MUSIC INTERVIEW
SPARTA
Back From The Brink
BY JOHN B. MOORE
S
PARTA’S LATEST RECORD NEARLY DIDN’T happen. After breaking off with their record label, aborting their tour halfway into it and the defection of guitarist Paul Hinojos (who left to rejoin his former At the Drive In bandmates in Mars Volta), Sparta was close to slamming the lid shut. But after a much-needed break, some internal reflection and the addition of new guitarist Keeley Davis, they decided to give it another shot, soldiered on and ended up turning in the strongest record of their critically acclaimed career. Founding member and drummer Tony Hajjar (who also played in At The Drive In before that group splintered off into Sparta and Mars Volta) talked recently about the band’s near demise and the 16minute movie they created last year, which tells the story of his family fleeing Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War.
How does Threes compare to Sparta’s first two records? I think it’s our first album that we didn’t rush. And that’s not really because of anyone else, but because of ourselves. It’s the way we’ve always been. It was the tour, go home and start writing, record and tour again cycle. Since a lot of things happened to us in 2005, it made us slow down because we weren’t even sure if we were still going to be a band – from leaving Geffen to losing a member to leaving a tour – it was a lot of stuff. Anything that could possibly lead to breaking up a band almost happened to us. But we took the right breaks and it just worked out great and I think the big difference was that time and we got to work on the songs three or four times, through three or four versions, and the time let the songs breathe a bit.
CNN and you see dead people on the floor, you can’t just turn off the TV because you might know those people. You need to know that there are other people that are affected by this that might live next to you. That was one of the big points of the film. Have you thought about turning this into a much longer film? Never about the same topic, to be honest. I’m done. It was very difficult to do the film because I had the label counting on me, I had the band counting on me and I had my family to please. It was really difficult, but I got so much trust from everyone. Have you been back to Lebanon since you and your family left? No, I haven’t, but I’m hoping to go back in the next couple of years. You can’t go back and just spend a week or two, you have to go back and spend a moth and when I do have that time hopefully I will. Why did you go back to Texas to write the record?
As a drummer, you could do a whole lot worse than tapping into John Bonham. Exactly. Who else should I do that with? This is your first album off Geffen. What made you decide to go with Hollywood Records? We did the first record with DreamWorks. While we were recording the next record we got the call that they had been sold to Interscope. We also heard that 40 of the 60 bands were getting dropped. We knew for sure we were getting dropped. We sold 120,000 records at that point and there were bands that had sold way more than us, but we never got that call that we were being let go. We met everyone at Interscope and played that game then all of a sudden they divided up again and we got shipped to Geffen and had to play the game of meeting everyone with Geffen. At that point our next record was ready to come out and we got lied to and crushed pretty much. They said, let’s start working on the third record and we told them we’d rather be a garage band than be on their label, so we left. I think later, one of the things that crushed us in a sense was that we felt homeless on that last one. Thank God we (left). That was one of the best things we did, leaving that label.
Was there ever a period during the break when the band got together and had a serious talk about whether or not you would break up? We kind of got back together and started writing and then we brought out Keeley. I wouldn’t really call it an audition, he just kind of came out because we had known him, and he was in really good spirits and excited to be there and we were just not in the same ballpark and we realized at that point that we should stop again. That was in May of 2005 and we decided “This guy is all happy to be here and we should be excited to be writing” and we weren’t. We knew we didn’t have the right mentality yet. So after that, we said lets try this again a few more times. All it was really about was time and really remembering how fun it was to be in a band. There was never really the big talk. It was about feeling it out and if someone wasn’t into it then it was going to be over. What did Keeley bring to the band? He total brought that freshness in and he also brought that reminder of how lucky we are. You tend to forget because you get used to things and then all of a sudden, if you let yourself, you can start complaining. That’s just horrible. We’ve never been that way and I think we were slowly going to become that and that would have been the end of our band because we’ve never been those types of people. Keeley just really helped us remember just how lucky we were. He also brought in great songwriting and a different way of doing things and he’s totally faded into how we do things. We needed that fresh start. Let’s talk about the short movie you made “Eme Nakia” that shows up on the special edition of “Threes.” Tony: Originally it was an idea I had. At kind of the worst time that the band was going through, in April of 2005, a few weeks after coming back from that tour that we had to cancel, I called everyone and said “How about for the next record we try to do some kind of short film.” Everybody was like, “Yeah that sounds good.” At that point we were a three piece, nothing was going right and I think everybody in the band was kind of giggling at me because we didn’t even know if we were going to do another record. They asked me about what and I didn’t really know. I just wanted to bring that aesthetic back, a la “The Wall.” Jim called me like 10 minutes later and said “You know, if we ever get to do a film, I think the only thing that it should be about is your life.” We had about a year to meet the right people. My cousin is a screenwriter and an actor; he’s the one that really convinced me to do it as professional as possible. That’s when we started hiring people, got a budget. Were you happy with how it turned out? I was really happy with how it turned out. I think we put everything into it that we wanted to have. It’s a family story and a political story at the same time. It’s showing people that when you’re watching
before I write my part, is listening to Led Zeppelin. I am very, very obsessed with them. It’s just one of the reasons that made me continue to play and continue reaching for more whether it’s live or in the studio. That’s pretty much all I listen to when I am creating, to be honest. I try not to listen to any music, but sometimes you need something to help you out and I’d rather listen to something that holds that kind of ground.
Have you had any problems since signing to Hollywood? Hollywood’s been very, very supportive and great to us. I have zero complaints about this label. And it’s the only label that I’ve been on that I’ve had zero complaints about.
THERE’S ALWAYS UPS AND DOWNS IN EVERY KIND OF RELATIONSHIP. OBVIOUSLY THIS IS DIFFERENT BECAUSE THERE ARE SO MANY MORE PERSONALITIES THAN IN A REGULAR RELATIONSHIP, BUT IT’S ALWAYS WORKED OUT AND WE’RE IN A REALLY GOOD PLACE RIGHT NOW.
They’re really trying to beef up their rock reputation, aren’t they? Yeah. They need us as much as we need them, if that makes any sense. It is really mutual. We needed a label that has power and money and didn’t have a lot of rock acts and they needed a band that – we’re very, very blessed and lucky to be respected and they needed that too. What made us feel really good was when we turned in the record and they were beyond pleased. It was way more than they expected. You don’t still keep in touch with any of your former band mates from At The Drive In, do you? No, not at all. What are your plans for the summer? We are actually making those plans now. We are right now on tour with mewithoutyou and Aloha and then that stops and we are touring across Canada with a Canadian band called Moneen, then we take two weeks off and fly out to Europe for a few weeks to play some festivals. We are really excited about that because we haven’t gone to Europe on this record yet.
El Paso isn’t as easy as LA to find things like a rehearsal space, but if you want to find an open space or open warehouse, that’s the place to go and we found a great warehouse and we literally drove down everything that we owned that we thought we could be creative with– every instrument, every non-instrument, every piece of recording gear that we have– and we just set up shop. We spent some days two hours, if nothing was going on, and some days 12 hours if we had a million ideas. The plan was don’t bring a note in, we’re just going to jam and that’s where almost every single song on the record came from. It was the most productive time we ever had. We ended up writing almost 30 songs. We have another record pretty much on a hard drive that hasn’t been recorded officially. It was just so nice to be that productive.
You had mentioned earlier that you’ve written enough songs for a new record – will that be coming out soon? No, there are no plans right now. There has been very, very small talk about eventually taking some of those songs and recording them properly and maybe doing an EP or something, but at this point there’s no time. It’s just so nice to have them. It’s so nice to know that they’re there, because we’ve never had that. It’s really exciting that we can come back to those songs and either think that they’re horrible or think that a few of them can be fixed and turned into songs.
Was there anything that you and the other guys in the band were listening while you were writing “Threes” that may have inspired some of the playing? We all listen to all kinds of different stuff, but some people are more influenced by certain bands than others. My biggest move, always
So the band is in a pretty good place right now? Oh, absolutely… There’s always ups and downs in every kind of relationship. Obviously this is different because there are so many more personalities than in a regular relationship, but it’s always worked out and we’re in a really good place right now. PG 29 • insiteatlanta.com • July 2007
