311 sounds like a real group affair; everyone seems to contribute equally, and I know you're constantly on tour. Does spending so much time together put a strain on things?
No, not really. I would think that someone being the leader would put a strain on things. We're just very fair and very unified in what we want to do, which is create different types of music and music that we love playing, basically.
So everything's pretty diplomatic?
Yeah, everything's diplomatic. I mean, on every issue, from who takes a shower first to who gets this T-shirt, or whatever. Certain people are involved in more of the financial stuff, some people are involved in more of the touring stuff... It just works out really well. We all have different types of energy, so we cover all of the areas when all of us get together. It winds up being a really fair, democratic thing.
Do you ever need to take a break from each other at the end of a tour, or even in mid-tour, just to keep your sanity?
Well, you have days off; if you need to be by yourself, you can go be by yourself. There's no drastic need to be without these guys. We grew up as friends in the first place. I guess it gets a little taxing, or wears on you a little to be around the same 10 guys all the time, but you just have to look at it like, what else would you rather be doing, really? Definitely playing music and traveling the country. If you're feeling one way, there's always ways to look at it to make you have a more positive attitude about it, definitely.
How did your sound develop? Did you have to make a concerted effort to plot the sound, or was it a natural evolution? It seems like you guys have... not necessarily disparate interests, but each member has his own separate "specialty interests" maybe.
Right. First of all, our music developed when we naturally came together and started playing what we wanted to play. We didn't really have a focus to bring rap together with Rock. We listened to Public Enemy and Ice Cube, and we also listened to 24-7 Spyz and Bad Brains. We love singing, rap music, hard rock and jazz. Like you said, everybody probably has his specialty, and that just makes us a more well-rounded musical group. We have all these different influences, instead of everybody loving rock music and being a generic rock band. I think it makes us stronger, also. It's harder to see in the public eye, because there are no rewards for the most innovative rock music, or the most creative attempt to put different styles of music together. There's no real reward to get from that, so we have to be very proud of it on our own. I just think of it as more of a natural thing. We never really said, hey, let's do this, but after we started doing it, we realized, wow, we're bringing rock, rap and reggae together.
You just threw it all together and it came out naturally?
Yeah, and after it comes out naturally, you start to realize what you're doing, and maybe then it becomes a more focused thing. Right now, we're just trying to write as naturally as possible, without worrying about what other people think of it -- just trying to be really creative in our own way.
You mentioned that there is no reward for being the most creative band. Does it bother you when you see other acts that are just dredging up a 20-year-old sound making it big on MTV?
That doesn't bug me, because if that's the type of career somebody wants to have, that's fine. If they do what you say they're doing, if they're just borrowing and making their own version of an older song, I just think those type of groups are going to be around for three to four years, tops; whereas we'll be together for hopefully 15-20 years. It does get a little frustrating, I guess. Like I said, there's no real reward, except for your personal gratification at what you've accomplished, and also all of the fans who notice that this is what we've done. That's another big grateful thing we get from putting all these different styles of music together. I guess in the early days, I might have gotten frustrated, but now I realize we're just better off being happy with what we're doing: trying to create and be innovative. That's much more rewarding than putting some pop song together and making a lot of money off it.
Is that kind of integrity difficult to maintain after so many years on the road? I'd guess you're not staying at four-star hotels and getting catered meals every day.
No, we're not; but I don't know if we'll ever be like that, because we're smart business people, also. We don't see any reason for everybody to stay at a four-star hotel. We're different from most bands in the way we operate. I would say we're a little more business-smart. The frustration doesn't really bother me any more; it's not anybody's fault. The only body's fault it is, really, is all of the public. It's not anybody's fault that the general public is at an eighth-grade listening level. That's what people like; they like simple shit that's put in your face. You can't get upset at that, because it's just the way things are. If people had a little bit more knowledge about music, maybe they would start to realize, "Oh wow, that group sounds a lot like this group, and this group sounds a lot like that other group." It's just that a lot of alternative bands sound the same. Even if I had a successful hit, it would bum me out more than anything to sound like 20 different other bands who had a hit that sounded like mine. Anybody can do that. I wouldn't say I could do that, because I just hate that fucking style of music, so I wouldn't ever try to write a piece of shit like that. Maybe I do get a little frustrated...
It's a different frustration than I was driving at before. It sounds like you get frustrated with what looks to you like a vanilla mentality, or pea-brain mentality of the general public. As a result, you must have a greater respect for your audience, which is perhaps more enlightened by innovative creativity. I'm guessing your audience is very enthusiastic.
Definitely, man. We have happy, fuckin', partying fans. Across the country, all the promoters say, "Man, we see all kinds of bands that draw really angry fans. Most of the ones that you guys draw are the happiest people. They're just ready to have a great time." We respect our fans, definitely, because each one of our fans is a very big fan. They're not just like, "oh, I'm a fan."
You clearly respect your fans a lot, but you've had some people at your shows who've done things you haven't agreed with. You've had at least a couple of instances of violence at shows, and I know that one of the guiding principles of the band is harmony and coexistence with all types of people, as well as general non-violence. Do you ever feel like some segments of your audience just don't get it?
Definitely. There's going to be a few people who don't understand that we're up on the stage rocking out as hard as we can, and might sound harder than shit, but actually, the message is really positive. So, if people aren't reading into the lyrics, they could just be watching us, taking the hard music and making up their own translation of what it might mean to them. You're always going to have people who get drunk and get mad because they got moshed too hard, and that starts a fight. That's always going to happen. But definitely there are people out there who've asked if we're with the KKK and shit like that, just because of 311. It's amazing that nobody would read the lyrics or even look to see that we have a half-Hispanic guy in the band, to know that we're not associated with any type of bullshit like that. Yeah, there's always people who are going to ignore what the message is, and go, "yeah, I like that music;" not even really concentrate. But that's expected.