Autopilot Off
Interview with guitarist Chris Hughes
Issue 3, Winter/Spring 2004
S&S: What were some highlights of your tour with AFI and Poison The Well?
Chris: You know, the simple ones, the one's you'd expect. The shows were obviously huge shows. [They were] so fun. AFI just couldn't have been nicer to us. Those guys are so cool and they're such regular guys. I think a lot people think that those guys are really weird and really mysterious. They're just into their art. They're definitely very artistic, but no way are those guys strange or anything. At least Davey and the drummer, Adam, are some of the most regular, down-to-earth guys you'll ever meet. We all hung out a lot at the shows and those guys are probably the best band to be on tour with. You get excited to see them every night and they're fun. They just made is a really great time. I think one of the big surprises was that we kind of cross into a lot of different genres. We never really fit into any one, which is really good, but at the same time, it can be really strange. You never really know what to expect from certain crowds. Some are a bit easier than others because [they] will be a little bit open minded. We're more of a pop band than AFI is. So, if we do more of a pop tour we know that if the crowd doesn't like you, they're not going to throw shit at you or yell. That's never happened to us luckily. We've done some heavy stuff like Snapcase and Sick Of It All and Boy Sets Fire. So, we were like, "Well, we'll see," because AFI fans are really dedicated and hopefully they'll be into us. But every night, people were really, really stoked. [They were] going crazy, loving it, coming and hanging out at the merch table afterwards. Everybody was wearing Autopilot Off shirts, so it was really fun. It was cool that their fans were really stoked on us, which we were really happy about. [It was] definitely a bit of a challenge, but we came out on top so we were psyched.
S&S: Do you ever miss playing small legion shows back home or are you hooked on big tours?
Chris: You know what's kind of funny? The only two shows that are really great are the really, really massive shows where you have a huge stage and there's like four thousand people going nuts. Because I'll tell you what, there's nothing worse than four thousand people standing still. That shit sucks. When all those people are going crazy and people are singing along it's awesome. The other great show is the show where you're right on the ground. All of your gear is on the ground and the fans are on the ground, people are knocking the mic stands over and they're right in your face. Those two kinds of things are very similar; they're both the same level of excitement. Yeah, I miss them. We don't get to do as many of those as we used to. Us and Poison The Well did a show in Boise, Idaho was like that. We played and literally I couldn't step forward because I would have hit someone in the crowd and I couldn't step back because I would have hit Phil's drums. We just all had to stand still and play, which was weird, but it was cool because everybody was right in your face. It was definitely a hardcore crowd. When we were playing, people were going nuts. It was cool. So, I definitely miss those.
S&S: What do you guys do while backstage?
Chris: I guess it sounds kind of cheesy, but we always were into it, and the only other band that we've ever met that's into it, and maybe I shouldn't give it away, but is AFI [and we're into] lifting weights. Two of the guys in AFI are really into lifting weights, so we were doing that on that tour a lot, just to stay in shape. Being on tour, it's so bad. You can get out of shape so fast and get fat and miserable, [while] eating crap and drinking. It's really bad, so we like to do a little bit of balance. So, we try to exercise a little bit. We listen to music. I play guitar a bunch backstage. We try to spend actually as little time backstage as possible. We'll stay backstage until we play, and then after we play, we usually go out into the crowd and hang out until the show's over. Backstage is just lame. You see all the same people all day long. You're there for 4 or 5 hours before the show even starts. So, you're kind of over it backstage by the time the show is going on.
S&S: Yeah, and that's so cool that you have that connection with the crowd afterwards.
Chris: You got to. There's no reason that you shouldn't be there. Just because you play music, that doesn't mean that you're special. You do something that's cool and it's definitely special, but without fans, it's like, "Big deal". The fans are the reason that the whole thing exists. It's fun because then you get people's opinions and you kind of get ideas. If you're sitting backstage by yourselves all the time, you kind of get inside a box. Then, you're going to be out of the loop really fast. I think it's important to know what people are thinking. I like to people watch, too. It's fun. I remember when I went to go see Green Day ten years ago in New York. I was just sitting on the side [at Irving Plaza], and I had never seen them and their album never had pictures of them in it before Dookie or anything. So, I was just hanging out and this guy came out and sat next to me. We talked for a while and he was just talking about music or whatever. He was a really cool dude and we talked for maybe 15 minutes and he went backstage. It was Billie Joe. I didn't even know, because I had never seen them before and their first two albums didn't have any photos or anything really. So, I didn't know what the guy looked like. They didn't have a video out or anything. That was really cool that he came out and didn't say "Hey, I'm in a band". He just was bullshiting and talking about music and talking about the people at the show and everything. We try to do that, too. That was kind of inspiring.
S&S: What do you think about when you're on stage? Or are you just rocking out and in the moment?
Chris: I'm in the moment. Ninety-five percent of the time, I'm in the moment. When I'm on stage, I definitely like to look into the crowd and see who's out there and see if people are into it, if they're bored, and what they're feeling. You can usually tell by people's faces what they're feeling. So, I spend a lot of time looking at the crowd and the other time just getting into the music. Those few times that I let my mind wander is usually when I fuck up (laughter), and then I gotta get back into it and say, "What the hell are you doing?" It happens a few times.
S&S: What can you tell me about "Make A Sound"? Is it headed in the same musical direction that you guys have had?
Chris: I think that it's always so hard to really say. I mean, every band does the cliched, "It's the progression of our band." No one's going to say, "We took a step backwards making this record", even if a lot of bands have. They'll never say it. What we tired to do is, rather than just writing songs [and saying] "Alright, here's some good songs, and here's some other stuff", our goal going into it was [that] we wanted to make an album. To me, great albums are not just one huge song and some other stuff and you're like, "I really like that song, but I don't like that one", and you're skipping around on an album. [We said] let's try to do some stuff that has some variation. Let's have other people come in and collaborate with us. Let's do a bunch of different stuff and make it interesting so that maybe someone hears one song and they're like, "That's pretty cool." Then, they hear the album and they're like, "Now, I see. It all kind of makes sense." We did that. We threw in some variation. There's fast stuff, there's slow stuff, there's just vocals and guitar, there's stuff we did with Tim Armstrong from Rancid. There's a bunch of crazy stuff on the record. We're really, really happy with it, and because we've been a band for a long time [and] we've played together for a long time, I think we were definitely mature enough to finally make the right record. We've always been experimenting [and] finding our own sound. The EP definitely kind of hit on what we can do. We were like, "Alright, now we know we can do the straight-ahead punk rock songs. Let's try to experiment a little bit." But when you hear it, nothing's weird. You're not gonna be like, "Oh wow, what the hell are these guys doing?" It's all straight-ahead, but it's gonna flow, I think, as an album. If you hear one song, you're not hearing what the album sounds like. You have to sit and listen to the whole thing and get the whole vibe of what it's all about. Hopefully, people will do that. We'll see. Everybody that's heard it has been really into it, from the people at the record label to our friends, to people from other bands. When Tim from Rancid had heard it, we were kind of finished with it and he had gotten a copy of it from somebody. He called us up and we didn't know this guy at all. He wasn't like a friend and he called us up. He just called us out of the blue and he was like, "This is awesome. I love you guys' record." We were really stoked. We were like, "Thanks, man." He was like, "I want to write some songs with you guys just for whatever", not necessarily even for us. Tim collaborates with a few people; he just did some stuff with Pink. He's just really into writing songs. So, we went and worked with him and [thought], "Alright, maybe we'll do some stuff for The Transplants", or whatever, just kind of write. We wound up doing two songs that Chris Johnson [from Autopilot Off] did the majority of the work on, and Tim got some ideas in there and I played a little bit of guitar. We finished and we were like, "What do you want to do with these?" and Tim was like, "I feel like you guys did a lot of work. You guys can keep them." So, we kept them and Tim sang on some of them and Matt from Rancid played bass on some of it. It was cool. We wound up re-recording the stuff for the album, but on the demos and everything, some of the guys from Rancid are playing on it. So, it's cool to have that. I don't know if that stuff will ever see the light of day, but for us to have songs, us and Rancid playing together on a record, is pretty cool. It was inspiring. We were like, "Wow, Tim's into it. Hopefully a lot of other people will be too."
S&S: What band or musician would you like to record a song with?
Chris: That's a really good question. You know what would be awesome? What I would love to [have] happen would be [that] we would do a song fully, the way we always do it - Autopilot Off writes it [and] it's done. Then, [we would] give it to somebody else and say, "You add something here." What I would really love to do, would be to do that with the Edge from U2. [I'd like to] give him one of our songs and let him layer and all that great guitar stuff that he can always do, that no one else really does. He's kind of the master of that stuff: All the cool guitar things that aren't solos. There are so few solos in U2 songs, [but] there's great guitar stuff going on the whole time, he's not trying to have the spotlight on him. So that would be cool someday to just give him a song and say, "Alright. Now you go record guitars on it and give it back to us. That would be pretty fun. We tried to do that on this record not with the Edge, but we invited people we knew and said like, "If you're going to be near the studio, come down and play." We let anybody play on our record. [We'd tell them to] come in and play guitar and if they had a cool idea...We weren't doing auditions off the street, but we were out in California, and we were like, "If you want to come in and hang out and play guitar, do it, and if it's cool, we'll use it on our record." The songs were written; these were just extra little things. Guys who worked in the studio were playing along in between takes, and if someone had something cool, we were like, "Keep it." The guy that produced our record [was] jamming and we let him do something and the engineer played something. [It] was more to create the moment and make it fun and exciting. When you're writing music [and] it starts going well, it starts to really snowball and get bigger and bigger. If everyone in the room is excited [and] somebody has an idea, you gotta let them do it. Whatever is going to make the song great and get everyone in the room excited, hopefully that will translate when people hear it.
S&S: What is your favorite song to play?
Chris: I guess "Wide Awake" from the EP right now is my favorite one to play, because it's one [that] you can really move around on and I think it's one that people that don't know us get into it right away, because it's kind of got the...it's a bit heavier, so people will kind of know what to do when it's going on, as far as the crowd moving and getting into it. But I'm into all of them. I have fun playing it, playing whatever. Of our covers EP that we did, the thing that we were just kind of giving away, we do a Quicksand song, and we never play covers live, ever. We never learned any covers, never played any, or anything, and this was the first time ever. We were playing that Quicksand song live, and that's actually pretty fun, because you're playing somebody else's song so it's a different mentality when you're up there doing it. It's not so structured. When it's your own song, you try to keep to what the song is, but when you're doing someone else's song, you kind of have that free range to just kind of do whatever you want. So, that's been fun, too, you know, to just throw a little variation in there and do something different.
S&S: What was your worst hotel experience?
Chris: I've had so many. Well, there was one. This one is really stupid. We were staying in Washington a few years ago, and the club that we played...the promoter had set us up to go to this hotel, and we aren't really big on staying in downtown places and shit gets crazy. We like staying in a Super 8 or something. We like shit to be clean. We're not trying to spend twenty dollars on a hotel room and have bugs crawl all over us and shit, 'cause we've done that and it sucks. So, we won't stay in the one-hundred dollar hotel downtown either. We try to find a happy medium. So, this guy put us up in this hotel, and we were like, "Alright. Well, he's paying for it, it'll be whatever." The place is kind of a shit-hole. We didn't want to be rude, so we were like, "This is cool." We get to the hotel and we start bringing our bags in, and the guy that owns the hotel comes down and starts freaking out on us, and he's like, "You guys are making too much noise, you got to get in your room." And we were like, "We got to take our bags in..." And he was like, "No, no, no...Go to your rooms! Get in your rooms!" And we were like, "What the f*ck are you talking about? We have to bring our luggage in." And he was like, "That's it, I'm calling the cops." It happened that fast. Then, Rob, our bass player, freaked out, and was like, "Go ahead, call the f*cking cops" and got in his face. Then, five cop cars came, and [they] knocked on our door for no reason. We had no where to go, and we were yelling at the guy. Needless to say, we luckily had the guy's phone number, and he got prank phone calls from us for a solid year. So, that was cool, but that's just one of them. There's always stupid shit going on. Something in the parking lot, or bugs, or the same old routine shit. The main thing, when you're staying anywhere when you're a band, is stay somewhere safe. The worst thing, that hasn't happened to us yet, knock on wood, is to go outside and all your shit's gone. We've had stuff stolen from us before, but just here and there things. At a show, we've lost guitars and stuff, because places are sketchy, but to lose everything...I know that I've gotten sick to my stomach when people I know had it happen to them. So, I can't imagine what it would be like for it to happen to us, so we try to be really careful where we stay. [We] try to stay somewhere safe.
S&S: What are you doing for Halloween this year?
Chris: I'm actually going to Miami to do the mixes on these two songs that we did with Tim Armstrong. Me and the other Chris are going down to Florida to oversee the mixes and all that. Then, that'll be done, and then hopefully we'll be back in time to do the Halloween scene - some trick or treating. I got over my brother's place. He sort of lives in a condo, and all the kids come and trick or treat, so it's fun. The kids are so stoked and they love candy, and it's always really funny. They say funny shit, so we just go and hang out and people come trick or treating and we just check them out. Sounds pretty corny, but it's a good time. I'm not a big get-dressed-for-Halloween guy, but I like when other people do it. So, I just hang out and watch everybody.
S&S: What do you think about Arnold becoming the governor of California?
Chris: Best thing ever. And I'll tell you why, and I know it goes against what most people think. Fat Mike sent a great e-mail out from the Fat Records website. We know Fat Mike a little bit, and he's a super smart guy. Super smart guy. He sent out a really funny thing about Arnold being governor and what a bad idea it was, and he made a ton of good points. He'd probably think I'm an idiot for what I'm going to say and I'm going to tell him the next time I see him, but I'm going to say it anyway: I think he's really the best choice. And I'll tell you why; there are so many politicians that are...well, there are some good ones. You can't let one bad apple ruin the bunch, but so many of these guys are so unqualified for the job...to get elected, you almost have to be an actor. You need that public persona. People don't elect people for their views or what they stand for, they elect people because they like them or don't like them. Arnold got elected because people love Arnold. Not because he made a lot of good points, or made sense; he didn't say anything he was going to do. He said he was going to make California better, which is a great idea, but how he's going to do it remains to be seen. But, with so many guys that are so corrupt and so evil and are there for their own personal reasons, I think Arnold's great because he doesn't have the three main temptations that almost every politician has. Arnold doesn't want to be famous...he already is. He doesn't want the money...he already has it. And he doesn't want to be president, because he can't be because he wasn't born in the United States. Those are three things that every politician [has.] As they grow and become bigger and more well known, they have those temptations. You say, "Are they doing this for the fame? Do they want their name to be really well known? Do they want to be a famous politician? Do these guys want to be rich?" Which is why a lot of these guys get kickbacks and do a ton of illegal shit to get loaded. And the third thing is, if you elect someone governor, are they going to stay, or are they going to bail and become president and leave your state hanging? He really has none of those temptations. So, unless he's the biggest egomaniac in the world and wants to be an actor and a politician and all this business, I think he'll make an attempt to do a good job. And who's going to try to give Arnold a kickback? He doesn't need it. He's a multimillionaire. And it's going to be funny. At least when I watch Conan O'Brien they'll be doing a lot of Arnold shit. But I think he's going to do a good job. He lives in California, and the guy who was already there who was elected was doing a horrible job. So, what's the difference?
S&S: How many letters are in California?
Chris: In the word? ...i-f-o-r-i-n-a...10?
S&S: Name a celebrity you'd like to date.
Chris: Mariah Carey. Everyone says she's nuts or whatever, but I say, "It's a fantasy, let me have it." And, she's on the same label as us now. Which gets me a little bit closer...but I've already put the word out, and everyone says I have no shot.
S&S: What is your favorite flavor lollipop?
Chris: I'm not a big candy guy, but if I'm going to eat a lollipop, I eat a root beer Dumdum. If I eat a ton of sugary stuff, it stats killing my stomach. But Dumdums are nice. They're small, you get the flavor, and you're done. You don't overdo it with Dumdums. You know what? I take it all back. Scratch it all. Life Saver's lollipops...the strawberry and banana Life Saver's lollipops. Life Saver's makes the best lollipops. The flavor stays with you forever after you're done; on your tongue and your lips. You can taste it for a week.
S&S: What is your New Year's resolution?
Chris: I try to never do New Year's resolutions, because I feel that if you have to change something, you should do it now. If you feel, "You know what, I need to start doing this," you can't wait for tomorrow. You've got to start now. So, I never really do them, but, I guess, looking into the future, it would be...I want to try to work harder than this year. I always try to work harder than I did the previous year. And...I'm going to relax more, at the same time. That make sense? That you can do both of those? It's all about the balance.
S&S: I have to tell you, this is definitely one of the best interviews I've ever done.
Chris: Thanks, Elyse.