You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you
just might find you get what you need. And for matchbox twenty, one
of the most successful bands to emerge in the past decade, what they
thought they wanted heading into 2007 turned out to be very different
from what both they and their fans really needed… and are now
happily getting via the band's new collection, 'Exile On Mainstream'.
Nearly five years had elapsed since their last studio album, and
in the interim, singer Rob Thomas had launched a chart-topping solo
career. So, despite some 28 million records sold over three multi-platinum
albums, a remarkable string of hit singles, and fan demand for the
band's return to active duty running hot, fully restarting the matchbox
engine nevertheless remained in question.
So the plan was to release a long-overdue greatest hits collection
and to include a newly recorded track or two. And the truth is that
when the members of matchbox twenty first reconvened to write new
material, they realised that this could be the band's swan song. "Paul
[Doucette] and I had a sense going in that this was our last record,"
says Thomas. "It seemed like a good one to go out on. We'd do
a greatest hits album and put one new single on it."
However, to quote one of the band's biggest hits, they very quickly
and surprisingly found their way 'Back 2 Good'.
"We got together, we fought, we laid all our stuff out about
what was important to us now, and we started to write," Thomas
says. "And suddenly it was like, 'This is fun. Maybe we should
do a new album, and screw the greatest hits.'"
The outstanding result is 'Exile On Mainstream', a collection that
is literally the best of both worlds: six new songs overseen by Steve
Lillywhite, marking the renowned Grammy-winning producer's first work
with the band, combined with a collection of 11 matchbox twenty smashes.
"We look at it as a new EP with a greatest hits attached to it,"
Thomas says. "It was important to put the new songs on there,"
agrees Doucette, "but we also wanted to make it so our fans are
still paying the same as for a regular CD."
The new songs represent a major shift for the band: on matchbox twenty's
past three albums, Thomas wrote the material, with the other group
members later adding their parts. This time, drummer-turned-guitarist
Doucette, guitarist Kyle Cook, and bassist Brian Yale were included
from the start.
"I don't think we could have gone on if we didn't change the
dynamic of the band," Doucette says. "Matchbox twenty was
a little bit Rob and his overly outspoken background band. Now it's
Rob, Kyle, Paul, and Brian. I'd become a writer over the years; Kyle
had become a writer. It started to become an issue while making the
last record. It got to a point where it was like, well, if we're going
to be a band, this needs to really be a band."
Thomas, Doucette, Cook, and Yale gathered in Thomas's New York home
studio to write, each bringing with them the life and musical growth
they'd experienced since the band's last album, 2002's 'More Than
You Think You Are'. Doucette, who shifted from drummer to guitarist
after Adam Gaynor left the band in 2005, had made a solo album under
the rubric The Break and Repair Method and had scored a film for Nickelodeon.
Cook had released a CD via his other project, The New Left. And Thomas's
solo career took off with the multi-platinum '…Something To Be'.
"We'd worked with different people, we'd really developed our
own sounds, and they're very different from each other," Doucette
says. "We just felt like we each have that separate space to
get ourselves out, so why don't we make matchbox something where we
all have an equal say."
It turns out everyone had a lot on their minds. The ideas came pouring
out, with the band writing 13 songs in four days. "We did this
kind of round robin thing," Doucette says. "Someone would
have a progression, and someone would sing a melody, and the next
person would sing a melody. It was just building on each other's ideas."
Just as the other band members felt they needed to add their voices,
Thomas found it liberating to draw a distinction between his solo
career and matchbox twenty. "The stuff I'm writing for my solo
records is about me and my own experience," he says. "We're
all older now and it doesn't make sense any more for the guys in matchbox
to spend their lives trying to play my experience."
Matchbox twenty drew inspiration for the new material from an unlikely
source: the 20th anniversary DVD of Live Aid. "We started watching
it and got this crazy freak-out about these great simple songs that
we just loved from the '80s," Thomas says. "It kind of all
switched on then, and we just started writing nonstop"
Inspired by the acts they saw on Live Aid like the Pretenders, Boomtown
Rats, and the Police, they stripped songwriting elements down to their
essence. "Lyrically, we decided to go with a lot less,"
Doucette says. "Really just get to the point of what we're trying
to say and what's the simplest way to say it."
The first single, 'How Far We've Come', merges apocalyptic lyrics
and frenetic, building rhythms. Doomsday has never sounded so good.
"There's no reason it can't be sexy," laughs Thomas about
the end of the world.
The other new tracks - including the darkly humorous 'I'll Believe
You When', the driving 'All Your Reasons', the R&B-leaning 'Can't
Let You Go', the jangly 'If I Fall', and the heartbreaking ballad
'These Hard Times' - share a lyrical leanness that allows them to
cut quickly through the sonic atmosphere. One trait that remains?
Matchbox's fairly pessimistic view of life. "Not happy, not happy,"
jokes Doucette when he reviews the lyrics. "But that's always
been this band. We've always done more uplifting melodies with really
downer lyrics."
The band traveled from Thomas's home studio to Los Angeles to record
the new songs with Lillywhite. "We each made a list of every
producer that we liked, and Steve was the only person on everybody's
list," Doucette says. "And he was on everyone's list for
different reasons." To handle drum duty, matchbox twenty recruited
the Push Star's Ryan MacMillan.
Lillywhite worked in a free-form style that fostered creativity and
freshness. "He was like, 'Look, I want you guys to be as unprepared
as you can be,' Doucette says. "He's a big believer in spur of
the moment."
"He's the most brutally honest guy," adds Thomas. "He's
like 'that's not very good, is it?' But he does it in a way that doesn't
make you feel bad."
When not working on the new material, the band selected the 11 songs
for the greatest hits portion. The result is one of those rare greatest
hits sets that really is all greatest hits - including such chart-toppers
as 'Push', '3am', 'If You're Gone', 'Bent', 'Disease', 'Unwell', 'Real
World', 'Back 2 Good', Mad Season', and 'Bright Lights'.
The album's title pokes good-natured fun at the group's tremendous
popularity, while playing off of the classic Rolling Stones album
'Exile On Main Street'.
"There's a sense that somehow a band like us should be apologetic
for making music for the masses," Thomas says. "But I think
it's great that we can hit a chord that means something to us and
means something to someone else. That's really what it's all about."
Fittingly, 2007 marks the tenth anniversary of matchbox's breakthrough
into the mainstream. Their debut album, 'Yourself Or Someone Like
You' was released in the fall of 1996 and began an initial slow burn
with the rock radio success of 'Long Day'. By the spring of 1997,
the band's momentum had become explosive and unstoppable. The album
went gold in June, platinum in July… and that was only the beginning.
In October 1999, three years after its release, 'Yourself…' earned
the RIAA's Diamond Award for U.S. sales of over ten million, and has
gone on to sell more than 15 million copies worldwide.
Matchbox was named Best New Band in the 1997 Rolling Stone Readers
Poll, and they followed the enormous success of 'Yourself…' with
two more multi-platinum sets - 2000's 'Mad Season By Matchbox Twenty'
and 2002's 'More Than You Think You Are'. Among their many accolades
are five Grammy nominations and three American Music Award nominations,
while Rob Thomas has earned three Grammy Awards, 11 BMI Awards, and
has been twice named Billboard's Songwriter of the Year.
"I still hear '3am' on the radio at an alarming rate,"
says Thomas. And that suits him and his band mates just fine. "Listen,
my goal in life is to be this weathered guy who everybody's like,
'Oh, I grew up listening to you.' I think that's the coolest thing
in the world."
So, unexpectedly but happily for everyone, the members of matchbox
twenty are now focused on their future together. The band is looking
forward to its first tour in four years, along with the prospect of
a full album of all-new material down the line.
"We're all excited. It's a good place to be," Thomas says.
"We feel more like a band than we've ever felt."
'Exile On Mainstream' is out now.
