Interviewed at The Kasbah, Coventry, 08/02/2008

In your own words you said “we’re just a couple of kids from a hardcore scene playing in a punk band” did you ever think that you would get to the point where you’d release three gold albums?

Ian Grushka: I don’t think we ever really thought about gold records at all when we started, I think it was just more just us getting together and being in a band, and playing shows and having fun just to give us something to do. And then we started just by playing shows throughout Florida. We just traded shows with bands, and then, you know we just kept touring and touring, but we definitely never even thought about gold records in the beginning. That was just like icing on top of the cake, you know?

So has it been a big surprise to you how successful you have been?

Ian: I think so.

Steve Klein: We also worked really hard to get to where we are too, so it’s kind of rewarding after working hard to like, actually get somewhere, you know?

Neverending Story has been loved by lots of people. So what do you think has made it really big?

Steve: The fact that it’s in a big movie? (laughs) Neverending Story is a big movie and people know that song

Ian: Yeah, it was just fun

Steve: We try to take fun songs and make them New Found Glory style

How on earth did you think of that song, because I thought it was genius, I loved it

Steve: There’s songs that we grew up with and liked watching, you know, so we all sat around, we all picked a song and..

Ian: We just liked the movie

Steve: Yeah, we all just liked the movie. Same thing.. we have, you know, ‘Screen To Your Stereo Part 2’ that just came out where, we did all movie songs too. It’s the second part to the first ‘Screen To Your Stereo’ that ‘Neverending Story’ is on, and there it was more current movie songs.

Fans of hardcore can sometimes chop and choose between which bands they like, and they say that they’re losing their authenticity sometimes as they get bigger. Do you think that has ever happened with New Found Glory?

Steve: No. I think you lose authenticity when you like sign to your label or change your music to fit in with what style is popular. New Found Glory obviously is true to what we like. We write from the heart.. we write lyrics that are about our life, so we can’t really be contrived when we’re talking about our life. We don’t really try too hard, we just want to do what’s fun, what we know that our fans are going to have fun at the show and sing along. Our records are like sound tracks to our live shows, we’re a live band more than we are anything else. That’s the reason why we do this

In your career have you ever been asked by the record label to kinda sway something or change it..

Steve: If they even like mention it, we’re just like they wanted to sign us - when they signed us, they knew that’s what type of band we were then. You’re not going to be able to tell us what to write or what to do. We obviously are doing a good job with what we are doing, so you can either mess with it, you know, a perfectly run machine..

Hows the tour going so far?

Steve: It’s going great

Ian: It’s been a lot of fun. We’ve kind of just started, so we’re keeping in the groove

Steve: It’s cool because we’re on tour with Paramore right now, and we got to do our own headline gigs and went to do the Grammys. We got to book a couple of headline shows, which are always fun. On the Paramore shows we’re playing support, so we don’t really get to play a long enough set and people get upset.. (shouts) “we need more songs” so we booked our own headline gigs in between shows.

How are you getting on with Paramore? I know you toured with them last year on the Warped tour

Steve: We get on with them well. I mean we only tour with bands that we know we’re going to get on with. It’s like when you’re on tour with somebody, you have to be friends, you have to be cool. And I’m just like there’s no point in really going on tour with them.

Ian: If you think in the beginning when you first get asked to do a tour, you try and schedule it, if you think there’s going to be some weirdness, usually you just won’t do the tour

In reviews we haven’t heard anything about where your influences came from through your music, so where did your influences come from?

Steve: I think if you ask each of the other five members separately they’re all going to say something different. But personally..

Ian: It’s kind of hard to say ‘cause our songs.. like everyone has input into writing and everyone listens to totally different music in the band Chad listens to everything from like Hatebreed to Bjork to Shania Twain. Jordan listens to all these bands that you’ve never heard of, you know what I mean, Cyrus listens to a lot of radio stuff. We’re kind of just like a mixture of everything, but I guess when we were starting out there were people that compared us to bands like Gameface and Texas Is The Reason and stuff like that. I don’t really think that there is one main influence on our band, I think its just kind of we all listen to so much different stuff, that we just take the pieces that we like from each genre of music and squeeze them into our band.. if that makes any sense?

What inspired you to start playing music?

Ian: I had some friends that played guitar and I would watch Headbangers Ball a lot on TV and just kinda watching my friends play Megadeth songs and stuff, and I went “Aw man, I wanna play the guitar” then I realised that.. I sucked (laughs) and it wasn’t that good, so I’m like “hey you know, I’m gonna play bass, it's got 2 less strings” and then that’s kinda what I did.

Steve: Yeah, I wanted to play guitar because I wanted to learn how to play the songs I was listening to on the radio so I picked up the guitar and that’s how I learned how to play the guitar. When I first like got into Green Day it was the easiest thing there was to just pick up and play the three chords, you know, so after that I just kind of learned from there.

I read the review that one of you was trying to play Joe Satriani but sort of said that you couldn’t really get into it or something.

Steve: He’s into Joe Satriani

Ian: I played some Joe Satriani stuff.. Dream Theatre, Metallica.. excellent

Steve: Ian’s the elder of the band, obviously, you can tell by his musical tastes (laughs)

Ian: No-one else likes the stuff that I like in this band, otherwise we’d be in a hair band

So are you self taught then on your guitars or have you ever had lessons?

Steve: No, self taught. Like I said, just put on records and just follow along with the record and learn how to play.

You’ve got a hit album coming out soon, how do you decide which songs to put on there?

Ian: We just kind of picked the songs that we had videos for, songs that we thought the fans liked the most, and then we tried to put on a couple of songs that people might not have on there so we put one of our b-sides on there, and then we put a brand new song on it as well.

Have there been any disagreements over the songs that you have been putting on there?

Ian: No I don’t think so, everyone gave their input. We kind of all put together a list on our own, everyone sent it in and we were like “alright, these are the songs we have in common” so everyone kind of knew.

Steve: They’re just the most popular songs

So do you guys actually have any favourite songs to play live?

Ian: Not really

Steve: There’s so many songs dude. There’s six records now, so.. I like playing the newer stuff just because we haven’t been playing it as long I guess.

You said you didn’t have a favourite song personally. What kind of songs get the best reaction from the crowds?

Ian: I would say the songs that you have videos for

Steve: The faster songs too, the heavier songs.. I dunno.. everybody has their own favourite songs so it’s kind of hard to tell. All these shows that we play, the headline shows, everyone knows all the words to every song so that’s what’s cool.

Interview by Abz, Josh and Hunter
Transcription by Ant