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Benji and Joel 107.5 Interview Part 1 |
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Joel and Billy Do An Interview |
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the hobbits and good charlotte |
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Good Charlotte - Benji & Joel Interview Elijah Wood |
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Good Charlotte - Interview With Billy |
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Good Charlotte Interview Scuzz TV |
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Good Charlotte-The River (featuring M. Shadows and Synyste... |
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| COMMENTS |
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Jun 09, 2008 11:59 AM
OMG I LOVE YOU SO MUCH AND UR SO SEXII!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!
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Jun 09, 2008 11:59 AM
OMG U R SO SEXII AND I LOVE UR SONGS SO MUCH I JUST WANTED TO TELL YOU DAT
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Apr 09, 2008 6:45 PM
amazing music. love you :)
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Mar 29, 2008 11:28 PM
Your music is awesome! I'd love to write a song 4 U! Keep rockin da house!!! Your Fan, CC
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Mar 25, 2008 6:55 PM
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Mar 22, 2008 1:03 AM
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Feb 22, 2008 1:52 PM
I really dig your music!!! If you guys get time check out my profile page thanks alot your friend Shawn of Sonic Rip-Pin
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Oct 30, 2007 12:52 PM
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Oct 24, 2007 7:55 PM
i love u guys u guys fuckin rock
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Aug 24, 2007 1:35 AM
i love you guys so much and joel congrats on the baby
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| TOP PHOTOS |
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Good Charlotte press shot |
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Good Charlotte Press Shot |
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Benji and Joel Madden with Award |
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LONDON - DECEMBER 16- Good Charlotte performs in concert a... |
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Madden Twins - Benji Piercing |
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Good Charlotte is a pop-punk band that banged around the gates of success for six years before striking gold with 2002’s multi-platinum smash, The Young and the Hopeless. Then, as fame and fortune came their way and they became teen tabloid fodder, they found themselves known more for lead singer Joel Madden’s relationship to Nicole Richie, for their tattoos and their personalities than their music. But if their record sales have suffered, it doesn’t seem to be bothering them much.
“It’s hard to be an angry kid, all mad a the world when you’ve got it so good,” Benjie Madden, Joel’s identical twin and Good Charlotte’s lead guitarist, admits. “I mean, that angst will always be there for Joel and I because of the way we grew up. But I definitely have a moment every day where I go, ‘Wow. What a rad life.”
It wasn’t always so rad. They grew up in a working class family in Waldorf, Maryland that was rocked when their father walked out on them one Christmas Eve. That same year, the 16-year-old twins went to see the Beastie Boys and, with no musical experience whatsoever, decided to start a band. They asked two buddies from high school, Paul Thomas (bass) and Billy Martin (rhythm guitar, keyboards), to join them and, after a few bad names, called themselves Good Charlotte, after a children’s book, Good Charlotte: The Girls of Good Day Orphanage by Carol Beach Yorke. If the name has any significance, the band, who claims it was a whimsical, meaningless choice, ain’t talkin’.
With little else to do, they gigged at local clubs for a few years until bands like Lit and Blink-182 saw their set and invited them to tour. On the basis of these shows, Good Charlotte got a contract with Epic Records in 1999, a moderately successful self-titled debut in 2000 and then, in 2002, rode to fame with the album, The Young and Hopeless. Replete with ‘80s references, the album, produced by Eric Valentine and John Feldman, yielded five hit singles, including “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” “The Anthem,” “Girls and Boys,” the title track and “Hold On.”
A success from the outset, the album sold more than three million copies, landed Good Charlotte in Rolling Stone, SNL, CNN, The Today Show, The New York Times and MTV, where they became fixtures. The album and perhaps the group’s shining moment is with “Hold On,” a song and video about suicide, which was labeled therapy rock by the N. Y. Times. The video, which was made in conjunction with several suicide prevention groups, won the MTV Viewer’s Choice video of the year, and gave critics the idea that there might be more to Good Charlotte than they had thought.
Fans, of course, never had that problem. But the last two albums, 2004’s The Chronicles of Life and Death and 2007’s Good Morning Revival, moved the band away from its punk roots into more of a rock territory. The band was, as Joel Madden explained on their website, “so happy with where we're at. We can take Good Charlotte wherever we want to go and I'm comfortable that our fans are going to grow with us. As long as we're being honest - that's all our fans want, and we're definitely going to continue doing that. Just being ourselves, being honest, doing what we do."
But since we’re being honest, many fans and critics were not so happy. Rolling Stone reviewer Christian Howard gave Good Morning Revival a two out of five stars, criticizing its dark, dour, cliched sound, closing with the line, “sounds like growing up sucks even more than they originally thought it would.”
Although that would be troubling to many bands, Good Charlotte doesn’t seem to be overly concerned. They have been on tour with Justin Timberlake; Joel Madden’s about to become a father and attempt The Simple Life and like his heroes, Outkast, he’s determined to take Good Charlotte wherever he and the others “wherever [we] want to go, confident that the fans will follow.
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