FASTBALL

Fastball: Low and Inside
By Troy Schmidt

Have you ever seen a grown man cry?
TONY: Yeah, sure. I've seen lots of grown men cry. It's necessary.
MILES: It was the promoter, I think.

You're on the road a lot. Do you eat a lot of fast food?
TONY: We really do try to avoid it, but sometimes it is unavoidable.
JOEY: Subway is decent.
MILES: Subway, you can get the veggie sandwich. Cracker Barrel is always an oasis in the desert. They have a Wendy's. There's always a Wendy's, then a Hardees, then a Taco Bell, then a Cracker Barrel. And it's like aaaahhhhhhh!
TONY: Waffle House.
JOEY: That's the worst.
MILES: I never go there.
TONY: As far as those little breakfast places go…Village Inn.
JOEY: Perkins is good.
MILES: Village Inn is good if you're inebriated.

You've said that you do not care about sales. At what point do you have to care?
MILES: That was probably a misquote. What allows you to do what you're doing, a big part is record sales.
TONY: We don't create our stuff contingent on future sales. We can't do that. That impedes good art, I believe. Yeah, I think what we do is art. It's an art form to play music. Granted pop music may not be the most refined of art forms. It's human expression at its most relatable….You probably absorb more of it that you can going, say, to a museum, or performance art, like that…What were we talking about? (ALL LAUGH)
MILES: He was ramblin'!
TONY: If we try to come up with radio hits, we'd come up with the most schlocky songs.

Your songs appeared in An American Werewolf in Paris, Varsity Blues and The Other Sister. Which was your favorite movie?
TONY: I saw An American Werewolf in Paris…dreadful. Horrendous.
MILES: I would venture to say Varsity Blues was the best, but I didn't see it.
TONY: What about Waterboy? "Sooner or Later" is in Waterboy.
MILES: I didn't go see any of these movies.
JOEY: (Waterboy) is probably the best one of the four. I didn't see The Other Sister, but I hear it wasn't that good.

The original band name was Magneto U.S.A. How did that come about?
TONY: I've always had this thing about names. I thought it sounded really, really power-poppy.
MILES: Then we found out there was this other band called Magneto and they were from Mexico.
TONY: It means magnet in Spanish.
MILES: They were like a boy band. They were like Menudo and we found out they were actually massive in the Latin world and had five records out. This wasn't like some small band. It was a big, huge conglomerate. At first we thought we could add U.S.A. and skirt the whole issue. People cautioned us against it.

In interviews, you make references to Fargo, North Dakota. Why?
MILES: It's because we got obsessed with that movie (Fargo by the Coen Brothers)…We had it on the bus. We watched it once, then someone said, "I haven't seen it." So they watched it, then you walk in while they're watching it and you sit down and watch it again. We must have watched it 18 times. We memorized all the dialog.
JOEY: (in Minnesota accent) Oh ya, you betcha.
MILES: The William Macy character… "What the heck's the deal here?"
JOEY: "What the heck you mean?"
TONY: "Smoke a peace pipe!"
JOEY: When he says, "Jerry Lundegaard."
MILES: I like it when the guy comes in and he says, "I thought you said the car was going to cost 18 thousand dollars." Then he says, "Yeah, but that trucoat comes with the car. There ain't nothin' I can do about that. The trucoat's an extra five thousand."
TONY: "You should see the other guy!"
MILES: When Steve Buscemi's all shot up. And the note that the father leaves that says, "No Jean, no money." We rehashed that endlessly.
TONY: "Awwww, jeeez."
MILES: Thing is, once everyone learns the language, then you can talk to each other that way."
JOEY: In total non sequiturs.

Do you have any other movies on the bus?
MILES: No, but that was the most popular one.
TONY: We don't have any movies.
MILES: We just switched buses.
TONY: We have a DVD player and we don't have any DVD's.
What other TV shows has your material appeared on?
TONY: Beverly Hills 90210. Dawson's Creek.
JOEY: "Out of My Head" was in a trailer for…
MILES: The new Richard Gere movie.
JOEY: Dr T. and the…
MILES: Dr. T and the Midgets, I think it was called…
TONY: We were just on an episode of Charmed.
Did you meet Shannon Doherty?
MILES: Yeah, and let me tell you something, she's better looking in real life.
TONY: She's foxy.
MILES: I was stunned…I couldn't believe it. In real life she's just stunning.
JOEY: She got us coffee.
MILES: "I'm going to Starbucks, does anyone want anything?" But I think she's the producer of that show.

The song, "The Way" talks of death. How do you want to die?
TONY: I want to die in my sleep.
MILES: Yeah, I think that would be the best way…I try not to think about it. My biggest fear is that instead of dying in my sleep, we're all going to be here when the entire world begins to decompose…this wave of insect plagues…
JOEY: There's the Ebola outbreak in Africa right now. It's widening.
MILES: I'm really afraid of all that. I'm amazed how distracted we are. Out of all the nations that could do something…

There's almost a fanatical devotion to "The Way." Does that put pressure on you to have another successful single?
TONY: I don't think it puts pressure on us. It puts pressure on the record company.
MILES: There's nothing we can do about that. If we had our way, there'd be a fanatical devotion to us. (ALL LAUGH) We would reach that icon status where we could hawk key chains and lunch boxes. Yeah, people love that song. It's so innocent. No one involved with us thought that song was a hit. Our manager did after it was all finished…
TONY: I remember asking people, "Does this sound any good? Do you think people will like it?"
MILES: You want to know what I like best about it, when I played it for my friends, the reaction was always the same… "This is you guys?" And I love that.

Miles, you almost became a priest.
MILES: I did have a Catholic family, I became very disillusioned. When I was in second, third grade, I really bought religion in the modern sector. I believed everything. I thought if I told a lie, that God would be mad at me and that I would go to hell. What spoiled it for me was that there were people who were more fanatical than me or my parents or people in my church. This is a long story—to make a long story short, my father used to go fishing with this guy, and they were best friends. So this guy crashes in a helicopter accident. His body has cuts and he was in a critical state in the hospital. According to him, Jesus came into his hospital room and healed him and left. My parents didn’t believe him, but they didn’t know how he got better either. He claims Jesus did it. So they joined this other church, and my parents got so upset. And I said, well wait a minute. You keep telling me about this guy and how he does these amazing things, and now he comes and we have a miracle and you’re so skeptical. There is something wrong. There is something at the root of all of this. Then the more I thought about it, the more my parents didn’t like that church and didn’t want me to go and then I just got more disillusioned because I felt that everyone in the regular church was like, well, “What time’s the ball game?” No one in that church really believes what’s being said, as far as this is the body and blood of Christ, yada yada, I’m going to turn this wine into his blood. Everyone is just there saying, "I’m here, its Sunday, I’m in my Sunday best, I did my hour, see ya."
JOEY: That’s how it is in all churches.
MILES: Right, so I figured what’s the point, I can get more out of it at home than I can at this church. I don’t need to get my parking validated. I don’t believe that He is going to, if I don’t go to that church, whatever, God is going to hold it against me. If I murder someone, that’s something else.

How strongly did you pursue it?
MILES: I didn’t. I thought about it. I was an altar boy. I just liked the whole thing for a brief period. I just liked the whole thing up until the age of eight or nine.

Along those lines, is “Morning Star” (song off Harsh Light of Day) a reference to Christ?
TONY: No, its Morningstar Farms, it’s a food company. I see it all over the place—Morningstar this, Morningstar dairy, Morningstar whatever. "Morning Star" has to do with waking up; it has to do with reality, you know, what was I thinking. You know, you wake up and there is a girl in there, and you’re like, "Oh my god, get out of here." Rock 'n' roll.

You look at the words, I was thinking priesthood, I was thinking that influence, I looked it up, and I connected the reference, and then I substituted Christ and thought, well, it is sort of a spiritual song.
TONY: That’s neat that you can find that.
MILES: You know, if we were a Christian band we’d be doing a lot better.
TONY: Probably. Those bands do well.
MILES: You know, Creed, U2—those bands have that strong Christian background.
TONY: A lot of people thought “The Way”…
MILES: We should have said that it was.
TONY: People want that, I think, in this country. It is mainly Protestant, Catholic and as far as religions go, and it's very homegrown too. I grew up in a Lutheran church, and I was heavily involved in the church until I was like 17 or 18 years old, even when I got into drugs and drinking and partying in the midst of my Christian education as a teenager. So it seems so homegrown to me. And so you dream and fantasize about all of this—that God is so cool and can get all of this stuff done, right, so I think people crave some sort of mysticism involved that can correlate to their religion. I think people sought that out when they heard this song and they really wanted it to mean something. With me it was just speculating about some afterlife and this couple disappears and nothing in the paper ever speculates because it's news and they like to keep it to the facts. I like to speculate, when I’m watching the news I drive my wife crazy because I’m like, "Oh, they’re probably this or that," I’ve got my opinion on everything. It’s just my little opinion on something that did happen. Maybe they just wanted to get away from their responsibilities and their families and be young again. That last grasp at youth and young love. All that stuff.

Are you upset that some baseball site has your web domain name?
TONY: We probably should have picked a better name.
MILES: Yeah, I’m not so much upset as it is just so overwhelming when you go to a search engine and you put in a search and you get 2 things for us and 800 for fastball. Having to compete with a sport that’s been around for so long.
TONY: The upside is that, I watch baseball, and every time I hear fastball, it’s like…

Free promotion.
MILES: Promotion, I’m not sure that’s promotion
TONY: It’s a psychological trip.
Which song of yours surprised you that didn’t become a hit single?
MILES: I think “You’re an Ocean.” I think that song should have been a hit song. I think it had everything a song needs to be a hit.
TONY: I wasn’t expecting any kind of real, I think “Out of My Head” could have been a good song. “You’re an Ocean” was not one of my favorites. It’s not one of my favorites on the record. Sorry. It’s all a matter of opinion and people weren’t all crazy about the song. I agree. It did seem to have all the elements.
MILES: You never know. You just never know.
TONY: That’s right
MILES: that’s what’s beautiful about this business
TONY: And ugly at the same time
MILES: Yeah, it’s a double-edged sword but the thing is but if they did know, all we would have are the Backstreet Boys.
TONY: That would be easy
MILES: Why not take the guesswork out of the industry. It would be just like casting a soap (opera).
TONY: It really seems like that’s the way they want it.
MILES: Well, of course they do, why not take the guesswork out of the industry. Every other industry there are certain laws, certain formulas.
TONY: We must get out
MILES: Well they haven’t done it yet....Radiohead debuted at number one with a very uncompromising noncommercial album, and I really like it that they don’t know, and I hate it when they try to tell me that they do know. Because I’m like, “No you don’t because if you did you’d have a huge and successful record label.” How do you know so much, I just don’t believe it. You know, Rod Stewart’s "Maggie May" was on a B-side. “Reason to Believe” was on the A-side, and they put it out and nobody played it. Then this one disc jockey flipped it over and played the B-side, and the phones were ringing off the hook. It went from there.
TONY: I remember when that started.
Do you think music is getting mean and ugly?
TONY: I don’t know what you mean exactly.
MILES: I think he’s talking about the Eminem, and Limp Bizkit and stuff like that. Is that what you’re talking about?

Yeah.
TONY: Yeah, that side of the spectrum which is ******* miles away from the other side, and you have nothing in between, you really don’t
MILES: I don’t know, I think it’s ironic. My favorite kind of music, well my favorite era of music, is the 60’s, the 70’s when there was the cultural revolution. The irony of it is that the children of these people who went through this cultural revolution are becoming the worst generation of people. These kids are blowing away other people at school. They can’t put two sentences together. The way they talk makes me think that maybe these people in the 30’s and 40’s were right. Maybe I prefer it when people say “Yes sir” and “No sir” and they trusted the government. Now we are seeing the end product and I’m wondering what the kids of these kids are going to be like.
TONY: Well, everybody is about to get tricked, coming up in a couple of days here. Everybody in the process of being completely snowed, because they’re totally accepting of what is going to happen and they are just going to take it.

That would be Election Day.
TONY: Everybody is still going to take it and be completely happy.
MILES: It’s still a dead heat. I mean with the power of the Internet…It’s just too many people are apathetic and anesthetized, but it would be so great if everybody just lied to the pollsters and elected Nader. Could you imagine corporate America if Nader took the election?
TONY: Grassroots would…
MILES: They would be like, wait a minute, we need to do the election over. Hold up. We need a recount.
JOEY: Either that or within two months he would be assassinated.

Not that you would do it.
TONY: NO, but I think the public would know. Not like JFK where no one could fathom the government had anything to do with that. But you wouldn’t have any doubts now. If Nader were president and he were assassinated right away, we would all know.
MILES: But I’m not sure what we would do about it.
TONY: Yeah, we wouldn’t do anything, but that’s a start—to add the awareness. His vice-president is a woman
MILES: She is the head of Chevron. No, I’m kidding.

What part of your success would you attribute to luck?
Miles: I’d say about half of it. But we work really hard
Tony: Yeah, like 50%
Miles: I meet a lot of bands who are struggling that I can see why they don’t succeed, but they’re not working hard enough, or not looking realistically. They are not working on their thing. They’re just doing their thing blindly. Never improving or trying to read. But there is a lot of luck involved; all of the latches have to line up at the same time. That’s what needs to happen. Everything needs to line up. It doesn’t matter if you have a great song if you’re on a label that doesn’t have the wherewithal to promote it, or is no good at promoting it. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got the best label in the world…if you don’t have the song.

Since you’ve signed with Hollywood Records, a Disney company, do you get free tickets to the parks?
Miles: Yeah, not only that, but the checks you get have a little mouse on it, so when your traveling through customs and they harass you and ask, "Well, what do you do?" All I have to say is that I work for the Walt Disney Company and it’s like three magic words, They’re like, "OK, go ahead."

Have you guys ever been in a fight?
Tony: No, with the three of us?
Miles: With anyone?

With anyone.
Tony: We’re not very violent people, I mean our tempers can flare, but no.
Miles: We’re not one of those bands. There have been times when we’ve wanted to fight people in the audience.
Tony: Other people, yeah, you feel like fighting sometimes, when you’re playing a rock show in some little **** hole.
Joey: What those people don’t realize that we have weapons in our hands—a guitar.
Tony: I have a Jazz Bass.
Miles: HE does have a lot of metal in his.

What is your favorite Christmas memory?
Miles: Oh, getting the Space 1999 spaceship. It was right at that age when I was starting to realize that Santa Claus wasn’t real, but I though he was real, but I was sort of getting ideas because I had to be specific, like, don’t ask for the motorcycle, ask for something that can be conceivable. You know when you look at Santa Clause you think he knows what you mean.
Joey: I think when I got my BB gun. The house we lived in backed up to a lot of woods, which are not woods now—suburbia. But I’d go back there and plink around with it. That was the best one.
Tony: Not really, I got a lot of gifts every year.
Miles: Christmas makes me sad because it used to be so great every year when you’re a kid. It used to be the great treasure trove, you know, you get these things you really wanted, but now you can just buy the things you really want.

What part of being a successful rock band are you over with? It was a big deal once, but now...
Miles: I think I’m over the big partying thing. It’s really fun, but it starts to interfere with everything else. It’s like a movie you’ve seen too many times. The same things happen every time and it sort of gets old. Either you have to back off a little bit or it is time to go full storm ahead.
Tony: We’ve done that a few times too. We just got back from Europe where it was pretty black and we got into drinking pretty much every night. I came home and said (looking at his stomach) "Yikes, how did that get there?" You know. Just kind of feeling pasty and not so hot. There is pressure to do it every night once you get on a roll like that.
Miles: It’s like golf. Once you get into it you don’t want to stop.
Tony: I feel pretty good about this one.

This tour?
Tony: Yeah, this tour.
Miles: Well, it just started.
Tony: Yeah.

“Love all, Serve all” is the Hard Rock motto. What does that mean to you?
Tony: I think it’s pretty lofty—pretty presumptuous.
Miles: Yeah, I was just going to say it makes sense if I were a CEO and trying to motivate my staff. But as a human being it just makes you feel like you have a long way to go. Because I don’t particularly feel like I want to love everyone or serve them. I just want to care of the people I care about and be nice to them.

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