Interview with former manager

[PhilHarmonic]

HitQuarters seem to be very interested in the history of Paramore. They've just published a second interview focusing on Paramore's early career - namely how they were first discovered, signed and developed - this time with former manager Jeff Hanson. If you like industry behind the scenes stuff it's very illuminating and full of drama. How about this for a quote!: "The vision of some of the people at Atlantic was to make Hayley Williams a 14-year-old pop singer - make a record, take it to Top 40 radio and that's it."

 

Check it out here: Jeff Hanson interview

[OliDayyy]

Pretty interesting!

Thanks for posting

Anyway, it's not surprising people wanted Hayley to be a pop star, but that's great she managed to get what she really wanted with Paramore.

[Ross]

Brilliant interview, great read.

[Chriss]

Someone posted about this on LJ today and there was a whole bunch of people worrying that Hayley was signed to FBR and the band was built around her (which this article doesn't imply at all, but someone re-worded it on Wikipedia). I know nobody here seemed to think that, but I thought I'd post Hayley's response to everyone who was worring over there because I like it:

 

hey, i have no problem clearing this up!

i met the boys at school and at church in 2002 and we started writing together in early 2003... songs like "conspiracy" and "o star" were 2 of our first.. when that version of our band broke up, we'd already stirred up some interest around town cause taylor's dad was in the business and word got around... i didn't stop writing after the first "paramore" broke up and i met some folks/friends who were interested in helping me record songs and write with me. it was all in good fun.. and i always planned in the back of my mind that the band would get back together at some point anyways. little did i know that labels like atlantic and capital were listening to my "solo" demos.. it was extremely cool and of course exciting but i still thought it would just turn out to be me and the guys in the end. there was a dude who had his own plans tho.. which were all based on his hopes that i would become the next "avril lavigne".. i got smart before it was too late and began explaining to a few labels that i wasn't the package they were expecting. i wanted to be back with my dudes. so i went to josh, started writing with him again.. we wrote "hallelujah", "here we go again" and "take me back" and that was that.. once atlantic heard those demos they had a little more faith in MY vision and when i told them that i didn't want to sign to a major at the get go, they understood. honestly, i just got lucky that FBR and Atlantic had plans to get together. the guys and i really wanted to be on FBR and once janick heard the songs and our story he was really excited to work with us.

 

the reason we don't talk about this is cause it's "business" talk. it's got nothing to do with inspiration and we don't want fans or critics focusing on the confusion of what "could have been" or "what really happened" ... for the record, none of the songs that i wrote on my own ("adore", "swim in silence", blah blah blah) were ever going to be on any of our records.. as far as i'm concerned, they were my way of bridging the gap between 2002 Paramore and 2004 Paramore!