AM Radio

While many teenagers over the last 10 years have felt like Weezer's Rivers Cuomo is their only friend in the world because of his unabashedly nerdy rock songs, AM Radio frontman Kevin Ridel can actually call the present day Buddy Holly his close, personal friend. Cuomo and Ridel spent their teen years together growing up in Connecticut before ultimately venturing out to California together in hopes of rock stardom. Although things haven't worked out quite the same for Ridel as they have for Cuomo (Ridel's numerous previous bands, such as Ridel High and Peel, have been plagued with label problems), now that Cuomo is back in the fold as AM Radio's manager, Ridel was upbeat and delighted to speak to Recoil about his longtime rock 'n' roll friendship and his band's power-pop debut album, Radioactive.

Recoil: What was it like growing up with Rivers Cuomo in Connecticut?
Kevin Ridel: It was pretty cool. We started a band (called Avant Garde) when we were like sixteen and it was the first real thing that I had ever done. We went into a real studio and we did a demo right off the bat. It was pretty cool. We were kind of getting serious.

R: What influence do you think you two had on each other musically?
KR: I don't know. It was kind of weird. In [Avant Garde] he wrote all the music and I wrote like the vocal melodies and lyrics. And then towards the end of the band we moved out to L.A. and turned into a band called Zoom and at that point both of us were writing entire songs. It was almost like we were kind of outgrowing the band, so we kind of just grew apart. He started his own band and I started my own band.

R: What's it like now working with Rivers as a manager/executive producer?
KR: It's awesome. In Avant Garde and Zoom he did all the business so it feels like old times again with him handling all of the business for me.

R: How would you say your experiences in previous bands have influenced what you are now doing in your career with AM Radio?
KR: I've learned a lot about how the industry works and what I want from guys in the band. [That kind of experience] teaches you how to interact with other people, too, and that's kind of a tricky thing sometimes, especially if you're in a band for like two months.

R: What is it about AM Radio that makes it different from your previous bands?
KR: I don't know. All the guys in this band kind of know what they want now, which is cool. [Higgins] was the only guy that I had already known that I wanted in the band before I held open auditions and the other guys, their styles just hit me right off the bat and I was like, 'This guy would be perfect for my songs.' It's cool because when I bring in new songs to the band, I usually don't have to direct them or anything, they usually just come up with parts and they're really cool.

R: How long did it take to work on and create your debut album, Radioactive?
KR: We've been together as a band since September 2001 and we've steadily been demoing the whole time. For this record, we actually drew from songs from like every era, which was really cool. It's almost like a virtual timeline of the band for this record.

R: Why did you decide to name your new band AM Radio?
KR: I actually had the name before I had the band. I was in a band called Peel and we had a record on Beyond Music but it was never coming out, this was like the beginning of 2001, and I was just kind of getting bored with that through just playing the album over and over whenever we would play shows or anything around town, so I wanted to like branch out and do something more with some of my other songs. So actually I started a band called AM Radio with just some friends and I just kind of pulled the name out of the air. I thought it was a cool sounding word.

R: Growing up, did you listen to a lot of AM radio?
KR: Yeah, when I was younger popular radio was also on AM radio still. Like I remember listening to 'Pop Music' by M and Donna Summer on my little AM radio [which] was like a Spider-Man radio.

R: At this point, you guys have pretty much toured everywhere. Are there any particular places that you would still like to play?
KR: I want to go back to Japan really bad. I just had like a great experience over there. It'd be cool to hit Europe and the U.K. because we've never really been over there.

R: Would you say that you have a number of fans in Japan already?
KR: Yeah, definitely. Japan was really cool. We went over there with Weezer, who is like the second coming of Christ over there, and by the end of tour it was just like a crazy chain reaction thing that had happened. [After] the last show we couldn't even walk out onto the street anymore. People went crazy.

R: What advice would you give to people coming up about sticking with it and trying to make it big as a band?
KR: Definitely be honest with yourself. Don't try to follow any trends on the radio or anything because that way you'll always be doing something you love. Even if somebody in the audience is going like, 'You guys suck,' you can say to yourself, 'You know what? I don't. You suck.'

August 2003