear a crackling sound through my headphones.
“Your choral rendition is wonderful,” says the voice, “but I think you should drop the seventh A at the end.”
It took me a long time to figure out what this actually means — namely, don't accidentally press G with your thumb again — and try to frame a response that at least makes the choice sound intentional.
“Good idea,” I say. “Just leave it.”
I play the whole piece three times, then go back to fix the parts I never got right. Even if I was chosen because of my awkwardness, it's still stressful and humiliating to not be able to play the piano well while people are listening attentively. By the end, I'm drenched in sweat and embarrassment. I think to myself, “I'm bad at piano, but I'm not usually this bad.”
I try to play the final passage, a simple descending line, with grace but fail miserably. You can actually hear my tortured train of thought in the notes as I play them very hesitantly and well behind the beat.
Apparently this more or less meets the requirements.
“I think it'll be okay,” George says. “Come on in.”
When I returned to the mixing desk, George was tweaking some parts to make it sound uncertain and wayward, but not too uncertain and wayward. This was humiliating in a way, but I was too exhausted to care. They asked for bad piano and I played my worst.
As I was relistening to the semi-revised version, the actual piano player came over, he waved, then he linked his arms and we started listening together.
“New songs?” he says.
“That's it,” says the guitarist, as the piano player turns to me, fingers curled into claws, arms moving up and down in an imitation of playing the piano like a marionette.
“Is that you?” he says.
“Of course I am,” I said. “I can't make those kinds of mistakes in a row. Not in a million years.”
