(Image credit: Future)
AFI were encouraged to collaborate with rap megastar 50 Cent in the mid-2000s.
Talking in the new issue of Metal Hammer, the Platinum-selling goth/punk band’s singer Davey Havok says that their A&R suggested the idea as a way to get the attention of Jimmy Iovine, the head of their then-label.
“We had signed to Dreamworks, but they sold it to Interscope. Bummer,” Havok recalls.
“Our A&R guy was hellbent on trying to get Jimmy Iovine – who had expressly claimed in the press that rock is dead – to pay attention to AFI, and so it was suggested that we collab with Jimmy’s great love at the time, which was 50 Cent.”
He adds: “I have nothing against 50 Cent, but what does that even mean?!”
Havok claims that this wasn’t the only desperate idea around that time, despite the band having just made their commercial breakthrough with their 2003 Dreamworks debut Sing The Sorrow.
“Even worse was this was the era when ringtones were the new technology craze,” he continues. “I love this man [their then-A&R] and I still see him once a month at the least, but this motherfucker says to me, ‘What if you were to be the first band to write a ringtone album?’”
AFI, formed by Havok and drummer Adam Carson in 1991, signed to Dreamworks in 2002. Sing The Sorrow lifted them from the punk underground to the American mainstream, reaching number five on the Billboard 200 charts before going Platinum in the US and Canada and Gold in Australia.
Their 2006 album, Decemberunderground, consolidated their success, topping the Billboard chart and going Platinum in the US, Canada and Australia. The album’s lead single, Miss Murder, was a radio hit that reached number 24 on the Billboard Hot 100. However, in the Hammer interview, Havok says, “It breaks my heart that Miss Murder will always represent us.”
“I don’t dislike Miss Murder, it’s a pretty good song!” he explains. “But never, even when we wrote it, did I think that it was the greatest song. I even voted to not put it on the record, but that experience really proved to me that it was all about marketing, because everything after Decemberunderground is better than Decemberunderground. I have campaigned to keep it off the setlist and recently succeeded.”
AFI are now signed to Boston independent label Run For Cover and released their 12th album, Silver Bleeds The Black Sun…, in October. It received positive reviews, including four-and-a-half stars from Metal Hammer’s Stephen Hill, who called it “their best album in over a decade”.
AFI will tour Europe next month and play their first UK shows since 2017. From September to November, they’ll play across North America. See dates and get tickets via their website.
Read the full Havok interview in the new issue of Hammer. It features electro-metal party-starters Electric Callboy on the cover, as well as an interview with super-producer Ross Robinson about 25 years of Slipknot’s Iowa and our report back from an escape room with zombie-metal sensations Dominum. Order your copy now and get it delivered directly to your door.
(Image credit: Future)
(LouderSound)
Leave a Reply