I write this diary from the comfort of my parents’ house on Bainbridge Island, WA, after returning on a 14-hour flight from Milan to London, back to Seattle. The last week of the European leg of the Macklemore and Ryan Lewis World Tour has become a jumbled mess of images, smells, and memories, which I’m still trying hard to process.  From Oslo, to Stockholm, to Amsterdam, to Paris, to Milan… we literally cut down the length of the European continent.  The whole tour was 25 shows, 200,000 fans and 12 countries. What’s even harder to process is that my life a year ago from today was quite different, and it is largely due to the release of an album called The Heist.  

The Heist had its one year anniversary 5 days ago on our last show in Europe in Milan, at the Mediolanum Forum. It was a consummate way to end our tour of Europe, and the perfect tail end to an amazing month of traveling and life experiences for me. The Heist was an album 2-3 years in the making. I remember when the song “Wings” was originally called “Nikes and Air Jordans”, and when the mega hit “Can’t Hold Us” was originally a beat called “Hope”.  I watched and listened as so many of the tracks morphed over time into their final forms now — I even listened to some of my demo tracking from 2 years ago, and they are hardly recognizable to how the songs are now. Even my personal pride and joy, “Neon Cathedral”, went through it’s transformations since we had to track a full string symphony twice, after Ryan Lewis and crew decided they wanted to change the root key signature of the song. All the above is a normal part of writing an album, however – trial and error – exploration – experimentation.  Sometimes you will never be satisfied with the final product.  Sound is such a malleable art form, that it is hard to imagine it having a real sense of permanence.  However, a couple of weeks before October 9, 2012, The Heist became a tangible object, and it went into print, waiting to be unleashed on the waiting world.

Ben Haggerty (Macklemore), wrote a keen and penetrating look at his own success after the release of The Heist — and this is a must read.  One of the topics he talks about is celebrity and fame, which I found very interesting. He writes, “It’s strange to walk around Europe with a hat, sunglasses and hoodie hopping you can go about your day causing as little of a scene as possible. I try to be as appreciative and polite as I can, but at a certain point it begins to wear on you. The zoo that Kanye speaks about is very real, and sometimes you don’t want to be the animal people are staring at. Following. Taking pictures of. Standing outside of your hotel waiting for you to leave. BUT, I understand it. I was that person waiting outside of the venue at one point in my life. And those people are the ones that have made this experience what it is. I always try to remember that, have patience and show gratitude.”

Ben isn’t the first person close to me that has had been immersed into the world of intense fame though. I watched my own half-brother, Chris Kattan, when I was in 8th grade, become an overnight sensation when he joined the cast of Saturday Night Live back in 1995, and stayed with the show until 2003. I remember how stunned he was when he was first flown out to New York City — he couldn’t believe that after a life time of dreaming and grasping for the unreachable star he had just landed on the moon. He had just joined the ranks of his personal pantheon – David Spade, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, etc.  The novelty of joining the show was quickly overwhelmed by an insane pressure to deliver.  Deliver laughs, deliver entertainment, keep ratings up, deliver skits, come up with brand new ideas, writing, etc. etc.  It was all glamour on the outside, but inside it was akin to drowning.  Furthermore, as my brother became a household name, fans from all walks of life took an interest in him, and sometimes the attention was overwhelming… you can get addicted to that kind of energy; it can be quite toxic.

I remember when I played the last show in Amsterdam with Macklemore and crew, and Ben mentioned the highs you get from performing in front of thousands of fans, and then coming home. It is a huge drop, and it can be difficult to cope with — sometimes it is an empty, hollow feeling. Also the intense amount of attention/adoration that you get from fans is both a blessing and a curse. Everyone wants to have a piece of you to the point where fans will create copy-cat Twitter/facebook/instagram accounts just to appropriate your image, name and persona since they adore you so much… how can that not have some sort of wearing effect on your psyche?

Unfortunately as artists, especially in entertainment, we all deal with a fickle, ever-changing audience. There is always pressure to deliver a new song, idea, joke…. content. There is a fear of irrelevance/impermanence once you have tasted an ounce of success; it’s hard to let go. My brother deals with that fear, and I know deep down Ben also has that fear.  The success is both amazing, and opens up the entire world to you… but then it also breaks down the floodgates and drowns you.

For me, the release of The Heist has just made me keenly aware of the nature of success. It is fleeting, and needs to be cherished fully in the moment, like anything else in life. It has also made me feel that success and fame are very odd occurrences: to be catapulted from playing small bars and living rooms to 10,000+ arena’s can happen quite quickly if the timing, messaging, package, and simple plain circumstances all line up, which is, to say the least, a little weird. Like Ben Haggerty said:

“As we nervously entered the Barclay Center, like freshman teenagers at a high school dance, a parade of cameras followed us to our seats, and I was acutely reminded, as I had been many times through the year, how apt the title of our album was. I felt like I’ve snuck into this award show, made it past the metal detectors, bypassed the security guards and for some reason didn’t get caught. Like I’m not supposed to be here, yet ended up with the best seats in the house. I walked over to Birdman and chatted for a couple minutes.  Drake came over, and we’re cracking jokes.  Bruno Mars strolled by, gave me dap and told me he’s a fan, how proud of me he is.  2 Chainz walked over to congratulate me, and I realize at this point I’m actually friends with 2 Chainz. Lady Gaga tweeted about our performance and cheered when we won an award.  Shit is really weird. And this is legitimately my life now.  And it’s not better.  Or cooler.  It’s just different.”

I think the one thing that is important to remember (speaking from the perspective of watching both my brother and Ben become huge success stories), is that the journey and the immediate experience is the most important.  If you get obsessed with holding onto success as a permanent fixture in your life, it somehow lessens the quality of your experience of it.  Really all your past memories, successes, failures… they aren’t lost.  They all become a part of who you are. They aren’t strewn around behind you like a disorganized mess.  They are rooted deep in the person you are right now.  Nothing is lost — nothing is forgotten.  It has all become a part of your individual enrichment. And that is what I need to keep reminding myself during this one-year anniversary of The Heist.  Happy birthday.

-Andrew