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Do You Want Punk Rock or Do You Want the Truth?

Punk and Disorderly? Or Sugar and Spikes?

Pay no attention to grizzled 40-nothings, the scene police and screaming teenage girls; Good Charlotte have plenty to offer the world.

Story by Jonah Bayer

"Hey, who's in there?" asks a teenage boy, swiping a drooping, multicolored Mohawk from his eyes. "Good Charlotte," I yell back, and I'm greeted with a roll of the eyes and a sarcastic grin as he walks away, nearly colliding with a defensive line of adolescent girls squealing like fire engines as they exit the A.P. tent where the band are signing autographs. This example is far from a rarity-- in nearly every town on this summer's Vans Warped Tour, Good Charlotte have been striking this hazy line between idolatry and ridicule. But with the release of their second Epic disc, The Young And The Hopeless, these four East Coast kids are set to prove that despite their good looks and barely legal (if at all) fan base, the music is the only thing that really matters.

As hosts of their own MTV show, All Things Rock, as well as the band's songwriters, identical twins Benji and Joel Madden are the obvious figureheads of the act (Benji's six-inch liberty spikes don't hurt, either). But while pop-punk peers like New Found Glory and Blink-182 have songs dealing predominately with puppy love and suburban setbacks, Good Charlotte draw from a more perilous pool of experiences.

"It's not hard for me to relate, especially to New Found Glory--they're some of our best friends," says guitarist Benji, 23, who along with the rest of his band, is often found on NFG's bus participating in PlayStation 2 tournaments. "But when i hear [them] talk about where they started, it's hard for me to relate to it in a way, you know? When we started out, my dad didn't buy me a guitar and we didn't have a van, so we couldn't tour the country. When we just graduated higschool, we were trying to pay our rent."

During their formative years, the twins played baseball fanatically and, for the most part, were normal adolescents. "We got our fair share of shit; we had our fair share of friends too," recalls Benji. "We definately weren't in the popular crowd. We found our place--but it wasn't at the party on Friday night." However, not being invited to boy-girl gettogethers became the least of their problems when at 15, their on-again, off-again father vanished for the last time.

"He left a couple times, [but] he left for good when we were 15," says Joel, the shyest member of the band, sporting a black pinstriped shirt with only the top button done over a black T-shirt and a bandana around his rist. "He was the sole breadwinner, backbone of the family. When he left, everything kind of got flipped upside down." Literally overnight, the twins lost interest in father-son oriented sports and found a new obsession to channel their angst and confusion.

"I think music saved my life," Joel continues solemnly, leaning back in the couch on the bus the band have called home for the past six weeks. "Even at that age, we were writing songs about our dad. That was our way of getting things out, of expressing things and channeling everything out, you know? And that's when we started the band." the twins started going to local punk shows; Benji aquired a cheap guitar and transformed a karaoke machine into a makeshift am; and together the duo instantly began writing three-minute songs and producing thier own lo-fi recordings.

Paul Thomas, the group's cherubic blond bassist and longtime crony, admits that he had his doubts during that first practice. "I was just baffled at how much these guys could not play anything at all... and they wanted to start a band?" he says, laughing. However, the 17-year-old highschooler was drawn to one thing-- the striking melodies and vocal harmonies that the twins seemed to pen effortlessly. In fact, he believed in the duo so strongly that the theater aficionado dropped his first lead role (as Antipholus in the Shakespeare classic A Comedy of Errors) during his senior year, to concentrate on the group--now comprised of the twins and another high-school friend, Aaron, on drums (Aaron left the band a year and a half ago, and Good Charlotte have yet to find a permanent replacement). Then again, compared to what the twins went through, Paul's sacrifice was minuscule.

"When a bank forcloses, it takes a couple months, and where we lived, everybody knew it... it's not like we showed up and everything was outside," Joel says a few days later, displaying a mature sens of perspective that's almost eerie coming from someone in his early 20s. "I hated it at the same time, but it was really humbling to not have a place to live and then to find a place and make it work for your family." After the eviction, the twins--along with their brother, sister and struggling mother--moved into a rural two-bedroom farmhouse and struglled through the lowest point of their lives.

"It wasn't big enough, but we made it work," Joel says with a sigh. "A lot of times we didn't have heat; a lot of times the electricity would get cut off; a lot of times we didn't really have food. I hated it. I hated my life," he says, his anger escalating with each sentence. "I always wondered why my parents couldn't just have a normal divorce where the dad still comes and sees his kids. I felt like nothing could be normal for me; and that's when music was definately our pill--that's what we took."

As a reward for graduating highschool--as well as a hard-wrought consolation for all the nights that they slept in their clothes and left their oven open for heat--the twins' mother bought them an open ended ticket to anywhere in the United States. They chose the punk mecca of Berkeley, California, for what they refer to as their "pilgrimage" to the legendary DIY punk venue 924 Gilman Street, where bands like Operation Ivy and Green Day got their start. After catching sets by FYP and Furious George, and, more importantly, absorbing the atmosphere of the thriving scene, the twins decided that it wasn't whether they'd succeed; it was when.

Back home in Maryland, the closest real scene was an hour away in Annapolis. Good Charlotte gigged there often, and when the time came to move out of the house, relocating to Naptown was the ideal move. The twins started hanging out with a dreadlocked metalhead named Bilyl Martin, whom they'd met at an acoustic gig they played a year before, and soon the trio were inseperable. When the twins were kicked out of their apartment, the three of them moved into a shed behind Billy's parets' house, and after he sat in on one practice, Billy quit his metal band and became the final ingredient in Good Charlotte.

The now-complete group applied the same energy they put into their songwriting into finding a record label for their nascent sound. Looking back, the group laugh about their homemade press packages and relentless label courtings--like the time they called their dream label, Epitaph Records, and asked to talk directly to owner Brett Gurewitz. But at the time, it was far from a joke--it was all the struggling teens had.

Contrary to popular legend, the group weren't handed a record contract after their first show. They paid their dues. "We just kept playing show after show after show, and some things started adding up," says Benji. "We got on a compilation for a local zine, and they got some interest from some record labels." Good Charlotte's big break came when they were offered the East Coast leg of a tour with goateed rockers Lit. After wowing record execs with their distinct conglomeration of punk rock, modern rock and even a touch of hip hop, they seemed guaranteed to get signed. And just a year after the twins graduated (Billy, the youngest member, was still in highschool), they inked a contract with Epic and went straight to the studio to record their selftitled, 12-song debut. To promote it, they jumped on a slew of tours with bands ranging from MxPx to the Rx Bandits, spreading inspirationa anthems like "Motivation Proclamation," "Little Things" and "WalkdorfWorldWide" to the masses. They just didn't know who was listening.

Back at the A.P. Tent a teenage boy barely in earshot yells at the group, "What, are you too famous to talk to us now?" In all the commotion, Benji actually hears the barb being hurled at him, gets up from the middle of a signing and calmly confronts the naysayer. After about 30 seconds of casual conversation, the two shake hands, the boy walks away smiling, and Benji sits back down at the table as if nothing happened. Later in the day, benji recounts the conversation from the comfort of the air-conditioned bus.

"Usually, people don't expect you to talk to them, but we try to be real with all our fans," he explains. "If they give us a compliment, we'll say thank you. If they say something that's disrespectful, we'll tell 'em to shut up. So this kid said that, and I just went over there and said, 'What's up? So what do you mean? You're joking around?' He was like, 'No, man we used to be able to talk to you guys.' And I was like, 'So do you think we should not even be out here? We came out here because we really wanted to meet all you guys, just to say thank you for supporting us. It would be an hour for us to just chill on our bus, but we figured we would try to meet everybody. See that line, we're going to try to meet all those people.' And he was like, 'Oh, you're right.'"

It's true. While most bands at Good Charlotte's level rarely venture off the bus except to play their sets and scope for backstage Betties, Benji is often seen riding his sticker-littered dirt bike through the crowd and chatting with fans. And when Joel, who's often seen wandering around the premises posing for pictures and signing autographs, says, "Out of the 300,000 kids who bought our first record, we've probably met every single one of them," it's not a carefully constructed sound bite--it's a fact.

"Benji is sexy" is scribbled on girls' shirts and shouted at you everyday, but are you ever insecure about your appearance?

Benji: Completely. I never like what I see when I look in the mirror, ever. That's the way I've been since I was little. [Pauses] I never look in the mirror and go, "Yeah, I look good." Every once in a while there'll be aday when I'll say, "Hey, you look okay today." I avoid mirrors; I don't like to look in the mirror. I don't know if I'd be insecure 'cause I just stopped caring, but I'm definately not confident in that way. Not at all, I never have been. When I see those shirts and stuff, I just think [the fans wearing them are] delusional.

But you see these girls every single day.

Benji: Yeah. I think they're not looking at me; they're just listening to the music. They haven't studied my picture, so those shirts definately make me [think] they really haven't looked. And I don't know what that is.... One friend I had in high school one day was like, "Dude, you're ugly," and it always stuck with me. In high school, I hung out with a lot of girls as friends, but I never got the girls, and I think that was just ingrained--"I guess I must just be average," or whatever.

So how do you view the band, physically?

Benji: I just don't think we're anything special; what we have special to offer is the songs and the lyrics. There's no Brad Pitt in our band.

It's true; Benji doesn't look much like the Fight Club star. With his smudged eyeliner and tattoo-covered arms, he's more reminiscent of Social Distortion's Mike Ness circa the 1984 road documentary Another State Of Mind. But comprisons aside, it's impossible to ignore that the majority of the group's fanbase is female. And although it's often a catalyst for criticism from punk purists, the band embrace all of their fans, even if it comes at a price.

"There's always haters out there, and I'm not gonna be one of them," says benji, who has nixed the spikes lately in preference for a bandana and a sideways trucker's cap. But besides jealous teenage boys whose biggest complaint is that the band are "gay," one of the group's most vocal detractors has been punk-rock legend and Bad Religion/Dag Nasty guitarist Brian Baker, who's shared the stage with Good Charlotte all summer on the Vans Warped Tour. When I tell Benji about a recent quote in the Cleveland Scene where, at the end of an interview, Baker spitefully tacked on "By the way, Good Charlotte sucks," Benji visibly sighs, but stays characteristically calm and unaffected.

"I could easily, easily, come up with a thousand insults that would make people laugh their asses off," he says. "But it's harder to sit here and go 'Whatever'--especially when [Baker] is in one of my favorite bands of all time. I could get testosteroney and say, 'I'm gonna knock him the fuck out,' 'cause I could. But I'm 23 years old; he's like 40. That's the hard thing to do, but to me, I'm being a bigger man."

Why do you think you have so many female fans?

Joel: I think generally people write girls off. I have to say, a 15-year-old girl's life is just as hard as a 15-year-old boys's life. I mean, [with] our female audience, you do have the screaming girls, but that's only a small percent. The girls can make a lot of noise at a show.

What about the rest of them?

Joel: The rest--more girls than guys-- come up to me and tell me about their lives, and I'm like, "Damn, I wish I could do something," because girls have it pretty hard. They have magazines telling them they have to look a certain way, and I feel bad for 'em, because there are girls that feel bad about themselves who shouldn't feel bad about themselves. i tell girls, "Be proud of who you are and the way you look, 'cause you don't have to fit into the Seventeen look or YM look." The most attractive girl to me is a girl that's real.

So the criticism doesn't bother you at all?

Joel: Anyone who's a punk rocker is not gonna point their finger at someone else and tell them they're not punk. 'Cause when you're a real punk rocker, you don't care what anyone else thinks. People have said worse to me, man. If someone's gonna hate on me because girls like us--man, hate on me all you want. That's a good problem to have.

Another reason the ladies seem to love the group is that their distinctive mugs are piped into households across America four nights a week. "they're not Vj's; they're rock musicians who are hosting a show on MTV," says Rod Aissa, MTV's vice president of talent development, who was drawn to the twins after seeing them guest-host a rock segment on MTV2. "Their love of music is just so organic, it oozes out, regardless of what band they're talking about."

Surprisingly, the fact that the twins have their own show on punk's mortal enemy hasn't garnered nearly the backlash the band anticipated.

"I get so many punks coming up to me going, 'Man, it's so cool seeing a punk rocker on TV. You're the only thing punk rock on American TV right now,'" says Benji. And although the twins don't get to pick the videos aired on the show, they're often seen wearing their favorite bands' T-shirts, and they always manage to find some way to plug the bands they admire. "If we play a Nickelback video, I find a way to relate it to NOFX."

"How many of you are sick and tired of rich people complaining about their problems?" Joel asks the audience, garnering enough applause to render the three surrounding stages inaudible. Moments later, a syncopated tom-and-snare beat kicks in, and the band launch into the first single from The Young And The Hopeless, "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous." Lyrically, the song's social commentary is as political as anything from Good Charlotte's street-punk contemporaries, taking swipes at everyone from OJ Simpson to Marion Barry ("Did you know if you were caught and you were smoking crack/Mc Donalds wouldn't even want to take you back/You could always just run for mayor of DC"). The only difference is that the melody is so infectious that it sure beats watching CNN.

The song's video, directed by Bill Fishman (best known from punk classics like the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated" and Suicidal Tendencies' "Institutionalized"), is an ideal companion to the lyrics, portraying the band in a police standoff, in jail, and finally in a courthouse where their ostentatious neighbor (Chris Kirkpatrick of *NSync) testifies against them based on their appearance. It's a perfect parallel: The boys have essentially been on trial for their entire careers, aesthetically judged by people without a clue about their tumultuous home lives, or by people who don't read Good Charlotte's lyrics and understand the positive effect their music can have on alienated youth.

But try telling that to the teeming sea of kids hanging on the band's every syllable during the Warped stop in Cincinatti. Whether you're a fan or a hater, there's something inexplicable about Good Charlotte's stage presence. Sporting a black Skinny Puppy shirt, Paul clutches his bass perpendicular to his body and spins like a giant corkscrew, while Billy hovers on the edge of the stage over his massive pedal board, bangs covering his eyes, mouthing the words and adding tasteful delay and phaser-induced noodlings. In the meantime, Benji hops all over the stage playing the guitar and tossing out clever between song banter, while Joel is the consummate frontman, singing, beat-boxing, ordering fans to jump ("Let's break the floor!"), and profusely thanking the audience between every song.

A quick listen to the new disc's instrumental introduction--an angelic wind-chime-heavy tease that's quickly smashed by galloping drums, blazing guitars and a gothic choir--confirms that the band have done a lor of growing up over the past two years, bravely sidestepping the formula that's gotten them this far. Ultra-catchy numbers like "Anthem" describe the tribulations of high school, but just because a song is catchy doesn't mean it lacks substance.

The album's poppiest number, "My Old Man," is also arguably the most introspective number of their eight-year career. Its chorus succinctly portrays their father's abandonment: "Monday he woke up and hated life/Drank until Wednesday and left his wife/Thursday through Saturday lost everything/Woke up on Sunday miserable again."

"That song is about alcoholism really," says Benji, who himself is a recovering alcoholic and hasn't had a drink in a year. "It runs in my family. Some people got it, some people don't, but no one will know unless they read the lyrics."

While the lyrics may have been a bit simplistic on the last album, the Young And The Hopeless is darker and more complex. With it's ascending, effects-laden guitar intro, "Bloody Valentine" could be a nod to My Bloody Valentine guitarist Kevin Shields in addition to a haunting love triangle that was influenced by Edgar Allan Poe's "The Telltale Heart." Plus, it's the catchiest murder fantasy since Saves The Day's last album (Opening lyric: "I ripped out his throat and called you on the telephone"). Ditto for the Social D-inspired "The Day That I Die." A simple 4/4 drum beat and four-chord progression are the perfect backdrop for this fictional journey through their last day on Earth--sort of like a punk-rock version of Ice Cube's "It Was A Good Day," without the guns.

Speaking of Cube, the final night of this year's Warped Tour is a punk-rock version of a South Central block party. In a parking lot an hour outside of Toronto, everyone is raucously celebrating the end of the grueling two-mi=onth tour. Empty beer bottles littler the grounds; Tom Herrera from MxPx runs around with an acoustic guitar strapped around his neck; and there's a group of some 20 kids huddled in front of a tour bus simply yelling, like they're engaged in some bizarre fraternity ritual.

Amid all this debauchery, Benji rides over, looking strangely stoic. he pauses before he speaks, as if he's running the sentence over in his head.

He looks me straight in the eyes. "I know we've had a hard life," he says. "But I don't want this to be a pity piece about our band."

I assure him it won't, and a look of relief comes across his fatigued face. Then, he smiles, kicks the clutch, and rides away from the party, dissapearing into the darkness.