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| .: OCTOBER - NOVEMBER 2004 | |
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OLD-SCHOOL PUNK WARREN KINSELLA EXPLAINS WHY GOOD CHARLOTTE AREN'T PUNK - AND THAT AIN'T BAD The thing is this: punk rock lost its way. It got off track. It became what it was trying to change. As a consequence, a lot of it sucked. Which brings you here, at this moment, backstage at Toronto's Molson Amphitheatre on a humid summer night, watching dissolute musicians and aging groupies mingle. Bored. Waiting. Despairing. Wondering how you ever agreed to interview something like Good Charlotte. Even worse: waiting to interview Good Charlotte. Good Charlotte, the painfully earnest, spiky-headed popsters from Waldorf, Maryland, are not punk rockers. Sure, they're part of the Vans Warped Tour line-up. Sure, they sport technicolour haircuts, and a couple of them periodically wear black leather bikers' jackets to photo shoots. Sure, they know (and sometimes talk about) the life-altering significance of Minor Threat or the Clash. They often get called "punk" by mainstream media folks. But they ain't. Ask Joel Madden, one of the twins who founded and fronts Good Charlotte. He'll tell you. Are Good Charlotte punk? "We're definitely not a punk band," says Joel, slouched in a chair, moments after his arrival. "We love a lot of punk bands, and we're influenced by a lot of different punk bands. But Good Charlotte's never been a straight-ahead punk band." So there. When Joel, along with guitarist Billy Martin and bassist Paul Thomas arrive backstage at the Amphitheatre, accompanied by assorted handlers and hangers-on, they certainly look like punks. Sliding into plastic patio chairs, they are pale, tattooed, and look like they haven't had three squares in their entire twenty-something lives. But instead of launching a barrage of cuss words in the direction of their interrogator (like the Sex Pistols did, famously, on The Bill Grundy Show circa December 1976), and instead of firing off a phlegm rocket at whomever happens to be nearby (like The Damned's Rat Scabies used to, with gusto, also back in 1976), they offer gentle handshakes instead. And friendly smiles. Smiles! Joel, 25, is about 5'9" and could easily pass for 16. Billy, the youngest at age 22, stands closer to six feet, and tonight favours a dark skinhead kind-of look. Paul, meanwhile, is all of 23 and is tonight sporting ball cap. And saying little. When they speak, they are exceedingly (and depressingly) polite and thoughtful. They don't throw the patio chairs around, or get their security guys to punch out the guy from the music magazine - even when they hear the "are you punk?" question for the zillionth time. They don't even roll their eyes. They've heard the question more times than they'd like - they told no less than Rolling Stone , in a cover story a while back, that everyone asks them that - but they answer the question patiently. Nicely. Even when someone is trying to provoke them. Nope - looking at them, listening to them, it is exceedingly difficult to picture Good Charlotte shooting out TV screens (like Elvis did), or rolling in glass and smearing themselves with peanut butter (like Iggy Pop did), or doing bad things with pieces of fish and compliant groupies (like Led Zeppelin did - allegedly). You just can't. They're too bloody nice to be punks. So can Good Charlotte be blamed for killing off punk rock? For turning it into what it has largely become: homogenized, sterilized, white suburban frat boy pop? A bunch of bands who think it's funny, in Joe Strummer's immortal phrase, turning rebellion into money? Well, actually, no. Because Good Charlotte have always been clear about what they are, and what they aren't. Says Joel, again: "We have a lot of freedom being in this band. 'Cause we can do whatever we want. People are going to hear a lot of different things on our records. You either love us or you hate us." At the start, there wasn't much of either - mainly profound indifference. Formed by Joel and his slightly beefier brother Benji in 1996, while they still attended La Plata High School (class of '97), on the outskirts of their hometown, the band-to-be was characterized by a lot of ambition and - dare we say it - a lot of heart. They came by it honestly, it should be said, and not without a lot of actual pain. On Christmas Eve 1995, their father - who they freely describe as a drunk and a bully - abandoned Joel, Benji, their mother and two other siblings. He left, the door slamming, never to come back. His wife and children were evicted from their home and forced to accept charity from relatives and others. Their mother, meanwhile, was repeatedly hospitalized with debilitating lupus. Joel and Benji - who thereafter assumed their mother's surname, wanting no further acknowledgement of their father's existence - took a succession of dead-end, minimum-wage jobs at their local mall, the St. Charles Towne Centre. After seeing the Beastie Boys perform in early 1996, the Madden twins were determined to form a rock & roll band - one that would eventually bear the name of Good Charlotte, taken from a distantly-remembered children's book. The band's entire founding line-up - the Maddens, guitarist Martin, bassist Thomas - attended La Plata High. Following graduation in June 1997, and following a pilgrimage to the fabled Gilman Street punk club in San Francisco, the band started gigging relentlessly in and around Waldorf. In December 1999, the group was invited to play a showcase in New York City. A deal was signed with Epic five months later; their eponymous first album debuted in September of 2000. Their approach to their music was established early on. Encouraged by their high school music teacher, Benji and Joel had started writing songs with lots of punk-style rhythms and major chords. And lots of punk-style honesty about the troubles that beset their family - most often with what Joel admits is an "embarrassing" degree of candour and detail. A sampling from 'Little Things', one of the band's biggest hits to date: Like the time Mom went to that institute, Asked about his willingness to write lyrics about so many intimate details of their lives, Joel shrugs. "With me, when I write, it's almost like a page out of a journal. Sometimes I hear the songs and get a little red-faced because it's personal s**t... A lot of the lyrics and the ideas for the songs are mine. A lot of it is me. The s**t we've been through, and all that. I think that, on some of the songs, all of us as a band can relate to the words." The others nod. Says Martin: "A lot of our stuff comes from similar experiences. We live together all the time. We try to be there for each other. We're friends." The most extraordinary example of Good Charlotte's willingness to plumb the depths of Middle America's dysfunctionality - and their own, perhaps - is 'Hold On'. If Good Charlotte requires redemption by the rock & roll gods (although, if only half of their life story is true, they don't), then 'Hold On' provides it. The fifth and final video from their gazillion-selling album, The Young and the Hopeless , the song - and the video that promotes it - is a brutally frank examination of teen suicide, which, America's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tell us, kills more people than homicide, by a long shot. This world, this world is cold Says Joel: "It's controversial, because people don't want to hear about that stuff." "Happy," says Thomas, sneering. "Yeah, exactly," says Joel, "And that's not how the world is, I think. In America, sometimes people totally ignore that stuff. So they need to have it put right in front of their faces." The video certainly does that. In it, Bob Burt, a retired school athletics coach, cries as he recalls his 19-year-old daughter, who killed herself with a deliberate drug overdose. Says Burt: "It's not the right order of things. You're not supposed to bury your children. They're supposed to bury you." He pleads with young people thinking seriously about suicide - and the CDC says one out of four do - to get help. In another jarring scene, Daphne Dachstbani, 24, describes what is left of her life after her boyfriend, with whom she lived, killed himself. "I knew he was depressed, but he was scared to get help," she says. "Well, now it's too late." Good Charlotte made the video with the direct involvement of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. The organization carefully reviewed the Maddens' lyrics before agreeing to offer their expertise. And they were impressed. Unlike many rock acts, it was apparent that Good Charlotte - unlike plenty of other bands - had no interest in making suicide seem in any way cool. The rest of us should be impressed too, quite frankly. They may be cute and cuddly and anything but punk. They may be polite to a fault. They may, God forbid, be a nice bunch of youngsters. But it's apparent that Good Charlotte's willingness to confront their demons in public - like they do in 'Hold On' - is a positive thing. Following its release, the band received dozens of letters from kids who had reconsidered suicide, and sought help, after seeing the video. What other band can say such a thing? Says Madden: "As a band, we sat down and we said that if the song saves one life, the whole record is worth it. It's worth it for one kid's life, isn't it? Our purpose, the reason why we think we're here on Earth, is to make some kid's life better. You know what I mean?" We do. It ain't punk, maybe, but it's still pretty damn good. Good Charlotte's new album, The Chronicles of Life and Death , is in stores now. |
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