Diving In

Once Villains was released, the playing field changed dramatically. Gone were the days of driving the van, partying after the shows, and crappy equipment. We now had a tour bus, a crew, and brand new instruments, which were written into the recording budget.

As we played across the country to drum up support for our major label release, the people at RCA records worked on getting the radio stations to “add” the first single, Photograph. It proved to be a long process, months of preparation. It seemed to me that the album was done, why wait for 3 months to put it on the shelves? We were impatient, but waiting turned out to be the right thing to do. Photograph was the most added record when it was released to radio.

I heard it for the first time on the air while driving in Florida. I had a girlfriend at the time, who was coming down to hang out me while we were on a semi successful tour with Seven Mary Three, who’s song Cumbersome was climbing the charts. I had rented a convertible, and felt a pang of guilt as I went to the rental car lot to pick up the car- a silver Mustang. I was embarrassed to drive it, and considered driving around the block and returning it minutes later. Something inside kept me from enjoying little luxuries such as this, limo rides included. (I would soon get over that guilt.) I decided to keep the car and drove down the east coast to reconnect with the band. It was on that coastal highway that I heard Photograph for the first time. Every cliche in the book came true. The song was being played on a station miles from my location, and so it was peppered with static throughout. Another cliche: I actually pulled over on the side of the highway to listen to it. As the static kept interrupting its play, I pulled forward a few feet at a time, and stopped suddenly when the song was clean. Then more static, and I would jerk the car forward a bit. I must have looked ridiculous to passers-by who pitied that poor young man with yellow bleached hair, crying over his bad transmission problem in the car that he certainly did not deserve to be driving (They were tears of joy).

I felt like I had arrived. After the song was finished, I pulled back onto the highway, and oddly, I didn’t feel guilty about that car - in fact, I was quite proud to be driving it. I felt like a real rockstar for the first time ever. I was far away from Michigan, from the hometown fans, and I had just heard my song on the radio.

Photograph did pretty well at first, but really took off when K-ROCK in Los Angeles picked it up. I had no idea how significant it was to have them play it. We got the word when we were visiting the RCA offices in New York City. People were dancing around, high-fiving each other. It seemed to be an overreaction to one radio station adding a song, but I went along with the celebration. Little did I know that K-ROCK adding your record was imperative to the single’s success on a national level. If K-ROCK added your record, then you could count on 50 more stations adding it across the country. Programmers around the country were lazy, and did as the trends told them, and K-ROCK knew the trends, and set a few.

Over the next 4 years, I would chase that drug of a K-ROCK add, but for now, I would shrug it off, ignorant of its importance.

We made the video for Photograph with Lawrence Carroll, Samuel Bayer’s art director for such videos as Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit and The Cranberries Zombie. Lawrence’s set designs were brilliant, and when I first arrived at the warehouse in Los Angeles where it was to be filmed, I was completely blown away at the magnitude of it all. It was surreal- This silly little song that I wrote at my kitchen table a year earlier was now being interpreted by a major artist at a major cost.

I found my way up to the dressing room, and there on the table with assorted snacks was the beverage of choice for the band- Jack Daniels. The day was a long one, and I would pull from the bottle many times, to the point of being buzzed enough to fear for my life a bit, standing on the edge of a diving board that was positioned 15 feet in the air, above a few mattresses below. I made it through that, reveling in the attention.

The woman who had done my hair the day before, Anne Morgan, showed up with none other than Cameron Diaz. I chatted with them both, trying to act as casual as I could. Cameron was a sweetheart. She was very funny, silly, and really good taste in bad metal rock from the 80’s. She would break into Round And Round by Ratt, singing at the top of her lungs, to no one, really. Just enjoying herself. I found it very endearing.

Once the video was complete, the next step was to get it added to MTV. It was featured on 120 Minutes, MTV’s alternative video show. Once it was played, sales of the album doubled, then tripled. Pretty soon, we had sold 200,000 albums. But it stalled there. We were in a battle with each other over which song would be the next single. The choice ended up being Cup Of Tea. The experience soon proved to be quite different for that single. Reluctant adds to radio, a lame video, and stalled record sales took its toll on the band. RCA were going back on their promise to release 5 singles. In fact, they threatened that if the next single, Revered Girl, did not do well, that the album would be over.