Interview with Aiden vocalist WiL Francis
ATTENTION:After posting this interview in December, I have recieved a ton of requests for us to do a second interview with WiL, and many of you have submitted questions...I am happy to announce thatI hooked back up with WiL during the 2007 Taste Of Chaos tour and he was happy to answer as many of YOUR questions as time allowed. When you're done with this interview click over to the THE NEW ONE to find out even more about WiLs life and career.
I first met Aiden when they opened for HIM earlier this year. I walked in assuming that they would be just another rip-off band, but instead I was treated to one of the most energetic live shows I've seen in years. All of the guys were amazing with their fans and just really nice guys, so I've been looking forward to getting together with them again. So, when the Victory Records Never Shave Again tour came around some friends and i road tripped it out to see them. I brought along some questions that fans wanted me to ask, and singer WiL Francis sat down with me to answer them for you.
Anarchy Music: This year has been incredible for you guys. Tell me about the rollercoaster you’ve been on…
WiL Francis: We’ve been on tour for 18 months and it has been a rollercoaster. Every tour we’ve been on seems to get better and better. We started off the year with Bullet For My Valentine in the UK and in Germany, which was out of control, big shows. It was insane. We came back and toured with 30 Seconds To Mars and then flew out to England for a couple of shows., the Give It A Name festival , which was our first festival. We did the Groez Rock festival in Belgium too so those were our first festivals we’ve ever played. It was with some of our favorite bands too, Taking back Sunday, Goldfinger… Then we came back and did the HIM tour.
Anarchy: You’re a big HIM fan right?
WiL: Yeah!
Anarchy: What was that like to tour with some of your heroes?
WiL: It was great. It wasn’t like “oh, we’re rock stars so and we’re going to take your band on tour so fucking bow down to us”. It was like “yeah, we’re going to tour together and have fun”.
Anarchy: You released an EP called Rain In Hell on Halloween as kind of a gift to your fans. What was the impetus behind that?
WiL: We wanted to release it on Halloween because it was on a Tuesday and how often does that come along? Like once every 5 or 10 years? We wanted to take advantage of that street date to put out something. We had a couple of extra songs we’d written on the road and thought we could put some covers, put these new songs, put a DVD together and make a cool package to put out on Halloween.
Anarchy: There’s a new direction on the EP, with more emphasis on melody and most of the metal-core stuff gone. Is this just an experiment or a taste of a new direction?
WiL: Over the course of the 18 months we’ve been on tour what I’ve really learned is to get my point across in a song, for people to understand emotion and feel energy I don’t have to sing all the songs at the top of my range. The new songs are sung at a range that’s real comfortable of where I can actually sing and be comfortable. I’ve learned how to write songs better as a result of touring so much.
Anarchy: What I got out of it was, and don’t take this the wrong way, but that before you were a band writing dark songs, but now you’re a dark band writing songs about what you know.
WiL: Yeah
Anarchy: So to me it’s a more mature, natural thing so I’m excited about the next cd.
As far as covers go, why “White Wedding” and “Die, Die My Darling“, other than the fact that they ‘re great songs.?
WiL: Yeah, what more reason do you need? Misfits are one of my favorite bands. You know, the Billy Idol song…we’d planned to do a Murder City Devils song and then at the last minute switched to Billy Idol just because…I don’t know why we did…it’s a great song, why not!
Anarchy: You wrote a letter to your fans that’s printed on the sleeve of the cd, about it being for people who are going through a tough time. I’ve been there, you’ve been there…when you’re in that dark place, personally, how do you get out of it?
WiL: Well, it’s different for everybody. There’s not really a piece of advice I could say like “You’re having a tough time so it’s time to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and go ahead with your life”. For me, it didn’t work for me. I had to go through the trials and tribulations of doing drugs and being alone and losing everything. For some people it’ll take a speeding ticket, for me it took reaching the bottom of the barrel and going so far beyond anybody’s conception of where a human being should go. That’s just where I needed to go to get out.
What was really important for me growing up and going through that shit is that music was always there for me. The records that I listened to were always there. It was never like, “oh, I don’t talk to that guy anymore because he fucking talked shit about me” or “we got in a fight so I don’t listen to that record”. The records were always there no matter what happened in my life or where I was at I could always find solace in music, and always find a place to go when there was no one around.
That’s the effort for all of our music and this record especially. The songs that we put on it are really geared toward letters that I got from fans and things kids tell me at shows about how music saves their lives. It’s weird being on the other end of that because I was that kid just a few years ago. There’s no difference between me and those kids who are coming to our shows except that I’m in the band.
Anarchy: Music enables you to impact peoples lives and we’ve both received letters about how your music has saved kids lives, that’s gotta be the most mind-blowing thing that ever happened.
WiL: Yeah, definitely!
Anarchy: On the reverse of that, what has having those fans and your experiences with them done for your life?
WiL: I think the biggest thing it’s done for me is make me feel like I’m finally put on this earth for something, rather than selfish reasons or feeling that I’m not accomplishing anything with my life. For my whole life growing up before this I felt like there was no point to it. When I founded this band and we started getting things going what really happened was that I was shown through letters and with talking to kids that I’m doing this for all the right reasons. It’s definitely not for money because we make enough money to get to the next place and get a new guitar if we break one. It’s not about money, it’s not about fame, it’s not about being the coolest kids on the block. We’re like the dorky kids that no one really liked. Even still it’s like that. But it’s not about any of that. It’s about connection with people who care about music. It’s about connecting with people on a level that’s so much more than fashion, or money, show or popularity. It’s just about connecting with people through fucking music.
Anarchy: There are people who are alive today that if not for you they wouldn’t be alive.
WiL: Yeah, that’s insane dude!
Anarchy: A couple of fans specifically pointed out “Knife Blood Nightmare” and “Cold December” as songs that have helped them. Can you tell them what the meaning behind those songs are?
WiL: “Knife Blood Nightmare” is about a dream I had growing up. The songwriting process for me is weird. I don’t sit around and go “okay, I’m going to write a song about going to school”, or “I’m going to write a song about this happening or this situation”. Music is written and then melody is written on top of that and then lyrics come last. Most times I don’t even know what the song is about until I can step away from it and go, “oh that’s what that’s about“.
Anarchy: Your lyrics are very interpretive too. They probably mean something completely different to me than they do to you.
WiL: Yeah, totally. So, “Knife Blood Nightmare” is just about this crazy dream I had that I was getting killed and I couldn’t wake up from it. It’s kind of sung from my own conscious saying “fuck, wake up, you’re going to fucking die”. “Cold December” is written about an ex-girlfriend of mine. I’m not real good at writing sappy love songs where I sing like “I miss you and everything’s so much better when you’re around”. I’m not very good at that. That song is written about like she died. She didn’t really die…
Anarchy: As if she did…
WiL: As if she did, and how I really do miss her. I’m just not good at writing “I miss you” songs.
Anarchy: Another random question somebody wanted me to ask…the world is ending and you’ve got one day left…what do you do?
WiL: Spend all the money I have. (laughs) All the little money I have. I’d go to Disneyland probably.
Anarchy: Maybe this is a little personal, but every album you have has a line about setting your friends on fire, or burning your friends, that sort of thing. Is this from experience of just getting fucked over?
WiL: Yeah! It is! There’s been a few instances in my life where I’ve had a set of friends, people that I hung out with. Something will happen and they’ll just turn their back on me. It just seems like people are constantly fucking looking for the next thing and it doesn’t matter if your fucking feelings get hurt or if you’re just left in the dust. People just don’t even give a fuck about you. So, that reference is really just a big fuck you to all those people who growing up were friends and then decided I wasn’t cool anymore so they just stopped being friends with me.
Anarchy: As far as this band goes, it’s got to be a source of strength to have a group that are like brothers. Tell me what bonds you guys as a group.
WiL: Yeah, we’ve been a band for almost 4 years and we’ve been together on the road on this run alone for 18 months. We’ve been together 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, rarely get time off.We’re always together, all the time. For some bands they would disintegrate, some people, just can’t get along. But I really think that this whole deal has brought us all together. All the stuff we’ve done, the festivals we’ve played, the bands we’ve gotten to meet that were heroes to us. We’ve shared a lot of experiences together that some people will never get to experience. It’s brought us close together. Same goes with our crew too, all the cats in our crew are kids that we have known for awhile and they’re out on the road with us and we’re all together. It’s a good time man.
Anarchy: I told you the first time we met that I was one of those guys that without even hearing your band I immediately pre-judged you. HiM was nice enough to have me out at a couple of shows and I think it was at the Detroit show when i was with Krystal where I told you that going into it with a completely negative attitude, having never given you a chance, your live show kicked my ass. Maybe the most fun I’ve ever had watching a band. It’s just chaos.
WiL: Yeah
Anarchy: By the way, sorry about pre-judging you.
WiL: No man, it’s common, a lot of people do it.
Anarchy: Do you find that most people who don’t like the band are idiots like me who don’t really give it a chance?
WiL: Yeah, the biggest thing is that people like to look at a picture of us and go “oh boy, fucking get out of here”. the fact of the matter is that we don’t have hit songs on the radio that you can listen to . When you hear a song first, its like “oh, that’s a pretty good song, it’s a good tune”. Then you see the band and you say, “oh, they kinda look silly, but the song’s good, so that doesn’t even really matter”. We don’t have songs on the radio or MTV or any of that shit so people generally see us first in magazines or t-shirts or the internet so they’re like “oh, well these guys fucking suck because they look stupid”. Most people see the picture first and go ‘well, they’re fucking silly” but then see us and they’re like “holy shit”.
Anarchy: I told everyone I was with that I just wasn’t prepared for you guys. Like I said I had more fun than I’ve had in a long time, and I go to a couple of shows every week. Now I’m a fan, so it works.
When you’re up there, just flipping the microphone around and acting crazy, how do you get in that mindset? Do you just think about something that pisses you off? I’ve never seen anyone perform like you.
WiL: I don’t know. I’m not really eccentric offstage. I’m not all crazy and shit like some people are. I’m usually pretty quiet and reserved.
Anarchy: You’re one of the most humble people I’ve come across in the business. When we met you were very polite, very humble, and then on stage, the devil possessed you.
WiL: There’s something definitely bizarre that happens. When the lights go down and we get on stage where I just go away. Then I feel like, what I can recall during the set is just like a whirlwind of shit happening and then it’s over and then I’m like…I couldn’t tell you if I hit anybody or if I jumped off the speakers. I don’t know what happens but I guess the real deal is that what I want to do with my life is to stand on stage and play music. That’s my passion. That’s what I love doing more than anything in the world. You’ll see some guys stand on stage and they’ll play music and you can tell that they really want to be working on a car or they really want to be hanging out with their girlfriend or something else. For me, my passion, my love is getting on stage and performing and that’s it. There’s nothing else in the world that I can think of that’s better than doing that. So maybe it’s that, coupled with the devils fucking lightning strikes when the lights go down.
Anarchy: So, is Rain In Hell the new album?
WiL: No! Dude, I’ve got like 10 songs already written for the new album.
Anarchy: So, after this tour do you take a break and then record?
WiL: No, we go to Australia after this tour and then after that we have until February 15th. That’s when Taste Of Chaos starts…
Anarchy: Damn, you never stop!
WiL: Dude, there’s no stopping. So, from the middle of December to the middle of February I’m going to fly to England and finish writing the next record by myself and then I’m going to come back about a week before Taste Of Chaos and I’m going to work with the band on the new shit and then we’re going to do that tour and then we’re going to record right after that.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WiL and I have always gotten along, but after the concert that night he accidentally set me on fire while hugging a fan...so that seals the deal! We're friends now! In all seriousness though, Aiden is one of the hardest working and most down to earth bands in the business, so everyone should definitely check out Aiden.org for more info on the band
To be kept up to date on future interviews and contests, FRIEND ANARCHY MUSIC ON MYSPACE