New Jackson Rathbone Interview with A.V. Club Chicago

New Jackson Rathbone Interview with A.V. Club Chicago

No matter how successful entertainers become, they’ll inevitably always remember the first

No matter how successful entertainers become, they’ll inevitably always remember the first gig—whether it was disastrous, wonderful, or absurdly strange. Gotta Start Somewhere embraces these nostalgic moments by asking established entertainers to retell the first time they ever graced a stage. In this edition, The A.V. Club talks to Twilight star and 100 Monkeys member Jackson Rathbone before the band’s show Thursday at House Of Blues.

Jackson Rathbone: My very first performance, I was in kindergarten. I was living in Norway at the time, in a place called Stavanger, going to ISS international school. My family lived there for like four years when I was a kid.

Anyway, I lip-synced and danced to The Big Bopper’s “Chantilly Lace” all by myself, and I brought the roof down. I don’t remember that much, really. I know I had slicked-back hair and I rolled up my sleeves like I had cigarettes in there. I always loved that kind of music, though, even when I was a tiny little kid.

The A.V. Club: Did your teacher or family encourage you to do this talent show?

JR: I was always the class clown. My mom always says that she got a call from every single principal, every single year, talking about what a problem child I was. I’d always act up in class and goof off to make other kids laugh. So, I think it was my teacher’s idea to make me perform.

I don’t know why I lip-synced. It was the late ’80s, though, so Milli Vanilli was all the rage. Now it would be Ashlee Simpson, I suppose.

AVC: She’ll never live that down.

JR: And she shouldn’t. It sucks, but shit.

AVC: Why drew you to do “Chantilly Lace”?

JR: What is there not to love about it? It starts off with that phone ringing and “Helloooooo baby” in that deep voice. It’s so funny, and very theatrical. It makes you want to twist your hips, especially with that lyrical content of “wigglin’ walk and gigglin’ talk / makes the world go round, round, round.” In the ’50s, they knew how to write a good pop tune. The Big Bopper was a radio DJ, and this was his big hit single before he met his untimely end in that airplane with Ritchie Valens and everyone else.

I think I loved music from that time, too, because my parents were extremely conservative. I wasn’t allowed to listen to other music growing up. I’d sneak to friends’ houses to listen to their rap albums. I grew up on blues and Muddy Waters, though—stuff not of the time. I was listening to music that was 40 or 50 years old at the time.

AVC: And what was your first full-band show like?

JR: I was in my first band when I was like 15 or 16. It was before I could drive, or at least before I had a license. It was a three-piece punk band called Sink Full Of Naked Barbies. We never recorded any music, and that’s probably a good thing. We weren’t very good. I played bass and sang backup. It was mostly the lead singer’s material, but we did a couple Bouncing Souls covers and “When I Come Around” by Green Day. I think we definitely did a couple songs of Dookie. That’s a record I would listen to on repeat, shooting hoops in my front yard.

Then I was in this really terrible acoustic four-piece called Forever Questioned. That was almost emo. I hated that band. I was in that for like two weeks, and then I couldn’t stand it anymore.

I was also a DJ. I went by DJ Joyride. I don’t know why I picked that. Back when I was a kid in Texas, it seemed like a good idea. We’d get in the car and drive around Midland, Texas.

AVC: Were you a radio DJ or a club DJ?

JR: I was a mobile DJ. My first gig was just kind of for fun. I was 14, and one of my friend’s older brothers was a DJ and then he quit, but he had all this gear, so we thought, “Let’s plug it in and go DJ our friend’s party.” These other parents thought it was cool, and they said, “If you come DJ our party, we’ll give you $50 an hour.” That was amazing to us, and so we did it. By the time we were 16, we were pulling $150 an hour. I DJed my sister’s prom, my prom, weddings, quinceaneras—I never did bar mitzvahs, because there aren’t many Jewish families in Midland, Texas. I did everything else, though.

DJing was fun, and it helps with what we do with 100 Monkeys. We write our set list right before we go on so we can feel out the other opening bands and the audience responses. We do a lot of instrument switching, so we try and figure out what the proper order of songs is, like, should we do three in a row on one instrument right at the beginning, or should we switch a whole bunch? That all stems back to my DJ days.

AVC: What were your big DJ jams to bring the house down?

JR: DJ Flex’s “Are You Ready.” That’s pretty much all it said, “Are you ready?” over a Chicago house beat. I would spin that and mix it with—I used to go record diving all the time—a Sesame Street fairy tale record. On that record, there was this song that went, “Are you ready to hear a story now?” So I’d mix it together and play through this fairy tale track, and spin it back so I’d always have this house beat behind it. It was like a danceable kids’ story song. That’s the kind of stuff I really liked as a DJ, helping people have fun and playing something they could dance to.

Carl Cox was one of my other favorites to spin, along with Basement Jaxx. Gatecrashers was a great series. I had this one really obscure record I found in Dallas while I was visiting my sister in college there. It started off with a helicopter landing. It’s by this guy Sal Dano, and it’s called “Hands Up.” I loved spinning that. It had this pretty sick beat, like it wasn’t straight four on the floor, and it had a swing to it, so it worked well with Carl Cox. I’d throw in some Peanut Butter Wolf there too, just to mix it up.

AVC: So how did you get from being exclusively allowed to listen to ’50s records at age 6 to spinning dance music at age 14?

JR: It’s just one of those things. There were a lot of different influences in my life. When my grandparents passed, my dad gave me their old records. I was like 10 or so, and it was all older ’50s stuff. My dad liked blues, and my mom loved musicals. My sisters were into techno and house music. The first CD I ever bought with my own money ... people in Dallas were really into hip-hop and rap, and I had no idea about any of that. I got my mom to drive me to a record store, and I had no idea what to get, but I wanted to fit in with the people who were talking about Westside Connection, and whatever. So I got The Source Presents Hip Hop Hits: Volume 1. It’s got Wyclef on it doing “Stayin’ Alive.” That’s one of my favorite covers. So that’s kind of how I segued. I travelled so much as a kid—we moved around about every two years—so I picked up a lot of influences. I have very eclectic tastes.

Source => A.V. Club Chicago / Via => JRathboneFB