Hoobastank: A band forthemselves

Mon 5th Feb, 2007 in Features

Dan Estrin, guitarist for Hoobastank, is not a fan of terriers.  “I think the terrier should just be in the cat family,” he says.  As a man who grew up with large dogs, Estrin is none too keen on dogs of a smaller stature.  “They’re pussies; [they should be in] the pussy family.”

Something Estrin is a fan of, however, is Australia.  Hoobastank are in the country to promote their third major-label release Every Man For Himself, a title which was created by drummer Chris Hesse and refers to the album’s theme of individuality.  On the eve of Hoobastank’s show at The Metro Theatre in Sydney, Estrin is genuinely shocked at the strong response so far on the tour.  “The show last night in Melbourne was really good; we had a really good time,” he reminisces.  “Last night was our first show in Australia in a long time and the crowd was awesome.  I didn’t really know what to expect and I kind of thought it was going to be a little weak.  But I was pleasantly surprised.”

Despite maintaining a solid fanbase in Australia ever since the release of their self-titled debut album in 2001, Estrin is aware that his band has never reached the same heights of popularity here as compared to the United States.  Estrin posits that it may have something to do with living near the oceans, explaining that “anytime we play somewhere where the people surf, it’s always kind of just mellow. In Los Angeles, when we play in our home town, it’s just weak. It’s not like how it is when we go to places that don’t get shows all the time”. Yet Melbournians lapped up Hoobastank, Estrin says, with the crowd brimming with enthusiasm and singing along to the band’s songs. ”They were so loud,” Estrin says of the audience. ”As long as they’re interacting with us somehow, then we’re getting off, we’re having a great time.” 

It’s been a long road for Hoobastank, who originally formed in 1994 in Los Angeles.  Beginning their life with a subtle variation on their current moniker (originally spelling their band name as ‘Hoobustank’) and with saxophonist Jeremy Wasser (who also appears on the Incubus track ‘Summer Romance’) as a fifth member, their debut album They Sure Don’t Make Basketball Shorts Like They Used To (1998) was an record rife with ska and punk influenced material. With the band’s sound developing post-debut, Wasser’s saxophone skills soon became superfluous and at odds with the band’s new, evolved alternative rock sound, and he was culled from the lineup, 

With one less member and an extra ‘a’ in the name, Hoobastank found success with their debut self-titled major label release: an album which spawned the hit single ‘Crawling in the Dark’. But it wasn’t until the release of the album The Reason, and the title track from it, that Hoobastank found international success, particularly in Australia where The Reason achieved rotation on radio ad nauseum.  However, with Every Man For Himself, released in mid-2006, the band have failed to match the success garnered with ‘The Reason’. For Estrin though, this doesn’t necessarily reflect upon the quality of the album. ”A song like ‘The Reason’ just took off, it did extremely well; it was our time,” he avers.  “A lot of bands have their time and we had our time with that record; and in the United States we had our time with the record before that.  But this album, I guess it’s not our time to be massive like with the last record. But it’s OK to us because it’s a break for us; it’s nice, it’s not as chaotic and hectic.  But at the same time we get to do what we love which is go out there and tour and play music and play for our fans.”

Hoobastank’s current tour is their without longtime bass player Marrku Lappalainen, who left the band before the recording of Every Man For Himself.  Despite the typical “creative differences” being cited as causes for the split, Estrin, who writes the majority of Hoobastank’s music with vocalist Doug Robb, believes that the imbalance in the songwriting between members may have been a vital element to Lappalainen’s departure.  “When we first started the band, we were all equal.  We never had any discussions, we were just young.  We didn’t know anything about the industry and about how things worked and writing stuff,” explains Estrin.  “With our first record, we released three singles, two of which did really well – first one was Crawling in the Dark and the second one was Running Away - and they both, in the United States, did really well; we sold a lot of records.  Doug and myself wrote those songs, and we never really sat there and said to the guys ‘Hey, this is what we’re gonna do’, but, I don’t know, it was almost kind of known.

“Then on the next record when we went in to do The Reason,” continues Estrin, “I wrote a bunch of songs and Marrku came to the table with a handful of songs and we put his songs together and when we played all the songs for our producer Howard Benson he happened to pick mine; he didn’t know whose songs were who.  I think he [Lappalainen] did get a little bit upset and he probably felt like shit – I would too if nobody wanted to use my songs, I’d be bummed.  But at the same time, we were having success because of the songs that Doug and I had written a certain way, and it paid off really well; and for songs that he had really nothing to do with, it paid off really well for him.” 

But despite the spilt, Estrin harbours no animosity towards his former band mate.  “I love the guy,” says Estrin, who also believes that stronger media focus on him and Robb was another underlying cause of friction.  “I just think it was a little tough because we’d been together for so many years doing this and once success came in it started to maybe get to him, or get to me, I don’t know…”

After trying out “somewhere between 25 and 50 bass players”, Hoobastank recruited their friend Josh Moreau to fill the bottom-end void.  For a band that was voted The Most Faceless Band of 2002, they’ve certainly proved their detractors wrong.  “I just enjoy doing what I do, and for the people that like it or love it, then that’s the icing on the cake for me,” says Estrin.  “I love and appreciate the support, and for all the people that talk shit about us, I guess you’ve gotta have those people too.  I wish it was as simple as ‘If you don’t like it, don’t listen.  Just turn it off and shut your mouth’.”

Hoobastank’s Every man for himself is out now through Universal