Phantom Planet |
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Fri. September 27.2002 3:47 PM EDT |
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Road Trippin’ To a Phantom PlanetA year's worth of road life can be a very messy deal. by Gil Kaufman |
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Phantom Planet (VH1.com) |
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Over the past 13 months, "California" power popsters Phantom Planet rocked each and every one of their million fans. Okay, maybe not a million, but several thousand, at least. Of course, there was that freezing night last winter in Buffalo - the
Whoever claimed a rock band’s road life to be nothing but groupies, glamour and glitz never met this tribe of non underwear-changing boys. Hitting the road is hard on any band, but when it’s your first-ever tour and your group has two vegans and a lactose intolerant guitarist, things are quickly complicated. The group - Farrar, singer/guitarist Alex Greenwald, guitarist Jacques Brautbar, guitarist Darren Robinson, and drummer Jason Schwartzman - has been on the move since its 1998 debut, Phantom Planet is Missing. For the last 13 months they’ve admirably slogged their way across the globe in support of their second album, The Guest. It’s a beautifully crafted 12-pack of pop sunshine with summertime anthems such as "California" and "Lonely Day." A bit of pre-fab visibility comes with this outfit. You might know Schwartzman from his starring roles in "Rushmore" and "Slackers." And Greenwald has appeared in both Gap commercials and the black comedy "Donnie Darko." With the end of their epic tour finally in sight, the Planet is preparing to enter the studio to work on their next album. But not before they share some of their road tales. Pay close attention as Farrar, 24 and Greenwald, 22, explain how and what to pack, why they ask for a live baby tiger at every show, and why you should never, ever stick your hand in their backstage cooler. VH1: How many shows have you played in the last 13 months? Alex Greenwald: [sighs] A million? Maybe 160. VH1: Is this the longest stretch you’ve ever been out on the road? Greenwald: We’d never been on tour before. We tried to tour for the first record on the East Coast, a bit but complications set in. We just went back home. We’re all very lonely crybabies. VH1: When you pack to leave for that long, what do you need to pack? Greenwald: When we first left, none of us had any idea what to pack or how long we should pack for or how big the suitcases should be. Some of us came on with trunks and trunks of stuff. Have you ever seen Spaceballs? It was like what Princess Vespa was bringing across the desert. Just huge trunks of useless things. By the end of this tour we figured out what we needed - like we all wear the same underwear for five days in a row. VH1: What’s the most ridiculous item you brought at the beginning of the tour that you now realize was useless? Greenwald: A clean conscience. VH1: Is there something that you brought that you can’t live without now? Greenwald: Maybe a loin cloth. VH1: Now that you’re not crybabies anymore, what do you miss the most when you’re on the road? Greenwald: As cheesy as it sounds, friends and family. VH1: Have you ever asked for something totally ridiculous on your tour rider that you knew you wouldn’t get? Greenwald: Yes. Every rider we make has something completely ridiculous on it to check if someone’s been reading it or to see if we could get it out of them. This tour it’s a baby tiger [listed], and people don’t often supply it. The ones with a sense of humor often give us a nice, little baby stuffed tiger. When they ask, ‘Why the hell is there a baby tiger on here?’ then we know they’ve been paying attention to our needs. We’ve never gotten a living one yet. VH1: If you suddenly got huge tomorrow, what would be your first indulgence on the road? Greenwald: We’d each get our own stretch Ferraris in a rainbow of colors with jacuzzi’s and whatnot. VH1: With DVD players in the steering wheels? Greenwald: Of course, the whole 18 yards. VH1: I assume you don’t have your own Phantom jet. How do you travel? Greenwald: The first six months was a van, then we all got fed up of being in such close proximity to each other, so we moved on to a bus. VH1: What kind of music do you listen to when you’re driving? Greenwald: Luckily, the bus is divided into three parts: a lounge, bunks and a second lounge. We all listen to our respective things separately. If I’m taking over one of the lounges you’ll usually hear Gang of Four, Buzzcocks and Wire, some poppy kind of punk-esque music. I just got the Interpol record; there’s some good songs on that one. Other places you’d hear the hum of Playstation 2. And you might hear Jacques listening to classical music on his headphones. VH1: Is there a guilty pleasure you all indulge in on the bus? The occasional Britney Spears, Avril Lavigne? Greenwald: Jason and I were just in a hotel room and that new Avril Lavigne song, "Sk8er Boi" came on ... I guess it isn’t that bad, so maybe it’s not a guilty pleasure. Maybe a reluctant pleasure. Sam Farrar: Is Peter Gabriel a guilty pleasure, or is that okay? We all have ProTools on our computers, so we’re always off making music by ourselves. Usually you sleep overnight and when you get to the city you walk around and don’t hang out on the bus. VH1: When I watch "How To Be A Pop Star," it seems like it’s all Cristal, luxury hotels and tricked-out buses. Farrar: [laughs] I don’t know about the Cristal part. VH1: So, after a year on the road, has it gotten any easier? Greenwald: It helps that we’re sponsored by Cristal. [laughs] We drink that instead of water. It’s exhausting, but it’s really just like an exaggerated summer camp. All the things you felt at summer camp: exhaustion, not being able to sleep ... just multiplied ten fold. VH1: Summer camp with drink tickets? Farrar: Yes! It’s like adult summer camp, it’s like "Porky’s." Wait, no "Meatballs." Actually, vegan meatballs. VH1: I don’t imagine you get to eat a proper meal on the road. What’s the grossest thing you’ve been forced to eat in a pinch? Farrar: Alex and Jason are vegan, Jacques is lactose intolerant, so we’ve got some picky stomachs. It’s part of their ritual to find the Whole Foods whenever we get into a city. We’re going to publish the most in-depth map of health food restaurants and stores ever. VH1: Have you had one of those shows on this tour where no one shows up? Farrar: Last year we headlined a club in Buffalo and 12 people showed up. We just laughed about it and enjoyed it and made it special for those 12 people ... and froze our asses off. It was the dead of winter - or that’s what we told ourselves, anyway. VH1: Do you have groupies? Farrar: I wouldn’t call them groupies. We can’t sleep with them. Groupie qualifies as someone you kiss or sleep with. We don’t go that far. But a lot of kids at our headline shows would go to every show, follow us around, hanging out on the sidewalk playing music. Greenwald: This last headlining tour we had a bunch of college girls who were the Deadhead equivalent for our band. Farrar: They were really cool. We would usually just go out there and play guitar for them and hang. VH1: Have any one of you gotten to partake in that rock rite of passage of signing a boob or a butt? Farrar: We’ve all signed boobs, butts, panties, had bras thrown at us. I’ve signed a foot. VH1: Have you ever trashed a hotel room? Farrar: Once. We didn’t set fires or anything. Levi’s threw a party for us at The Standard [in Hollywood] and we had 40 of our friends come back to our suite after the party. There was puke, Coke, beer, cigarettes everywhere and Alex and I woke up in the same bed together and we have no idea how that happened. But we’re still close, so it didn’t get too ugly. VH1: What’s the strangest thing that’s ever happened backstage at one of your shows? Greenwald: Two weeks ago we had a really tiny dressing room at a club in Indianapolis with no attached bathroom. You had to leave the dressing room to go to the bathroom and everyone in the club would see you and we were about to go on, so we didn’t want to be seen. I had to piss really bad. There was a container that held all the beer that was just ice water, so I just pissed and pissed and pissed in it. We played and we were all sweaty and bleeding from our fingernails, as usual, and Darren has cut his face open from a guitar. He needed water to wash it off and he runs straight for the bin I just pissed in. We walk in and say, ‘No, no, no, no!’ I said, ‘Darren I pissed in there.’ And he’s keeps doing it and says, ‘Maybe it’s good for my pores.’ For bio, news, CDs, songs and more go to the Phantom Planet Artist A - Z pages. |
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