An Indiana childhood didn't prepare Kyle Cook for rock stardom. Nothing
really readies you for that.
But three years removed from graduation at Frankfort High School, Cook's
on the cusp of fame as lead guitarist in Matchbox 20. The hot young
band's Yourself or Someone Like You is the No. 9 album in the country
this week, with sales of more than 700,000 copies so far.
"I couldn't have fathomed what this was going to be like," Cook, 21,
says during a telephone interview. "In many ways, I had the same
misconceptions as everyone else ‹ you get signed and as soon as you sign
your little name on that record contract, you eat caviar from then on.
"And that's just not the way it is. Actually, you pretty much eat
McDonald's hamburgers. It's usually the only thing that's near the gig."
The next gig in question for Cook and Matchbox 20 is Saturday at Deer
Creek Music Center, part of the WRZX-FM (103.3) X-Fest. There, 20,000
fans are likely to shriek gleefully in recognition of the band's first
hit, "Push."
Like so many kids who strap on a guitar, Cook dreamed of days like
these. But he's one of the rare ones getting to live them.
"He had a goal," says his father, David Cook, the Marion County public
defender. "He used to tell his mother and me that he was going to play
on David Letterman. We'd look at each other and always say, 'Bud, you've
gotta have a Plan B. There's a lot of very talented people who don't
make it.' But July 16, I watched him play on David Letterman."
How do you get from Frankfort High to the Top 200 and Letterman's Late
Show in three years? With a lot of skill, a little luck and solid
instincts.
Kyle Cook got his first instrument, a Yamaha classical guitar, sometime
before his 13th birthday. His parents worried about him being too
"one-dimensional" because he kept the guitar nearby at all times, but he
became both serious and good. His senior picture shows him holding the
guitar.
He played in a few local cover bands ("When you're that young, is it a
band or are you just learning what to do?" he wonders), but nothing
serious because he was too young to perform in clubs.
After high school, he decided to enroll in the Atlanta Institute of
Music, a one-year vocational-technical-style school. The graduation
ceremonies there include a performance, which gets videotaped. Record
producer Matt Serletic, who works with the band Collective Soul, saw the
tape ‹ apparently not by accident.
"Kyle was the star student, the one everybody was talking about,"
Serletic told Guitar World magazine. "I was impressed by his ability to
play like a virtuoso within a melodic song."
It also turned out that Cook and Serletic lived on the same block.
Eventually, they met and talked. Serletic was working with an Orlando,
Fla., band called Tabitha's Secret that needed a lead guitarist. He gave
Cook the group's four-song demo tape. One song in particular stuck with
Cook, a tune called "3 A.M."
"I gave that song three or four good listens," he says. "I listened to
the lyrics and I was like, 'This is definitely a band I want to be
involved with.' "
Cook flew to Orlando to audition. At Christmastime 1995, when Cook was
visiting family in Indiana, Serletic called and told him he had the job.
Not long after, Cook found himself auditioning for Atlantic Records,
along with Rob Thomas (the singer, who writes the group's songs) and
rhythm guitarist Adam Gaynor. The group was now calling itself Matchbox
20.
"I was 19," Cook says. "Naive, timid, didn't understand the magnitude of
what was going on. When you have a little bit of talent but it's still
rough and undiscovered and there's nothing really going on with it . . .
a lot of people approach you and promise you stuff and try to tell you
if you come here you can make some money."
Since then, Matchbox 20 has spent much of its time being pushed and
pulled to shows, radio interviews and everywhere else. Thanks to the
popularity of Yourself or Someone Like You, what started as a bunch of
guys packed into a van is now a group traveling comfortably in a tour
bus.
Listeners, Cook says, have caught on to Matchbox 20's "roots-rock
appeal." "There's a serious resurgence of bands that have a classic
sound," he says. "Not that we have a classic sound, but there's not a
lot of bells and whistles and electronic stuff going on. We have rock
'n' roll guitar, good lyrics and good melodies."
David Letterman apparently thought so. He introduced the band July 16
with "one 'exciting' and two 'terrifics'," Cook says proudly.
"It was pretty unreal," he adds. "The CBS Orchestra is just hammering
away (during the commercial before Matchbox 20 played).
Letterman's over there shuffling his papers, the makeup lady's getting
us ready and we're standing there going, 'Wow, this is Letterman.'
That's a long shot from sitting in Atlanta writing songs and going, 'How
am I going to get my next rent check?' "
Actually, that never turned out to be a real problem. "Both of my
parents have been very, very supportive," says Cook, whose mom,
Jacqueline Cook-Snyder, teaches in Frankfort. "My father paid my rent
and helped with money for bills. But it was getting to that point where
it was like, 'Son, we love you, you're talented, but you should probably
get a full-time job.' "
Now he has one. And "3 A.M.," the song he liked so much on the band's
original demo tape, is Matchbox 20's next single.