Hoobastank
by Alex McCann
If you read through Hoobastank's biog, you'll see the word "normal" mentioned five times within the opening paragraph. While they may be considered more "normal" than the likes of Marilyn Manson and Cradle Of Filth, there aren't many normal people who have spent the past twelve months touring around the world on the back of a mammoth single "The Reason." There also aren't many bands who've managed to piss off the polar opposites Evanescence and The Deftones throughout their career and had lucky one-hit wonder accusations thrown at them with every single they've released. SOAK Magazine correspondent Alex McCann caught up with bassist Markku Lappalainen to look at a whirlwind twelve months in the life of Hoobastank.
SOAK: I’m going to start by opening up the Pandora’s box of the Hoobastank vs. Evanescence scenario. Back in May, you were going to do your own European tour, cancelled it to play with Evanescence on their arena tour, and then ended up doing neither. Elaborate…
Markku Lappalainen: Evanescence asked us to do the tour out in Europe. It was all booked and settled, and then they were going to do a tour out here in the States, so they asked us to do that. We didn't want to do it because we were doing our own stuff with the success of “The Reason” and they got all pissed off and basically said, "Well you guys can't do the Europe tour." I really don't think I’d ever want to work with those guys again for pulling that shit. It really messed things up for us in Europe and because things are booked so far in advance we couldn’t just jump on another tour.
The Deftones did that to us as well. We were supposed to go out with the Deftones a few years back and I guess what's his face, Chino Moreno had a pear up his ass and said we're not a real rock band. Like whatever?
SOAK: I get the feeling that you’ve had that accusation thrown around a lot – people saying you're not a real rock band?
ML: Yeah. Even before "The Reason", I think people were jealous, you know. We've been doing this for ten years. We're not this knock off band. We've had this whole Incubus knock off band thrown at us...we grew up in the same neighbourhood, listening to the same music and obviously we're gonna have some similar styles and stuff. I think most of it was the fact that Doug and Brad were both heavily influenced by Mike Patton from Faith No More, so there's some similar styles with that, but I think our music's totally different.
People just always try to put us down. The same people who said we got lucky after "The Reason" were the same people saying we got lucky after "Crawling In The Dark" and "Out Of Control." Well, how many times can you get lucky? What, we're a five hit wonder band or something?
I guess now we're starting to get a little credibility. I don't know why people were shitting on us all the time. Oh well, it's probably because we weren't all rock n’ roll and blowing up buildings.
SOAK: Still, you must be surprised at the success over the past year with "The Reason"?
ML: You notice it more abroad. Maybe that's because we haven't been out of the States so much. I think our goal now is to start coming over to Europe a lot more because we just haven't had the chance to go back being so busy here.
SOAK: It was a bizarre moment as a fan and it must have been even stranger as a band. When you first came out you were literally everywhere with "Crawling In The Dark", you hibernated for years and then suddenly you turn on MTV and can't escape "The Reason."
ML: After the debut album we just took about six months off and started writing the second album. And then for about the last year we've just been out on the road going across the world in support of this album. It took us to South East Asia, Japan, Australia, Canada and all of the States. Hopefully soon we'll be able to start writing some music, you know?
SOAK: Is it when you do the live shows you really realize what an impact that that song made?
ML: Yeah. I don't give a shit about charts or what airplay we have that week. It's all about people coming to your shows. Charts are more for the record company, but the truth is, you can be at Number 1 and still be playing a small venue with no one there. And then you still have bands that can't get on the charts that still have huge sold out shows.
SOAK: How do you feel about the download situation seeing as "The Reason" was downloaded about a trillion times?
ML: Yeah, we got the report. Hoobastank's "The Reason" is the most downloaded song of 2004. It's like, great people, buy the album. People are going to always download it because it's free and it sucks. I have friends that download, but I’d feel bad if I was doing it. It hurts because record companies in the States will look over to other territories and say you're not really selling that many albums, and it's hard to grasp how many fans you have when people are just downloading music.
In my neighbourhood the local record shops are closing down and printed magazines are folding because fans have already downloaded the album before a review comes out - whichever way you look at it, it’s hurting people.
The thing is, we’re an album's band, but every song we do, we try and think of it as a single. Before, there were all these one hit wonder bands, where they had one huge song and the rest of the album sucked. I guess that's why the whole downloading thing is going so well, because a label will sign a band on the basis of one song and the rest of it is just filler music. When I was younger, I used to listen to tapes so you kind of had to listen to the whole album, but when CDs came in you didn't even know track names - it's just track 1 or track 7 or whatever.
SOAK: On your biog it makes a major point about you being normal people...so much that the word normal is mentioned five times within the first paragraph. You've just spent the last year on the road playing sold out gigs which isn’t exactly normal - what the f**k’s that all about?
ML: I guess we just don't have that rock star image. In the late 80’s and early 90’s you just had this real asshole attitude and you know, it's like it's not really worth it. There's nothing wrong with being the nice guys of rock. We kinda grew up in a decent neighbourhood and sometimes we can get a little crabby or whatnot, but in the most part we're just really mellow. There's no fights or drugs - our tour bus is like the library.
SOAK: You must have had your rock n’ roll moments?
ML: I got arrested for drunk driving last May. That's kind of rock n' roll-ish. Don't drive drunk in California, because it's the worst. I ended up paying a $10,000 fine and places like Canada look at it as a felony, so I have to do all this court paper stuff every time we go.
SOAK: You still need to get the label to rewrite your biog and leave out the word normal. We want a bit of mystery in our rock stars?
ML: (Laughs) What, like were all strung out drug addicts? I guess we're just mellow metal if you wanna put that together. We've been together for ten years and we're all getting close to 30, so we're not young kids anymore. If we were 21 it might be different; we'd have gone crazy, jumping off roofs and breaking our legs. We're just old men.
SOAK: At this stage you must know where you're going to be twelve months from now. How is it living your life permanently on the road?
ML: I'm always writing when I’m on the bus. I play more guitar than bass, but Dan is such a good rhythm guitar player so I show him what I have, and then he'll take it and vamp it up. He's such an innovator. We're just starting writing properly at the moment and there's always this thought that the second album's always the tough one, but I think it's going to be the third one for us.
The way it works is, when we get home, we'll record all our riffs individually. We all have Pro Tools setups (computer-based recording) at home and we make a CD and pass it around to the other members. We’re not like a jam band that jams around. We always write by ourselves. We're just not gonna pressure ourselves too much. Whatever goes out goes out. For us there's not a great pressure to rush anything out, maybe get something out for the end of this year or beginning of 2006.
Sometimes it's tough to be everywhere. We try our best and we spend most of our time on the road. It's hard having a phone relationship with your family and stuff. When you go home, your dog is like, "who are you?" and pees all over the place. There was a funny story about when I last left. I had my bass case open on the floor and my dog ran in, peed in the case and took off, because he knew I was leaving.
|
|
