Music > Interviews

Papa Roach

25/02/15

It’s a funny old world, being a music writer. One minute you’re putting your pyjamas on in your house in Norwich and making a cup of tea, and the next you’re having a good old chinwag with Tobin, bassist from HUGE INTERNATIONAL ROCK STARS Papa Roach over the phone to San Francisco! Amazing. You may remember Papa Roach from their massive hit single Last Resort back in the nineties, their appearances on Eminem’s Anger Management Tours or their charismatic lead singer Jacoby, also known as Coby Dick. They’ve made millions more fans since then, and have never stopped making heart-thumpingly emotional and heavy music. These Californian men have just released their eighth album, F.E.A.R, and are paying a visit to Norwich in March. Just don’t show them photos of  your weird fan pillows.

You’re in the middle of a tour at the moment, on the west coast of the US of A, right?

Yeah we’re working on some music and hanging out backstage; we’ve got a big show tonight in San Francisco. It’s our home team! The tour’s been great so far. We started off in Florida and then the weather got pretty cold on the east coast, but we’ve had loads of sold out shows and everyone’s killing it on stage.

Do you have any memory of your first ever gig back in 1993?

I think, if I remember correctly, we played at a backyard party. I borrowed part of the PA from my dad, who was a musician, and I remember someone set their beer on top of the PA and it spilled and started frying out. I remember being all bummed out…”Dude! You spilt beer all over my PA!” But that’s really all I remember. It was just one of those wild parties we used to have; we’d make flyers and invite everyone and set up in the backyard and everyone would be wildly drunk. Basically we were trying to make some fun in a small town where there’s not much else to do.

Your very first album and first EP’s sold well but when your album Infest sold 300,000 copies in a week did you think you’d then hit the big time?

We definitely were pretty naïve at the start. We had no expectations for our first record at all, we were just excited to be on the Warp tour. We started off playing on this little side stage to about 200 people and we had a shitty old bus. Our single Last Resort came out that week, and three shows into that tour we got a brand new bus, and we were headlining the tour! We were oblivious to the whole thing until we had to leave the Warp tour halfway through because Korn wanted us to go on an arena tour with them. I reckon that’s when shit started blowin’ up!

The first time you came to the UK you played on the main stage at Ozzfest. How did it feel to have such a keen fanbase in a different country so quickly?

It wasn’t just a thing that was happening in the States, it was also happening everywhere else too. To this day we make it a point to reach out to our fans worldwide and that’s why we tour so much in so many different countries. We’ve cultivated that relationship and it’s important to us. It can be a bit stale playing to Americans sometimes; we find it refreshing to play to other nationalities in other places. They jump out of their skin with excitement ‘cos you’re there, and they don’t get that kind of entertainment all the time so they really appreciate it.

You’ve got 6 million friends on Facebook but I wondered if you’ve ever had a crazy fan situation?

Oh yes. It’s really flattering to have these kinds of fans but at the same time…like “Woah. That chick just showed me a picture of her bedroom and she’s made a pillow out of my face!” And I wonder what her husband thinks about that! It’s totally rad that we have fans who are super-into the band like that but at the same time I think I would feel really bad if my wife had a picture of some other man’s face on her pillow! They have no shame in showing you these pictures…they’re like…”Check this out!” And I’m like…”That’s weird!”

So you’ve been together for over 20 years now, and your sound’s evolved but I think you’ve retained your identity as a band. How have you managed to stay the distance when so many other bands have not?

I don’t really know. We just prove ourselves with our live shows and have memorable songs that mean something personally to people. Maybe it’s just because we’ve been stubborn and never stepped away and have continued to put out records that we’re proud of. We always want to do things better and try new things, although that sometimes puts people off because albums don’t sound the same as the last one. Some people don’t like it when their favourite band’s played on the radio all the time. But we’ve won over a lot of fans, toured consistently and playing with all sorts of different bands. We do meet and greets with our fans and ask them how they got into Papa Roach, and it’s crazy how many new fans we have. Our fans are a real mixture of genders, ages…everything really.

Your lyrics tend to be emotional and confessional, and perhaps help your fans to make sense of the world and their place in it. How autobiographical are the words you choose to use?

You use those emotions when you’re creating and writing the song. But when you get on stage it’s more about connecting with the band and performing and rocking out. There is the energy that the song makes you feel but we don’t get too deep into it when we’re performing.

Your eighth album, F.E.A.R, has just come out. Can you describe it for me?

It’s an acronym…Face Everything and Rise. It’s a phrase that Jacoby felt summed up this record. It’s about rising from the ashes, overcoming your fears, dealing with the shit that gets thrown at you in life and how you deal with it. It has a sense of hope and a positive outlook on things. It started out as a song to start off with and Jacoby was dead set on having songs that could be album titles.

When you went into the studio to record this album were the songs all ready to go?

No, actually we made a conscious decision to show up at the studio with nothing pre written this time around. Normally as a band we get together and jam and write the songs together for a couple months and then come into the studio and re-record everything again. This time we didn’t have much of anything, maybe a riff or a chord or a vocal melody or a lyric idea, so we wrote the songs around one of those ideas. We wrote it and recorded it as we were going along, came back a couple days later and thought it still sounded great! It was really exciting to create music in that way for us, and I know it was super scary for Jacoby. He was not confident at the beginning but when he started to get into it, it turned out to be the right way to make this record. I hope we can work that way again; I love being in the studio, being in the moment and just coming up with ideas. That’s the funnest part for me.

There’s quite a lot of rapping in your music. Are there any particular rappers you guys enjoy as a band?

Some of the newer stuff I’m not into. There’s always gonna be the greats like Eminem, Jay Z, Nas and Wu Tang Clan that we grew up on, but as far as the new guys go we like Royce da 5’9” who is an amazing MC, but he’s not even new, he’s been around for a while. It’s really that we have our own style that we’ve developed over the years and we tend to stick to that. We’ve always been huge fans of hip hop. In the 90’s we were immersed in that type of music…Cypress Hill and Beastie Boys, those kind of groups, so it stuck around in our blood. I was so into the Red Hot Chilli Peppers when I was learning to play bass that that sort of funky groove style is just how I play. I couldn’t get rid of it if I tried!

The world of rock music is traditionally very ‘sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll’. How normal is your life when you’re not on tour?

How normal?! So normal I don’t even want to tell you it’s so normal! Seriously, people think it’s so cool, with groupies and everything and I don’t want to ruin that image. However being on tour is one thing and being at home is completely different. I have a wife and a two year old. The only thing I want to do when I get home is take my dogs and go on a hike. I just want to be as healthy as I can and do nothing but hang out at home with my family. The biggest sacrifice a touring musician makes is that you’re always away from your family. You’re around fucking freaky, nutty people all the time so to come home and be normal is a much needed thing!

Papa Roach play The Nick Rayns LCR on 8th March