Yeah Yeah Yeahs lead singer Karen O, already with a legendary reputation for wild onstage antics and her vocal stylings, is not your typical KA role model
By Jimmy Lee
Photographs by Eric Sueyoshi
About halfway into their set, Yeah Yeah Yeahs front woman Karen O slinks around to the back of the stage, leans against the wall, then serenely swigs from her bottle of Heineken, while guitarist Nick Zinner and drummer Brian Chase kick in to the next song with a gentle rumble.
Is she taking a break?
For the last half-hour, the stage of the Henry Fonda Theater in Hollywood has served as Karen’s personal playground, with her shouting, prancing, goose-stepping and jumping around like some hyperactive child who has missed her entire last month’s dosage of Ritalin. Plus, she’s all wet - a mixture of sweat for her efforts, but more from the beer that’s being flung at her by friend Christian Joy and others, and the water she periodically pours on herself and the audience.
But now her face is set in an impenetrable glare. Maybe she’s wondering whether these fans will like the garage-rock band’s first full-length album, “Fever To Tell,” due out in a few weeks on Interscope Records?
Or maybe she’s just surveying the sold-out, 1,200-capacity crowd in the middle of headlining a national tour, calculating the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ next move for taking over rock fans’ ears and hearts.
As Nick’s slashing riffs and Brian’s insistent drumming gathers volume, Karen resumes her place front and center and belts out more songs - most of them about lust, love and sex - offering everything from orgasmic moans to ear-damaging shrieks. She holds the mic with her teeth, sans hands, and lets out some blood-curdling screams. The next thing you know she’s writhing on the stage floor.
You need only witness this scene to understand why the Brooklyn-based Yeah Yeah Yeahs are one of the most electrifying rock acts today. They even triggered an old-fashioned bidding war among the major record labels who courted the band with fat contracts. In fact, one record exec was quoted in the press as saying “the bidding for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs got so out of hand and so pricey that it made a lot of us feel really poor.”
And the hype following in the trio’s wake is pervasive. The band has been plastered all over the music rags - i.e. Rolling Stone, Spin, Fader - along with Vanity Fair and newspapers across the globe.
At the center of all this attention is Karen - her lyrics, her singing and her now-legendary onstage antics. Karen’s persona has rock critics’ creative juices bursting with flirty flavor. She’s been dubbed “the android sex queen of New York trash-flash” and a “punk rock baby doll.” And her look has been likened to “some sort of S&M Blondie.”
Christian Joy (left) and Karen being their devilish selves.
But she can also be described as Karen Orzolek, the only daughter of Chris and Munja Orzolek - born in South Korea to an American father of Polish descent and a Korean mother. And for aspiring Korean American artists, she is certifiable proof for those stodgy parents that a KA can tear the roof off while howling like some kind of banshee and be successful.
Right now, however, dressed in a bright green, yellow and fuchsia Super-Y tank-top-and-short-shorts combo with torn purple fishnet stockings, she is in the thrall of a rapt audience. In fact, by the end of the fifth song, the five-foot barricade separating the audience from the stage has vanished. Seems that the surging crowd has pushed the metal barriers forward just because they want to be closer, hoping to be the lucky one to be doused with Karen’s water bottle.
A critic once wrote that he hoped “Karen [would] leap from the stage and bike-chain him half to death, just to cement the legend.”
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The legend began when Karen and Nick, who after meeting in an East Village bar, formed a band about two-and-a-half years ago with a mission in mind. They were tired of their fellow New Yorkers’ snobbery - their “too cool to dance, too cool to have fun” airs, even at dance clubs. “We wanted to crush that attitude,” says Karen.
“We thought we’d start a rock band of our own that was like super sleazy,” says Karen, “that was super crazy; that would get people to f-cking remember where they are - New York City.”
Playing rock ’n’ roll that oozes seediness is a New York tradition, after all, dating back to the Velvet Underground in the late ’60s and the New York Dolls and the Ramones in the ’70s, on through the ’80s with the likes of Pussy Galore and the ’90s with Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Jonathan Fire*Eater. And the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were up to the task of following that lineage. “[The sleaze] is totally a part of us,” says Karen. “We definitely have that.”
After recruiting Brian to play drums (Karen’s friend from her days at Oberlin College in Ohio), the Yeah Yeah Yeahs - named after the terse affirmative New Yorkers like to use - quickly garnered a reputation in the Big Apple for their frenetic onstage actions. Then they released their first recording, a self-titled EP on their own label, and soon there was much ado about this five-song collection.
The EP starts off with a “Bang” - that’s the title of the first song - which sets the template for the band’s sound: a stripped-down sonic assault of just guitar and drums playing arty garage-punk, combined with Karen spewing double entendres and cheeky word play, like “As a f-ck, son, you suck,” with her warbling voice.
The British music press heard the EP and were quickly fawning over the band as they are frequently wont to do. It was the media across the Pond who, within the last few years, helped to catapult other American garage rockers like the Strokes and the White Stripes into arena-level stardom. And even without a full album, the hype engine was now in overdrive for the Yeah Yeahs Yeahs.
“There were a couple of really good songs on the EP,” says Nic Harcourt, music director of the influential Santa Monica, Calif.-based radio station KCRW and host of the trend-setting program “Morning Becomes Eclectic.”
We grew up very white bread. [My parents] made a conscious decision not to teach us, or have us speak, Korean. They wanted us to fit in. … When you’re young, you’re way more self-conscious about [your mixed heritage].
“A very sexy, amped-up lead singer helps them stand above the pack [of the garage-rock acts], and an obviously gifted guitar player.
“So yes, I understand the buzz,” adds Harcourt. “It got me.”
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After some pleading on our part, KoreAm got an interview with pop music’s next big thing two days before the Henry Fonda Theater show back in mid-April. Having read the vivid accounts of her performances, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Would Karen be some outlandish, wild show woman, or some attitude-riddled star on the rise?
The woman I meet in a West Hollywood hotel is amiable and surprisingly reserved; a soft-spoken 24-year-old who is surprised that our publication is interested in profiling someone like her. She laces her speech with “likes” and the oft-used “you know.”
After we drive to Oki Dog for the interview and photo shoot, Karen listens intently as I describe the lore of this chosen locale - that it was an after-show haunt for seminal early-’80s L.A. punk bands like the Germs and Black Flag. A few minutes later, she’s devouring the greasy spoon’s signature dish - two hot dog wieners, pastrami, chili and cheese all wrapped up in a flour tortilla - along with her friend Christian Joy, who is also the clothing designer responsible for Karen’s wild and trashy fashions.
And while eating the artery-clogging concoction, she expresses some of her exasperation with all the hype.
“It’s a blessing because it’s paying the bills … and more. And it’s, like, fun,” says Karen. “And at the same time it’s far more complicated than I ever expected. We started a band just to start a band, not to get successful or anything like that. We started just to rock the boat in New York City, you know. We didn’t really see beyond that. And here we are on a major label.
“I’ve come to realize that I’m not really made of the raw materials that it takes for this rock-and-roll lifestyle. I’m really low-key, and like, fragile, I guess.”
That lifestyle doesn’t mean sex, drugs, late nights and trashed hotel rooms so much as it means submitting to the grind of the music business.
“What we found was that we went from having two new songs for every show that we play to, like, having two new songs every few months because like 98 percent of the stuff we’re doing is mostly bullsh-t. Most of it is press - [but] I don’t consider [KoreAm] press,” she points out, politely. “It’s like grunt work, and all these decisions that you have to make that have nothing to do with the music, you know, but it has everything to do with promoting yourself. And we feel like really worn thin because of it.”
So then what about this cult of Karen - the persona the media loves to write about with so many adjectives? The woman who pissed-off Courtney Love at last year’s South By Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas, because she bumped into Mrs. Kurt Cobain-cum-actress after Karen had a few too many margaritas. The fashion trendsetter who is inspiring female New Yorkers to dress in trashy chic. The photo subject who so easily hams it up in front of the camera, especially with her signature deer-in-the-headlights expression and bangs covering her eyes. The woman onstage - Karen acknowledges that alcohol intake fuels her live shows - who can be a “maniac,” according to friend Christian.
“We’re always getting into trouble for one thing or another. We just do whatever we want to do,” says Christian. “But Karen’s the instigator. She’s like the devil who whispers in your ear.”
So I’m a little perplexed by her paradoxical perspectives on the rock-and-roll life. But then Karen explains how draining it is when she performs. And after watching her mesmerize audiences, finding sympathy for this devil comes easily.
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The Yeah Yeah Yeahs: drummer Brian Chase, singer Karen O and guitarist Nick Zinner.
I always think of things in terms of like if I was in the audience, if I was a fan, because that’s what I was before this: ‘What would make a difference to me?’ Pushing all the limits and seeing how much I could get away with. That’s rewarding to me.
Karen’s, ahem, unruliness, began early on.
“[My mother] had a hard time when I was young and not doing so well in school. We had no relationship at all because it drove her crazy,” says Karen. “She was raised by a very strict mother, … and she tried to impose that on me, so it was like a constant conflict,” adds Karen, who also calls her mom “a beauty-queen valedictorian.”
In fact, her father, after serving in the U.S. Air Force, ended up in Korea teaching English at Ewha Women’s University in Seoul. One day while riding the bus, Ewha student Munja boarded, and “he was totally smitten with her,” says Karen. For the next month, he took the same bus at the same time, hoping to see her again.
The Orzolek family, which includes Karen’s older brother, moved from Korea to New Jersey when Karen was 2 years old. And with her dad running a textile business and her mom working in the fashion industry, she grew up in Bergen County as a “latch-key, ’80s kid,” which, according to her, nurtured a sense of independence and a sense of detachment. As well as “feeling more like an outsider,” Karen adds.
And there was little connection to her Korean heritage. “We grew up very white bread. [My parents] made a conscious decision not to teach us, or have us speak, Korean. They wanted us to fit in and not feel, uh, you know,” she says, then pauses. “When you’re young, you’re way more self-conscious about [your mixed heritage].
“I used to be ashamed of being Korean, half-Korean, when I was like 13 or 12 years old - when you want to fit in with everyone. They were really sensitive about that.”
Her perspective changed when she went to college. “I had this huge calling to like explore my Asian half more,” says Karen. “For so long I neglected my Asian half, and then all of a sudden I realized what an asset it was.”
We thought we’d start a rock band of our own that was like super sleazy, that was super crazy; that would get people to f-cking remember where they are - New York City.
At Oberlin she considered majoring in East Asian Studies because she was obsessed with … China. She was fascinated with that country’s acclaimed Fifth Generation of film directors, including Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige. “[Their films] are so tragic and really arty. They’re still my favorite films. It’s an Eastern aesthetic that I relate to a lot,” she says.
Oberlin is also where she learned to play the guitar and began writing her own songs - mostly “melancholy singer-songwriter” tunes, says Karen.
She then transferred to New York University to study film after enjoying a class she once took as a visiting student. “It was like cathartic for me to make films,” says Karen. “And New York City was what I was feeling, … like I was heading towards something.”
She adds, “It was the blossoming of my nightlife. I was partying all the time.”
And so it was that she met Nick, a photographer who was playing in a band with fellow graduates from Bard College, and Karen played him some of her songs.
“I thought that they were beautiful. Her songs were incredibly simple, yet beautiful and heartfelt,” says Nick. “I wanted to collaborate with her.”
And the rest is history - although they first started playing the melancholy stuff before launching into the raunch. In fact, the two maintain a side project, Unitard, to perform songs in a folk, acoustic style.
Karen and Nick also do the bulk of the songwriting for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
Some credit should be paid to Karen’s parents, as well, who fostered her creativity as a child - “I was hyperly creative” - and who had her playing the piano at age 6. “Funny thing about piano is as soon as I learned to play, I started writing music for it,” says Karen.
But it took some time before her parents found out about how she was applying those musical skills.
“I didn’t tell them anything about it until we were in our first few magazines,” says Karen. “That’s how they found out. They were shocked, because right away it went from us being just a band to like being this huge media sensation. They just couldn’t deny it.”
And now: “My parents are obsessed. They love it. They can’t get enough of it,” says Karen, proudly showing off the white leather bracelet with metallic “YYYs” that her mother made and that the band now sells as merchandise.
So now Karen - whose boyfriend is Angus Andrews, singer of the Brooklyn band Liars - is getting in touch with her Korean heritage by learning how to cook dishes like ddukbohkee, chapchae and kalbee, as well as asking her aunt and other Korean relatives about their history.
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As the band continues to try to forge its own sound, combining the sensibilities of catchy pop with noise and dance elements, Karen is learning to deal with the double-edged trappings of fame and hype.
“Everyone wants a piece of you when you get in the limelight - and mostly at your expense,” says Karen. “So it’s really complicated, especially when business mixes with art. You run into thousands of problems, thousands of conflicts.”
And therein rests one of Karen’s fundamental qualities - a restlessness to produce quality art in the form of kick-ass rock music.
“I always think of things in terms of like if I was in the audience, if I was a fan, because that’s what I was before this: ‘What would make a difference to me?’” says Karen. “Pushing all the limits and seeing how much I could get away with. That’s rewarding to me.”
And her fans are picking up on that.
“Karen is an artist who clearly follows her own set of aesthetics in music, as well as fashion. Her self-assurance and sincere passion for her work is key,” says Jennifer Wu, 23, who was at the Henry Fonda Theater show.
Intent on meeting her current favorite music act, Wu successfully weaseled her way backstage to talk to the fledgling rock star. For Wu, and an increasing number of young women, Karen is a role model - albeit, an unusual one.
“It’s the reality at a certain point, whether or not you want to be, that gets put on you, you know,” says Karen on her newfound stature. “And … uh … we’re a little sleazier than, like, what I would want a role model to be, but it’s still better than the same-old same-old.”
Oh, yeah, better indeed.
PHOTO CREDIT:
Photo by Emily Wilson