Justin Bieber (5 page)

Tom really took our vision on and designed a crazy cool opening for the touring show, and I don’t want to give any of the surprises away, but I get to sort of emerge from the fog and slam into “Love Me.” The show’s opening makes me sound like a bad-ass.

Back in 1996, Mom says I was all about the beat. And I suppose that makes sense. Before anything else, you gotta have rhythm. She loved pop music and played the radio loud when we were in the car. At home, she’d crank her stereo listening to Boyz II Men or Michael Jackson. I’d wail on whatever was handy – pots and pans, plastic bowls, tables and chairs – with whatever else was handy. Like a spoon or the phone or my fists. She got me a little toy drum kit, probably to keep me from destroying the place, and
I hammered on that until people started noticing I was actually laying down a pretty sick beat.

My mom is an absolute sweetheart who has this vivacious, goofy personality, so there were always a lot of interesting, artsy people hanging around our place. I think artsy people who can’t afford to go anywhere tend to hang out in the living room of the coolest person, playing guitars and talking about philosophy or whatever, and that’s the living room I grew up in. (I guess I just also realized that with my mom being single, a lot of those guys were probably hitting on her, but again: freakout factor. Not gonna go there.)

At the church my mom went to, there was a lot of music during worship, and most of it was backed by a contemporary praise band. The people in the band were friends, and, while we were hanging out with them, sometimes the percussionist would let me play with the various noisemakers. When he saw that I wanted to play – not just play – he’d let me sit on his knee while he played on the drum kit, and, after a while, he handed me the sticks and let me have a go at it.

By the time I was four or five, I could climb up on the stool and play the kit all by myself, and, about that same time, I discovered I could get up on the piano bench and pound on that, too.

Much to everyone’s surprise, it started sounding like actual music.

So here might be a good place to stop and say that if there’s an annoying little kid in your life – a little brother or some kid you babysit for – who wants to make noise and pretend to play music, I hope you’ll put up with him. Because, at some point, he won’t be playing anymore. He’ll be
playing.
Kids have to be allowed to do things they’re no good at. How else are they supposed to learn?

And, while you’re at it, you have to let yourself do stuff you’re not good at. Don’t get hung up on what other people think about what you’re doing. Dare to be a sucky skateboarder or a lousy video editor or a completely crappy golfer. If we do only the stuff we’re good at, we never learn anything new. Think of all the
great possibilities in life that pass by because we’re too chicken to explore them and risk looking like a loser. Screw the haters who have nothing better to do than make fun of people who are brave enough to put themselves out there. Get out of your comfort zone and go for it. You never know unless you try.

‘Nuff said. Back to when I was five.

I was actually getting to be pretty good on the drums, and not too heinous on the piano. Mom and one of her musician friends Nathan McKay, who my grandparents called “the Lion King” because of his big, bushy beard, decided that I needed a real drum set of my very own. Nathan, aka “the Lion King,” and a bunch of his friends pulled together a little benefit event at a local bar, where they played music and collected donations to buy me my first real trap set with a kick drum, floor toms, snare, hi-hat and boom cymbal. I went crazy on it. Now Mom had to crank the stereo loud enough for me to play along.

Some of the church band people were playing at the fair that summer, and they invited me to play drums with them, but I was so little that the emcee couldn’t see me sitting there ready to play. He was like, “Well, I see you guys brought a drum set, but where’s the drummer?” I gave him a little tasty
lick – ba-dum-bum-chhh! – and he stretched to see me back there behind the cymbal boom. Then he goes to the audience, “You won’t believe this. No way! There’s a little guy back there with his hat on backwards.”

I kept playing and getting better over the next couple of years. It got to be 2000, 2001, and you know what that means.

Beyoncé.

Destiny’s Child blew up out of Houston and killed everybody with “Survivor” and “Bootylicious.” That same year, I heard Alicia Keys’ “Fallin’,” and I still can’t get enough of that song. Usher murdered “U Remind Me.” Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliot did that crazy cool video for “Get Ur Freak On,” and there was that insane remake of “Lady Marmalade” by Christina Aguilera, Lil’ Kim, Mya and Pink. Plus, we heard from Outkast, Nelly, Uncle Kracker, Mary J. Blige – all in all, it was a very good year for music.

When I was six, I started first grade at Jeanne Sauvé Catholic School in Stratford, but after school I was banging on those drums and getting my musical education on the radio. I was also figuring things out on the piano. I couldn’t read music (I was just beginning to read books), and Mom couldn’t afford lessons for me, but I knew what I wanted the music to sound like. I could feel it when the chords and melody didn’t fit together, the same way you can feel it when your shoes are on the wrong feet. I just kept poking and experimenting until it fit the way I wanted it to. When I listened to music in church, I could feel those harmonies hanging in the air like humidity. It wasn’t an issue of learning it exactly: it was more as if the music soaked in through my skin. I don’t know how else to explain it.

As soon as I was big enough to get my arms around a guitar, I started figuring that out, too. You have to build up strength in your hands, and, until you build calluses on your fingertips, it feels like razor blades. That probably discourages a lot of people. They start out thinking, “Hey, playing guitar would be fun. And it looks pretty easy.” After thirty minutes or so, they’re like, “Ow! This really hurts.” And they forget about how much fun it was supposed to be and give up.

The thing is, if you keep on it, you get used to it pretty fast, and then you just keep plugging away at it while you’re watching TV or waiting for supper. Or sitting in your room because you’re
grounded for mouthing off. But we don’t need to go into that. The point is, I played guitar because it was fun, and, by the time I was eight or nine, I was all right.

The best times were when my dad was one of the people hanging out playing guitar in our living room. He wasn’t a big fan of pop music. He was more into classic rock and heavy metal. He taught me some stuff like “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and a few other Dylan songs, turned me onto Aerosmith, Metallica, and Guns N’ Roses, which got me listening to (and showing respect for) the legends like Jimi Hendrix and Eddie Van Halen. My dad taught me how to play “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple, and I still remember it. (You should hear Dan Kanter and me kill that thing.)