All Time Low Interview in Rocksound Issue 159 - March 2012
Keeta (interviewer): If your life was a video game, who in the band would you trust to play it?
Rian: Here's the thing; Alex is really good at video games but Zack is good at everything. It's a pretty tough one to call between those two.
Jack: You can give Zack pretty much any video game and he'll beat it in like two hours flat.
Rian: I guess if it were a specific type of video game I'd pick Alex, but Zack has a better overall range. He'd be a great all-rounder in the video game of life. Does that make sense?
Alex: Yeah.
Rian: Really?
Alex: No. I have no idea what you're talking about.
--
Katie C (interviewer): What one thing do you guys tend to argue most about?
Alex: Who used the last tampon. That can be a biggie.
Jack: If someone uses my hairspray without asking I tend to get really offended.
Rian: That's a big source of conflict. Jack really can get pretty offended if Alex or I want to use his hairspray.
Jack: Rian likes to use it on his eyebrows, but that can mean going through a full can on a bad day.
Alex: We're pretty boring like that. If Rian's eyebrows are in check everything is usually pretty peaceful.
--
Oscar (interviewer): What do you do with all the gifts and scrap books that you receive from fans?
Alex: Burn them!
Jack: That's it - the secret's out!
Rian: We actually store everything in a series of warehouses. We've got one here in the UK and another in America and we tend to put a lot of things in there purely because we can't fit everything in our homes.
Alex: One day we're actually going to build a completely new home out of the gifts.
Jack: We try to take as much stuff back home with us as possible, but we keep absolutely everything safe.
Alex: And then we really do burn it all.
--
Melissa (interviewer): What's your favourite high school memory?
Jack: Losing our virginity. That was sweet, right?!
Zack: That didn't happen at the same time, by the way...
Rian: I'm trying to think. High school pretty much sucked for the most part!
Jack: We had some pretty raging parties that ended with the cops coming over to shut it down. We were total badasses.
Rian: I remember one time I was passed out in a room at Alex's house, and earlier on in the night I'd put a sign on the door telling people not to come in because I didn't want anyone stealing my spot. The best bit about it is that the cops showed up while I was in there, but because of the sign they didn't actually come in. I'm in there passed out under a pile of beer cans, way too young to be drinking, but for some reason the police actually paid attention to the sign.
Alex: One time the cops threatened to pull their guns out, which was pretty sweet considering I was a 14-year-old kid in his parents' house.
Jack: The system works!
--
Katie C: Have you got any secret talents?
Jack: Ale is pretty good at underwater surfing. Is that a real thing?!
Alex: I rode a sea turtle once. I'm pretty sure that's what you're referring to.
Jack: Right! Underwater surfing!
Rian: I can blow bubbles off my tongue. I can't do it right now because I don't have the right type of spit, but I'll definitely do one by the end of the interview!
Jack: Didn't you ride that turtle at night?
Alex: Nope, it was around midday.
Rian: Wasn't it on some island near Fiji?
Alex: Nope. Hawaii.
Jack: We're an observant bunch!
--
Katie B (interviewer): When you were kids what did you want to be when you grew up?
Alex: I really wanted to be the guy who rode on the back of garbage trucks. I wanted to be a garbage man.
Rian: It's an important job!
Jack: The world can be a trashy place, and that's where people like you come in.
Rian: Like most kids I went through a police officer phase.
Alex: I never went through that.
Rian: I know, because you were too busy thinking about taking out the trash! I actually had a police scanner at one point but I got in trouble for taking it to school. You could hear everything that was going on across pretty much the entire town.
Alex: There's blood all over the floor! Oh God, we need backup!
--
Keeta: Do you have any strange fears?
Alex: I'm not a fan of needles, although I'm guessing that's not really what you might call a strange fear...
Rian: I have an irrational fear of getting hit by a bicycle. The thought of it scares the crap out of me!
Jack: Alex has a pretty big thing about people swallowing toothpicks. It freaks him out.
Alex: Oh, totally. I'm always really worried that someone is going to hit them and the person with the toothpick is going to swallow it.
Jack: When I was a kid I was always really worried that I'd be in a car accident and that some broken glass would end up getting in my eyes. That's kind of weird.
Rian: For some reason I'm always worried that I'm going to walk around a corner and bump into someone who happens to be practising their baseball swing.
Jack: Really? That ranks above, say, getting caught masturbating by your mother?
Rian: Getting caught by your mother maybe...
--
Molly (interviewer): How would you describe All Time Low in three words?
Alex: Dirty, sweaty, fun.
Jack: Perfect!
Alex: We've had that question before. Sorry!
Rian: Maybe we should think of another one?
Jack: Huge boner children? That's got a pretty nice ring to it!
Rian: Huge big dongs?
Zack: I'm liking the huge aspect...
Jack: I'm sticking with huge boner children. I smell a song title!
--
Katie B: What's the worst show you've ever played?
Jack: We've played some pretty bad shows over the years. It's actually really difficult to pick just one.
Alex: We played a show in Europe a while back that was pretty terrible.
Jack: Oh God - in Italy, right? We played a show with this guy called Vasco Rossi who is pretty much the biggest musician in the entire country, and for well over an hour, not one single person out of 20,000 or so gave a shit.
Alex: We were all pretty miserable that day.
Rian: We played another show in Europe once that involved us not going on until something stupid like 2am, and by that point Alex was, for want of a better term, shit-hammered. He was so drunk that he was actually scared about playing.
Alex: It was horrible. I knew I wanted to play but my hands just wouldn't do it. Never again.
--
Melissa: What advice would you give to your 17-year-old self if you could go back in time?
Jack: Don't do it! Any of it!
Rian: As a band, I think that we've made too many mistakes, which is almost unbelievable.
Jack: I really regret getting Rian in the band.
Rian: I was already in the band when I was 17. You can't use that.
Jack: Fuck...
Alex: I regret seducing Jack's mum.
Jack: I probably shouldn't have hooked up with a few people. There are a couple of girls and guys in my life who have had their hearts broken...
Zack: I regret walking in on Jack's mum vacuum cleaning in her underwear.
Jack: That was a one-time thing.
Alex: Are you kidding? That's happened like three times!
--
Keeta: Do you ever get distracted onstage?
Alex: Er, yeah!
Jack: You can quite often catch Alex just staring off into the distance. It's kind of a problem.
Alex: I get distracted by all of the beautiful men and women in the audience. What can I say?
Rian: It tends to happen a lot when people are singing the wrong words. You can almost see his head starting to tilt because he's trying to figure out what they're singing.
Jack: Sometimes if a girl shows her tits I can drift off into a whole other world for a good 10 minutes.
Zack: We call it Booby World.
Jack: Yeah, I tend to visit Booby World pretty often. It's a magical place.
--
Oscar: Who has been the most disappointing celebrity you've ever met?
Rian: Alex was a huge disappointment to me. Every day it only gets worse.
Jack: Have we really met anyone who has disappointed us?
Alex: Sometimes you meet people who just don't care about anybody, but that's not really disappointing because most of the time you don't give a fuck about them either.
Rian: The two biggest surprises for me were Robin Williams, who was totally awesome, and believe it or not, Chad Kroeger from Nickelback. He was the best dude.
Alex: We make fun of him so much but he was the nicest guy!
Jack: He's actually Jesus. I don't know how many people know that, but it's true.
--
Katie B: What's the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to you onstage?
Alex: I once saw Jared Leto and got an erection. True story.
Rian: I don't think anything has happened that sets us apart from any other band. I feel like we haven't really lived.
Jack: Sometimes when I stand on the barricade people grab my penis, which is both awesome and terrifying. I'm always afraid that someone is going to pull it right off.
Rian: You can never be too careful when it comes to a flaccid penis. By the way, if the next question is about who has the best-looking flaccid penis, the answer is definitely Alex.
Alex: When you're right, you're right.
--
Melissa: What's the best lesson you've learned from being in a band?
Alex: I suppose the main thing I've learned is to always be nice to people. You have to treat people equally and with respect because if you're a dick you're going to pay the price eventually. When we toured with Fall Out Boy a few years back they treated us really well and I think we picked up a lot from them in terms of being cool, particularly when it comes to bands you're on tour with.
Jack: Pete Wentz gave us all massages twice a day.
--
Oscar: Can the lifestyle that comes with a touring band become overwhelming at times?
Alex: YES.
Rian: Absolutely. Being in a band is the greatest thing in the world but you're still constantly away from home and most of the people you love. It can get pretty taxing, particularly when you throw in the piles of heroin, cocaine and the copious amounts of hookers.
Alex: When you get sick it sucks. I've been fighting a cold for nearly two weeks now and it just will not go away. It doesn't sound like a big deal but it happens all the time.
Jack: I'm fighting a heroin addiction right now which is pretty tough. I'm only kidding. I'm not addicted yet...
Life is Photogenic: Sunrise to Midnight Blues
Life is Photogenic: Sunrise to Midnight Blues
