HAYLEY WILLIAMS (PARAMORE) – POP/PUNK
With the recently overwhelming influx of handsome, young Fueled By Ramen boys taking over our airwavesand daydreams, it’s all too easy to toss aside a band that is fronted by quite possibly one of the strongest-sounding 17 year old girls to exist. Hayley Williams holds plenty of vintage Avril Lavigne boyish charm in herpint-size exterior, but this girl is oh so different from the afore-mentioned Canadian star- for one, she can singand hey, at least she’s realistic about the music she’s making.I caught up with Hayley and guitarists Jeremy Davis (bassist) and Josh Farro (lead guitar/backing vox) rightbefore they were about to hit the stage for their debut UK show as part of the Give It A Name Introduces…tour. Having spoken to the multitude of fans queuing outside beforehand, it’s safe to say that althoughParamore are not top of the bill tonight, they’re definitely the most anticipated act.Q: Let’s start from the beginning with quite possibly the mostmundane question you get asked: where’s the name from?
Hayley: One of our friend’s mom’s maiden name was Paramore, and we really liked the way it sounded. Welooked it up about a year later and found out that it means “secret lover” and “for love” which we thought wasreally cool and represented us well.
Q: How did you all meet?
Josh: Zac and I went to this one-day-a-week homeschool, which we met Hayley at. Hayley was at the time inanother band. We met the others through friends.
Q: Why did you decide to let Hayley have the vocal reign? Were youaware at the time that this might be a dangerous thing to do, giventhat critics are usually quite sceptical of male groups fronted by agirl, especially one so young?
Hayley: I grew up singing. When I moved to Nashville, I found a cover band who were looking for a vocalist soI tried out and it worked. So I started singing for them and then when I met [what was to become] the rest of
Paramore, they were looking for a singer. They were edgy about the whole female thing as they’d never donethat before but we’re really good friends so when I started writing for them, it just kinda worked out.
Q. Tell us of your evolvement and involvement with Fueled ByRamen, leading to that ultimate contract.
Hayley: We had managers in Nashville and they had friends out in Orlando that were managers and they got toknow us and wanted to manage us as well. So we ended up with a really big management team. Betweenthem, they all had connections and one of them was John at Fueled By Ramen. He got a hold of our demos andwanted to see us play. He saw us perform live and said he really wanted to put our record out, so that was that!
Q. What were your influences at the time of making your record?Being so young, do you find music that artists of your genre usuallylist in answer to this question less accessible?
Hayley: Well... obviously we were too young at the time to appreciate the rock legends that most people talkabout, so in that way yes. But I think we grew up on the newer generation of those bands – Underoath, Failure,Days Away etc. At the time of recording we were listening to a lot of The Academy Is… as we’d been giventheir record by the label.Jeremy: We’re very influenced by Slipknot!
Q. From what I’ve read, you seem quite detached from the whole “Pete Wentz protégé” notion that seems to tag most of yourlabelmates – would you agree with that and does it affect you at allto not be such a part of that movement?
Hayley: Our first ever tour was the Fueled By Ramen and Friends tour, where we played some of the datesacoustically. FOB were also on it, as well as Gym Class Heroes and The Academy Is… Fall Out Boy were reallycool to us then and always have been. We haven’t crossed paths in a while. I would say we are detached fromthat whole thing that’s going on right now with all of them, but we still respect it fully. We’re just different.
Q. How have you managed to grasp the concept of living your life onthe road, being so young?
Jeremy: There’s not a lot we can do about it, you know, this is our dream and our job mixed in one. Everythingwe do is a blast and we’ve gotten to meet a lot of cool people. Other than having to leave home, it isn’t thathard.Hayley: Today is pretty tiring. We played in LA last night and flew straight here, and now we have this show inLondon and we’ve not had any sleep! Apparently this year is going to be really busy for us – we haven’t reallyhad to deal with being non-stop on-the-go yet because our tours in the States are so frequent that they’requite laid back. In the near future I think we’re going to have to start grasping the fact that we’re not going tohave much time to relax anymore; it’s going to be pretty crazy.
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