A Conversation with Maroon 5’s Adam Levine – HuffPost 7.23.10
Mike Ragogna: What’s up with your new album Hands All Over? Are you still working on it?
Adam Levine: Well, I guess we’re done… more or less we’ve finished it. Hands All Over is our record. We went to Switzerland and made it with “Mutt” Lange, and we had an incredible, inspiring experience that we will never forget. We’ve never really embarked on anything like this — leaving L.A. and the comfort of our homes to make a record. It was pretty amazing to be completely undisturbed with creativity.
MR: On June 22, you guys released the single and video for “Misery.”
AL: Yeah, it just came out.
MR: The video was directed by Joseph Kahn, and you’re being thrown off of a building.
AL: (laughs) I read, like, three lines of the treatment that Joseph wrote on it, and I’ve always wanted to work with him because he’s really talented.
MR: What was the pitch like?
AL: I think the first line was, “Adam is going through something with his girl,” so I started rolling my eyes thinking, “Okay, next.” But then, I think three sentences in, it said something like, “…she’s trying to kill him.” I just thought that was awesome. I’d never really seen that before.
MR: And, of course, nothing says “I love you” better in a video than being thrown off a building.
AL: I love music videos, I really do. I think it’s kind of sad that it’s a dying art form. People aren’t paying as much attention to them as they used to, and they’re not as culturally relevant as they used to be. But I want to combat that by making fun, good videos that are entertaining for people. I don’t think anybody really wants to just see a band performing in a video anymore, that’s not what interests people. So, it’s nice to have a few little twists, turns, and quirks that draw you to the song in some unique way. I’m really excited about this video because I think it achieves that.
MR: Nice. Now, just to play a little catch-up for the readers, Maroon 5 was begotten from the group Kara’s Flowers. What’s the story behind that?
AL: Basically the whole thing started in high school, three of the five members have been together since high school. I met our bass player, Mickey, when we were eleven in seventh grade. We met and he started teaching me about classic rock that I didn’t know about or wasn’t into, like Bowie and Queen. I was raised on The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, and The Rolling Stones, but I never really got into certain things that he was really into. We kind of exchanged tastes. I was really into Guns N’ Roses and Mötley Crüe, and we started listening to all these different types of music and exploring. He started playing the bass because I played guitar, and that’s really how it started. It was really organic, just a bunch of kids screwing around in a garage. We knew there was something special going on. I really only became a singer because I was the best singer in the band — I was never one of these American Idol kids that wanted to be a singer. I just wanted to be in a band, that’s really all. I kind of thought to myself, when we were kids, “Okay, well I can sing. So I’ll sing.” It was very non self-conscious, I was just the guy that was going to be the singer. And that was just how I grew up, being in a band. That was really my goal, to play music with friends.
MR: Then comes Maroon 5.
AL: Ah, Maroon 5. Well, I think our music started changing. We started listening to R&B and hip hop which started effecting the way we wanted to play. I think in the late nineties, once rock ‘n’ roll was kind of officially dead, things started happening in the R&B and hip-hop world that were really revolutionary. To me, at least, rock ‘n’ roll bands started just regurgitating the same s**t. Everybody wanted to be Nirvana, everybody wanted to be Pearl Jam, and nobody really paid attention to the fact that The Neptunes and Timberland was all very new sounding, innovative sounding. And I was really drawn to that, even the early Destiny’s Child records. I know it sounds weird, but to me at the time, those were the most revolutionary records coming out. I mean Missy Elliott was almost avant-garde. It was so strange and cool and kind of a birth of a completely new genre of music. We loved that, we emulated that. And, I think, in doing that, we alienated ourselves from the rock ‘n’ roll scene and became a poppier situation.
I love that. I liked not doing what was expected of us. With the first band, we were just a straight up, power pop, rock ‘n’ roll band. I wanted to do something different, and it all came from those realizations that I had around that time listening to a lot of Stevie Wonder, Bill Withers, Marvin Gaye, and things that really affected the way I wrote and sang music too.
MR: Back at Live Aid, you got to perform with one of your idols, Stevie Wonder.
AL: Stevie Wonder is just one of those guys that completely delivers everything that you want to be true about Stevie Wonder. He’s an amazing human being, and the fairytale exists with that man. He’s one of the best people, I think, that exists on the earth.
MR: Favorite Stevie Wonder album?
AL: Ooh, Songs in the Key of Life.
MR: So, Songs About Jane comes out, and you start having hits like “This Love” right out of the box. Also, John Mayer takes you on his ’03 tour because he’s impressed. Did you feel like these were validations of the innovative approach you intended?
AL: I think so. I was never interested in being like every other five piece, regular rock ‘n’ roll band that ever existed. And you can say what you want about our band, but at the end of the day, there’s not another band currently out that sounds the way we do. It’s funny because the perception of the band is that we’re very poppy, which we are, and we fully embrace that. And that’s why there has been some confusion as to what we really are. I don’t really know what people think anymore, and I don’t particularly care, but it’s interesting. We fit such a strange niche that I don’t really know where we fit, and I think not fitting is what initially made us stand out.
MR: You’re multi-Grammy nominated, even winning a couple. But one of the more interesting nominations you’ve had was for “If I Never See Your Face Again” with Rihanna.
AL: Yeah, yeah. That was cool because she just came in there and knocked it out. She’s really impressive, man. I’ve been fortunate to be really happy with all of the collaborations we’ve done. They’ve all been really great.
MR: With the new album, we’ve already talked a little bit about one of its tracks, “Misery.” It’s coming out in September, right?
AL: I’m really excited about it. I think it covers a lot of musical ground, and it experiments with new ideas and new sounds. There’s a little bit of Motown, a little bit of country, and a little bit of what you’d expect. I think it’s a good, solid record.
MR: “Out of Goodbyes” has Lady Antebellum on it. How did you hook up with them?
AL: They did just an amazing job with helping us fill in the gaps because we’re not a country band, obviously. But there were little country elements that we wanted in that song, and her voice blended really well with mine. We needed a feminine touch on that song, and also some things that we weren’t capable of doing. It was nice that it came from another artist. Obviously, they’re doing really well too, so it was nice to have them involved. I’m very proud to say that I’ve been able to collaborate with a guy like Kanye, and then a band like Lady Antebellum. I think we have the rare ability to be able to do that.
MR: What is your advice for young artists coming up now?
AL: It’s hard to give advice because we’ve been doing this now for eight years. It’s really difficult to give advice in our position because there has been such a revolution in the way this business works since we entered it, basically. We didn’t have MySpace, we didn’t have outlets like YouTube and all these things that exist now. We didn’t have those things when we started, so we actually had to rely on good, old-fashioned hard work.
I know that makes me sound like a curmudgeonly old man. But we had to work, we had to go out on tour and play in front of people. We couldn’t advertise things on Twitter and do all these funky little technological things that bands can do now. So, what I would say is do all those things because it’s important at this point. But don’t be afraid to get dirty and go out and play for people. Go and play and tour. You’re going to get s**t on a little bit — hopefully not too much, but you’ve got to keep going. It’s really not easy. Succeeding in this particular business is extraordinarily difficult, so you just have to develop a thick skin and just go, go, go. We were a band for a long time before we succeeded, which I think was a good thing, sort of a blessing in disguise. I would just say, “Get ready to work.”
MR: One more quick question. Are you guys still in contact with John Mayer? Because if you are…
AL: … haven’t spoken to John in a while. He’s been speaking to the world, hasn’t he?
MR: (laughs) Adam, thank you so much for giving me your time, man.
AL: Awesome. Thank you, dude.
Transcribed by Ryan Gaffney