HEADING FOR THE SUN | BEING HERE | CREATING AN IMAGE | COVERING PEARL JAM
GETTING THE BREAK
By early June, the guys had 10 fully produced songs. They set up meetings with a half-dozen record companies, hoping to get someone to listen, but it was definitely a friendship with a production guy at L.A.'s KROQ--the station that sets the cutting-edge standard for alternative rock--that caused the cosmos to shift.
The friend, Jim Pratt, was playing the new CD when Program Director Kevin Weatherly, who decides which songs get played on the station, heard "Walkin' on the Sun." Weatherly loved it. He added it to the station's play list the next day.
"That created a buzz in the industry," says Camp. "An unsigned band is about to get added at KROQ. That's huge."
Someone at the station called Interscope's Lynn McDonald, who handles national promotions. Interscope is home of some of alternative rock's most successful bands--Marilyn Manson, Bush, No Doubt, the Wallflowers. McDonald told Interscope President Tom Whalley.
At 3 p.m., when Harwell and Camp arrived at the house where they were staying, the phone was ringing. Interscope had tracked them down. Whalley wanted to meet at 5.
"We turned around and left immediately," Camp says. "Every time we went there before, there were these two security guards with guns who pat you down because Death Row Records was there. This time they buzzed us right in and offered us fruit, water, coffee. We knew something big was up."
"We like to move fast," Whalley says. "It's not very often you run across an unsigned band that's already getting radio play and already has a finished record. In fact, it's never happened before."
The guys watched as Whalley cranked up "Fush Yu Mang" and listened. First "Flo," about an ex of Camp's who, during their relationship, came to a realization she is a lesbian. (Florence if you hear this won't you come and take your girlfriend back?) Two songs later: "Walkin' on the Sun." (So don't delay act now supplies are running out, allow, if you're still alive, six to eight years to arrive....) By the time he got to "Heave-Ho," about a former neighbor in San Jose who got Camp and his wife evicted from their house at 147 S. Morrison St. (She's got us tiptoeing around in fear, church mice at St. Leo's down my street have moved so far away, she has sent them packing and running scared. How much more does she think we will take?), Whalley turned it off.
He said, "I'm totally sold on this. Can you come back tomorrow? Who else has this? Do you have any more interviews set up?"
Harwell and Camp agreed to return at noon so that Whalley's partners could listen.
"We were freaking out all night long," Camp says.
At 10 a.m., their phone rang. Whalley wanted them to come over earlier. Back in the same office, they played the CD for his partners Jimmy Iovine and Ted Field.
"I was really tripping out," Camp says. "My heart was pounding, yet I was thinking this is exactly what should be happening."
By the end of the CD, their punk-ska version of War's "Why Can't We Be Friends," the Interscope guys were grinning. Cancel your meetings. You can't leave without a deal.
The band's attorney took over. Camp and Harwell walked to a bar and imagined their dream deal--an even million and a two-record deal with the label they considered "the coolest in the business."
Interscope gave them $1.8 million for two albums, guaranteed the first would be in stores in three weeks (it can take six months or more), gave them creative control, a generous touring budget that rented them their first luxury bus (it's got two living rooms and satellite TV) and a $2 cut on every CD sold.
"They got a very good deal for themselves," Whalley says. "It's almost scary how everything fell into place so quickly, but when you have a band with a strong sense of themselves, everything tends to go this way."
You know how some nutty folks win the lottery, then show up for work the next day? When the guys got back to San Jose, Camp and De Lisle played two more gigs with Lackadaddy. It took Coleman three weeks to quit his house-painting job.
"I was petrified, even after I got my first check," he says. "I made sure I didn't burn any bridges."
Two weeks later all four of them were in Malibu shooting the MTV video, having make-up artists powder their faces and stagehands bring them food and drinks.
Many bands ride one hit and fade. The guys are realistic that their futures are in the hands of the fickle record-buying public.
"I think we have like two years to make
our money and get out," Coleman says. "You have to look at the music
business the way you would a sports career. Sometimes it lasts longer,
but most of the times you just have a short amount of time and you're through.