- I need to be challenged.
I need to wake up each
day and break a barrier
where people tell me I can't do it.
Call me a freak all you want.
Because of my diverse skill set, yeah,
I'm a double freak, but I enjoy it.
7
00:00:23,999 --> 00:00:26,904
Hi, I'm Dan Spitz, I
am a master watchmaker.
I also co-founded the band Anthrax.
(heavy metal guitar music)
Anthrax was one of the
most successful heavy metal
bands in the history of music.
We changed the map so
much that people had to
come up with a term for
it, called thrash metal.
But, in 1995, I’ve kind of
had enough of touring.
I had children and a family and I wanted
nothing more to do but
have silence in my life.
As far as watchmaking goes,
I'm a third-generation watchmaker.
I started taking apart
watches in my grandfather's
jewelry store when I was eight years old.
After '95, I wanted to get my pedigree and
be able to take apart what's
considered complications,
or just crazy avant garde watchmaking,
which is the equivalent of
thrash metal in watchmaking.
The only way to do that is in Switzerland.
I was lucky enough to
gain access to a school
where six people are chosen
from around the world
every three years.
As far as the timepieces that I work on,
the watches usually
start at $50,000 and go
up to two or three million.
It is not with a battery,
not with a circuit board.
You get into two,
three, four thousand pieces
inside a timepiece that all
have to do certain things.
So, if there's a problem,
you might have to rip
apart the entire engine.
We call it a movement.
Figure out what the problem
is, rebuild the watch.
There's no road map to the pieces.
When you're in that zone, in that watch,
and trying to find that problem,
when you finally execute whatever that is,
it's a feeling of euphoria
and it's just like
when you're in the recording studio,
just like when you're onstage and you have
zero room for error and I
take that into my watchmaking.
(light playful music)
