Butch from the Marvelous Three

By-Rewind.com

You probably won't find a more infectious album in 1999 than the Marvelous Three's major label debut, Hey Album. This Atlanta glam-pop band has an album full of radio-friendly ear candy, and their first single, "Freak of the Week," is on it's way to your radio.

Jere: Congratulations on the new CD. I got an advance copy a few months ago, and I’ve been wearing the thing out.

Butch: Thank you. Thanks a lot.

Jere: Have you been doing a ton of these interviews today?

Butch: They’ve got me making the rounds, you know? But that’s OK. I love this stuff. It beats digging ditches. To be honest, I love talking (laughs). You might have trouble getting me to shut up.

Jere: You’ve got some catchy stuff on this disc. It really sticks with you.

Butch: That was the goal. We were shooting for those memorable pop/rock songs.

Jere: Have you read any of the reviews the album has gotten so far?

Butch: Not yet. I haven’t seen them. I hear that they’ve been good, though. We got some very positive reviews when the indie version of this album came out. People seem to really like it. It’s the album that I’ve been wanting to make for my entire life, and I really mean that. The whole recording of this album was such an amazing time. It was one of the happiest times of my life. I know that’s the antithesis of what you normally hear about recording albums. Usually, bands talk about all the pain and suffering involved in making their album, but we honestly had a great time.

Jere: Because of the classic pop rock sound on this album, it’s bound to bring up the inevitable comparisons to other bands.

Butch: Yeah, yeah. We expected that.

Jere: What are some of the comparisons you’ve heard so far?

Butch: Um...let’s see...we’ve been compared to Queen, Joe Jackson, Elvis Costello, Cheap Trick. In my eyes, those are all great bands to be compared to. Beats the hell out of being called "the new Collective Soul" (laughs).

Jere: I’d agree with the Cheap Trick one. Any comparisons that have seemed really bizarre, or ones that you’ve disagreed with?

Butch: Somebody once compared us to Rick Springfield (laughs). But that’s kinda cool, too. I’d rather be compared to some cheesy ‘80s pop singer than be compared to Pearl Jam, you know? The kids today, they don’t know that much about Cheap Trick and those guys. All they seem to know is this depressing, shoe-gazing Eddie Vedder stuff. We’re touring with Eve 6 right now, and those guys are all about 18, and I can’t believe that they don’t sound like Pearl Jam. I mean, they’re like an old-school pop band.

Jere: Radio is really open to that sound right now, too.

Butch: Yeah, definitely. They’re tired of bands that sound tired. Kids today would rather go play with their PlayStations than listen to rock and roll because it’s gotten so self-important and boring. I wanna change that. I’m on a mission to save rock and roll (laughs). The kids, when they come to our shows, they’re entertained. I get email all the time from kids who have never seen anything like us before, and they absolutely love it. It makes such an impression on them that they’ll sit down and write paragraph after paragraph telling us how much they loved our show. You can’t beat that. I think rock and roll needs to compete with rap and R&B. Those are the styles that are hot, and rock has kind of without a point man right now. Look at Puff Daddy, for instance. I mean, the guy’s not all that great looking, and he’s not that great a dancer, and he’s not that great a rapper. But he’s got style, man. He’s got that image. You see one of his videos and he’s this larger-than-life character, and his videos are fun to watch. He’s got his whole posse that’s like this big family. He kinda brought glam rock and rap together.

Jere: He’s Ziggy Stardust in the ‘hood.

Butch: (Laughs) Oh, that’s great. That’s a great line.

Jere: The single "Freak of the Week" seems to be doing well so far. Are the audiences at your shows more familiar with your songs now?

Butch: Oh yeah. Definitely. And that’s so great. We always do pretty well when we play in Atlanta, and there’s usually about half of the crowd singing along. But our last show there, which came after that song got on the radio, it’s like everybody in the crowd knew that line, "Tell me I sold out, go ahead." They all just screamed it. It made my nipples hard (laughs).

Jere: I was going to ask you about that very line.

Butch: That song is all about battling with your own indie credibility. For years, I was trying so hard to be considered "cool" that I was afraid to write a pop song or a love song. I was afraid of being called a sellout, and I realized that I really was selling out by not doing what I loved. Indie cred is nothing but playing it safe. It’s about going along with what you think everyone else will think is cool. "Freak of the Week" is about the point where I finally said, "I’m happy with what I’m doing. this makes me happy and I really don’t care if you think I’m selling out." You have to be what you are, or it’s gonna show.

Jere: What kind of tour plans do you have for the rest of the year?

Butch: We’re touring with Eve 6 for a while, and that’s been fun. After that, we plan to headline our own shows, but we might ended up just opening for other people and stealing their fans (laughs). Let’s be honest, that’s what it’s all about. At the risk of sounding cocky, bands don’t wanna play after us. We have a pretty high energy show, and these shoe-gazing bands just don’t follow us well. After we’re done, the kids in the audience are sitting there going, "What the...?"

Jere: I bet that didn’t make you many friends in the Atlanta music scene.

Butch: It’s funny. A lot of those bands are kinda following our lead now. The shorts and the caps are all gone. They’re putting on the eyeliner now. Of course, we didn’t invent this kinda thing. It’s been around forever, we just helped bring it back to Atlanta. It rubbed off.

Jere: It seems like everybody’s going that same way right now. Glam is back in a big way. You’ve got that whole Velvet Goldmine soundtrack, and you’ve got bands like Smashing Pumpkins, Marilyn Manson, and Hole all embracing that glam image.

Butch: I love that new Hole record. But, I mean, what else was she gonna do? There’s no way she could have done Live Through This, Part 2. She had to adapt, and she went right back to the stuff she used to hate so much. It’s kinda funny.

Jere: Even Pearl Jam’s loosening up a bit. At their show here in Birmingham a while back, they closed their show with a cover of "Baba O’Riley." They had this disco ball come down and they all had on these big Elvis shades. It was the highlight of the whole show.

Butch: That’s so cool. I love stuff like that.

Jere: I’m sure you’ve done this a million times already, but could you give us a Cliffs Notes version of the band’s history?

Butch: We were all in grade school together, actually. We were the only ones who could play music, so we naturally gravitated to each other. We got into glam rock and all of that ‘80s metal stuff, you know. We camped out together for Motley Crue tickets (laughs). So we decided to start on our band, and we went on the road and just never came back.

Jere: Let’s say that this album blows up...sells millions of copies, the whole bit.

Butch: That’d be nice (laughs).

Jere: So now you’ve got all this money. What’s the first thing you buy with that big royalty check?

Butch: A new Volvo. You see, I’ve got this old beat up Volvo right now that I bought for $100. Literally. It’s a $100 car. I’ve been scraping by, barely getting by, but that car has never let me down. Not once. It’s the best car I’ve ever had. I’m not gonna go out and buy an expensive sports car. People look at you funny if you drive a Corvette. I’m not the Corvette type. I’d rather be the guy in the Volvo laughing at the guy in the Corvette.