Paramore Is A Band

"We are a team, we are a band. It’s not just Hayley - it’s not her band. Just because she’s the lead singer doesn’t mean she’s the only one involved. We all put our hearts into this,” declares Paramore lead guitarist Josh Farro. Paramore certainly fight against a ‘Hayley Williams Show’ attitude the majority of the music press have adopted. They come as a package and wish to equally contribute to every aspect of band life. But this is all too often taken out of their hands. Hayley Williams is a girl in high demand. Young girls want to be her, guys want to date her and the music press want to plaster her pictures all over their covers. Josh admits to Gigwise, “I think in the beginning the problem was that all the press focused completely and solely on her. All anyone knew was this little red-headed chick called Hayley. They didn’t know our faces or our names. But now us guys are getting involved in a lot more press. We prefer it this way.”

Things are certainly about to change. Talking to Gigwise mid-way through their completely sold out UK tour, Josh is more than willing to give the guys perspective from a band already taking 2008 by storm. The release of their second album ‘Riot!’ which includes mammoth hits ‘Misery Business’, ‘Crushcrushcrush’ and ‘Halleluiah’ has subsequently sky-rocketed their profile and popularity. This rapid rise has even warranted headlining their tour ahead of pop-punk stalwarts New Found Glory, something which Josh still can’t quite fathom. “It’s very hard to believe, especially watching them every night. I feel like, ‘how are we are going to put on a show after this?’” But the packed crowds have loved every minute so far - while Josh seems to be enjoying it even more, “It’s amazing it’s going so well, every show is sold out in the UK. Our tickets went on sale on a Friday and almost every venue was sold out by the following Monday or Tuesday. So we had to book two nights at some. It’s crazy to see how dramatically the fan base is growing over here.”

But for fans that may have missed out on the ‘golden tickets’ for the current tour, the announcement that Franklin, Tennessee’s finest will be back on theses shores to headline this year’s Give It A Name festival in London and Sheffield is of some comfort -news that seems to have surprised Josh just as much as any fan, “It really is mind boggling. Because we are not over here a lot we do not see how fast it’s growing. So when we come over here after it’s been quite a few months and you’re headlining ‘Give It A Name’ we are like ‘WHAT?!?!’ How do we do that? We don’t even know what we are going to do.”

Although many will be buoyant about Paramore headlining, others are not so impressed and have vented such anger on Give It A Name message boards, declaring they don’t deserve to play ahead of bands such as Finch or higher up than Glassjaw. “Kids are going to get frustrated no matter what” responds Josh. “We have been given some flack for this tour, for closing after New Found Glory who are obviously a legendary pop punk band. It doesn’t mean we don’t respect them. It’s more politics, which we hate. If we could we would rather open up for all these bands, but we just let our booking agent handle all that, trust him with that kind of stuff and what’s best for our band.”

Although Josh and the rest of Paramore still draw the line when it comes to one special band, “We have a US tour coming up with Jimmy Eat World, it’s supposed to be a co-headliner, but out of respect we want them to close. That’s one band that we all adore and have looked up to since we were little. We feel like they are the reason we are a band and why loads of other bands are here today. It would sort of be a slap in the face if we get to close after them.”

Exposure is a fickle fate, while cover-star status may boost record sales and sell out tours, it also invites the cynics and vultures ready to swoop on any sniff of failure. Even promotional press articles can massively backfire, something Paramore experienced at first hand. A leading British rock music magazine ran a double page, glossy spread on the foursome, ready to introduce them to the world. But the content and undertones were certainly not what Paramore wanted the readers to believe. “It really upset us” uttered Josh. “They basically went back on their word. They made out how it was going to be so huge for us. Then we get the story and it’s all about how Hayley is bossy and something about Zac and Jeremy being gay together. It is all a bunch of untrue, Britney spears crap. Nobody wants to read about. It had nothing to do with our music.”

Despite the already die-hard fan base seeing through such an article, realising it was hyperbole, what worried the quartet most was the opinions of people who had never heard of Paramore before reading it. Their fear was that upon reading such an article they would take an instant dislike to them. “That was a huge concern of ours” admits Josh. “I’m sure that was the first time for a lot of people to see our band, then they read this and they probably think ‘wow this is a bunch of crap’ but there’s nothing we can do about, so we just have to move on.”