Maroon 5 finds its focus on "Hands All Over"
As evidenced by its slew of hits and awards, Maroon 5 clearly has a knack for creating catchy pop tunes. Keyboardist Jesse Carmichael said the band's creative process is pretty simple.
"Adam [Levine, singer/songwriter] really makes sure his life is in shambles to some extent so he has an inspiration for lyrics," Carmichael told SoundSpike with a laugh. "Then we take all the best pieces of all those parts we've written and put them together to make the best songs possible."
The latest result is "Hands All Over," which hits stores Sept. 21. The first single, "Misery," blends the classic Maroon 5 sound with the steady hand of famed producer Mutt Lange (AC/DC, Def Leppard). Carmichael -- who is joined in the band by bassist Mickey Madden, guitarist James Valentine and drummer Matt Flynn -- said Maroon 5 was much more focused on its mission this time around.
"Our second record-making experience [with 2007's 'It Won't Be Soon Before Long'] was a bit more disjointed than this one," Carmichael said. "We didn't really know exactly what we wanted. We were playing around with different styles. We were reacting to the whole weirdness of the first album [2002's 'Songs About Jane'] being successful."
Maroon 5 began writing the songs that appear on "Hands All Over" after winding down from a world tour in support of "It Won't Be Soon Before Long." Several months later, the band received a phone call from knob-turner Lange, who had heard Maroon 5 was beginning to write a new album, and expressed an interest in producing it. So, the band "slowed down for a second" and headed to Switzerland to work with Lange.
"Everybody just sort of said, 'What's the difference between making the first record and the second record?'" Carmichael recalled. "We realized when we made the second record, we weren't making music for anybody, really. We were making music that we really liked. It was kind of weird music. It didn't sound like a lot of other things. It happened spontaneously. We got into that mindset of being really free and pure with our musical impulses and letting whatever happened come out of us.
"The record's kind of diverse because of that. I think there are a lot of different styles of music on this new record. It does sound like our first record meets our second record."
Working with Lange was fascinating, Carmichael said. It was a learning experience for him and his Maroon 5 bandmates.
"He's a sonic mastermind," he said. "His ears are so sensitive to sound. He hears things that most people can't hear. I think it's so great to work with someone like that. They get into the nuances of recording that I like so much. It's a real science, combining sounds together to make something that sounds really good. You can't just get really good sounds and put them together. You have to get the right combination of frequencies. It's all about physics and the actual wavelength of each sound and how they come together and how they complement each other. Mutt's really interesting in that sense because he has a lot of experience making records that sound really good. They're full-spectrum records: The low end is completely full and tied to the middle and the high end, so it's really pleasing to listen to it. That's a really unique artwork."
The most important thing they learned from Lange was to realize that their music will be heard worldwide, something that a lot of bands take for granted.
"Especially in this day and age, and the world being as connected as it is, you have to really think of everyone in the world to some extent when you're making this music, and the melodies and chord progressions are things that will reach people no matter what language they speak," Carmichael said. "He was very internationally minded. And that was a really nice mindset to be in, because we're going to be traveling around the whole world for the next two years. The album's going to go all around the world. We really want it to connect with as many people as possible."
The album's title, "Hands All Over," is based on a lyric that Levine wrote for the collection.
"That lyric just came to him that day while he was driving around," he said. "It had something to do with him breaking up with his girlfriend at the time and this feeling of desperation that he wanted to just stop analyzing the situation and stop talking about it. So the phrase 'hands all over' came to mind. That's what the song is all about: Abandoning your logical mind for a second. It sounded like it had a good ring for the title. Who knows what people will think of it? It has a lot of different connotations. I think it's pretty open to interpretation."
On its summer tour, Maroon 5 will debut about five tracks from "Hands All Over" and roll out a few more after the album is released.
"I think it's going to be fun," he said of the jaunt. "I think we're better than we've ever been as musicians and as people and as friends. The whole process is a continuous process of trying to make things better all the time, trying to make the tour more environmentally friendly, trying to spread as much goodwill as possible to all the cities we go to around the world, spread as much good energy around in the actual shows themselves -- and have a good time."
