Tuned In
Good Charlotte

Their new album is titled The Young And The Hopeless, but the guys of Good Charlotte are only one for two. They're young, yes, but considering that they spent all summer rocking crowds on the Warped Tour and frontmen/brothers Benji and Joel host MTV's "All Things Rock," they're anything but hopeless. TeenPeople.com spoke to Benji about their own fabulous lifestyle - see what he has to say:

Your new single, "Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous," certainly makes a statement...
It's kind of a social commentary. With that song, well, we've noticed how a lot of famous people can get away with anything they want. Whether you're having success in music or film or whatever, you should count your blessings instead of whining about everything. When we were coming up, we'd see bands complaining or throwing their careers away with drugs and stuff like that, and we'd be like, "We'll take your place! Give us a shot." If you don't want to do it, step off and let some kid that's coming up take your place.

Do you want to be rich and famous?
We're not dissing success or money. Everybody wants to be successful, and anyone who says they don't is lying. You want to stay true to yourself and do all the right things, but you want to be successful in what you do. Cars, houses and everything - everybody wants to have nice stuff, and who doesn't want to take care of their family? We definitely do, and if we ever get any of those things, we'll be very thankful for it.

Among others in your new video, you've got Mike Watt, who's a legend that not very many TRL'ers know. What made you decide to put him in the video?
He's totally cool, and it's great, because we get to bring that to TRL. Kids may see it or read this and say, "Which one's Mike Watt? Where's he from? I'm going to go check his band out." It's good to know your roots, to know where the bands you love come from. When we got into music, bands like Rancid and Green Day were our favorite bands, not The Clash. But I'd read an article about Rancid where they'd mention The Clash or GBH or Minor Threat and go out and buy those albums. Hopefully, some of these kids that used to listen to Backstreet Boys who like our video and buy our record will look on the sleeve and see us thank NOFX and go, "Whoa, who's that? I gotta check them out." Maybe they'll become a NOFX fan - that'd be great.

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Joel Madden of Good Charlotte

Obsessing over Morrissey and Sinatra

It's not easy growing up in a strict religious household, where little more than Christian music is allowed. "I didn't really enjoy any of it," says Good Charlotte lead singer Joel Madden, who along with his twin brother, Benji, still managed to smuggle Nirvana tapes into their home in suburban Waldorf, Maryland. One listen to this "evil" music and they were hooked. Despite their lack of musical know-how, the brothers formed Good Charlotte in high school with some friends and hit the road for 300-plus days a year. Their second album, the Top Ten smash The Young and the Hopeless, mixes catchy power pop with orchestral flourishes and punk-rock attitude. But the melodies are all from Joel, who worships his tuneful elders -- Frank Sinatra, Nat "King" Cole and Morrissey. "Between me and my brother, I've definitely got the better music taste," he says. "Benji's a fan of street punk. I can't even tell what they're saying.'"

What's your earliest music memory?

My mom is a Christian, and she wouldn't let us listen to rock music. So me and my brother, we had this tape player with headphones, and we locked ourselves in our pantry. We were fighting over the headphones, sitting in this dark pantry listening to Metallica.

Which album had the biggest effect on you?

When I heard Nirvana, it changed my life. I have an older brother, and he had been listening to them since Bleach -- he would tell me about them. He was always a little bit ahead of me; he was the one who made me listen to the Smiths, the Cure, the Dead Milkmen.

Did your hometown influence you musically at all?

I grew up in Waldorf, just below D.C. Everyone there listens to hip-hop. If you go there, you'll see just lowriders, and you'll hear the bass. That's definitely been an influence.

What's the last CD you bought?

I just bought Bing Crosby, Nat "King" Cole and Dean Martin singing Christmas songs.

Your favorite make-out CD?

The best CD for any kind of romantic situation would be the Cure's Galore, the CD with all the good singles. It's good song after good song with that make-out vibe.

Don't you end up singing along?

That's why you gotta play them a little low.

What's the most embarrassing thing you listen to?

Vanessa Carlton. My friends see that and they're like, "What?" And the Smiths -- they're one of the greatest bands in the world. No one will ever be able to sing like Morrissey. He just captures emotions. I could talk about the Smiths all day long.

What songs from your past do you love most?

I remember running around with my brother when I was sixteen. Me and Benj would skate around and get into a lot of trouble, and we would listen to "Journey to the End of the East Bay," by Rancid. We were like, "Yeah, stick together!" like, us and our friends and our band. It just reminds me of being younger and feeling invincible. I also remember "U Can't Touch This" [laughs]. And "Pictures of You," by the Cure. I was totally in love with this girl, if you could imagine a really young kid being, like, heartbroken and listening to "Pictures of You."

Do you still buy a lot of music?

Music is the one thing I believe in spending money on. It's the business I'm in, and I like supporting other artists. Like Chevelle. I had heard some of their older stuff, but I never bought their CD, and they're kind of a new band, so I went out and bought it. I buy music every day. I try to support independent record stores and artists.

Do you ever do karaoke?

I go to karaoke bars and I sing a little bit of G n' R or Bon Jovi. I don't know any of the songs, but I'll sing along if the words are on the screen. It's pretty bad, though.

Is there a period of music you really missed out on?

I know almost nothing of metal. All I know is Tommy Lee was in Motley Crue. Sometimes when I find out one of my friends loves Motley Crue, I'm like, "I thought that only cheesy people who had long hair and wore tight pants liked that stuff." But when I think about it, it's perfectly logical. All these bands sold millions of records -- of course someone's gonna like them.

KIRK MILLER
(November 21, 2002) www.rollingstone.com

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Good Charlotte

Girls laughed. Dudes threw snowballs. Now it's their turn

For Joel and Benji, twin brothers who, along with longtime friends Billy and Paul, formed Good Charlotte when they were seventeen, high school was hell -- "more like a jail cell, or a penitentiary," as they put it in one song. "There was this one girl I really liked," says Joel. "One day these guys were pelting me with snowballs. It was terrible because she was really encouraging them." Most of the band's lyrics are inspired by tales of adolescent anguish like these -- like the time when some kids called their house pretending to be record executives offering a lucrative deal, or when they were made fun of for wearing ratty hand-me-downs, or when their father suddenly walked out, leaving the family in the lurch and prompting the twins to stop using his last name.

For a band whose lyrics are sometimes so downhearted, Good Charlotte make music that is surprisingly pop-friendly, chock-full of punky grooves and singalong choruses. The high school horror story "Little Things" scored them a modern-rock hit two years ago, and the video for the equally catchy "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," the first single from the forthcoming album The Young and the Hopeless, features 'NSync's Chris Kirkpatrick and Kyle Gass of Tenacious D. And while the band traveled with the Warped Tour this summer, Joel and Benji hosted their MTV series, All Things Rock, from the road. "It's like a summer of hanging out with the bands you grew up listening to -- like NOFX, Rancid, MxPx," says Joel. "Now I'm friends with [NOFX singer] Fat Mike!"

Despite their youth, Good Charlotte weren't exactly an overnight success. "There were so many shitty shows," says Benji. "There was this one show we played, and the bar owner actually tried to make us pay him." But Benji and Joel are grateful for their struggles -- both as a band and as a family -- and they haven't forgotten the impact they can have on kids going through the same kind of stuff. "One kid come up to me and told me that her mom died," says Benji. "She played the hidden track on our last record, 'Thank You Mom,' at her funeral. I was like, whoa."

CHRISTIAN HOARD
(September 27, 2002) www.rollingstone.com

New CDs: Good Charlotte, Cassius

Reviews of "The Young and the Hopeless," "Au Reve" and more

"We got nothin' to prove," good Charlotte declare on the finale of The Young and the Hopeless, the Maryland punk-pop quartet's second album. But Benji and Joel, the identical twins who co-founded Good Charlotte as teenagers, sometimes sound too desperate to establish their punker-than-thou credentials. The us-against-them bravado of "The Anthem," "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" and "The Young and the Hopeless" (which ridicules "critics and trust-fund kids") is strained. Good Charlotte are much more persuasive when they let their vulnerability crack through the surface of these slightly overbaked songs, in which elaborate production touches (strings, timpani-like drum flourishes) mask the band's three-chord limitations. "My Old Man" and "Emotionaless" wrestle with complex feelings in the wake of a father's departure, but relief arrives as hormones pogo in "Riot Girl." When Joel yelps, "Christina, wouldn't wanna meet her," it's way more punk rock than sniping at rich kids. (GREG KOT) www.rollingstone.com

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Good Charlotte Shoot Vid With 'NSYNC, Tenacious D Members

08.26.2002

'NSYNC singer Chris Kirkpatrick, Jack Black cohort Kyle Gass and punk-rock icon Mike Watt walk into a bar ...

It sounds like the setup for a joke, but it could have actually happened following the video shoot for Good Charlotte's "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," which features all three.

In the clip the band is performing in a mansion when police arrive and surround the home. After their arrest, Good Charlotte wind up in an interrogation room, in jail and finally in the courtroom, where Kirkpatrick plays a member of the prosecution and Watt is the head jurist who reads the not guilty verdict.

Since Good Charlotte have played on festival bills with Tenacious D, it's easy to see how the band hooked up with Gass. And because they're a poppy punk band it's not too hard to fathom what they might have in common with former Minutemen and Firehose bassist Mike Watt. But Chris Kirkpatrick?

"We met him on tour about a year ago," Good Charlotte singer/guitarist Benji said. "One of my really good friends was working for them, and apparently they had seen us and thought we were pretty good. So we ended up hanging out together and it was cool. We became good friends with those guys - especially Chris."

Such good friends that Kirkpatrick asked if he could be in the band's video. As close as they might be now, however, Good Charlotte weren't so open-minded when they first met the dirty pop icons.

"I went in with a bad attitude," Benji admitted. "I figured, 'Awww, these guys are d---s. I'm just gonna glom them.' And they just turned out to be the coolest, nicest guys. It really made me think twice about people in general."

The video for "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" was directed by Bill Fishman, who lensed classic punk videos including Suicidal Tendencies' "Institutionalized" and the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated" but who left the industry years ago to work on Hollywood films.

"He decided he wanted to start doing videos again," Benji said. "So we said, 'We'll give it a shot. Write the treatment.' And of all the treatments, we liked his the best."

The song is a commentary on rock-star celebrity. While Benji doesn't begrudge stars' extravagant lifestyles, he's irked when the famous bemoan the fame.

"The whole song is just a social commentary on how celebrities can do whatever they want," he said. "When we first started our band we'd see these bands complaining and throwing away opportunities and ruining their careers with drugs and stuff. And we were like, 'Man, we would give anything for a shot, and we wouldn't blow it like that.' "

Good Charlotte's second record, The Young and the Hopeless, comes out October 1. Unlike their 2000 debut, Good Charlotte, which sometimes watered down the band's intensity with sugary hooks and slick recording style, the new disc, produced by Eric Valentine, is tougher and less pristine.

"I liked the songs on our last album, but everyone who's heard it and all the bands we've toured with say, 'I like your record, but I like you live better,' " Benji said. "So what we wanted to do this time was find that medium between the stage [and our first album]."

-Jon Wiederhorn
www.mtv.com

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GOOD CHARLOTTE
The Monarch, London
06.09.02
KKKK

Washington DC pop-punks receive a hero's welcome on second ever UK date.

Two minutes into Good Charlotte's set on the second floor, the people situated directly beneath in the Camden Monarch pub are starting to fear for their lives. Upstairs, there are two hundred people jumping up and down simultaneously with utter abandon. The walls are shaking, the floor is bending alarmingly, and pints are shuffling across the bar of their own accord. This is Good Charlotte's second ever UK show, and they've yet to even release an album in the UK. It's clear, however, that the vast majority of the room not only owns their US debut, but they also know every lyric on it.

Good Charlotte's appeal is not a tough one to fathom - five cute guys playing bouncy, feel-good pop-punk. But there's no escaping the fact that they do it exceptionally well, and with a darker edge than most of their contemporaries. In Joel they have a truly charismatic frontman who knows just how to bond with his audience and get the best out of a show, but tonight he thrives on conditions that are undoubtedly far cosier than he's used to in the States. Still, it's an explosive start for Good Charlotte in Britain. At the end of the night The Monarch knows it, and you'll know it soon enough: this band is going to be huge.

RAE ALEXANDRA

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Benji and Joel from Good Charlotte sit down with Hobbits Dominic Monaghan (Merry) and Billy Boyd (Pippin) and talk about puberty, P. Diddy, tattoos, religion and oh yes, "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers."

Joel: I love "The Lord of the Rings," all the lords and all the rings. In the first movie, you guys were comical kind of sidekicks. In ["The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers"], I felt you had really important it was like there was another movie inside the movie. I'm sure there is a word for that in movie terms.

Billy Boyd: Let's call it a sub movie.

Joel: For the whole movie, my mind was in two different places. I was watching Frodo, then I was watching you guys with the trees. I was excited, because I liked you guys in ["The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring"] I can't believe I'm sitting here and you guys are Hobbits. In "The Two Towers," it was so cool that you had such an important, big, other part of the movie, like a whole different movie. How'd you feel about that?

Boyd: It was really cool. The good thing about these movies [is that] we had three movies to do it in. Normally, you have one movie and it's kind of crammed into a short time. We have time in these movies to give these characters an arc. In the first movies we are some funny Hobbits, then we're made prisoners of war and we have to kind of become real people and grab hold of our own destinies.

In ["The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers"], for Merry and Pippin it's all about growing up. It's about maturing and doing things for yourself, because we don't have Gandalf and Aragorn and Gimli to help us out. It's all about

Benji: Puberty, if you will?

Dominic Monaghan: P. Diddy, if you will?

Joel & Benji: Puberty.

Joel: Because you weren't supposed to leave the Shire.

Monaghan: It's a shame what they cut from the second movie, which is kind of like puberty. We go through growth spurts.

Joel: They cut it out?

Monaghan: Yeah. Like when you record your favorite track and "Ah sh--!" it's gone that's what they did with us.

Joel: You guys ruled in "The Two Towers."

Monaghan: But who's your favorite? I bet at the end of the day you're a Frodo fan. Gandalf?

Joel: Honestly, I think Frodo was getting kind of evil on me in this movie.

Benji: I can honestly say my favorite character was Gollum.

Monaghan: Me too. How about that scene where he talks to his twin with the pictures?

Joel: What's next?

Monaghan: I'm probably going to have a cup of coffee and then have lunch.

Boyd: Chicken? Lovely.

Benji: Do you miss each other when you don't see each other?

Monaghan: We see each other all year 'round. ... Billy was in Mexico, so I would go down one weekend and we'd go surfing then he'd come up to L.A. the weekend after that. Elijah [Wood] lives in L.A.

Boyd: And we hung out.

Benji: You guys are really friends?

Boyd: Yeah.

Benji: You guys like Snoop Dogg?

Monaghan: Yeah, I like Snoopy Dogg.

Joel: You guys live in L.A.?

Boyd: I don't. I live in Scotland, so next to my bed I only have a light so I can read.

Monaghan: I live in Hollywood.

Boyd: Sometimes a sandwich if I'm hungry.

Benji: Has being a Hobbit helped your dating life or hurt it?

Monaghan: I never had a problem with my dating life.

Boyd: Women like you?

Monaghan: What is that about?

Boyd: I don't know!

Monaghan: When does your album come out?

Joel: It's out. Comes out in January.

Monaghan: No, I meant when does your album turn into a second album?

Joel: That is the second album.

Monaghan: Third album?

Joel: January.

Benji: Next January, a year.

Boyd: This guy here [points to photo of Good Charlotte guitarist Billy] looks like David Grohl.

Benji: Yeah, Dave Grohl. A little bit. Billy is actually the biggest "Lord of the Rings" fan I ever met.

Monaghan: This guy, Billy? Then how come he's not interviewing?

Benji: He's got the ring tattooed around his hand.

Boyd: He's busy is he?

Benji: He's taking a couple of days off.

Boyd: What's your favorite tattoo?

Benji: My favorite tattoo? I like this one on my neck. It's the Virgin Mary.

Boyd: A lot of religious paraphernalia with you. Is there a religious vibe on the album?

Joel: No, not on the album; definitely not.

Monaghan: Just in life.

Benji: I just figure that when I die, I'm going to need some extra help getting into heaven because of the sh--.

www.mtv.com

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