[Emperor’s note: This is by far the longest interview we have ever conducted. If you are a fan of the band, you are in for a treat. – The Emperor]
It’s been murder, but after two years Julien-K finally released Death to Analog. During a media day in West Hollywood, band members Ryan Shuck and Amir Derakh sat comfortably in their London Hotel suite to talk about shooting their x-rated video, creating new material for the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen soundtrack and so much more cool shit. Let’s check in with the boys, raw and uncensored.
Racket Gail: Why did you want to premiere the video for “Kick the Bass” on playboy.com?
Ryan Shuck: It was x-rated [laughs.] What better place to debut content like that? I mean, you can’t exactly throw it on TV. To find an outlet that had a huge amount of traffic, four or five times bigger than MTV’s and debut it on that seemed like a really smart move; being an early, younger indulger of Playboy myself [laughs.]
RG: Where did you film it at? Is it in the Playboy mansion?
Ryan: [whispers] No.
Amir Derakh: I think it was the “Paramour” mansion or “Paramell?” What was it called?
Ryan: Paramour.
Amir: Paramour mansion, yeah. There’ve been other videos that have been shot there and probably some movies and things like that. It was a little tricky. I don’t think they were, even though they were completely aware of what was going on, I don’t think they were too stoked on all the naked girls. I don’t think they expected it. It’s not disgusting or anything but I think they were a little uneasy about it. We had a lot of strict rules and guidelines that had to be followed, as far as when you have naked girls around. There’s like weird rules and regulations. People had to come and inspect the filming and all kinds of stuff to make sure everything was kosher [laughs.]
RG: Oh wow. So they had to sign papers or contracts?
Amir: We had special licenses and stuff like that.
Ryan: It’s the same as shooting a porn.
Amir: Pretty much.
Ryan: Seriously.
RG: [Laughs.]
Ryan: It was exactly the same, regulation-wise. So there could be no alcohol on-set… I mean all sorts of rules and everything that you have to follow.
RG: Explain the concept of the video. Did you have any involvement with how it was going to look?
Ryan: Yes.
RG: Yeah, so tell me about that.
Ryan: Uh, well… [Laughs.]
RG: It’s pretty intense; I mean it just gets crazier as the video goes on.
Ryan: It’s a little bit of a satire of real life. I don’t know how descriptive I want to get because there is some basis in reality, but we’re sort of mocking [pauses.]
Amir: The excesses of…
Ryan: The excesses of success and there’s a lot of introspection there too. I mean, the way we carried on an orgy, and so on and so forth. Chester’s sort of this lord of the house that looks like he’s in control but he’s not really. It’s actually the wife that is or the “Queen” that’s actually sending the signals to Chester and he’s actually following her orders, doing her biding. Other than that, we sort of obviously blew it into sort of an absurd [laughs] proportion. But yeah, I think that is as much as I want to describe about it [laughs.]
RG: And then, the costumes of course, [are by] the guy from Project Runway.
Ryan: Jeff Sebelia.
RG: Yeah! How did you get involved with him?
Amir: Actually, it’s kind of coincidental. We actually met him through our stylist. We had had some sort of rough concepts of what we wanted the band to look like in the beginning, but we hadn’t really put it all together. We explained it to our stylist and when she ended up bringing in clothes for our first photo shoot, all of us gravitated separately to the same designer on the racks. We all came to a point, “Who the hell is this Cosa Nostra?” Ryan’s got a jacket. We all pulled these things out and we were like, “These are amazing.” So then, realizing that like, “Wow. We need to meet this guy,” and it turned out to be Jeff Sebelia. We immediately hit it off with him and started talking about him designing and modifying clothes for us, for our video and helping us style the video and just our whole look, basically. It was probably like a month or so after that he went on the cattle call for that show?
Ryan: Um hmm.
Amir: It’s like a month or two after that, he had gone in to audition for [Project Runway] and he ended up getting on it. So we had already met him “pre-all this” and then he ended up going on the show and winning it.
Ryan: [Laughs.]
Amir: And we were like, “Wow!” I guess we kind of know what’s up because we were like way ahead of that and we’re still really good friends. I actually just spoke to him the other day and he ended up doing a whole bunch of clothes for us. I hope at some point we’ll do some more, but the stuff that he’s done has just been great. We haven’t had a need to replace a lot of it. It’s just really cool.
RG: What kind of influences do you take from fashion, when you’re doing a music video or just in general?
Amir: It’s probably a two-part answer because he [Ryan] probably has thoughts too. I know, for me, there were things out of the music and the style, I think, that sort of influenced what I thought we should look like. There’s always weird little elements that I don’t even know that I want to tell you what they are because you’d be like, “That’s kind of lame.” But there’s lots of little elements of things that I thought in my head that if I could see them all put together, they would make something new and cool. Initially, Jeff’s clothes did that, like they brought all those elements together. We didn’t even know each other or anything but he was right on that page. I think he could probably…
Ryan: No, that was great.
RG: He said it all.
Ryan: I’m all about silhouettes. I like to package things in a really compelling way. Music for me is more than just a sound, it’s a look. Art is all-encompassing. It’s the control of the entire aesthetic: sound, color, vibe, feeling, smell. If I could control it all, I would but to me, I’m into silhouette, you know, just seeing the lines of things. So clothing that [has] like dark, sharp silhouette, lean, tall-looking. It’s the whole vibe that I imagine going with the music.
RG: Now I’m curious as to what you mean by “lame” though. You brought it up and now I’m like, “Why don’t you want to talk about it?” [Laughs.]
Amir: I opened Pandora’s Box and I closed it back up.
RG: Yeah! Now it’s just gonna bug me the whole interview [laughs.]
Amir: Well, it’s just that there’s a lot of styles of things that I like and they’re similar, I’m sure for Ryan as well. There’s sort of I guess, a New Romantic kind of thing that was from the 80s that had a lot of almost swashbuckler-type of things to it, like Adam and the Ants and all that kind of crap, and then you mix that with like more of a high fashion Duran Duran and mix that with some more industrial…
Ryan: Blade Runner …
Amir: Yeah, Blade Runner meets raver kids, underground club clothes. It’s just a big mix mosh of ideas, but how do you put all of that together and then make something new? It’s like you need a great designer to do that and Jeff, that’s what he does. We saw that stuff and it was just like, “Wow.” It’s got that punk rock, pirate, sort of industrial. There’s something I’m missing, sort of leather, rock and roll thing that he puts all together.
Ryan: At the same time it’s not Motley Crue and it’s not Marilyn Manson.
RG: [Laughs]
Amir: Yeah.
Ryan: It’s got a sharper, darker… It’s edgy, it’s hard but there’s definitely a “togetherness” to it.
Amir: It’s a more high fashion element to it, a more couture type of thing that he pulls off with it. So it’s not, like you [Ryan] said, it’s just not like that cheesy, rocker.
Ryan: It’s more like Sunset Strip, gonna hang out at the Roxy.
RG: At the Whiskey [laughs].
Amir: He takes it to a really extreme.
Ryan: There’s a lot more finish to it. It’s done in a really innovative, futuristic way.
Amir: He actually really helped a lot in the video too because initially we really only hired him to create like two looks for us in the video. He knocked those completely out of the park. He was so excited about it all, but he had other stylists as well and they all kind of worked together into creating the looks of everybody in the video. You know the fact that Chester’s like a general with all these medals.
RG: Yeah. I loved the hat! The hat was amazing.
Amir: He brought a lot of visual styling to the video as well, probably more so than anybody really, right?
Ryan: He gives it an over-the-top, Alice in Wonderland sort of like dark, edgy vibe.
Amir: We wanted it to look like movie. We wanted it to be that quality; any movie director would be proud to say like, “I did a music video.”
RG: So would you guys do a clothing line in the future?
Amir: Ryan’s actually already done clothing; he’s done some stuff in Orgy and discovered how difficult [laughs] that actually can be. We were always interested in stuff like that but we actually have so many friends now that run really big clothing companies that are very successful. It’s easier for us, I think nowadays to just be part of what they’re doing and we get the residual effect of really cool clothes and helping them. [Also] inspire them to do things maybe they wouldn’t typically do. So we get clothes out of that, in the process and I don’t know about turning it into making any money out of it at this point. He’s already gone down that road and it would be pretty hard to do it really well.
RG: I didn’t hear anything about the restaurants. Could you tell me a little about that?
Ryan: It’s not something we necessarily try to advertise. It’s certainly something that we’re proud of and that we love. We like to create spaces where we could go do business, where we could go feel comfortable, where we could go get food at 1 in the morning; great places to do business and take bands there. Having a Bricks and Mortar-type of place that you have control of, that you can kind of make what you want it to be is really awesome. I bought two restaurants in Orange County, one of them was in a place where basically Orgy came together at the LAB, a place called the LAB. The “anti-mall,” that’s what it’s called. It’s a really interesting, outdoor mall and there’s a restaurant where I used to do hair next door, I was a hairdresser. After Orgy, we had a lot of success and I actually came back and bought the place. Since then, we opened up a new one in Orange County in Santa Ana called Lola Gaspar. It’s sort of like creating business out of our lifestyle. That’s our whole deal. We’re artists and musicians, so basically everything we do, and we try to create business around it so we could just eat, breathe and sleep our work. There’s more businesses that we don’t mention.
RG: Yeah?
Ryan: The one we’re working on right now, we may open up rehearsal studios. Well, one of the uses for that would obviously be Julien-K to rehearse there but we would just make a business out of it. We would open up ten more rooms [laughs.]
RG: The “Kick the Bass” lyrics. I really like how you said, “I need to be somebody sometimes/do you even know who you are?” How did you connect and define yourself in those lyrics?
Ryan: It’s about the thing in me that craves excess. It’s about coming off of Orgy and just how crazy the demon was just in my blood- that is in my blood. It’s sort of wrestling with that party lifestyle, the excess, the craving of a spotlight. It’s sort of [pauses] I wouldn’t say really mocking it, it’s just sort of calling it out, describing it and creating a piece of art out of it which is the song. It’s sort of implying that everyone has that in them. “Do you really know who you are?” is sort of saying, “Don’t judge me because I feel there’s a lot of times, I doubt you really even understand that you even have this in you as well.”
RG: It makes me think of people that criticize you in the press. What would you say to them?
Ryan: I don’t have anything to say. I would never respond to criticism. I would lie and say that I’m not sensitive. It would be a total lie because I’m an artist. People criticizing me can’t be my concern. I shouldn’t do this if I’m not ready for that. I’m prepared to be and have been absolutely lambasted [laughs] before. All I can do is work with my best friends and create the best songs that we can possibly create and create a look and be totally fucking unapologetic about it. Go walk around looking like a fucking vampire dressed in black, in some of the coolest clothes ever with my nails painted and eyeliner. Fuck them if they don’t like it! We tend to dress like we come from some make-believe, futuristic world. I admit it. We do [laughs.]
RG: Ah! [Laughs.]
Ryan: I do think that, when I put my clothes on.
Amir: We like people who are into that.
RG: Yeah.
Amir: If you’re not, that’s cool too. But that’s the way we’ve always been. We’ve always dressed up, pretty much always worn makeup to some degree and pretty much all the things we’ve ever done. I’ve always been into fashion since I started caring, probably since I first got laid. I mean, that’s when you start honestly caring what you look like. You want to attract the opposite sex. [Laughs] It’s normal or maybe not, you want to attract the same sex [laughs.]
RG: [Laughs] if that’s your thing [laughs.]
Amir: It just depends. But it’s something we’ve always done. I think because of that, we will attract those types of people and that’s fine. That’s what we would expect.
Ryan: The same attitude is going to come out with our music. We’re gonna sound like what we sound like and we’re gonna work really hard to just make sure that it’s good and that it passes our test and criticism is something that comes with the territory. As long as we’re affecting people. I’m not gonna be one of those people that lies and says that, “I don’t wanna be loved and I don’t want to be successful.”
RG: [Laughs.]
Ryan: We want to be loved, we want to be successful but that doesn’t mean we have to be loved by everyone. It’s gonna be polarizing.
Amir: I always think that too. You’re not making enough of a statement if you can’t turn some people off. You’re not going far enough. You kind of have to push it and you have to take a side. You’re either gonna be this way or gonna be that way. You can’t fall in the middle because then no one’s really gonna love you. You want people to really love what you do or maybe even really fucking hate you [laughs] and that’s fine.
RG: What’s the craziest thing you’ve read about yourselves?
Ryan: That we’ve engaged in parties that is like the video to “Kick the Bass.”
RG: [Laughs] alright, cool.
Amir: I mean the video is kind of a funny thing like what you said because I think in some ways it’s a little bit of a joke for us. We feel like we’ve actually had the orgy that everybody thought we had in Orgy. I’m sure people thought Orgy was like that.
RG: Yeah.
Amir: Now we finally have our orgy, but it’s a video [laughs.]
RG: I didn’t make that connection.
Amir: That goes back to what he was saying and how it sort of plays on things, experiences that all sort of wraps into what people’s perceptions of being a rock star is and things that go on and all that kind of crap.
RG: What was your favorite moment of last year?
Amir: Last year was actually a fucking shitty year.
RG: Oh no.
Amir: Yeah, that’s when everything got really messed up for us, but it’s all turning around now. I mean, that tour [with Evanescence and Sick Puppies] was really fun, but there was a lot of stuff hanging heavy. There were a lot of complications, legal problems that started happening with our company and our partner; that basically is why we had to stall for a whole year to put our record out.
RG: Oh, okay.
Amir: It wasn’t a really great year for us. Things are a lot better now. Things are headed in the right direction now.
RG: Well that’s good. Just think positively.
Amir: It’s a pretty brutal year for a lot of people. There’s a lot of bad shit going on around us. My mom lost her job and I got other relatives that are having all kinds of financial problems. You just watch a lot of the weird stuff going on, but there’s a lot of good stuff happening too. I think some things will start turning around this year.
RG: Where do you go to get your mind set in the right direction?
Ryan: He calls me.
RG: [Laughs.]
Amir: It’s kind of funny actually. He gets on the other end and calls me up. We go back and forth. We have some close family friends. We’ve been laying a lot of crap on [them] over the last year, trying to not loose our marbles basically. It’s been really hard for us, really hard emotionally. We just rely on each other and our close circle of people we work with and friends and family to help us get through it.
Ryan: Chester’s been someone that’s been instrumental in getting us through this whole thing and just being an uplifting, positive force in our life. [He’s] another one of our inner circle best friends that’s just been like a brother to us. Now things are going great. We’re due to put out both records this year, Death to Analog and then we have Dead by Sunrise in September, which for us is just a huge release and a huge relief that we finally get this huge body of work. We’re gonna be releasing about three hours of music this year which is unheard of. I mean, it’s gonna be incredible. Then you get to tour two bands: Dead by Sunrise and Julien-K this year. We’re gonna somehow make these work together and we don’t exactly know how yet. I have a feeling that we’re gonna be doing some incredibly innovative marriages of the two bands, possibly even being able to go on tour together. I’m saying possibly. You never know. For us, I could think of a really interesting way to make a show out of both bands.
RG: Yeah.
Ryan: I think that’s really interesting. I don’t know where that’s ever been done before. But again, these are the things that we are throwing up against the wall right now and to me, that says it’s going to be a really exciting year for us. It’s gonna be very challenging. We’re going to be working our fucking asses off but that’s how we’re most comfortable.
RG: Wow.
Amir: We just created a lot of music for the new Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. We actually created like almost a whole album’s worth of original music for that [laughs.]
RG: What was it like doing the first song [“Technical Difficulties”] for the first Transformers soundtrack?
Amir: The song was written a while ago, before we were even asked to do the movie. But when the opportunity came along, the song was like, this song needs to be in the Transformers movie. It just sounds like it would fit and it made sense. Even the director I guess really liked it. We just got lucky. It was just the right thing for the right movie and it was good because that actually helped us get into doing the video game. They heard that stuff and they were like, “We have to get these guys to do the game. This is perfect for the game.”
Ryan: They have a little bit more creative control. They could go, “Oh, we’re gonna have this great new artist completely compose for the game,” where as with the movie, it’s much, much more difficult. While Michael Bay apparently liked the song, there’s much more politics involved. You can’t just go, “Oh Julien-K scored the movie.” It’s much more fun for us because you could just really go in there and working with a group of artists that are much more similar to musicians: video game designers, people responsible for the sound.
Amir: The other thing that was different about that was that they actually gave us scenes from the game and there specific guidelines and outlines that we would then plug these pieces of music into to create that vibe that they’re looking for in the game. Whether it’s something like a moody thing or something very aggressive or whatever it is. Most of the stuff that we did was fairly aggressive. They wanted really aggressive music for the game, which typically isn’t something we do a lot of anymore. It really came out cool.
RG: What was the funniest thing that happened on stage or in the crowd?
Ryan: I don’t know. I mean, all sorts of shit happen.
RG: [Laughs.]
Ryan: On tour with Evanescence, I walked right on stage and began the song, and then fell half way through the stage, through like a hole.
RG: [Laughs.]
Ryan: It wasn’t that funny. It hurt. It literally ripped my boot a part.
RG: Ouch.
Ryan: I crawled out of the hole and just kept playing. On the internet, I read all the comments about the show and there was like, “Wow, these guys…it was a really weird show.” “It wasn’t very good.” Well, you didn’t just fall through a fucking stage.
RG: [Laughs.]
Ryan: and it hurt badly. [Laughs] you know what I mean?
RG: But you kept going [laughs.]
Ryan: It fucking, fucked my leg up.
RG: Oh no!
Ryan: It ripped my fucking boot. So I had to play with pants that are falling a part. But yeah, you just go up there and just make it happen. You kind of laugh about it afterwards, I guess it was kind of funny. I don’t know every night there’s usually some fucking stupid thing that happens that’s pretty fucking funny that no one really knows about. I have a little bit of a scar on my forehead a little bit. It’s just the aftermath of the scar. The stage was so small; I was trying to run on top of the monitors. I stepped on my mic stand, this pretty elaborate, custom-made steel stand with all these sharp edges. I was going forward and I stepped on it and it swung back and it sawed me right in the forehead.
Amir: [Laughs.]
Ryan: I had to act like it just didn’t do anything. I didn’t know it made a perfectly, precision cut of an “L.”
RG: [Laughs] Sorry.
Ryan: I’m singing and we’re in Canada. I went up to wipe the sweat away and it was red. I just go, “Oh fuck! I fucking fucked my face up. God damn it. I think we got ten shows left. This is bullshit!”
Amir: Was that the day I got my arm burned?
Ryan: No, day after.
Amir: Day after? Okay.
Ryan: Yeah, oh man.
Amir: We have more disasters than funny stories.
RG: Oh [laughs.]
Ryan: I had to sleep with a white beater tied around my forehead every night to keep the swelling down. Keep in mind, a lot of these kids have never seen us before. It’s actually important that you don’t have a big fucking nut on your fucking forehead. It’s like one of those things. They don’t really care what you did the night before. You just look kinda fucking stupid, weird like you have a big bruise on your fucking face. Like, “What the fuck? What, you get into a fist fight?”
RG: [Laughs.]
Ryan: It’s like, “That’s cool.” “No. Not really.” It was just one of those things in the entire tour and we had to figure out ways to make the swelling go down every day. I was happy with the last show because I was like, “Fuck. I could just let myself be injured.” Yeah, there’s just so many, it’s hard to focus on one funny thing. Evanescence, one of their shows, their security guy dressed up and was singing behind me. I always did this schtick in “System to Sex,” where I take my shirt off and kind of turn into like a stripper.
RG: [Laughs.]
Ryan: All the girls would scream.
RG: [Screams.]
Ryan: and I thought that was cool. I’m [a] fucking ego-maniac.
RG: [Laughs.]
Ryan: I turn around after doing my little move and their security guard is out there with his shirt off and his big, fat belly hanging out. He’s got this big mask on and this shit painted on his belly. It looked like a big, floating fat face.
RG: [Laughs.]
Ryan: and he was just dancing his ass off, trying to mimic me and I turned around and I saw that and it scared the living shit out of me.
RG: Oh my god.
Ryan: There’s all sorts of stupid stuff. Jay Gordon from Orgy threw a steak knife at me and it stuck on my arm.
RG: [Laughs] On stage?
Ryan: No, on the bus.
RG: Okay because … [laughs.]
Ryan: Just before I got up there and in front of everybody. I don’t think he meant to throw it at me. He meant to get pissed off and threw it. It stuck in my arm and I didn’t even flinch for some reason because for some reason, it didn’t hurt me. So it just hung there and the whole band’s like “Ahhhh!” They waited a second and everybody gave me, “High five! Oh my god, you didn’t even flinch. Oh my god!”
RG: [Laughs.]
Ryan: We pulled a knife out of my arm. This kind of shit… we lit our guitar tech on fire for falling asleep. We did all sorts of shit.
RG: [Laughs.]
Ryan: I mean, we would just…
Amir: He liked it though.
Ryan: Yeah, he did.
RG: [Laughs.]
Ryan: There’s just too many ridiculous things. It’s almost sad [laughs.]
RG: What’s your favorite and least favorite part about touring?
Ryan: The least favorite part is being away from home. We have lot friends, a lot of people we care about [that] it’s hard to be away from them. But I would say it’s also hard to not be touring. This is what we do- the only thing that I really try to do really, really well in my life is to be a great performer. It’s the thing that I get my self-worth from are my performances. I get the energy to do what I do- all of it, to put up with all the bullshit- I get that from my performances and I put up with the shit, so I could do the performances. There’s something for me, I think I speak for Amir too, there’s something about being out there. There’s such a pure, singular focus on what you have to do. I really like it. The whole day is spent preparing to execute for that hour, hour and a half that you get to play. There’s something that’s really beautiful about that for me. I don’t know why, but I always feel like I’m doing the right thing. When I’m not touring or I’m not performing, I always feel like I’ve done something wrong, like I fucked over a friend or cheated on a girlfriend. You know that feeling you get, that sinking, gross feeling?
RG: Yeah.
Ryan: That’s what I feel when I’m not performing, when I’m not touring.
RG: To not doing anything creative.
Ryan: a pretty fucking, miserable life [laughs.]
RG: [Laughs] Not miserable.
Ryan: Destined for fucking misery because you know that you don’t get to tour all the time.
RG: So when you do tour, do you bring anything on the road with you? Any cute stuffed animals? [Laughs.]
Ryan: We bring the whole gym with us actually because we train almost every day when we’re out there.
RG: That’s awesome.
Ryan: We party and stuff too, but not like we did in Orgy. It’s much more focused. It’s important to actually keep yourself healthy and stay in shape. We just take it to another level now because we’re a little extreme with every thing we do but we bring an entire gym with us. It gets unpacked every single day in our dressing room. Actually like I said, there’s such a singular focus. For me, it’s really cool because I have a tendency to do 25 thousand things at once and so does Amir. So you get out there, you have to focus on the show; you have to focus on yourself. You have to focus on your body, all things that you need to have in order to perform that night and I think that’s the fucking greatest thing ever. It’s hard and wonderful.
RG: When do you find the time to actually work out? You bring a whole bunch of weights…
Ryan: We bring bench, we bring whole weights. We have a whole big tour case.
Amir: We don’t usually play, unless you’re doing a radio festival or something during the day, you’re not going to play until either early or later evening. Usually you’ll leave the gig late the night before, roll into where ever you’re going to for the next show and you get up very casually, 10, 11, 12 o’clock. You have the whole afternoon to either do interviews and typically we’ll fit in a workout, sometimes the hotel has a gym. Sometimes if we’re in an area where there isn’t one, we don’t need a lot of stuff to do our workouts. We’ll just do it right in the venue. A lot of the crew guys like to do it too. Nothing crazy, I mean we’re not like a bodybuilding team.
Ryan: It’s just one of those focus, focus, focus on the task at hand. It’s just so cool to really be like, “That’s what you’re supposed to do!” You’re supposed to prepare for the show and I love that, I fucking love it! When you get into a mode, a pattern or a regime, it’s just the greatest thing ever because you just become a machine. Every night you execute at the highest level and I love that. It’s really the only thing I really like doing. I really don’t like doing anything else, period in my life. I basically like fucking and playing [laughs.]
RG: So what would be a guilty pleasure food for you guys?
Amir: I don’t think there is one.
RG: There’s none?
Ryan: That’s the purpose of having a great diet is that you can still…we’re not nuts. It’s just a matter of…
Amir: When this food showed up right here, we dove into the fruit first. Yeah, I ate a couple of cookies… [Laughs.]
RG: [Laughs.]
Amir: But for the most part, like the fruit, we see that and we’re like, “Ah!”
Ryan: That’s a candy for us [laughs.]
RG: Nice. I like it.
Ryan: An indulgence for me is of course, partying, drinking, and having some wine. Yeah, I love that, that’s great. But then again, that’s why I eat right, so I can do that and not be a fucking, fat fuck.
RG: [Laughs.]
Ryan: I gotta take my shirt off and fucking dance in front of 5,000 screaming chicks every fucking night.
RG: [Laughs] Pay attention to that?
Ryan: It’s my fucking job. I can’t let those people down. I gotta look like I’m on crystal meth.
RG: [Laughs] Oh, okay. What have you learned from other bands when you’ve toured with them, performance-wise?
Ryan: Fuck!
RG: [Laughs.]
Ryan: On tour with Korn, Limp Bizkit and Rammstein, we basically learned the level you have to bring it. Those guys, I don’t care if you like their music or not, that’s not the point, the point is they fucking bring it live. They rock. It sounds good, they perform, it’s not contrived, and it’s not fake. They’re just out their rocking and they do it really well. It’s unique and authentic. It’s high energy and really it’s a serious thing. To play on stage with those guys, if you’re anything less then that, you’re fucking not even gonna get noticed, so Orgy quickly became a rocking live act. We really needed to bring it because that was our standard. Then going on playing with bands like Linkin Park and My Chemical Romance and all these amazing fucking acts that really carry on that legacy of really just performing at a high level, singing really well, everything sounding good and [to] have a high energy level for the entire show, it’s really fucking hard to do the equivalent of running in place and yelling at the top of your lungs for an hour and a half. A lot of people can’t even do it for three minutes. We learn from everybody and we tend to have a really, really good time with all the bands that we’re out with because we tend to grow to like, to love them more and to get to know them and to respect them more after we’re on tour with them. Mindless Self-Indulgence, I mean, every night those guys come up with some new, insane show, every single night. They know how to tap into that part of them, that creative energy, on the fly. I think that’s really cool. The last band we toured with, Evanescence, I mean Amy blew my fucking socks off every night.
RG: She’s amazing.
Ryan: She could sing her ass off and that blows me out of the water. I watched 35 shows of hers. You’d think you’d get bored and not watch it, but I watched the entire show every single fucking night. One of the best parts of being on tour, the best parts of doing what we do is to go out and be with these artists, to see Chester Bennington fucking scream at the top of his lungs for two solid hours.
RG: Yikes.
Ryan: And do it again literally for 18 months. Unbelievable. Un-fucking-believable. So, when you see that, you go, “Fuck, um, I better fucking work harder.”
RG: [Laughs.]
Ryan: I need to get on the level and no excuses because no one gives a fuck about my excuses or any of our excuses. You have to go out their and rock, fucking bring it. It’s not easy. It’s a beautiful challenge.
RG: You were talking about Limp Bizkit and then Linkin Park, just that music scene is very definitive.
Ryan: Sure.
RG: What can you say about the rock music scene right now? To me, I don’t feel like it was as strong competitively as it was when pop was on fire at the same time. Do you have any reaction to it now?
Ryan: Well the entire industry’s taken a huge shit, so in general, even artistically, in my opinion, the industry’s in a slump. There’s a lot of cool bands, but they’re cool like a pair of new boots.
RG: [Laughs.]
Ryan: You know, you’re not going to wear them that long. I think there’s some bands like My Chem, Linkin Park…
RG: They have longevity.
Ryan: They could achieve like a U2 status. Yeah, real bands, real fucking true artists. I don’t give a fuck whether people think they’re stupid because they’re successful or whatever. I think there’s very few of them. Obviously we hope to cut through some of the bullshit. I hope we’re doing passionate, honest music that touches people and will last a lot more where this came from. I hope it hits a nerve but I understand it’s real muddy water right now. Music is not really kicking my ass. I really look for a band to be an entire, put together feeling, vibe and movement. I just don’t see a lot of that anymore like what Korn did and what Linkin Park has done and again, My Chem. You see a My Chem fan and you know it’s a My Chem fan.
RG: [Laughs.]
Ryan: I love that because they are this all-encompassing feeling and force. That’s what we’re looking to do, that’s what we do. That’s what we did with Orgy. Orgy fans, you could tell they’re Orgy fans. They all had a look. They were inspired by the way we look and they interpreted it their own way and that was really special but again, it’s more than a look. It’s the whole attitude and being interested in the same types of movies that sort of spawned our way of thinking, reading the same books, coming from a core of like Depeche Mode, Erasure, Adam Ant and all these bands that we come from. It’s like what you’re doing hits a nerve, you’ll know that those people will come out of the woodwork and a movement will form and that’s what it’s about. I just don’t see that happening a lot. I see a lot of fractured, really unfocused, super attention-deficit type of mind set out there. A lot of bands, even one of my favorite bands, I don’t wanna name any names because I don’t wanna bag ‘um, but again they’re cool like a jacket, kind of trendy like a fad and some of them, I really love [laughs] I really love. I think the bands that aren’t like that and really hitting a real interesting nerve are The Presets. That’s a great band. All their entire records are good from front to back. I think they’re gonna keep cranking out great music and I think they’re gonna continue to slowly become a really influential underground band. But a lot bands that are cool like they are, are really kind of fast fashion. So, sorry for them.
RG: [Laughs.]
Ryan: I hope that we aren’t one of them [laughs.]
RG: Do you think technology has something to do with it?
Ryan: Absolutely. It caters to the ADD personality because there’s option anxiety going on right now. There’s option overload but then again, if you do something great, you’ll cut through it. It’s just harder, that’s all.
RG: You guys have two bands and you DJ. How do you keep yourself grounded with so many artistic things flying in your head?
Ryan: We don’t.
RG: You don’t? [Laughs.]
Ryan: We fail miserably. No, seriously we’re nightmares.
Amir: There’s just so much stuff. I know for me, especially in the last few years, [I’ve’] been practically vomiting things. I can’t stop it and if it was really shitty, I would say, “Okay, I’m not gonna do that.” But so far I’ve been able to do things, everything that we’ve been able to do, I feel good about. I’m like, “I’m just gonna keep doing this.” Why should I limit myself to, “Oh I’m just a guitar player.” It’s like I’m not just a guitar player. I can play guitar, I’ve been playing guitar half my life. It’s like riding a bike to me now. I like it and everything, but I need to constantly feed my appetite to grow as an artist or whatever and continually need to do new things and put myself in a position that possibly I could totally fail at and then prove that I’m not going to. I need that constant, I don’t know what that is, but it’s definitely evil. Whatever it is [laughs.]
RG: How do you think you’ve developed as an artist up to this point?
Amir: Well I hope that I’m getting better. I feel like I learned stuff constantly about so many different aspects of the music and things that we do. I think that’s it really, just hopefully continue to be better, be a better songwriter, be a better performer, continually break through boundaries, try things. I don’t ever want to be afraid to push the boundaries on something and try something that maybe I even feel uncomfortable about doing. I always seem to find that when I find things that I feel a little uncomfortable about, that I have to go after it because then after I get through that, it kind of gets me to another level.
RG: What things have made you uncomfortable?
Amir: Probably everything to some degree. I’m sure for Ryan, being the front man, that’s a huge feat. I can’t imagine what that would be like. That’s actually a challenge that I’m not up for and I don’t care to ever do that.
RG: [Laughs.]
Amir: I’m not a vocalist, so I don’t have that kind of personality anyway. I think that’s definitely one thing that I’ve learned over the years is knowing what my limitations are. I know what I’m good at now or what I’m not good at, let’s just say. There are other things that come along and even just for me, like as much as I’ve dabbled in playing keyboards over the years, I actually play a little bit of keyboards on stage and that’s kind of a weird thing. I’ve never done that but it’s like, I gotta do it. I gotta make it cool too somehow.
RG: What instrument would you love to learn how to play?
Amir: Hm…
RG: The oboe [laughs.]
Amir: Yeah, you know I actually kind of like wind instruments. It’s never been anything that I’ve ever really pursued, I guess. But I always thought that it might be kind of fun. I wish I could play drums because I can program drums but I don’t have the coordination to actually sit in a drum set and actually play them. I have a lot of it in my head, I just, I can’t do it [laughs.] That’s one thing where computers come in handy because I can hear it all and I can push the buttons and line up the things but I couldn’t, I can’t do it…that’s why we have Elias [laughs.]
RG: [Laughs.] Talking about being a front man, how did you handle the transition from being a guitarist to being in front of that microphone? What was going through your mind during that time it was happening?
Ryan: [Laughs] Fear.
RG: I need to run [laughs.]
Ryan: Scary, I had no idea what I would do, or how I’d perform without something in my hand but I knew I needed to get the guitar out of my hand to actually be a front man, to actually do what makes a front man great; being comfortable enough to cruise around the stage and look good and confident and really carry this thing off and deliver this package without having a teddy bear. It was really difficult, but I gotta say, through the first couple shows that we did kind of a little rehersal run, I really didn’t know what to do. I just tried to sing really good, I really didn’t try to perform. Then the first show of Projekt Revolution, we walked out there and people really liked it, like half-way through the first song, they were fucking screaming. These people had never heard of us, they had no idea who the fuck we were, nothing. They didn’t know we were in Orgy because we didn’t advertise that and we hadn’t advertised that, although we’re talking about it now because we think it’s appropriate now. We have gone on and proved that we’re not trying to just capitalize on the Orgy name. When they started screaming, reacting to things that I was doing, then I started doing more. It just came, it just snapped in and I became a different person. It was amazing. I just walked off stage with the biggest grin on my face. Everyone’s just like, “Oh my god that worked really well.” They really responded it, so it was in Seattle and they fucking treated us like gold. I couldn’t believe it. They cheered so loud after every song. While we were playing the song, they were like nodding to me in the front row. We were looking at each other and I was actually paying attention to it for once, which is rare. I tend not to look at individual faces because it’s difficult sometimes but I totally noticed. I could see them going, “Wow, I’ve never heard of this band. I don’t know who they are and they’re really good.” That was amazing and that just did something to me. I came on and from there, I’ve become really, really comfortable and actually I love it now.
RG: Did you meet any of your idols?
Ryan: Yeah, I met a lot of them, actually.
RG: Which one was your favorite one to meet?
Ryan: [Pauses] Liam Gallagher.
RG: Oh my god, you met Liam Gallagher? [Laughs.]
Ryan: He’s such a fucking prick.
RG: [Laughs.]
Ryan: I loved it. It’s actually what I wanted out of Liam Gallagher. I would have been disgusted if he was like [imitates an English accent] “Oh hello, how are you?”
RG: [Laughs] like Paul McCartney.
Ryan: I would have been like, “Who the fuck are you?” You’re supposed to be a nut. He’s 4’ tall and I’m 6 fucking 4, 6’3. He was a midget to me.
RG: [Laughs.]
Ryan: We were supposed to play KROQ Weenie Roast or the Acoustic Christmas and just before that, we had a huge incident with KROQ and got literally kicked off of KROQ. We were in consideration for playing the show, pretty high billing. Oasis was actually going to be below us in the billing.
RG: Ohhh [laughs.]
Ryan: [Laughs] I was there at the show and I come up to Liam because I’m a huge Oasis fan. I go, “Hey, fuck, we were going to play for you guys. I’m really bummed but hey, my name’s Ryan and I love you guys.” I very seldom would ever say that to an artist because I’m just too egotistical. I would never walk up cold but I love Oasis and they’re such fuck faces and I thought it was gonna be the coolest thing. He shakes my hand and he’s all, [imitates an English accent] “Well, some day if you play you’re cards right, you will be able to open for us.”
RG: Ohh [laughs.]
Ryan: I started laughing, I started laughing out loud and I didn’t even say anything back. I took his hand and said, “Thank you so much that was fucking perfect.” Little did he know, we would have been over them [laughs.]
RG: [Laughs.]
Ryan: At that moment, we were a bigger seller. We were a bigger band. They’ve sold many more records then we have. I’m not saying we’re bigger than Oasis, that’s fucking ridiculous but in this market for KROQ and everything, we were a much hotter band. I just thought it was fucking amazing and it was just [a] precious moment. I couldn’t believe how little he was. I was like, “This guy gets in fights and shit?” I would throw this guy across the fucking room but I love him. I wanna pinch his cheeks.
RG: [Laughs.] Anything from you Amir?
Amir: I [pause] wasn’t even paying attention.
RG: [Laughs.]
Amir: I was zoning out. I was writing a song in my head.
RG: Oh, okay. Do you need a pen and paper?
Amir: No.
RG: [Laughs] anybody that you’ve met that you idolized? Any experiences?
Amir: I’ve been really fortunate to have met so many that I grew up listening to and most of them were not disappointing. Everybody was really cool and some of them, I have a friendly relationship with to this day that I could call up, like Steve Jones for example. That was the first record I ever bought was the Sex Pistols. He’s a really cool guy and he’s a barrel of laughs too. We actually exchanged phone calls, talking about kidney stones because we’ve both had kidney stones before, it’s truthful, but he was the first one who told me about that and I remember after I got my first one, I called him up. He was like [imitates English accent] “Welcome to the club, mate.”
RG: [Laughs.]
Amir: It’s weird, very surreal sometimes when I think about growing up and now being here and the people I know and associate with. It was pretty rare. There was one guy ever that I’ve sort of liked, he was a guitar player. I don’t want to say who it is, but he was kind of a jerk. We were actually on tour with them. His band was like sound checked purposely until the doors would have to open so that our band, opening for him wouldn’t get a sound check.
RG: Oh no.
Amir: He was like a total jerk. I was kind of disappointed but it didn’t make me not like his guitar playing. He was a huge influence on me. It was kind of a bummer and I thought I would be friends with this guy [laughs.] He had no idea how much he taught me, just doing what he does. I was a huge fan of Jane’s Addiction. Dave Navarro, I know very well. We actually have the same birthday. He’s a super cool guy. It’s weird.
RG: A lot of people ask me in high school if I was related to him because my last name is Navarro. They’re like, “Do you know Dave Navarro?” I’m like, “No…” [Laughs.] But it’s crazy.
Amir: It just made me think of something that I probably can’t really talk about but I had a pretty weird… remember that thing that happened with Dave Navarro, years ago? Did I ever tell you about that? I don’t know if he wants me to talk about it [laughs.]
RG: I would LOVE to hear it [laughs.]
Amir: Off-the-record, maybe, I might tell you. My one night experience, back when he was in his dark days.
RG: With which band?
Amir: I think like still in Jane’s but he was heavily into drugs. One of the first times that I really hung out with him and it was something straight out of a movie, like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
RG: Yikes.
Amir: It was nuts. It was fucking nuts. He actually apologized to me years later, once he became sober. He came up to me one day when I ran into him and he was like, “Dude, I blanked out. I can’t even believe you remember that night.” [Laughs.]
Ryan: Oh, I remember what you’re talking about. You should keep that to yourself.
Amir: I’m probably not going to tell you the whole thing. It was pretty nuts. I don’t think he’d care that I’m telling you. But he came around, straightened himself out [laughs.]
RG: Well, that’s good. Talking about other artists, who would you want to work with on a future album?
Amir: Hm. That’s a good question. I actually have some sort of interesting ideas for our next Julien-K record whenever that comes five years from now. We’ve got so many things going on, but actually I had some ideas on working with some up-and-coming or known electronic producers and things like that to kind of try some new avenues. I think we’ve explored this avenue and this is something that we’ve been sitting on for a little while and ready to see what people think of it, not only as a whole, but separately to see what people really like about it. It’s a bit of an experiment in a lot of different ways. I’m really curious to see what people gravitate to that will sort of help dictate the direction of where we go as a band.
RG: Do you remember the first concert that you went to?
Ryan: Megadeth in Fresno.
RG: How did that change your life?
Ryan: I realized, oh fuck. These are just dudes. I could do this. I could fucking do this. First mosh pit I go in [laughs.]
RG: How old were you?
Ryan: Pretty young. I was probably 16 or so. I didn’t go to concerts until really late in life.
RG: Do you remember, Amir, your first concert experience?
Amir: Unfortunately, I do.
RG: Oh no! It’s Menudo [laughs.]
Amir: No, it’s gonna date me though. It was Boston, actually.
RG: I like Boston.
Amir: The band, Boston. They were really good.
RG: How old were you when you saw them?
Amir: Fuck, I don’t remember. I was a teenager, I’m sure. [Pauses] It’s funny because I remember we just barely got in. We had like obstructed view tickets or something.
RG: [Laughs.]
Amir: I went with my cousin. We were just so desperate to check it out, didn’t have a great view but I could see Tom Schultz, the keyboard player and all that. He was really the mastermind of the band. It was amazing. I just remember leaving there and just like, “Wow. I’ve never seen anything like that,” never knew what that would be like. I went to concerts constantly. I was going to concerts at least once a week. Lucky that my parents allowed me to do that, I guess at that point, I went as much as I could; anything that came into town that was anything interesting, any rock bands. I was into a lot of the progressive rock bands like Yes and Genesis.
RG: Did you limit yourself to just rock, or did you go to other kinds of shows?
Amir: It was mostly like everything from heavy metal to progressive rock, basically a lot of fusion music. I wouldn’t call it jazz. It was called fusion, I think. It had a rock element to it. A lot of improvising and a lot of those bands, they really went off on tangents. I think when I was first learning, I don’t remember why, you think I would have, I mean I loved AC/DC and all that, but I was very fascinated with the complexity of stuff that was just a little more than just the bubble gum rock and punk rock of the time. Punk rock was pretty hard to see at that point though because a lot of those bands, if they were touring, it was very limited. I don’t think a lot of them probably came to San Diego when I was living there at the time. I didn’t get to see a lot of the stuff I probably would have liked to and probably don’t think that it would have been really appropriate for me to go to those shows because they were pretty hardcore back then. It was the real deal. People showed up with fucking safety pins in their mouths. They would beat the shit out of you if you didn’t look right.
RG: Wow.
Amir: If you didn’t fit into that whole scene and I was just a little scrawny kid. I didn’t get into that and be able to go to show like that until I got a little older.
RG: Anything that you wanted to tell your fans, any future projects that you’re looking forward to that you would like to share with the world?
Ryan: You got it out, really. Dead by Sunrise sometime in September, we hope. Touring all year. Transformers 2. I don’t know the exact date.
Amir: In the summer, June.
Ryan: It’s gonna be a lot of work.
Amir: It’s like the last few years, all this work that we’ve been sitting on is all basically coming out this year.
Ryan: Hopefully Orgy in ‘10.
RG: [Laughs.]
Ryan: 2010, holy shit.