In the early 2000s, Taking Back Sunday were just some dudes living in Long Island, New York. Vocalist Adam Lazzara, guitarist and vocalist John Nolan, guitarist Eddie Reyes, bassist Shaun Cooper, and drummer Mark O'Connell all were working day jobs, but they were trying to make the music thing work, organizing DIY tours up and down the East Coast when they could. Unsure what to call their first demo CD, the quintet labeled it with a title that would eventually become fortuitous: "Tell All Your Friends."
It was a marching order for those with a copy, in hopes that the demo would land in the right hands. As fate would have it, the five-song CD was eventually heard by an A&R representative for Victory Records in 2001 — and the rest, as they say, is history.
Tell All Your Friends was officially released as Taking Back Sunday's debut album in March 2002, featuring 10 songs in total and introducing the band as one of the early forebearers of the decade's post-hardcore and emo movement. Though Taking Back Sunday reached their commercial peak with their third album, 2006's Louder Now, Tell All Your Friends is the fan favorite, and is seminal to both the band's career and the emo era as a whole. Millions of people around the world connected to the heart-on-the-sleeve songwriting and raw emotions conveyed in tracks like "Cute Without the 'E'," "Timberwolves of New Jersey," and "You're So Last Summer," all of which became huge hits on both radio and MTV; soon kids everywhere were growing out their bangs like Lazzara, wearing studded belts, and using lyrics as their AIM Away Messages.
Two decades later, Taking Back Sunday is still going strong. In 2023, they released their eighth album, 152, and on October 19 and 20, they will return to the When You Were Young Festival in Las Vegas, where they will play Tell All Your Friends in full. Ahead of the fest, GRAMMY.com caught up with Nolan to reminisce about those early days of Taking Back Sunday, and the memories behind every song on their debut album.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What do you remember of that time in your life before Tell All Your Friends was released?
We had signed our deal with Victory Records months before we went into the studio. When we were recording the record, we did it in Jersey City, but we all lived on Long Island. Adam, Eddie and I all lived in the same apartment at that point.
We were all working day jobs, so we were driving back and forth — which, you know, Long Island to Jersey City, depending on time of day, can either be a half hour or 3 hours. [Laughs.] So that definitely added a bit of complication to things.
But we were just so excited by the whole prospect. Anything that was challenging about getting there and back and juggling jobs didn't really matter. We were just so psyched about everything.
How did these songs come about for you guys? Had you been playing them for a while?
The first year or so of the band, we had a different singer and a few different bass players. Everything was kind of rotating. We finally got the lineup that we had on the album probably about a year before we recorded the album. During that time, we were writing and playing shows. As soon as we were done writing a song, we would play it live, because at that point, everything was new to everybody so it didn't matter. That was a cool thing to be able to do, because we were able to develop them live months before we ever recorded.
We also did a demo that had 5 songs from Tell All Your Friends on it that we started selling at shows. Those songs were the ones that were really established before we recorded.
When we were going into the studio, we didn't really have to put together an album because at that point, we had about 10 or 11 songs. We had written an album's worth of songs just kind of by chance. Some of them had been written more recently while others had been around for a while.
Listening to Tell All Your Friends 20 years later, is there anything in particular that stands out to you about the record?
The thing that jumps out to me the most is, we've been playing live for a very long time to a click track, so everything is very tight and on point. It's always interesting to me to hear the live versions of these songs where it speeds up and down. It's very inconsistent and very raw sounding because of that. I think it's part of what accidentally gave the album a certain level of excitement and made it stand out a bit.
You can definitely hear that raw energy on a song like "You Know How I Do," the first song on Tell All Your Friends. What makes it a good album opener?
That was one of the ones we had finished writing not too long before we went into the studio. So it was a new song in our mind. That was part of it. It felt like starting off with something that was new and exciting to us made sense. It just had feeling that felt like a good way to kick off the record. It has that intro with the one guitar and then everything kicks in.
After that comes "Bike Scene." Tell me about that song.
That one was one of the ones we recorded on the demo that we put out before the album. It had been established for a while. I don't think there were too many changes from the demo version to the record version. My sister Michelle sings on the bridge of that one. It was one of the songs that we started seeing a good reaction to at our shows pretty quickly.
So you guys honed that one on stage?
Yeah, that one didn't really go through many changes. We had that one locked in.
The next song on the record is "Cute Without The 'E'" which was a big single for you and a fan favorite. How did this song change things for the band?
Just getting signed to a record label was a huge accomplishment, and it was about as far ahead as we could think in terms of what our band could do. So, to be hearing our song on the radio and seeing it on TV not much longer after signing was mind blowing. I felt very surreal. It was very hard to believe that it was all true and actually happening.
I don't honestly remember how "Cute Without the 'E'" was chosen as a single. I don't remember any of us having a sense when we wrote and recorded that song that "this is the one," you know? It was a song on the album that we liked just as much as any other. For that one to take off the way it did was a bit of a surprise.
Is it true you don't rehearse this song anymore?
That is true, yes. We've played it at every show, I think, ever, from the time I was in the band in the early 2000s and then when I came back in 2010… that's a lot when you add that up. [Laughs.] That's one we don't really have any reason to rehearse, so we don't.
Next is "There's No 'I' In Team." There's a bit of a story behind this one, involving a falling out between you and a former bandmate, Jesse Lacey of Brand New. At this point, do you even still think about the drama that inspired song anymore? Is it hard for you to play?
No. I mean, it's so long ago. The actual emotions from the time, it's so far away. I find when we're playing these songs live, I will tap into something more current emotionally that I can channel into the song, but it's not the same events or emotions that originally inspired it.
There was a time, around the first six months or year that we played it, where the emotions of it and the circumstances around it were very real and very raw and new, and it was very intense and an emotional experience. I think that's part of what people responded to. I would say after that initial time, a lot of that stuff died down.
Tell me about "Great Romances of the 21st Century."
That was one of the first ones we wrote with the new lineup of the band. Our drummer, Mark, had actually come up with the guitar parts for that. I remember him showing it to me on an acoustic guitar one time in North Carolina while we were staying at someone's house before playing a show there. I remember just being really taken back by it, because I didn't even know he could play guitar. It was this intricate picking thing, and he was doing all these kind of weird chords and stuff. We then took his guitar parts, and got together and made it into the song.
I very clearly remember we were in our basement rehearsal space, which was at Mark's family's house. When we were finished writing and playing it, I remember feeling like something had really clicked and that we were onto something. There was something about that song that set the direction and tone for what the band was going to do.
We ended up making a music video for that one before we were even signed. We had a friend who made music videos and he wanted to do it. He ended up doing the "Cute Without the 'E'" video as well.
Because of the way it came together and how excited we were about it, we were like, this is the single, which is also sort of funny now because there's no normal structure to it. It would not make much sense as a single or something that could be played on the radio. But the song definitely caught on quickly when we started playing it live. We got a big reaction to it. It's funny now to think about how we were looking at that like, This song could be a big hit.
"Ghost Man On Third" feels like an important song on the record. What can you tell me about it?
That one was a newer song when we were going into the studio. A lot of the lyrics and melodies on that one came from Adam's experience at the time. I remember when we first started playing it live being really taken back and amazed by the emotion that he was putting into it. It felt really powerful when we first started playing it live. It was before people knew the song.
That was really something to me, to have a song that you're playing in front of people and they don't even know it yet but it's still really powerful and you can see it grabbing everyone's attention. It has a different feel than a lot of the other songs. So in the context of the album, that one is very important for changing the mood up and keeping it from getting too much of the same thing. I think it's a key point in the album.
Why do you think fans connected with that raw emotion and honest songwriting? Do you think it was something that wasn't really there in rock music at the time?
It was interesting because nu-metal was still very popular and had been from the late '90s into the early 2000s. Then pop-punk was starting to become a lot more mainstream. I think when we were making that album, yeah, a lot of it was not in line with what was popular at that moment, but for whatever reason, things were kind of shifting in that direction. Thursday was a big part of that. They were getting nationwide attention. There was this shift away from that more pop-punk thing and whatever the nu-metal thing was into something a lot less polished and a lot more openly emotional.
And that kind of leads us into "Timberwolves of New Jersey" which touches upon the post-hardcore, emo scene in the New Jersey right?
Yeah, a little bit. It was something that I had started on my own on an acoustic guitar, and I brought it to the band. Then they made it into what you hear on the album.
When I was working on it, it didn't really sound like something that would make sense for the band, but then everybody got into it. It was somewhat based on our experiences with our first singer and old band members. It's kind of a mean-spirited and cocky song. That's where I was at at the time, I guess.
How old were you when you wrote it?
Like 22, 23. I was little older than some of the other guys, so I don't have as much of an excuse. Adam was only 18 or 19, I think.
I mean, that's how we all are at that age right?
[Laughs.] Yeah.
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Moving on to "The Blue Channel," I read somewhere that you guys weren't thrilled with the final mixes, is that right? How do you feel about the song now?
I play a piano part to introduce the song – this Wurlitzer sound – just very slow and that's how I played it in the studio. I did it on my keyboard to a MIDI track, which means all the notes are there digitally, and the producer is able to change the sound after the fact, and the notes can be manipulated into anything they want.
I recorded it, and we didn't hear it until they gave us a mix of the album. They made it twice the speed that I had played it. They cut it in half and made it double-time, basically. They changed the sound to a real piano sound, which kinda sounded fake. It was just completely shocking. We had no idea they were going to do that.
When I hear it now, it sounds fine. It's not really bad or anything like that. But when we called the studio and talked to the producer about the changes that we wanted to make, they were like, "Oh no, that's the album. That's the mix. We're out of time and we are over budget. The album's done."
There were a lot of things like that on the album that weren't necessarily what we wanted or asked for or were involved in choosing. They were just like, "That's it, that's the way the album is."
I guess you were so new at the time that you couldn't be like "no we want it this way," right?
Yeah, maybe we could have, technically, but that would've involved really stepping up, talking to the record label, and making a big scene over it. I think we did kind of feel like being a young new band that that was not our place. We were also on our way out of town to start one of our first real tours. So, we were not really in a place to spend a whole bunch of time fighting to get that done anyway. We kind of just accepted it.
It obviously didn't hurt the record.
No, apparently not!
Next, we got "You're So Last Summer," which, I mean, come on, That song rules. It's no wonder it's become one of your most memorable songs.
That one we had more of a sense of the potential for it to be a popular song. It's also kind of funny looking back on it, because I forget now but I think we put it like 8th or 9th on the record…
Yeah, it's the penultimate.
Definitely an odd choice to put that song towards the end, but I think it does hold up now to have something more straightforward and poppier come towards the end of the album. It's nice for the pacing of it, and it's unexpected.
That one got a very big reaction very quickly. One thing I always think about with "You're So Last Summer" is I had written the line, "The truth is you could slit my throat/ And with my one last gasping breath/ I'd apologize for bleeding on your shirt," and when I wrote it, I was making an exaggerated point that was honest but I also thought it was funny.
It's a great line.
Yeah, but after it got popular, I always second guessed it. A certain amount of people just thought it was straightforward, complete dramatic teenager type of thing. I always had this love/hate relationship with that part of the song.
I've realized now it doesn't matter, because if something resonates with people, then that's good. You don't have to worry about why it's happening or what it means.
Finally, we got "Head Club." I love the way it closes out the record.
I always have mixed feelings about this song. We included this on our original demo and the ending of it – the big outro part – was different. I think I was the one who suggested changing it, and I wasn't always sure if that was the right choice or not. The other people in the band all kind of second guessed whether that was the right move or not. But I mean, nobody except for the people on Long Island or early fans who had the demo would even be able to make that comparison. For most people, it's just always the way the song was.
I always think about the drum intro. It's an interesting way to start the song to begin with, but then the producer put a flanger on the drums, which is really interesting and weird. I don't know if I've ever heard that before or since. It was an odd choice.
It works though!
It does! It's one of those things I don't even think about anymore, and probably anybody who listens to the record doesn't either. But the first time hearing it we were like, "What is that? That's weird."
So how are you feeling about playing all these songs in full at When We Were Young?
I think about half of the record are songs that we play on a regular basis, and the other half there's a bunch that we hardly ever play. There's definitely a few in there where it's been years since we've played them. We did one tour in 2019 where we were playing our first three albums, but a lot of the songs we haven't played since then.
It's always interesting going back and playing a whole album like this, because we get to see the live reaction to songs like "Cute Without the 'E'" and "So Last Summer" all the time, but it's always interesting to see the crowd respond and sing along to album tracks that are less-known. It's always interesting to see which of those it'll be. I'm still never sure.