June 16, 2020 • 44 mins
Can everyone be coached — or are some people beyond help?
- The transformative power of coaching is put to the test as Michael enlists a coach to help him tackle his greatest fear.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin, take a deep breath and go. So you're creating
those little accents from down here. Yes, that's it one
more time. This is the last episode of the show,
(00:37):
and I think I've got my takeaways. One takeaway is
that good coaches can have huge effects, and so it
really matters who gets them. Another is that the people
who get the best coaches aren't always the people who
need them the most. The people who most need a
(00:58):
coach are people in a position of weakness. Of course,
coaches can make the strong stronger, but the real magic
happens when a coach attacks a seemingly hopeless situation like
this one. That's it, you do. Oh. My strategy has
(01:25):
always been to hide my weaknesses, but it's hard to
hide this one. My voice this Yeah, I'm Michael Lewis,
and this is against the rules. This season has been
(01:46):
all about the rise of coaches. For this final episode,
I'm hiring myself a coach. It happens every time I
(02:11):
publish a book. I'll be three days into a speaking
tour and poof, I won't be able to speak. Last season,
the producers of this show tried to get me to
record two episodes in a day, only to find that
I was incapable of getting so many words out of
my mouth without my voice going. It's kind of funny
because my wife and children often say that I never
(02:33):
shut up, and I sort of wish that it could
be true. So take a deep, silent breath in and
hiss one. Two, he'd been strong, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, twelve.
(02:56):
All right for maybe a man in his nineties with emphzema.
I would say that was pretty good, But I'm not
going to allow that with you. You must build that up.
That's his name, is Eric Vitro. We're in his house
in La. If you were there, you could see that
Eric isn't just any old voice coach. His walls are
(03:18):
decorated with frame records that went platinum and thank you
notes from the singers who recorded them. I'm standing in
front of his piano. Behind it is a wall that's
more like a mural. The entire thing is filled with
snapshots of this coach, with the world's most famous people,
hundreds of them, lots of beautiful people taking on the
(03:39):
very spot where I'm standing. These are all SuDS. Yeah,
Cuba good. Yeah. Do you know Cuba. I don't know anybody.
I didn't know he sang anything. Yeah, he's done Chicago
Summertide or London and on Broadway one of the nicest
ariana Grande John Legend, pink Seawan Mendez. And they look
(04:00):
not just happy to be here, they look grateful, especially
the actors who came to him to learn how to
sing in a Broadway musical or a Hollywood movie. Emma
Stone and Ryan Gosling for La La land Renee Zellweger
for Judy, Natalie Portman for Everything. The Wall is an
Awards show speech waiting to happen? Well, Ferrell say, oh,
(04:21):
wouldn't he sing it? I worked on the movie with
the Stuck Brothers where he's saying at the end, all right,
all culminates with him singing time to sing by. I
can't believe I had the balls to call you up
and ask you to do this. I really can't. On
a whim, I'd call the agent who turns my books
into movies and asked him, who's the coach for actors
(04:41):
who need to fix their voices? Say actors who don't
normally sing but suddenly need to the answer came back
immediately Eric Vetro. Hollywood agents all know just how vulnerable
their clients feel. I was petrified. I didn't like singing
(05:05):
in front of people. I always loved singing, but privately
in my call in the shower, my own husband had
never heard me sing. Even stars need help to shine,
the brightest have a sixth sense of where to find
that help, like this actress Emily Blunt. Rob Marshall had
asked me to audition for other musicals he was doing,
and I'd always said no because I was just frozen
(05:26):
with fear about the thought. He eventually called my agent.
He said, she's coming in. I know she can sing,
She's perfect for this role. I really want her. Tell
her to come and I have to hear everyone sing.
What was the song? It was Moments in the Woods.
It was her big song. This is ridiculous. What am
I doing here? I'm in the wrong story. Into the
(05:47):
Woods was the hit Broadway show that was then being
turned into a movie. Emily Blunt had no idea if
she could do the role, but she had a phone
number for Eric Vitro. Eric told her what he tells
everybody who calls, come to my house for the first
lesson and we'll see. I mean, Eric's how is always spotless,
(06:11):
it always smells heavenly, and he's sort of this weird
juxtaposition of someone who's incredibly sort of refined and elegant,
and then he wears sort of like rocker jewelry, like
real thick chains, and sort of he's sort of an
interesting image when you look at him. He's usually got
a fabulous shirt on. And I remember thinking how cool
(06:31):
this guy was and how how effortless he was sort
of be around. So I went into his kitchen walk
me through the first like fifteen minutes. We went into
his music room and he I think we did some
really embarrassing scales or something something that I was just
horrified by the idea of. And I felt embarrassed having
(06:56):
to do all of these strange mouth exercises, like he
makes you do things like ni like stuff like that.
Though You're like, how horrifying if someone were to see
me do this in your life? Had you had that
experience before it? Anybody ever, any kind of nothing, nothing,
Because I didn't go to drama school. I wasn't put
through the ring or of doing sort of trust games
(07:17):
or physical sort of warm ups or anything I've never
done it and or anything like that. Where did the
fear and the inhibition come from in you? I don't know.
Is it English? Maybe? Maybe it's like if you aren't
the very best, that you're supposed to just kind of hide.
Even if you are the very best, you're supposed to hide.
(07:39):
You're not supposed to enthuse about your own talents where
I'm from, you know, or try too hard. No, you can't,
you can't. So even having a voice coach, that's almost
like trying too hard. Well, that's interesting to me. Was
there a little part of you that resisted that in
any way? No? I feel like I desperately needed it.
I mean I really really needed it. Emily Blunt got
(08:04):
Eric Vitro's coaching for the next few years, and it
had magical effects. I mean she became Mary Poppins. Do
you ever lie awake at night just between the dark
and the morning light? Such? My problem is obviously not
(08:26):
the same as Emily Blunt's. I have no hidden talents
and no one suspects that I do. I don't secretly
hope to audition for Rob Marshall's next musical. On the
other hand, well, I'd better come clean here. My problem
with my voice isn't practical, it's spiritual. A long time ago,
I basically decided that the last thing I should ever
(08:48):
do is sing. Standing in Eric Vitro's house, I thought
how nice it might be to walk through the world
without being unsettled by the national anthem or terrified by
karaoke night. As you're gonna put the straw in the bottle,
you're gonna hum into the straw, which means air is
going to be coming through the straw and it's gonna
blow bubbles right into the water. Yes, now go, Yeah,
(09:16):
that's it. You want to send that Eric through the straw? Yeah,
sometimes out it's funny you feel like around my belly body, Yeah, exactly,
that's what I want. The first lesson at Eric's house
was just so that he could see if there was
any point in having a second lesson over the phone.
(09:37):
He said, I could come over, but then it also
might be a great waste of time. Now, by the way,
I am the most positive, optimistic and supportive people you
will ever meet. I really am supported with my students. However,
I really think that whole phrase you can be anyone
you want and achieve anything you put your mind to.
(09:57):
I think it should be followed by within reason, because
you know, that would be like me saying, all right,
I'm gonna quit teaching and I'm going to become the
greatest basketball player ever. Well, at my age, with my
hype and my body type, I don't think that's gonna happen.
I mean that would And if someone said you can
(10:17):
do it, Eric, you can put it in and you
put your mind to, they would be steering me down
the wrong road, right, It would be ridiculous. I was
waiting to hear how this story applied to me. Then
he told me about the famous actor, the actor who's
picture never quite made it onto the wall behind Eric's piano.
He made a movie and made a big splash, and
(10:39):
everybody wanted to hear him. You know, everyone's like, ooh,
this guy's us. That's a good looking and a good actor.
So he was getting a million offers, and one was
a Broadway musical and they said, here's the deal, of
the producers will pay for unlimited voice lessons. They just
want you to prepare him for this. They trust you.
You know, money's no object. How often do you really
(11:00):
hear that? You know, money's not you. So I was like, oh,
this sounds like a great gig. That was until he
got here. And when I met him, he was actually
very nice, So that was ices on the cape. Oh,
a great guy and just seemed fun to talk to.
Then he started singing, Oh my, I was like, ah,
(11:20):
it was a terrible and it's worse than what I
just did. As he's telling me this story, I'm wondering
what else is he trying to tell me? But here's
the thing. You know, what are the qualities that you
really need to possess to, you know, to be a
successful artist and to have a long career. One of
them is some kind of self awareness of who you
are and what you should be doing. I kept waiting
(11:43):
for him to elaborate. He didn't, But at the end
of the session, Eric looked at his schedule and asked
when I wanted to do the next lesson and whether
it should be at his house or over FaceTime. So
I had myself a coach and a new way to
deal with what was a complicated problem. Who you got trouble,
(12:18):
my friend? Right here, I say, trouble right here in
River City White, Sure, I'm a billiard glare certainly. The
Music Man was a musical turned into a hit movie
in nineteen sixty two. There are actually plans right now
to revive it on Broadway, and you can see why.
It's both from another era and totally of the moment.
It tells the story of a con man played in
(12:40):
the movie by Robert Preston. He rolls into a small
town in Iowa and sells musical instruments to parents by
persuading them that their kids are prodigies. He promises to
teach them how to play, only he doesn't know a
thing about music. The only person in town he doesn't
fool is marrying the librarian played by Shirley Jones. She's
(13:02):
a prim and proper beauty who teaches piano and sees
through the Khan. But the music Man persuades her that
he has this magical system. Oh, I now have a
revolutionary new method called a think system. Well, you don't
bother with notes. The music Man has found a new
and better way to coach, not how to sing or
how to play, how to get yourself into a state
(13:23):
of mind in which all you want to do is
sing and play. Oddly, this musical had exactly the opposite
effect on me. A single song, did it? I tell
you my phobia, I tell where it comes from it
and it's that the latter Rose song. Oh, I couldn't
(13:43):
figure out from your text what you were lucky about.
So here's what happened. When I was in the third
and fourth and fifth grade, I had the leads in
the school players, and it was just I think it
was more willingness to get on stage and sing, but
I had them. And in fifth grade they cast me
in the leading and without telling me that I was
(14:04):
supposed to marry on stage a little girl, and there
was this It was this awful sequence of events. Childhood
is a fun house mirror. Everything in it gets distorted.
I know a woman who became a meteorologist because a
storm dropped a tree onto her house when she was
(14:25):
ten years old. That tree kicked a little pebble off
the top of a hill in her mind and started
an avalanche. That kind of thing happened inside my head.
Only my tree was a song called Light a Rose,
Light a Rose, I'm home again, Rose, dude, get the side.
(14:50):
Our fifth grade class was going to stage a version
of the music Man. I thought I'd been duped into
singing the musical's one love song to a girl in
front of basically the entire world. But then these extremely
ancient teachers told me who the girl was, the new girl.
(15:10):
She had a birth effect, no fingers on her hands
or toes on her feet. She was also wildly bizarrely aggressive,
grabbing it boys, pitching fits. I knew I was meant
to be kind to her, and I tried. A ten
year old boy with a better character than mine would
have just gone along with the whole thing, but I didn't.
(15:33):
I told them that I wouldn't do the song, and
instead of telling me that I couldn't sing, they wound
up telling that poor little girl she couldn't have the
role in the play. The teachers had exposed a weakness
in my character. Of course, when I was ten, I
wouldn't have put it that way, or anyway at all.
I just suddenly had this ugly new feeling a combination
(15:56):
of anger and self loathing. There and then I refused
ever again to sing in school plays. I told the
music teacher I would never again meet her after school.
It's funny how phobias start. It was a short skip
from refusing to sing to feeling that I shouldn't sing
(16:19):
to almost being afraid to sing. I know it's a
very strange story and it's got no happy ending to it,
but I'm done telling that story to my new coach.
He has an idea. So it's possible that my voice
is so bad that you're not gonna be able to
do anything at all. So let's see how it goes.
(16:42):
I think conquering that song that gave you such anxiety
would be fun, would be buzzing conquer, you know. So
what I want to do is I want to have
you sing the melody, but instead of on the words,
you're going to do it on wah wah wah. And
(17:16):
I have known a lot of singing teachers, and some
of them are just playing nuts. I talked to a
lot of Eric's students. This is Bette Midler, another famous
singer on Eric's wall. And there are a lot of
quacks too. So you have to be very careful because
you could be led down the garden path by people
who say that this is the way to do it.
(17:38):
When Bett found Eric, she was in a funk. It
was two thousand and eight. She was about to open
a new show in Vegas, at Caesar's Palace. The dry
air was getting to her. But it wasn't just the air.
Something wasn't quite right. She felt more than usually vulnerable.
Her backup singers were called the Harlettes. One of the
(17:58):
Harletts told her about Eric, so Bett called him up.
He started coming to Vegas to help me, and he
would come once a week or so and we would
warm up, or he would call me on the phone.
We would warm up on the phone, and he gave
me the taps to warm up with it. And I
was religious about it. She didn't just get through the
show's run. She went two years without missing a single performance.
(18:22):
The staff at Caesar's Palace told her that that had
never happened, so they invented an award to give her.
It's still Bette Midler's favorite award, and it's sort of
changed her ideas about the value of a coach. There
are some songs when I can hear him in my head,
I can hear his voice, I can hear certain things
(18:43):
that he said in my head. And if I can
keep myself from dismissing it, if I can believe it,
I just thank God for him every day. First of all,
He's a sunbeam in the world. And I do think
that a coach has to be You can't have someone
(19:03):
who's going to be abusive. Yeah, they have. They have
to You have to know they care about you. Yes, yes,
you have to trust them. And trust is absolutely imperative.
If you don't trust your coach, you're not gonna make
it ready to take deep breath. Okay, Nope, but that's okay.
(19:36):
That's why you're here to improve. So yes, we're not listening.
We're not listening to a friend who was standing in
our guest copie and he heard me practicing. He I
came a piece that I thought that was the garbage truck.
No he didn't. It wasn't just the odd house guest.
It was the Amazon delivery lady, the guys on the
(19:57):
recycling truck, the neighbors. Anyone who came within about thirty
yards of me singing assumed a worried expression. One day,
I looked at my office window to see a deer
staring back at me with a look of concern. Then
there's my children. In happy families, children don't want their
(20:17):
parents to change. They really don't want to see them
trying to change. One day, my thirteen year old son
Walker wandered in with his skateboard under his arm. He
grabbed a tape recorder and supplied a running commentary just
out of my earshot, and then I just walked down
unless my dad going, and he's just run. Okay, it's
(20:48):
going to be a next Michael Jackson. Somebody wants to
steal kids. It's hard at the same time to be
both a comic character in the minds of everyone around
you and also a slayer of childhood demons. But something
about this coach made me want to keep on going,
(21:10):
just to see where he might lead. So you figure
out what they have, You expanded the best, the best
you can try to work, and then you worked all
about funny out who you are. Isn't that life in general?
But it's it's really true. But it's and I think
it's the key to life, you know, and finding, you know,
that combination of what you do best and what you
(21:30):
love the most, right, what you enjoy the most, because
that's what you're going to want to practice right. If
you're doing a style of music that you don't like,
you're not going to want to practice it right. So
it becomes meaningless, like like they'll tell me, oh, so
and so tried to get me to blank blink, Like
I go, that's not what you want to do. Then
you're you're really trying to fit up a square pain
around the whole. Right, you've got to have some kind
(21:52):
of love or passion for it, right has to. This
entire season has been mainly about the effects that coaches have.
We haven't talked much about why they do what they do.
There's lots of reasons someone might decide their passion is
to sing, but passion for helping others learn to sing.
It's hard to explain sometimes, but you know, you feel
(22:16):
like you are getting as much as you are giving,
like to see the improvement, to see people get excited.
All of that it comes back at you like a rush,
like a rush of adrenaline. Really is what it is.
Or to see someone complimented, or if you read a
good review. I would never say, oh, I take credit
(22:38):
for that. I don't feel that, but I know I
had something to do with it. I was a part
of it, and that just and it makes me so
happy for that person. One day I asked Eric how
he became a coach with a completely straight face. He
said that it had all started in the fifth grade.
This show can't seem to move on from the fifth grade,
(22:58):
but such as life. By the time he got to
the fifth grade, Eric loved music but didn't get much
encouragement from his parents. Then his class stage of music,
just as mine had. The most popular boy in aris
class wanted to play the lead, but he didn't know
how to sing. He knew because I was playing the
(23:21):
piano in the morning, you know, for the kids to
sing the Star Spangled Banner, America the Beautiful, And he said,
I want to audition. And meanwhile, by the way, we're
talking at like a ten minute skit. It wasn't a
big thing. But to us, you know, when you're that
age and you're in a school, you're surrounded by people
who really matter to you, all those classmates, and there's
(23:42):
so many hierarchies and levels and all of that going on.
So he was popular, he was athletic, he was, you know,
all the positive things you could be for boy in
the fifth grade, and or I guess in any grade really,
And so he said, can you teach me this song?
And I said sure. So we walked home. My house
(24:04):
was probably twenty five minutes from the school. He walked
home with me and I sat at the piano and
I taught him the song and we went over and
over and over it. That bonded us forever. You know what.
We didn't sit at the same table and lunch whatever,
but whenever I would see him from that time on
(24:25):
until graduating high school, we were walking down the hall,
he'd give me that nod, I'd give him that nod,
like we had that bond. It was amazing. It was
a really special thing we had between us. And so
Eric just started to help other kids who needed to sing.
He didn't really think of it as a job until
one day when he was in college, a classmate auditioned
(24:46):
for a Broadway show. She offered to pay Eric to
help her. After that, he built an entire career on
word of mouth. People just heard about this guy's rare
coaching gift and called him up. He never really had
to market himself or push himself on others. They found him,
what did it feel like You're gonna yawn? Credible space
(25:07):
to back your throw all these strange sounds. I spend
an hour every day making them. I ask him why
I'm doing them, and he sort of explains but sort
of doesn't, or rather all of his explanations boiled down
(25:29):
to a single persuasive sentence. Just follow my lead the
way everyone else is done, and I'll get you there.
Practice really truly, bet Middler again, my fellow singer. This
is ther only piece of advice to me. The more
you do it, the better you're going to get. There's
no question. There is absolutely no question you will improve.
(25:51):
The more you do it, the better you get, and
you find the secrets you find. Well, he told me
to do it that way. I can't quite do it
that way, but I can do it this way, and
it's a pretty good sound, So I like him. My
question to you is, how do you sound? How do
you like yourself singing? That was a good question, and
(26:13):
I was still avoiding the answer. Let's start with a tongue,
making sure to connect to your breathing muscles. You're gonna
take deep ruts in and you're gonna sing that. I
(26:36):
try it. I try everything very good. Now try it
with the lip bubbly and see if you can do it. Yeah,
don't worry about it. Don't worry about it, I promise.
But I kept thinking of Bette Midler's question, how do
I like myself singing? The truth is I feel totally
disconnected from my own voice. I sing the way people
(26:58):
talk when they're trying to get a foreigner to understand them.
When it isn't working, I just do it again, louder.
I also sing with the feeling that something's about to
go drastically wrong, like I'm a five foot point guard
driving for a layup with a pair of seven footers
right behind me. So you're gonna go memo, memo, memo, memo, memo, memo, Mimo, memo, Mimo, Mimo, Mimo, memo, memo, Mimo.
(27:22):
Now rolling your head, memo, Mima. The music Man is
about a con man. He knows he's a fraud, but
he's happy in the role. I'm less. So wow, even
though Eric agrees to take me on as a student,
I start with one foot out the door, and I
think he kind of knows it. Okay. Good. Looking back
(27:49):
on all this, I see our relationship had a bunch
of stages. I can count five. You've already heard stage one.
He was just feeling each other out to decide if
there was any point of spending time together. Stage two
was Eric gradually taking control. But I only notice this
happening after I went back over the recordings of all
(28:12):
our sessions. It sounded better, Yeah, really really noticeably sounded better. Yeah.
I mean from a low baseline, but I noticed the difference. No,
that's great. I didn't give you the acid reflux diet.
Hot to look at you did? He had given me
the acid reflux a diet the first session. This long
list of stuff I was now encouraged to consume, plus
(28:35):
a longer list of things I shouldn't touch. No spicy foods,
no coffee, no alcohol. It seemed excessive. I mean, no
carbonated beverages. You did? Then? Why are you drinking carbonated
water in front of me? Oh my god? You caught it?
So because you know it's all I have. It's I'm
drinking up the remains. I hadn't bought any new ones,
(28:56):
but it was what, Okay, your family can't drink the perree? Allright? Busting.
I'm sorry. It won't happen again. Could always take a
bath in it. Yeah, that's what I'll do. I'll take
a back, right, I'll send it to you. Do you
have a dog, You could wash the dog with it.
I found that once I got my coach talking, I
(29:19):
could encourage him to keep going. Please do tell me
how to wash a dog in sparkling order. Yes, I
do very much want to hear what Joan Rivers once
said about her dog. So long as he was talking,
I didn't have to sing. I was creating a kind
of alibi that crime against music. No way I could
have committed it. I wasn't even present at the scene.
(29:41):
Feel like you're sighing. Make sure you support by using
your breathing muscles on that first note and put a
slight cry so to be more of a mey memai
may good. Now, I guarantee you if you start doing
it every day, that will get better and better. How
could it get worse? That is not true? All right now,
(30:06):
I want to do one keeping a nice and forward,
keeping your mouth loose and relaxed. Say yum yum, yum,
yum yum yum. Actually, before we go out further. I
know you're being funny, but I know there's always a
little truth in every little bit of humor. What I
want you to do is stop thinking of it as
(30:28):
not good, because as long as you do that, you'll
kind of keep it there, you know what I mean,
You'll always have a little bit of a sense. While
I'm not really a singer, I'm not really good. I
want you to start just thinking to yourself as a singer.
You're putting in the time, the effort, you're practicing. Why
wouldn't you get better? You know right? Anybody will get
(30:49):
better is something they put effort in, time and energy,
And so I want you to just start thinking to
yourself like a singer. He didn't miss much. He was
onto me. It's a defense mechanism, I know, but I
want you to drop it, all right. I want to
break through that defense because I really do think when
someone feels a little bit better and they tell themselves,
(31:12):
you know, self affirming thoughts, it really does make a difference.
All right, I won't do it anymore. Yeah, I want
you to really just think, yeah, this is better. His
will was just stronger than mine. At some point I
gave up and accepted that he was in charge. And
(31:32):
at that point I entered stage three of the coaching relationship.
Buy in actual, honest, buy in very good. And I
heard by Groat on that first note, whoa to do
that again? Who wa wa? Wa wa wa. Now aim
(31:52):
high on that last note, though, don't let it fall
back from your throat. I mean, who knows if I'm
actually getting better? I can't tell, but he's giving me
a feeling of movement. May may May May May may
may may May. So far, that's the briant, the best
you've sounded. Does it feel good? It feels really good. Yeah,
(32:14):
and I want you to really embrace it. Feel what
it feels like, listen to it because it sounds really good.
At some point into all of this, like after maybe
three months of weekly lessons and almost daily practice, it
occurred to me that one anxiety had been replaced by another.
(32:35):
I used to be anxious mostly about singing. Now I'm
anxious mostly about letting him down. I think we'll call
this stage four. So have you ever taken a ballet class? No?
I haven't, but I've been close to one. Okay, So
in ballet class quite often, you know, they talk about
(32:57):
getting in touch with and what's the word of connecting
to your center? Yep. We'll leave your abdominal muscles then, yep.
I'm kind of tight and squeezing your butt cheeks together yep, yep,
clanking in the back holding it. Ye, so that's why
they stand so straight. Yep, yep, Okay, that's clenching in
(33:20):
the bus and pulling your abdomino muscles can help you
with support. Now, I prevertical in front of back to
support because I don't want to be known as the
butt teacher. And I'm not recording it. He wasn't recording it,
but I was, Oh no, no no. So I can
tell you if I if I was able to sing
with my ass muscles, I'd be on Broadway, right, there's
(33:41):
ever going to be a Broadway again. Yeah, well that's
a that's a good point. Yeah. Anyway, Okay, getting back
to your bus. So I want you to put one
end on your abdominal muscles and you're gonna go to
a normal hiss pulling your abdomino munz of it, and
then you're going to add clenching your butt cheeks together. Okay,
so I'll so. But it just hissed and clenched my
(34:04):
butt cheeks while I'm doing it. You're going to do
normal ping of your abdomino muscles. Then you're gonna okay, gotcha, wow,
oh my god, it was like a howitzer. That's what
you're gonna do that behind us, You're going to seats
(34:27):
together and pulling your domino was gonna be liker. That
was like a nuke. It was also extremely weird, but
it was working, and it got us eventually to stage five.
I still didn't really like the way I sounded, but
I could see how one day I might like the
way I sounded. I was starting to have this entirely
(34:49):
new feeling because of this coach, and I sort of
confessed it directly to Bette Midler. I don't know if
you feel this way, but I found that once you
start singing, it's really hard to stop. That's great, you know,
do you know? You know you start saying you kind
of don't want to stop. So I find myself one
(35:09):
undering the streets after I've been doing a lesson singing,
and then I realize people are staring at me. Oh really,
Oh that's a sweet story. That's fantastic. I'm going to
try that. Now. How has your progress been with you
mentally thinking of yourself as a singer? Not bad? Good?
So that interference is gone, and I'm trying to talk
(35:30):
myself into this great great because I think that, you know,
then it becomes I don't want to say, an experiment,
maybe an exercise in not just singing in general, but
how powerful the mind can be to creating what it
is we want to create in our life. I agree. Okay, so,
(35:53):
but one hand on your chest, one hand on your
abdominal muscles. Take a deep, low breath and a long
steady It's not often that someone persuades you that you
can go to a place you've never been. It's intoxicating,
even for people who've been on most everywhere. And actually,
the most free thing about Eric is that he encourages
(36:15):
you to not make it sound beautiful and perfect, just
makes sense of it, like Emily Blunt makes sense of
the song. Let me hear the story, Tell me a story.
This is what's so elusive about coaching. How a gifted
coach can get you to shift the focus of your
attention so you're no longer singing a song. You're sort
(36:37):
of exploring who you are or might be. It hit
Bette Midler right away. You know what I have to
tell you this, This is a good story. When I
first care to Eric, I would come to Eric and
you don't know me, Michael, but I am. I'm a
very sad person. I mean, I can be hilarious, but
like many comics I am, I am like a tragic soul,
(37:02):
and I can be very hard on myself and very
hard on people around me. I'm sorry to admit that.
People I'm telling I'm letting you in. This coach knows stuff.
Stuff you never know that he knows. He knows what
you might be capable of. If you allow him to help,
you might already be world famous and headlining a Vegas show.
(37:23):
You also, at the same time might be hating yourself
and making life miserable for your coach. And he came
(37:43):
to my opening night, and you know what he told me,
Like years later, he said to me, when that curtain
(38:04):
went up and you came up, I didn't reckon you
are you were so full of joy as life and
color and fun and you're such a bust. Recognize she's
(38:28):
laughing so hard that you might not have heard what
her coach said to her. You were so full of
joy and life and color and fun, and you're such
a bitch. She loved that he said it then and
obviously still loves it now. Oh my god, the poor guy,
(38:49):
because I am intense and he is he just never
let me go? So yes, he helped me over. He
helped me, He helped me over an enormous he helped
me climb an enormous mountain, an enormous mountain. You've given
me something. That's why I had to come. I don't
(39:09):
recall giving oh, yes, something beautiful. That's why I came back.
In fifth grade, after Eric Vitro realized he had this
gift for helping people learn how to sing, he began
to collect voices. They were a gallery in his mind.
He recalls the first acquisition when he saw a movie
(39:31):
called The Music Man, Oh B on the huge but
I never I didn't see it in the movie theater,
but it was on television one night, and I had
this little real to real tape recorders before there was
VHS tapes or anything, and I recorded the whole thing
(39:55):
so I could listen to it again. I thought Shirley
Jones had such a beautiful voice. I used to play
it over and over, her singing till there was you,
the songs she sings at the end and at the footbridge.
I thought it was so beautiful that was you. It
may have been Eric's first experience of paying really close
(40:16):
attention to someone else's voice, just studying it, and it
was ironic that you became It was her teacher for years,
for like ten years, you know, and we became very close.
That was a rare false note for Eric Vitro. It
doesn't feel at all ironic to me that Shirley Jones,
(40:36):
star of the Music Man, would one day call Eric
and ask for his help. It feels like his destiny
to help her and maybe me too. So before we
sing Lyda Rose, You're chosen song to heal the wound
of your child? What are you going to think? What
(40:57):
am I going to think? Well? I think probably the
best spirit to sing it in is a slightly comic seduction. Okay,
it's like an ironic seduction. Okay, So that's the tone.
That's good, that's the overall tone, and and it's it's
(41:18):
it's sort of like, yeah, Light of Rose, I could
understand if you don't want to get married at the
end of this, but I'm giving him my best shot. Okay, Great,
So it's an irresponsible, uh love song? Great, all right,
So let's sing through Light a Rose, Light a Rose,
(41:41):
I'm home again Rose to get the sun back in
the sky, Light a Rose, I am home again Rose,
about a thousand kisses shine ding dong ding. I can
hear the chapel bill chime, ding dong ding at the
(42:06):
least suggestion, Oh up the question, light a Rose, I'm
home again Rose, without a sweetheart to my name, Light
a Rose? How everyone knows that I'm hoping you're the same.
So here is my love song, not fancy or fine,
(42:34):
Light a Rose. Oh, won't you be mind? I'm Michael Lewis.
Thanks for listening to Against the Rules. Against the Rules
(42:54):
is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. The show's produced
by Audrey Dilling and Catherine Girodo, with research assistance from
Lydia Jeancott and Zooe Wynn. Our editor is Julia Barton.
Mel o'bell is our executive producer. Our theme was composed
by Nick Brittell, with additional scoring by Stellwagen Siphonette. We
(43:15):
got fact checked by Beth Johnson. Our show was recorded
by tofur Ruth and Trey Schultz at Northgate Studios in Berkeley.
As always, thanks to Pushkin's founders, Jacob Weisberg and Malcolm Gladwell.
(43:46):
So my last question and then we can get onto
the lesson. If you want to get into the lesson,
Is any anyone you ever worked with ask you so
much about yourself as you Most of the time people
are here just to learn, so they don't really ask
that much about me. Yeah, the dury, little big You're
(44:09):
always the most interesting person in the room, but you're
paying attention to everybody else. I don't know if that's true,
but I am paying attention, and you know, I'm sure
you find this too. It's really more interesting to be
the person listening to the other people because I know
my own story. I've gotta feel the same way.
Pushkin, take a deep breath and go. So you're creating
those little accents from down here. Yes, that's it one
more time. This is the last episode of the show,
(00:37):
and I think I've got my takeaways. One takeaway is
that good coaches can have huge effects, and so it
really matters who gets them. Another is that the people
who get the best coaches aren't always the people who
need them the most. The people who most need a
(00:58):
coach are people in a position of weakness. Of course,
coaches can make the strong stronger, but the real magic
happens when a coach attacks a seemingly hopeless situation like
this one. That's it, you do. Oh. My strategy has
(01:25):
always been to hide my weaknesses, but it's hard to
hide this one. My voice this Yeah, I'm Michael Lewis,
and this is against the rules. This season has been
(01:46):
all about the rise of coaches. For this final episode,
I'm hiring myself a coach. It happens every time I
(02:11):
publish a book. I'll be three days into a speaking
tour and poof, I won't be able to speak. Last season,
the producers of this show tried to get me to
record two episodes in a day, only to find that
I was incapable of getting so many words out of
my mouth without my voice going. It's kind of funny
because my wife and children often say that I never
(02:33):
shut up, and I sort of wish that it could
be true. So take a deep, silent breath in and
hiss one. Two, he'd been strong, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, twelve.
(02:56):
All right for maybe a man in his nineties with emphzema.
I would say that was pretty good, But I'm not
going to allow that with you. You must build that up.
That's his name, is Eric Vitro. We're in his house
in La. If you were there, you could see that
Eric isn't just any old voice coach. His walls are
(03:18):
decorated with frame records that went platinum and thank you
notes from the singers who recorded them. I'm standing in
front of his piano. Behind it is a wall that's
more like a mural. The entire thing is filled with
snapshots of this coach, with the world's most famous people,
hundreds of them, lots of beautiful people taking on the
(03:39):
very spot where I'm standing. These are all SuDS. Yeah,
Cuba good. Yeah. Do you know Cuba. I don't know anybody.
I didn't know he sang anything. Yeah, he's done Chicago
Summertide or London and on Broadway one of the nicest
ariana Grande John Legend, pink Seawan Mendez. And they look
(04:00):
not just happy to be here, they look grateful, especially
the actors who came to him to learn how to
sing in a Broadway musical or a Hollywood movie. Emma
Stone and Ryan Gosling for La La land Renee Zellweger
for Judy, Natalie Portman for Everything. The Wall is an
Awards show speech waiting to happen? Well, Ferrell say, oh,
(04:21):
wouldn't he sing it? I worked on the movie with
the Stuck Brothers where he's saying at the end, all right,
all culminates with him singing time to sing by. I
can't believe I had the balls to call you up
and ask you to do this. I really can't. On
a whim, I'd call the agent who turns my books
into movies and asked him, who's the coach for actors
(04:41):
who need to fix their voices? Say actors who don't
normally sing but suddenly need to the answer came back
immediately Eric Vetro. Hollywood agents all know just how vulnerable
their clients feel. I was petrified. I didn't like singing
(05:05):
in front of people. I always loved singing, but privately
in my call in the shower, my own husband had
never heard me sing. Even stars need help to shine,
the brightest have a sixth sense of where to find
that help, like this actress Emily Blunt. Rob Marshall had
asked me to audition for other musicals he was doing,
and I'd always said no because I was just frozen
(05:26):
with fear about the thought. He eventually called my agent.
He said, she's coming in. I know she can sing,
She's perfect for this role. I really want her. Tell
her to come and I have to hear everyone sing.
What was the song? It was Moments in the Woods.
It was her big song. This is ridiculous. What am
I doing here? I'm in the wrong story. Into the
(05:47):
Woods was the hit Broadway show that was then being
turned into a movie. Emily Blunt had no idea if
she could do the role, but she had a phone
number for Eric Vitro. Eric told her what he tells
everybody who calls, come to my house for the first
lesson and we'll see. I mean, Eric's how is always spotless,
(06:11):
it always smells heavenly, and he's sort of this weird
juxtaposition of someone who's incredibly sort of refined and elegant,
and then he wears sort of like rocker jewelry, like
real thick chains, and sort of he's sort of an
interesting image when you look at him. He's usually got
a fabulous shirt on. And I remember thinking how cool
(06:31):
this guy was and how how effortless he was sort
of be around. So I went into his kitchen walk
me through the first like fifteen minutes. We went into
his music room and he I think we did some
really embarrassing scales or something something that I was just
horrified by the idea of. And I felt embarrassed having
(06:56):
to do all of these strange mouth exercises, like he
makes you do things like ni like stuff like that.
Though You're like, how horrifying if someone were to see
me do this in your life? Had you had that
experience before it? Anybody ever, any kind of nothing, nothing,
Because I didn't go to drama school. I wasn't put
through the ring or of doing sort of trust games
(07:17):
or physical sort of warm ups or anything I've never
done it and or anything like that. Where did the
fear and the inhibition come from in you? I don't know.
Is it English? Maybe? Maybe it's like if you aren't
the very best, that you're supposed to just kind of hide.
Even if you are the very best, you're supposed to hide.
(07:39):
You're not supposed to enthuse about your own talents where
I'm from, you know, or try too hard. No, you can't,
you can't. So even having a voice coach, that's almost
like trying too hard. Well, that's interesting to me. Was
there a little part of you that resisted that in
any way? No? I feel like I desperately needed it.
I mean I really really needed it. Emily Blunt got
(08:04):
Eric Vitro's coaching for the next few years, and it
had magical effects. I mean she became Mary Poppins. Do
you ever lie awake at night just between the dark
and the morning light? Such? My problem is obviously not
(08:26):
the same as Emily Blunt's. I have no hidden talents
and no one suspects that I do. I don't secretly
hope to audition for Rob Marshall's next musical. On the
other hand, well, I'd better come clean here. My problem
with my voice isn't practical, it's spiritual. A long time ago,
I basically decided that the last thing I should ever
(08:48):
do is sing. Standing in Eric Vitro's house, I thought
how nice it might be to walk through the world
without being unsettled by the national anthem or terrified by
karaoke night. As you're gonna put the straw in the bottle,
you're gonna hum into the straw, which means air is
going to be coming through the straw and it's gonna
blow bubbles right into the water. Yes, now go, Yeah,
(09:16):
that's it. You want to send that Eric through the straw? Yeah,
sometimes out it's funny you feel like around my belly body, Yeah, exactly,
that's what I want. The first lesson at Eric's house
was just so that he could see if there was
any point in having a second lesson over the phone.
(09:37):
He said, I could come over, but then it also
might be a great waste of time. Now, by the way,
I am the most positive, optimistic and supportive people you
will ever meet. I really am supported with my students. However,
I really think that whole phrase you can be anyone
you want and achieve anything you put your mind to.
(09:57):
I think it should be followed by within reason, because
you know, that would be like me saying, all right,
I'm gonna quit teaching and I'm going to become the
greatest basketball player ever. Well, at my age, with my
hype and my body type, I don't think that's gonna happen.
I mean that would And if someone said you can
(10:17):
do it, Eric, you can put it in and you
put your mind to, they would be steering me down
the wrong road, right, It would be ridiculous. I was
waiting to hear how this story applied to me. Then
he told me about the famous actor, the actor who's
picture never quite made it onto the wall behind Eric's piano.
He made a movie and made a big splash, and
(10:39):
everybody wanted to hear him. You know, everyone's like, ooh,
this guy's us. That's a good looking and a good actor.
So he was getting a million offers, and one was
a Broadway musical and they said, here's the deal, of
the producers will pay for unlimited voice lessons. They just
want you to prepare him for this. They trust you.
You know, money's no object. How often do you really
(11:00):
hear that? You know, money's not you. So I was like, oh,
this sounds like a great gig. That was until he
got here. And when I met him, he was actually
very nice, So that was ices on the cape. Oh,
a great guy and just seemed fun to talk to.
Then he started singing, Oh my, I was like, ah,
(11:20):
it was a terrible and it's worse than what I
just did. As he's telling me this story, I'm wondering
what else is he trying to tell me? But here's
the thing. You know, what are the qualities that you
really need to possess to, you know, to be a
successful artist and to have a long career. One of
them is some kind of self awareness of who you
are and what you should be doing. I kept waiting
(11:43):
for him to elaborate. He didn't, But at the end
of the session, Eric looked at his schedule and asked
when I wanted to do the next lesson and whether
it should be at his house or over FaceTime. So
I had myself a coach and a new way to
deal with what was a complicated problem. Who you got trouble,
(12:18):
my friend? Right here, I say, trouble right here in
River City White, Sure, I'm a billiard glare certainly. The
Music Man was a musical turned into a hit movie
in nineteen sixty two. There are actually plans right now
to revive it on Broadway, and you can see why.
It's both from another era and totally of the moment.
It tells the story of a con man played in
(12:40):
the movie by Robert Preston. He rolls into a small
town in Iowa and sells musical instruments to parents by
persuading them that their kids are prodigies. He promises to
teach them how to play, only he doesn't know a
thing about music. The only person in town he doesn't
fool is marrying the librarian played by Shirley Jones. She's
(13:02):
a prim and proper beauty who teaches piano and sees
through the Khan. But the music Man persuades her that
he has this magical system. Oh, I now have a
revolutionary new method called a think system. Well, you don't
bother with notes. The music Man has found a new
and better way to coach, not how to sing or
how to play, how to get yourself into a state
(13:23):
of mind in which all you want to do is
sing and play. Oddly, this musical had exactly the opposite
effect on me. A single song, did it? I tell
you my phobia, I tell where it comes from it
and it's that the latter Rose song. Oh, I couldn't
(13:43):
figure out from your text what you were lucky about.
So here's what happened. When I was in the third
and fourth and fifth grade, I had the leads in
the school players, and it was just I think it
was more willingness to get on stage and sing, but
I had them. And in fifth grade they cast me
in the leading and without telling me that I was
(14:04):
supposed to marry on stage a little girl, and there
was this It was this awful sequence of events. Childhood
is a fun house mirror. Everything in it gets distorted.
I know a woman who became a meteorologist because a
storm dropped a tree onto her house when she was
(14:25):
ten years old. That tree kicked a little pebble off
the top of a hill in her mind and started
an avalanche. That kind of thing happened inside my head.
Only my tree was a song called Light a Rose,
Light a Rose, I'm home again, Rose, dude, get the side.
(14:50):
Our fifth grade class was going to stage a version
of the music Man. I thought I'd been duped into
singing the musical's one love song to a girl in
front of basically the entire world. But then these extremely
ancient teachers told me who the girl was, the new girl.
(15:10):
She had a birth effect, no fingers on her hands
or toes on her feet. She was also wildly bizarrely aggressive,
grabbing it boys, pitching fits. I knew I was meant
to be kind to her, and I tried. A ten
year old boy with a better character than mine would
have just gone along with the whole thing, but I didn't.
(15:33):
I told them that I wouldn't do the song, and
instead of telling me that I couldn't sing, they wound
up telling that poor little girl she couldn't have the
role in the play. The teachers had exposed a weakness
in my character. Of course, when I was ten, I
wouldn't have put it that way, or anyway at all.
I just suddenly had this ugly new feeling a combination
(15:56):
of anger and self loathing. There and then I refused
ever again to sing in school plays. I told the
music teacher I would never again meet her after school.
It's funny how phobias start. It was a short skip
from refusing to sing to feeling that I shouldn't sing
(16:19):
to almost being afraid to sing. I know it's a
very strange story and it's got no happy ending to it,
but I'm done telling that story to my new coach.
He has an idea. So it's possible that my voice
is so bad that you're not gonna be able to
do anything at all. So let's see how it goes.
(16:42):
I think conquering that song that gave you such anxiety
would be fun, would be buzzing conquer, you know. So
what I want to do is I want to have
you sing the melody, but instead of on the words,
you're going to do it on wah wah wah. And
(17:16):
I have known a lot of singing teachers, and some
of them are just playing nuts. I talked to a
lot of Eric's students. This is Bette Midler, another famous
singer on Eric's wall. And there are a lot of
quacks too. So you have to be very careful because
you could be led down the garden path by people
who say that this is the way to do it.
(17:38):
When Bett found Eric, she was in a funk. It
was two thousand and eight. She was about to open
a new show in Vegas, at Caesar's Palace. The dry
air was getting to her. But it wasn't just the air.
Something wasn't quite right. She felt more than usually vulnerable.
Her backup singers were called the Harlettes. One of the
(17:58):
Harletts told her about Eric, so Bett called him up.
He started coming to Vegas to help me, and he
would come once a week or so and we would
warm up, or he would call me on the phone.
We would warm up on the phone, and he gave
me the taps to warm up with it. And I
was religious about it. She didn't just get through the
show's run. She went two years without missing a single performance.
(18:22):
The staff at Caesar's Palace told her that that had
never happened, so they invented an award to give her.
It's still Bette Midler's favorite award, and it's sort of
changed her ideas about the value of a coach. There
are some songs when I can hear him in my head,
I can hear his voice, I can hear certain things
(18:43):
that he said in my head. And if I can
keep myself from dismissing it, if I can believe it,
I just thank God for him every day. First of all,
He's a sunbeam in the world. And I do think
that a coach has to be You can't have someone
(19:03):
who's going to be abusive. Yeah, they have. They have
to You have to know they care about you. Yes, yes,
you have to trust them. And trust is absolutely imperative.
If you don't trust your coach, you're not gonna make
it ready to take deep breath. Okay, Nope, but that's okay.
(19:36):
That's why you're here to improve. So yes, we're not listening.
We're not listening to a friend who was standing in
our guest copie and he heard me practicing. He I
came a piece that I thought that was the garbage truck.
No he didn't. It wasn't just the odd house guest.
It was the Amazon delivery lady, the guys on the
(19:57):
recycling truck, the neighbors. Anyone who came within about thirty
yards of me singing assumed a worried expression. One day,
I looked at my office window to see a deer
staring back at me with a look of concern. Then
there's my children. In happy families, children don't want their
(20:17):
parents to change. They really don't want to see them
trying to change. One day, my thirteen year old son
Walker wandered in with his skateboard under his arm. He
grabbed a tape recorder and supplied a running commentary just
out of my earshot, and then I just walked down
unless my dad going, and he's just run. Okay, it's
(20:48):
going to be a next Michael Jackson. Somebody wants to
steal kids. It's hard at the same time to be
both a comic character in the minds of everyone around
you and also a slayer of childhood demons. But something
about this coach made me want to keep on going,
(21:10):
just to see where he might lead. So you figure
out what they have, You expanded the best, the best
you can try to work, and then you worked all
about funny out who you are. Isn't that life in general?
But it's it's really true. But it's and I think
it's the key to life, you know, and finding, you know,
that combination of what you do best and what you
(21:30):
love the most, right, what you enjoy the most, because
that's what you're going to want to practice right. If
you're doing a style of music that you don't like,
you're not going to want to practice it right. So
it becomes meaningless, like like they'll tell me, oh, so
and so tried to get me to blank blink, Like
I go, that's not what you want to do. Then
you're you're really trying to fit up a square pain
around the whole. Right, you've got to have some kind
(21:52):
of love or passion for it, right has to. This
entire season has been mainly about the effects that coaches have.
We haven't talked much about why they do what they do.
There's lots of reasons someone might decide their passion is
to sing, but passion for helping others learn to sing.
It's hard to explain sometimes, but you know, you feel
(22:16):
like you are getting as much as you are giving,
like to see the improvement, to see people get excited.
All of that it comes back at you like a rush,
like a rush of adrenaline. Really is what it is.
Or to see someone complimented, or if you read a
good review. I would never say, oh, I take credit
(22:38):
for that. I don't feel that, but I know I
had something to do with it. I was a part
of it, and that just and it makes me so
happy for that person. One day I asked Eric how
he became a coach with a completely straight face. He
said that it had all started in the fifth grade.
This show can't seem to move on from the fifth grade,
(22:58):
but such as life. By the time he got to
the fifth grade, Eric loved music but didn't get much
encouragement from his parents. Then his class stage of music,
just as mine had. The most popular boy in aris
class wanted to play the lead, but he didn't know
how to sing. He knew because I was playing the
(23:21):
piano in the morning, you know, for the kids to
sing the Star Spangled Banner, America the Beautiful, And he said,
I want to audition. And meanwhile, by the way, we're
talking at like a ten minute skit. It wasn't a
big thing. But to us, you know, when you're that
age and you're in a school, you're surrounded by people
who really matter to you, all those classmates, and there's
(23:42):
so many hierarchies and levels and all of that going on.
So he was popular, he was athletic, he was, you know,
all the positive things you could be for boy in
the fifth grade, and or I guess in any grade really,
And so he said, can you teach me this song?
And I said sure. So we walked home. My house
(24:04):
was probably twenty five minutes from the school. He walked
home with me and I sat at the piano and
I taught him the song and we went over and
over and over it. That bonded us forever. You know what.
We didn't sit at the same table and lunch whatever,
but whenever I would see him from that time on
(24:25):
until graduating high school, we were walking down the hall,
he'd give me that nod, I'd give him that nod,
like we had that bond. It was amazing. It was
a really special thing we had between us. And so
Eric just started to help other kids who needed to sing.
He didn't really think of it as a job until
one day when he was in college, a classmate auditioned
(24:46):
for a Broadway show. She offered to pay Eric to
help her. After that, he built an entire career on
word of mouth. People just heard about this guy's rare
coaching gift and called him up. He never really had
to market himself or push himself on others. They found him,
what did it feel like You're gonna yawn? Credible space
(25:07):
to back your throw all these strange sounds. I spend
an hour every day making them. I ask him why
I'm doing them, and he sort of explains but sort
of doesn't, or rather all of his explanations boiled down
(25:29):
to a single persuasive sentence. Just follow my lead the
way everyone else is done, and I'll get you there.
Practice really truly, bet Middler again, my fellow singer. This
is ther only piece of advice to me. The more
you do it, the better you're going to get. There's
no question. There is absolutely no question you will improve.
(25:51):
The more you do it, the better you get, and
you find the secrets you find. Well, he told me
to do it that way. I can't quite do it
that way, but I can do it this way, and
it's a pretty good sound, So I like him. My
question to you is, how do you sound? How do
you like yourself singing? That was a good question, and
(26:13):
I was still avoiding the answer. Let's start with a tongue,
making sure to connect to your breathing muscles. You're gonna
take deep ruts in and you're gonna sing that. I
(26:36):
try it. I try everything very good. Now try it
with the lip bubbly and see if you can do it. Yeah,
don't worry about it. Don't worry about it, I promise.
But I kept thinking of Bette Midler's question, how do
I like myself singing? The truth is I feel totally
disconnected from my own voice. I sing the way people
(26:58):
talk when they're trying to get a foreigner to understand them.
When it isn't working, I just do it again, louder.
I also sing with the feeling that something's about to
go drastically wrong, like I'm a five foot point guard
driving for a layup with a pair of seven footers
right behind me. So you're gonna go memo, memo, memo, memo, memo, memo, Mimo, memo, Mimo, Mimo, Mimo, memo, memo, Mimo.
(27:22):
Now rolling your head, memo, Mima. The music Man is
about a con man. He knows he's a fraud, but
he's happy in the role. I'm less. So wow, even
though Eric agrees to take me on as a student,
I start with one foot out the door, and I
think he kind of knows it. Okay. Good. Looking back
(27:49):
on all this, I see our relationship had a bunch
of stages. I can count five. You've already heard stage one.
He was just feeling each other out to decide if
there was any point of spending time together. Stage two
was Eric gradually taking control. But I only notice this
happening after I went back over the recordings of all
(28:12):
our sessions. It sounded better, Yeah, really really noticeably sounded better. Yeah.
I mean from a low baseline, but I noticed the difference. No,
that's great. I didn't give you the acid reflux diet.
Hot to look at you did? He had given me
the acid reflux a diet the first session. This long
list of stuff I was now encouraged to consume, plus
(28:35):
a longer list of things I shouldn't touch. No spicy foods,
no coffee, no alcohol. It seemed excessive. I mean, no
carbonated beverages. You did? Then? Why are you drinking carbonated
water in front of me? Oh my god? You caught it?
So because you know it's all I have. It's I'm
drinking up the remains. I hadn't bought any new ones,
(28:56):
but it was what, Okay, your family can't drink the perree? Allright? Busting.
I'm sorry. It won't happen again. Could always take a
bath in it. Yeah, that's what I'll do. I'll take
a back, right, I'll send it to you. Do you
have a dog, You could wash the dog with it.
I found that once I got my coach talking, I
(29:19):
could encourage him to keep going. Please do tell me
how to wash a dog in sparkling order. Yes, I
do very much want to hear what Joan Rivers once
said about her dog. So long as he was talking,
I didn't have to sing. I was creating a kind
of alibi that crime against music. No way I could
have committed it. I wasn't even present at the scene.
(29:41):
Feel like you're sighing. Make sure you support by using
your breathing muscles on that first note and put a
slight cry so to be more of a mey memai
may good. Now, I guarantee you if you start doing
it every day, that will get better and better. How
could it get worse? That is not true? All right now,
(30:06):
I want to do one keeping a nice and forward,
keeping your mouth loose and relaxed. Say yum yum, yum,
yum yum yum. Actually, before we go out further. I
know you're being funny, but I know there's always a
little truth in every little bit of humor. What I
want you to do is stop thinking of it as
(30:28):
not good, because as long as you do that, you'll
kind of keep it there, you know what I mean,
You'll always have a little bit of a sense. While
I'm not really a singer, I'm not really good. I
want you to start just thinking to yourself as a singer.
You're putting in the time, the effort, you're practicing. Why
wouldn't you get better? You know right? Anybody will get
(30:49):
better is something they put effort in, time and energy,
And so I want you to just start thinking to
yourself like a singer. He didn't miss much. He was
onto me. It's a defense mechanism, I know, but I
want you to drop it, all right. I want to
break through that defense because I really do think when
someone feels a little bit better and they tell themselves,
(31:12):
you know, self affirming thoughts, it really does make a difference.
All right, I won't do it anymore. Yeah, I want
you to really just think, yeah, this is better. His
will was just stronger than mine. At some point I
gave up and accepted that he was in charge. And
(31:32):
at that point I entered stage three of the coaching relationship.
Buy in actual, honest, buy in very good. And I
heard by Groat on that first note, whoa to do
that again? Who wa wa? Wa wa wa. Now aim
(31:52):
high on that last note, though, don't let it fall
back from your throat. I mean, who knows if I'm
actually getting better? I can't tell, but he's giving me
a feeling of movement. May may May May May may
may may May. So far, that's the briant, the best
you've sounded. Does it feel good? It feels really good. Yeah,
(32:14):
and I want you to really embrace it. Feel what
it feels like, listen to it because it sounds really good.
At some point into all of this, like after maybe
three months of weekly lessons and almost daily practice, it
occurred to me that one anxiety had been replaced by another.
(32:35):
I used to be anxious mostly about singing. Now I'm
anxious mostly about letting him down. I think we'll call
this stage four. So have you ever taken a ballet class? No?
I haven't, but I've been close to one. Okay, So
in ballet class quite often, you know, they talk about
(32:57):
getting in touch with and what's the word of connecting
to your center? Yep. We'll leave your abdominal muscles then, yep.
I'm kind of tight and squeezing your butt cheeks together yep, yep,
clanking in the back holding it. Ye, so that's why
they stand so straight. Yep, yep, Okay, that's clenching in
(33:20):
the bus and pulling your abdomino muscles can help you
with support. Now, I prevertical in front of back to
support because I don't want to be known as the
butt teacher. And I'm not recording it. He wasn't recording it,
but I was, Oh no, no no. So I can
tell you if I if I was able to sing
with my ass muscles, I'd be on Broadway, right, there's
(33:41):
ever going to be a Broadway again. Yeah, well that's
a that's a good point. Yeah. Anyway, Okay, getting back
to your bus. So I want you to put one
end on your abdominal muscles and you're gonna go to
a normal hiss pulling your abdomino munz of it, and
then you're going to add clenching your butt cheeks together. Okay,
so I'll so. But it just hissed and clenched my
(34:04):
butt cheeks while I'm doing it. You're going to do
normal ping of your abdomino muscles. Then you're gonna okay, gotcha, wow,
oh my god, it was like a howitzer. That's what
you're gonna do that behind us, You're going to seats
(34:27):
together and pulling your domino was gonna be liker. That
was like a nuke. It was also extremely weird, but
it was working, and it got us eventually to stage five.
I still didn't really like the way I sounded, but
I could see how one day I might like the
way I sounded. I was starting to have this entirely
(34:49):
new feeling because of this coach, and I sort of
confessed it directly to Bette Midler. I don't know if
you feel this way, but I found that once you
start singing, it's really hard to stop. That's great, you know,
do you know? You know you start saying you kind
of don't want to stop. So I find myself one
(35:09):
undering the streets after I've been doing a lesson singing,
and then I realize people are staring at me. Oh really,
Oh that's a sweet story. That's fantastic. I'm going to
try that. Now. How has your progress been with you
mentally thinking of yourself as a singer? Not bad? Good?
So that interference is gone, and I'm trying to talk
(35:30):
myself into this great great because I think that, you know,
then it becomes I don't want to say, an experiment,
maybe an exercise in not just singing in general, but
how powerful the mind can be to creating what it
is we want to create in our life. I agree. Okay, so,
(35:53):
but one hand on your chest, one hand on your
abdominal muscles. Take a deep, low breath and a long
steady It's not often that someone persuades you that you
can go to a place you've never been. It's intoxicating,
even for people who've been on most everywhere. And actually,
the most free thing about Eric is that he encourages
(36:15):
you to not make it sound beautiful and perfect, just
makes sense of it, like Emily Blunt makes sense of
the song. Let me hear the story, Tell me a story.
This is what's so elusive about coaching. How a gifted
coach can get you to shift the focus of your
attention so you're no longer singing a song. You're sort
(36:37):
of exploring who you are or might be. It hit
Bette Midler right away. You know what I have to
tell you this, This is a good story. When I
first care to Eric, I would come to Eric and
you don't know me, Michael, but I am. I'm a
very sad person. I mean, I can be hilarious, but
like many comics I am, I am like a tragic soul,
(37:02):
and I can be very hard on myself and very
hard on people around me. I'm sorry to admit that.
People I'm telling I'm letting you in. This coach knows stuff.
Stuff you never know that he knows. He knows what
you might be capable of. If you allow him to help,
you might already be world famous and headlining a Vegas show.
(37:23):
You also, at the same time might be hating yourself
and making life miserable for your coach. And he came
(37:43):
to my opening night, and you know what he told me,
Like years later, he said to me, when that curtain
(38:04):
went up and you came up, I didn't reckon you
are you were so full of joy as life and
color and fun and you're such a bust. Recognize she's
(38:28):
laughing so hard that you might not have heard what
her coach said to her. You were so full of
joy and life and color and fun, and you're such
a bitch. She loved that he said it then and
obviously still loves it now. Oh my god, the poor guy,
(38:49):
because I am intense and he is he just never
let me go? So yes, he helped me over. He
helped me, He helped me over an enormous he helped
me climb an enormous mountain, an enormous mountain. You've given
me something. That's why I had to come. I don't
(39:09):
recall giving oh, yes, something beautiful. That's why I came back.
In fifth grade, after Eric Vitro realized he had this
gift for helping people learn how to sing, he began
to collect voices. They were a gallery in his mind.
He recalls the first acquisition when he saw a movie
(39:31):
called The Music Man, Oh B on the huge but
I never I didn't see it in the movie theater,
but it was on television one night, and I had
this little real to real tape recorders before there was
VHS tapes or anything, and I recorded the whole thing
(39:55):
so I could listen to it again. I thought Shirley
Jones had such a beautiful voice. I used to play
it over and over, her singing till there was you,
the songs she sings at the end and at the footbridge.
I thought it was so beautiful that was you. It
may have been Eric's first experience of paying really close
(40:16):
attention to someone else's voice, just studying it, and it
was ironic that you became It was her teacher for years,
for like ten years, you know, and we became very close.
That was a rare false note for Eric Vitro. It
doesn't feel at all ironic to me that Shirley Jones,
(40:36):
star of the Music Man, would one day call Eric
and ask for his help. It feels like his destiny
to help her and maybe me too. So before we
sing Lyda Rose, You're chosen song to heal the wound
of your child? What are you going to think? What
(40:57):
am I going to think? Well? I think probably the
best spirit to sing it in is a slightly comic seduction. Okay,
it's like an ironic seduction. Okay, So that's the tone.
That's good, that's the overall tone, and and it's it's
(41:18):
it's sort of like, yeah, Light of Rose, I could
understand if you don't want to get married at the
end of this, but I'm giving him my best shot. Okay, Great,
So it's an irresponsible, uh love song? Great, all right,
So let's sing through Light a Rose, Light a Rose,
(41:41):
I'm home again Rose to get the sun back in
the sky, Light a Rose, I am home again Rose,
about a thousand kisses shine ding dong ding. I can
hear the chapel bill chime, ding dong ding at the
(42:06):
least suggestion, Oh up the question, light a Rose, I'm
home again Rose, without a sweetheart to my name, Light
a Rose? How everyone knows that I'm hoping you're the same.
So here is my love song, not fancy or fine,
(42:34):
Light a Rose. Oh, won't you be mind? I'm Michael Lewis.
Thanks for listening to Against the Rules. Against the Rules
(42:54):
is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. The show's produced
by Audrey Dilling and Catherine Girodo, with research assistance from
Lydia Jeancott and Zooe Wynn. Our editor is Julia Barton.
Mel o'bell is our executive producer. Our theme was composed
by Nick Brittell, with additional scoring by Stellwagen Siphonette. We
(43:15):
got fact checked by Beth Johnson. Our show was recorded
by tofur Ruth and Trey Schultz at Northgate Studios in Berkeley.
As always, thanks to Pushkin's founders, Jacob Weisberg and Malcolm Gladwell.
(43:46):
So my last question and then we can get onto
the lesson. If you want to get into the lesson,
Is any anyone you ever worked with ask you so
much about yourself as you Most of the time people
are here just to learn, so they don't really ask
that much about me. Yeah, the dury, little big You're
(44:09):
always the most interesting person in the room, but you're
paying attention to everybody else. I don't know if that's true,
but I am paying attention, and you know, I'm sure
you find this too. It's really more interesting to be
the person listening to the other people because I know
my own story. I've gotta feel the same way.
Host
Michael Lewis
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