Nick talks of 'I Wanna' to the NewsOK
When the All-American Rejects shot their new video in the Los Angeles house where Rob Zombie filmed his remake of "Halloween II,” they didn’t look in the basement.
Not that they were afraid to. They were just having too much fun upstairs.
"We literally had a 48-hour house party - with a bunch of people we didn’t know,” guitarist Nick Wheeler said in a phone interview from a Latrobe, Pa., tour stop last week. "It was actually a lot of fun.”
Indeed, it appears that in the video for "I Wanna” - the latest single release from the Rejects’ third hit album, "When the World Comes Down” - everyone’s having a high old time dancing and cavorting and draining a seemingly endless supply of kegs and shot glasses while live pigs run amuck, soapsuds fly and singer/bassist Tyson Ritter pursues an elusive blonde who keeps disappearing in the crowd of revelers.
The partiers are actually hired help, dancing to the driving beat of this lust-fueled, power-popping song like they really mean it. The slippery object of Ritter’s desire is merely an actress, and the action - much of it seen on the screens of cell phones - is directed by Paul Hunter, the man who helmed Michael Jackson’s video for his last U.S. Top 10 hit, "You Rock My World” (featuring a cameo by Marlon Brando).
But while it’s only MTV make-believe, the smiles and grins on the faces of Wheeler, Ritter, guitarist Mike Kennerty and drummer Chris Gaylor are for real. "We were kind of p------ into the wind, hopin’ it would work,” Wheeler said. "It came out pretty neat. We’re getting good feedback on the video.”
The band is hoping it will give the single a big boost, since no other song from the album has been able to top the singles chart success or staying power of "Gives You Hell,” the deceptively upbeat revenge ditty that’s been in heavy rotation at pop radio since before the album’s December 2008 release.
"Yeah, we released a couple of singles after that, and we can’t get this damn song ‘Gives You Hell’ out of the way,” Wheeler said. "It’s not making room for any other songs, unfortunately.”
The orchestral ballad "The Wind Blows,” originally written by the Rejects for Gwen Stefani, fell far short of the first single’s lofty chart position.
"I guess the chorus wasn’t as strong as (Stefani) would’ve liked it, so we kept it for ourselves, Ty rewrote the chorus, and we’re proud as hell of it,” Wheeler said. "It’s a really pretty song ... and the other song, ‘I Wanna,’ which was actually the first song written for the album. It’s the oldest song for us, but it’s a catchy little number.
"But I can’t complain. ‘Gives You Hell,’ it’s afforded us so many ridiculous opportunities, and it’s done so much for us. I mean, we literally had a No. 1 song all over the world. We’ve been to Malaysia twice this year. Who goes to Malaysia twice in one year? I mean it was No. 1 in Southeast Asia, in Australia and New Zealand, and it did great for us in Europe, as well.”
Not bad for a little ol’ band from Stillwater. Trouble is, all this success and the constant touring that comes with it leaves little time for Wheeler and Ritter to get back to the town where they started making homemade recordings just 10 short years ago. But they’ll be making their annual Thanksgiving run through the state, with Taking Back Sunday and Anberlin in tow, hitting Oklahoma City on Tuesday and Tulsa on Wednesday, with enough time Thursday to sit down with their families for a turkey dinner.
"I just got me a little place in Stillwater, so I don’t have to crash on Mom’s couch anymore,” Wheeler said. "You know, she turned my room into a sewing room, so there wasn’t a bed for me to come home to for a while.”
Speaking of houses and rooms, what was so mysterious about the basement of that place in L.A. where Zombie shot his version of "Halloween II”?
"We heard the basement was pretty freaky,” he said. "I didn’t get to go down and tour the basement, but we heard it was like a flashback to Michael Myer’s room. I don’t know. I didn’t see the movie.”
Wheeler will take fun over freakiness any old time.
( source )