Paramore, Kerrang!, May, 2007
HAYLEY WILLIAMS is very much in charge. She’s in full flow, strolling around a makeshift photo-studio in a glass-walled meeting room perched high on top of a Times Square hotel.
“Oh I don’t like that one,” she says, a quizzical pout forming on her lips. She’s looking at the shots for which she’s just been posing, dismissing or accepting them as though it’s her choice to make. “Hmm, no not that one either. Do you think you can fiddle with it later to make a bit more of the orange in my hair? That’s a good one for the cover but I think that one would look nice inside,” she says, jabbing a finger at the computer screen.
So far today she’s been the centre of attention. From the minute she strode into the room – tiny, boyish figure, big head, big hair and big eyes – she’s been trying to direct things. She took one look at the wardrobe selected for her and rejected it out of hand. “I’m supposed to be looking glamorous? Not in those…”
Next she stopped to assess each of the boys in her band Paramore, 19-year-old guitarist Josh Farro, his brother and drummer 16-year-old Zac Farro and 22-year-old bassist Jeremy Davis. She looks each of them up and down, leans back and puts a finger on her mouth, then makes quick adjustments to their t-shirts, pulling necks down, stretching shoulders out, making suggestions as to other clothes they could be wearing. Though 18 now, there’s something of the little girl arranging dolls for a tea-party, something snooty, something a little bossy.
“Well, I’m a girl,” she says, with mock outrage. “I can’t help it, that’s what we’re like!”
She takes a quick look at Josh, standing awkwardly in front of the camera. “Not quite right,” you can almost hear her think. “Move your shoulder around a little,” she says. “Mmm, better.” And then later, she’ll join the guitarist on a sofa, her head resting on his shoulder, her arm linked in his. A closeness that has led to more than a few rumours in the past.
But first, a costume change. “Zac’s trying a tank-top,” says Hayley, fingertip in mouth, thinking. “That should work.”
And then she’s off, a different outfit for her too. “Something more natural, something more me. I don’t want to look like a sexpot.”
She’s gone for a while, nearly an hour cutting up t-shirts, repeatedly scrawling ‘Riot’ – the name of her band’s new album – onto a pair of tights, then reappearing to stand in front of a mirror.
“What do you think?”
Shrugs from the boys.
“Yeah, me too. Maybe the white t-shirt?”
She’s gone again, popping in briefly with a broad, cheeky grin on her face, her nose shrivelled in disgust.
“Phew, don’t go in the bathroom for a few minutes…”
She asks Josh to scrawl ‘Riot’ across her breasts, over her t-shirt. He does so with an intimacy that suggests neither of them mind him touching her there.
And then we’re outside on the hotel roof, the mohawk that she’s asked to be put into her hair is flapping about in the breeze, gusting across her face. She blows hair out of the corner of her mouth, stamping her feet in pretend exasperation before checking her reflection in the mirrored glass of the building’s walls. It’s something she does between every shot before deciding that, no, she doesn’t like it out here. We’re moving inside again. A different set-up, one where Hayley can stick her tongue out and be, “you know, more us”.
And so it runs for the rest of the morning. Hayley suggesting this, Hayley thinking that, Hayley wanting the other – while everyone else does all three.
IT’S THE beginning of May in New York. Paramore are here to play a benefit show that not even they quite know the point of. All they know is that Oprah will be there, and Bill Clinton and various other luminaries. They get to play one song, eat as much food as they like and leave. It’s a few months after they finished making their second album, and a few months before it will be released and they’re preparing to hit the promotional trail hard. Small-town life back home in Franklin, Tennessee can go on hold for another year.
It’s been quite a ride for the band of late. First emerging in July 2005, after being signed only months previously by an A+R man who had seen them just once, they toured relentlessly. It meant sales of their debut album, All We Know Is Falling, were good but not stunning – 95,000 US sales and 26,000 in the UK makes a decent platform but certainly give you no bragging rights – yet somehow there was something about the band. Kerrang! readers voted them the Best New Band in 2006, beating Panic! At The Disco to the award, while their Warped Tour appearances and UK Tours were universally packed.
And as the band graced more and more covers, slowly their history emerged. That teenage singer Hayley Williams’ family had fallen apart when she was young, that both she and Josh Farro have claimed her step-father was abusive to her and that her life growing up in small-town southern America wasn’t always the easiest.
When she speaks today there’s still that gentle southern accent. Ask her what her life would be like without music and her reply of, “I don’t what else I’d do,” comes out as ‘Ah don’ know whaat aylse ah would doo’, in a husky, deeper than you’d expect, drawl.
There’s also the band’s upbringing, which while not ostensibly on show, is clearly Christian. You’ll rarely meet a cleaner cut band – none of them drink, all thank God on their album’s sleeve notes and not one of them swears. Ever. It’s, “fricking this,” and, “fricking that,” in Paramore-world. Perhaps a, “what the frick?” if it’s really tense. And recently it’s been tense.
SHORTLY BEFORE Paramore went into the studio to record their second album, they fired guitarist Hunter Lamb. He had been making plans to be with his girlfriend and get married in the three month break they had before recording started. Paramore, meanwhile, thought he should have been concentrating on them. It’s what they’re talking about now.
“That was a stressful time, it was draining,” says Hayley.
“Umm, it definitely didn’t help,” adds Josh.
“We wondered whether it would work if he got married because there’s so much we want to do as a band,” says Hayley, ambitiously. “A marriage is something you have to put your whole heart into. You don’t have time for tons of other things.”
And, as they talk, it becomes clear that, really, they don’t particularly miss Lamb. They’re almost glad he’s gone.
“I can’t say that there wasn’t a part of us that felt he was being disloyal,” says Hayley. “We were a little bummed about the timing too. But we supported him. Then, when we moved to New Jersey to make the record, there were times where it didn’t seem like we were all on the same page. He was dealing with getting married and so his playing wasn’t always working. There was a disconnect. But I realised, when we went to record our video, that it feels right for this band to just be the four of us. We look fine.”
Which is what Hayley thinks about a lot because, “image is important for every band. I don’t think every band focuses on it like us” – lark uurrss – so she’s not too worried about Hunter leaving. And she’s certainly not worried that he might be upset that they think the band works better without him.
“Do I care? Yes and no,” she says with a shrug. “I don’t think we can care that much. We have to move on.”
“If you get kicked out of a band and then you hear they’re doing alright, then it must hurt, I suppose” adds Josh, looking at Hayley.
“But he said, ‘If you guys ever asked me to join again, I don’t know if I would,” says Hayley primly, ending the matter.
IN PARAMORE it’s mostly Hayley Williams who does the talking. When she’s not, Josh Farro will chip in too – shyer, less sure of himself, he’s the band worrier, always concerned about whether everything’s going okay. Zac Farro and Jeremy Davis are quiet when interviewed but noisy the rest of the time – like kids who’ll clamber all over the furniture but who dry up when you tell them not to. They say you can draw a line through the middle of Paramore, Josh and Hayley on one side and Zac and Jeremy on the other.
“The band is sort of split into me and Jeremy being best friends and Hayley and Josh being best friends,” – freyends – says Zac. “Jeremy and I are always playing video games and lying all over each other…”
“…we’re always messing about and those two are always the serious ones,” continues Jeremy, proudly. He says Hayley shouts at them, “like, all the time. Those two try to make us serious when we’re goofing off. But we make them laugh, which they need to do sometimes.”
Each will hang out with their ‘best friend’ constantly, and they’re always touching, Zac and Jeremy forever twining their legs around each other’s, sitting virtually on top of one another whenever possible. Hayley will frequently stroke Josh’s arm, or lean her head against him. They’re amazed that people might think this means there’s more going on than friendship.
“There have been rumours about all of us dating each other,” says Hayley. “Maybe it’s because we’re so close. Josh and I are always by each other. We’re always like this…” she breaks off, puts her arm in his and leans her head on him… “It’s because we’re close. We write all the songs together. We know each other on that level – and it’s a very personal one. Kids see that and maybe they see chemistry that they don’t have with their friends, so they assume, ‘Well, they gotta be dating’. But we’re not, are we guys?”
The guys shrug and shake their heads.
THE CLOSENESS is something Hayley says is invaluable to her and Josh’s ability to write songs together. She’s uncomfortable when asked to explain what her lyrics are about – she shifts back from a legs apart, leaning forward, talking nine-to-the-dozen stance and hunches back in a chair, knees drawn up to her chin, colour rising in her cheeks.
“It’s kind of embarrassing to talk about,” she squirms. “I don’t think I realised how personal some of the stuff was when I wrote it. It was a like a bigger and bigger weight on my shoulders. I didn’t realise my head was so cluttered. There were so many feelings that I didn’t know were there. As soon as we got off the road, I sat down and things just started pouring out. Before I knew it, we had all these songs. I don’t even remember writing some of it. Oh…”
She breaks off and reddens again. She’s trying to explain the feelings that went into the first single, Misery Business.
“…Oh, I get very embarrassed talking about lyrics. It takes me a while to find the right words to explain them.”
She stops, starts, then tries again.
“Well…”
She studies her feet. Deep breath. Then blurts:
“I feel like there are a lot of women or girls who use their bodies and sex to control people. One day that hit a little too close to home because someone in particular was controlling someone that I love very much with her body, with sex and, urgh, just grossness.”
She says sex like it’s a swear word.
“I felt like she was always playing mind games. She was a very manipulative person. It’s crazy to feel that she could be so controlling. All of us saw her do it. It definitely hurt all of us. I wasn’t cool with it so I had to let it out because I won. I beat her, dude. I hope she’s feeling it right now.”
Does revenge make you feel better?
“Yes!” – like, of course, duh! – “That’s the selfish, vengeful, hateful side of me. Everyone has that side of them. Don’t they guys?”
Hayley will sometimes shift the attention onto the rest of her band – sometimes to get them more involved, sometimes to deflect the flak. It is, she says, because she doesn’t necessarily like being the centre of attention. She doesn’t want anyone seeing this as her band.
“That’s why I wore a t-shirt on tour in the UK that said ‘Paramore is a band’,” – bayand – “It’s frustrating when magazines only put me on the cover. It’s not like I’m a super-diva chick. We’re a band, it’s not about me.”
Could Paramore carry on if one of you left?
“It would be hard but we’d carry on,” says Josh.
What if that person was Hayley?
“Umm, well that would be different,” he says. “Then we’d be screwed.”
So it is Hayley’s band, then.
“Um,” says Hayley. “Um, well, in my opinion we couldn’t carry on without Zac, or Jeremy or Josh. I think all these guys are super-valuable.”
Yet, during the photo-shoot, it very much was about Hayley. She primped and preened, made sure to look at all the photos, made sure to be at the forefront of all of them. Made sure she was in charge.
Again she counters with, “But I’m a girl! That’s what we do!” Which isn’t quite true.
But it’s an odd correlation because if you ask a general question about the band, then she will be the first – and only one – to jump in, the focus on her. But ask a question directly to her, about her personal life or her inspirations, and she will withdraw protectively, knees up, arms wrapped around them. It’s as though she’s always vying for attention but, when she gets it, or it challenges her, she doesn’t quite know what to do with it.
AS THEY stand to leave, to soundcheck before playing for Oprah, they glimpse a cartoon playing on a hotel TV. At once, they all morph into the teenagers they mostly are, giggling, pointing and trying out lines in cartoon character accents. And really, they are kids, kids who have been forced to grow up quickly and in the spotlight.
It’s something they occasionally think about, Josh – the worrier – wondering whether he’s missing out by not being at high-school, not being at home with friends around him but out on the road with his band. Wondering whether this is a normal way to live.
“It’s hard, actually,” he says. “It’s hard to be away from home. You miss a lot of teenage life. We don’t have a lot of friends. Of course, we’re friends with bands but you only see them when you pass through shows. We don’t have lots of close friends at home who we can see a lot. It’s definitely difficult but I think we’ve adjusted.”
But as he threatens to get wistful, Hayley cuts him off, with a, “But we’d much rather be here, wouldn’t we? We’re not missing out that much, are we?”
And then she rounds up her boys, sending them up to their shared hotel rooms to get ready, while she heads to her own un-shared room, something that causes the odd grumble from the ranks.
“Well, did you want me to sleep with you guys?”
And, like schoolboys, they almost, ‘No, miss,’ her before they paddle along like ducks in her wake.
© Tom Bryant 2010
“Oh I don’t like that one,” she says, a quizzical pout forming on her lips. She’s looking at the shots for which she’s just been posing, dismissing or accepting them as though it’s her choice to make. “Hmm, no not that one either. Do you think you can fiddle with it later to make a bit more of the orange in my hair? That’s a good one for the cover but I think that one would look nice inside,” she says, jabbing a finger at the computer screen.
So far today she’s been the centre of attention. From the minute she strode into the room – tiny, boyish figure, big head, big hair and big eyes – she’s been trying to direct things. She took one look at the wardrobe selected for her and rejected it out of hand. “I’m supposed to be looking glamorous? Not in those…”
Next she stopped to assess each of the boys in her band Paramore, 19-year-old guitarist Josh Farro, his brother and drummer 16-year-old Zac Farro and 22-year-old bassist Jeremy Davis. She looks each of them up and down, leans back and puts a finger on her mouth, then makes quick adjustments to their t-shirts, pulling necks down, stretching shoulders out, making suggestions as to other clothes they could be wearing. Though 18 now, there’s something of the little girl arranging dolls for a tea-party, something snooty, something a little bossy.
“Well, I’m a girl,” she says, with mock outrage. “I can’t help it, that’s what we’re like!”
She takes a quick look at Josh, standing awkwardly in front of the camera. “Not quite right,” you can almost hear her think. “Move your shoulder around a little,” she says. “Mmm, better.” And then later, she’ll join the guitarist on a sofa, her head resting on his shoulder, her arm linked in his. A closeness that has led to more than a few rumours in the past.
But first, a costume change. “Zac’s trying a tank-top,” says Hayley, fingertip in mouth, thinking. “That should work.”
And then she’s off, a different outfit for her too. “Something more natural, something more me. I don’t want to look like a sexpot.”
She’s gone for a while, nearly an hour cutting up t-shirts, repeatedly scrawling ‘Riot’ – the name of her band’s new album – onto a pair of tights, then reappearing to stand in front of a mirror.
“What do you think?”
Shrugs from the boys.
“Yeah, me too. Maybe the white t-shirt?”
She’s gone again, popping in briefly with a broad, cheeky grin on her face, her nose shrivelled in disgust.
“Phew, don’t go in the bathroom for a few minutes…”
She asks Josh to scrawl ‘Riot’ across her breasts, over her t-shirt. He does so with an intimacy that suggests neither of them mind him touching her there.
And then we’re outside on the hotel roof, the mohawk that she’s asked to be put into her hair is flapping about in the breeze, gusting across her face. She blows hair out of the corner of her mouth, stamping her feet in pretend exasperation before checking her reflection in the mirrored glass of the building’s walls. It’s something she does between every shot before deciding that, no, she doesn’t like it out here. We’re moving inside again. A different set-up, one where Hayley can stick her tongue out and be, “you know, more us”.
And so it runs for the rest of the morning. Hayley suggesting this, Hayley thinking that, Hayley wanting the other – while everyone else does all three.
IT’S THE beginning of May in New York. Paramore are here to play a benefit show that not even they quite know the point of. All they know is that Oprah will be there, and Bill Clinton and various other luminaries. They get to play one song, eat as much food as they like and leave. It’s a few months after they finished making their second album, and a few months before it will be released and they’re preparing to hit the promotional trail hard. Small-town life back home in Franklin, Tennessee can go on hold for another year.
It’s been quite a ride for the band of late. First emerging in July 2005, after being signed only months previously by an A+R man who had seen them just once, they toured relentlessly. It meant sales of their debut album, All We Know Is Falling, were good but not stunning – 95,000 US sales and 26,000 in the UK makes a decent platform but certainly give you no bragging rights – yet somehow there was something about the band. Kerrang! readers voted them the Best New Band in 2006, beating Panic! At The Disco to the award, while their Warped Tour appearances and UK Tours were universally packed.
And as the band graced more and more covers, slowly their history emerged. That teenage singer Hayley Williams’ family had fallen apart when she was young, that both she and Josh Farro have claimed her step-father was abusive to her and that her life growing up in small-town southern America wasn’t always the easiest.
When she speaks today there’s still that gentle southern accent. Ask her what her life would be like without music and her reply of, “I don’t what else I’d do,” comes out as ‘Ah don’ know whaat aylse ah would doo’, in a husky, deeper than you’d expect, drawl.
There’s also the band’s upbringing, which while not ostensibly on show, is clearly Christian. You’ll rarely meet a cleaner cut band – none of them drink, all thank God on their album’s sleeve notes and not one of them swears. Ever. It’s, “fricking this,” and, “fricking that,” in Paramore-world. Perhaps a, “what the frick?” if it’s really tense. And recently it’s been tense.
SHORTLY BEFORE Paramore went into the studio to record their second album, they fired guitarist Hunter Lamb. He had been making plans to be with his girlfriend and get married in the three month break they had before recording started. Paramore, meanwhile, thought he should have been concentrating on them. It’s what they’re talking about now.
“That was a stressful time, it was draining,” says Hayley.
“Umm, it definitely didn’t help,” adds Josh.
“We wondered whether it would work if he got married because there’s so much we want to do as a band,” says Hayley, ambitiously. “A marriage is something you have to put your whole heart into. You don’t have time for tons of other things.”
And, as they talk, it becomes clear that, really, they don’t particularly miss Lamb. They’re almost glad he’s gone.
“I can’t say that there wasn’t a part of us that felt he was being disloyal,” says Hayley. “We were a little bummed about the timing too. But we supported him. Then, when we moved to New Jersey to make the record, there were times where it didn’t seem like we were all on the same page. He was dealing with getting married and so his playing wasn’t always working. There was a disconnect. But I realised, when we went to record our video, that it feels right for this band to just be the four of us. We look fine.”
Which is what Hayley thinks about a lot because, “image is important for every band. I don’t think every band focuses on it like us” – lark uurrss – so she’s not too worried about Hunter leaving. And she’s certainly not worried that he might be upset that they think the band works better without him.
“Do I care? Yes and no,” she says with a shrug. “I don’t think we can care that much. We have to move on.”
“If you get kicked out of a band and then you hear they’re doing alright, then it must hurt, I suppose” adds Josh, looking at Hayley.
“But he said, ‘If you guys ever asked me to join again, I don’t know if I would,” says Hayley primly, ending the matter.
IN PARAMORE it’s mostly Hayley Williams who does the talking. When she’s not, Josh Farro will chip in too – shyer, less sure of himself, he’s the band worrier, always concerned about whether everything’s going okay. Zac Farro and Jeremy Davis are quiet when interviewed but noisy the rest of the time – like kids who’ll clamber all over the furniture but who dry up when you tell them not to. They say you can draw a line through the middle of Paramore, Josh and Hayley on one side and Zac and Jeremy on the other.
“The band is sort of split into me and Jeremy being best friends and Hayley and Josh being best friends,” – freyends – says Zac. “Jeremy and I are always playing video games and lying all over each other…”
“…we’re always messing about and those two are always the serious ones,” continues Jeremy, proudly. He says Hayley shouts at them, “like, all the time. Those two try to make us serious when we’re goofing off. But we make them laugh, which they need to do sometimes.”
Each will hang out with their ‘best friend’ constantly, and they’re always touching, Zac and Jeremy forever twining their legs around each other’s, sitting virtually on top of one another whenever possible. Hayley will frequently stroke Josh’s arm, or lean her head against him. They’re amazed that people might think this means there’s more going on than friendship.
“There have been rumours about all of us dating each other,” says Hayley. “Maybe it’s because we’re so close. Josh and I are always by each other. We’re always like this…” she breaks off, puts her arm in his and leans her head on him… “It’s because we’re close. We write all the songs together. We know each other on that level – and it’s a very personal one. Kids see that and maybe they see chemistry that they don’t have with their friends, so they assume, ‘Well, they gotta be dating’. But we’re not, are we guys?”
The guys shrug and shake their heads.
THE CLOSENESS is something Hayley says is invaluable to her and Josh’s ability to write songs together. She’s uncomfortable when asked to explain what her lyrics are about – she shifts back from a legs apart, leaning forward, talking nine-to-the-dozen stance and hunches back in a chair, knees drawn up to her chin, colour rising in her cheeks.
“It’s kind of embarrassing to talk about,” she squirms. “I don’t think I realised how personal some of the stuff was when I wrote it. It was a like a bigger and bigger weight on my shoulders. I didn’t realise my head was so cluttered. There were so many feelings that I didn’t know were there. As soon as we got off the road, I sat down and things just started pouring out. Before I knew it, we had all these songs. I don’t even remember writing some of it. Oh…”
She breaks off and reddens again. She’s trying to explain the feelings that went into the first single, Misery Business.
“…Oh, I get very embarrassed talking about lyrics. It takes me a while to find the right words to explain them.”
She stops, starts, then tries again.
“Well…”
She studies her feet. Deep breath. Then blurts:
“I feel like there are a lot of women or girls who use their bodies and sex to control people. One day that hit a little too close to home because someone in particular was controlling someone that I love very much with her body, with sex and, urgh, just grossness.”
She says sex like it’s a swear word.
“I felt like she was always playing mind games. She was a very manipulative person. It’s crazy to feel that she could be so controlling. All of us saw her do it. It definitely hurt all of us. I wasn’t cool with it so I had to let it out because I won. I beat her, dude. I hope she’s feeling it right now.”
Does revenge make you feel better?
“Yes!” – like, of course, duh! – “That’s the selfish, vengeful, hateful side of me. Everyone has that side of them. Don’t they guys?”
Hayley will sometimes shift the attention onto the rest of her band – sometimes to get them more involved, sometimes to deflect the flak. It is, she says, because she doesn’t necessarily like being the centre of attention. She doesn’t want anyone seeing this as her band.
“That’s why I wore a t-shirt on tour in the UK that said ‘Paramore is a band’,” – bayand – “It’s frustrating when magazines only put me on the cover. It’s not like I’m a super-diva chick. We’re a band, it’s not about me.”
Could Paramore carry on if one of you left?
“It would be hard but we’d carry on,” says Josh.
What if that person was Hayley?
“Umm, well that would be different,” he says. “Then we’d be screwed.”
So it is Hayley’s band, then.
“Um,” says Hayley. “Um, well, in my opinion we couldn’t carry on without Zac, or Jeremy or Josh. I think all these guys are super-valuable.”
Yet, during the photo-shoot, it very much was about Hayley. She primped and preened, made sure to look at all the photos, made sure to be at the forefront of all of them. Made sure she was in charge.
Again she counters with, “But I’m a girl! That’s what we do!” Which isn’t quite true.
But it’s an odd correlation because if you ask a general question about the band, then she will be the first – and only one – to jump in, the focus on her. But ask a question directly to her, about her personal life or her inspirations, and she will withdraw protectively, knees up, arms wrapped around them. It’s as though she’s always vying for attention but, when she gets it, or it challenges her, she doesn’t quite know what to do with it.
AS THEY stand to leave, to soundcheck before playing for Oprah, they glimpse a cartoon playing on a hotel TV. At once, they all morph into the teenagers they mostly are, giggling, pointing and trying out lines in cartoon character accents. And really, they are kids, kids who have been forced to grow up quickly and in the spotlight.
It’s something they occasionally think about, Josh – the worrier – wondering whether he’s missing out by not being at high-school, not being at home with friends around him but out on the road with his band. Wondering whether this is a normal way to live.
“It’s hard, actually,” he says. “It’s hard to be away from home. You miss a lot of teenage life. We don’t have a lot of friends. Of course, we’re friends with bands but you only see them when you pass through shows. We don’t have lots of close friends at home who we can see a lot. It’s definitely difficult but I think we’ve adjusted.”
But as he threatens to get wistful, Hayley cuts him off, with a, “But we’d much rather be here, wouldn’t we? We’re not missing out that much, are we?”
And then she rounds up her boys, sending them up to their shared hotel rooms to get ready, while she heads to her own un-shared room, something that causes the odd grumble from the ranks.
“Well, did you want me to sleep with you guys?”
And, like schoolboys, they almost, ‘No, miss,’ her before they paddle along like ducks in her wake.
© Tom Bryant 2010
