... The
two fledgling songwriters spent countless hours together playing Vodka
Scrabble and thinking of band names for their nonexistent band. During
the remainder of their school years, they found a drummer and played
sporadic college gigs under such names as Are You My Mother?, Woolly
Mammoth and Three Men Who When Standing Side By Side Have A Wing Span
Of Over Twelve Feet. Their third band member at the time was a brooding
young lad named Jeff Perrott; Perrott is now often referred to as the
Pete Best of FOW.
Chris,
Adam and Jeff kept playing together after college, when they all lived
in the Boston area. Rechristened the Wallflowers (!), the band began
playing Boston and New York clubs, and quickly were offered a recording
contract by a small independent label in NY. A record was made but never
mixed or released, and the band name was purchased for a small sum by
one Jakob Dylan, another young musician who wanted the name more than
Chris, Adam and Jeff. Renaming themselves Pinwheel, the boys continued
to play gigs, but the label they had signed with went out of business
and the Wallflowers/Pinwheel record disappeared into the ether. The
only song that survives from this period is "Troubled Times,"
which was later re-recorded for Utopia
Parkway.
Frustrated,
Adam, Chris and Jeff went their separate ways for a couple of years,
during which time Chris played around Boston with the Mercy Buckets,
a quasi-country band that exhibited a strong Gram Parsons influence.
Adam moved to New York and started the band Ivy with two new friends,
Andy Chase and Dominique Durand. Jeff went back to school to study painting.
In 1995,
Chris decided to get out of Boston and move down to New York. During
that year, Adam and Chris started hanging out together again, and soon
they were talking about playing music again. One afternoon, Chris called
Adam and said that he had written three new tunes that day, and wanted
to play them for him. The three tunes were "Radiation Vibe,"
"Joe Rey" and "Leave The Biker." Instantly jealous,
Adam holed up in his apartment and wrote a batch, including "Sink
To The Bottom" and "She's Got A Problem." The remainder
of the songs that appear on FOW's debut album were written in a flurry
of inspiration (and inebriation) that same week, with Adam and Chris
writing down possible song titles on napkins while hanging out at WXOU
Radio Bar in the West Village.
Chris
and Adam entered The Place recording studio in the Meat Packing district
with a bass player friend named Danny Weinkauf and recorded four of
the new songs. Within weeks of finishing the demo tape (which became
the first four songs on the album), they had multiple offers from record
companies, and they knew they had hit upon something pretty good. Whereas
in their earlier days, the songs often seemed labored over and stiff,
the new songs were looser and more fun, but also just better. After
some deliberation, they signed with TAG/Atlantic Records in New York,
in part because Adam was already somewhat involved there with Ivy and
it seemed like a good idea at the time. The band name Fountains Of Wayne
was borrowed from a store that sells -- you guessed it -- fountains
in Wayne, NJ, near Adam's hometown of Montclair.
It was
during this time period that Adam also submitted a song demo for an
upcoming Tom Hanks film called "That Thing You Do." Much to
everyone's disbelief, the song was chosen for the film, which subsequently
happened to be released the same week as the FOW debut album. This proved
to be both a blessing and a curse for Fountains Of Wayne -- it created
a flurry of publicity around the album release, but also plagued the
band with articles entitled "That Thing They Do", etc...
Although
they had recorded the debut album mostly by themselves, Chris and Adam
soon realized that an actual band was necessary to tour in support of
the record. They first called Jody Porter, a guitarist originally from
Charleston, SC, who had spent several years in London in the early 90's
fronting a band called the Belltower. Adam had known Jody for a while,
and had actually filled in on bass during one short Belltower tour in
the US, before that band broke up. Jody liked the music and decided
to join. Then, through a mutual friend, Chris and Adam were introduced
to Brian Young, a drummer from Seattle who had been playing with the
Posies for the last several years. Brian met up with the band in Los
Angeles for an "audition" which consisted mostly of jamming
on Steve Miller songs. He was perfect.
The new
band secured a high-priced Los Angeles video director who used a lot
of phrases like "that really pops," and made a pretty embarrassing
video for the first single, "Radiation Vibe." They then headed
out on the road for most of 1996 and '97. The record received raves
in the press, and radio played the hell out of "Radiation Vibe"
and, to a lesser extent, "Sink To The Bottom." They opened
for the Lemonheads and then for the Smashing Pumpkins, and then headlined
their own US club tour. They also traveled extensively in Europe, playing
a mixture of big festivals and grimy clubs. By the end of the year,
the Fountains had a solid reputation as masterful pop songwriters and
as a great live band, and they were also really tired.
After
a much needed break, FOW began work on a second record in New York.
This time around, they took a little more time and spent a little more
money on the recording process. Also, the songs for the new record were
written over a period of many months, as opposed to one week. The resulting
record, Utopia Parkway, was not as tossed-off sounding as their
debut, but felt more substantial in many ways. Because the songs were
more thematically unified, it was perceived by many as --(gasp)-- a
concept album! Many of the songs dealt with characters who lived just
outside the major cities of the East Coast. Utopia Parkway made
its way onto dozens of critics' Top Ten lists and proved that the band
could do more than just complain and drink a lot.
Once again,
FOW hit the road for close to a year, this time around adding Australia
and Japan to their schedule. Chris learned how to say "I am an
umbrella," and "I ate my dog," in almost ten languages
during his travels. After the Utopia Parkway tour drew to a close, the
band once again dispersed and began thinking about making a new record
someday. Which they're pretty much still doing right now.
