|
Enter content here
GOOD CHARLOTTE
One careful listen to the songs of their new Epic album, The Young and The
Hopeless, and the message is clear: Good Charlotte is growing up fast.
In these 14 new original songs, all co-written
by GC founding members and identical twin brothers Benji and Joel, the melodies are more diverse, the edge is more aggressive,
the playing and singing are stronger and more confident than ever before. Whatever the style or subject matter, every track
reveals new maturity, expanded creativity, and hard-won wisdom.
About The Album
The Young and The
Hopeless was recorded between February and May 2002. Good Charlotte worked with Eric Valentine, who produced, mixed and
recorded the album at his own Barefoot Studio in Hollywood, CA. Valentine's previous credits include Third Eye Blind, Smashmouth,
the Dwarves, and Queens of the Stone Age.
"Eric's main job was to make us play the best we could play on this record,"
explains Benji. "We recorded mostly in full takes, without editing. That was hard, but I'm really glad we did it. You can
tell it's authentic."
The brothers had no trouble coming up with new material, their intensive roadwork acting as
a creative stimulus. "I write better on tour," says Benji, "in places where I don't know anyone, where I'm in the middle of
nowhere."
"Joel's got this flair, this spark-that's why he's the lead singer-and a lot of times he can take a song
from being just okay to being great. At other times, he'll have ideas and not know what to do with them. But I'm good with
structures and arrangements, so we work well together even though we're really different people."
About The Songs
"Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" - The first single from The Young and The Hopeless is this biting
commentary on both celebrity self-pity and justice that's bought and paid for. It's a fearless critique of American culture
from a street-level point of view.
"Hold On" - In the course of their many months on tour, Good Charlotte encountered
hundreds of new fans across the country. Benji and Joel met many that shared their experiences of poverty and abuse, who contemplated
running away or even suicide. The twins wrote this song in response, and today Benji cites it as one of his favorite tracks
on The Young and The Hopeless. The unforgettable chorus goes: "Hold on, if you feel like letting go/Hold on, it gets
better than you know."
"Boys and Girls" - A caustic and witty critique of interpersonal relationships tainted
by mindless materialism: "Girls don't like boys, girls like cars and money/Boys will laugh at girls when they're not funny."
"It's pretty self-explanatory," says Benji. "I hope it pisses some people off!"
"The Anthem" - A song for the
so-called "losers" in every junior high and high school across America, the ones who are shunned and mocked for their appearance
or their foreign background or their lack of money. Benji and Joel knew-and befriended-some of those kids, and now have given
them what Benji calls "a song that would help them get through the day. It's a song that could help them say, 'hey, bring
it on-it won't bother me because I don't wanna be like you.'"
"Bloody Valentine" - Inspired by Edgar Allen
Poe's classic story The Telltale Heart. This haunting, tragic tale of mad love is a prime example of the twins' more mature
writing style and their expanded creative horizons.
"Emotionless" - When the twins were 16, their father walked
out on Christmas Eve, leaving their mother alone to care for four children. His departure sent the family into a financial
tailspin, ultimately lead to eviction from their home.
"I feel like my dad affected my life in a bad way for long
enough when I was younger, and I'm not gonna let him do it anymore," say Benji. "I'm not gonna carry that burden of being
hateful and angry. So 'Emotionless' is a song of forgiveness. I'll forgive him for my sake: I won't let those feelings about
him affect the way I treat other people or the way I live my life."
The Story So Far
Twin brothers
Benji and Joel (born 3/11/79) grew up in a lower middle-class family in the town of Waldorf, Maryland-"the middle-of-nowhere
suburbs," says Benji.
"Ours was definitely a dysfunctional family situation," he admits, "but luckily me and Joel
always had each other. When things started to fall apart, we just got into music." The twins' older brother Josh turned them
on to influential albums by Rancid, Minor Threat, the Cure, the Smiths, and many more.
Benji began teaching himself
guitar at 16; Joel gravitated towards lead vocals. "Right away, Joel and I started thinking up songs," Benji recalls. "We'd
go straight to our room after school, singing and playing for hours every day."
After Paul (bass) and Billy (guitar)
joined, Good Charlotte took their name from a children's book and played their first gig in a neighbor's basement for an audience
of 20. "We only played our own songs-we weren't good enough to learn anyone else's songs!"
The brothers dedicated
themselves to their music, although they had almost no money for equipment and no connections in the industry. They cut their
first demo, wrote their own bio, and began mailing packages off to a list of record companies obtained from a magazine.
"I
wrote this letter saying, we're Good Charlotte and if you sign us now it will be a lot cheaper than if you wait!" recalls
Benji. "Our ignorance was kind of a blessing. We couldn't be discouraged by knowing too much about how the business really
works."
Benji and Joel graduated high school in June 1997, and for a graduation present the twins' mother presented
them with a pair of open airline tickets to California. "Some of our favorite bands like Green Day had started out at this
East Bay club called 924 Gilman Street. So when we graduated, that summer we made a pilgrimage to visit the club. We'd never
even been on a plane before, but we have an aunt in Berkeley who let us crash with her."
The brothers returned to
Maryland, newly inspired and more determined than ever. They left home and moved to Annapolis, played many more shows both
electric and acoustic, and worked "all kinds of shitty jobs-I've had over 30 of them," says Benji. "It was a struggling time
in our lives, but it was also a great time. It's good to be hungry sometimes."
When Billy joined on second guitar,
Good Charlotte was complete. The band won a local contest, and their song "Can't Go On" was included on a sampler of area
talent. They attracted the interest of a manager, and Lit offered a support slot on a series of sold-out East Coast dates.
"We had no money, no transportation, and no way to do the gigs. Our mom was living in like a shed on a neighbor's
property, and the only thing she really owned was a mini-van. She said, you guys take the mini-van to play the shows and I'll
catch rides or walk to work. That just shows you how she's been there for us the whole time."
"By the time we played
New York with Lit, in December 1999, all the labels turned out. We signed our deal in May 2000, in the studio where we were
recording, and the album Good Charlotte (Epic) came out in September."
By then, the quintet was on the road non-stop.
Three months of dates with MXPX segued into the 2001 W.A.R.P. tour, then into more gigs up until Christmas Day (off), followed
by still more gigs including a trip to Australia and New Zealand (where their debut went platinum). Through this intensive
roadwork, Good Charlotte built an avid fan base-and MTV took notice, giving extensive airplay to the band's videos for "Little
Things," "Motivation Proclamation," and "Festival Song." At this writing (August 2002), Benji and Joel are hosting MTV's "All
Things Rock," which airs Monday through Thursday after 11 PM (ET).
Honesty is the thread that runs through every song
on The Young and The Hopeless and binds Good Charlotte to their devoted fans. "I don't think we're better than any
other band," says Benji, "although I do think we're more sincere, more real, than some of them. We want to be judged for what
we're really doing, not put in a genre with a bunch of other bands with which we have nothing in common."
"We have
a lot more to say than some of the bands we're compared with, and I hope people will hear it on this album. The kids that
we were, five years ago-I just want to give those kids something to help them through the day." |
Joel - Lead Vocals
Benji - Vocals & Guitar
Billy - Guitar
Paul - Bass
It's not often that a young band of Cure/Clash/Beastie Boys-loving barely-twenty-somethings comes tumbling out of virtually
nowhere, well, Annapolis, Maryland to be exact, to drop the year's most fiercely melodic and garage-gritty debut album. Good
Charlotte is a brash young quintet whose killer first single, a hitbound anthem of high school angst called "The Little Things,"
announces the arrival of a unique, genre-jumping rock band.
Yet until just four years ago, 21 year-old lead guitarist Benji had never strummed a single chord and front man Joel, his
identical twin brother, had never sung a note. Toss in their equally precocious high school buddies, drummer, Aaron, and bass
player, Paul, plus recent recruit Billy on guitar. This is Good Charlotte: a hard-driving, fun-loving band that has rocked
Washington, DC radio station WHFS' famed HFStival for the last two years and built a devout following in the Baltimore metro
area.
Their self-titled Epic debut album is a triumphant, raucous celebration of high school kids who found a way through music
to talk back to their tormentors and survive troubled times.
Good Charlotte, The Album, is a collection of explosive modern-rock gems with deeply personal and often very funny lyrics.
There are powerfully crafted declarations like the kick-ass "Motivation Proclamation" ("Motivate me/I wanna get myself out
of this bed/Captivate me/I want good thoughts inside of my head"); and songs with haunted, autobiographical overtones, like
"The Little Things."
"Me and Benji have always written from personal experiences," says lead singer Joel. "You've got my brother on guitar, he's
got that punk-rock aggression, and you've got me singing." He gestures to his heart: "Everything comes from here."
Most of Good Charlotte's songs resonate with a heartfelt but humorous sense of personal triumph over some pretty bad luck.
Others, like "WaldorfWorldwide," take a socio-political slant: "All I wanna do is kick the welfare/All I wanna do is get my
share/I don't wanna run for President/I just want an honest way to pay my rent."
"We want kids to come to our shows and forget about everything," says Joel. "Whatever their problems are, we want them to
be focused on the energy, have a good time, and then go back to their normal life tomorrow."
The brothers, who hail from Waldorf, Maryland, were avid baseball players throughout their early teens and had never contemplated
playing music until one extraordinary day. During what Joel calls "a weird time" when they were 16 and dealing with some serious
family problems, the brothers attended their first rock concert, the Beastie Boys' "Ill Communication" tour, and felt the
earth move beneath their feet.
"It changed our lives totally," says Joel. "We were both freaked out and knew this is what we were going to do."
Benji went home and dug a cheap guitar out of the closet, one that the brothers had never touched before. Their good friend
and future bassist Paul taught Benji a few basic chords, igniting a lifetime obsession. Another high school buddy, Aaron,
quit the football team to play drums and supply studio space in his house.
"We had our first band practice maybe two weeks after I started playing guitar," laughs Benji. "I knew three chords: D, G
and A! I became fascinated with all of the late-Seventies punks. There was something about those old recordings, those seven-inch
singles...There's no music that sounds like that today because of the raw quality."
"I love the chaotic, wild way the guitars sound on 'The Little Things,'" he enthuses. "And some of the sound on our song 'East
Coast Anthem' comes straight out of the Clash handbook."
By their senior year of high school, the brothers' musical obsession had become all encompassing. "We totally withdrew from
everything else," says Joel. "Our whole life was this band. Every weekend we had a show. We were totally blind, all we could
see was the big picture: We were going to make it."
In 1998, the twins along with Paul and Aaron moved to Annapolis to join its thriving music scene. Skipping college, Joel and
Benji decided, was a risk they had to take. Economically, they barely survived, working a series of low-paying jobs as stock
boys, waiters, and ("our best job") shampoo boys at a beauty salon.
"We made a name for ourselves in that town because we played out everywhere," says Joel. "Every party, every bar. People knew
us as the twins that play."
Joel befriended Billy when the guitarist showed up to see the twins play an acoustic set at a local hangout. "I thought, wow,
these are really good songs," he recalls. "There were a lot of local bands doing their own things, but these songs...every
one of them could have been a radio hit."
Billy was playing with his band Overflow at the time. After the twins got kicked out of their apartment, they moved into Billy's
house. One day, Good Charlotte coaxed him into joining in an impromptu practice. A week later, Billy played his first show
with the band.
Things moved fast for the young group. Unsigned Good Charlotte played with Blink 182 and Bad Religion, and opened for Lit
on a sold-out East Coast tour. They found local champions in the dee-jays at their beloved radio station WHFS, who began hiring
Good Charlotte to play station gigs and finally asked them to play the local stage at the HFStival. In the spring of 2000,
Good Charlotte made a bold career leap to HFStival's second stage, sharing the bill with Eve 6 and Nine Days. Good Charlotte
played charity gigs with equal fervor, ranging from benefits for the Annapolis Rape Center to the Leukemia Foundation.
A demo of "The Little Things" made its way to Philadelphia modern rock station WPLY (Y100) and broke a record on the station's
show of dueling songs. "For fifteen nights we won 'til they had to retire us," says Joel. The buzz around Good Charlotte was
deafening. After being courted by a variety of labels, they finally signed with Epic Records this year.
Producer Don Gilmore (Lit, Eve 6) was recruited to guide the quintet through their debut album. "What drew me to the band
the most was their personality," says Gilmore. "There's a lot of pop-punk rock bands that have gotten record deals, but these
guys are doing something really different."
Benji looks around the New York studio where Good Charlotte is recording. A sheet of recorded tracks hangs on the wall with
titles like "I Want To Stop," "Complicated," and the tentatively-titled, still-developing "Thank You Note to Mom."
"Sometimes it doesn't feel real," he says quietly, running his hand through his shock of pink hair. "Then I realize that it
is, like when I'm walking home from the studio to the subway at night and I realize that we're in New York making a record."
"We've been doing this for four years, and there were all those times when we were crammed into a car, driving three hours
home from a gig and we hadn't even made enough money to pay for gas. It's thinking of those times that it really hits you."
Benji pauses, shakes his head and smiles, "We daydreamed all this stuff and now it's all happening."
|
