Interview - Rooney

Not the footballer... Everyone was getting on with life at Universal / Polydor HQ and I was waiting to be called to interview when there was a fire drill. I presume it was a drill anyway. Journalists, bands, and record label staff all milled out in the streets waiting to go back in.

It all felt a bit odd because it always take people a while to warm up to being questioned by a stranger, plus the band were trying to eat lunch, plus a couple of them wore sunglasses throughout the whole interview. Still, it all came together all right.

Words - Suzy Sims
Previously published on Native.tv http://www.native.tv in September 2007
(c) Niche News & Publishing Ltd

ROONEY

Rooney - the band - is cool. I know this because two of them are sitting inside wearing sunglasses. This makes it very hard to make eye contact and I spend a fair bit of time staring at the bowls of crisps and mystery sandwiches on the table.

It’s lunchtime – I was meant to be in the interview room a while ago, but a fire drill left bands and visitors alike standing in the street looking lost for a bit. Now Rooney – aka Ned, Matthew, Louis, Robert and Taylor – are trying to eat their lunch while I ask them questions.

Charismatic frontman Robert Schwartzman is actually out of the room at the start; singers are always super-popular so I think he’s doing another interview down the hall. Louis Stephens looks like he could be in Kings of Leon – chiselled face, long straight hair. Matthew Winter and Ned Brower are hiding under sunnies, though Ned is easily recognisable with his shock of hair and lime green shirt. I’m sat next to laidback and baby-faced guitarist Taylor Locke.

The interview gets off to an excellent start with Ned knocking over a bottle of Sprite onto the table.

“Does baby want a napkin?” asks Matt as Ned watches the puddle progress slowly across the table towards him. Should we take bets on how long it takes for that to fall on your lap? I ask. Ned decides wiping it up would be a better idea and disappears in search of tissues.

Matt fills me in on how the band began. Robert and Taylor met at one of Robert’s brother’s gig when they were both around 15 and after a while decided to form their own band.

“I was the only bass player Robert knew in high school and Robert, even though we weren’t the best of friends he asked me to try out for his band.” Matt giggles slightly. Ned was ‘a friend of friend’, and Taylor knew Louis from school.

“Yeah, we’d go to Taylor’s house and practice in his garage after school,” says Louis. “And his parents were very accommodating, like surrogate parents for a while. We drank and ate a lot of their food and drink."

Do you remember your first gig with your current line up? “Yeah, Knitting Factory, right?” says Matt. Were you knitting? “I was knitting before the show.”

“It’s a venue that’s in LA and New York,” explains Ned. “That was our first gig. It was cool. We played around LA a lot, built up a good following. By the time we were finishing school the labels started to take notice that we were filling up these clubs, so we got a record deal and started making an album and touring professionally and that was in 2002.”

This is where the UK and the US differs. The band have been well-known in the States for some time, but over here they haven’t. Does it feel weird being new again?

“No, it’s awesome,” says Taylor instantly.

“It’s great. It makes me feel like a boy again,” says Ned. “We’re excited to be back and doing this stuff you know.”

“We want to really concentrate on playing over here a lot on this record which we didn’t do nearly enough at all on the first album,” says Taylor. “After this tour we’re gonna come right back in November and maybe do more dates.”

Ah, this tour. Rooney play a few dates in the UK in September – support courtesy of Nick Harrison: “The label hooked him up with us,” explains Matt - before moving onto the wide world of Europe.

“We have a show in Switzerland supporting Ash,” says Louis. “We’ve liked that band since we first started so that’s pretty cool.” They’re doing some festivals as well, including Belgium’s Leffingleuren.

“I know Robert, who can’t be with us here right now, I know he’s very excited about Italy. I think I’m pretty excited to go to Switzerland…” begins Ned.

“Zurich, Amsterdam…” says Taylor.

“Yeah, everywhere basically. And Germany, we’d like to go back there, we have friends there.”

“It’s very exciting to be here in Europe,” affirms Louis.

‘Calling The World’. That is your latest album. “It’s tearing up the charts in the States,” says Taylor.

“Ascending the charts like a flag on a flag pole, and it took us approximately three years to complete because we made three different versions of the album,” explains Louis. “The first album we made we weren’t happy with and we left and went on tour for a while to regain our confidence, and then we made another record that we weren’t happy with so we went on tour for a while after that, and then the third year of record making was when we made ‘Calling The World’ and everybody seemed to be really happy with it our end and everybody around us, so that’s when we finally had to put it out. It’s been a long time since we had a new record out.”

Do you think your sound’s evolved much since your first album? “I think from basically taking a bunch of passes at our album, we were in like five or six different studios with different engineers and we figured out how to get sounds, how to do the things we wanted to do in our studio. I think we’re more accomplished.”

Any favourite tracks on there? “I like a song called ‘Are You Afraid’,” says Matt. “Keyboard sounds. When I was a keyboard player I liked to…”

“Make sounds,” says Taylor.

“...make sounds.”

“With a keyboard,” adds Taylor. “The third track ‘I Should Have Been After You’ is a lot of fun to play live.”

“All the songs kind of have a different face or personality, so depending on my mood I listen to different stuff. Some of it has a little bit of country some of it’s a little bit harder rock, some of it is ballad. I kind of like all the songs but it just depends what day it is,” says Ned. What day is it today? “I don’t know.” Too early to decide? “I don’t even know what day it is. Thursday? Cool.”

“You should be really proud of knowing that one,” says Matt.

“I felt like it was getting towards the end of the week but it wasn’t quite there,” says Ned.

As well as their own songs, the band are noted for their covers of Queen and The Ramones. “Johnny Ramone was a big fan of the band and a friend, so right after we recorded our first record he approached us about doing a song for their tribute record, so we picked ‘Here Today Gone Tomorrow’ because we thought that one had some room to grow. We had a lot of fun doing it and we played it live a lot for a couple of years. We’re actually talking about bringing it back into the live set,” says Matt.

“And then (‘Death On Two Legs’) we did for the Queen tribute record, which is definitely a challenge ‘cause with Queen you’re not only trying to make it your own but it’s also a struggle just to play the parts that those guys play, ‘cause they’re all really great musicians. So that was fun and challenging.”

Is there anyone you’d have in mind to cover your songs? “The Jonas Brothers.”

Ned chuckles. “There’s this funny kid band in America, they’re kind of popular. It’s like three brothers, they’re young teenagers, and they apparently covered our new single, which is odd because it just came out.” You haven’t heard it yet then? “No, I haven’t.” You probably want to avoid hearing that. “I think so!”

You know the band are getting somewhere in the UK when they appear on This Morning. For any Americans – or Brits who work and don’t have the opportunity to watch such televisual gems – it’s a morning magazine show with agony aunts, makeovers, weather reports, etc etc etc. Rooney turned up the day before this interview to play their latest single.

“Mickey Rooney was the other guest,” says Taylor. Did they have some kind of Rooney theme going on? “I think it was a coincidence.”

“You think it was a coincidence?” asks Ned. “Really?”

“I guess it was fate,” says Matt settling that matter.

“So we got to meet him. He is very… small,” says Taylor. “And very old. And we did our song.”

“We met the host and she was very nice,” says Louis. “And the guy from a soap opera cooked food. The guy from the crying show, you know this show where this man cries? It was like a bad soap opera.” Quality TV.

Embarrassing moments. I was looking on your forum and there seem to be a lot of fans who get all embarrassed when meeting you. Have you ever embarrassed yourself in front of people you admire?

“I know there have been some people who I’ve met where I’ve got really geeked out,” says Ned.“I think I embarrass myself once in a while,” says Louis. “And I block it out as best I can.” Alcohol-related? “Yeah. I had a really embarrassing moment in front of Kenny G. I wanted to just tell him how I felt and instead I think I said something like ‘Mr G, I want to be with you.’”

“He’s like, call me Kenny!” laughs Ned.

“He freaked out and said ‘Please call me Kenny.’ Anyway, it worked itself out.”

“I grabbed a girl’s butt who I thought was my girlfriend at the time but it was actually my friend’s girlfriend,” confesses Ned. “I grabbed her behind in her jeans. I walked up behind her and stuck my hands on her bare butt.”

“Really?” says Louis in surprise.

“And squeezed. And then she turned round and I saw her face.”

“Oh my God,” says Matt.

“And she turned round - and that was one of my most embarrassing moments.” You look slightly traumatised now just thinking about it. “Yeah!”

“Quite lucky though too,” muses Louis.

“It was a mixed blessing.”

Back to the music side of things – new single ‘Where Did Your Heart Go Missing?’ is out on September 10th. What’s your video like for it? “The video we shot in Los Angeles and it kind of represents a day in our collective lives,” says Ned. “It was loosely based on a Snoop Dogg and Dr Dre video but we did our own Rooney version of that with this hip hop director named Benny Boom. It was his first rock video. So it was an interesting collaboration and it was fun to make.”

“An LA day from the beach to Hollywood and inbetween,” explains Taylor. “(LA)’s a nice place to go back to when we’re not on tour. We have a lot of fans there.” Do you miss it much at the moment? “The weather’s been really nice since we got here. Better than the other times we’ve been here.”

“I’m enjoying the fall,” says Ned. Autumn. It’s autumn… “The cooler air here. Being at home is muggy in the States, where we just were.” They describe the music scene in Los Angeles as “eclectic” with pockets of scenes spread across the city, including metal (and skiffle, according to Ned).

Cheerful Robert pops in for the last question – sadly he can’t shake hands as he’s got crisps on them - and he lists plenty of the bands he’s just put on his MP3 player: “Steely Dan’s life’s work, Todd Rundgren’s life’s work, Utopia - which was a Todd Rundgren project - Michael Jackson, Prince, ELO, vocal warm ups, I’ve got the Bee Gees greatest hits, The Beatles, the Beach Boys, Ronettes, Frank Vallie and the Four Seasons.”

“DJ Bobby!” proclaim his bandmates, and they laugh.

Anyway it's a busy day of interviews they've got ahead, so I leave them to their spilt drinks and crisps...

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Rooney release album ‘Calling The World’ through Cherry Tree Records / Geffen on September 10th

Rooney
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