August 8th 2002

The boys are back - not that they have ever left. Having spent the summer on the Vans Warped Tour, Good Charlotte is poised for the release of their sophomore effort The Young and the Hopeless. After pulling double duty with the Warped Tour and hosting MTV's All Things Rock from the road, Good Charlotte is ready to take the United States by storm.

Earplugsrequired.com caught up with guitarist Billy at the "hometown" stop on this Summer's Warped Tour for a little briefing on what has been going on in the lives of Good Charlotte.

Billy: October 1st is the date. The Young and the Hopeless it is called and first single is "Lifestyles of the Rich and the Famous" which I know HFS started playing a little early. The 13th is when we are officially going out with it and I know HFS had, actually 7 stations have started playing it early which is more than we've ever gotten before so it's really exciting.

ER: It's always good for your home station to start playing it.
Billy: Definitely. It's awesome.

ER: Which other stations are playing it right now?
Billy: Y100 in Philly, an Atlanta station, Denver, Portland Oregon, a couple of random places.

ER: So pretty major markets. You've got 99x
Billy: In Atlanta
ER: HFS
Billy: We're doing all right so far. Better than normal so it's cool with me.

ER: With the first record you really blew up - at least in our area.
Billy: Yep around here we definitely went from a local band to actually getting on the radio a whole lot like on HFS and Y100 and stuff which is cool but we never really got a song - like a couple of stations here and there like this KNRK in Portland, Oregon has been really good. 104 in Hartford Connecticut has been really good to us.

ER: They are really good at pushing music there.
Billy: There are a couple of like random stations that have always been really good to us but for the most part we never have really been able to get one single all across the US. It's okay because I think for the most part our fans are more about coming to see the live show than going to see . . . because obviously, if we can have kids showing up at our shows with no song on the radio, it's got to be word of mouth or at least they have seen us before and keep coming back.

ER: Now I had read that you had shot the video.
Billy: Yep. We did a video in California.

ER: So what's the video about.
Billy: It's really cool.

ER: Are you allowed to tell me?
Billy: Yeah I can tell you. I'll give you a brief one. It's like the song "Lifestyles of the Rich and the Famous" it's kind of about rich people complaining about money. So we kinda sort of did a Robin Hood kind of thing you know where we break into the rich people's houses. You don't actually see us breaking in. It's just like us inside of a mansion and cop lights all surrounding and we end up getting arrested and we go to jail and they are interrogating us in a room. Then we go to court; we're testifying against all these like different celebrities and celebrity impersonators, like we are in court against some people. And then at the end they kind of go to the jury and it's like a bunch of kids in mohawks and stuff and we get off and then we go out of the court room and it cuts back to us playing a lot in the video. It came out really good.

ER: And when is that going to be added?
Billy: I don't really know. I know it goes to radio on the 13th and whether it's going to MTV right away who knows. Sometime hopefully late August. We'll see what happens.

ER: Now the show at HFS (Hfstival 2002) was taped for a DVD.
Billy: Yeah we are trying to compile like a whole bunch of footage of the past couple of years but we want a like real professional type of quality so we came and just had a camera crew like just follow us around at hfstival all day and no release date or anything yet for that. We're still compliling stuff; it's not even realy close to done.

ER: The NFL guys were filming.
Billy: Yeah I don't know how that happened. Our record label was like we are getting a film crew an NFL film crew. We've seen it and it looks pretty cool. It looks really good.

ER: Very cool. How's Warped tour going? You've done Warped tour before.
Billy: I'm not really sure what's been happening this year but it's just really good. Like last year we played it and the shows were good and you know we came and did our own tour and those shows were good and we took like five months off like did a new record and we we're like " man I hope our fans aren't like bored and they've kind of faded away" We started Warped Tour and the crowds are like three times as big and we're like "what's going on?" I'm not sure, but I love it! Like we keep walking in the bus every day after the show going like "Wow! This feels really good."

ER: So crowds are 3 times as big, how many shows on Warped equals how many album sales?
Billy: Hopefully if they all like this enough they get this record. That's all right with me, we'll see if that happens. It's just been like a , our spirits are higher than they ever have been. Things have always been like this and it seems like we have just went to the next level and we are starting slowly from the next level. Which is a really good thing. Not really sure what level we are on but whatever we are, we are happy right now, so it's okay.

ER: What's going to happen after Warped?
Billy: After Warped we are going to go to Europe for the first time. A week in Europe, we are going to do some shows with Our Lady Peace over there which is pretty cool. We've never been there yet and then we are going to do a headline tour through October and November, a full US one. That's still being booked, I'm not really sure. And then we are probably going to go to Australia after that.