Sugar Ray |
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Tue. July 08.2003 10:23 AM EDT |
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Sugar Ray: Keepin the Summer AliveMark McGrath talks about partying on stage, bad summer jobs, and lovin' Duran Duran. by Heather Stas & C. Bottomley |
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Sugar Ray (Publicity) |
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You can count on Sugar Ray to keep you happy. For the past 15 years, the Orange County superstars have created a songbook of tunes that sound great at a summer BBQ. There are light Caribbean rhythms, catchy choruses, and a bright but knowing outlook
If its a formula, its done pretty well for the Ray. Since hitting the charts with 1998s bouncy Fly, theyve had a ditty like Every Morning or When Its Over readymade for each time their fans hit the beach. They may do lots of biz, but as you might have guessed from their hilarious videos, Sugar Ray are in it for kicks. Fifth album In the Pursuit of Leisure & finds McGrath and company still looking for a good time. Theyre stretching new muscles, too. Check the sample-savvy hit Hey Bartender (Its So Easy), the teary take of Joe Jacksons Is She Really Going Out With Him, and the skate-punk vibe of In Through the Doggie Door. Some things remain the same, however. Thats red-hot Shaggy laying down the toast on 56 Hope Road - just like dancehall legend Super Cat did on Fly. While youre firing up the grill, Sugar Ray is getting down to business. Currently on tour with their buds in Matchbox 20, they're making sure it isn't all work by keeping a fully-stocked wet bar on stage. McGrath took a breather from all the fun to tell VH1 about his crummy summer jobs, blowing recording budgets on comedy, and partying on. VH1: How has the tour been going for you? Mark McGrath: The guys in Matchbox Twenty couldnt be bigger sweethearts - and it takes a lot for me to call a man a sweetheart. To play arenas every night has been a dream come true. Were playing the SBC Arena tonight, where the Spurs and Celtics played. Its fun going through all these locker rooms of teams and players that you idolize, looking for a wristband that you can steal. But dont tell anyone I told you that! VH1: Do you and Matchbox perform together? MM: We have a bar onstage thats actually a working bar. Ill hear a really loud cheer and think Boy, I must be singing really well right now. Then Ill look behind me and Rob [Thomas] is grabbing a Pina Colada off the bar! Every now and then Ill go up and sing with them. They do a couple of covers like Everybody Wants to Rule the World or Jet by Wings, and theyll let me ruin that for them. VH1: Can you guys can still keep up your partying and stay in the game? MM: Well, lets be honest, we are getting a little older. My one liver left is saying, Please stop! Youre like a kid in a candy store your first week of touring. You party your ass off and youre like, Wow, I got another seven weeks of this? I want to keep the fantasy up that were having the best time ever - and we are - but I have to show up for interviews at ten in the morning. But Ive never had more fun. Its the only job in the world where I show up and there are three cases of beer and its OK to drink them all. VH1: Mr. Bartender is about a guy who got fired. Do you remember what it was like to get fired from your day job? MM: I remember what its like having a job. I used to work on construction sites. I was literally a bottom-of-the-totem-poll laborer - the guy carrying drywall. Whenever I hear myself complaining that theres not enough bologna on the rider, those images become very vivid in my mind. I can feel peoples pain. VH1: Theres a great collaboration of songs you guys put together in that track. MM: It was one of those tracks that was put together in five minutes and forgot about. Our drummer Stan heard the Sweets Love Is Like Oxygen, where the guitar sample is from. He went to DJ Homicide and put a loop together. When he played the song for me, the first thing I heard in my head was that Midnight Star song No Parking on That Dance Floor. I started singing, Its so easy/ Its so right, and added that on there knowing full well wed change it later. Then all of a sudden our producer David Kahne is putting Kool & the Gang and horns all over it. It became a monster, to the point where we were like, We cant play this for anybody! Maybe it will be a B side in India or Thailand. Then David played it for the label and of course the first call I got from Ron Shapiro, the label president, was like, Thats the song! We love it. VH1: Whose decision was it to do Joe Jackson? MM: Theres a guy at the label named John who signed P.O.D. He went to our A&R guy and said, It would be really cool to hear Mark doing Joe Jackson. They have a very similar voice. Growing up in Southern California, theres a radio station out there called KROQ who supplied us with healthy doses of new wave. I remember spending summers in Newport Beach just listening to that song, and it was the soundtrack to our lives in high school. So the synergy was weird in that a) we all love the song and b) the label thought it was a good idea. It turned out really well. We maintained the integrity of the original and tweaked the melody at the end to make it even sadder than the song already is. VH1: 56 Hope Road, is a great collaboration with Shaggy. MM: I was reading a biography about Bob Marley. I love his music but I also love his whole philosophy. It said the address that he lived at in Jamaica was 56 Hope Road. How perfect is that? I said, No matter what - Im calling a song on the next record 56 Hope Road. It wasnt a reggae or dancehall song at all but it had a bit of that vibe. I became friends with Shaggy doing the World Music Awards in Monte Carlo, and asked him to jump on this track. There couldnt be a cooler guy on earth than Shaggy. What you see in his videos is what you get. I couldnt think of a better personality and voice to have on 56 Hope Road to capture to what I was trying to say in the song. VH1: Whats with the little skit in the album? MM: We have a guitar tech that we take on the road with us and he constantly amuses us with his incredible impersonations. He was in the studio, messing around doing this little King Lear thing he does, and we thought it was the funniest thing weve ever heard, so we put it on the record. Little things like that infuse a bit of personality and let you know who the band is - maybe to the detriment of the entire record. VH1: You guys are goofballs. MM: Were big goofballs - and we know how lucky we are. Here we are with a million-dollar record budget and were putting in a little skit that may not be funny to anybody. You cant blame us for trying. VH1: Will you go see Duran Duran now that theyve reformed? MM: Im a psycho Duran Duran fan. I cant wait to go see them. In our When Its Over video I thought I was John Taylor. I made the entire rest of the band dress up like Duran Duran with makeup and did my little fantasy Rio video. I actually heard that they got a big kick out of it. VH1: What was the first album you bought of theirs? MM: Rio. I was a little late. I never saw them in their heyday. My sister saw them on The Reflex tour. Ive seen them since then but not with the original members. I dont think Ive seen the pure essence of what we call Duran Duran. VH1: In the CD booklet you thank all your band mates and say heres to another 15 years. Talk about the chemistry. MM: We started this band in 1988 and its been the same members throughout. Weve had our squabbles, our girl problems, too much alcohol problems - Behind The Music will be very interesting! But the greatest reward is that we started this band to have fun together playing other peoples music and now we get to do that 15 years later playing our own music with that same feeling. To see the fans respond every night and actually sing songs that we wrote with the enthusiasm that I used to sing the Cult or U2 songs is an incredible and surreal experience. VH1: So maybe its Greatest Hits time. MM: Its incredible to even think that there would be the option of having a greatest hits. You live in your rock n roll bubble where you feel like youre never aging. Then someone knocks on your bubble and goes, Two of your band guys are married with children, your other guy is getting married and its time for a greatest hits record. And by the way, your hairline is receding too! |
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