HANSON! - music group - Interview

Interview, July, 2000 by Gus Van Sant

To everyone who thought they'd be gone in an mmm-bop, the golden-voiced, golden-tressed trio are back with album No. 2, This Time Around (Mercury), a rockin', poppin', summer disc that rides high on the brothers' harmonic convergences. We asked director Gus Van Sant, who first met the chart-toppers when he directed their video for "Weird," to shoot an exclusive, behind-the-scenes photo documentary on the brothers Hanson as they prepared to take on the world again.

TAYLOR HANSON: Why do you have two tape recorders?

GUS VAN SANT: One tape might go out sooner than the other in the middle of a good thing. It's not a bad idea.

TAYLOR: OK. The Gus Van Sant sessions.

GVS: You know, they made a book out of the Rolling Stone interviews with John Lennon and Jerry Garcia, too, so who knows. We don't want to miss anything.

TAYLOR: Oh, wow.

ISAAC HANSON: That sounds like a really good book.

ZACHARY HANSON: It sound like an ice cream.

ISAAC: Actually, it's Cherry Garcia.

ZACHARY: Cherry Garcia! Cherry Garcia!

TAYLOR: I have to take it intravenously. [Laughter. Taylor pretends he is shooting up in his left arm with a syringe.]

GVS: There are a lot more blues and rock influences on this album than the last. Did you try to distance yourself from the more polished teen pop that's out there today?

TAYLOR: It was really just the natural change. Just the result of three years going by. Anything you listen to is going to influence you. We listen to the Black Crowes, Sheryl Crow, Lenny Kravitz, that kind of genre. I think "This Time Around" has a Black Crowes flair. So maybe there's a little bit of that influence seeping through.

GVS: Because you were so young when "MMMBop" became a huge hit, there must have been cynics out there. Was it difficult to put the pressure of making your second album aside and just record?

TAYLOR: There have been naysayers. There always will be. You don't think about the other stuff; you just focus on making an album you feel great about. There's always personal pressure. I think a lot of times just meeting and deciding who you wanna work with is a big step.

GVS: And now that the record has come out some reviewers are saying the opposite of what they said before; it's being called "too mature."

TAYLOR: Yeah, there's a little bit of that. People saying, "OK, maybe they're trying too hard." It is a funny twist. You just let the music speak for itself, be who you are, and hopefully it'll just work out.

GVS: You have guests on the album ranging from John Popper to Jonny Lang. How were those experiences?

ZACHARY: Really cool. We love Blues Traveler and Jonny Lang, so it was cool to have those guys on the album because one, they're amazing musicians, and two, we like their records a lot. Jonny came in for an afternoon and we just said, basically, "Wail throughout this song and we'll see if anything works."

GVS: And how did you hook up with DJ Swamp, who is also Beck's DJ?

ZACHARY: Well, that was a cooler experience, I mean in the way it worked out. The DJ we had scheduled had a problem; he had to go to the doctor's office, and something weird. And we had just seen Beck a few weeks before and were talking about how good [the DJ] was, so we figured out who his manager was and called him up.

ISAAC: I was definitely watching the DJ during Beck's show, but of course you can't help but watch Beck himself because he has such an interesting stage persona. The DJ actually did a solo and everything. If I remember right, he had two turntables, and he was flipping records and then going to the next record. He did some pretty crazy stuff.

GVS: So, are you guys still drawing?

ISAAC: Gus, you saw our artwork at the studio, right?

TAYLOR: We must have showed it to you when you came by.

GVS: What kind of medium do you work in?

ISAAC: Just about anything.

TAYLOR: Pen and paper, really.

ZACHARY: I'm more of a sketch guy. I am not that great a freehand artist.

ISAAC: Tay and Zac are really good. They're more cartoonists.

TAYLOR: I think it would be really fun to be able to produce your own records and do your own artwork and direct your videos.

GVS: You guys don't feel like you can do that?

TAYLOR: Well ... for instance, David Bowie is at the level where he can. He's a huge artist. He has established his career, and he's in a position to do whatever he wants.

ISAAC: We are definitely into directing a video at some point because we have all these ideas in our heads, and it would be so cool to take them from being a piece of paper to being in charge of making them happen. It's a little different than with the music thing, because in some ways I think you also need an outside source to help you out.

TAYLOR: It is actually a good idea to be working with somebody else so you don't get too inside yourself.

GVS: Maybe if the album goes well, you can do the next video by yourselves.

ISAAC: Yeah. I'd love to. Trying to make the video for "This Time Around," we got really excited-

TAYLOR: We wrote up a treatment for the video, but the consensus was that it would be too dark.