A Conversation with fun.’s Jack Antonoff – HuffPost 4.16.12
Mike Ragogna: How are you Jack?
Jack Antonoff: Good.
MR: You’ve got a lot of momentum right now with the band. What kinds of crazy things have been happening since your second album Some Nights came out and “We Are Young” became a huge hit?
JA: What’s funny is a lot of the crazy things that are happening, you know? It (was) the #1 song in the country, we’re signing a lot of albums, we’re on the cover of Billboard and all this stuff. It’s not tangible to us because we’re still on the bus, we’re playing shows, and that’s all we do…we just tour. That’s what we’ve been doing for the past twelve years. The band has had fans since our first album, so it’s not like all of a sudden our shows are selling out. It’s actually very weird, I haven’t heard the song on the radio once and apparently it’s been added to every pop and alternative station out there.
MR: And don’t forget the Super Bowl.
JA: Yeah, that I saw, which was very surreal.
MR: Did your parents catch it?
JA: Yeah, we saw that together. I think it was an affirming moment for my extended family that I’m not just in a band smoking pot somewhere. But actually, I think it’s great that we’re so isolated because we’re doing what we do best, which is playing shows and touring, and all this stuff is just icing on the cake.
MR: Of course, you had that Janelle Monáe connection, that was awesome. What was it like? How was it recorded?
JA: She recorded it in Europe and we had recorded the song at least a month before.
MR: You’re a blogger for The Huffington Post, aren’t you?
JA: Yes.
MR: What do you usually discuss in your columns?
JA: What I write for them is specifically gay rights, gender issues, from the straight male perspective, which, one of the reasons why I think it’s fascinating and important is because that’s one place where a lot of these things aren’t discussed. To me, that’s how it all changes, the non-oppressed parties standing up and having an opinion.
MR: It’s a support system that at least seems unlikely.
JA: It unfortunately is, which is sort of the big point that I’m getting at, how sad it is that it’s unlikely, that we’re not all standing up for each other, that we’re not all allies for each other. You look at African-American civil rights and the moment that the real shift happened is when white America understood that this was everyone’s problem, that we’re not all free until we’re all free. That’s the big moment, people understanding this isn’t a niche issue, it isn’t a gay issue, it’s a human rights issue. It’s bigger than the economy, it’s bigger than any sort of politics, it’s human rights.
MR: Right. What’s amazing about this is that it seems like a non-issue, for the most part.
JA: It crazy. I grew up in the ’90s, and I don’t want to sound old because I do feel in touch, being in the music scene and doing what I do. But I feel that this young generation is more apathetic than the generation I grew up in. You know, the ’90s–like Woodstock ’94, if you even want to tie the music into politics. It was a really progressive time. That Woodstock, if you look at ’94, ’99, was all about dreadlocks, purple hair, and being whoever you want.
MR: Yeah, the flannel years.
JA: If you jump to Woodstock to ’99, the fans literally burned down their own peace festival, which says a lot about the culture. In many ways, although I’d like to be more positive, I think we’ve gone down that road. I think fundamentalist religion has been on the rise in young people, which is, to me, terrifying, because it’s the birth of a lot of hate. I think that young kids have gotten more conservative, but mostly more apathetic as a whole, just “not my problem.” You see it in music, you see it in bands blowing up and having this attitude which is screw everything, using a lot of hateful language and having horrible politics, and people just eating it up.
MR: Having had great success with Fun., what do you think of your Still Train years?
JR: It’s really cool and it’s the same story for all three of us. We didn’t pop out of nowhere. I’ve been on tour for twelve years, my first tour was when I was sixteen in my parent’s minivan that I borrowed and took all the way to Austin, which is funny that we’re here all the way from New Jersey. God knows why they let me do that. But what’s great about that is we learned how to play live, we learned the right way, we learned by booking our own shows, we learned by playing to five kids, then ten kids, then twenty kids. We’ve literally dumpster-dived and slept on people’s floors, and it’s been a complete steady build. We went from sleeping in the van to one hotel room, to two hotel rooms, nicer hotel rooms, and now we’re finally in the bus. There are so many amazing things about it. Mostly importantly, we’re incredibly grateful for everything that comes our way. But even bigger than that, I just think that we learned how to play in a Rock ‘n’ Roll band, to get up there and interact with a crowd and be great to our fans. Bruce Springsteen says anyone can make fans, but how you serve them is what makes you great. Lots of people have fans, but there are very few Bruce Springsteens who go out there and tour, make great records, and really care.
MR: At SXSW, were you at Springsteen’s keynote speech?
JA: I wasn’t, nor was I at the show.
MR: He made a lot of incredible points, one of which being you have to earn your stripes live.
JA: We’re seeing that in modern music so much, with everything, for example, all that controversy over Lana Del Rey on Saturday Night Live. It’s not even her fault; it’s the media’s fault. We should be promoting and getting behind bands that are a little bit more seasoned. It’s exciting to be on the ground level, but it should be happening in clubs, then garages, then it builds. I think we’re going back to that, I think it’s reverting.
MR: It seems that once you get out into the trenches, you’re seeing bands seasoned in a way that they’re so at home in the sweat and the crowds.
JA: The greatest bands have that, and it’s the only thing you can’t fake. There’s so much you can fake, there’s millions of great songwriters out there, there are amazing producers. You put anyone in the studio with Jon Brion and they’re going to sound incredible. You put anyone with Max Martin, they’re going the have a hit. But live, whether it’s technology or anything else, it is unfakeable. It is more than even just the talent–the way you sing, the way you play instruments, the way you play together. There is this other element that the greatest bands create with themselves and with the crowd. They create this third party, which doesn’t exist, the ghost of a great show. Springsteen does it every night when he gets his crowd, himself, and his band to create this thing that happens together. That’s live music. It’s impossible to duplicate.
MR: This is a good point to ask this question. What advice might you have for new artists?
JA: To know that that’s it. Everyone’s coming up with a quicker way to get successful. Two or three years ago, it was all about Pitchfork and all about hype. You just do that and you blow up and you’re Arcade Fire, which doesn’t work. Arcade Fire was one of the most amazing bands. That’s why they’re huge. To tour, it’s almost like the meat and potatoes of the situation, to go out there, get an event and understand what it means to be in a band. If you do have the one in a million opportunity to play for lots of people, you’re going to want to have that experience. When we get up there in big crowds, that’s all we’re doing. We’re doing it like we did when we were fifteen.
MR: And in a lot of cases these bands are representing their local areas, they’re carrying their regional flags and they know it.
JA: I feel very strongly about New Jersey.
MR: I was about to ask, how do you feel about your own situation, being associated with Jersey?
JA: It has a very rich tradition and it’s something that should be continued in any way possible.
MR: Was Bruce your idol when you were growing up?
JA: Absolutely. Bruce Springsteen and all the local punk music that was happening. I see Bruce Springsteen, in his own way, as a complete punk.
MR: I think so too. He also actually said that, that he wasn’t trying to be controversial, but he was being controversial in how he was depicting people in his stories, the darkness.
JA: He’s as punk as you can get. Him and growing up was hardcore and punk music, going to see it in fire halls and legion halls is the heart of New Jersey and that is a tradition that he carries.
MR: What future Fun. will there be?
JA: The immediate future is going to be a ton of touring on this album. We’re going to go all over the world, it’s really exciting. All of us…the success really invigorates us to want to go back and make another album. The more people you have listening, the more delicate the situation, the more years, the more special you want the album to be. It’s special.
MR: When you look back at your first album, Aim and Ignite, and you look at your latest,Some Nights, what do you feel is the biggest jump?
JA: I think Aim and Ignite is an album of three people having this explosion together, finding out all these new things, learning to write together. It was almost like a honeymoon album–that initial buzz–and it was the debut, so artistically, it’s very “Here we are, this is us!” Obvious in all the right ways–here’s the production, here are the strings, the big guitars, Nate’s voice is here–it’s all bombastic. Some Nights is after that chemical-called-love disappears and something even more beautiful happens when you make a conscious effort to stay together and to work together. So this album for us was getting in a room, saying, “Okay,” and it’s not about shoving anything down anyone’s throat and saying this is “Fun.” It’s about taking a step back and looking at this with a little more delicacy. It’s a more mature record with a lot of less-is-more. A lot of people would never think this, but we recorded a lot of this album live–the piano, acoustic, and vocals. A lot of people see it as more of a produced record, but it’s actually quite the opposite. It does feel more confident being in our own skin and defining the band, not saying, “Hey, we’re three guys who can make a cool album.” It’s, “Hey, we’re three guys who can make great art consistently” is the goal here.
MR: And what about that Still Train reunion?
JA: Yeah, definitely. There’s only so much time in the day, but I love playing with Still Train, I love playing with fun. I have a couple of other ideas I can’t really talk about yet, but everyone will have enough of me at some point.
MR: If you don’t have a song featured in next year’s Super Bowl, are you going to be disappointed?
JA: No. The only way I could be disappointed is if people stopped coming to the shows or if they stopped acting the way they act at the shows. Our fans are so excited, they’re as excited to be there as we are, which is the only way we ever want it. They’re singing every song. It makes us play and write on a level that we would never be able to do on our own. The fans are an integral part of our process and we’ve always had that, whether it was fifty kids or a few thousand. So if that ever were to dissipate, it would be heartbreaking. Anything else, who cares.
Transcribed by Narayana Windenberger