Hey, Let's Make a Band!: The Official 5SOS Book

by 5 Seconds of Summer

  It didn’t take us long to realize that they’re genuine lads. Whenever we had some downtime on that UK tour, which was rare, we’d hang out together. One time we played football with them, but they absolutely pummeled us. We were really unfit and after halftime we were like, “No, we can’t do this, let’s quit.” We were beaten something like 10–4. Louis was probably the best one out of them – he’s a decent player.

  Another time we went paintballing. It was in this random place in the countryside and it was pouring with rain. The mud was intense. As we were running around, they had this thing called The Predator – some dude who dressed up as The Predator from the movies. It was the scariest thing ever. He would jump out from the trees. If you saw him you weren’t allowed to move otherwise he’d shoot you. That was fun times.

  One night, at the end of One Direction’s UK tour, they pulled all of us up on stage so we could do a human pyramid in front of the crowd. I was like, Holy s**t! This is nerve-racking. I had been backstage, hanging out in my thongs [sandals] and jeans and then we randomly got this call to go up. When we got up there, I was on the bottom and I was finding it really hard to keep my balance. I didn’t want to be the one who caused the whole thing to collapse. I was like, “Don’t fall over!” Somehow, we pulled it off.

  ASHTON:

  When we got to the US, the tour bus started to smell pretty bad after a while. We had one that was built to look like a 50s tour bus and Metallica had been on it before us. They’d left all their stuff in the cupboards, like their coffee and Twizzlers. We were living off the groceries they didn’t want!

  We love being on a tour bus, but sometimes the schedule would get really stressful. We weren’t really used to working so hard – the only pressure we’d had previously was getting out of bed in time to get to school and I reckon we even made that look like hard work! I had a part-time job at a video shop and that’s not tough compared to working from 8am every day till midnight – that’s a regular day for us now. But the bus felt like a little home on wheels. Even if we had a hotel to stay in, we preferred to sleep on the tour bus.

  MICHAEL:

  We get pretty close on tour. Luke even admitted to me once that he’d steal our underwear when he hadn’t got any clean ones left. He’d just go into our rooms and take it. Dude, clean your underwear!

  CALUM:

  I remember the police threatened us in Dallas because they wouldn’t let us meet the fans after the show. We were like, “We’re gonna meet them.” But they didn’t look too pleased. One of the cops said, “Hey, you’re not. And if you do, we’re gonna arrest you!” We backed down pretty quickly after that.

  LUKE:

  Our live shows were getting really tight. We were progressing. We’d come off stage and straightaway we’d be talking about the things that we were doing wrong, or the things that we thought went well. We’d be like, “How can we make this better?” We wanted to make our live show as good as it could be.

  We were a much better band at the start of the US tour – by then we knew how to work the crowd. We had only done 16 shows before playing the O2 in London, so it was a pretty intense ride, but we were trying to be a force, we wanted to show confidence and instead of being shy we had to own the stage. We had to be in charge.

  You kinda have to be a little bit cocky during shows and we found that hard at first. Since those early gigs, I think we’ve learned to involve the crowd. We move around a lot more. We didn’t do it much back when we started, but suddenly we’d become more exciting to watch. Michael was all over the place. Running around the stage was his way of keeping fit, I think.

  MICHAEL:

  I went from standing still on stage to running around like a lunatic. That’s confidence, dude. When I watched videos of our early performances I was a little bit shocked. In my mind, I’d been going pretty crazy, but when I watched myself back it just looked as if I was walking around – especially on the One Direction shows. I realized I had to imagine what the people at the back were seeing. I had to make everything bigger. We all got that. We were growing up fast and our stagecraft was starting to get better and better.

  SOME KINDA HOLIDAY

  LUKE:

  When we first heard we were going to be recording our album 5 Seconds of Summer in LA last September, we couldn’t believe it. We were a small band. I know we had fans around the world, but that was nothing compared to some of the bands we loved like Green Day or Blink-182. It was insane.

  Then we were told we’d be staying in a big house in the Hollywood Hills and we were freaked. When we got there, I’d never seen a place like it before. It was huge! The building was glass-fronted and had a pool and amazing views of the city. There was even a studio out the back where we could write and record. We wrote a lot of the album there. It was a cool place to hang out and party, too.

  Waking up every day knowing we were in LA making our first record – that was really cool. We’d written quite a few songs in London, but I think LA was where we really found the 5SOS sound.

  MICHAEL:

  I think that was the most amazing month of my life. When we walked into the house for the first time, I remember saying to our manager, “Are we in the right place? Are we actually staying here?” The first thing I did was run upstairs and claim the best bedroom! We recorded a lot of songs while we were there – “Kiss Me Kiss Me,” “Don’t Stop,” “Everything I Didn’t Say,” “She Looks So Perfect” . . .

  ASHTON:

  We hooked up with the legend of punk, record producer John Feldmann, and everything just clicked. He got who we were. In the UK everyone seemed a bit confused about us because there was no one else around who had our pop–punk sound anymore.

  John got what we did. He liked it. He knew it was about the guitars and there was a little bit of an attitude behind it, too. John had written with heavy metal bands – the heaviest of the heavy – and he makes rock music that does well on radio, too. He’d also worked with Good Charlotte, who we love.

  When John was asked to work with us, he didn’t look online. He went to see us live, and when he came backstage he said, “You guys are a band. You’re a rock band.” We were like, “Finally! Someone’s understood what we are.” We were lucky to meet him.

  CALUM:

  We recorded some cool songs in LA. I love “Disconnected.” We wrote that with Alex Gaskarth of All Time Low, who came over to work with us towards the end of the writing process. We decided to do something different and “Disconnected” became more of a drum and bass kinda song. It’s a bit slower and really melodic, and I love the lyrics. It’s one of my favorites.

  LUKE:

  Michael and Ashton had written our first proper single, “She Looks So Perfect,” but Michael hated the song at first. I remember he came back from the writing session and was like, “It was really bad today. The song wasn’t very good.” I was like, “Don’t worry, man, I’ve been there, I’ve definitely had those days.”

  MICHAEL:

  I didn’t like it at first. When I was in session with Ashton and the writer, Jake Sinclair, I was sitting there thinking, I just don’t like this song, I don’t think we’ll use it. I don’t think anyone else is going to like it.

  ASHTON:

  Jake came up with the idea because his girlfriend used to wear his T-shirt around the house. He thought there was something quite sweet and romantic about it. Then he changed the lyric to include the line “American Apparel underwear,” because it was quirky. I don’t think Michael was too sure about that. He said, “Well, we’ll have to bail on the underwear line.” I was like, “No, mate, you can’t do that – that’s the winning thing.”

  LUKE:

  They came back to play it at the house, and when I heard it I was like, “You’re f***ing kidding me – this is great!” It was just Ashton singing on it at that point. Everyone in the band was saying, “This is definitely a cool song.” Michael came around in the end. Once we’d finished it in LA to how we liked it, we were all pretty excited a
bout it.

  CALUM:

  Being in the studio was so much fun. I remember having my 18th birthday there and all the lads sent me into the recording booth. They were saying, “Sing this line, sing that line.” I wasn’t sure what was going on. I was like, “I don’t even sing this bit.” Then someone said, “Yeah, well, actually . . . we got you a stripper. Happy birthday!” It was proper funny, I was like, WTF?!

  Another time, we were in the house one night when Michael came up to me a little freaked out. He said, “Someone’s trying to get into the house!” I looked out and I could see people shining flashlights through the windows.

  I was terrified. We went to the upstairs window and we could see these guys. But I remember thinking, Why are they wearing such tight pants? Eventually, they went away, but the next day some fans were hanging around outside. They were like, “Oh, we got you some male strippers last night as a surprise.” Through all of that chaos, it’s amazing we even managed to finish 5 Seconds of Summer!

  I’m so proud of the album, though. It took us two years to write, but what’s really cool is that one of the songs, “Beside You,” is one of the first we ever wrote. It’s great that it’s survived. This is going to sound weird, but we’re my favorite band – we write the music that I love.

  LONG WAY HOME

  LUKE:

  It was time to go home. We’d been away from Australia for nearly a year, but the One Direction tour was rolling that way and we couldn’t wait to get back to see our families. It had been such a long time that we’d been away. It was weird going from that to my bedroom in Western Sydney with the old posters on the wall.

  There was such a different attitude to our band in Australia, especially at that point. We hadn’t done anything there for a while and it felt a bit like there was some negativity towards us. I guess that’s because we hadn’t released a full record there yet and we’d been away for so long. The response has been a lot better recently, though, which I’m happy about because we love where we’re from and all our fans there.

  The first thing I did when I got back was catch up with my family and our dog, Molly. I loved being at home, doing nothing. It was nice to do normal things. Of course it was a great experience doing all those crazy things with the band – making music, living in LA, touring the world – but it was so nice to have some normality, and see family and friends, to bring us back to Earth. In a sense it all still felt a bit surreal when I was away from home.

  Before too long we were back playing shows. This time it felt extra special as we had grown so much as a band and now we were back home doing gigs. We had our families down and they could see now that our band was a real thing. It felt as if we were proving to them that what we were doing was real. They hadn’t seen anything of us for ages because we’d been overseas. Hopefully they were proud and could see now that all our time spent rehearsing and saying we wanted to be in a band was worth it.

  It was really nerve-racking, though. I get the most nervous playing in front of my family – even now. I think it’s my brothers that make it quite tough. They’re builders and carpenters, and they’re quite manly – they have manly jobs. They must think what I’m doing is pretty weird.

  CALUM:

  The crowds were great in Sydney and throughout Australia. I was home for about a week and it was surreal. On tour I usually wake up and check my schedule first thing. I know I’m doing this, this, and this. When I went home I was like, “What do I do now?” I just hung out with the family and it felt so cool. My mum makes the best spaghetti.

  The funny thing was, after a day at home I was bored so I called Ashton. I should have been sick of him. I should have been sick of all those guys, but I wasn’t. I’m not sure why. I guess it’s a sign that we’re all such good friends.

  MICHAEL:

  The first time my parents saw me perform at a proper show was at the Allphones Arena in Sydney doing the One Direction thing. They’d been to loads of concerts there – like the Stones and stuff – so I felt really proud because now I was playing there! It was amazing. It was the first time they’d seen me in a year and it was great to see them dancing along to our music.

  It’s weird how you can feel the same whenever you go home, no matter how long you’ve been away for. We had two days off, and I just stayed in the house, had dinner with my parents, and went to sleep. That’s exactly what I was doing before I left. I hope stuff like that doesn’t change. I always feel it’s the younger me when I go home. It’s definitely comforting being in those surroundings when you’ve been away for so long.

  I think before we went away home seemed really boring. It sucked. But now home is the best. I appreciate it so much more.

  ASHTON:

  I was really worried that my grandparents wouldn’t like the music when they came to see us. The whole time I was thinking, Oh, I’d better not swear on stage! But in the end it was the same as when they came to their first 5SOS show, which had 200 people in the audience. They were blown away then; and they were blown away again.

  It was insane the way things had elevated. Two-and-a-half years previously we’d been in Michael’s garage with tins of paint everywhere. It was dirty, we had dusty drums and a few amps the size of a cardboard box, which sounded like crap. Then we went on to rock the Allphones Arena in Sydney. Pretty crazy for us four dudes.

  TURN THE RADIO LOUD

  MICHAEL:

  We were looking for our first single, and we needed it to be a “moment” because it was our first proper release. We wanted to blow people away. We had a meeting where we talked about potential songs and singles, and there was a moment when one of the boys said, “Let’s go with ‘She Looks So Perfect’ as the first single!” Everyone started nodding: “Do we wanna do it?” We all looked at each other and said, “Done! First single.”

  LUKE:

  It didn’t seem real, to be honest. I think it was nice to have something out finally – to have something that acted as a statement for us as a band. Honestly, I would have put out anything at that point because we had spent so long on all the touring, writing, and building the band.

  When “She Looks So Perfect” was released there were people at home I knew who were texting me. They were saying they’d heard our record in a club, or a shopping mall. It’s funny, we’d supported One Direction on a whole arena tour and did all those headline shows but nobody outside our close friends said anything about it. Then when they saw us on TV they were like, “Oh . . . my . . . god!”

  WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE 5SOS MOMENT SO FAR?

  CALUM:

  The first show we played at the Annandale Hotel was one of the best moments. Actually it was one of the best and the worst because the gig was so bad, but I remember a lot about it: getting down on one knee and saying to Ashton, “Will you join the band?” It was the first time we took group photos, too. We looked f***ing terrible, but it felt like something special.

  LUKE:

  When we went to Number 1 in the UK. That was a special moment. You can’t really beat that. We topped the charts in only a few places – Australia, Ireland, NZ – that week, but that felt like a proper event. We were in the UK at the time and I thought it was such an achievement for an Australian band. It was a big statement for us. We went into a radio station to celebrate. Then we flew to Sweden that night to do five shows in five cities. That was tough. We had to get up at five every day, but we had to go out at night to celebrate, too, so we’d go to bed at three and be up at five to do it all over again. It was pretty intense, but extremely worth it.

  MICHAEL:

  The album coming out. I was so excited for that day, when all our family could listen to it and all our fans could have it in their hands. It was the best moment. I knew it was going to be the best moment months before, because it had been such a long time in coming. We’d been making the album even before we went on the first One Direction tour in 2013.

  It’s always been about trying to make an album for us. There are songs on ther
e like “Beside You” that were written two years ago. Hopefully it’s changed people’s perception of us, so they can see we’re a proper band.

  ASHTON:

  My favorite moment is repetitive: it’s sitting behind the drums and looking out into a sea of people. It’s my favorite view of the world and it happens every day when we’re on tour.

  That’s been the best thing so far; there’s nothing better than looking out at that. It’s why I don’t get to sleep very easily on those nights. It’s impossible to come down after that madness.

  ASHTON:

  As soon as the song was released, we were looking at the charts all week. We’d heard it could be Number 1 in the midweeks and we felt lucky our fans were behind us. They really wanted us to get the Number 1 spot that week. They were awesome.

  MICHAEL:

  Duke Dumont was in the mix for Number 1 as well and every day we’d be saying, “How many has Duke Dumont sold?” We were constantly thinking, Are we still in the mix? We pushed it so hard but we wanted people to want the record because they liked it, not because we had tweeted saying, “Go get it!” if you know what I mean. I even heard “She Looks So Perfect” in Starbucks, and I was thinking, I’m in Starbucks getting a coffee and no one here knows that I’m the guy singing all those “Heys!”