VanWyngarden was born in
Columbia, Missouri on February 1, 1983, and was raised in
Memphis, Tennessee. His father, Bruce VanWyngarden, was the editor-at-large of the alternative newspaper
Memphis Flyer. One of his first experiences with music was listening to his father play
The Who song "
Pinball Wizard" on his electric guitar with a
Fender Twin Reverb amp. In seventh grade, he received a Les Paul guitar and started playing. That same year, he won a contest at
Lausanne School, playing "
Under the Bridge" by the
Red Hot Chili Peppers. He was influenced by the music he listened to with his sister,
Nirvana and
Ween in particular, and often went through his parents' record collection in the attic where he found
Neil Young,
Bob Dylan,
The Rolling Stones, etc. "From then on, all he ever wanted for Christmas was musical instruments; future seasons saw a drum set, a banjo, and a mandolin." Later on, VanWyngarden was in a band called Accidental Mersh with future MGMT guitarist Hank Sullivant who would later introduce him to James Richardson, MGMT's future live guitarist. The band achieved local success and fame in and around the Memphis area, and released two albums: The self-titled
Accidental Mersh and
Mirror Israeli. The first album reached the #2 spot on Napster's "Unsigned Bands" chart. The band went on hiatus when most of its members went to college. Andrew invited
Ben Goldwasser to play the keyboard for Mersh during the summer of 2002. The band had a weekly gig at Newby's, but the shows were sparsely attended and the band dissolved. In college, he wrote and performed a song called "Super Volcano" for a class. VanWyngarden attended and graduated in music from
Wesleyan University, where he met fellow band member Ben Goldwasser in his freshman year. VanWyngarden remembered his university years as something "almost sickeningly idyllic: lots of doing mushrooms in the woods, not a hard graft in the library." ==Career==