avril-lavigne-forum.MyForum.ro ~ Avril`s Blender Interview

soo..am gasit interviul kre a aparut in blender..sh e kinda aiurea..adk o fac pe ea sa para..oricum o sa vedetzi sh voi..

Avril Lavigne: Wild Thing
Avril Lavigne is now happily married. But does that mean she can't still have fun? Pour yourself a whiskey — make it a dublu — and find out…

By Michael Joseph Cross

Blender, June 2007

It seemed like a great idea. Blender would meet Avril Lavigne for lunch at L.A.’s legendary Chateau Marmont hotel, get her stinkin’ drunk, swap underwear, go skinnydipping and take notes while she told us her dirty secrets. Since she’s a rock brat at heart, we figured she’d be inspired by an afternoon at the mecca of rock & roll misbehavior. This is where Led Zeppelin rode motorcycles through the lobby, Jim Morrison used up the eighth of his nine lives jumping off the roof of a poolside cabana and, most recently, Lindsay Lohan lived out a chemically enhanced version of every girl’s Eloise fantasy. Considering that the 22–year–old Lavigne is Canadian (hence: alkie — in a good way!) and recently married (to Sum 41 frontman, Deryck Whibley), but surely still in close touch with her inner juvenile delinquent, the plan seemed like a lock.
When she shows up, with personal assistant and a couple of band members in tow, we see immediately that it’s not gonna be that easy. A half–smile curdles her upper lip as if someone told her that when earthlings meet, this is what they do. To help warm her up, we say we’re running a tab, so drink and be merry.
Lavigne, whose Volcom hoodie and four–inch Stuart Weitzman heels suggest a PTA mom’s idea of how to dress like a rebellious rocker, primly answers, “I’ll have water; I’m driving.”
But, we say, rock & roll! … And stuff like that.
Ignoring us, casting her Bermuda Triangle–blue eyes around the garden, she says, “Didn’t somebody die here or something?”
“John Belushi,” we say.
Her pause lasts so long we start counting dust motes in the air. She says, “That’s right.”
Maybe if we talk up the guys in the band … What’s Avril like on the road? Does she share a dressing room with the boys? Is she a towel–snapper?
“A what?” she asks.
Everybody’s quiet. Finally, pleadingly, her guitarist says, “You know,” and defines “towel–snapper” with such diplomacy you want to get that boy a job at the United Nations.
Beat. Beat. Beat. Then: “Oh.”
Wondering if she can smell our flop sweat, we pull out the stops: C’mon, tell us some road stories! Sex! Drugs!
“I’ve never done drugs,” she huffs. “I would never do drugs; nobody in our group of friends does drugs. I don’t approve of that at all.”
Then she puts on her sunglasses.
In her short career, Avril Lavigne has made more powerful men than Blender sweat bullets. Since her debut album — Let Go, released in 2002, when she was 17 — she has been marketed as a ballsy prodigy–in–charge, staunchly bending no less a power than Arista’s then chief executive L.A. Reid to her will. As legend has it, this small–town Christian–high–school dropout from Napanee, Ontario, spurned execs’ attempts to soften her rough edges and insisted on her skater–girl sound and necktie–and–tank–top style. They wanted Britney; she gave them Billie Joe Armstrong in a training bra.

Some have challenged this narrative. Both her former manager, whom she fired after they worked together on her bull’s–eye–hit first single, “Complicated,” and the Matrix, who produced and cowrote much of Let Go, suggest that Lavigne’s claims of self–creation were exaggerated. Haters dismissed her brand of cool as co–opted, citing the species distinction between punk and mall rat, and trounced contemptuously when Lavigne, announcing Grammy nominees in 2003, pronounced David Bowie’s last name as if it rhymed with Howie Mandel’s first.

Whatever the process, however impure Lavigne’s pedigree, the payoff was indisputable: 16 million album sales, jackpot money and instant fuck–you–Mr. Suit clout. Under My Skin (2004), her darker, moody follow–up, sold half as well as Let Go (though it debuted at No. 1) and explored her vulnerable side; but in making it, Lavigne further locked down creative control, not letting her label hear a single track until the album was complete. With her new CD, The Best Damn Thing, Lavigne attained absolute sovereignty, refusing even her manager’s input until the whole thing was done. It’s her happiest work yet, and may prove the most universal in its appeal.

Determined to connect with the happy Avril, we order a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. Whether it’s the bubbly (after one glass, she concedes, “I love champagne in the middle of the day”) or satisfaction with the mini–grilling to which she’s just subjected Blender (she wanted to know, in detail, how we’ll go about researching and writing this article), Lavigne presently metamorphoses into good company, a nearly unrecognizably engaging and charismatic storyteller: exactly the kind of girl you’d like to get drunk and go skinny–dipping with.

Recalling her first New York night with her old bandmates — from tequila shots to a trashed hotel room (her left arm bears five scars from that evening’s flying glass) — Lavigne tickles words and punches them, talking with her hands, shoulders, eyebrows — finally, she even ditches the shades. The inflection is 1980s Valley Girl, the timing is 1930s wisecracking dame, and the combination will be platinum ore for the filmmaker who extracts it. (After a voice–over for the animated Over the Hedge and small parts in Fast Food Nation and The Flock, with Richard Gere, she wants to do more acting.)

Sewing up a string of old boozing stories, Lavigne declaims, “I used to drink like a motherfucker. But I’m way more mature now.” Sunlight glints off diamond rings — the biggest rock looks to be half the size of Barbie’s head–marking her engagement and subsequent 2006 marriage to fellow Canadian Whibley. (They met at the Roxy in Vancouver in 2002, the same night bouncers kicked her from the club — twice — for fighting.) These days, “I don’t drink that much,” she reiterates. “Only in moderation.”

So when’s the last time you puked?

“Last week.”

As if it did not cross her mind that her statements could be contradictory, Lavigne rushes on, laughing. With her brother and sister, who were visiting from Canada, she listened to her new album: “This is how I get when I’m drunk and listening to my own new songs: like bouncing, and like fuckin’ jumping.” Then, when most people’s voices would take some shade of self–consciousness or shame, Lavigne’s glee goes undimmed: “And then it’s like, all red wine, all over.”

The Best Damn Thing is a jumping–around record. After the gothic downtempos of Under My Skin, Lavigne says, her next album had to be “just fast and energetic, because I started realizing my favorite songs to play live are all the fast ones like ‘Sk8er Boi.’ It took a couple records for me to realize what exactly I want to do. This is exactly what I want to do.”

Evan Taubenfeld, her former guitarist and one of her best friends — he’s been with her since that first night in New York — has a different explanation of the change. “I think she grew up,” he says. “She has the fairy–tale romance, and she’s very successful. And she goes, ‘I’m really happy with my life and comfortable with myself.’ And I think she wants everyone to come along for the ride. I like Happy Fun Avril better than Sad Unhappy Avril.”

At its best, The Best Damn Thing is as sweetly, exhilaratingly intoxicating as Christmas candy canes dissolved in Red Bull spiked with Everclear. She started mixing that concoction with the title track, produced and cowritten by Butch Walker, borrowing from Cab Calloway, Billy Idol and Toni Basil’s pep–rally classic “Mickey.”

“I had this idea to do this ‘Mickey’–like song, with rapping in the verse and the bridge, and it ended up being the blueprint for the record,” Walker tells Blender, noting the similar formula of rock spunk and pop hooks — think Joan Jett with hair extensions — carrying through three of Lavigne’s tracks with Lukasz “Dr. Luke” Gottwald: “Girlfriend,” “I Wear the Pants” and “I Can Do Better.” Lavigne calls that last song her favorite on the album, moaning “Oh, my God, I was so wasted on that one!” Gottwald (who cowrote Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone”) jokes, “I hope I didn’t set up any bad habits. The first couple of days, she drank a whole bottle of Limoncello and made me drink a whole bottle of Jäger.” Walker says that one of the album’s power ballads, “When You’re Gone,” which he cowrote, was inspired by long conversations with Lavigne about “how hard it was for her when Deryck was gone and on the road. I started writing it, just knowing that it was something she’d relate to.”

Lavigne, asked about Walker’s backstory for “When You’re Gone,” looks embarrassed: “He told you that?” Though she draws a no–questions zone around their relationship, stray comments give hints about the couple’s domestic life. Lavigne thought it was hilarious when Whibley would get drunk and swim in the fountain in the front hallway of their old house. Whibley, apparently, doesn’t get too freaked out if Lavigne barfs in both the “hers and his” bathrooms in their new house. In April, they traded up from 6,900 square feet to 12,000, moving into the $9.5 million Tuscan–style Bel–Air mansion where blink–182’s Travis Barker lived while filming MTV’s Meet the Barkers.

A reliable Mr. Romance, Whibley whisked her off to Venice to propose and then back to Italy for their honeymoon, with vineyard visits to indulge their shared passion for wine. (“Like, $100 bottles to $200 bottles,” Lavigne explains.) Last September, after a birthday dinner at her favorite restaurant, Wolfgang Puck’s steakhouse CUT at the Beverly Wilshire hotel, Whibley surprised her with a party at the Hotel Bel–Air (“Jäger shots all night.” she says), which then decamped to the nightclub Hyde (where, upon leaving, Lavigne spit on paparazzi — “I don’t know what the big deal was … I’ve been spitting at the paparazzi for two years”). After stopping to hurl by the side of the road, they ended the night with some drunk scooter–driving through the gated neighborhood where they lived at the time.

Asked if there’s tension because she sells more records than he does, Lavigne coolly answers, “We’re doing different things. He’s rock; I’m pop.” Sports, however, bring out the bloodlust in her, as was revealed the day North America’s shortest celebrity couple (she claims to be five feet one but looks littler; he’s five feet four) tried to participate in the sport of giants. “Poor Deryck. We went to go play basketball one day, and I’m like, Ha! HA! YEAH! Kickin’ your ASS! And we’re trying to just play, like, Pig, or something, and he’s just looking at me like, Uhh … OK. I’m like, YEAHHH!”
When next we meet, Lavigne needs no coaxing to play the role of the happy rocker. Following a photo shoot, she lights a cigar, mixes us a couple of stiff Jack and Diet Cokes in paper cups and, open–container laws be damned, says it’s time to take a walk.

As we ramble down a stretch of South La Brea past a McDonald’s and a roach motel (“We are so ghetto right now!”), Blender broaches the subject of her boobs. The wife–beater and tie never exactly hid them, but suddenly Avril Lavigne’s sexuality is at center stage: She wears fishnets and heels in the video for “Girlfriend” (whose lyrics brag that the singer can “do it better” than the competition), and she’ll be grooving with backup dancers on next year’s tour. And then there’s the Blender cover photo. On the sidewalk, we ask, does she think she’s hot?

“HELL, YEAH!” she hollers, cracking up and bending over double. “What kind of a question is that? Fuck, yeah, I’m hot.”

Is it fun to play with that, or do you have mixed feelings about using sex to sell records?

“I don’t think of it that way,” she says, getting a look in her eyes like a cat that’s just been asked to come down from the refrigerator.

Direct questions are poor tactics for learning Lavigne’s views of herself. Interrogation on defining themes of her writing (in her songs, she’s often the third party, on the outside looking in; she’s acutely sensitive to deceit in romance and friendship; and many of her best lyrics are about the search for home), elicit empty stares.

“What’s weird about writing is, shit will just fly out of my mouth,” she blurts. “I don’t know where it comes from half the time.”

A more oblique approach is called for.

What’s the most Canadian thing about you?

“I like to get FUCKED! UP!” she yells. More serious: “No, it’s that I’m really low–key. I drive a jeep. Look, I just went for a walk down the sidewalk drinkin’ J.D. and smoking a fuckin’ cigar. I mean, if I was Mariah Carey or whatever — I’m not dissing her” — Lavigne non–dissingly mimes like she’s tip–toeing through some fancy–ass tulips. “I’m down to earth. I’m, like, normal. I think a lot of it comes from being small–town.”

Napanee (pop. 5,000), as Lavigne describes it, was a laboratory for stardom. “If I started doing my hair in a million braids, other girls would show up at school with their hair in a million braids. If I cut off my pants, girls would show up at school with their pants cut off.” She says she wasn’t popular, “but everybody knew who I was.”

When she was a child, Avril went to church “every Sunday until I fuckin’ moved out.” But as the expletive suggests, religious worship is no longer part of her life. Did Christianity give her anything good?

“Morals,” she answers. “Christianity teaches don’t have sex before you’re married, lying and stealing are wrong, be kind to others. I’m not gonna talk about my sex life, but I think having those morals kept me — like, you know, I didn’t slut out, is what I’m tryin’ to say.”

Meaning, she waited to have sex until she was married?

You idiot. “No.”

Asked what’s the first melody she remembers, Lavigne conjures a third–grade talent–show performance, breaking into song: “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to/Cry if I want to … ”

Did you win?

You idiot. “Of course I won.”

Lavigne made the moon shot from talent shows to Top 40, according to The Best Damn Thing and Green Day producer Rob Cavallo, because “she’s doing the thing so many kids want to do: have 100 percent confidence in themselves to break down any shyness or barriers.”

As a girl, Lavigne says, “I remember seeing an awards show on TV, and I couldn’t settle down. I went up to my room, and it was intense for me, it was like” — she caps the sentence with a pair of fiery, Lamaze–deep breaths — “It was like, I have to do this. And this has to happen now.”

To be sure, her confidence is compelling. While she’s mixing drinks, she mentions a recent Billboard cover story detailing her manager Terry McBride’s innovative marketing strategy for The Best Damn Thing (featuring foreign–language versions of “Girlfriend” and a Japanese–style Manga graphic novel). “There was this headline, AVRIL INC.AVRI?, and Terry is quoted describing a business idea, and they quote me like, Terry talks business and I stop paying attention.” She scoffs, “Whatever.”

Was the quote misleading?

“I’m very motivated and very driven,” she replies. “I’m the kind of person who doesn’t take no for an answer.”

Blender asks Lavigne to tell a story showing that trait, expecting a glimpse of how the prodigy–in–charge does business.

“I was just at this hotel in London,” she says. “And I call down to order Malibu bay breezes for me and my friend at three in the morning. They’re like, ‘We don’t have that.’ I hang up and call again, hoping to get a different guy. “I’m like, ‘Hi, I’d like to order a drink: Malibu bay breezes.’ They’re like, ‘We don’t have that.’ I’m like, ‘Yes you do: It’s Malibu rum, cranberry juice … ’ And then I lied to him. I go, ‘I had one already at the bar tonight. You have the stuff.’ I hung up.”

Lavigne’s fierce confidence may fall short of profound ambition; and while no one could claim that her story, or her music, reveals the secret of life, it would be hard to deny that, in her way, she lays a plausible claim to one good little piece of it. She ends in victory: “Two minutes later, they bring me up two Malibu bay breezes. I don’t take no for an answer.”

btw..am postat sh toate pozele de la photoshoot`ul pt blender.. http://www.avril-lavigne-forum.myforum.ro/aici-vp1112.html#1112