“When I used to get fucked-up, I was escaping my life” — an interview with punk band Good Charlotte
“When I used to get fucked-up, I was escaping my life” — an interview with punk band Good Charlotte
From the archives: in December 2003 a music magazine sent me to interview an American pop punk band on their first big UK tour.
From the archives: in 2003 a music magazine that was about to collapse into acrimonious bankruptcy sent me to interview an American pop-punk band who were about to embark upon their first major tour of the UK. According to setlist.fm it will have been December 15, the day of their first gig at Brixton Academy. I’ve republished the interview below, unedited, for no reason other than I read their name in a newsletter today and it reminded me that I’d once interviewed them.
GOOD KIDS ON THE BLOCK
The jury is still out on GOOD CHARLOTTE — they’ve cornered the teen market but is there more to the bratty punkers than meets the eye for the rest of us? As they release their new album ‘The Young And The Hopeless’, we sent ANTHONY DHANENDRAN to find out why we should give ’em another listen…
Good Charlotte are a punk band. That’s punk as in three-chord, thrash-em-out anthems, all attitude and aggro. Well, some of those things, anyway. They’ve got the songs, sure, but they’re decidedly lacking in the attitude side of things. Which is to say, they won’t spit at you in the street, nor will they be baited into throwing a television set out of a hotel window. Not even at the Hilton.
If you were looking for a punk band in central London, the Trafalgar Hilton is probably not the first place you’d think of trying. Sandwiched between The Mall and Trafalgar Square, and overseen by the sombre bronze figure of General Charles Napier (d. 1853), the place seems to be largely populated by people in suits either having or arranging meetings.
“We’re an honest band, and you’ll always be able to tell what’s going on in our lives through our music” — Benji Madden
Today, though, the guest roster includes Benji and Joel Madden, Billy Martin, Paul Thomas and Chris Wilson (the band), and assorted hangers-on. They’re here to promote ‘The Young And The Hopeless’, their album of the aforementioned thrash-em-out anthems, in between full-house shows in Birmingham, London and Manchester, at the end of an 18-date European tour.
“We actually have one more leg of this tour after Christmas, and that’s in Japan, but it’s only a week,” says Joel. “So at that point I think we’ll all be really happy that the tour’s over. We really all just want to get back into the studio, so early next year we’re going to get back in and make another record.”
‘The Young And The Hopeless’, the band’s major-label debut, is a collection of 14 songs largely about growing up in small-town America, and avoiding spending the rest of your life in the same place. It is evidently a popular theme, the album having gone platinum on both sides of the Atlantic.
Joel and twin brother Benji formed the band in 1997 and worked the local circuit of tiny gigs, while working “all kinds of shitty jobs”, according to Benji. Having come up through the musical ranks, moving from small venue to slightly-less-small-venue, until finally being signed nearly three years later, GC found themselves feted as ‘the next big thing’. Won’t the next album be a more difficult proposition, now there’s no more need to wait tables down at the Golden Corral restaurant (“it was literally a corral for angry fat people”)?
“I think you change, obviously, not so much for the bad,” says Joel, who, as vocalist, assumes the role of spokesman. “Everybody changes — every year you’re a different person than you were last year, so the last two years have definitely changed us. Seeing the world and doing the things we’ve done, I think we’re definitely different, so the record will definitely be a different record, and that’s a good thing. We want kids to see how we change. That’s the exciting part, to me, of loving a band. All the bands that I love, I’ve watched their evolution, of where they were when I bought their first record, to where they were on their third, fourth, fifth record. So we want to have the same thing, we want people to be able to be able to map out where we’ve been from our first record, to now, to the next record. We’re an honest band, and you’ll always be able to tell what’s going on in our lives through our music.”
“What the fuck is so cool about trashing a hotel room, or getting drunk and insulting people? That, to me, is not cool, to me that’s just stupid” — Joel Madden
Honesty is important to Good Charlotte (the name comes from a favourite children’s book). One question that has dogged them since the album’s release is that of their punk-ness. Can musicians who cavort with the mainstream media, from MTV to CD:UK, and who — most heinous of all — are trimly well-behaved, really be considered Punk? A recent Rolling Stone piece was headlined ‘The Polite Punks’, a charge that seems to rile the band (only they’re too polite to admit it).
“Was that because we actually have manners or something?” asks Joel. “The notion that you have to party to be a punk is, I guess… Well, whoever had that is fine with me, but I never want us to be a band that doesn’t have to answer for what we do. I never want to not have consequences for trashing a hotel room. That, to me, is just a waste of time, energy and money.”
So no car-in-pool incidents, then?
“I think of things realistically, like, what the fuck is so cool about trashing a hotel room, or getting drunk and insulting people? That, to me, is not cool, to me that’s just stupid. The way I choose to live my life, and these guys are the same way, we wanna answer for what we do. If I’m an asshole to someone, I want them to go, ‘You’re an asshole,’ and not just let me do it ‘cos I’m in a band.”
That seems to be the end of that. It may not be fashionable, but they aren’t party animals. Another charge that has been levelled at them is the notion that they’re a kids’ band. With those tight, controlled harmonies, and eschewing chugging riffs for melody, it’s easy to see why they appeal to the younger end of the market. That said, there’s no reason why, if it’s good, this kind of thing shouldn’t appeal across a wider age range, and GC’s particular brand of angst is better than most.
It may be that their refusal to stick to punk’s unwritten rules was their undoing within the punk community, such as it is. GC disregarded those rules, largely to do with the notion of ‘selling out’, in favour of maximum appeal to the fans they wanted to hear the record. It’s the same approach that Kurt Cobain took when he agreed to change the cover art of Nirvana’s ‘In Utero’ to suit the giant US retail chain Wal-Mart, because that was the only place many kids in the mid-West could buy the album.
In GC’s case it meant lots of MTV action, even to the point where they were given the chance to present their own show, ‘All Things Rock’, something they had to give up recently. “We’d done a great thing — we got a lot of bands on MTV that would have otherwise not been played on MTV, we got a lot of new music out to kids, from bands they might not have heard of, so we got an opportunity to do some really good things for the scene that we were in. But there’s a point where you have to just go, ‘That was then, we had a good time and we got to do that, but this is now and we just don’t have the time or energy.’”
They’ve played a selection of London’s smaller venues on previous tours, and “we’re really looking forward to playing Brixton Academy. We’ve heard about it a lot, but we’ve never played there,” says Billy. But Joel’s mind is on other things — namely the gig three days hence in Manchester, and a possible chance meeting with one Steven Patrick Morrissey: “I didn’t really get into Morrissey until the last couple of years. But it’s definitely been influencing lately the things that I write about.” Behind him, the rest of the band, chuckling, break into singing ‘We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful’, complete with bad Spinal-Tap-English accents.
The Smith are an unlikely influence on an American punk band, but just as Morrissey’s tales of middle-English idiosyncrasies resonated with minds in America, so Joel Madden’s lyrics seem to have struck a chord over here. Not that GC are the new Smiths, or anything like them, but the influence isn’t as silly as it first seemed. “The older I get, the more his style influences mine,” Joel adds. “I think the older I get the more I can understand his lyrics a little better.”
For a 23-year-old, Joel has led an eventful life, from those “shitty jobs” to the years of constant touring, and the eventual fame and fortune of the present day. They are experiences that inform both his writing and his attitude to work: “It’s a working-class attitude, I think. It’s always having jobs and always working for the money. If, when we were kids, we wanted something, we had to go out and buy it, or if we wanted to do something, we had to work for it. I think it’s just a working-class attitude that we’ve always had, but it’s not something that we’re proud of, it’s just there.
“I couldn’t care less whether or not someone thinks I’m a party animal, I don’t give a damn. It doesn’t matter to me. I like being able to comprehend shit, and I don’t like being super wasted. But back when I used to get fucked-up, it was because I was escaping my life, what I had to deal with. And what I had to deal with, I was 17 or 18 when I left home, I got fucked up to get away from something, because I hated my jobs, and I hated that I was going nowhere.”
Chris adds: “We’ve had plenty of times getting fucked up on the weekends. But you still had to go to work, and you don’t show up to work drunk, you’ve gotta get your job done, you’ve gotta make the money. Sure, Joel doesn’t drink, but the three of us do, and there’ll be nights where we’ll go and we will party.”
“I like being able to comprehend shit, and I don’t like being super wasted. But back when I used to get fucked-up, it was because I was escaping my life” — Joel Madden
Other than being (relatively) clean-living, the band’s faith is another important pillar, and another reason they get up the noses of the punk cognoscenti. In amongst the tattoos, you’ll find religious imagery as well as the more usual tattoo fare, but they are more reluctant to discuss their religion with regards to the music than other American Christian-rockers. A teetotaler Christian might be the last thing you expect to find in a punk band, but Joel is uninterested in such stereotypes: “Getting fucked up was like, the coolest thing, the funniest thing I had, besides being in the band. But the band, even, was sometimes so hard work and such stress, because it felt like we were never gonna go anywhere, that getting fucked up was the only thing I had. But as I’ve gotten older, and when I chose to go straight-edged, it was a whole different thing for me, and it’s just something that I am now. The person that I am now is not the same person that I was six years ago. But I don’t care what anyone else does.”
It is the sincerity, and the impression they give that they really care about what they’re doing, and who they’re doing it for, that both define the band and defy the punk attitude. But, as Chris points out: “We love what we have and we’re really happy that we’ve got to this stage, that there’s no sense in just throwing it all away.”
‘The Young And The Hopeless’ is out now on Sony Music