Once when SMASH MOUTH were an unknown San Jose, Calif., band and money was tight, vocalist Steve Harwell and drummer Kevin Coleman "repossessed" a local drug dealer's bicycle to pay for the cost of recording a demo tape. "This kid owed Kevin money, so we just moseyed on over to his apartment," Harwell says cheerfully, lounging in a dressing room at Los Angeles' Universal Amphitheater an hour before show time. "The door was open, and there was the bike. So we confiscated it." His smile broadens. "Then I conned another of Kevin's stoner friends into buying it for $200."
Not that Harwell couldn't afford to buy the pole. Smash Mouth ska-punk debut, Fush Yu Mang (named for one of Al Pacino's drug-slurred epithets in Scarface), came out of nowhere last summer to sell more than a million copies--and counting. The album's first single, the retro-loungy gem "Walkin' on the Sun," was one of the biggest songs of 1997, and its follow-up, a campy cover of War's "Why Can't We Be Friends," will likely propel the band well into '98. If Sublime and Rancid are ska's punk soldiers, Smash Mouth...have emerged as its party animals, specializing in rowdy suburban anthems spiked with irresistible bits of soul, surf-punk and laid-back funk.
Harwell, 30, confesses he's still a little blown away by the band's sucess. "I'm like, dude, what is this?" he says. "It doesn't really hit until we're sitting around having a beer, and we'll all start laughing at each other and say, 'God, we just pulled off the biggest scam in the world! We sold a million records!'"
Though he claims the King as his main childhood influence (growing up, Harwell forced his family to sit through his recital of "Hound Dog" and other Elvis classics every Thanksgiving), Harwell discovered reggae and rap as a teen. His first gig was fronting a local hip-hop group called F.O.S. Then, in 1994, he and Coleman hooked up with Camp and De Lisle, two old high-school homeys who were veterans of the San Jose bar circuit. The chemistry worked. "The first time we played together, I knew we had it," recalls Camp, the group's main songwriter. "It was like the innocents meting the professionals."
Opposites also attract in Smash Mouth's new video for "Why Can't We Be Friends," which features Harwell executing classic Presley hip-swivels as he leads an army of white cops, black B-boys and miniskirted go-go girls in a dance down a suburban street. It may seem naive, but Smash Mouth actually believe that good will and racial harmony can be spread through good tunes. "We have a huge Hispanic following, and one night we were playing and this cholo guy actually jumped onstage and sang 'Padrino' with me," Hawell says, tracing a finger along the Elvis tattoo on his forearm. "He knew every word, too. It was like me singin' 'Hound Dog' when I was a kid, dude. Now that is cool."