Maroon 5 Interview
By: Andy Powell |
Sunday July 29, 2007 |
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Bringing Funk To The Pop World |
| Maroon 5 is a Grammy-winning soul-influenced rock band from Los Angeles, California comprised of five members: Adam Levine (lead vocals, guitar), James Valentine (guitar, backing vocals), Jesse Carmichael (keyboards, backing vocals), Mickey Madden (bass guitar, vocals) and Matt Flynn (drums, percussion). The band is best known for their hit singles "Harder to Breathe", "This Love", "She Will Be Loved" and "Makes Me Wonder". The band has won several awards for its debut album Songs About Jane. Released in June 2002, the album enjoyed major chart success, going gold, then platinum, then triple platinum in many countries around the world. In support of Songs About Jane, Maroon 5 toured extensively throughout 2003 - 2005, in which a live album was released, entitled Live - Friday The 13th. Original member Ryan Dusick left the band in September 2006, due to injuries sustained by the constant touring, and was replaced by Matt Flynn. Maroon 5 have returned with their first album of new material in five years with the release of It Won't Be Soon Before Long in May 2007. The single, "Makes Me Wonder," was released to radio on March 27, 2007, soon making one of the highest leaps in Billboard's singles chart history, ending up atop the charts. They promoted the album tirelessly, appearing on MTV's Total Request Live, at the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards, American Idol, on Saturday Night Live alongside host Zach Braff and have done The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. I recently had a opportunity to do a phone interview with two members of the band Maroon 5. Well...me and about 30 other journalists. The interview was set up in a teleconference fashion with restrictions. If you had a question for the band you would press "*" and it would put you in a queue to be able to ask it. Then when you turn came up you were allowed 1 question and a follow up to that question. The band's Adam Levine and. Jesse Carmichael were very cool and relaxed, and surely would have been fun to interview in person. Jesse Carmichael: I'm Jesse. Adam Levine: I'm Adam and we are here to answer your questions in a very formal fashion. All right, what's happening? Who wants to party? Hello, guys, thanks for doing this. You're playing Boston at a very small club and I'm wondering why you chose to do this. This is going to be like a 500-seat venue. AL: Times are tough and we don't know whether anyone will show. Actually we're just doing a little sneak-peak, kind of warm-up gig, I guess you could call it and just wanted to have it be a little mellow kind of exclusive thing for fans and press and family and friends and things like that. Is that something that you're going to have to remember how to do - playing a really small venue? You haven't done that in a long time. AL: We've done some shows in Europe, so I think we've picked it up again. That's kind of how it started, so we need to get back to our roots, so that we can expand from there again, so the jump isn't so big, that we get overwhelmed and implode on ourselves. Do you think for the band, it was a [long] while in between before you released another album? AL: The common misconception, I think, is that people think we took a lot of time off, but because the record took such a long time to happen, we took about a month off when we got home. We were on the road for about three and a half years. And pretty immediately after we got home, we started working on the new record and the record took about a year to make. We couldn't have anticipated the success of the first one and obviously when that happens, it gets more intense and longer and the cycle gets a bit bigger. What do you think was the reason it took a while for people to get it? I, myself am guilty of it, but once I finally started listening to it, I was like, 'This is a really good record.' What do you think was the reason in your case? AL: I think that there weren't a lot of bands out there that sounded like us when our album came out, so radio stations and MTV didn't jump on it right away. We had to build up a following by touring for the first year. And then slowly but surely, radio stations would start adding it. When they saw that it worked, other radio stations would start adding it. So it was just an organic process, as opposed to a big blitz process. That's why we need to get used to this new way of doing things, which is eight billion people all at once. It's really intense because we remember when we couldn't get anybody to [listen to] us and now it's changed quite a bit. So that's an adjustment in and of itself, you know? It's exciting; it makes you feel special. When you were on the road, was there any negativity, as far as talk amongst yourselves or wondering what's going on? AL: No, not really. The cool thing is, we weren't bitter or upset that people weren't picking up on it right off the bat. Everything else is such a wild card and it's such a fickle universe, that you don't really know what's going to happen. We knew that we could play and that's what we had to offer, especially live. So going out there and getting fans was just the only thing on our minds at the time. We wanted to give them a reason to play us on the radio and to put us on television, so we needed to build that up. We just wanted to make an organic, grassroots thing that started from a really sincere place, such as us just wanting to play and have it grow from there. Give us a sense of what kind of pressure you felt coming off the great success of the last album. AL: Well, I don't think we could possibly feel the pressure we felt initially with our first album because there was so much more riding on it. We didn't have any money and no idea what we were going to do, had this not worked out. So that's real pressure. We were in the studio for a shorter period of time with a very small budget and barely, not to cue violins or anything, but we had to borrow money for food from our producer. We were in a rough spot. We had poured our entire lives into it. So there was so much more riding on it then. In my opinion now, this is the fun part. And God forbid we don't have the success that we did on the first record, we still made it this far. So I think we all have a pretty healthy head about it. I think the record is going to do great, but you know, there is pressure. I can't deny that there is. That definitely exists, but we certainly don't feel it like we did the first time around. I was just wondering how has the group evolved musically between records? And then how does that evolution come out on stage? AL: We went through a bit change with losing our drummer, Ryan. Over the years, he developed a nerve injury in his shoulder from repetitive drumming and he had to leave the band halfway through all the touring we did. And Matt Flynn came in and took his place. That's a difficult thing in itself to get over emotionally. Then on top of that, there's the whole musical and personality/chemistry thing that a new member brings to the situation. So luckily, Matt really fit in and definitely changed the sound of the band with his style of drumming, which is a bit more upbeat and energetic. So I think the whole record feels a bit more urgent than the first one. What is it about this album's music that you think will resonate with fans? AL: Hopefully, we've continued to be honest and forthright with the lyrics that we write and still connect with them in that way. I think what helped the first time around, what established our relationship with our fans in the first place was that they connected with what we were doing lyrically. And musically, too, but they could take away something that meant something to them. Hopefully, that connection is still there. I think that we were equally honest with ourselves with this music. So as far as I'm concerned as long as we continue to be sincere in everything that we do, our fans will be on board. If you compared yourself to an older rock band, attitude-wise, and some of the things they were motivated by, like money and girls, who would it be and why? AL: I'd probably be in The Police if I could. That would be my first choice. I'd be in The Police right around 1981, 1982. Jesse, how about you? JC: There's so many things I'd like to do; I'd kind of like to be an astronaut. AL: Really? He's talking about what band you want to be in. JC: Well, isn't there a band called The Astronauts? Did that big jump last week give you any sense of relief to go from sixty-four to one, to be the highest leap in Billboard history... AL: The history of all leaps. Did that give you any sort of sense of relief of that kind of pressure that, 'Oh, people are still out there for us'? AL: Yes, absolutely. There's always some degree of fear when you've taken a hiatus when you're coming back, but that certainly put most of those fears at bay. I think in general just the enthusiasm from everybody is exciting. Like I said before, you never really know what is going to happen. You can't predict the future; there are no certainties in this life regardless of how much success you have or think you're going to have. So, yes, that was very encouraging and that iTunes is responding real well. The cool thing about iTunes, which is so amazing is it's completely driven by people that go online and purchase music because they love it. So I know, it's almost as if that gives us so much. It does put all those feelings at bay because actual people are going out there and actually listening to our music, which is cool. Since you did so much touring, was there any sort of demonstrative effect that you can point to that when you went back into the studio things that you'd learned about yourselves as musicians that you applied? AL: When you do something so often for such a long period of time, no matter what it is, we were playing music and it became second nature. Obviously, playing the songs on our first record became extremely easy and it will probably be easy to play it for the rest of our lives unless we start forgetting things and need teleprompters or something like that. No, it's a skill and when you hone that skill you get better. So I think when we go in the studio, we were completely different musicians. We were far better, more seasoned and just stronger in all ways. I think mentally, we've really come around, too. We all are in a pretty good place at this point, which makes us really happy. We also saw how crowds responded to more energetic and upbeat songs. So that definitely helped us record stuff that was a little more straight-ahead rhythmically so that it would translate to large groups of people. So now we've got two albums we can put together a much better set list for our concerts. If you could go back to right before you started the tour for Songs about Jane, what would you tell yourself about the next several years and what do you wish you'd known ahead of time? AL: Great question. I don't know. I'm going to get really trippy on you...I don't know if I would want to have given myself any advice because I might have altered the course of time. You never know. We've all seen what can happen in Back to the Future 2. I could have told myself something that would have totally screwed up everything and we might not be where we are today right now. I'm a big fan of 'no regrets'. So I think that if I could do that, if that was a possibility, I would either say 'no' or if someone put a gun to my head and said, 'Do it,' I would do it and I'd probably kill myself with the shock because I would see myself coming back to give myself advice. So it would really get confusing and scary. But maybe I would say, 'Just take a deep breath and relax.' That's all I would say. For the new album, I was wondering who are the producers you work with? AL: We started out working with a team of producers, scientists, 100 monkeys….the first people we worked with were Mike Elizondo and Spike Stanton. JC: Musical scientists. AL: Mike had just finished with Fiona Apple's record and had done a lot of work with Dr. Dre, knew a lot about hip-hop and R&B production and Spike was a sonic genius who worked with U2 and Björk. So we put them together, just to sort of really round out everybody in the band. We could always go to Mike to ask him questions about musicality and arrangements and go to Spike to ask questions about the sound of the recordings. That was a great start to the record. And then I think we just worked so hard on it for so long that we started to not be able to hear it for what it was and needed some fresh ears. Also, like the first record, we decided halfway through that we needed to add more live elements into it and balance out everybody's tastes in the band so that everyone would be satisfied. We think that's obviously going to translate to the most amount of people as possible, too. We worked with Eric Ballantine, who had done some good sessions with Queens of the Stone Age and finished up the process with a guy named Mark Endert, who really just tied everything together. The last thing we recorded with him was "Makes Me Wonder," which was the track we've been struggling with the entire year we were making the record. So it finally came together with Mark and then we were done. AL: I was going to ask you, you've collaborated with a few other artists since Songs about Jane came out. I wondered if that kind of influenced the writing of the new album or gave you a different perspective at all. AL: Yes, I think it definitely did. Kanye and Alicia are amazing talents, in totally different ways, too, so yes. Just seeing such amazing people working in the studio, especially when I first saw Kanye worked and so good and so quick and so all-over-the-place. Just to watch his brain work is pretty fascinating. And then Alicia is like this unbelievable maniac of a musician. Her whole energy is just amazing, so that was pretty cool. I definitely took things away from them, just seeing how intensely they loved music was very inspiring, so absolutely. How [will] these new songs play live [mixed] in with the old songs and sort of if these new songs have a new feel, how they fit in with these songs. AL: We really needed these songs because we were lacking upbeat, fist-pumping songs that really got people excited. We needed some more of those. We only had one record so you have to think essentially if you have one record out, it's basically your set list. So it was tough to round out our live show. But this is great because a lot more straightforward, four-on-the-floor, easily danceable tunes that people can get into immediately. We desperately needed that in our set, so we're really excited to have those to-go-to-songs. Can you talk a little about some of the sources and influences you drew on on this album? AL: When we started writing the record, we moved into a house together. We spent a few months just making music every day and seeing what came out of us. We always try and have our musical output be really sincere and just spontaneous. There's nothing calculated about it. So we can't really pinpoint influences because it's just everything that we ever heard and experienced in our lives that came out of us while we were making the record. Yes, it sounds to me, too, like we're going through a phase. If we're constantly listening to Prince, then that's going to probably manifest itself somehow in the record. But, yes, it's hard to pinpoint exactly because there's so many different things that play into it. Especially in our band, we all have such eclectic, diverse tastes. We all like so much collectively, but it's insane. Why did you decide to add two bonus tracks to It Won't Be Sooner Before Long? AL: This is such a cool time right now where people are getting all the information that they need from the internet and we can spread music that would be b-sided to another time and maybe not get heard by a lot of people to everybody. And so we feel happy that people on iTunes can get two bonus tracks. People who buy the record at another store might get a different bonus track. It's cool. It's nice that the business is changing because it's giving the artist actually more options of things they can release and take things that otherwise would be obscure are very much in the foreground. It's just more music for our fans to appreciate, hopefully. That's the good part, more music. In this decade it seems like it's been very, very difficult for U.S. bands to continue the momentum of success. They have one album that blows up and then they seem to fade. Why do you think that is? Has the landscape changed, have listeners attention spans changed? Why is it so difficult the second time around after you've had a smash album? AL: You never know why these trends take place. But I think maybe it has something to do with what happens before the boom of success. The coolest thing about what's happened with us and the reason why we're so happy and confident going into this next record is because we toured for a long time before anything happened really. And a lot of times when bands release a record in the summer and then by fall, they've sold a million copies, it's really difficult to know why people are there for that moment, maybe. And so much hype and so many things happen all at once that it becomes overwhelming. At the end of the day, you started off and there were ten people that were there to see your show and now there are 10,000. And that jump, I think the slower and more gradual it is to get to that point, the more you have to fall back on when that buzz is over and the dust settles. Do you know what I mean? I think the best thing about being in a band is that you can tour and tour and tour and hopefully just accumulate fans all over the world or at least all over the country before anything major happens. So I think that maybe has something to do with it. And attention spans has obviously been shrinking in all of us over the years. So maybe that's part of it. Maybe it's a cosmic thing. You were talking about needing some fresh ears kind of midway through the recording. I'm wondering if you have any personal quality-control measures. Like with a new recording, will you take it for a drive or play it for someone or anything? AL: I think our friends and family, right? But that's our best barometer for things is when - I think we have got such a big group of support around us at all times. We filter it through them before we put it on tape and even after we play it for our friends and play it at parties or play it on our cars for people we trust. I think that's important, you know? Because we're making this music for ourselves, but we're also making it for everybody else. You had said that you were kind of struggling with "Makes Me Wonder". What was the problem that you were having with it? AL: We just didn't have all the parts together. We actually were missing the chorus part until the very end. I have a bad attention span when it comes to music, absolutely. It's my fatal flaw and my greatest gift. So I didn't really know what to do with it. And then we went to Vegas and I met a girl and wrote a chorus. It was amazing. All of a sudden, I had a girlfriend and I had a great song. That song was sitting around for four years and it was one of the first demos we even made for our record that's coming out, so it's got the oldest and newest feelings, my emotions in it. Adam, I notice you write most of the songs, some by yourself and some with the band. How do you come up with ideas and do you lay them down in a home studio first? And then on the collaborations, if you can tell me how you and Jesse and Mickey wrote "Makes Me Wonder". AL: I don't really have a process that is consistent. I don't really have one message for all of this madness. Sometimes it'll be a chord progression that Jesse writes on the keyboard or guitar or a riff that James writes that I elaborate on or something that I do entirely by myself with a drum, starting with the drums and moving my way out. Or my friend, Sam, who's a great producer and one of my best friends, he'll have something amazing that he's whipped up on the computer or something. Or I'll be singing in the shower. There's no method to it whatsoever. Things just pop into my head at random times. And as far as "Makes Me Wonder," Jesse wrote this progression and we were jamming on it in Australia and I took that progression that Jesse wrote and made a demo of the song minus the chorus. The song sat around for four years. And then Jesse and then the rest of the band minus me had this jam session and Mickey wrote this bass line that everyone wound up jamming on. I took that jam session, put it up on the speakers, and wrote a melody over it. It's very complicated. And then we wound up tacking on, in the eleventh hour of making the record, we wound up tacking on that progression and melody to the original "Makes Me Wonder" and now we had a chorus and there it is. What do guys think about the promotional world of MySpace? JC: Awesome. AL: MySpace is like a double-edged sword because on one hand, it's very nice that people can become involved with bands that they like on a personal level. On the other hand, sometimes people go too far with the Internet and start basing their lives on virtual experiences. I think of it as far as having a MySpace account and having a bunch of friends is kind of silly; it's totally weird and creepy. But I do think that using MySpace as a vehicle for your band as an enterprise is amazing. I think that it's one of the coolest things in the world to ever happen for bands because it's that step before that hasn't existed for so long. I think that you can do things; you can market your band; you can have your music online. You can create a buzz. You can get people to your shows and you have a legitimate network to do that with. I think it's the best thing that's ever happened for a starting band. I've heard a lot of people complaining that bands use that page as just an advertisement for things. So we try and personally manage ours and put blogs on it and update the photos ourselves so then it's something that people can feel like they're actually getting directly from the band. But either way you're getting your music out there. As a musical outlet I think it's one of the cooler things you can do. You had mentioned something about lacking fist-pumping songs. The songs are a lot funkier than the last time. Was that kind of a focus, to get it a little bit deeper? AL: Absolutely. We want this record to be stronger and we wanted you to be able to feel it in your chest. Yes, that's exactly it; I can't listen to it on my computer because iTunes doesn't go up that loud. I put it on the CD player and I was like, 'Alright'. Were you happy with the sound of it as far as that goes? It is really deeper and a lot funkier. AL: Yes, we wanted that, thank you. We wanted it to hit you a lot harder. We really kind of wanted to be an uninhibited album. We wanted it to be unrelenting. We have our issues on our first album, but this one, I just think that we've become better players and I think the parts are cooler and more unique and definitely funkier. I'm glad that came across to you because that was the goal. Also, I drank some funk juice. Funk juice always helps. |
