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NWMS: So Gavin, how are things going? It's been a good year for you. How's the tour been with Maroon 5? GAVIN: It's been very good. More than I had thought. It's great. It's given me a chance to see the country from the highway and meet people and see how it goes over live. NWMS: I heard you might be touring with Matt Nathanson. Is that confirmed or still too early to know for sure? GAVIN: That's not confirmed. I don't know what the deal is with that. There are a few artists that I hear might be right and are cool. So whoever's cool and whatever can come together. It's hard to find the perfect combination of cool and availability. NWMS: Well I don't know about Matt's availability but he's definitely cool and would be great to tour with I'm sure. His mom's so sweet. She sent me this doll. He's called 'Mr. Wonderful'. You squeeze him and he's got all of these great cheesy lines like, "Here honey, you take the remote. As long as I'm with you I don't care what we watch." He's the best. If you want, I'll loan him to you and he can be your teacher. GAVIN: (Laughs) Oh that's really bad. I heard there's also a doll called the 'Yes Man'. It says stuff like, "You're right again. How do you do it?" NWMS: I can confirm the existence of the 'Yes Man' doll. I had a boss a few years ago who was the poster boss for corporate America. Big cheesy smile, blank stare and way too many Tony Robins seminars. He had the 'Yes Man' on his desk. GAVIN: Nice. That's really bad. That's completely Office Space. NWMS: (In unison with Gavin) Mmmm.... yeahhh... GAVIN: Exactly. NWMS: Early on in your career, you turned down an offer from a major label. How did you come to that decision? GAVIN: I didn't think the deal was very impressive. I figure that the offer you get is reflective of the company's belief in you. If they didn't believe in me enough to impress me, then I just figured I needed to work more on what I was doing and work on myself. I'd rather not have a deal than have a really bad one. NWMS: That takes a lot of courage and sense of self to realize that. GAVIN: I guess beggars can't be choosers but I didn't really feel desperate. You know what I mean? I wasn't in a hurray to have that kind of pressure on me. NWMS: Now you're with J Records, a label I've heard only great things about. Maroon 5 is on the same label and when I interviewed Adam a few months ago, it sounded like there is a lot of creative control given to the artists as well as a grassroots approach that the label takes when developing artists. GAVIN: It's the Rolls Royce of the labels without a doubt. NWMS: What about allowing your live shows to be taped? GAVIN: Well I don't really have any control over that. I mean, I don't have control over whether people tape the shows. I certainly haven't signed anything that would say that people can or cannot tape the shows. I believe in the live show. To me, that's the whole point of playing music is the live experience. I'm not a hip hop artist or modern R&B artist or rap artist. A lot of them can put out a new record every six months because a lot of them don't do a huge amount of touring. They're more like studio artists. I believe in live performances. If you're bad live that day, then you're just bad. If you're good live that day, then you're good and you're only as good as that day. That's the way it should be. Part of the beauty of music is the inconsistency. NWMS: If you were filming a live DVD, would you leave everything exactly as is from beginning to end? I know that artists have been asked to go back into the studio to do touch ups on certain notes or moments that might not have been at perfect pitch. GAVIN: I think the imperfection is cool. Certainly in Rock 'n Roll there are some days when you get a sound check and some days when you don't. That's the nature of it. Some days the sound system's terrible. Some days it's amazing. I like the fact that it does change and your environment changes and it's out of your hands. It's like a sport. It's not supposed to be perfect every time but it is supposed to do something to you, whatever that is. It should always be different. NWMS: You have said that writing with honesty is more important to you than being the next big thing. GAVIN: I'd rather do what it is I do than to fit some mold of what's considered completely accessible and completely inoffensive or whatever it is that people do to break into the public. My kind of music is based on what you've been through or at least what you have a good idea about. I would never write a song about something I don't really know anything about because it's a good topic. 'Oh, let me write about that although I've never experienced anything of it but I think it'll sell.' That doesn't really do anything for me. I think it's a joke. NWMS: Have you gotten to play at the Apollo yet? GAVIN: No but I want to play the Apollo bad though. That's a cool joint. NWMS: Are you missing New York yet?
GAVIN:
Oh yeah. I love New York. I'd love to be hanging out there for a couple
days again. GAVIN: I'll go back for Thanksgiving. If I could be in New York for one week out of every month, that would really satisfy me. You know what I mean? Just to have that... NWMS: A bit of grounding. GAVIN: Yeah, a little reminder of where I'm coming from. NWMS: When I was looking through your press kit, I was surprised to see a clipping from YM Magazine. Being a musician and songwriter, most importantly, how do you feel about being in a magazine that's very much geared towards younger girls? Do you think that puts you in a position to be put into a box of a 'heartthrob' category? Are you comfortable with that and do you feel it compromises artistic integrity? GAVIN: Well I'm certainly not heartthrob material. I think that if that's what has to be done in order for young people to get into my style of music, which I think is a little bit more sincere style of music, then that's good. It certainly is good for them. I mean, I'm not seeking any particular audience. I'd like to have people in my audience who appreciate my kind of music. If it takes them seeing that I wear the same clothes as them or, 'Hey, he looks like my cousin. Let's go hear what he sounds like', or whatever it is, then that's fine with me. Whatever it is that sparks that first interest in you. Sometimes people aren't going to go seek you out. You have to be accessible to them and they need to be exposed to you first. They're not just going to go look for something different. It's certainly not the worst thing to have young people into music. The only thing that ever bothers me about music are some reasons people like music. I'm certainly not trying to be something I'm not. I want to be some regular guy who just happens to write songs about the world. I'm not trying to hurt anybody or offend anybody or throw a bunch of naked girls in my video to get somebody to listen to my songs. I don't feel like I need to do that to be a real man. NWMS: Along those same lines, there's something I'm curious about from an outsider's perspective. At one time, especially with boy bands, there was a pressure to be very discreet about romantic relationships and even deny they existed when they did. You shouldn't have to be open about it anyways because it should be kept private to a large degree but is there any specific pressure put on musicians by the label reps or anyone else to appear single? Does that make sense? GAVIN: Yeah. I understand what you're saying. I don't know. I just try to leave anything private as far as a relationship or if I had an argument with my family. It's kind of like my life, you know what I mean? It just seems a little snoopy to me, that kind of stuff and very shallow but different strokes. To me, if some actor goes out with some actress I'm not going to suddenly like or dislike the actor. It just doesn't do anything for me. If that's what people get off on, then that's what they get off on. It's not going to make me find someone more credible or not credible. It's interesting. I saw these record sales for... I can't recall the artist but I think it might have been David Cassidy or someone like that. He had had this massive career and then he got married and they said that his sales went down 50%. NWMS: Because of marriage? GAVIN: (Laughs) Yeah, and I remember thinking, 'How is that possible?' It doesn't make any sense but then it does makes you wonder if that's how people are swayed into liking an artist by whether they're single or not. If it's about the music... but I wonder about music anyway. I wonder about people's success. I wonder about my own credibility and my own success. I think about fashion and I think about what people listen to today and what they'll listen to tomorrow. Music is fashion and if it's fashionable for a musician to go out with a famous actress, it's going to sell more records, I think that's kind of funny. If it's fashionable for the artist to be single to sell more records, then I just think that's funny. It's a reflection of what's considered fashionable in the society. I try not to get wrapped up in that. I just think it's interesting that it comes your way. It doesn't seem like it should really matter. NWMS: But when I was prepping for the interview, I checked out the message board on your website to read about what your fans were talking about and you seem to have a really respectful audience. GAVIN: That's cool. That's the type of audience you want to strike. Really, the credibility of an audience like that makes you someone who is an artist as opposed to a product. To me, I don't need to know about Woody Allen's private life. It's none of my damn business. I don't care. I just want to watch his movies. Unless there's something incredibly wrong going on and even then that's not up to me. That's up to the law. You know what I mean? I just think it is interesting. It does throw me off that it does matter to so many people. I think it all just depends on the demographic. Some people are going to care and some people aren't going to care. NWMS: It depends on who you're being marketed to. You mentioned David Cassidy but of course David Cassidy's relationship status is going to affect his record sales. His career was built around his teen idol status. Look at somebody like Billy Joel. When he married Christy Brinkley, nobody cared. His fans didn't stop buying his records. That's because he's an artist. It depends on what energy you're putting out there. Everything comes back to you. GAVIN: Exactly. Exactly that's true. I think it has to do also with... if you grew up being somebody who was really gossipy, then when you get in a position for people to gossip about you, then that's what's going to happen. I was never a gossipy guy. If that's karmic at all, I don't know if karma's real or not but if it is, then I guess it's good that I was never a gossipy guy. I don't really read those message boards though. Maybe it's better I don't. |
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