Maroon5

If patience is a virtue, the boys in Maroon5 are some righteous dudes. The Los Angeles-based band -- which consists of singer/guitarist Adam Levine, guitarist James Valentine, bassist Mickey Madden, drummer Ryan Dusick, and keyboardist Jesse Carmichael -- has endured a roller-coaster ride along the bumpy, twisting tracks of the music industry. But now, after a decade-long musical odyssey, the guys in the band remain optimistic (and funny). And given the buzz over their recently released album,Songs About Jane, they damn well should be.

In an earlier incarnation -- the ultra-poppy four-piece rock band Kara's Flowers -- the guys in Maroon5 were signed to Warner Brothers Reprise Records before three-fourths of the band's members were even 18. Their debut full-length, The Fourth World, was released -- complete with Weezer-ish ballads about sailing and the ocean -- and they toured the U.S. in 1997, supporting third-wave ska acts Reel Big Fish and Goldfinger. Then, in a not-atypical scenario, Kara's Flowers was dropped before a second album was recorded.

Over the course of a long four years, Valentine, formerly of the L.A.-based band Square, joined Maroon, and Carmichael, who used to play guitar, took over keyboard duties as the band's '60s-era pop sound was abandoned for a more mature, soul-inspired rock flavor.

Late this June, after two years of showcases and major-label flirtations, Songs About Jane hit shelves as the first release for J Records imprint label, Octone. And while the full-length is a sophomore effort for most of the members of Maroon5, the guys say it's really the debut album from a completely different band.

Maroon5 is currently touring, supporting Sheryl Crow and Train on the Jeep World Outside Festival (for tour dates and additional info about Maroon5, clickhere).  StarPolish editorial assistant Kelly Aplin spoke with Maroon5 before their Octone Records showcase at the Village Underground in May, just prior to the release of their album. The band talked about fine-tuning their sound, offered advice on the benefits of the Internet, discussed the relative merits of indie and major labels, and gave their personal accounts of the disappointment that comes with being dropped from a major.

Scene: Village Underground. Date: May 6, 2002. Situation:  Maroon 5 are preparing for a gig. Clive Davis is scheduled to be in the audience. The band wants to look spiffy. James Valentine needs socks.

CARMICHAEL: I have socks. I have white socks...

MADDEN: You don't need socks.

CARMICHAEL: I have brown socks if you want them.

MADDEN: Dress shoes and no socks is good.

CARMICHAEL: Are you sure? Isn't he going to sweat a lot? Are you going to get gnarly blisters?

(Adam steals the recorder and whispers into it.)

LEVINE: Interviewww...

CARMICHAEL: You're talking into the speaker.

(Adam whispers into the microphone.)

LEVINE: Hello! Hellooooo...

CARMICHAEL: All right, next interview!

STARPOLISH: James, what are your favorite pastimes?

VALENTINE: I like to read magazines, and I believe everything I read. I like to surf the Web. It's great -- you type something in and all these pages are brought up. Anything you want!

STARPOLISH: Why did you change your name?

CARMICHAEL: Why did you change yours?

MADDEN: I've always been named Mickey.

STARPOLISH: Your band name!

CARMICHAEL: I knew what you were talking about.

MADDEN: Saucy, aren't you, Kelly?

DUSICK: We changed our name for a lot of reasons. The first one being that...

MADDEN: It's a new band. James is a new member. We don't play any of our old songs...

STARPOLISH: Why not?

MADDEN: Because we're in a different place right now.

CARMICHAEL: It's a new band. I don't think you listened. I mean it's a totally new band.

DUSICK: We wanted to distance ourselves from our album on Reprise because we feel that our style is very different now than it was then.

MADDEN: And not that we don't stand behind our album on Reprise at all. We're very proud of it and happy with it. It's just that this is something new and different.

DUSICK: And also, the name "Kara's Flowers" -- actually, this is the number one reason -- it was very difficult, whenever people asked us the name of our band, for us to say clearly "Kara's Flowers" and have them understand what we we're saying. People would say "Cars and Flowers," "Carlos Flowers," "Carson Flowers"...

MADDEN: We'd wanted to change our name for a long time.

CARMICHAEL: This is something I'm thinking about right now -- just for the future, we don't need to even discuss it because we didn't change the name...

MADDEN: ... Yeah, it's a new band.

CARMICHAEL: We disbanded Kara's Flowers...

MADDEN: And we joined James' group.

CARMICHAEL: Maroon5.

VALENTINE: I was holding auditions. And these scrappy four young guys walked in and said, "I think we can round out your team."

CARMICHAEL: His audition [solicitation] said, "Wanted: Kara's Flowers."

STARPOLISH: Do you guys think that certain band names have certain connotations?

MADDEN: Definitely.

CARMICHAEL:  For example, "Toe Tag Timmy." Or "Choke."

MADDEN: I think we talked about changing the name Kara's Flowers for a long time, too, because of the pronunciation problem. I think that Maroon -- and then Maroon5 -- are sort of abstract enough, but there's a mood to them, there's a feeling... But it's not very "on the know." It could be any kind of band. We didn't want to spell out our style with a name. We did toss around the Funk Kings. Groovemeister was up high on the list.

CARMICHAEL: Kelly, who do you hang out with? What's your main scene of people, music-wise?

STARPOLISH: I don't know. I hang out with a diverse bunch.

CARMICHAEL: What do people think of our music that you hang out with?

STARPOLISH: People love it.

CARMICHAEL: That's very encouraging.

MADDEN: Thanks, Kelly. Back to the interview.

STARPOLISH: This interview is going to go up on StarPolish, which aims to provide advice for musicians from people who have...

CARMICHAEL: Are they talented?

LEVINE: Go to law school.

DUSICK: Learn a trade!

CARMICHAEL: If you believe you've got what it takes, then you do -- and you'll make it in some capacity.

MADDEN: It's true. Is there a specific question?

STARPOLISH: Yes. I'd like to talk to you guys about label stuff... What happened with Reprise, and how it felt to be dropped --  was it discouraging?

CARMICHAEL: No. Let's think about this for one second. Maybe it's not a good idea... our label is around us...

DUSICK: But we can definitely talk about Reprise...

MADDEN: Right. To answer your question, the situation with Reprise was definitely... discouraging is a good word for it, because we had very high expectations. We were very young and idealistic and we felt...

CARMICHAEL: You know what? I don't think we should do this.

MADDEN: Were talking about Reprise...

CARMICHAEL: I know, but it's not a good idea to talk about other labels...

MADDEN: But this has nothing to do with Reprise! It has everything to do with us, and our being discouraged by our deal falling through. Can we stop [the tape] for a second? (Band argues briefly) Anyway, yes, we were discouraged because we had tremendously high hopes and we were very young and we thought we were on top of the world. And then when everything fell through, it was an extremely important learning experience for us. It helped us a lot in terms of how we behaved in the future. And I think the biggest lesson that we learned from that was to be as personally involved as possible on every level, because if you leave things out of your control completely, it's much harder to keep your foot in. It's important to know everyone at your label who's distributing your record in whatever capacity you can, and just to be active and take things into your own hands and collaborate.

DUSICK: I think the main thing that we've learned as a band in our experiences with the music industry is, number one, I think patience is extremely important.

STARPOLISH: How so?

DUSICK: Over the years, you have extremely high hopes when you really believe in yourself and the art that you're making. And if things don't come immediately, it can become very discouraging, especially if you have setbacks. When you see something going a certain way and it doesn't go that way -- "Oh, we're going to do this, and we're going to sign with this label," and then it doesn't happen. Or, "We're going to get into the studio this time," and then it doesn't happen. You definitely have to, if you believe in yourself, know that those kinds of things are going to happen and have the patience to work through them and use them as tools to improve.

Because I think that really, we've also learned that if things are not moving forward for your band, you always have to look at yourself and wonder what, if anything, are we not doing that we could be doing to make ourselves better? Is our live show as good as it possibly could be? If not, then what are we going to do about it? We're going to make it better.

CARMICHAEL: Right now I was pointing at James, because he's putting his fingers in the ashtray, and I would imagine that that's where people put their cigarettes.

VALENTINE: Sorry.

STARPOLISH: Why did it take so long? What was happening?

CARMICHAEL: That's what she said.

STARPOLISH: Jesse!

CARMICHAEL: Such disappointment.

MADDEN: You don't approve of our keyboardist.

CARMICHAEL: We don't have to answer this question seriously, just so you know, if we want to let that go right there.

DUSICK: But...  we maybe should, though... (laughter)

CARMICHAEL: Some of them, I think.

MADDEN: We can do whatever we want.

CARMICHAEL: Yeah, I just read a bunch of boring interviews recently, and it's because they were answering the questions.

MADDEN: You read them because they were answering the questions?

STARPOLISH: Should we go back to that question?

MADDEN: No, I'm happy.

CARMICHAEL: I'm happy, too. Believe me, I think this is all interesting. That's our answer to that question.

MADDEN: What was the question?

STARPOLISH: Why did it take so long [between labels]?

MADDEN: It took a long time because we...

DUSICK: ...Were doing a lot of heroine.

MADDEN: Yeah. You know how it is when you get addicted to a drug, a hard drug, and it takes a lot... Because, basically, my priority was heroine for a while, and the band sort of came second to heroine. Which, you know, I just chose that one thing. That was my thing for that moment. Anyway, the real reason it took so long, aside from the drug addiction, was because we had to deal with that discouragement that I previously discussed, and we had a lot of personal issues between the four of us at the time to work out. Taste issues, creative issues.

STARPOLISH: Taste issues, because your sound has changed a huge deal?

MADDEN: As we've gotten older, we've been getting more and more open-minded, listening to more and more music. And now  I don't think there's a single genre of music that any of us would dismiss as an influence.

STARPOLISH: But for a while there was?

MADDEN: Yeah, I think we were definitely more narrow-minded when we were younger. That's just what happens. The more you're exposed to different kinds of music, and the more you listen, the more you realize that anything can be appreciated.

STARPOLISH: But for a while, between band members, there was... ?

MADDEN: Yeah, there was definitely tension, for sure. We were pulling in different ways. There were a lot of disparate tastes and feelings and, essentially, we had to decide to tough it out together or else we'd fall apart. And that's what we decided to do.

DUSICK: Thankfully, at a certain point somehow our musical tastes kind of came back together in a magical way.

MADDEN: Or at least we found a good common ground to operate on. In particular, I think the breakthrough came from embracing hip-hop and R&B, Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock, and the Police, and Prince... things like this that were all hugely important influences for us. And when we started working in that sphere and aspiring to see what we could learn from those artists, I think that we became...

CARMICHAEL: ... Learnéd.

MADDEN: And just happier. It was something that we were all passionate about.

STARPOLISH: Would you rather never have sex or never play music again for the rest of your lives?

CARMICHAEL: I would rather never have sex again for the rest of my life.

MADDEN: I would rather never play music.

CARMICHAEL: I can still masturbate, am I right? Kelly, please? You're the one negotiating this deal.

MADDEN: Is this going to happen? Do I have to decide now?

CARMICHAEL: Shit!

DUSICK: That's a tough question to answer.

CARMICHAEL: It's easy for me.

MADDEN: It is a tough question. Again, I think I choose never to play music...

CARMICHAEL: Next bass player...

MADDEN: ... Because I could appreciate music still, and I could listen to it and enjoy it, but...

CARMICHAEL: I could appreciate pornos.

DUSICK: Yeah...

MADDEN: Actually, it's not that easy.

CARMICHAEL: What do you think, Kelly? What would you rather have none of?

DUSICK: Do you play music?

STARPOLISH: No.

CARMICHAEL: Do you like that? Do you want to hold on to that? (laughter)What else would you like to know?

STARPOLISH: So you guys are sort of sticking with the maritime theme...?

MADDEN: I think we've let the maritime theme go, to be honest.

STARPOLISH: Really?

MADDEN: Yeah. I think Adam's lyrical fascination with boats, oceans, storms, et cetera, has waned.

DUSICK: But I can see storm as a metaphor for his relationships. I can see that happening down the line. But on this album, there are no storms.

MADDEN: It's obviously more personal and less abstract.

STARPOLISH: But your band's name...?

CARMICHAEL: What about "Maroon" made you think of mariners?

MADDEN: The M-A-R?

DUSICK:  Being marooned on an... because of a storm?

CARMICHAEL: That's a very interesting and liberal use of the word "maritime." I applaud you for it. You're really pushing the envelope of that word.

DUSICK: You're breaking ground as an interviewer.

MADDEN: This is how language changes, Kelly. It changes with popular usage.

CARMICHAEL: Honestly, Kelly, it was appealing to me to...

STARPOLISH: It makes sense, right?

MADDEN: Of course.

CARMICHAEL: I liked that connotation about it when we first heard the name Maroon.

STARPOLISH: Is that what it is? Or is it the color?

MADDEN: It's both.

DUSICK: It's anything. We don't like to limit ourselves to one definition of the word "maroon."

CARMICHAEL: Or any of them.

MADDEN: Nor do we think you should limit yourself to one definition of the word maroon.

CARMICHAEL: Or any other word.

MADDEN: Are we helping you out here?

STARPOLISH: I like it this way...

MADDEN: That's what she said! Kelly...?

CARMICHAEL: Why!

DUSICK: Mickey!

MADDEN: I'm sorry to disappoint both of you. It's just who I am. It's how I live.

CARMICHAEL: What do you want from us? Do you want more succinct answers?

STARPOLISH: I need advice.

CARMICHAEL: OK.

DUSICK: About being in a band?

STARPOLISH: About the process of courting a label -- the courtship process.

MADDEN: Just keep your head and always follow your instincts about people and their personalities.

STARPOLISH: Can you talk about your experiences?

CARMICHAEL: Sure. We've just had rough experiences. This interview is for musicians going out to look for record deals, and they should know that you can have difficult times in a record deal, which I'm sure everybody knows.

MADDEN: The music industry is designed to, the way it's set up -- the artist gets screwed in comparison to the record label. The balance is very tipped in the record label's favor in a lot of ways because what the record label provides is quantifiable.

CARMICHAEL: Is this something you know? Have you heard of this phenomenon before? Is this common knowledge? I'm just asking you...

STARPOLISH:Umm...

(A chandelier suddenly drops a few feet down from the ceiling)

MADDEN: Anyway... Whoa!

CARMICHAEL: We set off a boobie trap!! Boobie trap! Ahhh!

MADDEN: That's bizarre.

CARMICHAEL: That's amazing.

DUSICK: Please note what just happened in the interview.

MADDEN: The lights just lowered themselves to about three feet above the ground.

DUSICK: I think that chandelier is like in the haunted mansion.

MADDEN: I think, because there's so much business to the music business that the scales are tipped in favor of money as opposed to art, because you can count money. It's a tangible, quantifiable thing. And art is much more abstract, so you can't really put a price on it.

STARPOLISH: That affects you guys?

MADDEN: This is just general talk about the way that it's set up.

DUSICK: The music business is different than any other business because when you sign a record contract, it's a negotiation that is one-sided. The money is all on one side and the product is on the other side, which is the art. And in most negotiations there's some kind of middle ground, so the balance is a little off in that context. So it's definitely something that, over the years, from the beginning of the recording industry, has been something that the artist has had to deal with, being sort of, at times, an unfair balance.

But I think the thing to remember, though, as any artist trying to get -- or getting -- a record deal is that you're choosing to put yourself in that context. You could just sit in a bar and play music for the rest of your life, if that's what you want to do. But by choosing to go into the commercial realm, you have to know and expect a lot of things that come along with it, and be able to choose your battles as far as what things you're willing to fight to the end for and what things aren't that important in the grand scheme of things.

CARMICHAEL: Let's discuss the alternatives to choosing to enter into that world. There are several things you can do with your own band if you want to spend the time that it takes to start your own record label, to distribute your own records, to tour.

MADDEN: Obviously, a lot of indie labels are much more fair in their distribution of money. And while they don't have the same kind of scope as a major label in terms of getting your album in stores and getting it reviewed and getting it in front of people's faces, the money that you potentially can make per record sold is a lot greater than it is on most record labels. That's the trade-off. And I think I applaud independent labels for that, because I think it's very respectful to the artist, which is where it all originates.

And I think that also right now, as James was saying earlier, this phenomenon known as the Internet in which people trade information freely over an abstract virtual information super-highway as we call it really changes the game a lot and makes it possible for artists to directly distribute their music to their fans. Of course, there are plenty of kinks to work out in how artists are compensated for this in the future. But at the same time, I think the record industry, in its current state, is becoming somewhat obsolete and it's sort of scrambling for a way to be relevant in that context.

But I do think that the Internet is a very valuable way to promote your record, even for a band on a major label. The Internet has been so amazingly helpful for us because what happens is that localized excitement about a band spreads in a way that it never has before. All of a sudden, if you had a very successful show in Virginia, those people are talking to their online friends in Seattle two hours after they see you and there's a buzz in Seattle all of a sudden and people come to your show there. There's never been anything like that before, ever. Back in the days of the Pony Express, it would take two weeks before that information got to Seattle.

CARMICHAEL: So, here's my advice for bands out there: I would say look at your band, consider how commercial you think you are, and then how far you personally are willing to work to spread the music. You might have to find private investment. But if, however commercial you think you are, you think that you want to do this yourself without signing away some aspect of your creative control, then you have to be ready to really work for the alternative route.

MADDEN: And again, what I was going to say earlier is that I think the most important thing, in terms of when you're meeting with labels and choosing who you're going to ultimately work with, [is to] trust your instincts about the people who you're going to work with. It's important to have people that you like, that you respect, whose tastes you can trust, and people that you want to hang out with. I think that ultimately, personal relationships are the most important thing in the world of the music business. You stand to gain so much more by genuinely liking the people that you work with.

CARMICHAEL: So here's another piece of advice about that: You can find out all the information you need to find out about a label or any business-related person by looking at their track record in terms of the stuff that they might want to tell you in the meeting. But it's not as important for you to listen to their promises about what they can do number-wise, or what they've done with records in the past, as it is to like Mickey says get to know them. Talk to them about a variety of subjects. Feel them out just as people.

MADDEN: And make sure they love your music, too. That, ultimately, is the most important thing. If someone looks at you merely as a commodity then they will not be as successful in terms of the longevity of your career, the passion that it takes to work something, despite its initial success, etc.

DUSICK: Somebody once told us that nobody is ever going to love, or work as hard, or support our band as much as we are. Do you know what I mean? No one's going to love what you do and stand behind you until the end as much as you are. So really, I think the struggle as far as finding people who are going to represent you in any way -- whether it's management, a record label, or booking agent --  is to find the people that really support you the most of all the options out there, the people who really feel like the project is their project almost as much as it is yours. Obviously, it will never be as much [theirs], but if you can feel like they're invested in it to a very high degree then that's how much they're going to work for you.

CARMICHAEL: That's a pretty big chunk of information. You can just write the interview around that. Write your questions where you want to place them.

MADDEN: Don't suck corporate dick. Don't sell out.

CARMICHAEL: Do you have any other questions? I have to go to the bathroom.

MADDEN: Ask anything you want now.

DUSICK: I have some questions. Mickey, what is wrong with you?

STARPOLISH: I was thinking about just regurgitating questions from my old [1997] interview. I thought that would be funny.

MADDEN: That is funny. Let's see how much we've changed.

STARPOLISH: That's what I was thinking.

MADDEN: Right?

STARPOLISH: But Adam, James and Jesse walked away.

MADDEN: That's OK.

STARPOLISH: What are your musical aspirations, and how would you describe your sound?

DUSICK: Our musical aspirations are to be the best band that we can be...

STARPOLISH: That's not very different.

MADDEN: And, I think, constantly push ourselves I think it's important to us to plunge the depths of all music, listen to as much as we can, absorb as much as we can, and keep changing and growing and not ever get stuck in a rut. I think we'll all be happy if we keep surprising people.

DUSICK: I would describe our sound as alternative soul.

MADDEN: Alternative to what?

DUSICK: Alternative to the mainstream. No, that's a good marketable term for what we do. But if I really wanted to describe it, as far as the sound goes, I would describe it as soul-influenced rock.

MADDEN: I think melodic, poppy somewhat...

STARPOLISH: That was Kara's Flowers.

MADDEN: I know. Well, those are the things that have remained. And then I would say heavily influenced by soul and R&B.

DUSICK: I think no matter what style of music we play -- and this is the thing I think a lot of people don't get, because we play different styles of music and because our music is so different now than it was in the past -- no matter what kind of music we play, I think the melodic ideas are always consistent. We grew up on pop music -- the Beatles were a huge influence on us. And whatever style of music we delve into, there's always going to be that pop-rock influence in the songwriting.

Right now we happen to be into a lot more beat-oriented kind of music. We listen to a lot of R&B and soul and even contemporary hip-hop and R&B, but we're still writing pop-rock songs in that context. Maybe in the future we'll start getting into something different -- something more acoustic, more folky, maybe heavier, maybe something with more riff-oriented kind of music. But I really think that no matter what we do, the biggest influence that stays consistent is the pop songwriting influence.

To find out more about Maroon5, visit the band's website athttp://www.maroon5.com. Maroon5's new album, Songs About Jane, is now available at most retail stores, or online athttp://www.amazon.com.