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Hanson.
"By golly, there's a journalist that's listening," cries out
19 year old Zack Hanson, drummer with the band which includes
his two older brothers, Taylor (now twenty-one) and Isaac (twenty-four),
and bears their surname. "Truthfully, I don't think that we've
ever said that we're going for a new direction. I believe a
lot of people have said, 'Oh Hanson, they're more mature and
grown up', but they said that about our last album ['This Time
Around' - 2000] also. I think it's more a product of the ability
to look at guys in their twenties rather than guys in their
early teens and to really see it for what it is and what it's
always been. That is just three guys making music the way they
hear it, you know?"
Exactly. Listening now to their latest release, 'Underneath', then referencing back to their mega-selling 1997 debut, 'Middle Of Nowhere', other than much stronger vocals I honestly can't see much difference. And that, my dear cynical reader, is definitely no slight on a trio of very talented young men who happen to blessed with the ability to write and perform smart, hook-laden pop songs. Considering their ages when they first started out, you have to concede that they were pretty darn amazing.
"Well thank you," Zack modestly responds. "You know, you never really worry about that stuff and we've been lucky to be accepted and Rolling Stone [magazine] called that first record one of the best records of the 'nineties and recently Bono said that MMMbop was a genius song and it was one of his favourite songs. So when you get things like that you just go, 'Whoa!' And you're never in it for that but that's always a nice thing and it's the icing on the cake. You can't always focus on what the critics think, it's about the relationship between you and your fans and the people who come out to your concerts, and the people who visit your websites, because that's something you can fuel and be a part of to make sure that you're putting out quality records and songs."
Given that the Hanson boys could well have been deemed a one hit wonder or, even more dimissively, as a novelty act in Australia - they could be forgiven for feeling that they've burnt their bridges in Australia. However, Zack is clearly looking forward to the tour and challenges my question about what audience the band are aiming for these days.
"We're not aiming, and we never have," he firmly states, "and that's maybe another misconception, you know? You don't aim for an audience. I mean, clearly for any band your peers are the people that you're mostly likely to connect with. With our first record we were speaking mostly to our peers which were the majority of our fans, so it was people who were somewhere between twelve and sixteen. So probably similarly, and this will be my guess from all the fans that I meet, the majority of hardcore Hanson fans are now between the ages of nineteen and twenty-four. You don't aim though, you make records for people and whoever jumps onto it and whoever can listen to the music and can take something from it. So whether you're forty or twelve we don't really care, as long as you're there for the music.
"The Beatles wrote catchy pop songs, perceivably for teenagers at the time, which now the whole world is listening to and we're thinking that they're the greatest band of all time. There's always the bar that exists and there's always a bar higher. I mean, you can do sloppy music and focus on boobs or an image, or you can do really great music that's going to really affect people and it can still be catchy pop."
Funny that, weren't the lads trying to tell us that right from the beginning? "Hold on to the ones who really care / In the end they'll be the only ones there / When you get old and start losing your hair / Can you tell me who will still care? / Mmmbop, ba duba dop / Ba du bop, ba duba dop / Ba du bop, ba duba dop ba du." Oh yeah.
Steve Jones
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Hanson play at Thebarton Theatre on Sat 4 June.
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