Josh: All right, let’s start this then.

Jason: Yeah, let’s start this fucker.

Josh: Do you find it at all to be a hinderence that people might view you as a Hollywood band?

Jason: I hope they do. I hope they think we’re a Hollywood band because we are from Hollywood. We’re a bunch of actors, so thank you for thinking that.

Josh: But when I think of bands with actors in them, I think of Keanu Reeves in Dogstar.

Jason: Yeah, I want people to think of us like that.

Josh: But you’re so much better than that.

Jason: Well, that’s your opinion. We want to be thought of with Russell Crowe’s band, Dogstar and all of those bands.

Josh: But the Guest is so good.

Jason: Thank you. We worked really hard on it. We’ve been together for a long time now.

Clair: Really?

Jason: Yeah, nine years. We’re doing our best so far, just making music. We’re going to make another record and hopefully it beats it, that’s all we ask.

Clair: Where did you originally start out?

Jason: Los Angeles. I’ve known Alex for eighteen years now.

Clair: So you guys grew up together?

Jason: Yeah, pretty much. We hated each other, we were rivals. To tell you the difference, he would be in the principal’s office for throwing spitballs and I was too busy forming a detective agency.

Clair: What did you call it?

Jason: The Jason Schwartzman Detective Agency.

Josh: Is there any sort of science fiction reference to the name Phantom Planet?

Jason: We’re not about science fiction, but the name is a science fiction movie. A 1962 or 3 film about where if you breathe in the air you’d shrink to six inches long. It was really bad. But basically, Alex had this CD called Neil Mormand’s Science Fiction’s Greatest Hits and there were disco-ized versions of like, the 2001 theme song. And Alex found it, loved this song on it a lot and he was like, “Man, we should use this”. He looked at the back of the CD and it said the Phantom Planet theme song and he said “That’s the name of the band”. Turned out he miscounted, it was really Godzilla.

Josh: Without really naming off everything, is it fair to say you guys have pretty differenct influences musically?

Jason: Yeah. What’s good about forming a band super young is that you get to discover... When we formed we were still... We all loved different music and started in the same place, but then our influences spaced out. We all discovered records together. We’ve got these core references. But then Jacques is really into classical music and I don’t really know about classical music. Alex is really into dub and reggae and I don’t know anything about dub o r reggae. I’m really into video game soundtracks.

(Here Jason compliments my ring)

Josh: Is anyone influenced by Violent Femmes? In Turn, Smile, Shift, Repeat I hear a lot of Violent Femmes in that.

Jason: Really? The funniest thing is today I was just talking to Alex about how I love that song American Music. Is that what it’s called? Is that the name of that song? I was telling him how much I love that song, so it’s weird you hear them in our songs. But we didn’t start listening to the Violent Femmes until after.

Josh: Is there any Tom Petty influences?

Jason: Oh yeah. The first song we started playing together as a band was Don’t Back Down.

Josh: That’s awesome.

Jason: We love Tom Petty.

Josh: Is it really all about rock’n’roll?

Jason: You mean at the end of the day? No.

Josh: At least, as a band?

Jason: Yeah. It’s gotta be. As a band, you can’t play otherwise.

Josh: Like Alex jumping off the rafters.

Jason: Oh, that’s not rock’n’roll. Rock’n’roll is plugging in the guitar.

Josh: But that’s part of it.

Jason: Yeah, sometimes, but rock’n’roll is fire and having a market and having costumes.

Josh: Like Kiss?

Jason: No, it’s not. I hate Kiss.

Phantom Planet’s the Guest is available now everywhere and they are on tour until they stop.