UG: Avril Lavigne How She Pushed 'To Sound More Rock,' and..
Apr 2, 2022 3:00:59 GMT
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Post by Jimmyzz on Apr 2, 2022 3:00:59 GMT
Avril Lavigne Explains How She Pushed for Her Debut Album 'To Sound More Rock,' Remembers Her First Guitar
UG Exclusive: "I was so young, so I didn't totally know how to articulate myself."
UG Exclusive: "I was so young, so I didn't totally know how to articulate myself."
JustinBeckner
March 31st, 2022
March 31st, 2022
On February 25, Avril Lavigne released her seventh studio album. Titled "Love Sux," it was more of a return to the classic pop punk style of her early career days. You can read our official review at this location.
Speaking of her early career, in a recent interview with UG's Justin Beckner, Lavigne looked back on her beginnings, including her first guitar and the recording of her debut album. You can read one part of the interview below.
Speaking of her early career, in a recent interview with UG's Justin Beckner, Lavigne looked back on her beginnings, including her first guitar and the recording of her debut album. You can read one part of the interview below.
I want to take it all the way back. What was your first guitar and what were some of the first songs that you tried to learn on guitar?
Okay, so my first guitar, I don't even know what it was called. It was just called 'my dad's guitar.' He played it in high school, and it was just sitting around the house. So, I would learn how to play it on my own. It was a G chord that I learned first, and then D, and then C, and then F, so I knew four chords.
There was a time when I first started singing in church - I was like five or something. Then I started to sing at fairs and around town. Then where I was like, this isn't cool, I don't really want to sing this music, so I stopped. But then what happened was, I started to write my own little songs. So that was probably around 13 or 14, and I wrote them on my dad's guitar.
That's how that started, and I learned on my own. I did have my older brother who kind of taught me some barre chords and showed me how to play 'Fly Away' by Lenny Kravitz – that was where I learned barre chords, and then, you know, 'Time of Your Life' by Green Day, Oasis 'Wonderwall,' those are some of the first songs. I don't know how to read music, so it was all learning to play playing by ear, and I didn't take lessons.
To be honest, I don't think I've ever told anybody this… I think I kind of forgot or maybe I didn't want to tell anybody, but when I was in high school, there was a classical music class, and we learned a bit about guitars, and we used to learn to pick and stuff. I was literally so bad at that. I think partially because it was school, so I didn't pay attention. But I really did teach myself how to play. I think it's definitely something that my dad and brother were doing. It was the same with hockey, my brother was playing hockey and I wanted to play.
The music that I connected to in high school were bands like Blink 182 and the Goo Goo Dolls and Matchbox 20, so it was very guitar-driven, and of course Alanis [Morissette] and Shania [Twain] – two Canadians. When I started songwriting, I wanted it to be very guitar-driven. When I went out to make my first album, I was very young, and I had to push to be a songwriter because I think the producers I was put with were like, 'oh, here, sing our songs.' I was just like, 'I don't like any of these…' And felt really inspired to speak out and be like, 'No, I want to write'.
Then the other thing I had to really push for on my first album was for it to sound more rock. I was so young, so I didn't totally know how to articulate myself. So I would say, 'can you make it sound more like a band?' I wanted it to have more guitars, distorted guitars, and I wanted it to rock a little harder. So that was what I was pushing for, and it was a lot of work. The first six months of making my first album was shit, and it went terribly. In the end, like the last two months, I finally met people that listened to me like The Matrix's Lauren Christy and Clif Magness. They allowed me to go into a genre that I was like trying to get to, musically, production-wise.
Lauren Christy and I would write songs together, we would talk about my life and dive into that. So it was important to me from a young age to rock. That was at my core, and I wanted everything to have loud guitars - I wanted the guitars as loud as possible. That's what got me to my sound.
So when you sit down to write a song, is it typically the guitar that drives the melody and the songwriting process?
It has been guitars [driving the writing process] my whole life. Even though, my last album was before this one had a lot of piano and some guitar. So I suppose it's a bit of both. But the first three albums, everything was written on guitar, nothing was written on the piano. Then on the last three it was guitar and piano, and then this one, everything was written on the guitar, except I wrote 'Dare To Love Me' on this brand new piano at my new house, and that's a little emo ballad on this album.
There was a time when I first started singing in church - I was like five or something. Then I started to sing at fairs and around town. Then where I was like, this isn't cool, I don't really want to sing this music, so I stopped. But then what happened was, I started to write my own little songs. So that was probably around 13 or 14, and I wrote them on my dad's guitar.
That's how that started, and I learned on my own. I did have my older brother who kind of taught me some barre chords and showed me how to play 'Fly Away' by Lenny Kravitz – that was where I learned barre chords, and then, you know, 'Time of Your Life' by Green Day, Oasis 'Wonderwall,' those are some of the first songs. I don't know how to read music, so it was all learning to play playing by ear, and I didn't take lessons.
To be honest, I don't think I've ever told anybody this… I think I kind of forgot or maybe I didn't want to tell anybody, but when I was in high school, there was a classical music class, and we learned a bit about guitars, and we used to learn to pick and stuff. I was literally so bad at that. I think partially because it was school, so I didn't pay attention. But I really did teach myself how to play. I think it's definitely something that my dad and brother were doing. It was the same with hockey, my brother was playing hockey and I wanted to play.
The music that I connected to in high school were bands like Blink 182 and the Goo Goo Dolls and Matchbox 20, so it was very guitar-driven, and of course Alanis [Morissette] and Shania [Twain] – two Canadians. When I started songwriting, I wanted it to be very guitar-driven. When I went out to make my first album, I was very young, and I had to push to be a songwriter because I think the producers I was put with were like, 'oh, here, sing our songs.' I was just like, 'I don't like any of these…' And felt really inspired to speak out and be like, 'No, I want to write'.
Then the other thing I had to really push for on my first album was for it to sound more rock. I was so young, so I didn't totally know how to articulate myself. So I would say, 'can you make it sound more like a band?' I wanted it to have more guitars, distorted guitars, and I wanted it to rock a little harder. So that was what I was pushing for, and it was a lot of work. The first six months of making my first album was shit, and it went terribly. In the end, like the last two months, I finally met people that listened to me like The Matrix's Lauren Christy and Clif Magness. They allowed me to go into a genre that I was like trying to get to, musically, production-wise.
Lauren Christy and I would write songs together, we would talk about my life and dive into that. So it was important to me from a young age to rock. That was at my core, and I wanted everything to have loud guitars - I wanted the guitars as loud as possible. That's what got me to my sound.
So when you sit down to write a song, is it typically the guitar that drives the melody and the songwriting process?
It has been guitars [driving the writing process] my whole life. Even though, my last album was before this one had a lot of piano and some guitar. So I suppose it's a bit of both. But the first three albums, everything was written on guitar, nothing was written on the piano. Then on the last three it was guitar and piano, and then this one, everything was written on the guitar, except I wrote 'Dare To Love Me' on this brand new piano at my new house, and that's a little emo ballad on this album.
