Taking Back Sunday’s Adam Lazzara: The Six-Pack Q&A
Rolling Stone posed six questions to Taking Back Sunday frontman Adam Lazzara while hanging backstage at this summer’s Projekt Revolution tour. He dissed Axl Rose, explained his love of Lifetime and admitted he’s slowly becoming a Harry Potter geek.
What’s the most rock-star thing you’ve ever done?
I don’t believe in rock stars ’cause when I think of the word rock star, I think of Axl Rose and Bret Michaels and they look like grandmothers if you look at them now. So I don’t believe in that at all.
What was your favorite album when you were fourteen?
Lifetime, Hello Bastards. It was fast, but it was also real melodic — they’re still my favorite band to this day. [Singer] Ari Katz, his delivery and everything, something about it — you know, when you hear those records all the songs just kinda speak to your soul. I just related to it so well.
Who’s the coolest famous person you’ve ever met?
Oh, we did the Video Game Music Awards and at the time I was seeing if I could grow a mustache. But it was also when that movie Grandma’s Boy was coming out and the star of that movie — he’s in all the Adam Sandler movies, and his name escapes me right now [Allen Covert] — but he was doing a movie where he had to have a gnarly mustache too, and so we had a good long moment. And you know when you see people in movies you think they’re like untouchable and stuff? But he was totally cool and down to earth, we talked about mustaches for like a good twenty minutes — which isn’t really exciting.
What’s on your current playlist?
The Avett Brothers’ Emotionalism. They’re from North Carolina and that’s where I spent my young years. All their words are really rad. And, I love the fact that they come from this rock & roll world, but they’re a guitar, a banjo and a stand-up bass. That new Ryan Adams record, I’m like just getting warmed up to it. I was a huge fan of like everything up until like right after Love Is Hell, and then he kinda lost me there. But then this new record, he’s like pulling me back in. To tell you the honest truth, I bought the Harry Potter book off of iTunes so I can listen to it when I’m running. I’m still on book one. But my fiancee, she’s on book seven, and I’ve been making fun of her forever for reading them. I just wanna be part of the club, you know? That’s totally not gonna make me sound cool at all. And also that new White Stripes record is really rad.
When will you know that it’s time to retire?
Hopefully it’ll never be time to retire, I’ll never stop writing songs.
What has the Projekt Revolution tour been like for you this summer?
The My Chemical Romance guys, we’ve been touring with them since we both [started to be] in bands, so it’s real awesome to be with them. And it’s funny too, the band families are real incestuous too, ’cause there’s like lots of guys that work with them, when they’re off they’ll work with us, and stuff like that. So it’s real nice just knowing everybody. Them and the Bled and Saosin we’ve all toured with before. I have this scooter and Saosin, they all have scooters, so we have a little gang.