Young the Giant talks VMAs, touring and Lollapalooza
This story was written by CBS News' Jake Barlow.
(CBS) If you caught the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards you may have seen Young the Giant. The band's performance of "My Body" really got the crowd on its feet (and yes, lead singer Sameer Gadhia uses two microphones during the performance).
At Lollapalooza 2011 in Chicago, the band talked to CBSNews.com about lots of things, from what its name means to what it felt like to open the main stage (and win over lots of news fans). Young the Giant's eponymous debut album was released in late 2010.
CBSNews.com: The band name, where did it come from?
Young the Giant: The name Young the Giant doesn't have a profound or deep-rooted meaning. It is merely a moniker which we felt comfortable writing music under.
CBSNews.com: What are you listing to right now? What did you listen to growing up? Has that changed?
Young the Giant: We all listen to such various types of music, often times sharing with each other new bands and artists that we individually love. There were so many hours in the van driving across the vast expanse of America where we could fill the time with listening to albums straight though.
Recently there has been a lot of Little Dragon, James Blake, Kanye West, Tame Impala, the Roots and bossa nova jazz being played. While we were growing up we were listening to everything from classic rock to Dr. Dre to Nirvana, all of which still come up on our individual playlists.
CBSNews.com: Where do you get your sound from? Is there an influence? A place or time?
Young the Giant: I think an important factor of how we arrived at our sound has to do with the fact that we all try to take an equal part in the songwriting process. It can be difficult at times to have five equally stubborn guys try to voice their opinions, but we seem to have fallen in the groove of things while we were writing last year in Hollywood together.
Before we lived in [Los Angeles] and wrote the bulk of our material, we lived right on the water in Newport Beach, Calif. This was a very liberating time for all of us considering it was directly after we took a leave of absence from college and had no real responsibilities. Most of the album is influenced by the carefree attitude of living at the beach, as well as the nights in Hollywood.
CBSNews.com: The process, how does it come together? For example, when I talked with the Silversun Pickups they explained how when putting together a song, they all at some point split up with their iMacs and then come back together and hammer it out. Is there a process like this? Or some bands jam and find a good click.
Young the Giant: We were fortunate enough to have a loft in our apartment which doubled as our studio, as well [drummer] Francois [Comter] and [guitarist] Jake [Tilley]'s bedrooms. Our neighbors didn't mind when we rehearsed - they actually encouraged our jams and would bake us cookies - so we were able to play a lot.
It took a while to get used to the washed out acoustics of the A-frame ceilings, but after a while we could just all jam out sounds together. One of us would start with a guitar lick, beat, bass line or melody and we would kind of just go from there. Sameer would sing whatever words sounded right with whatever melody he made up on the spot and often times some of the lyrics would just stick.
CBSNews.com: In the new world of alt-rock, there are a ton of bands out there. Your sound is unique. How was it to form this? Was the process a struggle or is there a musical genius in the family?
Young the Giant: Like I had mentioned before, the fact that we all co-write together while bringing in our personal influences has a lot to do with the sound we arrive at. The process is always kind of a struggle. There are days when things click and days when things just crash and burn. Although even if we have a crash-and-burn type of day, Eric or one of us will have written something on [Apple's] Logic [studio] that night and bring it to rehearsal the following day for us to add to and jam on.
CBSNews.com: Where did you get your start and how did you guys meet?
Young the Giant: Everyone pretty much came from somewhere outside of California to Irvine, Calif., shortly before high school started. The local music scene was and still is very strong in Irvine and encouraged all of us to start playing in bands at a very young age. Jake and I were in a pop-punk band shortly after he arrived from England and Sameer and [bassist Payam Doostzadeh] started to play in an indie-acoustic band around the same time. Francois was also in another indie-acoustic band with some friends while Eric was making beats and freestyling with his friends. During high school, Sameer and Jake joined a band called The Jakes with some others and went on for quite a while until Eric and Francois joined the band a couple years later. [Doostzadeh] was the latest to join, replacing Francois on bass while he made the move to drums.
CBSNews.com: How do you like life on the road? What has been one of the coolest places you have been?
Young the Giant: The road has been incredibly kind to us and blessed us with great people, weather and food. We have now been to every state in the continental U.S. as a band except for Maine. We've had the chance to see Indonesia, Australia and most of Europe as well. I do wish, however, that we would have more off days in the locals, considering the usual course of events allows you only one night in the respective city with an early morning wake-up call.
CBSNews.com: Any cool road trip story that stands out?
Young the Giant: There are honestly thousands, some of which blend together. It's kind of hard to retell one in its entirety accurately. Although, just this past weekend at the [Video Music Awards] we got to meet Brian May from Queen and he filmed us toasting to Freddie Mercury for [what would have been] his 65th birthday coming up. After the show we were all piled in a van about to head out to an after-party when we saw him and called out to him asking to join. He came over, popped his head in the van and said that he wasn't young enough anymore to join us. I think the fact that there were 20 of us in a 15-seater was making the offer less attractive. Hopefully there will be another occasion when we can have Brian join us.
CBSNews.com: Lollapalooza was a big deal, huge crowd. How did it feel to see the sea of people digging you guys?
Young the Giant: It was such an honor to open the mainstage at Lollapalooza's 20th anniversary with such an immense crowd. To this day, that was the largest audience we have ever played to. [We] can't even explain how gratifying it is to win over festival goers who might have never heard of your band before.
For more information visit the band's website here.