Staind glass houses

“They never stopped singing. They were singing, they were fighting – two guys took their shirts off and started fighting with each other. Oh my God… it was madness”. Aaron Lewis’s recollections, you might imagine, of some particularly memorable gig on Staind’s seemingly never ending tour, possibly one of their shows with Linkin Park or some other such rock ’n’ roll madness. But no, he has in fact just experienced the joys of the Holyhead to Dublin ferry and four hours spent in the company of a boatload of Welsh rugby fans. Seems like sometimes even rock stars have to spend some time in the (sur)real world.

And, despite his probable protestations, Aaron Lewis definitely is a rock star, maybe one of the biggest in the world right now. Staind’s second album, 1999’s Dysfunction, was certified triple platinum in the US while its successor, Break The Cycle, debuted at no.1 on the Billboard chart. It has also opened the door to Europe for them in a massive way, the reason why the band are in Dublin to begin their arena tour of the continent. Not bad for a band who, for a while at least, seemed destined to be known mainly as proteges of Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst.

Matters took a significant, and hugely fortunate, turn in 2000. A spur of the moment live acoustic rendering of the, at that point still embryonic, song ‘Outside’ (featuring Durst on backing vocals) made its way onto the Family Values Tour ‘99 live album and onto the nation’s airwaves in a massive fashion, pushing the sales of that second album through the roof and ensuring that Break The Cycle became one of the most eagerly awaited records of the year.

“‘Outside’ was around forever the original way before it dwindled away a little bit,” Lewis recalls, “and then it came back the way it is on the record with the full band. Then to come over here and the crowd sing that song so loud with me every night, it’s like the song that never goes away.”

Asked how the band deal with the whole promotional treadmill, Lewis replies diplomatically. “It’s something that you gotta do. Most of the time it’s way too early in the morning or you’ve played for four shows straight and it’s on the fifth day and it’s supposed to be a day off.” By his side sits bassist Johnny April, who seems to approach this particular duty with less enthusiasm. At various points during our conversation he will look at his watch or yawn.

So, by accident or design, it is Aaron Lewis who becomes the centre of attention. He is also the architect of the acoustic element of the band’s sound that has stood them so well recently, not just with ‘Outside’ but with the slow burning follow up, ‘It’s Been A While’. Yet despite this measured constraint to much of their music they have still become an integral part of the nu-metal scene – the ‘Family Values Tour’ that they appeared on last year also featured Static-X, Stone Temple Pilots and Linkin Park, (“Nice guys, a good band and God bless them.”).

“We’re in the same book, but a different chapter maybe,” offers April. “Everybody was kind of different so there’s no real competition.”

Aaron himself had the opportunity to move in more varied circles when he contributed to the ‘What’s Going On?’ project, an experience that he obviously enjoyed. “The first time Bono called me I was on the phone to him for about an hour, shooting the shit, you know. I picked up the phone and it was like (adopts very vague approximation of an Irish accent) “Hello, Aaron? This is Bono” and I was like, ‘oh my God’. For Bono to call you on your phone is amazing. I cannot say enough good things about the guy.”

While most of the bands they have toured with have adopted the lyrical bravado of the hip-hop community, the words that give Staind’s music its character are steeped in emotion and self-doubt – an approach more in common with the so-called emo-core wing of the punk movement and, more tellingly on a musical level, the grunge bands who came out of Seattle in the early ’90s.

“Bands like Pearl Jam and Nirvana were the first wave of bands in a while that put it out there a little bit more on a personal level,” Lewis agrees, “and Korn’s first record just blew me away. Just the honesty and the raw intensity that he put out on that record. That last song where he’s crying in the studio… that’s powerful shit.”

If Break The Cycle has an overriding theme then it is perhaps the breakdown of family, examined most tellingly on ‘For You’ (“to my mother, to my father… are my screams loud enough for you to hear me?”). “All I’ve ever done is just be honest and say how I felt,” says Lewis, whose parents divorced when he was at high school, “really how I felt, not just what everybody wanted to hear. That’s all I’ve really done. It’s an amazing thing for me to know that – through all of this, everything that I’ve gone through, everything to this day – I’m not the only one who feels like this. There are all these people just totally relating to what I’ve put out there, just through being honest with myself.”

“We’re all the same fucked up individuals that we were before all this happened, I’m just further along in my life. I was 26 when we wrote ‘Tormented’; I was 28 when we wrote ‘Dysfunction’ and 29 when we did ‘Break The Cycle’. That’s a huge growth period in someone’s life. By 25 I was a mess. My lyrics are basically documented personal growth from the time I was 25 until now. That’s where the whole ‘Break The Cycle’ thing comes up. You won’t get anything sorted in your head if you don’t step back and try and work out why you’re feeling like that.”