Define Success

In the past few years, the music industry has basically proven itself to be the redheaded stepchild of the entertainment business. How has it done this, you ask? Waging war on those thieving, amoral 13-year-olds that continue to steal from the defenseless millionaire record label executives was one particularly effective method. Another was the brilliant attempt at simultaneously hopping on a hundred different trends.
Today, the dust hasn’t even begun to settle, leaving many bands running around like the proverbial headless chicken, trying blindly to find a place to fit in. Then, there’s Maroon5. Over the past few years, they’ve proven themselves to be one of the few bands able to successfully wade through the current climate of confusion. What makes them so special? Well, aside from creating truly amazing music, they’ve never lost sight of their original goals.
That focus has done nothing if not kept them on the road as they continue to climb the ladder of success. Fresh off an arena tour with John Mayer and the Counting Crows, Maroon5’s charismatic frontman, Adam Levine, recently called from a tour in Germany and shed a little more light on why he thinks the music he helps to create connects so deeply and effortlessly with people.
“I think [our music] is genuine,” he offered. “I think it’s very much from our hearts. It’s emotive and unpretentious and I think it’s actually different. I don’t think that there’s really much out there like it, to be totally honest.”
“Bringing our music into Germany is interesting,” he continued. “It’s a different kind of crowd — different people that don’t speak English, but we love them very much. Different cultures have different ways of responding to music and that’s what’s really cool about touring in other countries. It’s like you’re on Mars because no one speaks English and you feel like an idiot. It’s wonderful though. The fact that we can still communicate what we’re doing musically is really cool. I love that.”
So, what happens on a tour with Maroon5? All the usual stuff: “Things breaking, overdosing on heroin and getting caught in Amsterdam with three strippers. Actually, we’re really laid-back and not caught up in the whole thing,” Adam said. Considering the amount of time Maroon5 spends on the road, that’s probably a good thing. After this tour is over, they plan on “more touring,” of course. “We’re going to tour, tour, tour and see where we wind up in eight to 10 months. More things are going to happen that will be exciting, hopefully; then we’re going to re-group and think about when we’re going to make [another] record.”
All of the touring is paying off, though. “Dreams are coming true everyday. MTV started playing our video, which is very cool. They’re little dreams, but they’re dreams. They all add up to the big one.”
While it is obvious that the band is thankful for all of the success they’ve achieved so far, they remain ambitious. “I would love to sell a million records,” said Adam without a hint of hesitation. “A lot of people shy away from saying that, because they’re not supposed to, but I really want to — it would be a huge accomplishment. It has nothing to do with money, it has to do with exposure. If that many people connected to what we are doing, I’d be really excited. It’s really not about money. I mean, I’d love to make money, but I don’t think that’s the primary goal of anybody in the band.”
Then the conversation turned to the beginnings of the band. “You know, we were just best friends,” Adam said casually. “We loved playing music together, we loved hanging out together and that was it. Well also, we were getting sick of the rock cliché. It’s more exciting to do stuff that we’re not supposed to do. That’s really how it started. It was really simple. We figured out at a very young age that it would help us become more popular [laughs]. Just kidding. It was just what we did — it was very natural. It just kind of turned into a band, but it’s always changing. There’s no formula for what we do — it’s never really the same thing. Sticking to one formula is boring — it becomes a bit too predictable.”
As the interview came to a close, Adam offered this advice to everyone hoping to build a career in music: “This is a dangerous business, but you’ve got to keep doing it, even if you think you’re never going to make it. It took us 10 years to get where we are today. If it’s your dream, you can’t ever let up.”

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