Hanson From Boys to Men

(typed by haisaacs@aol.com --Heather--at AFH. Who I didn't ask to post this. So I hope she's not mad =X)

From boys to men, Tulsa boys Hanson have become rockier in sound with age. Middle of Nowhere, with its huge hit "MMMBop" gave way to This Time Around last year and fans are waiting for the next album from Zac, Taylor, and Isaac.

Zac is getting bigger and bigger-what have you been feeding him?

Taylor: (laughs) Well, it just happens.

Zac:  I've been eating fertilizer for the last few months.

Isaac:  We've been giving him Miracle-gro plant fertilizer.  He just grew and grew.

Taylor:  Zac has always been bigger than both of us.  Zac has always been the stocky one, and we're the scrawny ones.  He just grew and it's something that happens.  I don't know why exactly.

Has he grown up mentally as well?

Taylor:  No, he's actually been going backwards, mentally. It's very strange.

Zac:  What happened was, I started out as a genius, like Albert Einstein,
really, and went backwards.

And have you guys changed?

Taylor:  I don't know.  I think we're pretty much the same as two years ago, but everybody's grown up a bit.

Isaac:  We're a little bit taller.

Taylor:  Little bit taller is the only thing that's different.

Do you and Isaac still need to protect Zac?

Isaac: He's never needed us to protect him.

Taylor:  Zac kind of protects himself, he never really needed us for that.

Isaac:  And now that he's a big burly football player, he has trouble with his massive arms.  Everybody get out of the way!

Apparently, Taylor, you once asked that people refrain from saying anything negative about Zac.  Had an incident happened that lead to that?

Taylor:  I don't know. That's a good question.

Isaac:  I think that might be relating to something we might have said earlier on because people came up with all these random pet names.

Taylor:  Yeah, because Zac is, like crazy.

Isaac:  Zac is a goofball.  As am I.

Zac:  I'm the type of guy to make people...

Taylor:  ...think he's a psycho

Zac:  But personally, I have fun with it just because someone can meet me and they're like, 'What's wrong with him?'

Taylor:  Zac had nicknames like Prozac and Animal and jokes like that, that's what it was and I was like, "Oh, don't give him nicknames," But the thing is, everybody kind of plays into roles.  Zac will be crazy sometimes and then he'll be totally quiet in a minute.  So we kind of all switch around.

Isaac:  We all have plenty of moments where we're goofy.

A lot of people are in the opinion that CD's won't be in our future and that computers are taking over the industry  Do you think your attitude to music might change as well?

Zac:  I think music is changing. It's amazing now and in probably a year instead of signing to a record label, you'll have a web site and you'll produce your own records.

Taylor:  Well not in a year but...

Zac:  There are already people doing stuff like that - it will happen but I don't think computers will ever just take over the world.

Isaac:  Well they have already taken over the world in the sense that everybody is very dependent on computers and that kind of stuff.

Zac:  But there's always the necessity for people to go out and buy something that you can get physical with.

Taylor:  The world is getting smaller.  Something happens and instantly the world knows about it.  So the world is changing in a lot of ways because of technology, but music is always going to be around whatever format it is in. Whether you buy it on a CD or whether you find it on the Internet.  Music can't go away but I think probably the way you get it and the way people go to find music is going to probably change.  But it's been changing for the last 50 years.

Have you ever come away with any negative feelings that your music was not always taken seriously because of your age?

Isaac:  No negative feelings.  NO, I think we were happy with the success that we had.  We're very glad that...

Taylor:  ...we had success at all!

Isaac:  Yeah, exactly

Taylor:  Well, think about it.  When you're young, especially then, I mean, we're still young, but people would say at the start, "Oh those three blond kids - 11, 14, and 16 - how could they actually be real?" So, we get a little of that but we were always saying, just listen to the music and forget about how old we are.

Your parents have always been very supportive - what's you're business relationship with them like?

Isaac:: there's a business?  They're very helpful in terms of business. They're kind of co-managers in a sense.

Taylor:  They're a part of just about everything.

Zac:  And it's always good to have someone who has a different outlook on something.

Isaac:  And also somebody who is out for your best interests

Talyor:  And somebody who can kind of take a piece of the pie and not be as much of a burden on you. When you have all these different things that need to get done and somebody who can really help you get through it all and really make it work.

Who is the co-managing with?

Taylor:  Triune music.  They're co-managers because they've always been apart of it.

Isaac:  They're our parents too.

Do you have another passion in life besides music?

Isaac:  I think music in out case definitely comes first.

Taylor:  I don't thin k there's anything more broad than music because everybody whether you're in any country, speaking any language...put it this way, we have no plans to be accountants.

Isaac:  Nothing wrong with accountants.

Taylor:  Nothing wrong with accountants, but we wouldn't be good ones.  But there's art stuff - directing films, writing screenplays, writing songs for people.

Isaac:  Producing other people's records.

Taylor:  Journalism - all those things are creative outlets and music is the core of that

What about acting?  Every pop band seems to want to get into that.

Taylor:  Not really.

Zac:  We're more interested in being on the otherside of the camera.

Taylor: Directing and writing.

Isaac: doing scores of music.  Maybe a little acting, but right now...

Taylor:  We'd be better at being comedians than serious actors and if we were trying to be serious, we'd be funny without even knowing.

Why do you have such long gaps between albums?

Isaac: It's not a thought out thing. It's just something that happens.  In between we fly around the world promoting and we have school and we do concerts.

Taylor:  Then it takes ages to put an album together in the studio.

Zac:  And it's also a good thing to get out of people's minds for a while.

Isaac:  We were so in peoples faces

Zac:  I think it was a good thing to go away and not be in people's minds so that when you can come back...

Taylor: ...you've had a mental break and we've been able to grow and change and evolve and let people look at you in a perspective that they didn't before.

Not to compare you to boybands like Nsync or the Backstreet Boys, but do you think if you hadn't come along before them it would have made it harder for those guys?

Taylor:  The music scene when we came along was a lot different.  It was a lot more grunge rock stuff.  That was the stuff that was being played, and we came along with something different which was definitely more pop and since then, the music industry has changed so...

Zac:  ...I think no.

Taylor:  The music scene has defiantly changed since Middles of Nowhere was out.

Zac:  But if there had never been Hanson, it still would have changed because people get sick of all kinds of music after a while.  They were getting saturated with grunge so they started to want to move towards something different.  And when "MMMBop" came along, they were like, "let's embrace pop music."  And now they embrace pop music and someday whether it's tomorrow or 37
years from now...it's not like it ever goes away but it's not in the spotlight. It's like a turntable.  It spins around and things just keep rotating.

Isaac:  Things keep changing and you hope that you also evolve with the times, you can change and continue to be successful and people will still respond to your music.  It's hard to have a long career nowadays, you just have to hope that you can.

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