Installing/using MySQL for Google Cloud SQL?

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Hello!

I'm a new user trying to get MySQL set up, and have gotten so bogged down in errors that I can't seem to get anywhere. I need to install MySQL locally (apparently?) in order to connect to Google Cloud SQL with a web app that I'm building. I went ahead and did the full installation of MySQL 5.5 on my machine, since I didn't know what I would and would not need.

According to Google's tutorial (https://developers.google.com/cloud-sql/docs/mysql-client), I need to put in a few commands in the command prompt (I'm on Windows 8.1, if that makes a difference). Specifically, the first command is where I'm stuck:

"shell> mysql --host=instance-IP --user=root --password"

...where instance-IP is specific to my account. When I try typing in mysql (or mysql -u root) into the prompt, I get this error:

"Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' <using password: NO>"

For kicks, I also tried typing that command into the MySQL Command Line Client that installed with MySQL. I didn't get an error, but it simply didn't do anything (where I expected it to ask me for the password that I set up on Google's server).

Apologies for sounding so new. I'm just stuck at the beginning and can't figure out how to get started. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!