Exclusive Interview on the road with Warped 2001

By: Roxanne Reyes 

Good Charlotte, the young band putting their hometown of Waldorf, Maryland on the map, is definitely on their way to stardom. It was only about five years ago that 22-year-old lead singer Joel and twin brother Benji (guitar) took interest in the music industry after watching a Beastie Boys concert.

            The twins came home, decided that music was their destiny, learned how to play guitar, and called on friends Aaron for drums, and Paul for bass. They threw in fellow Marylander Billy on guitar, wrote a few songs, and they were set. Sounds so easy, huh?

            Well, it was still a lot of hard work. The boys promoted their music, constantly performed at nearby clubs in Annapolis and the Baltimore-Washington D.C. Metro area, and were received well by the public. Clearly very talented, Good Charlotte was heavily promoted by local radio station WHFS, who subsequently reserved slots for them at the gigantic yearly event, the HFStival. After taking on the side stage at the festival in 2000, Good Charlotte's popularity continued to grow. In 2001, they took the main stage with bands such as Fuel, Lifehouse, Green Day, Live, Staind, and Incubus.

            With the release of their hit single, "Little Things" - a song constantly heard in movies and motion picture soundtracks, the boys who "got picked last in gym class, never had a date to no school dance, and...been called a freak" were suddenly in numerous magazines and could be seen on MTV. Proof that they weren't a one-hit wonder came with the release of the following two singles from the album, "Waldorf Worldwide" and "Motivation Proclamation."

            Good Charlotte was invited to join Warped Tour 2001 despite being without a drummer. Aaron, who quit the band earlier in the year to join another group, Wakefield was substituted with another hometown (D.C.) drummer, Dusty.

            When I went to the Warped Tour for the interview, I had no idea who Dusty was, or what he looked like. All I saw was the band breaking up to accommodate all members of the press. As Dusty approached, I thought that I wasn't even going to get the opportunity to talk to real band member. Everything turned out great after we introduced ourselves, and the rest is all here: 

GC:Yes I am... well, until Michael Jackson comes along and says he needs a drummer.

AMZ: Yeah, that was actually one of my key questions because I know that Aaron left the band to join Wakefield. So the drummer situation is...

GC:The drummer situation is good!

AMZ: How did you get to join the band?

GC: Through mutual friends. They needed a drummer... I played in some other area bands and it just came up. We got together and played and it worked out.

AMZ: So I hear there's going to be a new album?

GC: Yes.

AMZ: Know what its called?

GC: No. No title for it yet. [We're] roughly shooting for recording beginning of the year and however long it takes us to actually finish it...probably springtime. But we got a lot of touring to do before then and so we're concentrating on that and writing songs right now.

AMZ: I know that [Joel and Benji] wrote the songs on the last CD. Is everyone pitching in on this [new] one?

GC: Yeah. It's pretty much the same thing. [The twins] write the lyrics and structure of the songs...and then the rest of us make the music.

AMZ: So you're here at the Warped tour with about thirty other groups. Do you like meeting the other bands?

GC: Yeah, DEFINITELY! It's just cool to be around people doing the same thing, same kind of agenda - the flow of their day - they wake up and get ready to play. It's cool to be around people who have that sort of lifestyle: to entertain people.

AMZ: Is there any performer that you're still in awe of?

GC: I think it would probably be somebody who's not alive, someone amazing like Jimi Hendrix. It's gonna sound really dumb if you print that. Ummm, I would say any of the remaining Beatles. They're good songwriters. Their music is timeless. That's the beautiful thing about music - there's stuff that comes and goes, and there's stuff that you just can't shake. It's amazing to be able to do that. It's not just hype. It's not just made up by a promotions group or whoever. It's not just... pushed by the media.

AMZ: Are there bands [at the Warped Tour] that you all go out to see?

GC: Yeah, definitely... H20, Rancid. I had a lot of friends come on the tour and leave, like Lefty, Fenix TX.

AMZ: You have any good stories from the tour that I can print?

GC: A friend of ours, who will go nameless, ended up naked in a truckstop. I'm not saying I was there and I'm not saying that I was naked. And that person got arrested.

AMZ: Naked?

GC: Yeah, he was naked. Just being silly. It was all in good fun, but he ended up getting pushed too far, too late, but it was harmless. I went and hid from the cops so I wouldn't get in trouble.

AMZ: So, after the Warped Tour, are you going to be starting a different tour?

GC: After Warped Tour, we're doing Summer in the City, which is an MTV thing (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame series). Then we're doing a show in Ocean City (Maryland) a day after that. We're going out with Blink [182] for two and a half weeks in Canada, and then after that, we're gonna work out a headlining tour... and that should go hopefully for the remainder of this year, then take time off and get ready for the new record.

AMZ: So everything's going great?

GC: Yeah. It's been really good. Really fun. Really HOT!