Lifestyles Of The Rich & Famous

If you've watched the episode of MTV's Cribs featuring Good Charlotte guitarist Benji Madden, you'll know that he kept a tiger as a pet. Does he still have one? “Ah, no,” he hesitates. “I have to say that the pet tiger – it was a bad idea: it's not a good idea to have a pet tiger unless you are a tiger trainer.” Was there an incident? “Ah, for legal reasons I can't say. I will just tell you that it was a bad idea to have a pet tiger,” he laughs. And something that he would not repeat?

“I wouldn't repeat that, no.”

While his identical twin brother and Good Charlotte frontman Joel was a coach on The Voice Australia, Benji came on board as guest mentor. “I really enjoyed the few episodes I got to do,” he enthuses. “I mean, for me it was all fun and games. I didn't really have to do any work or anything. So that was cool, you know. I liked it.” Sounds like being an uncle. “Right, yeah. I play that role in life really well [laughs]. I can just do the fun stuff.” No nappy changes then? “No,” he responds immediately. “That one's easy. All you've gotta do is just say you don't know how and then – I have actually done that,” he remembers. “I know how to do it.”

Good Charlotte have established strong ties in Australia, which one would imagine probably results in many excruciatingly hungover, long haul flights. “Ugh, are you kidding? Every single flight home from Australia,” Madden confesses. “Over the years we've made a lotta friends there, and every night before we leave we always go out and that flight home is horrendous. It's really painful just getting through the airport and also, for some reason, like, [at] an airport people really recognise people, you know what I mean? At the airport you can see anybody. Like, you can go to a restaurant or a store or something and people will look at you and go, 'Oh, that guy looks familiar, but I dunno'. They don't even think twice. But at an airport, it's like, 'Oh, it's an airport, anyone could be here,' you know? So you're, like, you can't even talk you're just in so much pain and you also don't wanna be a bitch, so you're just like, 'Yes?' Uggghhhhhhh,” he laughs. “Literally, I've almost thrown up. You're just like, 'You don't even know how close I am to throwing up on you right now,' [laughs]. How terrible would that be?”

This question jogs Madden's memory and he shares, “One of us threw up incessantly on a plane on one of those flights one time. It was terrible. I mean, you just have to throw up in bags and shit. Oh, man, it's the worst. [Pauses] Paul [Thomas], our bass player – one day we had a signing and he threw up at the signing at the table [laughs].”

Madden admits that during particularly gruelling tours when too many flights, TV appearances, shows and promotional obligations are scheduled in a row, “There are times when you can barely hang on.” He's also quick to outline the lifestyle benefits that accompany his chosen profession: “Listen, we never even flew on a plane until we got a record deal, so we'd never even left Maryland! Over the years there's many memories. It's priceless. I can't even imagine what my life would've been. [We've seen] so many things people don't see in their lifetimes and we wouldn't have either if I hadn't had this experience. So the best part is getting to see the world with your best friends and the fact that we get to do something we love.

“That's one of the keys to being happy in life, that I've found, is doing something that you love. Whether in your spare time or what you do for a living, if you can do something you love for a living – game over, you win: you're gonna have a happy life. If you have to spend every day doing something that you don't like, well life's maybe a little bit tougher. So the fact that we get to do something that we love is um, you know, we're really thankful for it… And we say it to each other, when no one else is around, all the time. We'll be backstage saying, 'Fuck, man! We're so lucky. This is awesome.' We still have these moments. It'll never stop.

“I can tell you that when I'm at the airport and a kid comes up to me and says, 'This song on this record is my favourite. I love that song' – I get affected by that. I love it. That's what I really, really appreciate… As far as, like, mums and dads and, you know, 14-year-old girls who don't listen to our music – I don't hate them, I don't necessarily care if they know who I am or not. But I don't feel I need to be rude to them at all. I go, 'Oh, hey! Oh, cool. Yeah, I'll take a picture with you.' But when people actually listen to the music, then they talk about something, that's what I dig. I go, 'Oh, damn, man! Someone's actually listening.' And I love it, you know?”       

Madden is equally enthusiastic about the material he's currently working on with his brother under The Madden Brothers moniker. “We thought it would be an appropriate time for us to do this record, because actually these shows that we're doin' comin' up will be the last couple of shows we do for a while,” he enlightens. “The other guys – their babies are about to be born and they all decided they wanted to be home for all the first steps and to take a little bit of time with their families… And the record is really exciting: it's kind of more how our songs start out. There's still drums, there's still production, but it's a lot more under-produced, you know? We're hoping to have a single out before the end of the year, and a record out next year, and it's really just kinda us like when we start, before it becomes us with the band.”

When it's suggested that truly great songs translate well to the barebones treatment, Madden interjects: “That's my philosophy! That's 100% my philosophy and that's the philosophy that we'll do on this record. We'll see how it all goes and how people like it, but so far what we have – I love it, I'm really excited. And we're working with Eric Valentine who we haven't worked with in about seven or eight years. He did The Young And The Hopeless and [The] Chronicles [Of Life And Death]. It's a whole new trip. I mean, I've wanted to work with him for the last eight years but the timing wasn't right and it never really lined up so it's really special to be back with him.

“I think we're gonna be able to do a lot of cool stuff on this record and, really, we're excited that the guys are down with us doing it. And I'm really excited that we're actually going to do it – it's something we've wanted to do for years but the timing just never felt right and so I hope people dig it, you know?”

Good Charlotte will be playing the following shows:

Thursday 20 September - Festival Hall, Melbourne VIC
Friday 21 September - Big Top Luna Park, Sydney NSW
Saturday 22 September - Fat As Butter, Newcastle NSW