Photograph By Chris Floyd
Rolling Stone Magazine, Issue 870 ~ June 7, 2001
Spurred by the success
of "Hanging by a Moment," these
sons of missionaries are
making believers out
of millions
By David Wild
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Backstage at "The Tonight Show," a hurrried search is under way to score drugs for tonight's musical guests. Another rock & roll casualty in the making? No, this is not show business as usual. That's because the band that will shortly be seen by millions playing from this TV studio in Burbank, California, is the morally uplifting Lifehouse - a group that got its start playing (and leading worship services) at church in Malibu. The band's desired drug is really just a couple of Motrin for frontman Jason Wade, who's feeling a little under the weather today.
The members of Lifehouse - singer, songwriter, guitar player and focal point Wade, 20; bassist Sergio Andrade, 23; drummer Rick Woolstenhulme, 23; and touring guitarist Stuart Mathis - have good reason to be feeling somewhat spent. They've been slogging it out on the road since the October release of their debut, No Name Face - most recently as the first act on the triple bill with Matchbox Twenty and Everclear, two better-known acts that Lifehouse are currently outselling. Driven by the massively catchy single "Hanging by a Moment" - a love song that combines soaring pop hooks with a dark grunge undertow - Lifehousehave become the most successful new band of the year. No Name Face has leapt into the Top Ten, with sales of more than 1 million.
"My voice is a little shaky right now," says Wade as he takes a seat in the backstage dressing room alongside his band mates. He may not be feeling great, but he sure looks fine. Indeed, the singer-songwriter resembles a teen idol version of Val Kilmer, a fact that has arguably helped fuel the band's success. Soft-spoken and polite, Wade is surprised at how things have happened. Asked why he believes Lifehouse have found such a big following so quickly, he offers, "There's no explanation, except that people are hearing it on the radio and getting off the freeway and going to the store to buy it. I don't know if our music is standing out from stuff on the radio or if it's just more positive than some, but it's connecting with a lot of different age groups. Mothers and daughters come to our show, so we're breaking past age barriers, which is pretty cool." Unlike most rockers, when Wade uses the phrase "mothers and daughters," he still sounds somehow wholesome.
The remarkable success of Lifehouse signals that the teen audience that's made stars of Britney and Justin is beginning to grow up. "There are kids moving out of what they're being told to buy into - the mass saturation of the boy bands and teen idols," says Jeff Blue, vice president of A&R at Warner Bros., "and they're looking for attractive young kids that are speaking to them on a different level." Blue, who signed the platinum-plus rap-rockers Linkin Park, continues, "Bands like Lifehouse and Linkin Park are introspective and meaningful - they evoke an emotion in a younger act that kids weren't getting out of the pop acts."
But for a band selling so many albums, Lifehouse have so far experienced a fairly low profile. "Nobody can get our name right," says Wade. "Four different radio stations in a row called us Licehouse. And our song's been called 'Hanging by a Thread,' 'Living on a Moment', 'Living by the Moment.' I'm so sick of correcting people, I'll say, ' "Hanging by a Thread" - it all started back in sewing school.' "
Jason Wade grew up all over the world - his parents were Christian missionaries, and he followed them from Camarillo, California, to Hawaii, Japan, Thailand, Singapore and Hong Kong. "We lived pretty much the same wherever we were, but sometimes, like in Hong Kong, we didn't have much money, which had a way of changing things," Wade remembers. "At one time there, we had like ten dollars a day for groceries, but then my dad, who's a psychologist, got a good job, and things got better." From there, they traveled to Oregon. Following his parents' divorce, when Wade was twelve, he moved with his mother to Seattle just as the Seattle sound was going supernova. A major Kurt Cobain fan today, Wade didn't get into Nirvana or music generally until he and his mother moved back to Southern California.
The divorce was, Wade confesses, in many ways "the turning point in my life. I really disagree with a lot of things that the church does - the Christian church. Just religion in general, I see a lot of things that seem off. I saw firsthand how someone like my dad - maybe he fell, maybe he made some mistakes - but then people from the church would basically say, 'You're going to hell.' And turn their back on him. To me, God is all about love and mercy and compassion, and I don't see a lot of that today."
Some songs on No Name Face - most notably "Trying" - reflect Wade's attempts to cope with this major event in his life. "My mom was amazing," he recalls warmly. "She went back to school and got up at four in the morning to study for Pepperdine - while having a job and home-schooling me and my sister."
Arriving in Agora Hills, California, Wade met Andrade through a friend. "We started hanging out, playing basketball and eating Burger King, doing our thing," Wade says. The pair had more in common than fast food. "Our parents were both missionaries," says Andrade, who had moved to this area from Guatemala. "It's funny," adds Wade. "Serg and I basically had the same experience on different sides of the world." Around the time Andrade got into music, Wade picked up a guitar his mom - a folkish storyteller-songwriter herself - kept around the house, along with albums by Christian artists like Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith and Sandi Patti. "It was pretty much all Christian music," Wade says.
"Then we found a drummer and started a trashy, just-no-good garage band," he says. For a period they were called Bliss. "Then one of our fans came up to us and said, 'Bliss - it sounds like taking a pee,' " he says. "And I'm like, I think it's time to change our name." (For the record, Lifehouse was not named after the legendary, abandoned Who rock opera that was to follw Tommy. "We're fully aware of it now," Wade says. "But the Who weren't a real influence on us, so it took us by surprise.")
At a gig at Pepperdine, Wade played with producer Ron Aniello, whom he met through his friend, a young Capitol recording artist Kendall Payne. "Jason and Kendall were friends, and we all went to the same church together," says Aniello. "I brought Jason to my studio and heard some of his songs, and I was really blown away." Aniello also exposed Wade to the music of a variety of rock artists, including the Beatles. "It was like a whole new world," Wade says with a smile. At fifteen, Wade came close to scoring his deal with Capitol, where Payne was recording, but it fell through in the end. "Then I had two years of nothing happening," he remembers. "I was washed up at sixteen."
Lifehouse started making a name, though, playing Friday night shows at the school of the Malibu Vineyard Church; they were part of a youth group there called FKA, which stood for Formerly Known As. "They wanted it not to be like a typical church youth group, which is why they had a rock band," says Wade. At first, shows drew an audience of about seventeen, but in the next four years they built to several hundred fans and began to feature a light show and smoke machines. "The church wasn't really conservative - not like you have to wear a coat and tie or whatever," Wade says. "It was more like a cool hang."
"You don't come here and sit and play pingpong and eat ice cream all night," says Kristy Owen, the nineteen-year-old daughter of Malibu Vineyard's senior pastor. "That's not going to affect kids these days. You would come in and there were smoke machines and special lighting. This is a church, but at the same time, if you walked in the room and Jason was leading worship, the room looked really cool."
At the Vineyard, Lifehouse played some of the same songs they play today, including "Hanging by a Moment" and "Everything." "They were probably some of the most amazing worship experiences I've ever had, listening to him and the band," says Owen. "People were like, 'How could a kid that age be writing these songs?' So to look at him now is no surprise."
Wade seems proud of the band's spiritual leanings, but he deflects any effort to define Lifehouse in strict religious terms. "I don't even like the word religion," Wade says. "My music is spiritually based, but we don't want to be labeled as a 'Christian band,' because all of a sudden people's walls come up and they won't listen to your music and what you have to say."
Still, Wade admits that there's a certain missionary aspect to his life with lifehouse. "I think we have a positive message of hope," he says. "We're not trying to blatantly preach. It all comes down to love."
Wade himself has found his love. Though he prefers to keep his private life private, the Internet has been buzzing about his recent marriage. "Hopefully it's something that people will respect," he says. "I do get a lot of comments that I got married too young, but I know it's one of the things keeping me grounded."
If Wade is "starving for truth," as he sings in "Hanging by a Moment," he apparently isn't looking for it in pop culture. "The best way I can explain Jason's personality is that he doesn't own a TV - he hasn't really seen his video on MTV or VH1," says Lifehouse manager Jude Cole. "He doesn't seeem to read much of his press. He does not seem obsessed about this at all."
The press has compared Lifehouse to Pearl Jam - for whom they served as a second-stage opening act last year - and Creed. "Honestly, I feel like my voice has similarities to Eddie Vedder's, just because we both have low voices," says Wade, "but I'm more influenced by Kurt Cobain. But we're not trying to copy anyone - just trying to be ourselves. Musically, things might change over the next years, because we're still young and have got a lot of room to grow."
Before it can grow any more, the band is called from the dressing room to the Tonight Show stage. Coming after Leno's chat, Denis Leary and puffed-up Bill O'Reilly, Lifehouse let loose with a heartfelt and convincing performance of "Hanging by a Moment" that seems to create some new believers in Burbank.
The following night, Lifehouse perform their slightly longer opening set at the Universal Amphitheater, while much of the crowd is finding seats. Though they've been offered other prominent opening slots, Lifehouse are currently looking into their first headlining road trip - as befits a band that willl be presented with its platinum plaques after this show.
The ceremony doesn't interrupt any wild antics. "It's a mellow scene backstage," Wade admits. "We have that half an hour where we just sit in silence and get ready to go onstage. Then afterward we do our meet-and-greets. It's not your typical rock & roll band, I guess you could say."
Though the Malibu Vineyard is only a short drive away from tonight's hometown performance, Lifehouse have come a long way from those Friday-night sets. But those gigs had certain advantages, Wade recalls. "We don't have smoke machines now," he says with a chuckle, "so we've taken a step down, really."
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