How has 2020 been for you? It’s obviously not the year that any of us were anticipating…
Luke: "In some ways it’s been extremely productive – with our new album being a result of that – but it’s been a really strange year in my personal life. I don’t think anyone will be coming out of this whole experience is the same person they were before it happened. Everyone has been reflecting so much, and making a lot of changes, and I’m curious to see once the world gets back to normal what similarities there are between all our experiences."
Adam: "We’ve probably never had so much time at home because we usually tour so much, so it’s been nice having more time with our girlfriends and families. But I’m looking forward to when we can have ‘normal’ back, instead of this ‘new normal’."
Were you both in the U.S. when the lockdown hit?
Luke: "Yes, I’d decided to move out to Los Angeles last December; something inside me was telling me to get out there, a strange calling, and so in early January I found myself there. Obviously, I let the guys know, and everyone kinda followed suit very quickly. We did a very small U.S. tour in February, and then the whispers about COVID-19 started happening, and everything just got cancelled. Technically we’ve never lived in LA before – that’s something that got slightly lost in translation in the press we’ve had – so this was us properly pulling up our roots and plonking them in LA for the very first time. And what a time to be there!"
Adam: "We weren’t exactly living the Hollywood dream – everywhere was closed, just like here. People were pretty militant over there, though, about mask-wearing from early on. One day I went for a run without a mask and car pulled up alongside me and a guy wound down the window and shouted, ‘Put a fucking mask on, man!’ I was thinking, 'I’m on my own, in the middle of nowhere!'"
Luke, the introduction to I Hate How Much I Want You on the new album sees you telling Joe Elliott that you’ve got 10 days to make a new record: was the recording schedule genuinely that tight?
Luke: "Absolutely. The original plan was to go into the studio for 10 days and record three, maybe four songs, but everyone had such a burning passionate desire to get into it that by day number four we had six or seven songs done. And so we were like, ‘Hmmm, right, we’ve got five days left, let’s see what else we can do.’ By day seven all the instrumentation and arrangements had been comped and roughly mixed, and I spent the last three days laying down all my vocals. It was a perfect marriage of me working relentlessly on ideas for two weeks before that, and Adam creating a riff bank, so when we started jamming, with our producer John Levine on the piano, it was kinda effortless, which was really bizarre. It literally felt like a dream. I remember waking up on day four, thinking, ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’ Not only was it really easy and exciting and fun, but the quality of the music was really strong."