Good Charlotte Joel - Lead Vocals; Benji - Vocals & Guitar;
Billy - Guitar; Paul - Bass; Aaron - Drums

It's not often that a young band of Cure/Clash/Beastie Boys-loving
barely-twentysome-things comes tumbling out of virtually
nowherewell, Annapolis, Maryland to be exactto drop the year's
most fiercely melodic and garage-gritty debut album. Good Charlotte
is a brash young quintet whose killer first singlea hitbound anthem of
high school angst called The Little Things announces the arrival of an
unique, genre-jumping rock band.
Yet until just four years ago, 21 year-old lead guitarist Benji had never
strummed a single chord and front man Joelhis identical twin brotherhad
never sung a note. Toss in their equally precocious high school buddies
drummer Aaron and bass player Paul, plus recent recruit Billy on guitar.
This is Good Charlotte: a hard-driving, fun-loving band that has rocked
Washington DC radio station WHFS' famed HFStival for the last two
years and built a devout following in the Baltimore metro area.
Their self-titled Epic debut album is a triumphant, raucous celebration of
high school kids who found a way through music to talk back to their
tormentors and survive troubled times.
Good Charlotte, The Album, is a collection of explosive modern-rock
gems with deeply personal and often very funny lyrics. There are powerfully
crafted declarations like the kick-ass Motivation Proclamation
( Motivate
me/I wanna get myself out of this bed/Captivate me/I want good thoughts
inside of my head ); and songs with haunted, autobiographical overtones,
like The Little Things.
Me and Benji have always written from personal experiences, says lead
singer Joel, You've got my brother on guitarhe's got that punk-rock
aggressionand you've got me singing. He gestures to his heart: Everything
comes from here.
Most of Good Charlotte's songs reso-nate with a heartfelt but humorous
sense of personal tri-umph over some pretty bad luck. Others, like Waldorf
Worldwide, take a socio-political slant: All I wanna do is kick the welfare/All
I wanna do is get my share/I don't wanna run for President/I just want an
honest way to pay my rent.
We want kids to come to our shows and forget about everything, says Joel.
What-ever their problems are, we want them to be focused on the energy,
have a good time, and then go back to their normal life tomorrow.
The brothers, who hail from Waldorf, Maryland, were avid baseball players
throughout their early teens and had never contemplated playing music until one
extraordinary day. During what Joel calls a weird time when they were 16 and
dealing with some serious family problems, the brothers attended their first rock
concertthe Beastie Boys' Ill Communi-cation tourand felt the earth move beneath
their feet.
It changed our lives totally, says Joel. We were both freaked out and knew
this is what we were going to do.
Benji went home and dug a cheap guitar out of the closet, one that the brothers
had never touched before. Their good friend and future bassist Paul taught Benji
a few basic chords, ignit-ing a lifetime obsession. Another high school buddy,
Aaron, quit the football team to play drums and supply studio space in his house.
We had our first band practice maybe two weeks after I started playing guitar,
laughs Benji. I knew three chords: D, G and A! I became fascinated with all of
the late-Seventies punks. There was something about those old recordings, those
seven-inch singles...There's no music that sounds like that today because of the
raw quality.
I love the chaotic, wild way the guitars sound on 'The Little Things,' he enthuses.
And some of the sound on our song 'East Coast Anthem' comes straight out of
the Clash handbook.
By their senior year of high school, the brothers' musical obsession had become all
encom-passing. We totally withdrew from everything else, says Joel. Our whole
life was this band. Every weekend we had a show. We were totally blind, all we
could see was the big picture: We were going to make it.
In 1998, the twins along with Paul and Aaron moved to Annapolis to join its thriving
music scene. Skipping college, Joel and Benji decided, was a risk they had to take.
Economically, they barely survived, working a series of low-paying jobs as stock
boys, waiters, and
( our best job ) shampoo boys at a beauty salon.
We made a name for ourselves in that town because we played out everywhere,
says Joel. Every party, every bar. People knew us as the twins that play.
Joel befriended Billy when the guitarist showed up to see the twins play an acoustic
set at a local hangout. I thought, wow, these are really good songs, he recalls.
There were a lot of local bands doing their own things, but these songs...every one
of them could have been a radio hit.
Billy was playing with his band Overflow at the time. After the twins got kicked out
of their apartment, they moved into Billy's house. One day, Good Charlotte coaxed
him into joining in an im-promptu practice. A week later, Billy played his first show
with the band.
Things moved fast for the young group. Unsigned Good Charlotte played with
Blink 182 and Bad Religion, and opened for Lit on a sold-out East Coast tour.
They found local champions in the dee-jays at their beloved radio station WHFS,
who began hiring Good Charlotte to play sta-tion gigs and finally asked them to
play the local stage at the HFStival. In the spring of 2000, Good Charlotte made a
bold career leap to HFStival's second stage, sharing the bill with Eve 6 and Nine Days.
Good Charlotte played charity gigs with equal fervor, ranging from benefits for the
Annapolis Rape Center to the Leukemia Foundation.
A demo of The Little Things made its way to Philadelphia modern rock station
WPLY
(Y100) and broke a record on the station's show of dueling songs. For
fifteen nights we won 'til they had to retire us, says Joel. The buzz around Good Charlotte
was deafening. After being courted by a variety of labels, they finally signed with Epic
Records this year.
Producer Don Gilmore
(Lit, Eve 6) was recruited to guide the quintet through their debut
album. What drew me to the band the most was their personality, says Gilmore.
There's a lot of pop-punk rock bands that have gotten record deals, but these guys are
doing something really dif-ferent.
Benji looks around the NewYork studio where Good Charlotte is recording. A sheet of
recorded tracks hangs on the wall with titles like I Want To Stop, Complicated, and
the tentatively-titled, still-developing Thank You Note to Mom.
Sometimes it doesn't feel real, he says quietly, running his hand through his shock of
pink hair. Then I realize that it is, like when I'm walking home from the studio to the
subway at night and I realize that we're in New York making a record.
We've been doing this for four years, and there were all those times when we were
crammed into a car, driving three hours home from a gig and we hadn't even made
enough money to pay for gas. It's thinking of those times that it really hits you.
Benji pauses, shakes his head and smiles. We daydreamed all this
stuffand now it's all happening.