Recently, as I was packing up my things, I was distracted by finding some old journals. As it turns out, I had written a rather extensive journal entry about my audition. Admittedly, most of it was pure cringe when read over a decade later. Despite this, I pieced it together into something that would tell my side of the encounter. At the same time, I spare myself the embarrassment of releasing the meandering dear-diary drivel that the neurotic and self-deprecating fan-boy I once was wrote in the spring of 2010. Thankfully, I’ve done a considerable amount of growing up since then.
Probably nobody cares, and if that’s you, you’re welcome to stop reading here. That is, after all, why I hide my side of the story in the comments of my code. I don’t mind being invisible; I have never been one to long for the limelight.
The reason I want to share this is that, honestly, I don’t have the same view of Micke at that audition as Axel. Yes, I thought they were laughing at me, and yes, it did little to ease my anxiety. While that was a bit rude, they were otherwise very kind to me.
Outside the S:t Eriksplan station exit I stood, struggling to get my bearings, and clutching the handle on my guitar bag so tightly I feared my fingers might fall off. Already I’d lost all feeling in them. In my imagination they’d gone white and numb, devoid of blood flow, fast becoming useless jiggly rubber-digits. What a nightmare that would be, to arrive at my audition with wiggling maggot-nubs! The ease with which I could envision that probably calls my sanity into question. However, considering the circumstances, for once, my rampant anxiety made some degree of sense.
I swung the bag multiple times, attempting to force the blood flow. It was so bulky and I was so scrawny back then that it nearly swung me. As I started toward the rehearsal studio, I glanced at my phone and realised I was far too early. Which was good because my mind was spinning so maniacally that I felt faint. Every single solitary cell in my body was vibrating in sync, creating friction and threatening to kick off a chain reaction; fission maybe? Finally, I located a nearby bench and forced myself to sit.
‘Get a grip, Kåre,’ I told myself. ‘You came all the way from Malmö for this moment; you’ve waited most of your life for this. Just remember to breathe, for Christ’s sake, breathe, but not so much that you hyperventilate, and everything will be fine.’
My sister had dared me to send in an audition video and when a dare didn’t work, she bribed me to do so by offering to buy me the Rickenbacker bass guitar I wanted in the event I was called in to a physical audition. I followed through, if for no other reason than to appease her, with zero expectations for it to go anywhere. It was a long shot; I assumed I had nothing to offer them. I’d only ever been in one other band, after all, a terrible emo band that thankfully left no lingering traces on the internet. And as far as I was concerned, I wasn’t even an interesting person yet.
While it’s news to me that Micke called me ‘the kid’, I still thought of myself as a kid in many ways. ‘What the hell would Axel Lundén and Micke Berg want with a kid?’ I wondered. He probably had every big-shot session guy in town auditioning. And me. The only twenty-one-year-old with the audacity to show up. At least I was a good bassist. At that point, I had already been playing for eleven years. I reckoned that was a good deal longer than most others my age.
Axel... I had actually met him once previously, at a Nauru record signing. My father escorted me in 2004, the last year he was alive. I was so nervous when it was my turn in line that I froze.
“What’s your name?” he asked me as he uncapped his sharpie and held it poised over the surface of my CD-sleeve. I hesitated. He blinked at me, laughed and asked me again, “You do have a name, don’t you?”
I had glanced over my shoulder and met the eyes of my father, who nodded encouragingly. Softly, I said, “It’s Kåre.”
“Are you sure of that?” Axel chuckled as he signed. “You don’t sound very sure.”
I nodded and stood there grinning as he signed my record; I grinned like I’d never grinned in my entire life, I grinned and my face hurt for hours afterward. He handed me back my CD. “Thank you,” I managed to spit out. “Thank you so much.”
Looking back on it now, I find it hilarious; endearing even.
But on audition day, a part of me hoped Axel wouldn’t remember that version of me, broken as I was. And of course, he didn’t remember. I was one mortified fan among many.
Suddenly it occurred to me that perhaps I was shaking because I had eaten nothing since I boarded the bus five hours earlier. With some reluctance, I ducked into the ICA across the way, and then it began. There were too many options, and with all of them weighed up against each other, it’s damn near impossible to make any sort of sound decision.
With just crackers I’d have to consider: Do they have palm oil? How much fat is in those? No, you’re not supposed to… yeah, but trans fat… no, shut up. Well, what’s the cheapest then? What brand has the best ethical standards? The least plastic packaging? How many ca… no. Fuck it, try something else already! Then I’d move on to the next thing and the next until I found the one thing that could clear the endless hurdles my chronic compulsions would throw in the way. It could take forever. It overwhelmed me. Often, I’d leave empty-handed, sometimes in tears.
‘You’re fixating on this to distract from what you’re really afraid of, which is the audition,’ the more sensible side of me, my internalised psychologist I guess you could say, reasoned. ‘If you stand here focused on trivialities, it will either cause you to give up and go to the audition woozy with hypoglycaemia or to miss it entirely. Stop sabotaging yourself.’
What I honestly wanted to do was to turn around and go home. Why did I bother to come all this way? What did I believe would happen?
I figured I would simply write it off later as a nice memory… or, possibly, the worst day of my life. That wasn’t out of the question.
My phone rang, and it startled me at first, until I realised it was only my sister. “Hi, Kåre! Did you make it to Stockholm in one piece?”
“What do you think? Of course I’m nervous! I’m shaking!” Concerned that my voice was too loud, I caught the eye of a fellow shopper and then looked down at the dusty creases in my worn out combat boots, ashamed.
“How much longer until your audition?”
“In a little under an hour,” I told her. “I’ll be fine, Ebba, seriously.”
“You’re a great bass player, remember that.” Ebba knows how I can be. She knew how my thoughts could get stuck in a relentless, miserable, self-deprecating loop.
“I was thinking that I shouldn’t have come.”
“Don’t you dare leave, Kåre. You’re going to nail it,” she said, without a trace of doubt in her voice. But then, she is my big sister. She would never doubt me, even in the David and Goliath scenario I was about to face. Although perhaps that’s an unfortunate analogy. I certainly wasn’t aiming to take out poor Axel’s only good eye. “Besides, they invited you,” she continued. “It’s not as if you showed up unannounced. They asked you to come there! If you don’t get it, think: you’re auditioning for one of your favourite musicians. How many people can say they’ve done that?”
“Not many.” I breathed in deeply and it seemed I could never get enough oxygen to fill my lungs.
I could see that one coming a mile away. She’s worse than a mother. Actually, she’s twelve years my elder and has been more mother to me than the woman who birthed me. “If I eat, I’ll throw up. I’m that nervous.”
“I’m working on it. I have to hang up if you want me to have time, you know.”
“Okay. Call me when it’s over.” Then she slipped in a last pep talk before I could hang up. “You will be great. So tell those crappy voices in your head to shut the fuck up because you got this. You are incredibly talented. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, I hear you.” I smiled, embarrassed as I was listening to my sister gush about her baby brother. “But you are biased.”
“She’s your girlfriend. She’s equally biased.”
Ebba sighed. “I love you, but I can’t win with you. Go eat.”
“Yeah, yeah. I love you too.”
I rolled my eyes and uttered on a sigh, “I am.” She always forced me to do that.
I hung up and slid the phone back into the pocket of my jacket. Her pep talk helped. I stopped quivering in my boots. And her interruption created the momentary break from all the noise in my head that I required to decide what I wanted. Or, more accurately, what I could tolerate. I grabbed an energy bar, paid, and picked at it as I headed toward my destination.
Standing in front of Axel Lundén’s rehearsal space, I was struggling to believe I was there, let alone that I had his fucking mobile phone number in my contacts, that I could just casually send him a text: “Hey, I’m your next audition. Standing outside.” As I waited for him to fetch me, I felt as if everything inside of my skin was about to come foaming out of my mouth like a baking-soda volcano in science class.
‘You’re not that good at bass.’ That cruel voice I was constantly working to banish was all that erupted from me, albeit in my mind. ‘You’re about to make a fool of yourself. You’ll probably forget all the songs, the fucking idiot you are. The second you open your mouth, you’re bound to say something idiotic. Or maybe you won’t be able to say anything at all.’
I took another deep breath. I needed to shut that down before it broke me down.
‘I worked very hard to come to where I am at this moment.’ This became my mantra. ‘I worked very hard to reach where I am at this moment.’ Repeat… repeat…
The metal door swung abruptly open, Axel Lundén’s grinning face peeked around it, and I can’t imagine what the look on my face must have been like because when he saw me standing there, surely the picture of nerves in a bind, he smiled disarmingly and reached out to shake my hand. “Hi, I’m Axel!” he introduced himself, as if I didn’t know that. “You must be Kåre?” All I could do was nod in response. Well, at least that time he said it before I could stumble over it.
“Well.” He held the door open for me. “Come on in. Micke’s waiting for us upstairs.”
I felt pretty insubstantial following in his wake. His aura radiated out and filled the entire hall. Or maybe I imagined it. After all, I had a lot of expectation built up around this encounter. He has an odd gait; I noticed it for the first time as I trailed behind. Also, he was taller than I imagined he would be. I followed him up a flight of stairs and down another longer, darker corridor. As we walked, I could hear other bands rehearsing behind closed doors, other worlds beyond them. I listened closely, wondering if I might recognise any of them. You never know.
Axel slid his key into the door of the second to last room at the end of the long corridor, and after jiggling it in just the right way, let us in. Micke leapt up immediately from where he was lounging on the couch with a beer bottle in hand and flashed his wide, friendly grin.
“Hey, welcome.” He held out his hand; I shook it. “Can I grab you a beer?” he asked. “Otherwise we’ve got... didn’t we get some Coke or something, Axel? We only drink beer around here, because what kind of band drinks Coke… without rum, anyway? Oh Jesus, Axel, it smells to high hell in this fridge again!” Micke spoke a mile a minute; I remember how I could barely keep up with his nonstop banter. Now I understand why.
“That’s because you spilled something in there a week ago and left it that way,” Axel informed him.
“Well… yeah. Probably. Certainly sounds like a thing I would do.” Micke reached in and pulled out the bottles while making a face of disgust. “Man, I suck!”
“A beer is fine,” I interjected softly as I unzipped my gig bag and extracted the new Rickenbacker 4003S Ebba made good on. The bass I still play to this day. “I like your hair,” I added, noticing that he had changed it since I saw Attax play live several months prior. Then I kicked myself perpetually because I had no clue why I had to say it just then. Probably nerves.
But instead of responding directly to my awkward compliment, he spun toward Axel as he cracked open our beers with his key ring. “Alright, look, Axel, you win. It’s better than the green hair; enough people have said so at this point.”
“I didn’t mean…” I tried to jump in. But Micke caught my eye and gave me a furtive smile, shaking his head.
“It looked like you crawled out of a sewer,” Axel mumbled, reaching out to accept the beer from him. “He insisted on wearing red all the time, Kåre. It was a… year-round Christmas explosion! Truly tasteless, Micke…”
Micke pretended to toss the bottle at Axel before politely handing it over. “You’re a grinch.”
“Excuse me, you were the one with green hair!”
Listening to them spar with each other was oddly calming. They were both so casual, as if I was already a part of their inner circle. Some people might call them unprofessional, but this was what I needed, not a jury with a camera and two guys sitting on a chair, staring me down in dead silence.
In a moment of sheer irony, Axel then asked, “Is it okay with you if we record you with our camera? We’ve had a lot of auditions and after a while, they all blend together, if you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, sure. Of course.” So much for no camera, no jury.
I noticed how Micke leaned close in on Axel to whisper in his ear. Axel hissed something back, and Micke nearly fell over from the combination of laughter and the gentle shove Axel gave him. I speculated that they were already drunk for the day. Reputation said probably.
The comfort quickly faded. ‘God, what if they’re laughing about me?’ When that thought occurred to me, I instantly resumed panicking. Maybe there was something in my hair, or, God forbid, stuck in my teeth? Or perhaps they thought it was hilarious that I entertained the idea of having a chance at this.
To my relief, they apologised shortly thereafter and pulled themselves together. Micke plopped down behind his drum kit, Axel strapped on his guitar, and they were nothing but business. Well, Axel anyway.
“Your demo video showed promise,” Axel complimented me as he tuned his guitar, wrinkling his nose when he heard how out of tune it was. Once he corrected it, I hastily checked my tuning against his.
“Yeah, it showed a lot,” Micke chuckled to himself as he adjusted his crash cymbal. A fresh wave of terror gripped me again as I envisioned my fly having been open in the video I submitted. That would be just my luck.
Axel shook his finger at him and snapped, “Shut up. I will kill you.” Then he turned back toward me and smiled. “Please ignore him.” Then, through his teeth as he gave Micke side-eye, he added, “Micke is a child.”
“What?” He smirked and twirled his right drumstick like a baton. Then, I think he muttered, “It showed me a whole new side of you.”
Axel rolled his eyes and followed his own advice, turning his back to Micke and returning his attention to me. “What were you thinking of playing with us today?”
I drank from my beer, seeing as how I needed it desperately at that point. “‘Jagged Teeth’ maybe? And ‘Mirror’ if we have time?” Quickly, I raced through all the memory cues for the songs. Sure, I could have walked through any of the bass lines in a coma. But my pulse was racing and there was a camera pointed right at me and only me.
“Sounds like some decent choices.” Axel nodded. “We’ll have time. You’re our last appointment today.”
“‘Jagged Teeth’ is my favourite,” I told him, then had to fight the powerful urge to berate myself yet again for more anxiety-driven ass-kissing, although I was only being honest.
But Axel merely smiled, thanked me and said, “Well, we’ll play that first, then.”
The next thing I knew, before I could respond, Micke was clicking off the beat. My fingers went into automatic mode, and I became lost in the zone close to immediately, tossed into the deep end as I was. I felt like I was treading water for dear life. Within moments, while still aware of what I was doing, I was no longer there. The music lifted me up over the room and I was hovering outside of myself, watching little nobody me playing bass with fucking them. It all should have been more than that younger, vastly more fragile Kåre Jansson could handle, but as long as I hovered outside of my skin from a bird’s-eye view, it would be fine. Save for the fact that my legs were shaking so hard that they occasionally threatened to pull me back down to earth. I hoped they wouldn’t notice that and instead observe how I was practiced and professional.
It’s sad when I recall how I couldn’t really be present. If I wasn’t preoccupied with being hypercritical of myself, I was too busy being out-of-body to truly savour the moment.
Now and then Axel’s voice would drop out and he would stand there simply playing guitar, observing me, listening intently as he bobbed his head to the beat. I hoped that my personal embellishments weren’t too much, that he wasn’t the type who insists that his band play everything exactly as on the recording. Judging from the live shows I’d been at, he didn’t seem the type, and so I took the chance, while still being mindful not to noodle. And although Micke was playing the songs at the wrong tempo, I couldn’t help but think, ‘Hey, I may even nail this audition.’ It was going off without a glitch.
Before I realised, it was over. The room was still. Axel stood there, nodding. His eyes briefly met Micke’s and narrowed. Micke snorted. I sensed they were trying hard not to burst out laughing again. It was unbearable.
“You’re pretty good.” Micke at last broke the silence with some words of encouragement and a friendly smile. He stood and offered his hand to me once more over the drum kit, as if in congratulations, and I shook it. “I gotta confess, that was definitely among our better ones today.”
Axel took a swig of beer, set the bottle down, and stepped forward slightly. “I have a good feeling about you.” Micke snorted again, but Axel paid him no attention. “I think you could work out.”
“Hey, Axel, before you marry the guy, maybe we should review the other auditions, right?” Micke cut in, rolling his eyes.
Axel ignored him. “You don’t have to head back on the train soon, do you?” he asked me. “You came out here from…?”
“Malmö,” I tell him. “And no, I have a lot of time to kill before… the bus. I took the bus.”
“How would you feel about relocating to Stockholm?” He asked, and my heart hopped directly into my throat.
“Well, I’d do it without question if I get this gig.” I shrugged and finished my beer. Really, I could have used another. I wished to disappear; I was quite possibly on the verge of disintegrating into a puddle and sloshing over the edge of my boots. I hoped I didn’t sound too eager, tripping over myself to give just the right response.
“Alright.” Axel tilted his head slightly. “You look pretty young. How old are you, again?” Micke suddenly emitted a sound like he was deflating, and Axel shot him yet another dirty look.
“Twenty-one. People always say I look younger than I am.”
“Aren’t you at university?”
“Computer Science,” I said. “I’m done next month.”
“Don’t worry. It’s fine.” Axel assured me. “This is probably a question I’m not allowed to ask, but um, there’s no boyfriend back home or… or girlfriend? No, actually don’t answer that. Sorry.”
Micke lost it completely after that. He literally collapsed over his snare drum in a fit of laughter. I frowned and stared at him, attempting to interpret what was going on and failing.
“What?” Axel chuckled softly. “I’m trying to see if anything might come in the way of his moving across the country.” To me, he said, “I’m really, really sorry. Micke and I had a... um…”
Micke broke in and saved him: “We had a terrible audition right before yours and I haven’t been able to keep a straight face ever since. But hey, next to that guy, you look awesome! I’m certain Axel agrees.” He cleared his throat and quickly regained composure. “I’m sorry… Kåre was it? I apologise for being so obnoxious. It’s been a long day for us. And please… as Axel told you: always, always ignore me. I’m an asshole.”
“Exactly. What he said.” Axel leaned over the kit toward Micke, and they spoke in hushed tones. I wasn’t at all able to interpret what they were saying, but suddenly Axel announced, “We’re gonna step out into the hallway for a second. Okay?”
“Yeah, sure.” I said. But no, it was not okay. My heart was galloping. I was certain I was on the edge of death, that I was on the brink of a cardiac arrest and when they returned, I would be face-down on the floor. Wouldn’t even be the first time.
Axel placed his guitar on its stand, and then he approached and placed his hand on my shoulder reassuringly. “Hey, relax. Everything is fine. I just need to discuss something with him. You did great. Would you like another beer?”
Somehow, that light touch on my shoulder helped. This wave of calm flooded from his fingertips, filled up my chest, spilled over into the rest of my body and at last I could properly breathe. He stooped down, grabbed a beer for me from the stinky fridge, cracked it open, killed the camera, and they disappeared behind the door.
I unplugged and collapsed onto the couch with my bass and my beer, staring at the poster of Johnny Rotten nailed to a cross on the wall, beside a poster for The Cure’s ‘Boys Don’t Cry’, both of them encircled in white Christmas lights. That was perfectly representative of the two of them. Two disparate entities that sparkle and shine in near proximity.
There I was, hugging my bass for dear life, waiting for Axel’s judgment to come down… I don’t know what not getting that gig would have done to me. It might have crushed me to a fine powder. Or perhaps I would have walked away, happy to have had the chance.
A few minutes later, there came a knock at the door. I rose from where I sat and opened it.
“We always get locked out,” Micke sighed. “You should get used to that.”
I should get used to that? Did he actually say that? What did this mean?
“Well... um, so…” Axel clapped his hands together and bit his lip, looking up at the ceiling as if he was continuing to mull it over. He seemed nervous. I still don’t know why on earth he would have been nervous. “Would you like to hang around a little while longer and maybe go through some more songs? Do you know more songs than those two?” He looked me right in the eyes and I felt a jolt that caused me to blink hard.
“Ah, I — I know all of them. I even know a lot of the Nauru songs.” Now I was truly blushing, having revealed myself as the ultra mega fanboy I was. In actuality, it was a boon to them. They wouldn’t have to teach me anything. I was ready to walk on stage the next day.
Axel only smiled. “Okay, well, let’s give it a shot and see how things go. What do you prefer to do next?”
My mind went blank, and I cringed. “I don’t know. You call the shots. It’s your band.”
“Well, now it’s your band, too. I mean, if you still want in after putting up with this fool.” He glanced over in Micke’s direction. “Unfortunately for you, I can’t kick him out. I don’t have the heart.”
My mouth tumbled open. I stood there staring at Axel for a second, the tips of my fingers pressed together in a peak, as if I were praying. Then, once it really sunk in, I began pacing the floor wildly, tugging at the roots of my hair on autopilot. “I-I got the gig?” My mouth was ajar as I looked Axel directly in the eye. “I got the gig.”
“We’ll start off on a trial basis, but I’d say yes. Indeed,” he nodded. “You got the gig.”
I wasn’t expecting to be told right on the spot. I envisioned a polite phone call where I would most likely thank him, hang up and cry my eyes out for a couple of days. Possibly months. Or I would, far less likely, hang up and scream and jump up and down for several years. I certainly couldn’t do that in their presence.
Surprised as I was, I found I was wobbling on my feet, just trying to contain myself. But slowly, a grin spread across my face. “Can I step outside and call my sister? I’ll be quick about it. She’s waiting to hear how this went and she’s going to freak out if she doesn’t hear from me,” I explained.
“Sure,” Axel shrugged. “Just knock when you want to come back in.”
I slipped off my bass, carefully laid it down on the couch, and stepped out into the darkened hall. My heart was pounding as I leaned back against the bare brick wall. My life was about to change dramatically and I understood that. As I dialled Ebba, I stared at the phone in my hand until she answered and nearly fumbled and dropped it as soon as she did.
“You what?” I can’t really blame her for not hearing me. My voice was nearly a whisper.
“I got it. I got the gig.”
“You got it?!” she shrieked. “See? What did I tell you? They chose you over all those other people.”
“And you deserve it, Kåre,” she insisted. “You live for this. Everything you tell yourself in your stupid head stops now. Okay?” I nodded my head again. “Hello, are you there?”
“Yeah. I’m here. But I need to go back. I only left for a second to call you.” I dabbed at the corners of my eyes with the sleeve of my jacket, afraid I might ruin the makeup I did so meticulously that morning. “Thank you for daring me to do this. For insisting. I owe everything to you.”
“Nonsense. You earned this. You owe me nothing,” she said. Just to annoy me, she asked me again, “Anyway, who’s the best?”
“You’re the best,” I said, and ended the call before she could complain. Then I took a deep breath and rapped on the door.
For the record, the selfie was also Micke’s idea. I didn’t dare ask.
I must confess that now, as I return to my packing, I can’t help but feel like… maybe I’m actually the worst.
